Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

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wtf
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by wtf »

bobevenson wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:53 am No, the market value of a house is what buyers consider its intrinsic value.
You just made that up. It's wrong. The intrinsic value is shelter. The market value is what someone will pay for your house today.
bobevenson wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:53 am You don't seem to understand that everything doesn't have intrinsic value.
Of course I understand that. Bitcoin has a perfectly well known market value at any given moment (depending on the particular exchange). But nobody knows what its intrinsic value is or if it even has one.
bobevenson wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:53 am They both have market value, but only the house has intrinsic market value. The stock certificate only represents intrinsic market value.
You're entitled to your own reality. Meanwhile read this. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer ... -value.asp
Philosophy Explorer
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

This is the article that inspired this thread:

https://www.axios.com/schumer-trump-is- ... 76830.html

PhilX 🇺🇸
wtf
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by wtf »

Philosophy Explorer wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:17 am This is the article that inspired this thread:

https://www.axios.com/schumer-trump-is- ... 76830.html

PhilX 🇺🇸
Well yeah, Chuck Schumer. The link I posted seemed more nuanced and evenhanded. 80% of Americans will get a tax cut. What's the problem?

There's a midterm coming up in November and we shall see what this looks like by then. I didn't follow the tax bill in detail so I'm as curious as anyone else to see what's going to happen. As a general rule you can safely ignore anything Chuck Schumer says about anything.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

bobevenson wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 11:00 pm The term intrinsic means non-legal.
No it doesn't.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

wtf wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 7:13 am
Philosophy Explorer wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:17 am This is the article that inspired this thread:

https://www.axios.com/schumer-trump-is- ... 76830.html

PhilX 🇺🇸
Well yeah, Chuck Schumer. The link I posted seemed more nuanced and evenhanded. 80% of Americans will get a tax cut. What's the problem?
Here's Megan McArdle at Bloomberg then. She's no Republican or Democrat, she's not a fan of ObamaCare,has also written about the good side of this tax plan in regards to simplification (although that's mostly lost opportunity).
Megan McArdle wrote: So Republicans should stop crowing about passing a big tax cut; they’ve done no such thing. All they’ve done is cut taxes for some favored constituencies, while raising taxes on future generations. To spend is to tax, as economists like to say; you can fudge the distinction for a while by borrowing, but in the end, the piper is going to come calling for his fee, and someone’s going to have to fork over.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles ... it-busting
Or check out what The Economist has to say about it:
One test of the final bill is its effect on the economy. On the one hand it would limit deductions in favour of cuts to marginal tax rates—a worthwhile reform. On the other it will increase inequality, largely because business-owners tend to be rich, and it will add a trillion dollars in public borrowing by 2027, according to an official projection for the Senate’s bill.

But there is another test, which is the effect on governance. The Republicans have argued that their bill is aimed at helping middle-class Americans and that it will spark enough economic growth to pay for itself. This is belied by experience—witness the rise in deficits after the tax cuts of 1981 and the early 2000s (see article). Not even economists in sympathetic think-tanks believe that the Republican claims will be borne out. Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, has failed to produce any analysis justifying his predictions of much higher growth (his department’s inspector-general is investigating why not). The Treasury did, however, delete a study from its website that was unhelpful to the administration’s argument.

All politicians exaggerate the benefits of their policies, and some Republicans have made unconvincing claims about the rewards of tax cuts for decades. However, in the 1980s the party undertook a robust debate over the merits of supply-side economics, and in the 2000s George W. Bush’s own economists cautioned against over-rosy growth forecasts. This time, most Republican senators simply brushed off the official projection that the bill’s effects would contradict their sunny promises. In addition, they attacked the independent forecasters whom they have previously championed as a valuable restraint on self-serving politicians. And to minimise scrutiny, they rushed the bill through barely a day after the forecast was released. Perhaps, after the failure of health-care reform, they were desperate for a significant legislative achievement.

A lack of consistency makes Republicans seem unprincipled. They have spent the past decade claiming that the national debt is among their main concerns. In 2009 they opposed President Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus, arguing that it was unaffordable. Yet it cost less than today’s tax bill would. It passed when unemployment was over 8% and interest rates were stuck near zero. Today unemployment is 4.1% and rates have started rising because the Federal Reserve is worried about inflation. The Fed will probably raise rates faster after the tax bill, limiting the boost to economic growth.

