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Newfie wrote:If they have, they haven’t spent it.

If you bought Apple at $10/ share, but now it’s trading for $200/share you have greatly increased your prospective wealth. But all you invested was $10. The other $190 is just sitting there. And if Apple shares drop, that prospective wealth vanishes. But it’s not like you invested $200 and it’s doing something.

I've never directly owned a share of AAPL, so just posting as a stock market observer.

That $10 (or $200) is collecting a nearly $3 a year dividend, which has been increasing roughly annually at a roughly 10% clip, so there's that.

People tend to forget that, on average over time, big companies tend to have roughly half their total appreciation come from dividends. Dividends that arrive as cash flow that can be spent, saved, reinvested elsewhere, etc. Dividends that tend to grow over time.

KaiserJeep wrote:

Ibon wrote:

Cog wrote:Evidently the masses in the third world don't think it's such a great deal to live in the third world since we have to build a wall to keep them out.

98% of residents in Central and South America have zero and I mean zero desire to go the US.

Where are you getting your information?

I think you need to take that trip to Guatemala.

Ibon, the USA has an estimated 12-14 million illegal Hispanic immigrants today, meaning that we already have 2% of the South and Central American population living here. Admittedly, the number has been declining recently, but the border crossings in both directions remain a high number. I see the wall as a means of reducing crime (human trafficing) and illegal drugs, primarily opioids.

Yet, the experts claim that objectively:

1). The ports, including the airports are the biggest problem, re drugs.
2). The largest source of illegal immigrants is people who arrive legally with a temporary visa, and then don't leave when it runs out.

No wall is going to change that.

Meanwhile, for people who are worried about big time drug dealers, etc., with the border to Canada, and the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, do you REALLY imagine that people with means can't sneak into the US, even if they're afraid to just fly in?

If a physical wall in the south could prevent, say, 90% of the problem, I'd be all for it. It can't come remotely close to that until the more serious problems are fixed. And how well can those problems be fixed within what people are willing to spend on them?

We can do more than one thing at a time. I've seen the pictures of people climbing the border fences so it does happen. Or crossing where there are no fences at all.

I'm not a combat engineer but I worked with them a lot in the Army. The purpose of an obstacle or barrier is not to fully stop an enemy. It is to impede his advance until you can defeat him in other ways. Do you think that prison walls are in place for decoration? Or that the prisoners just voluntarily stay there without them?

The wall is part of an overall solution and at $5 billion its a steal relative to the $50 billion we are going to hand out in foreign aid this year.

Cog wrote:We can do more than one thing at a time. I've seen the pictures of people climbing the border fences so it does happen. Or crossing where there are no fences at all.

I'm not a combat engineer but I worked with them a lot in the Army. The purpose of an obstacle or barrier is not to fully stop an enemy. It is to impede his advance until you can defeat him in other ways. Do you think that prison walls are in place for decoration? Or that the prisoners just voluntarily stay there without them?

The wall is part of an overall solution and at $5 billion its a steal relative to the $50 billion we are going to hand out in foreign aid this year.

First, I'm not buying that $5 billion will do anything remotely close to building an effective wall across the entire US border with Mexico. I have my doubts about $50 billion doing it. Then you have maintenance, etc.

Second, I don't want to spend that money to solve some relatively small part of the problem. Illegal immigration from Mexico has decreased a lot over the past decade.

Again, if it solved the problem, or even a significant majority of the problem, I'd have a different opinion.

Meanwhile, I still think a virtual wall to stop illegals from getting US employment on the books (unless authorized for temp work visas and the like) would be FAR more effective.

For one thing, once the majority of the Mexican illegals, those who stayed after their temp. visas expired, and suddenly find it hard to get a job on the books -- what's the economic incentive for them to stay then?

Finally, prison walls are pretty effective at keeping prisoners in the prisons, so they're justified. Why make a completely invalid comparison? Oh yes, to score political points for the wall. Never mind.

I don't believe that a wall will do any harm, and the cost is nominal. It will allow us to divert more of the Homeland budget from patrolling and apprehending border crossers to processing people and vehicles at the legitimate border crossings.

Let me also point out that whatever side of the debate about the Wall you find yourself on, the only harm done to the country so far is from the Democratic shutdown of the government. No harm has yet been done by a Wall that hasn't been built yet.

KaiserJeep wrote:Let me also point out that whatever side of the debate about the Wall you find yourself on, the only harm done to the country so far is from the Democratic shutdown of the government. No harm has yet been done by a Wall that hasn't been built yet.

Um, as a moderate, for you to claim the current shutdown of the government is "the Democrat shutdown" is clearly politics. I watched the discussion between Pelosi, Schumer, and Trump, when (paraphrasing) Trump said he wanted a shutdown, would own it, etc.

