Greed is Good (Fodder for a broad discussion of economics :))

[Benko]

Human beings have the capacity for many choices, and I'd like for us to make good ones, better ones than many people currently make.  In fact, I'd say that unless we do that we will almost certainly wind up destroying ourselves, along with a lot of nature.  We've developed an amazing amount of technology that gives us a lot of power.

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

I'm with you brother.

But how do you do that?

I think that you do it through persuasion, but effective persuasion has to start with where people are at today.  They're often petty and passion-fueled, and can be very grabby in many ways.  It's like trying to domesticate a cross between Helen Keller and a chimpanzee.  They can be blind to so many things except their next impulse, and they can wreck a whole lot of stuff before they learn much of anything.

But yes, I am 100% with you on the kindness and compassion thing.  Implementation is the challenge.

1.  There was a paper came out a coupla years back showed that people who read literary fiction  were more sensitive to other people, more compassionate.

2. If you do a search you'll find that people who meditate regularly become more compassionate, less stressed, etc.

Which kind of meditation you do matters.

3.

What do you make of the martial artist who would prefer to sip tea in the mountains and ponder his next volume of tree-themed haiku who reluctantly finds that it is once again time to open up a fresh can of whoop ass in response to a problematic human relations situation?

That person can respond appropriately which is the challenge for all of us in life i.e. to be forceful when needed, and likewise to be caring and compassionate when life calls for that response.

[jafs]

Human beings have the capacity for many choices, and I'd like for us to make good ones, better ones than many people currently make.  In fact, I'd say that unless we do that we will almost certainly wind up destroying ourselves, along with a lot of nature.  We've developed an amazing amount of technology that gives us a lot of power.

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

I'm with you brother.

But how do you do that?

I think that you do it through persuasion, but effective persuasion has to start with where people are at today.  They're often petty and passion-fueled, and can be very grabby in many ways.  It's like trying to domesticate a cross between Helen Keller and a chimpanzee.  They can be blind to so many things except their next impulse, and they can wreck a whole lot of stuff before they learn much of anything.

But yes, I am 100% with you on the kindness and compassion thing.  Implementation is the challenge.

It's nice to have an ally!

I agree - it's hard to do.  One thing that is good is for us to all embody the values we preach, and so people can see if they work well in practice.  And you have to accept that some people, for whatever reason, will not be swayed to your side.  Some people have had too much pain/struggle in their background and are too damaged from that.  Others are too attached to an ideology that's opposed to it.  Etc.

My sense is that greed is an overlay on top of fear, and that fear is the underlying motivation.  So one idea might be to talk about fear and how that works.  It's easy to imagine that if one is afraid one won't have enough, that would tend to make people grab for as much as possible right now.

Again, I'm the same - I want to feel/be secure financially as much as the next guy.  It's just that the desire doesn't manifest as greed for me somehow.

Another thing is the question of "enough" - is there "enough" to go around?  Depending on how you answer that question, you wind up with a different world-view.  I like Ghandi on this, that "there's enough for all of our need, but not for all of our greed".

Since Benko mentioned meditation (which I endorse and think is a very good way to become more centered/peaceful), I'll mention that I've been doing a little gratitude practice each night for some years now.  As I go to sleep I think of the things that I'm grateful for in my life, and then ask for help with things that are challenging.  It's a simple practice, but seems to have a lasting effect, and I usually am easily able to find the "silver lining".

It's surprising how much there is that is positive that we take for granted, and focusing on it even briefly gets us into the habit of not getting stuck on/attached to the negative things.

[MediumTex]

But yes, I am 100% with you on the kindness and compassion thing.  Implementation is the challenge.

It's nice to have an ally!

There are lots of us here who would probably agree with your ambitions for humanity.

[Pointedstick]

How would you define "greed?"

[jafs]

My dictionary gives:

Excessive or reprehensible acquisitiveness.

That seems pretty good to me - of course those are subjective terms and can be seen/used differently.

[Pointedstick]

of course those are subjective terms and can be seen/used differently.

Right. I don't care what your dictionary says; I care about what you think. For example: one of my goals is to accumulate 25 times my family's annual spending so that we are financially independent. Is this excessive? Or even "reprehensible?" Am I being greedy? Should I accept a high level of taxation on my efforts? If you or anyone else advocates this, should I refrain from opposing you/them?

Etc. Specifics are where the rubber meets the road.

[Greg]

Back to Trump, he's stealing the headlines again today. First he cajoles Apple to bring manufacturing jobs back to the States and then Sarah Palin snubs Ted Cruz and endorses him less than two weeks prior to the Iowa vote. Are these things good or bad?

