American Budget Cuts

Sorry, I don't think that Communism is either a practical or an ethical economic system.

No, they still have an incentive to be efficient. The flaw is that you equate profit with an inefficiency. What do you think happens to the profit? Do they eat it? Does it magically vanish?Your main argument hinges on assuming that a portion of the population getting paid is an "inefficiency". It may be an inefficiency in the transaction of the consumer's money for a good, but it isn't an overall inefficiency for the economy. To spell it out for you, if you are arguing that there are inefficiencies when people break the law then people are still capable of breaking the law when the government has monopolized the market. If a company can promise payment and then simply not fulfill that promise then so can a government agency.And the government agency is immune to lawsuit! And again you are just talking out your ass here. If the premiums were twice what the payout could possibly be, of course there would be profit. There couldn't conceivably not be profit. The issue isn't that the people can't be profitably insured, its that the people can't pay. It has nothing to do with insurance, its about people wanting something they can't afford.Thats like saying bread can't be sold profitably because there are some people out there who can't afford bread. I don't support your desire to steal from people who earned their wealth fairly, even if you think you have a good cause. Then you are an idiot. The money is being taken against people's will and the benefits given to those who haven't earned it. I don't think I have...

There is a reason once someone becomes an adult they are allowed to leave their family unit and become financially independent.And I was talking about large-scale economics, not "small village" units.

Did it now?

Nope, in socialism you are rewarded relative to the amount you contribute to the group. Not simply based on need, or working according to your ability.

Once you dropped any pretense of economic argument and start arguing efficiency gains based on subjective criteria, I'm completely finished talking to you. You don't have anything meaningful to add. Arguing against dishonesty in trade isn't an argument against capitalism. "Better" care is subjective. If someone doesn't get sick do they pay less for healthcare than sickly people? Do they have the freedom to choose where they allocate their healthcare money on an individual basis? Nope, and nope.But your entire pitch at this point is completely opinion so I'm not going to reply to you anymore.

That graph shows a reduction relative to if the 1979 distribution had prevailed. The bottom fifth was $6,900 lower than would be expected if the distribution had remained the same, showing a widening gap of distribution. The top pulled dramatically further away from the bottom.However that doesn't mean that real income went down. It just means that the distribution widened.

Not so; it makes all the employees their paychecks and the investors their expected return on their investments. Thats making money. You don't seem to be using the term "inefficiency" in a way I am familiar with. If you have a wheat field and instead of planting in regular rows to maximize space you haphazardly dot the plants around resulting in less overall wheat production from the plot, thats an inefficiency. Nobody pockets that, it never existed, it was a waste.If aggregate spending equals aggregate income then all the resources spent toward producing a product are offset by the sale of the product. That includes paying off investors, maintenance on equipment and property, materials and labor costs. There is no profit to be reinvested in expansion of the business, research, or dividends. For the consumer the company's profit is a waste; making that purchase doesn't require profit to happen. But the company isn't going to waste that profit. Sure, someone could pocked it.. but in economic terms that isn't a waste because they will reinvest it. Even if they just burned the money it would result in slight deflation causing everyone's money to become slightly more valuable, exactly offsetting the burned money. BWAHAHAHAHAH!! Gosh, you had me going there for a second. 'tear' Thats a good one... But thats not a criticism of public sector insurance companies, or capitalism in general. Its just a general whine about how limited resources sometimes means people can't afford important things. And how exactly did these people who can't afford healthcare have their wealth pilfered exactly? And thats completely irrelevant to the point. You can't just perform economically unsustainable actions and expect to be paid.

Thats simply not what the graph says. If you think that when a graph talks about the "1979 Distribution" its talking about the transfer of wealth you need to go back to school.If one person has 3 crackers, a second person has 5 crackers, and a third has 2 crackers then I have described how the crackers are "distributed" among the people. A year later the total number of crackers has doubled and if the original "distribution" had been maintained then person one would have 6 crackers, person two would have 10 crackers, and person three would have 4 crackers. If instead we find out that person two has only 8 crackers then the chart would show a -2 change relative to if the original distribution had prevailed. Person two still has more crackers than at the start however.The graph you posted describes a similar circumstance, and the fact that you completely failed to understand what it was saying puts significant doubt on your ability to judge such matters.

