Where is the US economy headed?

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

okie wrote:

Well, trickle up has never worked. How many people with no money have ever given you a job, ci?

Is that all that matters - people providing jobs?

Someone has to purchase all the durable goods manufactured by people who already HAVE jobs... a rising tide lifts all ships, and if poor folks have more to spend on stuff, it leads to higher sales, bigger profits, more jobs...

Cycloptichorn

But the water won't rise by dipping water out of one end of the lake while you feed it into the other end. That isn't how you achieve a tide.

Money confiscated from the 'rich' and given to the 'poor' does indeed give the poor more to spend temporarily, but it gives the 'rich' less to spend which will have at least some negative impact at their end of the lake. And the process cannot be sustained after you have made all the 'rich' much poorer and the process will cave in on itself if it is imaginary money that is given; i.e. money that the government prints but that represents no productivity.

The only way to create a sustainable tide is to facilitate productivity for everybody. That would require the progressives to give up their contempt for the rich and appreciate that we need the rich and permission/opportunity for all to become rich and incentives for the rich to help others become richer in order for there to be opportunity for productivity for everybody.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Nobody gave me money for me to go into consulting.

Would you care to expand on that ci. ?

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

okie wrote:

Well, trickle up has never worked. How many people with no money have ever given you a job, ci?

Is that all that matters - people providing jobs?

Someone has to purchase all the durable goods manufactured by people who already HAVE jobs... a rising tide lifts all ships, and if poor folks have more to spend on stuff, it leads to higher sales, bigger profits, more jobs...

Cycloptichorn

But the water won't rise by dipping water out of one end of the lake and pouring it into the other end. That isn't how you achieve a tide.

It's not a permanent solution, but this in fact does work in the short run.

Quote:

Money confiscated from the 'rich' and given to the 'poor' does indeed give the poor more to spend temporarily, but it gives the 'rich' less to spend which will have at least some negative impact at their end of the lake.

Negligible impact for them. At every point of taxation history in the US, the rich went right on spending, investing, and running things. Their behavior is not materially affected by small changes in taxation.

Quote:

And the process cannot be sustained after you have made all the 'rich' much poorer

What? Who is being made 'much poorer?' NOBODY is being taxed out of being rich, Fox. Nobody. The Rich in America who are taxed, are still rich at the end of the day - just as those who receive some assistance are still poor.

Quote:

and the process will cave in on itself if it is imaginary money that is given; i.e. money that the government prints but that represents no productivity.

The only way to create a sustainable tide is to facilitate productivity for everybody. That does require the progressives to give up their contempt for the rich and appreciate that we need the rich and permission/opportunity for all to become rich in order for there to be opportunity for productivity for everybody.

No, we don't 'need the rich.' This is an assertion without fact to back it up. Our system would work just as well with a much larger group, who were only moderately wealthy, as it does with gigantic amounts concentrated in the top 1%.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@okie,

It's not people with money that provides the inventions of our economy. Many started their business in their garage (aka HP), and they have become some of the biggest companies on this planet. They have created wealth for many - not only for themselves, but for the people who invested in their company.

2 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

What's an "invention" ci? From an economic science point of view.

1 Reply

@spendius,

If I have to explain what an "invention" is, you're on the wrong thread.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

It's not people with money that provides the inventions of our economy. Many started their business in their garage (aka HP), and they have become some of the biggest companies on this planet. They have created wealth for many - not only for themselves, but for the people who invested in their company.

Nobody is going to invent something in their garage if they do not know that they will be able to keep the profits they might eventually reap on the invention. Besides, if the inventor comes up with something or viable idea that could be developed, he or she typically needs to find an investor or a person with resources to back them, to fund the work and materials needed to develop the invention, to take the chance of eventual success. So robbing people of their money only decreases the amount of capital available to inventors and innovators in need of the capital to drive progress and innovation. Economics 101, ci, which is nothing more than common sense.

As an aside, you recently claimed that the government was the principle driver of invention and innovation. Caught ya, ci.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie, Quit changing what you first wrote, and what you're saying now after my rebut. You wrote in the earlier post

Quote:

Is it the people with money that provide innovation, invention, capital, and jobs, or is it the people with no money that make the country prosper and give other people jobs by buying junk at Walmart with a credit card that they can't pay for?