Did Trump say how much more the iPhone would cost if it were built here?  I wonder how much more people would be willing to pay for a U.S.-made iPhone when all other phones were still being made in Asia.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/31/iphon ... g-graphic/
http://techonomy.com/2013/08/where-do-a ... come-from/

Interesting information, whether fully true or not on how much it would cost extra for buying a phone manufactured in the U.S.

[MediumTex]

Back to Trump, he's stealing the headlines again today. First he cajoles Apple to bring manufacturing jobs back to the States and then Sarah Palin snubs Ted Cruz and endorses him less than two weeks prior to the Iowa vote. Are these things good or bad?

Did Trump say how much more the iPhone would cost if it were built here?  I wonder how much more people would be willing to pay for a U.S.-made iPhone when all other phones were still being made in Asia.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/31/iphon ... g-graphic/
http://techonomy.com/2013/08/where-do-a ... come-from/

Interesting information, whether fully true or not on how much it would cost extra for buying a phone manufactured in the U.S.

I would say that $3 in cost difference on a $900+ device is basically nothing. 

It looks like the more compelling reason for outsourcing production is that China has the infrastructure to actually deliver the desired level of production on short notice.

To have that kind of excess capacity, you have to be willing to accept high levels of unemployment, especially seasonal unemployment.  I don't think that anyone has the desire to have 10%+ unemployment in the U.S. just so that there can be enough idle factory workers at all time to handle any surge in production that a company may need to handle.

More on Chinese unemployment:

http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/china-unemployment/

[WiseOne]

But as a practical matter, I don't think compassion can be instilled in people by legislation or laws.  It is a personal and cultural thing.

I'd say trying to impose "compassion" by external means ultimately backfires.

Jafs, we are all with on how we'd like to see human society evolve.  The question is whether we allow it to do so on its own, or whether we believe governments can usefully hurry things along.

If you're a Democrat, you think that the utopian vision can be achieved by government edict.  What I've learned over the past several years that government edicts have a way of backfiring, causing unintended consequences that can be far worse than the original ill the edict was intended to fix.  The problem is that society is so enormously complicated that no one can successfully identify the consequences that will result from a given set of flipped switches.

There's a science fiction short story titled "The Game of Blood and Dust", whose author I can't remember.  It was about two omniscent players who would go into human history, change one thing, and then observe the results.  The effects of small changes, like delaying invention of the printing press, were enormous and not trivial to predict.

The one exception to this view, in my mind, is health care.  Everyone needs it at some point, some more than others, and sometimes people draw a short straw through no fault of their own.  Because this is relatively rare and people will inevitably want to optimize their own situation, the natural history is for those few people to be completely screwed.  That's why I take an essentially Republican economic view except that I would like to see some form of "single risk pool" insurance implemented.

[jafs]

of course those are subjective terms and can be seen/used differently.

Right. I don't care what your dictionary says; I care about what you think. For example: one of my goals is to accumulate 25 times my family's annual spending so that we are financially independent. Is this excessive? Or even "reprehensible?" Am I being greedy? Should I accept a high level of taxation on my efforts? If you or anyone else advocates this, should I refrain from opposing you/them?

Etc. Specifics are where the rubber meets the road.

Do you think you're being greedy?

[jafs]

But as a practical matter, I don't think compassion can be instilled in people by legislation or laws.  It is a personal and cultural thing.

I'd say trying to impose "compassion" by external means ultimately backfires.

Jafs, we are all with on how we'd like to see human society evolve.  The question is whether we allow it to do so on its own, or whether we believe governments can usefully hurry things along.

If you're a Democrat, you think that the utopian vision can be achieved by government edict.  What I've learned over the past several years that government edicts have a way of backfiring, causing unintended consequences that can be far worse than the original ill the edict was intended to fix.  The problem is that society is so enormously complicated that no one can successfully identify the consequences that will result from a given set of flipped switches.

There's a science fiction short story titled "The Game of Blood and Dust", whose author I can't remember.  It was about two omniscent players who would go into human history, change one thing, and then observe the results.  The effects of small changes, like delaying invention of the printing press, were enormous and not trivial to predict.

The one exception to this view, in my mind, is health care.  Everyone needs it at some point, some more than others, and sometimes people draw a short straw through no fault of their own.  Because this is relatively rare and people will inevitably want to optimize their own situation, the natural history is for those few people to be completely screwed.  That's why I take an essentially Republican economic view except that I would like to see some form of "single risk pool" insurance implemented.

That's really not true of D - what they/we believe is that government policies can be compassionate and useful.  That alone won't bring us to any sort of utopia - people will still be free to make bad choices, and probably will do just that.  Only a combination of good policies and good personal choices might get us to utopia, if it's possible.

Overstating that as "achieving a utopian vision" is sort of a strawman argument.  It's like when D argue that gun regulations can "reduce" violent crime, and then the other side says they won't "eliminate" them.

I agree that there are often unintended consequences from policies, and think it would be a very good idea to do what we can to reduce those.

