The Rich Don't Create Jobs

[Photonic]

I'm curious, Dragon...do you think repeating something twenty times makes it any more true than the first time you said it?

Nope. It was 100% true the first time I said it and it remains 100% true now. Nobody has offered a single item in rebuttal, and the evidence in favor is overwhelming. So I'm going to keep repeating it. Thanks for your advice, but I believe I'll ignore it.

Taking the incentive away from those with capital to invest it is not the way to grow the economy.

The incentive to invest lies in consumer demand for the products to be produced by investing it. No one invests in products that won't sell, which is why the economy has been so slow to grow recently.

More money to the rich does NOT create jobs.

More money to the middle class and poor creates more consumer demand, which does.

Everyone who invests in the production of a good or service "thinks" they will sell, Dragon but there is never a guarantee of that taking place. And let's be honest here...the incentive to invest is profit. Without profit there is ZERO reason for investors to risk capital. I don't know why you find that concept so hard to grasp.

Yea, but how well would a company do on just investment?

Not too well if there are no consumers.

No consumers, no profit, no jobs.

 

[The Rabbi]

Nope. It was 100% true the first time I said it and it remains 100% true now. Nobody has offered a single item in rebuttal, and the evidence in favor is overwhelming. So I'm going to keep repeating it. Thanks for your advice, but I believe I'll ignore it.



The incentive to invest lies in consumer demand for the products to be produced by investing it. No one invests in products that won't sell, which is why the economy has been so slow to grow recently.

More money to the rich does NOT create jobs.

More money to the middle class and poor creates more consumer demand, which does.

Everyone who invests in the production of a good or service "thinks" they will sell, Dragon but there is never a guarantee of that taking place. And let's be honest here...the incentive to invest is profit. Without profit there is ZERO reason for investors to risk capital. I don't know why you find that concept so hard to grasp.

Yea, but how well would a company do on just investment?

Not too well if there are no consumers.

No consumers, no profit, no jobs.

How could there possibly be no consumers? There may be no investors but never no consumers.

 

[Photonic]

Everyone who invests in the production of a good or service "thinks" they will sell, Dragon but there is never a guarantee of that taking place. And let's be honest here...the incentive to invest is profit. Without profit there is ZERO reason for investors to risk capital. I don't know why you find that concept so hard to grasp.

Yea, but how well would a company do on just investment?

Not too well if there are no consumers.

No consumers, no profit, no jobs.

How could there possibly be no consumers? There may be no investors but never no consumers.

You know exactly what I mean, don't take it so literally.

No consumers means there is no one that wants to buy your shit. So your company is fucked no matter how much investment it gets.

Profit is when consumers take an interest in that which is to be consumed.

 

[The Rabbi]

Yea, but how well would a company do on just investment?

Not too well if there are no consumers.

No consumers, no profit, no jobs.

How could there possibly be no consumers? There may be no investors but never no consumers.

You know exactly what I mean, don't take it so literally.

No consumers means there is no one that wants to buy your shit. So your company is fucked no matter how much investment it gets.

Profit is when consumers take an interest in that which is to be consumed.

And that interest wouldn't exist without a product initially. The product will succeed or fail. But an investor had to put in front of the public first.

 

[FA_Q2]

If your small business profits more than 250k a year its probably not small.

Apparently, you have no idea what a small business actually is....

It's amazing how hard some people have understanding this. It's really not rocket science.

A business owner has a million dollars he could invest to expand his business, but business is slow. He barely makes a profit as it is. People want his products, but they can't afford them.

A good fairy comes along with a magic spell that can do one of two things. Either it can give the business owner another million dollars, or it can give 100 people $10,000 each. The fairy wants to see the business expand, but can do only one of those two things.

Which one would work better?

