Thomasio

I'm sorry, I have no clue. If I remember right, there's a video on YT, where he tells how he grew up and what he did, but I didn't pay attention, because for me isn't important what someone did in the distant past, important is for me what he did in the recent past and what he will do in the future.

I have no clue how much he is worth and how he got there, but I wonder, even if it's true why would he be "awful with money"? He might have financed education for his kids and grandkids, he might have given them extra money, like buying them a house or a car or something, all completely reasonable things to do. After all there's no point in saving anything at old age, unless you're a Pharaoh from Egypt and believe you can carry your wealth over into your afterlife, there's way more sense in helping your children while your're still alive than saving it all and let them wait until you die. Last but not least, as a socialist he is aware that money in the bank in times of zero interest where nobody is willing to invest anything anywhere is poison for the economy, only money in circulation keeps business going.

The flaw in that thinking is, that on start the argument is, small business can compete with big business through lower expenses. When then an argument comes up, that proves how big business can easily kill small business, the argument becomes, in order to compete small business has to become bigger. If an argument comes up pointing out how big business could exclude small business from a given product, the argument becomes, small business could produce something else. The big flaw in there is, if a competetive business has to grow, the average size of any remotely successful business has to grow, which in a finite world leads to the ultimate state of one corporation owning the world. If small business gets excluded from ever more branches of business, it is ultimately doomed to vanish completely.

There's no need to have all stocks in the hand of one individual, charging 20 or 30% more than neccessary only requires there to be no competition. Those enterprises exist already, Microsoft might be the best example. On the web and in business Linux has the edge, because it's free, but among home users MS-Windows ist the only choice. Microsoft has tried anything they could to bind their operation system to specific hardware, because that means an OS will expire together with the computer it runs on. In Germany the constitutional court has declared several times by now, binding software to hardware is illegal by German law. That's why I enjoy the liberty of a Windows7 license I've been using at no extra cost for the last 4 or 5 computers I bought. But M$ doesn't give up, just the opposite, they are getting smarter, trying any possible way to undermine the law and slip their quadrupling of price into the market. Now they are offering a "free" upgrade from win7 and win8 to win10, while trying to hide the fact, the upgrade terminates the permanent license for the old OS, while the win10 license is valid only on the hardware it first gets installed on, or in other words, as soon as I buy a new computer, I have to buy a new OS. At same time M$ actively seeks cooperation with hardware manufacturers, so they will sell computers with preinstalled windows, just to keep users away from the idea of installing the free Linux alternative. Fairly obvious M$ cannot compete with a free system, but they found their way to keep the free alternative low and obviously there is no opportunity for making money with another OS, because M$ controls the market worldwide.

The Chinese have done the same thing as the western world did on start of the dotcom era. Taking loans to buy shares, expecting the shares to rise faster than the interest on the loans. That bubble is now bursting, just like the dotcom bubble bursted.

I don't live in England not in USA and I don't even own a smartphone. I picked up the info from the NY times, which I find reliable enough. The article was published on august 23rd 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/business/two-countries-two-vastly-different-phone-bills.html?_r=0 And just who said they would be so expensive that nobody could afford it? They would simply charge some 20% or 30% more than necessary, giving them the edge to extend their wealth, extend their field of business and buy even more of the country. Exponentially increasing wealth is an unstoppable process where in the end one individual will own the whole planet.

Why is it that a contract for a smartphone costs in USA roughly 50% more than the same contract costs in England? Can you imagine that's because in England governement is preventing monopolys that dictate prices to the market, leaving smaller business a chance to compete, while in the US the big players have outcompeted and/or bought their competition? Can you imagine how much money there is in maybe 200 million potential customers all paying 50% more for their contract and can you conclude from that estimate how much effort the big players would be willing to put in, to keep the monopoly on their profitable business? That has nothing to do with providing a good service, not for Walmart nor for any other business, it's the power of a monopoly that allows them to dictate any price they want and if it requires buying all the land in a city, so be it. Why would Walmart give any free rent to anyone, once they got a monopoly on the land, they would charge HUGE rent for all their properties and on top of that they would exclude renting anything to potential competition of their business. Do you really not understand how big business works? If you cannot beat them, buy them, that's all it takes.