[Pointedstick]

of course those are subjective terms and can be seen/used differently.

Right. I don't care what your dictionary says; I care about what you think. For example: one of my goals is to accumulate 25 times my family's annual spending so that we are financially independent. Is this excessive? Or even "reprehensible?" Am I being greedy? Should I accept a high level of taxation on my efforts? If you or anyone else advocates this, should I refrain from opposing you/them?

Etc. Specifics are where the rubber meets the road.

Do you think you're being greedy?

No.

But I don't typically use that term because it seems like it is used more as a politically-loaded bludgeon to attack people who are more concerned with material wealth than you are, and as such it rubs me wrong. When I succeed, I will be in something like the 99th percentile for material wealth among people in my age range. Relative to them, I can see how this would look "greedy" to someone who cares about "greed." Everything's relative. You probably look pretty greedy to someone from Papua New Guinea.

Do you think I'm being greedy? If not, would you care to describe material wealth acquisition habits that do look greedy to you?

[jafs]

I'm side-stepping a bit for a while, because I like you and enjoy our conversations, and don't want to create friction.

Also, it's hard for me to say. 

I don't think it's necessarily greedy to want to be financially independent, so that you don't have to work for anybody else.  On the other hand, if that means you want to be a billionaire, then I might consider it greedy.

The margins are a lot easier - it's easy to say that many rich people look greedy to me, based on their consumption.

[MediumTex]

I'm side-stepping a bit for a while, because I like you and enjoy our conversations, and don't want to create friction.

Also, it's hard for me to say. 

I don't think it's necessarily greedy to want to be financially independent, so that you don't have to work for anybody else.  On the other hand, if that means you want to be a billionaire, then I might consider it greedy.

The margins are a lot easier - it's easy to say that many rich people look greedy to me, based on their consumption.

I'll say it: Pointedstick is being greedy.

He is attempting to accumulate far more than he needs, even as others have far less than they need.

The only question now is what we are going to do about Pointedstick and his ilk--i.e., those self-disciplined greedsters who work in the shadows, patiently increasing their surplus, quietly slurping the froth off of our economy, storing their riches in dark PP-themed caverns far from view, retiring late at night to solitary moments with their stash, touching the brokerage statements as if they were magic parchment, caressing the bullion with Gollum-like adoration, their hearts blackening even as their pulse quickens, as if the greed is replacing their organic life force.  Although there is an occasional cackle, the spectacle is mostly a quiet celebration of the dark grabbiness within their soul.

Pointedstick's motto is Greedster's Gotta Greed.

[img width=460]http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-pu ... gollum.jpg[/img]

[l82start]

I don't like bullies, having been bullied as a child, and so I love stories where the victim turns the tables on the bully, and gives them a good whomping, like the Karate Kid movies.

  you should watch this for an opposing take on the bully victim relationship in that movie 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Gz_iTuRMM

[Pointedstick]

I'm side-stepping a bit for a while, because I like you and enjoy our conversations, and don't want to create friction.

Also, it's hard for me to say. 

I don't think it's necessarily greedy to want to be financially independent, so that you don't have to work for anybody else.

If everybody did what I do, the entire economy would collapse into a huge depression and need to be re-created along substantially different lines. In a lot of ways, my extreme saving habits are only possible because the of the selfless extreme consumption habits of others.

So 25 times one's annual spending is not greedy unless that figure is measured in billions of dollars. So are billionaires the greedy ones? How about millionaires? Multi-millionaires?

[MediumTex]

Right. I don't care what your dictionary says; I care about what you think. For example: one of my goals is to accumulate 25 times my family's annual spending so that we are financially independent. Is this excessive? Or even "reprehensible?" Am I being greedy? Should I accept a high level of taxation on my efforts? If you or anyone else advocates this, should I refrain from opposing you/them?

Etc. Specifics are where the rubber meets the road.

Do you think you're being greedy?

No.

But I don't typically use that term because it seems like it is used more as a politically-loaded bludgeon to attack people who are more concerned with material wealth than you are, and as such it rubs me wrong. When I succeed, I will be in something like the 99th percentile for material wealth among people in my age range. Relative to them, I can see how this would look "greedy" to someone who cares about "greed." Everything's relative. You probably look pretty greedy to someone from Papua New Guinea.

Do you think I'm being greedy? If not, would you care to describe material wealth acquisition habits that do look greedy to you?

Is the squirrel greedy because he gathers nuts in the summer?

[rickb]

So 25 times one's annual spending is not greedy unless that figure is measured in billions of dollars. So are billionaires the greedy ones? How about millionaires? Multi-millionaires?

