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The real use of money is to buy freedom

paraschopra.com

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Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#251

Post by coldtea »

mathattack wrote: post #246
coldtea wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody forces them to accept it. In fairy tales maybe. In real life, need to feed the family, debt, hunger, mortages, need for shelter, medical treatment needs, etc etc are forcing them to accept it. > Unless I stick the money under my mattress, putting money to use helps others. The same thing happens with giving slaves food. It helps them. That doesn't mean it's the best kind of help they can get.

So the alternative is not buying things or services from people who need the money?

No, the alternative is to have some guilt when taking advantage of people that work for minimum wage, and not feel like Mother Teresa about doing it.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#252

Post by coldtea »

Crito wrote: post #244
humanrebar wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe your assertions about the 1950s need substantiation. I'd like to see some empirical data about things like poverty levels, life expectancy, job security, bankruptcy, and so on. Keep in mind that this is only a couple of decades (at most) from the Great Depression. Even if the 1950s were clearly better, it's a rather cherry-picked data point considering how much worse the 1930s clearly were. That being said,…

Just for starters, he is almost certainly warping his perception of the 1950s by only considering what movies and television showed the 1950s being like for white men in suburbia America.

Which doesn't matter much, because I can also do the exact same comparison to the same group in today's suburbia America.

And no, it's not "movies and television". There are numerous books studying the decline of the middle class since the seventies.

Heck, there's even an accepted term "Great Prosperity" (as opposed to the "Great Depression" that describes the era after World War II for the USA and the West in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_econo...

Here are some factoids:

Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

Back in the year 2000, more than 64 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

The home ownership rate in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.

In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.

Consumer debt in the United States has risen by a whopping 1700% since 1971, and 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#253

Post by coldtea »

Crito wrote: post #241
benched wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experience…

So... how many women do you know that have died in childbirth?

So, how does that matter in this discussion? And the 1500s people didn't knew many who died from car accidents or obesity either.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#254

Post by coldtea »

kbolino wrote: post #181
coldtea wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are in agreement! I only gave the example to say that what's basic is relative (compared to current standards), so saying that a trailer-park person has more access to more things than a peasant doesn't mean anything.

If living better than a medieval peasant doesn't mean anything, then why do so few people want to live like medieval peasants?

For one, because most people can not even point Canada on the map, much less know anything about the living conditions in the medieval age.

In fact, most things people associate with the middle ages are either BS or happened at other times. Witch-huns and the Inquisition for example, are phenomena of the Renaissance, not of the middle ages. Even the Plague happened on the tail end of the middle ages entering into the Renaissance.

Heck, even fewer know that the ratio of holidays (what we'd call bank holidays today) to work was extremely higher in the middle ages compared to today.

Most homeless/coupon-living/trailer individuals would be much better off in the middle ages compared to today.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#255

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

rwmj wrote: post #27
forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #16

When you know self made millionaires you learn one thing: "Money is not wealth". Almost nobody that understands wealth holds money, money is a tool for exchanging things and its value decreases with time. They hold real state, they hold precious metals, they hold stock, they travel, they know people. The people that made money usually like making wealth and don't fear losing it so much, they learn all their life to h…

The one thing I learned from working with a couple of very rich people was that all they think about is how to get money . Which is why I'm never going to be super-rich, because I don't really care about it obsessionally like those two did. Edit: I should say these were self-made millionaires. I have also worked with people who were millionaires just by being in the right place at the right time, and they were comple…

This is not a criticism, but are you sure "making money" was all they thought about, or was it that they constantly saw opportunities for making money around them? The two are not the same. The latter is an extremely valuable skill worth cultivating, because even if you don't take advantage of it, having it can be useful someday.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#256

Post by wpietri »

run4_too wrote: post #200
wpietri wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most rich people became rich because they provided a particular value to society. Evidence? I think quite a lot of rich people are rich not because of an ability to create value, but an ability to extract cash. E.g., 95% of Wall Street's activity. And even those in the value-creating category often attribute much of their wealth to right-place, right-time luck rather than an unusually high ability to create value.

> 95% of Wall Street's activity. I think most people consider growth of their investments and savings "valuable". >And even those in the value-creating category often attribute much of their wealth to right-place, right-time luck rather than an unusually high ability to create value Irrelevant. Point is that the value has been created and thus so has their wealth.

> I think most people consider growth of their investments and savings "valuable".

The growth of investments mainly comes through the work of the people at the company invested in. There is little evidence that the people managing retail investments do more than add overhead. And managing retail investment is a pretty small part of what Wall Street does.

> Irrelevant. Point is that the value has been created and thus so has their wealth.

Entirely relevant. Those people didn't become rich because of their ability alone; it was ability plus luck. That means using wealth alone to imply virtue isn't very persuasive.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#258

Post by Crito »

coldtea wrote: post #253
Crito wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... how many women do you know that have died in childbirth?

So, how does that matter in this discussion? And the 1500s people didn't knew many who died from car accidents or obesity either.

> So, how does that matter in this discussion?

...how does it not?

Are you seriously attempting to make the case that automobile accidents and overabundance of food have made all of our other advancements a complete wash? That is delusional.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#259

Post by Crito »

coldtea wrote: post #252
Crito wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for starters, he is almost certainly warping his perception of the 1950s by only considering what movies and television showed the 1950s being like for white men in suburbia America.

Which doesn't matter much, because I can also do the exact same comparison to the same group in today's suburbia America. And no, it's not "movies and television". There are numerous books studying the decline of the middle class since the seventies. Heck, there's even an accepted term "Great Prosperity" (as opposed to the "Great Depression" that describes the era after World War II for the USA and the West in genera…

> Which doesn't matter much, because I can also do the exact same comparison to the same group in today's suburbia America.

Compare the lives of minorities and women in America 60 years ago to their lives now. Quality of life for the majority of Americans has undeniably improved. You have massive tunnel vision if you cannot recognize this.

Remember that white American men are a plurality, not a majority.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#260

Post by jbeda »

pmelendez wrote: post #220

I thought deeply about this when I read something that Bill Gates said answering a question a while ago. At some point he said that he could understand that people wants to be millionaire because the freedom that brings, but after a threshold the burger is the same for everybody. Freedom in that context is a weird concept, specially when you see a lot of rich people that are slaves of money. I guess it depends on the…

That quote made a big impressions to me also. It was from a Q&A session at UW from late 2011. Here is a video: http://www.geekwire.com/2011/its-hamburger-insights-bill-gat...
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