The problem is that your analogy is a complete farce as is most of the confiscation argument through this thread. First, taxes are not materialized into existence with a fairy and that capitol does not come from nothing. It must first be taken. So your analogy would be better stated as taking the million from the business owner and distributing it to the people. What it also fails to take into account is the fact that taking that cash from the business owner will have 3 possible effects: it can de-incentivize his creation of the business in the first place. It can drive the cost of the product up to make up for the lost profits. This has a double effect as now the customers that were given the cash are in no better shape than they were in before. Yet another effect is the stifling of reinvestment into the company which would have driven the cost of the original product down. You see, by taking the money from the one person and redistributing it to others you have, in fact, done little to change anything as the variables change to reflect the new situation. The market is in its state for a reason. The only thing that you have accomplished is to introduce inefficiency into the system through the transfer process and therefore destroyed productivity/wealth.

Also, cutting taxes on the poor has almost no effect in general as you are cutting an extremely small amount of cash. The effect of the average family getting 10 bucks back a year is miniscule. It is the middle class that has the true power to surge the economy forward. Same goes for the rich as you have stated. We are clearly on the side of the tax code where lower taxes on the wealthy are not going to help anything. I cannot support higher taxes though until congress can prove that it can handle it by coming up with at least a semblance of a balanced budget. They failed to cut 1% of the budget, a total farce, with extreme pressure to do so. It is clear that no amount of taxes are ever going to sate their lust for spending.


And you're doing the exact same thing when you ignore the fact that capitol, through investment, is equally required in the first place. You cannot, as you have tried to force everyone to accept, that people will produce as long as there is a demand. That is utter bullshit. There are a million factors that can play into someone that wants to fulfill a specific demand and the large majority of the time the demand goes unfulfilled. There needs to exist the correct variables for someone to take the risk and actually produce a product. Both sides of the equation are equally important. Jobs are created as a factor of all the variables in the marketplace and to specify one single piece of the puzzle like wealth or demand is asinine.

Then you fail to understand a flat tax. It would hurt both the rich who would not be able to avoid taxes as they do now and the poor who use taxes as another bank account. The ONLY group that would receive great benefits from it would be the middle class who lack the capitol and other things necessary to avoid their taxes.

No, in practice, counting deductions and loopholes, we don't. In any case, as I said the cost of those taxes -- the ENTIRE cost -- is a pittance compared to the savings in labor that are available abroad. If corporate taxes were reduced to ZERO that would not put a dent in outsourcing.

Progressives like yourself describe additional taxes on the wealthy as a "pittance", yet a dyed in the wool Keynesian economist like Christina Romer comes out and states that raising taxes on ANYONE in an economy as weak as ours is now, would be bad fiscal policy. How do you explain that?

It's doctrine, and I believe she's wrong. Generally speaking, it's true you don't want to raise taxes in a weak economy; however, tax increases that don't hurt consumption don't cause problems, and would reduce the budget deficit which many consider to be a burden to the economy. (Long-term, I agree with them.)

While I agree that increasing the tax base is one way to reduce the deficit, I disagree -- as I've said several times -- that increasing the money int he bank accounts of the very rich is any way to do that. The rich aren't the ones who are short of funds. We have plenty of capital. What we're short of is consumer demand. That means we need to increase the money in the bank accounts, not of the rich, but of the middle class and poor. Ideally, if I could wave a magic wand and make it happen instantly, here's what I would want:

1) A confiscatory tax (like 90%) on incomes above, say, 2 million a year, ALONG WITH a 100% deduction for investment in job-creating activities.

2) Magically increase union strength to around 40% in the private sector (well, I did say a magic wand) and raised wages following from this.

These two things would, through the action of the market around the changed parameters, redistribute wealth dramatically, boost consumer demand, boost investment, and restore real prosperity. Or it would if we had no natural-resource issues to worry about. There are a couple of other things I would do along those lines, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.

No, they would destroy any investment at all as there would be zero reward for risking your capitol after the government confiscated all the profits. Also simply raising wages accomplishes nothing. If the lowest McDonalds worker earned a million dollars an hour there would be no difference in their economic status. The value of the cash he is paid will naturally fall to equal the value his labor adds in real goods. It would be reflected by the fact a burger would cost you 500 thousand dollars to purchase. This idea that raising labor costs will not affect the price of the goods you are raising the labor costs to buy is absolutely nuts. On what planet are the labor costs not DIRECTLY ties to the cost of the product?



