From: wood@eisley.akita.com (Ken Wood)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Summary: The rich did get richer but the numbers are wrong.
Keywords: rich money wealth poor work economics
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 00:43:29 PDT
Organization: Mos Eisley Spaceport BBS

alpinist@eskimo.celestial.com (David Butler) writes:

>  Well, it sure as heck doesn't 'trickle down' to the populace.  Over the past
> Decade the richest 10% of the nation went from owning a little less than 1/4
> of the nations wealth to over 1/3.  That means the majority got poorer.
> When somebody owns enough money to represent consumption of more than they
> could produce in 100 lifetimes (anybody worth >1 mil) then that means 
> thousands of people must produce more than they can consume (the working
> poor) in order to support that person.  Letting the rich get richer only
> sends this country barrelling down the road to 3rd worldism and creates a
> class society of the haves and have nots.
>  Hey lets let people be well off.  Lets reward them for individual incentive,
> but how about putting some limits on the upper end (where they've got way
> more than they need anyway) and raise and maintain a decent standard of
> living for everyone.
> 

     I generaly agree with you assertion here Dave but I think your 
numbers are off.  The latest numbers I recall put the richest 10% at over 
50% of the wealth.  Your numbers sound like they might come from the 
income not the total wealth.  Obviously the wealthy not only make more 
but they can save alot more of what they make.  Also the 100 lifetimes is 
way off.  It comes out to just over $300 of production per year.  And this
is a conservative estimate ( only 33 years ).  In fact if you are a 
professional you probably make as income over 1 million in your lifetime. 
The average teacher in this state makes more than that and Washington is
BELOW the national average!  Of course salery doesn't corelate directly 
to value produced but it's the best yardstick I have handy.  Given the 
way our system works the salery on average should be below the value of
the product produced ( overhead, management and sales costs, and of 
course the profit also add to the final value of the product, well they 
don't really but I think you know what I mean :-)  ).  I guess this
is just nitpicking but I wanted to point out that haveing over a million 
dollars doesn't automaticly make you an Evil_Capitalist_Running_Dog_Exploi
ter_Of_The_oppressed_Poor.  If you want to encourage innovation you need an
open system with no limits.  Otherwise once somebody reaches the limit 
why not stop and relax?  Of course you can make it a diminishing return 
as you get higher just as long as it doesn't get to the point where it's 
no longer worth it.  Well that's my $0.02, see ya'll later.

     Ken Wood



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