We Are the 99.9%!

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by MH

Small nuance:
When the super super rich guy goes broke the government bails him out and the poor guy ends up on the street.
If the government does not then much more people end up on the street.
Something is screwed up and out of control here.....its a win win situation for super rich ....megalomaniacs.

Indeed. The rules are different for the 1% and the rest of everyone else. The 1% take risks and have everyone bail them out when they blow up.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

An opinion piece that ignores simple math....

Working man buys 5 shares of gettinreadytoexpand inc. at 20 bucks a pop.

Super-rich guy buys 2000 shares of gettinreadytoexpand inc. at 20 bucks a share.

The company goes global and makes money hand over fist - paying dividends and watching its stock price multiply by 10 fold.

Working man collects his dividends and makes a nice little profit.

Super rich guy does the same.

Yes - super rich guy just made 400x more than the working man - because he RISKED 400x as much.

Paul Krugman (and most other liberal "economists") intentionally ignore the fact that when you "have more" - its easier to "make more".

Simple and fundamental reality - but in their view - the super rich guy should be giving his extra profit to the working man - just to "be fair".

And they wonder why the economy hasn't recovered with wealth distribution schemes in place...

Your opinion ignores reality......
Super rich guy buys 2000 shares, working guy buys 20

Getting ready to expand grows big then goes tits up.
super rich guy gets a nice bail out on his 2000 shares because he is big and politicians like him and his friends, working guy gets burnt on his holdings because he doesn't really count for much, then gets stiffed with a tax hike to pay for super rich guys bail out then gets thoroughly screwed with more taxes because super rich guy wants more breaks for his next unable to fail gamble.

[tater]

Actually, the rich guys, and the slightly less rich guys get stiffed with taxes to bail themselves out. The guy who can only afford 20 shares doesn't actually pay enough in taxes to even cover HIS shares bit of bailout, much less anyone else's.

The only people who have a right to complain about wall street bail outs are those paying enough that they are actually contributing to bail outs in a meaningful way. That means meaningful income tax payments. No, payroll taxes don't count, since those workers can expect a positive return on their payroll tax investment (even properly counting the "employer" contribution). The bail outs---like every other government expense in the US---are overwhelmingly paid for by the top tier of taxpayers.

The most funny thing to me is that most people hear "1%" and likely think of a lifestyle actually akin to the top 0.1%, or even 0.01%. People just in the top 1% are your neighbors, parents to your kids' friends, etc. They are not pals with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The top 1% is a couple million taxpayers, the vast majority of whom make under 500k a year. In major metro areas (where most of them live), that sort of income gives you a pretty mundane lifestyle.

[tater]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Indeed. The rules are different for the 1% and the rest of everyone else. The 1% take risks and have everyone bail them out when they blow up.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Everyone else bails them out? How, exactly, when they pay little or no income tax? Or are you concerned about people in the top 20% who don't happen to be in the top 0.1% who might actually get bailed out? That's fine by me, I was against all the bail outs, I thought the market should do its work.

Again, payroll taxes do not count in the least, since that is in effect a retirement program for the poor, and they will in fact pull out far more than they ever put in. Anyone in the top 20-40% will not get a positive return.

Same old tune tater, no matter how many times you repeat the fallacy it won't become true.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Same old tune tater, no matter how many times you repeat the fallacy it won't become true.

Indeed. I've given up. Apparently the macroeconomic costs that everyone is paying in this recession caused by the financial industry don't count in tater's world.

[tater]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Indeed. I've given up. Apparently the macroeconomic costs that everyone is paying in this recession caused by the financial industry don't count in tater's world.

We were talking about bail outs. That's government money (taken form people that actually pay taxes—or borrowed (to be paid back later by... people who actually pay taxes)) given to wall street, et al.

The bail outs were supposed to mitigate macroeconomic effects on others, that was the point of democratic support for them (and so-called "stimulus").

I'm for letting wall street crash and burn, as I said, not bail outs. Regardless, the price of bail outs is paid for by net taxpayers, and in proportion to the amount they actually pay. The number of OWS protesters that paid as much in bail-outs over the last few years than they've paid for Apple products, or even lattes is likely small to nonexistent.

Show me again how people that don't pay enough taxes to cover their familys' per capita share are making a meaningful contribution to things like bail outs. You cannot, because they don't. Real conservatives hate the bail outs because they think the market should work, and bad choices should result in wall street idiots jumping out of windows. Liberals hate bail outs because they know that it is a wealth transfer of money from the rich back to the rich (since they are well aware who pays for everything), when they'd prefer it being transferred to a larger voting block.

The US already puts a a couple trillion a year into wealth transfer from the top down (entitlements, which are ~2/3 of all federal spending). TARP, etc is chump change by comparison (and again, I'm against wealth transfer, period, to rich or poor—least I'm consistent).

[Gerald]

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by tater

We were talking about bail outs. That's government money (taken form people that actually pay taxes***8212;or borrowed (to be paid back later by... people who actually pay taxes)) given to wall street, et al.

I know very well what we're talking about, and there's no need to get patronizing. And I repeat, you ignore the greater macro repercussions of the bailouts. You're so myopically focused on this "the poor don't pay taxes" canard that you fail to recognize the moral hazard implications of bailouts, how it makes the playing field uneven for community banks and how keeping zombie banks going prolongs the inevitable deleveraging that's necessary for the economy to recover. So yes, the bailouts are a tremendous transfer of wealth upwards, not sideways as you argue.

[Gerald]

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by tater

We were talking about bail outs.

What might help this discussion is if we stop using terms like "bail outs" and use the actual term for the program being discussed e.g., TARP. That way we can focus the discussion on actual facts and not emotional nebulous terms.

There are several programs that were part of the recovery strategy. Not all of them were good and not all of them were bad. Any discussion lumping all the programs together is sophistry as it brings the argument down to an emotional level.

I don't worry bout money, I don't have any to worry about.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by sidslotm

I don't worry bout money, I don't have any to worry about.

No problem, in other words,

[Blood_splat]

Nothing to see here everything is just fine.

[geetrue]

Anybody really know who these people are?

The news media doesn't go far enough in reporting who they are.

Anyone can see that they are twenties to thirties, dirty, angry, cold, willing to lose (what looks like to me) everything they own just to make a point.

But ... who is responcible for such a large world wide outpouring of human souls?

Who is behind all of this?

Who is funding them?

I see food being distributed, tents set up as libraries, alcohol, drugs, social meetings taking place along with some kind of unexplained agenda, at least on my TV, to change what Wall Street does and thinks.

In fact why don't we invite them to the congress to explain their actions and what they hope to achieve. Congress goes after sports stars that use dope and rich televison evangelist, right?

Why not ask them to voice it in Congress ... all I hear is correct the problem with our votes, but I've been hearing that for fifty years.