The dems have repeatedly stated they want the government open, care about national security and are open to compromise, but Trump holds out and threatens to declare a state of emergency (which will force the courts to stop him).

Why is each side bashing the other side with stuff which CLEARLY is outright false or easily shown to be very distorted such a "thing"? It's as if we didn't have the internet to check on things.

Just to be clear, over time, the left is just as guilty of this tendency as the right, each side has their own story line to tell.

KaiserJeep wrote:I don't believe that a wall will do any harm, and the cost is nominal.

Kind of like $1 billion+ fighter jets after cost overruns, built with cost-plus contracts? I disagree.

Again, your basic Civics appears to be defective. The POTUS makes a Budget Request of Congress. Then the Budget Committees in both the House and Senate debate and either pass or modify the BR.

Trump has made the BR, and Chuck and Nancy are refusing to even debate the BR in either the Senate or the House because it contains a $5.7B earmark for a border wall.

So these two people have shut down the Federal Government:


There, you see, you can easily refute partisan rhetoric if you give it a moment's thought.

The border wall is just a catalyst for discussion and negotiation. It’s a tangible thing and that makes it easier to describe.

IF we wanted to deal with immigration then we could enforce the laws already on the books. Start with folks employing illegals. Then go after all those folks who came in as visitors and over stayed their visas. WTF is CBP doing with all heir budget is they loose track of millions of visitors. Shut down sanctuary cities, they are no different than the confederacy, openly defying Federal law. Get effing real about illegal drugs. Legalize pot and get the federal government out of the “War in Driugs.” We lost, get over it. Once you decriminalize you will remove the profit incentive. Sure we will loose a bunch of junkies, but hell our own MDs are spreading narcotics like candy. It’s become a rich privilege hat you can get legal drugs if you relatively well off but the poor can’t.

These are the kind of things that we SHOULD be talking about. These are the kind of things he D’s could bring to the table as negotiation devices IF they desired to move forward on the immigration issue.

Without arguing with any of that, the POTUS made his Budget Request, and it is NOT being debated in Congress, because Pelosi and Schumer would rather shut down the Federal Government than debate Trump's budget.

Simply put, is that not literally what has happenned?

Democrats have voted for border fencing and walls before. But not this time. I would ask them why.

Leave it shut down until the EBT riots start next month. That should turn up the heat on the Dems sufficiently to come back to the table.

This line of discussions seems to be getting a bit off topic...but as long as we're off topic

I had a dream last night that after a catastrophe (or perhaps the apocalypse! ) a high school principle directed all his students to go raid the neighboring communities for supplies. I suggested that maybe we should instead try to cooperate, and at any rate, while everyone in our community was out raiding others, who's to say the other communities wouldn't take the opportunity to raid ours. I was, of course, laughed out of the room. I woke wondering if the principle was cog or KJ

KaiserJeep wrote:Again, your basic Civics appears to be defective. The POTUS makes a Budget Request of Congress. Then the Budget Committees in both the House and Senate debate and either pass or modify the BR.

Trump has made the BR, and Chuck and Nancy are refusing to even debate the BR in either the Senate or the House because it contains a $5.7B earmark for a border wall.

So these two people have shut down the Federal Government:


There, you see, you can easily refute partisan rhetoric if you give it a moment's thought.

Of course. Only your political rhetoric counts.

What Trump says or does means nothing. After all, he's only the POTUS.

I'm NOT talking politics. There is a budget process defined by the 1974 Budget Control Act. Step 1 of the process is that the POTUS prepares and submits a Budget Request. Step 2 is that the House and Senate Budget Committees debate the BR.

Trump did step 1, and Pelosi and Schumer are refusing to do step 2. The 1974 Budget Control Act does not have a step 1.5, shut down the Federal Government. Yet that is what happened, is it not?

Maybe this line of argument should be taken over to the Trump domestic thread? Please!

Thanks, Newf.

World's 26 richest own same as poorest half of humanity

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-world-ric ... oxfam.html






As Warren Buffett put it: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” I think by now he can emend it to "...and we've won!"

Warren Buffet has shown no particular willingness to cut a big check to the Treasury. He can do that at any time.

Cog wrote:Warren Buffet has shown no particular willingness to cut a big check to the Treasury. He can do that at any time.

Would you cut a big check to the treasury, or bypass the government and give to causes you believe in, as Buffet does?

If I felt I was undertaxed and made a big deal about it, I would do both. But Warren's convictions apparently only run as far as not to cut into his bottom line. Might want to ask Buffet if he deducts his charitable contributions from his tax bill. I can assure you he does just like all billionaires.