How much money do you need?

[Sponger15SB]

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Capitalism sucks. I could make a million dollars a day, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, and not have as much money as Bill Gates has right now.

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Yeah that sounds terrible.

[Bobby Cannoli]

"In order for someone to be rich, many others must be poor"

Completely and utterly false. IF you're talking about capitalism.

IF you're talking about communism >as it's been practiced so far in this world<, then yes, you are correct.

Bobby

[grandgnu]

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Capitalism sucks. I could make a million dollars a day, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, and not have as much money as Bill Gates has right now.

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Yeah that sounds terrible.

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I'm not saying it would be terrible to make a million a day. I'm saying that no one needs that kind of money, and it's that type of imbalance that is what's wrong with Capitalism.

[grandgnu]

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"In order for someone to be rich, many others must be poor"

Completely and utterly false. IF you're talking about capitalism.

IF you're talking about communism >as it's been practiced so far in this world<, then yes, you are correct.

Bobby

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????? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] Uh, no, YOU are wrong sir. Look at it this way.

I believe awhile back it was calculated that if you took all of the money and assets within the U.S. and divided them equally amongst the populace, every single person would receive about 90-99 thousand dollars, roughly speaking.

Now, obviously, some people have a lot more than that, and some have a lot less. My point is that in order for someone to have a million dollars, many other people cannot, in a Capitalist system, have an "average" level of income or possessions, because that one person is taking more than their "fair or equal share".

If the median income is 38K in the U.S. (just guessing, but let's go with it), how many people are making less than that? How many are making more?

There is NO way for there to be a caste of rich people in a capitalist society, without their being an even larger caste of poor people.

[Bobby Cannoli]

WOW. Just wow. You have absolutely no clue.

You said "For someone to be rich, others must be poor". Who did Bill Gates rob to become rich? Answer: nobody.

A company (or person) makes money by performing services or delivering goods that the customer desires. If they make (or perform) crap, they make no money. If they perform well, they make a ton of cash. But there's no coersion involved. It's a FREE market. So you don't make people poor in the process of gaining wealth. It's just not a true statement.

And here's an interesting follow-up thought: Of all those people/companies that bought MS products, do you think they gained anything from it? Like maybe more productivity/better performance of their own companies? You have to give the customer some credit for spending their money wisely. They didn't pay Mr. Gates' company scores of billions of $ for no reason.

And you also need to learn the meaning of a term: "zero sum game". A capitalistic economy is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth gets created. That's the main reason you don't need to make others less wealthy in order to become more wealthy.

Note that this is different than poker. In poker, it is actually worse than a zero sum game, unless you play without a rake. In that case (no rake), it is exactly a zero sum game.

If you look at the world's fastest growing economy (China), you will see that they have made a decided turn towards an open market economy (read: capitalism). Their economy pretty much sucked before that. And the Soviet Union's economy also sucked gas.

If you look at less economically-developed countries, they usually have one of two problems (sometimes both): Lack of education and/or dictatorship. Ignorance and oppression are the two great causes of poverty. Not capitalism.

Bobby

[Cased Heel]

At least 800K. I thought 500K but that's pushing it.

[Quicksilvre]

I'd say $5 million after taxes, for about $75,000 a year for 67 years. I'd spend a lot less than that in a year by myself now, and interest would pad the number, but I want to be on the safe side, just in case there's an expensive divorce along the line or living to be 120 is in the cards.

[grandgnu]

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WOW. Just wow. You have absolutely no clue.

You said "For someone to be rich, others must be poor". Who did Bill Gates rob to become rich? Answer: nobody.

A company (or person) makes money by performing services or delivering goods that the customer desires. If they make (or perform) crap, they make no money. If they perform well, they make a ton of cash. But there's no coersion involved. It's a FREE market. So you don't make people poor in the process of gaining wealth. It's just not a true statement.

And here's an interesting follow-up thought: Of all those people/companies that bought MS products, do you think they gained anything from it? Like maybe more productivity/better performance of their own companies? You have to give the customer some credit for spending their money wisely. They didn't pay Mr. Gates' company scores of billions of $ for no reason.

And you also need to learn the meaning of a term: "zero sum game". A capitalistic economy is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth gets created. That's the main reason you don't need to make others less wealthy in order to become more wealthy.

Note that this is different than poker. In poker, it is actually worse than a zero sum game, unless you play without a rake. In that case (no rake), it is exactly a zero sum game.

If you look at the world's fastest growing economy (China), you will see that they have made a decided turn towards an open market economy (read: capitalism). Their economy pretty much sucked before that. And the Soviet Union's economy also sucked gas.

If you look at less economically-developed countries, they usually have one of two problems (sometimes both): Lack of education and/or dictatorship. Ignorance and oppression are the two great causes of poverty. Not capitalism.

Bobby

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I didn't say that Gates robbed anyone, I'm saying that in a Capitalist economy, in order for one person to have more than the "average median" income or assets, many others MUST have less than the average, thus making them "poor" based on that economy.

And let's not get into the "productivity" that Microsoft has delivered, since they continually produce buggy software and have a near stranglehold in the world of Operating Systems and Word Processing applications.

Many "better" products have been put out of business because other "lesser" products just had better marketing or more capital to set themselves up. Beta vs. VHS, Amiga vs. IBM PC's, etc.