The problem isn't finding a niche in the market, the problem is finding a piece of ground not owned by Walmart. They aren't doing that right now, because there is no point in doing so, while government prevents them from using brute money force, but you may bet anything you like, without government Walmart would literally own all ground remotely suitable to build a shop on, just to prevent anyone from building anything they don't like. They would freely rent houses to their customers, but they would make sure there cannot be competition.

Ok, let's see. If any accumulation of wealth is always forwarded within the same family, how could anyone from outside those families ever hope to compete with their power? Only on the possibility that the offspring is too dumb to hire some managers who manage their wealth good enough? How could anyone from outside these families ever feel free, while those families dictate all the rules of all the markets simply because they have the monetary power to ruin any small competition? How did Microsoft ruin Netscape? Microsoft simply gave away their Internet Explorer for free and the small competition was gone in no time, because you just can't underbid a free offer if you depend on making at least a living from your product. Whether you call it unfair or whatever, there simply is no chance to ever create a truly free society, if you allow the exponentially increasing wealth of a tiny minority. You might get a whole lot of open source free projects going, like Linux, but anything remotely profitable will remain in the hands of the rich who accumulate ever more wealth over the generations. If they buy and occupy all the land and refuse to sell any, how could anyone build anything?

Nobody should get it, at least not for free, simply because nobody has earned it. Not any relatives of the former owner, nor any individual someone who hasn't earned it. Being the offspring of the former owner cannot be a reason to get free wealth, because birthright shouldn't have any value. Up to a given value, say 500k inheriting may remain free, so children of wealthy people will not fall into poverty even if they are worthless parasites, but above that any accumulation of wealth should fall back to the society it has been generated in. There should be an auction, selling it to the highest bidder, where ALL people should benefit from the sale in form of public services, such as schools, museums, streets and all kind of other stuff financed from the money.

How do you know the situation I'm in? Wanna know? I bet you'll be surprised. I grew up in Germany, got some average education and went on start for a regular job. Since I'm a computer freak, I didn't even bother learning some profession, but went for self learned stuff right away. I had jobs as service technician visiting customers at home as well as a regular job in a computer shop, which was back then a good job, simply because computer technology was in its early days. After some 10 years I discovered, the system isn't working, I could already tell, even though my job was halfway well paid, the pension I would get later on, no matter how many years I would work, upon an expected average inflation rate my expected pension would leave me in poverty as soon as I stop working. I left the system, became self employed and haven't paid a dime of tax since. All completely legal, no work in black or anything, I just found my way around, i.e. through playing Backgammon online for money, where winnings are tax free and apparently I'm pretty good at it. Aside of that I learned programming and I've created a few websites for people and small companies, but the money I made through that always remained below the tax free level. Over all I've had a real good "income" that way, well over 100k per year, I paid my private health care which in Germany costs less than half the public health care but is accessable only for the wealthy and the self employed, and I invested in a pretty unusual way of pension plan. I bought gold, not some paper junk, but real physical gold, which multiplied its value by over 7 times betwen 1999 and 2011. This money I invested then in a private pension funds which has a pretty good return (so far). In between I moved to Italy and married a state employed teacher who is by now retired and gets a fairly good pension. When playing for money online became too difficult, because now it has become illegal in most contries and the services have increased their commissions to the roof, I've quit, I was just lucky enough to get enough money together in time. I've retired (if you want to call it that) at the age of 45, not because I'm getting a pension (yet), but because I just don't have to work anymore, my wife and me own all we want, we don't have any debt, we have a house, a car, I can afford 3 times 3 weeks of vacation per year, I have a secure retirement and I'm more than content with how I managed a secure life without much efford. Just to show a bit of activity and contribution to popular movements I've recently added a solar system to our house, meaning now I'm even mostly independent from energy prices, at least during daylight. For fun I'm still creating websites and I take care of the computers of a whole bunch of friends (who mostly are my friends only because they like getting me to work for free, but I'm aware of that and I'm fine with it). I do that for free for my "friends" and even from strangers I take so very little money that no commercial service can compete. I'm having computer companies swearing at me, because my cheap service is killing their business and I'm having a load of plain fun out of that, to my mind they are just lucky I'm a one man show and I just can't (nor want to) do all the work available. I'm buying computer parts for everyone I know in China, for a fraction of the price those things cost in Italy and I forward them at no profit, killing local stores that way and I consider that my personal revenge to a system that moves more and more local jobs to Asia. You might wonder, why I'm so much against a system, where I was so easily able to make my way through it, and why I vote for even more regulations, but that's easy to answer. If all other people had tried to do the same I did this wouldn't work for anyone, simply because in a game of Backgammon, there is no over all profit, for every cent I win, someone else will lose not only as much as I win, but plus the commission for the service, while society as a whole has no advantage whatsoever. Since I was able to do this from within a highly regulated society, I believe in an entirely unregulated society way more people would do something similar and society as a whole would go down the drain. Even though my free working for friends and very cheap services for others are highly apreciated by those who benefit from it, for society as a whole, I'm a destructive force. Having children would have been possible for me, but costs too much for my lifestyle, I would have had to cut back on other things I enjoy in my life, meaning if all other people would do like I did, humans would die out within one generation.

