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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (58342)	4/16/2006 5:50:58 PM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 110194

But wealth isn't "distributed", it's created or earned. And wealth can be destroyed by bad investments, or by the government making uneconomic attempts to "distribute" (i.e. confiscate from politically weak economic units, transfer to politically powerful economic units) wealth. Insofar as there was a higher degree of wealth inequality- well, there was a higher degree of wealth creation. Not all of the 1920s economy was a bubble, just as not all of the 1990s economy was a bubble. The effects of the crash were exacerbated by authoritarian interventions into the economy. Of course, most Americans complied willingly with Blue Eagle rules and regs, turning in their neighbors like in Stalin's USSR. Fortunately, Americans these days are far more skeptical of the government's munificence. In the 1920s, only the top 5% in income paid income tax at all. So if not "tax cuts for the wealthy" (demagoguery alert!), then for whom? The problem is not wealth inequality (which can't really be measured in a way we'd all agree on, anyway) per se, it is the government's undying attempts to deliver self-contradictory political and economic outcomes. The problem is that our rulers insist on having a "policy" on everything, leaving few major decisions to a people once called self-governing.

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (58342)	4/17/2006 2:26:24 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

the lack of social safety nets). My great grandpa had a farm, no tractor - used animals - and had many children - hard days working in the hot sun. My grandpa had a farm too - used animals - lots of children as well - hard days working in the hot sun. Was making good profit so he went and got a loan from the bank and bought more land and expanded his farm and worked his kids and animals longer and harder! My mom recalls the horror of picking cotton and only being 6 years old! hehe Well prices fell for commodoties. Grandpa's profits went up in smoke - he begged all his family and friends to help him with the loan payments until he got back on his feet - all shunned him. He lost his farm and one of his neighbors who hadn't leveraged themselves so much took grandpa's big farm at firesale prices from the bank and added to his own farm! HAHA! Neighbor many years later on went to the bank - got a loan - got tractors and that family is mega millionaires now - they just kept gobbling up all the other farms around them from the poor people that were still doing farming "the old way." Poor John Henry. Broke Grandpa hit the road with his starving kids and for many years worked on farms all over the country picking food with his kids - then he moved to fl and got in with some guy named george who was talking about something called publix - saw grandpa and his many kids would help out his business so they got in at the start with ole george. Now George came to my grandpa's funeral when I was a youngling and said boy your grandpa was one of the hardest working men I ever knew. I looked at george who had flown in on his helicopter and said yah he died broke, but he sure worked hard for you - HAHA! I don't think George liked that. Grandpa's kids most all did well though - thier publix stock and positions of power in the company made them all millionaires - their kids live much richer lives than thier peers. All my cousins - sure to squander all those many millions in publix stock - thier grand children will most likely live like grandpa did (much poorer than his peers) and the cycle will get to repeat again. Now if grandpa hadn't lost his farm or someone had given him the money to save it, I might have come up in backwoods Alabama and accumulated a lot of real estate there instead of in fla - then where would I be? hehe. I would probably be working full time and couldn't be here chatting it up with the other slackers. I am quite sure most of my aunts and uncles would be much poorer now if they had stayed in alabama instead of working at publix. At least poorer in green paper - they probably would have been a closer knit family in Alabama.