Comment by jack on March 7, 2013 at 9:41pm

Nice vid - I "liked" - If you've had the "pleasure" of visiting thirld world nations you'll know they have similar wealth distribution models - weird that...... huh?

Comment by jack on March 7, 2013 at 10:07pm

Comment by Peter jcp on March 7, 2013 at 10:47pm

Excellent video and all Americans need to view it - especially one I can think of  ;-). Normally its Pareto's rule or the 80 /20 set up - ie 20% of the people have 80% of the wealth - or even in business - 80% of your main income or sales can come from 20% of your customers.

For 40% of the countries wealth to be with 1% of the US population is just criminal - totally wrong and as just got out of sync the last 25+ years.

We all know life is not fair - humans are not all equal - but you can the help the people who might be frail or disabled or ill - or old - or just not so fortunate - by taxing that 1% or even 5% just another 5 or 10% - or even better stop them getting away paying hardly any tax on massive incomes and wealth.

In a democracy - numbers count - ie the majority have a say - clearly in the US the majority have not agreed for the 1% to have so much wealth and power.

No country is perfect - but the US needs to have such a change to be great again. Saying that Keith - the video could also relate to forex trading in so many ways ;-))

Comment by Sir Gissachance on March 7, 2013 at 11:19pm

Hi Keith,

Great video and so is the one from Jack.

Peter you pick up on some interesting points especially on tax and tax avoidance. This has got in to such a state or to re-phrase, a complete and utter United state. I actually think the only way forwards would be to make them all British again. I believe our Queen was discussing this with Obama on his last tour. Between them they have hatched a cunning plan and when Obama gets rid of all their guns and permits, our Queen will again launch 3 Long boats filled with 500 Scots armed to the back teeth with swords, shields and axes. That should do the trick and release the equity back to the majority and the very good people who actually need and deserve it. What say ye, do we hear a battle cry and shall I get the Horses ready?

; 0 )

Best Regards,

Sir Gissachance (PPND)

Comment by Peter jcp on March 7, 2013 at 11:36pm

Absolute brilliant idea - they need our help - and we are always willing to help and assist . A few "Glasgow kisses" should sort out the Fed and may even be welcome by the Orange county wives and all the other desperate housewives - we keep hearing about ;-)) 

Comment by Keith Shaw on March 8, 2013 at 9:04am

Hi Jack, thanks for the video and observations re similar wealth distribution models in third world nations, isn't it interesting how patterns repeat.

Grigore, I think you have a very valid point, Milton Friedman touches on some very interesting facts regarding taxes in the below clip.

Peter, I was in a similar thought camp as you regarding Pareto's principle aka the 80 - 20 rule, which just goes to confirm that reality is often not what we think it is.

Gissa definitely a forward thinking and plausible solution, food for thought . . . ;0)

Comment by Peter jcp on March 8, 2013 at 10:40am

Hi Keith - I like your last "confusing" example with the 3 - or is it 4 objects?. That's an example of of we can be fooled by maths  ;-) Maths can lie when set up to lie . In your example both your characters are correct in their assumptions - one is using 4 in his maths equation - to deduct there are 4 objects. The other guys who similar can count - is seeing 3 in his maths equation - Both guys are correct from their perspective - but as we can see the bigger picture - we are seeing an illusion - just like in the forex market  - Brian ;-))

Comment by Indy on March 10, 2013 at 1:50am

hello Keith,

just stumbled across this and thought it might be relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKrtwuX3T

while I'm here I may as well give my 2 cents as the americans may say. I should first point out that I am  not anti-american, my brother moved there 14 years ago and i have spent quite alot of time there, it has a lot of good points. now onto business.