It is the people with an idea that will have market demand that creates capital and jobs. Hewlett and Packard did not have money when they started building their their very first financially successful product, a precision audio oscillator. Both were electrical engineering students at Stanford, and started their business in their garage. They have developed the company into the largest high tech company in the world.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

From a link, here is a little information, ci, which indicates they needed some backing, in other words - capital. And a person with money that rented them the garage for almost nothing. Also, when they began to make a profit, it was not completely taxed away from them, they were able to move up and expand. The larger the company grew, the more capital I am sure was necessary, all dependent upon to a certain degree on tax laws which allowed this to happen, to plow more money into the business to expand it, rather than going to the government. Even as we speak, HP stock is owned, and bought and sold by probably millions of Americans, either individually or via mutual funds, retirement funds, etc. Those millions of Americans certainly would include teachers, fireman, engineers, and all kinds of professionals and other people, all with a stake in the company, all reaping the rewards of success, that enable the company to continue to operate. Another point, many of the first customers that they had were people or companies with money, not people without money. Economics 101, ci, learn it.

"The HP Garage: A Techie Log Cabin

....

The dream of what would become Silicon Valley was first promoted by Stanford engineering professor
Frederick Terman who envisioned a western technological area surrounding the University that would rival
the electronic centers back east. It was he who wooed promising Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and David
Packard back to Palo Alto and set them up with fellowships and part-time jobs in 1938.

The Hewlett-Packard story is legendary in Valley folklore. Beginning with $538 in start-up capital, the boys
set to work in that one-car shed with a used Sears Craftsman drill press that Packard had lugged out from
Schenectady in his car. Packard and his newly-wedded wife Lucile lived on the first floor of the house on
Addison originally built for Palo Alto’s first mayor. The landlady (the mayor’s widow who charged just 45
bucks a months for rent) lived on the second floor and Bill in a little shack behind the house just big enough
for a cot and a sink.

The garage lit by a single, overhanging bare lightbulb, served as the research lab, development workshop
and manufacturing plant for HP's early products, including the Model 200A audio oscillator used to test
sound quality in radio and TV.

Hewlett and Packard’s naming process show what an unseasoned enterprise it was. The boys flipped a coin
to decide the name of the company and because Bill won, it was H-P that would one day be listed as a Blue
Chip stock on Wall Street, not P-H. For the name of the first oscillator, they chose the name Model 200A,
rather than 100A, which might reveal the greenness of the company. And for the product’s original price, the
boys chose $54.40, as in “54-40 or fight,” James Polk’s old presidential campaign slogan. These were truly
the whims of business world newcomers.

While some of their early clients were of the local variety---they helped invent a foot fault indicator for a San
Mateo bowling alley---in 1939, HP gained a more prestigious client. They sold 8 of their audio oscillators to
Walt Disney to test the state-of-the-art soundtrack for Fantasia. HP used those profits to move to a larger
space, at Page Mill Road, and hire a few employees. They were on the road to eventually establishing a 90
billion dollar a year company with over 150,000 employees--- a company that is largely credited for laying
the foundation for what would become Silicon Valley.

In recent years, the HP company, still located in Palo Alto, purchased the old garage and set about on a
million dollar renovation project, delivering the garage, the house and even Bill’s old shack to their original
1940s vintage.

So after the obligatory visits to the Golden Gate Bridge and Pier 39, why not stop by the HP Garage, a truly
historical destination.

-Matt Bowling"
http://www.paloaltohistory.com/hpgarage1.html

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

If I have to explain what an "invention" is, you're on the wrong thread.

I didn't expect you to risk an answer ci.

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Here is a summary for what Hitler actually did, how he governed, from our own Time Magazine, when he was chosen as "Man of the Year" in 1938. (Proof again that leftist media was not invented yesterday, these people have been at this for a very long time.) Following are pertinent quotes which obviously indicate Hitler was leftist in how he governed. I think the clincher is on Page 6: "The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on others what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539-2,00.html

"GERMANY: Man of the Year, 1938"

Page 2:
But the figure of Adolf Hitler strode over a cringing Europe with all the swagger of a conqueror. Not the mere fact that the Führer brought 10,500,000 more people (7,000,000 Austrians, 3,500,000 Sudetens) under his absolute rule made him the Man of 1938. Japan during the same time added tens of millions of Chinese to her empire. More significant was the fact Hitler became in 1938 the greatest threatening force that the democratic, freedom-loving world faces today.

His shadow fell far beyond Germany's frontiers. Small, neighboring States (Denmark, Norway, Czecho-Slovakia, Lithuania, the Balkans, Luxembourg, The Netherlands) feared to offend him. In France Nazi pressure was in part responsible for some of the post-Munich anti-democratic decrees. Fascism had intervened openly in Spain, had fostered a revolt in Brazil, was covertly aiding revolutionary movements in Rumania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania. In Finland a foreign minister had to resign under Nazi pressure. Throughout eastern Europe after Munich the trend was toward less freedom, more dictatorship. In the U. S. alone did democracy feel itself strong enough at year's end to give Hitler his come-uppance (see p. 5).