Restated because no one at all took up the points listed....

 

[Dragon]

First, taxes are not materialized into existence with a fairy and that capitol does not come from nothing. It must first be taken. So your analogy would be better stated as taking the million from the business owner and distributing it to the people.

How about if the business owner has TWO million he's sitting on, then, and the government proposes to tax ONE million and give it to the people?

The point of the analogy was not that it realistically depicts anything that can actually happen in every detail, but that it illustrates that giving more money to people who already have plenty and AREN'T investing it won't accomplish anything. Spreading some (not all) of that money around to those who DON'T have it, and therefore aren't spending it, will.

Of course, when you get down to details, it's important to consider how you go about doing that. But there's no point in considering those details until you acknowledge the plain, obvious overall principle: more money to the rich does NOT create jobs. More money to the middle class and poor DOES.

What it also fails to take into account is the fact that taking that cash from the business owner will have 3 possible effects: it can de-incentivize his creation of the business in the first place.

It's possible that there's a level of reduced profit margin that would do this. Do you have any idea what that level is? Will you acknowledge that there is also a lower level of reduced profit margin that will NOT do this?

It can drive the cost of the product up to make up for the lost profits.

No. A business does not charge its customers what it MUST. It charges its customers what it CAN. If the market would bear an increased price, an increased price would already be charged. Now, it is possible that, for a short time, increased consumer demand would result in higher prices, but only until the business and/or its competitors increased production to meet that higher demand.

Yet another effect is the stifling of reinvestment into the company which would have driven the cost of the original product down.

What reinvestment into the company? Why would anyone invest in a company when there is insufficient consumer demand for its products to justify that investment?

You see, by taking the money from the one person and redistributing it to others you have, in fact, done little to change anything as the variables change to reflect the new situation.

On the contrary, I have taken money that was not being invested and put into the hands of people who will spend it. It was idle money, now its consumption money. Consumption drives investment, so it also increases the amount of the accumulated capital that will be invested (since nobody is talking about taking literally ALL of it).

This is the hole in supply-side thinking: the failure to understand that just because capital has been accumulated does NOT mean it will be invested in anything that creates jobs. That will happen only to the extent that consumer demand justifies doing it.

Also, cutting taxes on the poor has almost no effect in general as you are cutting an extremely small amount of cash.

That's one reason why I keep saying "middle class AND poor" and not just "poor." But let me tell you what would have a bigger and better effect on the disparity of income, and hence on the economy, than anything we could do with the tax code. If the government were to strictly enforce labor law and the right to form unions as it did in the 1950s and 1960s, that would drive wages up, which would redistribute wealth. If at the same time it were to crack down on employment of illegal immigrants, that would reduce the labor glut, which would drive wages up, which would redistribute wealth. If at the same time it were to set trade and tax policy to discourage outsourcing rather than encourage it, that would also drive wages up, which would boost consumer demand which would help the economy.

It is the middle class that has the true power to surge the economy forward. Same goes for the rich as you have stated.

Agreed about the middle class. More generally, the bigger and more secure the middle class is, the better the economy performs. The more jobs there are that provide a middle-class income, the better the economy performs. But we cannot do this and at the same time help/encourage the rich to become as rich as possible, because these are mutually exclusive goals.

As for the rich, the problem isn't that they CAN'T "surge the economy forward." It's that, under present demand conditions, they WON'T. Reducing their ability to do so slightly, in order to increase their incentive to do so by increasing demand for consumer products, is a net gain.

And you're doing the exact same thing when you ignore the fact that capitol, through investment, is equally required in the first place.

