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Originally posted by citizen:
Who's the more stupid, the person who takes a loan they can't afford, or the one that hands over money they'll never see again?

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
The one who bails both of them out afterwards

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
The one who bails both of them out afterwards

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Isn't that you :p

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Originally posted by rue:
I don't make a 'profit'. And I'm smart enough to know that the money I make by working is a 'wage' - not a 'profit'.

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Originally posted by rue:
And your point ?

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Originally posted by rue:
But whatever. If your ego requires it tell yourself that even though you work for your money, you're really a capitalist. I'm not going to stand in your way.

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Originally posted by rue:
Not at all. A profit is the fallout of an investment of money. No WORK is required. That's what makes it different from a wage.

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Originally posted by rue:
I don't make a 'profit'. And I'm smart enough to know that the money I make by working is a 'wage' - not a 'profit'.

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Originally posted by rue:
You see, unlike you, I know what a profit is, and who makes it. And unless you own a business, it's not you either. It's the place you work for.

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
Wonders if Rue and Signy are busy bump.

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Originally posted by rue:
Breaking even and making a profit are not the same. This is how it works out in deep mathematical jargon:

PROFIT: money in - expenses(incl. direct wages) = extra money
BREAKING EVEN: money in - expenses(incl. direct wages) = 0

And, to be complete

LOSS: money in - expenses(incl. direct wages) = in the hole

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As you can see, making a profit, breaking even, and taking a loss are not the same.

Try coming back with something not quite so hopelessly silly and maybe we'll have something to discuss.

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Originally posted by rue:
See the quote of yours that I included ? Doesn't it equate profit with breaking even ? And isn't that wrong ?

If you have some OTHER topic in mind - besides what you posted - it would be really nice of you to clue to rest of us in.

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
Just trying a little thought experiment. In the other thread it was postulated that profit only comes about because the capitalist short changes his/her workers. That the capitalist is somehow in the wrong for not breaking even. I was just curious as to how this thinking impacts your life and the choices you make. Does your income exactly match your expenditures? Are you a greedy person if they do not? Who sets the guidelines regarding how much profit is too much?

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In this very thread, you mused that profit comes about because the capitalist does not give the worker the full value of their work. So in your opinion, no capitalist should ever make a profit because they are robbing their employees to make it. So if there is no profit to be made, where is the incentive to start a capitalistic venture? If there is no reward, why take the risk?

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The SickyNym-RueTard Axis are MIA , presumed killed...

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If only it were that easy. Most entrepreneurial capitalists I know not only invest their money, but work quite hard to make their businesses a success.

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The point is that they are similar in that they are both payment for a service rendered.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Your ignorance of capitalism is inexcusable considering that you're so vehement in its defense.

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Nice...

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Sorry, just playing your game.

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Was listening to This American Life on NPR this morning, and they mentioned that the total private debt in the U.S. is currently about equal to the GDP (14 trillion or so), up from 20% of GDP in the '40s/50s. The last time debt equaled GDP was...1929.

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Anyway, I know enough about capitalism to recognize the part that investors and owners play. Far from "doing nothing" they fill an important role that can't just be done away with. As I've spelled out in previous posts, they make crucial decisions that seek to satisfy consumers' needs and wants. Profit is their compensation for making theses calls correctly.

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
If you are a good person for providing for your family at the lowest cost why is it not the same for the capitalist providing for their family (investors)?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
It's very clear that profit is killing the system which creates it. Taking a percentage money out of circulation at each turn of the production-consumption cycle brings the system closer and closer to collapse, because people simply don't have the money to consume what they've just produced. Eventually, you wind up... where we are now: with the collapse of debt-financed consumption/ economy.

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Whether you all it savings or profit, it is a sequestration of money from circulation, and therefore you better have a damn good reason to take money OUT of circulation, because you're going to have to make up for it somehow.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Was listening to This American Life on NPR this morning, and they mentioned that the total private debt in the U.S. is currently about equal to the GDP (14 trillion or so), up from 20% of GDP in the '40s/50s. The last time debt equaled GDP was...1929.

