Re: Fraud in the CPI


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ntd8l3lgko201tvh70ca8io6midmbu9ibj@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:59:51 -0600, "John Galt"
<whoisjohngalt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Rumpelstiltskin" <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message


<snip>


People first, not as a side-benefit. If you look at
business and assume as long as business is OK
then the people will be, they might not be.

Uh.....whatever. You still can't have one without the other.



Yes you can. There's the French aristocracy,

How did the French aristocracy earn money without any laborers?

and
the amazing thing Krugman said lately, that the top
hedge-fund manager in the USA made more money
last year than all 80,000 teachers in the NYC school
system made and will make for the next two years,
all added together. Don't try to tell me that doesn't
have much effect on people who aren't rich, even
that single instance!

Hm? You think the hedge fund manager doesn't have a staff? A company that
employs people?


The following isn't the particular talk I heard, but
here's a reference to that observation of Krugman's,
under "The New Gilded Age" three paragraphs
down from the top:
http://seattlest.com/2007/11/02/paul_krugman_on.php

Maybe you think it's OK. I think it's unspeakable.
It makes me want to look into plans for constructing
a guillotine, since it might be time to bring that back.

No, but I also realize that a single exception doesn't make a rule. (So does
Krugman, but when he gets political, he dissembles.)


A bit further down, "The Great Compression" is one
of the great phrases I heard in Krugman's talk that
I couldn't remember later.

<snip?


In the 1960's, one breadwinner could support a family.
Yeah, I know about computers and VCR's and whatnot,
but even families who don't have those things need
both parents working these days far more often than
before. That's one way it can be argued that quality of
life has decreased.

That's why reality is subjective. Many americans have jumped on the 50's
and
60's as an ideal, but to me, it's not reasonable to choose the only 30
year
block in human history when familes who were not rich could get by on a
single salary. Is it a decrease in quality of life? Sure. Was it
reasonable
to expect even a perfectly run economy to maintain that standard? No.


Why did it stop?

Inflation, mostly. Developing nations often experience a temporary wealth
boom, except it's not really a boom -- it's a moment in time where wealth
starts to pour into the hands of the people, but inflation hasn't acted on
the economy yet. You see it happening now in ASEAN, China, and India now.
Then, inflation follows the infusion of wealth, and the situation
stabilizes.


We could probably still do it, except
for the increase in wealth disparity.

Uh, no. The US citizenry has a net worth of 56T. Divide that equally amongst
310,000,000 citizens, and you get 183K per person. That seems like a lot,
but as you well know living in SF, you can't buy a house for it. Or, another
way of putting it would be that if you divided it up and told one spouse to
stay home and live off the interest of the 183K, that would be between 10
and 18K per year depending on your rate of return., Most workers would
consider that to be a pay cut.

As I've said often
in my commie way, it takes a lot of poor people to
support one rich person.

That's not commie -- it's capitalistic, you just have to turn it around. I
can't remember the name of the landed rich family -- but he was from San
Francisco -- who said "I'd rather have 10% of a thousand people's labor than
100% of my own."

JG


In England back before I was 6 in 1951, hardly any
married women worked, and people got along fine
though we weren't rich. That was right after the war
too, a bad time for England economically.

<snip>



.

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