Also, it isn't always about performing well, many companies just rip us off. I know it's nit-picking, but here are a few examples:

1. Friendlies Restaurants (Northeast US) used to give you HALF a cherry with your ice cream. What corporate big-wig was sitting in his office going "do you know how many millions we'll save if we give everyone half a cherry?!"

2. Moist Wipes: These used to come in packages of 50, now you get 48, or 42, but you get charged the same, or more.

3. Have you SEEN the prices of razor blades lately? You're paying something like 16 dollars for eight razor blades that probably cost a nickel or less apiece to produce (granted, there are varying advertising and other costs to be considered, but c'mon man, really!)

4. Purchase Microsoft XP in the States and you're paying somewhere between $150-$300. You can get it in China for $40 (and I'm not talking an illegal copy, this is a Microsoft approved price)

We live in a society where we are taken advantage of by the minority upper class who control the majority of the money and assets. And we are too apathetic and comfortable to fix the system.

Don't get me wrong, I know that Socialism and Communism have had, and do have, their faults. We haven't found an ideal system yet, hopefully one day we will.

[Delphin]

I would need about 3.9M after taxes in order to safely say I will never even think about working again (at least not for financial reasons).

This assumes that my family and I could live off of 100k/year (a significant raise compared to my current income) for the next 70 years. I assumed that I could earn an average of 6% on my investments (I consistently do much better than this) and I assumed that the govt would take 25% of my investment earnings and that inflation would be about 2.5% annually.

This is a very safe estimate. If I take 10 years off my life expectancy (assume I'll only live until 87 instead of 98), and assume 8% returns and 2% inflation (still pretty conservative) then I'll only need 2.4M.

2-3M is a pretty good estimate if your lifestyle can be supported by 100k/year.

[Bobby Cannoli]

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I didn't say that Gates robbed anyone, I'm saying that in a Capitalist economy, in order for one person to have more than the "average median" income or assets, many others MUST have less than the average, thus making them "poor" based on that economy.

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So if you're below average, you're poor? Hardly. You need to learn some facts before you make these wonderful claims. The average income in the US is WAY above the poverty line.

And are you further claiming, that an economy is good only if everyone has the same amount of assets/income? Why is that necessary? I don't begrudge rich people what they have. I'm happy with my lot in life. (tip: average and median are different concepts, you might want to investigate further [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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And let's not get into the "productivity" that Microsoft has delivered, since they continually produce buggy software and have a near stranglehold in the world of Operating Systems and Word Processing applications.

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As a frequent MS basher, you're preaching to the choir here. BUT, you're making a mistake. I agree MS could make MUCH better s/w, hence my dislike of them. However, that doesn't mean that their products haven't delivered much to their customers. Again, if people got no value from a product, they would stop buying it. Period.

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Many "better" products have been put out of business because other "lesser" products just had better marketing or more capital to set themselves up. Beta vs. VHS, Amiga vs. IBM PC's, etc.

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Again, preaching to the choir. I still have my original Amiga 1000 (one of the first 100 made [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] But notice something: you put better in quotes. Who says it's better? Not enough people, that's the problem. "better" is subjective. Why did Beta fail? Sony kept the h/w proprietary, so they could charge more, and not compete with the undercutters. Result: People bought VHS, cause it was cheaper. Was it as good? No. Was it good enough? Yes. And cheaper, too [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (see MS argument above). Why did the Amiga fail? Because Commodore was too cheap to pay business app vendors to port their apps to the Amiga. Result: NO businesses bought PCs. Just hobbyists and cable TV stations. And there weren't enough of those sales to support the machine.

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Also, it isn't always about performing well, many companies just rip us off. I know it's nit-picking, but here are a few examples:

1. Friendlies Restaurants (Northeast US) used to give you HALF a cherry with your ice cream. What corporate big-wig was sitting in his office going "do you know how many millions we'll save if we give everyone half a cherry?!"

2. Moist Wipes: These used to come in packages of 50, now you get 48, or 42, but you get charged the same, or more.

3. Have you SEEN the prices of razor blades lately? You're paying something like 16 dollars for eight razor blades that probably cost a nickel or less apiece to produce (granted, there are varying advertising and other costs to be considered, but c'mon man, really!)

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In all three examples, you don't have to buy the product. If you get "ripped off" more than once, it's your fault.

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4. Purchase Microsoft XP in the States and you're paying somewhere between $150-$300. You can get it in China for $40 (and I'm not talking an illegal copy, this is a Microsoft approved price)

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Well, if you buy a configured system, you're paying a lot less than $150 for the OS. And if you're buying just the OS, there are ways to pay (sometimes) much less. As far as China goes, I actually admire MS approach to it. They are trying to encourage a society with much less available capital than the US/Canada/Europe to actually buy the product instead of stealing it. Reminds me of the music industry complaint against MP3s/file-sharing. They say they are losing $7B a year in sales. Yeah, right. Like $7B is going to appear out of thin air to buy the CDs. If they could stop file-sharing, they would make very little additional income, consumers would simply consume less. MS is attempting to sell more legitimate copies at a lower price, making the same income they would have anyway, but also starting the process of putting the illegal copiers out of business.

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We live in a society where we are taken advantage of by the minority upper class who control the majority of the money and assets. And we are too apathetic and comfortable to fix the system.

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Well, let's just say that's a completely subjective statement, and I simply don't agree.

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Don't get me wrong, I know that Socialism and Communism have had, and do have, their faults. We haven't found an ideal system yet, hopefully one day we will.

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Here we agree.