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There are two figures I've been trackng for the last couple of decades (yes, decades); income disparity and private debt.

...When I saw that income disparity was reaching 1929 proportions (about three years ago) I got a 1929-size butt pucker. Job creation is pulled by consumption, not pushed by investment (Who would be fool enough to create jobs without the glimmer of a market?) In purely Keynsian fashion, Greenspan thought he make up for loss of purchasing power by growing the money supply through artificially low interest-rates*. What he did was set off a bubble of horrific proportions. What you don't realize is that all of that leveraged "funny money" flooding the economy... THAT was inflation. THAT was when the dollar was destroyed.

Economists (except Roubini and several others) thought that the world economy would "decouple". How the frak did they think THAT???? Every capitalist economy needs a consumer who WILL consume beyond their earnings, because otherwise the friggin' economy collapses! And the USA filled that role: World's Stupidest Consumer. They (we) followed Bush's exhortation to Go forth and SHOP! Well, now that we're not shopping so much, China, Japan, and Germany are wondering who's gonna buy their sh*t.

* Greenspan thought that bankers' self-interest would keep them from going too far out on a limb. He said that given control of interest rates he could even stop a Kondratieff Winter (great depression). Looks like he was wrong on both counts.

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I'm not seeing any cause and effect in what you're saying here. You seem to be saying that increased savings will lead to inflation, though not sure how that would play out. Doesn't the opposite usually happen? And how does that connect with debt financed consumption

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Really? People can only save money if they have a "damned good reason"? So who get's to decide?

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Originally posted by SignyM:

...It's very clear that profit is killing the system which creates it. Taking a percentage money out of circulation at each turn of the production-consumption cycle brings the system closer and closer to collapse, because people simply don't have the money to consume what they've just produced. Eventually, you wind up... where we are now: with the collapse of debt-financed economy.

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The inflation is BUILT INTO the system , since the establishment of the International Bankster FEDERAL RESERVE in 1913 , at which time the EVIL TWIN collection mechanism , Internal Revenue Service , was also set into motion , to pay the INTEREST on the DEBT...It's not PROFIT that kills the system , except the BANKSTER-Profit , USURY , and the FED-RESERVE-induced INFLATION...

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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The inflation is BUILT INTO the system , since the establishment of the International Bankster FEDERAL RESERVE in 1913 , at which time the EVIL TWIN collection mechanism , Internal Revenue Service , was also set into motion , to pay the INTEREST on the DEBT...It's not PROFIT that kills the system , except the BANKSTER-Profit , USURY , and the FED-RESERVE-induced INFLATION...

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In the early 1900s "the great depression" was the depression of 1873. Previous to that, there was the great depression of 1837.

Inflation is the Keynsian "solution" to regularly recurring depressions, but not the cause of them. With or without inflation, ordinary people still fell on starving times.

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Really? People can only save money if they have a "damned good reason"? So who get's to decide?

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Here I am trying to put this in terms ammenable to you and you're (I swear to god) deliberately taking it out of context. The point is that if you TAKE MONEY OUT OF CIRCULATION you better have a damn good reason for it.

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Now, for the sake of discussion, I'll assume that you don't really expect a store owner, for example, to sell their products at cost. I'll assume you recognize their need to cover overhead and related expenses. I'll even assume you realize that they need to provide for their own needs and creature comforts.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
But the whole concept of "the owner" as the person "at risk" needs to be re-thought. First of all, as mentioned before, a business owner USUALLY goes into business on someone else's money- typically, a loan. Please don't tell me it doesn't work that way: I know peeps who opened an Ethiopian restaurant (have to lease the building, buy industrial kitchen equipment, rennovate, get the necessary licenses incl liquor license etc) and peeps who operate franchises. If someone goes into business on their own money it's usually because the cost of entry (and therefore the risk) is low: consulting, gardening, housecleaning, dogwalking, private-duty nursing.

So generally the people "at risk" are really the INVESTORS and the question is really: Why would an INVESTOR risk their money w/o the lure of SOME sort of gain and the answer is: they wouldn't.

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