IMO, greedy is less about your net assets and more about your income.  If you are the CEO of a company and you make more than 300x the average of your employees - you're greedy.  Oh wait, that's now the average ratio between American CEO and worker salaries.  Up from a ratio of 20x in 1965.  See http://fortune.com/2015/06/22/ceo-vs-worker-pay/

I've posted a link to this source before but let's do it again (note that they're a right leaning, not left leaning, organization): http://taxfoundation.org/article/summar ... 015-update

Looking at the appendix at the end, the income level that puts you in the top 1% is (as of 2013) $428,713.  The income level that puts you in the top 0.1% is $1.86M.  The top 1% pays an average of 27.08% of their income in taxes (down from a not strictly comparable 34.47% in 1980).  The top 0.1% currently pay 27.91% of their income in taxes (there's no comparable data from 1980, but I suppose it was probably at least 35%)

PS's hypothetical conflict about the inner city person making $53,000 wanting the suburbanite making $100,000 to pay 75% of his/her income above $50,000 misses the mark by several orders of magnitude. 

Increasing the average tax rate on the top 0.1% (those making more than $1.86M per year, 18 times more than PS's example) from its current 28% to half of PS's 75% (37.5%) would result in about $305B total ($77.5B more) tax revenue.

Just by comparison, the Federal deficit this year is projected to be about $474B.

Assuming all you conservatives care about the deficit, what exactly is your plan to eliminate it without raising taxes on folks I think we can all agree are greedy?

[Edited to correct how much additional tax revenue increasing the average rate on the top 0.1% would generate]

[Xan]

...folks I think we can all agree are greedy?

I think it's much greedier to covet what somebody else has, to make a claim on something that isn't yours and that you didn't earn, and then use force to take it, than it is to negotiate a salary which those paying it think you're worth.

[jafs]

Thanks, rickb - I was having similar thoughts.

I just read an article that said that the 62 richest people in the world have more wealth than the bottom 50% combined.  That seems crazy to me.

In this country, actors make $1 million an episode on a popular sit-com while teachers/social workers make $30-50K/yr.

Minimum wage is virtually impossible to live on without government programs for assistance, even if one is working full-time.

PS' example is hard for me, because I completely understand not wanting to have to work for somebody else your whole life, especially if your job isn't particularly fulfilling, as many aren't.  So, I'm not sure I'd call it greedy.  But, from a numbers perspective he'll definitely wind up with a lot more than many people will ever have.

One tax change I'd like to see is for unearned income like capital gains to be taxed at the same rate as earned income.  Would you say that would "hurt" you, PS?  Or just make it take a little bit longer for you to reach your goal, and be a relatively minor inconvenience?  And does it matter to you how the taxes are used?  If they were used for an early intervention program that has been shown to be effective at improving inner city kids chances of success, is that better than other ways of spending it?

[Reub]

So you want to take income from senior citizens so that government can waste more of it? It's not the government's money!

[Benko]

...folks I think we can all agree are greedy?

I think it's much greedier to covet what somebody else has, to make a claim on something that isn't yours and that you didn't earn, and then use force to take it, than it is to negotiate a salary which those paying it think you're worth.

+1 

The bolded part is usually called theft.

[Cortopassi]

I don't begrudge anyone making more money than me.  What I think has thrown everything out of proportion is the scale of it.  300x salaries plus huge stock options plus golden parachutes for CEOs who many times run companies into the ground but are hired by another just because they seem to have some magical C level experience.

Celebrities making millions per movie or episode.

Athletes making millions per year.

Don't get me wrong, "we the people" have allowed this to happen.  How it's gotten so out of whack over the past 50 years I have no idea.  But as long as people are willing to pay outrageous ticket prices to sporting events, keep watching TV and going to the show, it will continue.

As PS said, I am similar.  If the current economy depended on people like me and my consumption habits, it would collapse as well. 

[Greg]

As PS said, I am similar.  If the current economy depended on people like me and my consumption habits, it would collapse as well.

While the current economy would collapse, it would ideally reorganize into a more useful economy based on items that are more worth real value. Maybe a lot more money would go into making medicine cheaper, putting more money into designing cars/cell phones/washing machines, etc. to be much more reliable and having a better secondary market for parts, etc.

I kinda wonder how this society would happen as it transitioned. Like if everyone just stopped work on whatever they were doing, and then started doing something else entirely based on that it added real tangible value to society.

[jafs]

Part of it is that people are willing to spend a lot of money on sporting events, concerts, etc.  But part of it is also the policies that have been crafted to help those at the top at the expense of the rest of the people.

It's not at all personal for me either - we have more than enough, and are financially comfortable.  It's a matter of looking at the bigger picture, and seeing how out of balance it's gotten.

The economy is definitely driven by spending, and that concerns me, but I haven't figured out any other way for an economy to work.  We spend less than many, but still enough that I feel good about circulating some money through the economy so that it benefits others, rather than hoarding it.