But I'm NOT ignoring that. I'm taking it for granted, and I have every reason to do so. Capital is not going to disappear. In a capitalist economy, it always exceeds consumer demand. The economy has suffered a downturn over and over for lack of consumer demand, but it has NEVER suffered a downturn for lack of financial capital. Accumulation of capital is a problem only for an economy trying to bootstrap itself into industrialized production and out of an agrarian, pre-industrial state. But we finished that job a long time ago. We have a mature economy, and in a mature capitalist economy the problem is always consumer demand, not capital formation.

Then you fail to understand a flat tax. It would hurt both the rich who would not be able to avoid taxes as they do now and the poor who use taxes as another bank account. The ONLY group that would receive great benefits from it would be the middle class who lack the capitol and other things necessary to avoid their taxes.

No, a flat tax would hurt the middle class. The only way that a flat tax has ever been presented as beneficial to the middle class is by drastically understating the level it would have to be set at to cover current and projected government expenses.

Or do you think that the meme on the left that MOST rich people pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the middle class is actually true? I'll grant you (and my somewhat-confused left-wing peers) that there are SOME rich people who do this, but most pay a higher percentage of their income than the average. This means that most rich people would receive a tax cut from any realistic flat tax. The poor might come out with a wash, depending on how much income is set aside as non-taxable. It's the middle class that would get screwed.

No, they would destroy any investment at all as there would be zero reward for risking your capitol after the government confiscated all the profits.

I refer you to the 1950s and early 1960s, when the top marginal tax rate was at 91% on incomes above $1.6 million (in today's dollars -- nominal dollar amount was lower but that was in 1950s money) and the result you predict did not occur. How do you explain that?

I can explain it, of course. Most investment simply does not come from people in that stratospheric level of income. Most investment comes from smaller investors or from entrepreneurs starting new businesses or expanding existing ones, whose incomes are nowhere near the level where they would run into that kind of tax bite. And since the policies of that time, taken altogether, increased consumer demand over what we have now, the net effect was MORE investment in job-creating activities, not less.

Also simply raising wages accomplishes nothing. If the lowest McDonalds worker earned a million dollars an hour there would be no difference in their economic status. The value of the cash he is paid will naturally fall to equal the value his labor adds in real goods. It would be reflected by the fact a burger would cost you 500 thousand dollars to purchase. This idea that raising labor costs will not affect the price of the goods you are raising the labor costs to buy is absolutely nuts. On what planet are the labor costs not DIRECTLY ties to the cost of the product?

This one. Or at least, on this one labor costs do not DETERMINE the price of the product. That's how my father, who worked as a machinist in the '50s and '60s, could support a non-working wife and three children, send all of us to college, own a home and two cars, all on one full-time blue-collar income. There were a lot of jobs like that in those days. Did the higher wages of those times evaporate in higher prices? No, they did not.

Once again, a business charges its customers what it CAN -- what they can and will pay -- not what it MUST. If it can raise prices, it does. If it can't, because its customers can't or won't pay that much, it doesn't. Generally speaking, except in a few industries that operate very near the bone, rising labor costs don't result in higher prices, or at any rate not in prices rising anywhere near whey would absorb all the wage gains, and on the other side, dramatically FALLING labor costs -- such as when a manufacturer moves its operation to China -- don't result in DROPPING prices that fully reflect the drop in production costs. Prices of goods produced in third-world countries have indeed fallen, but by only a fraction of the companies' savings.

 

[Oldstyle]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality. Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

 

[Photonic]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality. Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

 

[Dragon]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality.

What "reality" are you referring to? Actually, reading the rest of your post, you're not talking about "reality" at all. You're talking about supply-side dogma, assertions based on ideology about what reality SHOULD be. You aren't even considering what reality observably IS.

Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

That's why, in the past when THIS WAS ACTUALLY DONE SUCCESSFULLY (note: THAT is "reality"), a "tax shelter" was provided in the form of a deduction for investment in job-creating activity. The idea of a confiscatory tax isn't to collect it. It is precisely to drive the income into a shelter, and then to make sure that the shelter is something that will benefit the economy.