The Fascintern, with Hitler in the driver's seat, with Mussolini, Franco and the Japanese military cabal riding behind, emerged in 1938 as an international, revolutionary movement. Rant as he might against the machinations of international Communism and international Jewry, or rave as he would that he was just a Pan-German trying to get all the Germans back in one nation, Führer Hitler had himself become the world's No. 1 International Revolutionist"so much so that if the oft-predicted struggle between Fascism and Communism now takes place it will be only because two revolutionist dictators. Hitler and Stalin, are too big to let each other live in the same world.

But Führer Hitler does not regard himself as a revolutionary; he has become so only by force of circumstances. Fascism has discovered that freedom"of press, speech, assembly"is a potential danger to its own security. In Fascist phraseology democracy is often coupled with Communism. The Fascist battle against freedom is often carried forward under the false slogan of "Down with Communism!" One of the chief German complaints against democratic Czechoslovakia last summer was that it was an "outpost of Communism."

Page 4:
"Discovering his powers of oratory, Hitler soon became the party's leader, changed its name to the National Socialist German Labor Party, wrote its antiSemitic, antidemocratic, authoritarian program."

Page 5:
In bad straits even in fair weather, the German Republic collapsed under the weight of the 1929-34 depression in which German unemployment soared to 7,000,000 above a nationwide wind drift of bankruptcies and failures. Called to power as Chancellor of the Third Reich on January 30, 1933 by aged, senile President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Hitler began to turn the Reich inside out. Unemployment was solved by: 1) a far-reaching program of public works; 2) an intense rearmament program, including a huge standing army; 3) enforced labor in the service of the State (the German Labor Corps); 4) putting political enemies and Jewish, Communist and Socialist jobholders in concentration camps.

What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to Germany in less than six years was applauded wildly and ecstatically by most Germans. He lifted the nation from post-War defeatism. Under the swastika Germany was unified. His was no ordinary dictatorship, but rather one of great energy and magnificent planning. The "socialist" part of National Socialism might be scoffed at by hard-&-fast Marxists, but the Nazi movement nevertheless had a mass basis. The 1,500 miles of magnificent highways built, schemes for cheap cars and simple workers' benefits, grandiose plans for rebuilding German cities made Germans burst with pride. Germans might eat many substitute foods or wear ersatz clothes but they did eat. What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to the German people in that time left civilized men and women aghast. Civil rights and liberties have disappeared. Opposition to the Nazi regime has become tantamount to suicide or worse. Free speech and free assembly are anachronisms. The reputations of the once-vaunted German centres of learning have vanished. Education has been reduced to a National Socialist catechism.

Page 6:
Pace Quickened. Germany's 700,000 Jews have been tortured physically, robbed of homes and properties, denied a chance to earn a living, chased off the streets. Now they are being held for "ransom," a gangster trick through the ages. But not only Jews have suffered. Out of Germany has come a steady, ever-swelling stream of refugees, Jews and Gentiles, liberals and conservatives, Catholics as well as Protestants, who could stand Naziism no longer. TIME'S cover, showing Organist Adolf Hitler playing his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on, was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper (see p. 20), a Catholic who found Germany intolerable. Meanwhile, Germany has become a nation of uniforms, goose-stepping to Hitler's tune, where boys of ten are taught to throw hand grenades, where women are regarded as breeding machines. Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on others what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for foodstuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism.

When Germany took over Austria she took upon herself the care and feeding of 7,000,000 poor relations. When 3,500,000 Sudetens were absorbed, there were that many more mouths to feed. As 1938 drew to a close many were the signs that the Nazi economy of exchange control, barter trade, lowered standard of living, "self-sufficiency," was cracking. Nor were signs lacking that many Germans disliked the cruelties of their Government, but were afraid to protest them. Having a hard time to provide enough bread to go round, Führer Hitler was being driven to give the German people another diverting circus. The Nazi controlled press, jumping the rope at the count of Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, shrieked insults at real and imagined enemies. And the pace of the German dictatorship quickened as more & more guns rolled from factories and little more butter was produced.

Page 7:
Imprisonment also gave Hitler time to perfect his tactics. Even before that time he got from his Communist opponents the idea of gangsterlike party storm troopers; after this the principle of the small cell groups of devoted party workers.

1 Reply

@okie,

Sorry, I posted on the wrong thread.

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@okie,

They didn't need "capital" to start their business from their garage. What started as a couple of guys with above average skills in electrical engineering, they produced their first product that was financially successful. From that time on, they did almost everything right, and grew to the company they are today.