First of all, no my position is not. For the blindingly obvious the government is a strong regulatory factor changing our system from being perfectly capitalistic or competitive. Perfect competition isn't something realistically possible even without intervention, in much the same way that the Navy's goal of having all the metal surfaces of their ships painted and sealed is never going to happen. Its a continually moving target hindered simply by it taking time to change and develop products, adapt business models, etc. Ok? Whats your argument exactly, that the rich are too rich? Can you define that in a way that isn't based on "I want their money"? As well they should. Consider this: The rich presumably got that way because they are better at making money. That means they should be able to profit more per dollar than a poor person, plus they have more money to their name. If the poor could get better return per investment dollar you would have to wonder why they were poor, and the rich were rich.If you reward success, or rather allow the successful to retain their earnings, then you have to expect the wealthy to make money faster than the rest. That still sounds like you want to redistribute wealth. Why would you be OK with rewarding people freely for their effort, but then go back and change things about afterwards? Do you think they got that wealth illegitimately? They have not lost value compared to the top. They have decreased in percentage share, but thats not really the same thing. They do. If you pay a percentage per dollar then those with more dollars pay more taxes. In actuality they pay more per dollar than the poor.But thats not really what you were wanting was it?

Remember, the productivity of the richest 1% of Americans is going to be a lot larger than might otherwise be expected. All of their invested money counts as effort as well.If you have a project where a wealthy person invested 1 million dollars and an employee invested $250,000 worth of effort... then the rich person is responsible for 4 times the total gain of the project than the employee. The money is directly convertible to effort yet I expect you didn't consider it equivalent. And you completely missed the significance of investment, and what it represents.You simply don't understand what is going on.

Still completely wrong. Lets have a thought experiment:Imagine two people, each of which perform $100,000 dollars worth of work. It doesn't matter at what, they get their effort converted to dollars which they can then easily reallocate to whatever they choose.The first (person A) spends his money on things he consumes. That could be food, or things he owns, or practically anything. The point is that it is gone, not providing any more economic benefit.The second (person B) takes all his money and buys a machine that will last one year. This $100,000 machine he lets the first person run the next year, with the understanding that they will split the profits. Remember its effectively B's first year of effort plus A's second year of effort, thus the split is perfectly reasonable. B hasn't gotten the reward from his effort, he is investing it instead.So if someone has a bunch of money, that have a bunch of placeholders for effort. They can purchase effort from other people, or they can purchase equipment or supplies which effort was required to produce. And thats completely irrelevant. Investment capital can be spent on labor too. You are turning labor placeholders back into labor. Of course if you only buy equipment then nothing gets done, but thats completely irrelevant.

Right, so who are you to say that the $100,000 worth of effort worker A puts in the second year should give him any more right to the fruits of that labor than the deferred $100,000 of labor of person B? (provided in the form of machinery) They exchanged productivity for productivity. Or more accurately the results of their productivity for the results of someone else's productivity. Why would an equivalent exchange change anything? The purpose of a medium of exchange is to allow such transformations. No thats "labor productivity", a distinct subset of "productivity". Productivity is a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input. Our unit of input is dollars, which is used to quantify the amount of labor input as well as the amount of invested equipment.Regardless, you are just trying to cloud the issue with semantics. Whatever you want to call it people deserve to reap the rewards of their investments.Edited by Phage0070, : spelling

So basically you haven't the faintest concept of the allocation of resources beyond getting your paycheck and spending it.You haven't really progressed past "hunter-gatherer" stage have you? How is that relevant?

Are you saying you can't tell the difference between an investment and "spending"?Whats the difference between the income produced by manual labor and the income produced by the return on financial investments? Why are you equating an increase in GDP with investment in American workers? Is that truly the only way you understand that GDP can increase? Thats still false. I'm not just going to go along with your mistake because you insist others have made the same mistake.Furthermore you haven't actually outlined how this "theft" is taking place. How exactly are the wealthy stealing all this money?