The whiff of self-enrichment does not help. President Donald Trump assures Americans that the bill will be “not good” for his bank balance. Without seeing his tax returns, that is impossible to know. But he holds interests in around 500 “pass-through” businesses, which are among the main beneficiaries of the tax bill. As a property developer, he is almost uniquely fortunate in being allowed to keep most of his tax exemptions.
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Lacewing
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by Lacewing »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:23 pm Or check out what The Economist has to say about it
God, it's all so insane, isn't it -- when "winning" is more important/valuable than truth or reality or fairness? What kind of people can participate in such a fucked up game? Are they aliens, totally screwing with us? It's like the most crazy people have taken over the asylum.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Problem is that the other guys are invariably just as bad at their extremes. American Republicans have this thing about tax cuts where they are just totally convinced that every tax cut pays for itself plus a little - it's a fantasy that has been indulged before and doesn't work out. But many on the left tend to believe that increased spending also pays for itself by priming demand and creating jobs. Both sides are just claiming that a small discount from a costly policy is larger than the original bill that will eventually fall due, and both are totally insane.

But whichever unreality a person inhabits, they can convince themselves that pointing at the other fantasist and repeating whichever of the the majical thinking mantras ("Magic Money Tree" or "Trickle Down Economics") applies to their team. They each think the other outfit's version of voodoo Economics is the only alternative to their own.

There seem to be multiple irreconcilable conflicts here, I can think of a few, but I bet there are many more...
1. People want to have an opinion on stuff, and consider their opinion sufficiently informed.
2. Few people want to put effort into finding out if their opinion is well informed.
3. Most people actively avoid sources of information that conflict with their existing opinion.
4. Given the options, they also choose friends whos views reflect their own.
5. Facebook makes 4 much easier than ever before.
6. People are increasingly unlikely to trust experts on any subject.
7. And anyway, if you stick to the news sources that give your own opinion back to you, they will find pliant 'experts' to do that with.

8 ... But most importantly, economic policy should be boring and technical. Everyone knows that deep down, which is why most people don't read about it. But they just won't let that stop them having opinions about it, and rejecting economists who warn them they are mistaken, and unfriending people who fail purity tests on such matters.

So everyone ends up a sucker for a dramatic shouting match about a misrepresented mess. And even less stuff than before gets fixed before it causes a full blown crisis.

Which incidentally is a pretty worrying problem with this tax bill. Giving too much benefit to the already rich is probably a bad idea, but politically it might be what people want and that's democracy for you. However artificially creating a deficit crisis and timing it to explode late next decade .... which is roughly when the Social Security Trust Fund will go below water... is just dumb. Because Americans who thought they were really cool with their 2 grand middle class tax cut today are not going to have time left in their careers to fix their pension funding shortfall so their kids will have to pick up the tab.


Little edit.... It occurs to me that I see a lot of apocalyptic predictions on this forum with stuff about the rich eating the poor and whatnot, and some bizarre assumptions about things that robots will get up to. I really don't want to add to that gloom. The tax plan is bad because it is irresponsible and yet another example of a current generation forcing their offspring to sort out today's self inflicted mess. That shouldn't be taken as a suggestion that they won't actually be able to. But they might get sarcastic when they find out about it.
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Lacewing
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by Lacewing »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:54 pm So everyone ends up a sucker for a dramatic shouting match about a misrepresented mess. And even less stuff than before gets fixed before it causes a full blown crisis.
I love this summarized description. :lol: It made me burst out laughing. Such an absurd convoluted mess, it's hilarious.
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by bobevenson »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:08 pm
bobevenson wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 11:00 pm The term intrinsic means non-legal.
No it doesn't.
In this particular context, it does.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by FlashDangerpants »

bobevenson wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:24 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:08 pm
bobevenson wrote: Mon Dec 25, 2017 11:00 pm The term intrinsic means non-legal.
No it doesn't.
In this particular context, it does.
Intrinsic value already has a well known meaning, and it is not the one you are using. You need to get your own word.
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by bobevenson »

Intrinsic value for ignoramuses refers to the actual value of something (like an automobile) as opposed to the legal value of something (like a stock certificate).
wtf
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by wtf »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:23 pm Here's Megan McArdle at Bloomberg then.
She's making the point that the tax bill will increase the national debt. I agree with her about that. The tax bill may well be a long term disaster.

That is a different question than whether it helps or hurts most Americans in the short term. Over the next few years more Americans will be helped than hurt. And the people who are hurt -- wealthy taxpayers in high-tax states like California who can no longer write off 100% of their state taxes -- are exactly the people the left wants to soak. The irony of course is that those wealthy Californians are leftists. Go figure.