As for driving it "overseas," this will accomplish nothing for the taxpayer unless that overseas investment is tax deductible. Otherwise, he'll owe taxes on the money that he no longer has because it's been invested overseas.

 

[Dragon]

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

While there isn't an "equivalence," there is actually a connection. Rich people do tend to be more intelligent than the average.

 

[The Rabbi]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality. Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

Generally they correlate pretty well, yes. Wealthy people didnt get that way by being stupid.

 

[bripat9643]

Yea, but how well would a company do on just investment?

Not too well if there are no consumers.

No consumers, no profit, no jobs.

How would consumers do if there were no consumers?

That is an incredibly stupid question. It's like asking "where would we be if there were no people?"

 

[bripat9643]

You know exactly what I mean, don't take it so literally.

No consumers means there is no one that wants to buy your shit. So your company is fucked no matter how much investment it gets.

Profit is when consumers take an interest in that which is to be consumed.

If no one buys your shirt, it's because you make a crappy shirt. Your real question is: "how do you know what will sell and what won't?" That issue has nothing to do with how the government can create jobs. It can't. All government can do is dispense checks. A job is a renumerated activity that helps to produce something people are actually willing to buy voluntarily.

 

[Oldstyle]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality. Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

I suppose you think people with wealth are idiots? "Ah...gee...you want to take all my money? Duh...I guess I'll give it to you 'cause I don't know what else to do!" Yeah, that's realistic! Use your head, Photonic...if there is one thing people with wealth know how to do...it's preserve the wealth that they do have.

 

[Oldstyle]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality.

What "reality" are you referring to? Actually, reading the rest of your post, you're not talking about "reality" at all. You're talking about supply-side dogma, assertions based on ideology about what reality SHOULD be. You aren't even considering what reality observably IS.

Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

That's why, in the past when THIS WAS ACTUALLY DONE SUCCESSFULLY (note: THAT is "reality"), a "tax shelter" was provided in the form of a deduction for investment in job-creating activity. The idea of a confiscatory tax isn't to collect it. It is precisely to drive the income into a shelter, and then to make sure that the shelter is something that will benefit the economy.

As for driving it "overseas," this will accomplish nothing for the taxpayer unless that overseas investment is tax deductible. Otherwise, he'll owe taxes on the money that he no longer has because it's been invested overseas.

I'm not talking about supply side economics at all...I'm talking about what the result would be if your "plan" to seize wealth were ever attempted. Do you not understand that once you drive money overseas that we don't collect money on taxes from it? That money goes to some other government. As for what it will accomplish for the wealthy that DO start investing elsewhere? Just as New Jersey lost revenue when it instituted a "millionaires tax" because of all the wealthy people who simply moved to a State with a friendlier tax rate, the US will lose revenue when wealthy people move their capital to a country with a friendlier tax rate. The super rich that you progressives want to bleed so badly tend to have residences in many different places in the world...your plan would simply cause them to declare one of them as their principle residence instead of the US. It's the same thing that happened in England when they raised the tax rate on the wealthy to an ungodly rate back in the 70's.

 

[bripat9643]

First, taxes are not materialized into existence with a fairy and that capitol does not come from nothing. It must first be taken. So your analogy would be better stated as taking the million from the business owner and distributing it to the people.

How about if the business owner has TWO million he's sitting on, then, and the government proposes to tax ONE million and give it to the people?

The federal government has the authority to tax incomes. It doesn't have the authority to tax your property. Such a tax would be unconstitutional. Furthermore, it would be pure confiscation of property. How much do you think people would save if the government came along and confiscated it whenever it felt like it?

The point of the analogy was not that it realistically depicts anything that can actually happen in every detail, but that it illustrates that giving more money to people who already have plenty and AREN'T investing it won't accomplish anything. Spreading some (not all) of that money around to those who DON'T have it, and therefore aren't spending it, will.