You speak almost always from ignorance. You are an idiot.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

You apparently did not read the link, ci. They used $538 in capital just to get started. I checked this and in 2009 dollars, it amounts to $7,854.43. Although not a huge amount, I think it was important, and undoubtedly this is not the only capital that grew the business into what it is today. Funding is obviously important to inventors and innovators, this is so patently obvious to most anyone with common sense.

I am continually surprised by how freely you throw around names such as idiot or ignorance, but its beyond me caring anymore, perhaps the information posted here will sink in someday, and hopefully some other people will appreciate it.

3 Replies

@okie,

That "capital" was their own money. Many companies start with their own funds or "borrowings" from family and friends. That both Hewlett and Packard were able to attend Stanford and Harvard (very expensive colleges) shows they were "wealthy" compared to the average household. There is no way to get funds through stock sale, because nobody will register any start-up company on the stock exchange without some history of financial success.

You're still missing the point.

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@okie,

okie wrote:

You apparently did not read the link, ci. They used $538 in capital just to get started. I checked this and in 2009 dollars, it amounts to $7,854.43. Although not a huge amount, I think it was important, and undoubtedly this is not the only capital that grew the business into what it is today. Funding is obviously important to inventors and innovators, this is so patently obvious to most anyone with common sense.

I am continually surprised by how freely you throw around names such as idiot or ignorance, but its beyond me caring anymore, perhaps the information posted here will sink in someday, and hopefully some other people will appreciate it.

Unbelievable that you would count the meager amount in their checking accounts as 'start-up capital.' It isn't like they went to the bank and got a loan for that amount, or had investors. You are basically killing your own point.

We've also discussed the large differences between the situation 70 years ago, and today. You are still focused on an outdated model of scientific research and innovation; the government plays a much larger role today than it did back then, in funding such research.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@okie,

okie, My tag for you, "idiot," will remain as long as you continue to show how stupid you are with your opinions that have no basis in fact or evidence. You are not capable of providing proof for most things you post on a2k; you have been challenged by more people on more topics than anyone else on a2k.

The proof is in the pudding.

Try doing some research before you post BS, and leave your personal imagination behind when you post. That'll save you much negative comments from a2kers.

I have just met with some a2kers in Chicago last week, and you are the laughing stock, ignoramus, bar none!@

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

This is what Walter wrote about your post on the RUTHLESS DICTATOR thread:

Quote:

What I find especially fascinating with your 'argumentation' is that it is more or less a copy of what is produced by Neo-Nazis. Shocked.

You have the habit of challenging people who are known to have more knowledge about any subject; Walter's background is History, and he taught at the college level.

People like you have no idea how ignorant you look to many on these boards.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

okie wrote:

You apparently did not read the link, ci. They used $538 in capital just to get started. I checked this and in 2009 dollars, it amounts to $7,854.43. Although not a huge amount, I think it was important, and undoubtedly this is not the only capital that grew the business into what it is today. Funding is obviously important to inventors and innovators, this is so patently obvious to most anyone with common sense.

I am continually surprised by how freely you throw around names such as idiot or ignorance, but its beyond me caring anymore, perhaps the information posted here will sink in someday, and hopefully some other people will appreciate it.

Unbelievable that you would count the meager amount in their checking accounts as 'start-up capital.' It isn't like they went to the bank and got a loan for that amount, or had investors. You are basically killing your own point.

We've also discussed the large differences between the situation 70 years ago, and today. You are still focused on an outdated model of scientific research and innovation; the government plays a much larger role today than it did back then, in funding such research.

Cycloptichorn

Cyclops, I know a few people very well that had enough money or capital to start their own businesses. Without it, they could not have done it. Startup capital is important. Others borrowed money or had investors buy interests in the business. HP did not require alot of money at the start, mostly just ingenuity and sweat equity, but it was not just the startup money, they had customers at the beginning, like Disney, that had money to buy some of their new inventions. You are the one missing the point. I know lots of business owners, and I have been one, so I know what I am talking about. You should try it sometime, and then perhaps you might learn alot of things about it. Things like how businesses are taxed, and how taxes affect businesses. Just one example of many.

1 Reply

@okie,

okie, You are an idiot. You can try to rationalize what "capital" means, but $500 to start a company even in the 30's doesn't compare to what "capital" means today. You say $500 is worth $7,800 in today's money. Don't forget, part of that $500 was equipment. $7,800 today isn't even "seed" money. How long do you think two people can survive on $7,800? They'll need to buy materials and equipment, feed themselves and have a roof over their heads until income is made.

1 Reply

Where is the US economy headed?

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