... and there is the problem. If they own the money exclusively because they inherited it, while NEVER moving a finger themselves, that's feudalism. As far as I understood feudalism was terminated when capitalism came up, because feudalism was found to be just too unfair.

And there you're once again mistaking hard working business for super rich, only leaving out the "small" before business from my post above. There is nothing wrong with someone investing, building something, creating jobs, etc., making a return on his investment and that doesn't at all disturb the AVERAGE income of all the people. If one individual invests 50 million, employs 1000 people and takes 5 million for a personal profit of 10% per year, that only means, his 1000 workers will earn on average 5K less per year and the overall average is still intact. You just don't understand what the super rich are doing with the tax breaks they are getting. We're in the 2nd or 3rd generation of inherited wealth by people who have never moved a finger in their life. They don't work, they hire some managers, pay them a few millions so they organize their profits. They simply own the money they give to whoever wants a loan, which today for the most part are state loans to finance national debt, they cash interest and live off that. There is no work involved for them, they enjoy life from birth to death without EVER contributing the slightest little bit to our society, plain parasites.

Fairly easy. If you were one of the beneficiaries of tax cuts for the rich, you'd be at some beach on the Maledives and not posting in a forum like this. You just don't know how much you're worth compared to what you're getting. You're mistaking hard working small business for rich, while the super rich don't work at all. As Stefan pointed out in one of his videos, those super rich people who aren't even willing to do some weeding after the hard working people have cleared the ground for more freedom are plain parasites and those are the ones receiving the biggest tax breaks. Calculating how much you're worth is actually fairly easy, but for some reason nobody actually does that calculation. Take your country's GDP, divide by the amount of existing jobs including entrepreneurs and divide that by the average 4 times money changes hands before taxes and fees have returned it to the state and you'll get the average net income per earner. The USA had a GDP of $16.77 Billion in 2013, while there were about 130 million jobs and about 6 million entrepreneurs and self employed. $16.77 trillion / 136 million / 4 = $30,800 average net annual income per earner. For a family with two adults where one cares for the kids and does (if any) only part time, that means an average annual net income of $61,600. The fact the average annual income of workers is far less than that simply means, there are super rich people taking the biggest piece of the cake, leaving the vast majority of people with very little, which not only shows inequality, but shows an unfair spread. Anthing from 70% to 150% of the average is considered middle class, or in other words, up to a net income of $92,400 per year, a family cannot be considered rich, let alone super rich, therefore wouldn't be effected by "taxing the rich", let alone the top 0.1%. You talk about a decent living and large quantities of capital. May I ask, how much would you consider a large quantity of capital? Unless you own at least a billion, sorry, you're not rich enough to compete with the big boys. Even if you earn over 500k net per year, you're still extremely likely not effected by taxing the rich, just the opposite, giving tax breaks to the rich and putting the burden on the middle class cuts big time into your personal income. Again, terminating government and leaving it up to everyone to care for himself is a different story, we're just discussing here different forms of government, excluding the option of no government. Still, just out of curiosity I'd love to see your estimate of how much you would earn if there were no government and how much things like your health care would cost you, given the fact that without a single payer system you're already paying twice as much as single payer systems costs.