All income is either spent on final goods or on capital. If it's saved, then it's still spent on capital. Your bank can pay you interest only because it loans your money out to business or to consumers. Even if the rich kept all their funds in the form of cash and stuffed it in a mattress, that would mean they weren't consuming. The goods not consumed would be available in the form of capital. Your mistake is that you keep confusing actual physical capital with worthless scraps of paper. In economic terms, only tangible goods can be capital. A bond or a share of stock is not capital. It's a claim on capital. It has no economic significance.

Of course, when you get down to details, it's important to consider how you go about doing that. But there's no point in considering those details until you acknowledge the plain, obvious overall principle: more money to the rich does NOT create jobs. More money to the middle class and poor DOES.

In the first place, your terminology is meaningless and deceptive. What is "more money to the rich" supposed to mean? Does that mean they have earned more? Does it mean lowering their taxes? If the latter is the case, then what you really mean is "confiscating less from the rich." Your belief that confiscating income or property has no ill effects on the economy has been demonstrated to be false time and time again.

It's possible that there's a level of reduced profit margin that would do this. Do you have any idea what that level is? Will you acknowledge that there is also a lower level of reduced profit margin that will NOT do this?

Any reduction in profit will cause a business to expand less than it would have otherwise. Profit is what makes expansion possible. It also provides the motivation for expansion. Expansion means more jobs.

No. A business does not charge its customers what it MUST. It charges its customers what it CAN. If the market would bear an increased price, an increased price would already be charged. Now, it is possible that, for a short time, increased consumer demand would result in higher prices, but only until the business and/or its competitors increased production to meet that higher demand.

If a business does not cover its costs, it goes out of business. Competition drives business profits to zero. Therefore, the price of a product is invariably determined by the marginal cost.

On the contrary, I have taken money that was not being invested and put into the hands of people who will spend it. It was idle money, now its consumption money. Consumption drives investment, so it also increases the amount of the accumulated capital that will be invested (since nobody is talking about taking literally ALL of it).

"Idle money" isn't the issue. What is being done with worthless scraps of paper isn't an economic issue. The only thing that matters is idle capital - that is, real plant and equipment that isn't being used.

 

[Photonic]

And once again, Dragon...your "premise" falls on it's face when it's subjected to reality. Stealing wealth from one person to give to another only works if the person you're stealing it from LETS you do so. People who were smart enough to build great wealth are smart enough to preserve it as well. As I said before...any attempt to seize the wealthy's assets will simply produce a massive movement of capital either overseas or into some sort of tax shelter. Either scenario does nothing to help our economy.

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

I suppose you think people with wealth are idiots? "Ah...gee...you want to take all my money? Duh...I guess I'll give it to you 'cause I don't know what else to do!" Yeah, that's realistic! Use your head, Photonic...if there is one thing people with wealth know how to do...it's preserve the wealth that they do have.

Having knowledge does not make one intelligent, and having intelligence does not make one knowledgeable.

 

[The Rabbi]

Did you seriously just equate wealth with intelligence?

I suppose you think people with wealth are idiots? "Ah...gee...you want to take all my money? Duh...I guess I'll give it to you 'cause I don't know what else to do!" Yeah, that's realistic! Use your head, Photonic...if there is one thing people with wealth know how to do...it's preserve the wealth that they do have.

Having knowledge does not make one intelligent, and having intelligence does not make one knowledgeable.

It is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

 

[Photonic]

I suppose you think people with wealth are idiots? "Ah...gee...you want to take all my money? Duh...I guess I'll give it to you 'cause I don't know what else to do!" Yeah, that's realistic! Use your head, Photonic...if there is one thing people with wealth know how to do...it's preserve the wealth that they do have.

Having knowledge does not make one intelligent, and having intelligence does not make one knowledgeable.

It is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

Since when did either have to satisfy the other to make it true?

 

[The Rabbi]

Having knowledge does not make one intelligent, and having intelligence does not make one knowledgeable.

It is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

Since when did either have to satisfy the other to make it true?

If your point is that high income earning people are stupid then you are simply dead wrong. That's the point.