Lefty's Well-Illustrated Take on the Crisis

[don]

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[don]

Re: Lefty's Well-Illustrated Take on the Crisis

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

[dropthatcash]

Re: Lefty's Well-Illustrated Take on the Crisis

One could use this pyramid in any free system that rewards ability and luck. 1/1000 of all basketball players (pro and wannabees) earn 100% of basketball revenue. 1/1000 of all singers (think american idol) earn 99.9% of all money spent on music. Even in stock and commodity speculation more than half of 'investors' have a negative return in real and post tax dollars. Spend some time around those that are asset-less you'll quickly understand why they are where they are.

[c1ue]

Re: Lefty's Well-Illustrated Take on the Crisis

One could use this pyramid in any free system that rewards ability and luck. 1/1000 of all basketball players (pro and wannabees) earn 100% of basketball revenue. 1/1000 of all singers (think american idol) earn 99.9% of all money spent on music. Even in stock and commodity speculation more than half of 'investors' have a negative return in real and post tax dollars. Spend some time around those that are asset-less you'll quickly understand why they are where they are.

Uh, sorry, but your statements are flat out wrong.

Basketball:

http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q8

According to the present collective bargaining agreement, the players receive a minimum 57% of all revenues. If in fact the players receive less, the NBA league pays the difference.

While the exact percentage isn't published, I am quite certain the players collectively don't receive that much more than the minimum.

As for the star players - they cannot possibly receive the income ratios noted above. For one thing, there is an NBA salary cap.

So unless you're referring to everyone who has ever played basketball as the quote unquote 'pool', as opposed to the actual paid professional basketball players, your assertion is wrong.

As for music, or publishing, or whatever - all that is needed is the example of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter and J K Rowling are not about quality or inventiveness. They are about corporate product.

The Beatles demonstrated that having a universally recognized star product was much more profitable than showcasing a wide variety of talent (consider Motown).

Thus again your assertion can only possibly be true if the music companies are excluded from the financial equation; by the very structure of corporate music is the dichotomy in earnings created.

And then there's the financial industry.

If you look at what the top 20 hedge fund managers made vs. the entire industry - you still don't get the ridiculous ratio shown above.

[flintlock]

Re: Lefty's Well-Illustrated Take on the Crisis

One could use this pyramid in any free system that rewards ability and luck. 1/1000 of all basketball players (pro and wannabees) earn 100% of basketball revenue. 1/1000 of all singers (think american idol) earn 99.9% of all money spent on music. Even in stock and commodity speculation more than half of 'investors' have a negative return in real and post tax dollars. Spend some time around those that are asset-less you'll quickly understand why they are where they are.

Sad but true! Something the idealists fail to see.

Our goal should be equal opportunity, not equality per se. But the deck does seem to be stacked more and more in favor of those at the top. Or so it would seem.

Its always been a tough balancing act. Its human nature for the successful group to attempt to consolidate power so as to ensure future success. Some of this is just the natural way of things since the beginning of man. What the US has, this "rags to riches", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" thing, this is not normal in the history of man. In fact I'm not sure it ever existed on a large scale until recent history. People were almost always ruled by Kings, or at least an elite few. Everyone else struggled. Any "middle class" was tiny by comparison with today. Those few rich didn't think twice about taking every crumb left on the table. Our system has only prospered because some guy figured out that he could do better personally by ensuring the prosperity of those working for him. That it wasn't a zero sum game. For every tycoon, there was a small army of minions that had been handsomely rewarded. And that worked its way through the economy. Part of the problem today is that, in the world of finance at least, a very FEW can accumulate a fortune without the need to spread the wealth. Nor do they contribute much to the economy in the process of making all this money. I leave it to someone much smarter to explain why this happened.

We are fighting against the basic selfish nature of man here. And by selfish I mean BOTH rich and poor. The rich man's form of selfish we all know. But to expect equality without working equally for it, that is the poor man's version of selfish. It exists at all levels of society.

If you could sprinkle magic "wealth and success" fairy dust on the current crop of poor, do you think some of them would somehow not behave just as selfishly with their own money as the current crop of wealthy? To some degree, the very aggressive and money focused ways of the rich, that very nature which helped make them rich, also lends them to behave badly. But they are not the majority. Most rich I know give away more money than the average burger flipper makes each year. But nobody wants to talk about that.