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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (421868)	10/2/2008 2:44:39 PM
From: Alighieri	Respond to of 1573697

So no, I'm not "slamming you" like Al accused me of doing. I'm just praising the student who knows enough about what's going on in the news and is curious enough to ask what your position is. Not bad for a middle school student (I assume). I was kidding... Al

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (421868)	10/2/2008 2:58:50 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573697

Back in the 60s, i taught 5th grade in the south bronx to non-english speaking kids, disciplanary problem kids and slow learners all lumped into one class--some kids as old as 14 in the 5th grade. I did this to get out of the draft and i wasnt bad at it either. During lunch my friend mike and would smoke a joint and took turns at a nixon dartboard on the back of the front door. Guys like Ted are just too conservative for my taste. (g)

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (421868)	10/2/2008 4:30:58 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573697

Forbes 535 v. the US Congress Don Boudreaux rightly says that "no one is or ever can be 'ready' or 'qualified' to exercise power of the sort that is concentrated today in Washington." Indeed. Let's explore this point a bit by comparing the concentration of financial power in the hands of the 535 members of the United States Congress with the concentration of financial power of the 535 richest people in the United States. According to Forbes, the 400 richest people had a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion. Let's simply assume the next 135 richest people had the same net worth, though they surely didn't, as the 400th person--$1.3 billion each. That brings our estimate of the combined net wealth of the richest 535 Americans to $1.75 trillion. But wait, this is net worth, which is a stock, not income, which is a flow. So let's figure the annual income flow from the ownership of $1.75 trillion to be 10% of that amount. (I don't know if this number is high or low. On the one hand really rich folks probably are good at making high rates of return. On the other hand much of that $1.75 in net worth is likely to be speculative, consumptive, and/or illiquid assets like real estate, yachts, artwork, etc where the return is difficult to determine without selling the item. It turns out, you could double or triple this estimated return and still make the point I'm going to make.) Our estimate therefore is that the richest 535 Americans have about $175 billion (10% of $1.75 trillion) to spend on an annual basis. Ok, let's compare this group with the 535 members of the US Congress. According to the latest Economic Report of the President, the annual outlays of the federal government amounted to $2.73 trillion in fiscal year 2007. So I estimate that the 535 members of the US Congress enjoy over 15 times the financial power of the 535 richest Americans. But do note how charitable I am being here. Unlike the 535 richest Americans, the US Congress also reserves the right to regulate the hell out of practically ever aspect of our lives. Furthermore, unlilke the 535 richest Americans, who hardly know each other and who certainly never hold meetings to coordinate their decisions, the US Congress does in fact meet regularly to decide exactly how this vast financial power is to be spent. Furthermore, I have failed to say anything about the various state legislatures in the land who annually spend an additional $1.9 trillion. Why do we worry so much about the supposed concentration of economic power in the hands of "the rich", a group of strangers who don't coordinate their actions in any way, but care so little about the vastly greater concentration of economic power in the hands of Congress? [2004 version of this exercise here.] Posted by Robert Lawson at 03:32 PM in Economics divisionoflabour.com cafehayek.typepad.com