Oh well, you're confusing quite a lot of things. First of all there are two options, with or without government. I'm aware many people in this forum want no government at all, but that's a different topic. For this topic we're discussing only the option with government and how different forms of government with different policies give a different outcome in expenses for the people. Therefore you may drop your "stealing" and consider the fact, as long as there is a government, taxes are required and all we can discuss is, how the burden of taxes shall be spread across the population. Right now the heaviest part of the burden of taxes is on the middle class, while the top incomes pay far less, in many cases not only in percentage of income but literally in total amount. You remember the statement by Warren Buffet, saying he pays less taxes than his secretary? The official form of government is democracy and that means the majority of the people decides whom to tax how much. Quite logic, while the majority is the middle class and the poor, they will vote for higher taxes on the rich. Whether or not that's fair is again another story, if you want to change that and legalize huge tax cuts for the rich, you first have to terminate democracy and go from there. The big question there is, why would the vast majority of people in a society vote for terminating a system they benefit from and prefer a system that benefits a tiny minority of super wealthy. Take a look at European countries who have a single payer health care system, like Germany. Total cost of health care in Germany is less than half of what Americans spend while at same time this covers ALL Germans rather than a shrinking amount of Americans. If you believe your current system is better, you will have to come up with some kind of argument, why partial coverage costs in total twice as much as full coverage. The concerns of the middle class they might have to pay more in case the rich are taxed more is the plain success of the propaganda of those rich ones. There is no logic whatsoever in believing taxing the rich would increase taxes on the middle class, just the opposite, if you don't tax the rich, the middle class has to cover the burden of supporting the poor, whether through public welfare or in form of charity. If you tax the rich they would pay for the poor and that would relieve the middle class. Yes, of course relieving the middle class of some of their tax burden, increasing the minimum wage and all that would increase inflation, but why would that be a bad thing? What is all the QE about the FED is doing? Isn't all the money flushed into the markets meant to counteract the deflation that arises from shrinking wages? Inflation is what the national debt needs, to dissolve itself over time. Do you really prefer to pay an increasing amount of your taxes for interest on your national debt, while roads and bridges all over the country are falling apart, or would it make more sense to pay higher wages, get more people in good jobs, rebuild the infrastructure of the country and get a solution for the national debt for free at the same time? See it like this: IFFFF you would double ALL wages and IFFF that would result in doubling all prices, that would still decrease the national debt by 50% and therefore all taxes all Americans currently pay for interest on the national debt would be cut in half.

Take a closer look at the taxes he wants to raise, then compare to your personal wealth. When you then discover that you personally wouldn't have to pay a dime more, but would be a net beneficiary of the changes, then think again, whether or not you prefer to be an advocate for the super rich at your own expense.

How could ANYTHING except of the laws of physics be universal and always true? In "normal life" stealing is immoral. If a bunch of poor people is starving and has no money to buy food, taking food from a farm becomes the moral right thing to do. Not sure about other countries, but for example in Germany taking food from a field for your own immediate consumption was legal by law before they invented social security and eliminated proverty at least as far as nobody has to starve anymore. Why I'm arguing anti-religious? Funny, you really don't know? YOU have posted a question that wants to suggest that there was no morality outside of religion. YOU are a believer of things that could NEVER be proven, but you insist atheists should prove you wrong. How about YOU begin with bringing us some proof for your claims, before you request proof of anything from anyone. I'm showing you the absurdity of your whole question, by pointing out that religion is the last spot I would consider a possible source of morality.

It doesn't, neither of them claim to know for sure where morality come from. That's the difference between religion and science. Science NEVER claims absolute certainty of anything. Only religion claims to know things for sure, where at least some of these things are verifiably false. It does exist, but it isn't universal nor evenly spread. Same as there are species who protect their offspring and others who don't, there are moral people and immoral people. You could even say there are groups of people who over all on average are more or less moral, where religious people are very likely less moral. No it proves god cannot be the moral law giver, because among the most immoral things ever done on earth, the worst ones have been done for religious reasons.

Let alone the fact morality being a common belief regardless of religion and doesn't require a bunch of guys in suits, let's assume for a moment you're right. Then maybe you could answer a question: What's the difference between a bunch of guys in suits deciding whats moral and a bunch of priests deciding whats moral? Ah ....... hold on ........ no need to answer that ........ I know already. The bunch of priests will rape a few children while making up what shall be moral.

You're some kind of ignorant fool, I give you that. But then, being religious requires to be ignorant of facts, so I guess you just have to be like that. Atheists never claimed to be the source of morality, how could they? Atheists do not make any kind of claim where morality comes from. Atheists claim morality cannot come from religion because all religions are about the opposite of morality but they do NOT claim to know where it comes from. Atheists do not make any claim about the existence of a god, they only say the existence of a god so highly unlikely that it makes no sense believing in it. Just like not believing in fairies, unicorns or santa. Evolution suggests, morality might originate in the instinct for survival of the species, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not a god exists, because even IF a god would exist, he would still not be the source of morality.

