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Surely that's good? The problem with rich people is they don't spend their money. The money has to keep going round and keep being spent.

ThomPete 13y ago
But what does that help if people then are back to having no money.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  1) A year with money and the rest without is better than always being without. You might as well argue "we all die eventually so why do anything". 2) For a year they did have money. There is a lot you can do with a year of having money to radically improve your future chances. 3) The money will not have all been sucked back into the hands of a few people. There will still be billions of people with money, and that money will continue being spent and going round. If you have no money and everyone around you has no money, you've got a big problem. If you have no money and all around you are people with money to spend, you can now get money, because that's what creates jobs; demand for goods and services and the ability to pay for them. The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time, and quite possibly never given the precedent set.
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    There is a reason why eg. Scandinavian countries re-distribute wealth continuously and not just once. I am not sure why you would think that wealth wouldn't skew back into in-equal distribution.
    - EliRivers 13y ago
      I am not sure why you would think that wealth wouldn't skew back into in-equal distribution. Maybe you didn't read what I wrote very carefully. I said: "The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time, and quite possibly never given the precedent set." Let's break that down. "The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time" - hey, looks like I do think the wealth will skew back to in-equal distribution! I simply think it will take a while to return to a handful of people holding half the world's money, and given that the rest of my third point is about what would happen when some people with no money find themselves surrounded by people with money, it seemed pretty fucking clear to me that I was talking about an in-equal distribution. "and quite possibly never given the precedent set." - because once it's been made clear that at the point a handful of people hold half the world's money it all goes back again, nobody will be stupid enough to get that rich because they know they'll lose it all.
      - ThomPete 13y ago
        I can read, so no need to be snarky. The question is whether we are discussing the same here.
arethuza 13y ago
"The problem with rich people is they don't spend their money" They don't sit on piles of cash (i.e. literal bits of paper) - they own (purchase) assets of various kinds and even if they do have large quantities of cash sitting in a bank then this is put to work by the bank.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  I should be clearer with what I mean; the problem with rich people is that, relatively speaking, they don't spend their money. Poor people spend all their money, fast. Rich people seem to have a lot of money tied up in swapping things with each other (for exmaple, stocks, which are not investments in the company except for the first time they're bought).
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Why is that a problem though? If there wasn't a downstream speculative market in shares then the value they would get when sold initially would presumably be far less so the companies or individuals getting the money at that stage would be worse off.
    - EliRivers 13y ago
      It's not inherently a problem; it's relatively a problem, given that swapping shares around each other creates no value (i.e. nothing of use to the world has been created), but the rich could instead blow it all on actually creating something or rather, paying for people to do work that leaves the world more actually wealthy (by which I mean, not "has more money" but "has more value"; Bill Gates stumping up cash to help wipe out Polio will leave the world phenomenally more wealthy, but with the same amount of once-owned-by-Bill-Gates cash in it - this is an extreme example of how to do it, but with the very rich it has to be extreme, because unlike poor people, the very rich simply can't spend a significant amount of their money feeding themselves and having a room redecorated and going to the movies). Also, would it really be so bad if the stockmarket was less speculative and the benefit from owning stock was expected to come in the form of dividends? Everyone would have an incentive to make companies reliably, long-term profitable instead of prone to boom and bust. Edit to answer the below: Yes, that cash does come from some very wealthy individuals, and what they're doing there is paying for people to do work that leaves the world more actually wealthy (hopefully - if the business crashes and burns when it turns out the world doesn't want shoes that are also electric bananas no new wealth was created). They're hoping to get a lot of that new wealth for themselves, true, but lots of it goes elsewhere too. They're not just swapping shares around; they're actually paying people to do things.

ThomPete 13y ago

But what does that help if people then are back to having no money.

EliRivers 13y ago
1) A year with money and the rest without is better than always being without. You might as well argue "we all die eventually so why do anything". 2) For a year they did have money. There is a lot you can do with a year of having money to radically improve your future chances. 3) The money will not have all been sucked back into the hands of a few people. There will still be billions of people with money, and that money will continue being spent and going round. If you have no money and everyone around you has no money, you've got a big problem. If you have no money and all around you are people with money to spend, you can now get money, because that's what creates jobs; demand for goods and services and the ability to pay for them. The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time, and quite possibly never given the precedent set.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  There is a reason why eg. Scandinavian countries re-distribute wealth continuously and not just once. I am not sure why you would think that wealth wouldn't skew back into in-equal distribution.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    I am not sure why you would think that wealth wouldn't skew back into in-equal distribution. Maybe you didn't read what I wrote very carefully. I said: "The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time, and quite possibly never given the precedent set." Let's break that down. "The redistribution wouldn't vanish back to the original situation for a long, long time" - hey, looks like I do think the wealth will skew back to in-equal distribution! I simply think it will take a while to return to a handful of people holding half the world's money, and given that the rest of my third point is about what would happen when some people with no money find themselves surrounded by people with money, it seemed pretty fucking clear to me that I was talking about an in-equal distribution. "and quite possibly never given the precedent set." - because once it's been made clear that at the point a handful of people hold half the world's money it all goes back again, nobody will be stupid enough to get that rich because they know they'll lose it all.
    - ThomPete 13y ago
      I can read, so no need to be snarky. The question is whether we are discussing the same here.

arethuza 13y ago

"The problem with rich people is they don't spend their money" They don't sit on piles of cash (i.e. literal bits of paper) - they own (purchase) assets of various kinds and even if they do have large quantities of cash sitting in a bank then this is put to work by the bank.

EliRivers 13y ago
I should be clearer with what I mean; the problem with rich people is that, relatively speaking, they don't spend their money. Poor people spend all their money, fast. Rich people seem to have a lot of money tied up in swapping things with each other (for exmaple, stocks, which are not investments in the company except for the first time they're bought).
- arethuza 13y ago
  Why is that a problem though? If there wasn't a downstream speculative market in shares then the value they would get when sold initially would presumably be far less so the companies or individuals getting the money at that stage would be worse off.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    It's not inherently a problem; it's relatively a problem, given that swapping shares around each other creates no value (i.e. nothing of use to the world has been created), but the rich could instead blow it all on actually creating something or rather, paying for people to do work that leaves the world more actually wealthy (by which I mean, not "has more money" but "has more value"; Bill Gates stumping up cash to help wipe out Polio will leave the world phenomenally more wealthy, but with the same amount of once-owned-by-Bill-Gates cash in it - this is an extreme example of how to do it, but with the very rich it has to be extreme, because unlike poor people, the very rich simply can't spend a significant amount of their money feeding themselves and having a room redecorated and going to the movies). Also, would it really be so bad if the stockmarket was less speculative and the benefit from owning stock was expected to come in the form of dividends? Everyone would have an incentive to make companies reliably, long-term profitable instead of prone to boom and bust. Edit to answer the below: Yes, that cash does come from some very wealthy individuals, and what they're doing there is paying for people to do work that leaves the world more actually wealthy (hopefully - if the business crashes and burns when it turns out the world doesn't want shoes that are also electric bananas no new wealth was created). They're hoping to get a lot of that new wealth for themselves, true, but lots of it goes elsewhere too. They're not just swapping shares around; they're actually paying people to do things.