So yes, long term the tax bill is probably a disaster. Short term though, it will help more people than it will hurt, and it's pretty much hurting the right people. Perhaps (one hopes) it will cause Californians to reflect on the out of control taxing and spending in their own state.
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

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Bobevenson: intrinsic means in-born or inherent. An inherent value is not a price; it is a non-dollar description of its usefulness.

Price is an amount of money what someone is willing to pay for something. Market price is an amount of money what a lot of people are willing to pay for the identical product.

As Socrates put it, "a critic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." This is beside the point, however.

You are very much trying to put a dollar price on intrinsic value, but that can't be done. You are also trying to separate products on the market that have a market value and an intrinsic value, from those which have no intrinsic value but have a market value. Can that be done? Its possibility depends on the usefulness and practical value of a product. That changes, though, over time. A golden sword was very valuable in the bronze age, for its usefulness, but in today's world the usefulness is gone out of it as a sword or weapon. A book that teaches you how to make a sword from scrap metal is very useful, until your learn the art; after that the book loses its value to the knower, but it retains its value to those who haven't yet learned how to make a sword. And the price in this instance may stay the same or may go down or may go up.

And to convolute the mess, may I add that there are things that have never had price, but tons of value, such as love, a handshake, the birth of a new child, a song you bellow out on a sunny August night because you can't but.

Knowledge has value, but not price. The transfer of knowledge has a price though, and lots of post-secondary students are paying for it through the nose. Who knows, many payments through the nose to those who each knows will never be nos. Except in the case of Socrates, whose washwoman wife hated him for not charging money to teach people how to argue philosophy.

A thing can have intrinsic value (an inherent practical or emotional, sentimental, future practical, artistic, survival value) and independently of that, can have a market price. The relationship between the two are complex and is dictated by many human factors. But VALUE ought never be mixed up with (or united with) PRICE. And that is what people are objecting to: you bastardize the distinctively restrictive properties of words and create a contradictory linguistic situation by marrying the notion of "value" to "price". Please don't do it.
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by bobevenson »

-1- wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 10:18 am You are very much trying to put a dollar price on intrinsic value, but that can't be done.
intrinsic
adjective
1. belonging to a thing by its very nature:
the intrinsic value of a gold ring.

Please, go back to school, my friend, grammar school.
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Re: Is Trump Santa to the rich, Scrooge to the poor?

Post by -1- »

bobevenson wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 4:44 pm
-1- wrote: Wed Dec 27, 2017 10:18 am You are very much trying to put a dollar price on intrinsic value, but that can't be done.
intrinsic
adjective
1. belonging to a thing by its very nature:
the intrinsic value of a gold ring.

Please, go back to school, my friend, grammar school.
Go back to grammar school? What for?

What you quoted is exactly what I said. But what I, and two or three others can't get through your thick sucking skull is that price and value are different qualities.

But now that it's clear that you are insane and incorrigible, it's all good. I can safely ignore the garbage that comes out of you and gets preserved for eternity in these forums.

Hey, Bobevenson, have you ever noticed how the trees come out upside down from the ground, and that the fish like to whistle old Beatles tunes? No, you haven't? Don't give me that bull.

You are way out on left field intellectually. In fact, they wouldn't even let you into the ball park.

Practically the only thing going for you are your balls, and the self-delusion of self-importance that comes with that. That alone is a formidable force that gives you staying power on these forums. But definitely not logic, reason, or clear thinking. You fail those with miserable F marks. In fact, your grade point average in terms of intellectual output, looking through old posts, is zero point zero, zero, zero.

--------------------

intrinsic
adjective
1. belonging to a thing by its very nature:
the intrinsic value of a gold ring.
-------

So how come that a gold ring's intrinsic value is worth $453 today, was worth $25 in 1965, and will be worth $395 if the oil prices plummet, but will shoot up to $845 if there is going to be a war between North Korea and the US of A? One should hope that intrinsic value, since it's inseparable from the thing that possesses it, is stable, no? As long as the unit that has an intrinsic value, does not change, then in the same period its value ought not to change either. If I have three children that belong to me, will they become seven children if there is a war, but will get reduced to two children if the oil prices plummet? Obviously not.

There you go. This ain't grammar school stuff, I'm showing to the others, not to you, since you are unable to comprehend that there is such a thing as value, and such a thing as price, and the two are not the same.
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