On a personal note I think one of the galling factors about the financial crisis was the way many bankers were receiving multimillion dollar bonuses as the banks they worked for were going bankrupt. I mean WTF, how does that work? I have spent a little time in sales and marketing and it was standard to receive a basic wage then double it on bonuses, but the bonus was related to to performance, i.e. the profit you created for the company in the last month, there was no way you got a bonus for losing money. some people may say I just don't understand how the banking sector works but I think my view repressents the view of the 'average joe' and I think it highlights a shift in balance between shareholders and directors in recent years. I don't think it was the shareholders who said 'hey, I just lost half of my investment value, lets give that guy 30 million dollars', i think its more likely that one director said to another 'I'll approve your bonus if you approve mine, how does 50 mill sound?'  This an issue that needs to be addressed, CEO's etc need to be reminded that they are just employees, the company belongs to the shareholders. A case of the wealthy having too much power. The balance of power is currently wrong. The rich just help the rich, take the money now and screw everyone else. 

moving on to the second point. One of the interesting things for me in that video (as a european) was when they did the graph to represent socialism were they showed everyone having exactly the same amount of money. I think one of the problems with american opinions atm is a seeming lack of understanding what socialism means. The word Socialism in america is often synonymous with communism and communism is often used as an insult, for example regarding Obama and his social health system etc. Western europe is a socialist region of the world, so is canada, australia japan etc, in fact almost every other member of the 'wealthy, first world, westernised', country group  is socialist, America is the odd man out as far as that is concerned, .anyone who has spent any time in europe knows that there is no goal to make everyones wealth exactly equal, all that socialism means is that people have a social concience and that wealthy people pay alittle more taxes to help out the people less fortunate then themselves. (Surely helping those less fortunate than yourself should be a good christian value?) We still have democracy and a  a free market economy. We are not 1960's russia. wake up socialism and communism are not the same.

Monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism, free market economy, etc etc are not mutually exclusive terms. anyone who thinks that should have acloser look at the world.

Britain is all of them

OK, this i turning into  a rant, possibly(probably) because of the beer tonight, there is a part 2 but thats probably enough for now

regards

Indy

Comment by Indy on March 10, 2013 at 2:32am

Part 2,

as I'm on a roll i may as well share this. America is currently up in,arms about Obama's social health plan , and citing how people will be dying in the streets at the hands of death commitees etc, etc. I really don't understand this, 'no I don't want free health care, I want to pay for it'. most european countries had to campaign to get it and americans are campaigning against it. so lets see how bad social healthcare is, heres a map of global life expectancy rates. it seems like a good measure of health to me. after all, live people are generally healthier than dead ones.

Hmmm, dark blue, aren't they the the socialist countries? america is light blue. Hmmm, To go on the article I took this from states

'How long will you live? This colour coded map shows the life expectancy in 222 of the world's nations. Nations shaded dark blue are those where people are expected to live to over 80, and they include most of the developed countries which have compulsory state-funded healthcare like the most of the countries of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Jordan and Japan. With the exception of Afghanistan, the countries with the lowest life expectancies are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Inhabitants of Afghanistan, Swaziland, South Africa, Guinea-Bissau and Chad are not expected to reach 50,

Just to push the point, USA ranks 51, i wonder how many of the top 40 have social medical systems?

Ok so that article was published in a British newspaper, we are socialist we are probably trying to push our communist viewpoint and misrepresent the facts. Wait a minute. those statistics were drawn from the 'CIA world factbook'  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankord...

UnfortunatlyI have lost the link wich showed that the average rise in taxes would be significantly less than the average cost of health insurance, making the average american much better off, but never mind. The last point Americans make on social healthcare is that it condemns you to having bad healthcare,  actually in all european countries you can still take out additional private healthcare plans if you want better treatment, but even private healthcare plans tend to cost less as they have to reduce costs to compete with the government funded healthcare. Thats justbso you can have all the facts.

This seems like an appropriate post to use a trekky sign off

Live long and prosper

Indy

Comment by talisman on March 10, 2013 at 3:11am

good input indy.  i usually try to stay away from the non trading discussions but feel compelled to comment on this one.  as a canadian i enjoy free health care in a scially responsible society , that is true.  but the health care system here has become very inefficient and is management heavy.  they do not allow us to queue jump if we have more money.  what is interesting since we are a neighbour to the usa is that if we have a medical problem, and we have the money, we can go down to the states and get a higher level of health care whenever we want.  we sort of have the best of both worlds in that regard i guess

 

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