Before I give you the answer to that, let me point out the obvious first: Since religious people are obviously less moral than atheists, that by itself proves morality cannot come from religion. Now let's see where it comes from: Any living being has a natural instinct for "survival of the species". That's not limited to humans, that's valid throughout all forms of life. Most female and in some cases even male adults of almost all species will put their life on the line to protect their offspring. Since animals aren't any religious, we can safely assume, this behavior isn't religion related, but a natural instinct. Evolution simply gives species that protect their offspring at all cost a better chance of survival, which through natural selection leads to the fact that today almost only these species are left on earth. Among humans this has evolved one step further. Easiest to show for major crime. Killing other humans is bad for the survival of the species, that's why humans have a natural instinct not to kill. If criminals walk around free and kill people, the very same natural instinct makes other humans act and lock them up. For other immoral behavior it's less obvious on first view, but once you got the point of morality originating in the natural instinct of survival of the species, the development of a moral society that extends morality over all aspects of life is plain logic.

Expatriating is quite a topic, but it's a relative concept, because the wish to move to another country requires there to be a country with better conditions. I remember about 40 years ago many people in Germany saw the US as the land of their dreams, many tried to get a green card, or get married in the US, all hoping for a better life, but those times are long gone. At same time the amount of people who would love to go to some other place has grown big time. In a survey in Italy 2 years ago (not sure who did that survey, or how reliable the numbers are, I can't even find a link to the results on the web) over 50% of all people living in Italy said, they find Italy under the current laws uninhabitable, but at same time, given the choice between Italy and the US, they would rather stay in Italy. The reason may come as a surprise, but in the survey people said, half of Italy is ruled by organized crime and the other half is drowned between greedy corporations and corrupt politics, but that's about the same in the US and at least Italy still has a functioning state financed free health care for everyone. The most popular country to live for almost all Europeans is Germany, while Germans themselves would rather live somewhere else, they just don't know any better place, which shows, people choose the less evil, but a good place to live doesn't exist. Of course that's unless you're rich, because if only you have enough money, you can enjoy yourself anywhere. I believe this is the root of the problem. This world has become a world for the rich, where a tiny minority enjoys life at the expense of the rest. Where in old times people used to believe, if only you work hard enough, you can become rich and therefore everyone struggled to get there, today most people have discovered, wealth is a relative concept as well. Almost anyone can can get there, but at any given time there can only be a minority of rich people, because their lifestyle wouldn't be possible if all people wanted to do the same. The more people seriously try to get rich, the harder the competition for one of the spots on the sun side of life becomes, but the amount of people actually reaching it becomes smaller and smaller over time while the ones who reached the top become even wealthier. By now most people have given up trying. Whether or not the rich deserve their wealth is another topic and would (to my mind) very much depend on how they got it. Fact is, the bottom end of society is working for the luxury of the wealthy and even if you believe the poor are just not intelligent enough to make it and the rich deserve to be rich, you will have to face the fact, the numbers of the poor are growing, by now they are such a large majority, they will soon find the means to organize themselves, because soon most of the former middle class including many well educated people will drop down to the bottom and they will overthrow the system.

If morality was what most religions want it to be, I'd call for revolution tomorrow. Atheists have a FAR better morality than any religion can ever hope to achieve. Where the pope preaches the use of condoms is immoral, while the spreading of AIDS is a smaller problem, atheists have LONG ago discovered that gay marriage, interracial and interreligion marriage is a human right. Our society is still deeply undermined by way obsolete religion based discrimination, the claim there could be any morality in it, only because there are religious people who have abandoned most of those obsolete ideas without leaving their religion, is plain absurd.

Sanders has one gigantic advantage over all other politicians. He believes what he is saying and he has a 35 years long consistent history. Where other politicians got caught lying, like Bush lying to the entire world to initiate war in Iraq, where other politicians run gigantic propaganda campaigns nearly independent of what they really want, Sanders has never made a secret of his beliefs, he is following his ideas and he speaks his mind. I believe the people in America are simply sick and tired of people like Hillary Clinton who pretend to be democrats, but act as if they wanted to overtake the conservatives on the right side. Sanders gains popularity because he is a real person. Whether or not his ideas make sense is another story, I don't want to go into that part.

Good one!