ATM Robbery Sparks Ruminations on Capitalism

[BridgeTroll]

 

You are reverse engineering my statement to suit your outrage.

Not outraged at all JC... though you appear to be...

The point is that, and it is the last time I will make it, that capitalism fosters the worst in humans, it is a framework where within you can destroy whatever you need to just so you can have a bigger house and a fancy hand made car, its stupid and more often than not far more destructive than productive.

No it doesnt... It fosters the best in human beings.  You must be blind to the wonders all around you... built and acheived the best humans not the worst...  Without them... and the capital required to make it happen...

Ah forget it...  Not gonna convince you am I?  You see the worst humans have to offer while others see the best.  The gains made by our system...

FAR OUTWEIGH ANY ALTERNATE... and I wont say it for the last time...

[NotNow]

I know how they work.  I don't know how disparaging these people helps your argument.  A charitable trust makes no money for the philanthropist. That interest earned on the principle can only be applied to charity. IN addition, I personally know of individuals who give well beyond their tax credits. IT is sometimes hard to remember, but the world is inhabited by many good people as well.

[JC]

You are reverse engineering my statement to suit your outrage.

Not outraged at all JC... though you appear to be...

Whatever!

The point is that, and it is the last time I will make it, that capitalism fosters the worst in humans, it is a framework where within you can destroy whatever you need to just so you can have a bigger house and a fancy hand made car, its stupid and more often than not far more destructive than productive.

No it doesnt... It fosters the best in human beings.  You must be blind to the wonders all around you... built and acheived the best humans not the worst...  Without them... and the capital required to make it happen...

Ah forget it...  Not gonna convince you am I?  You see the worst humans have to offer while others see the best.  The gains made by our system...

FAR OUTWEIGH ANY ALTERNATE... and I wont say it for the last time...

Please tell me how you account for all the horrible things I have mentioned in this post then.  


Oh, and about those Stella Doro workers, the company sold the name to Lance, moved the operation to Ohio I believe and closed the doors to the Bronx plant, gone, no more, those workers lost.  

[NotNow]

The point is not to get too over awed by the charity of the megawealthy.  It helps keep their fortunes intact.

In what way?

[JC]

I know how they work.  I don't know how disparaging these people helps your argument.  A charitable trust makes no money for the philanthropist. That interest earned on the principle can only be applied to charity. IN addition, I personally know of individuals who give well beyond their tax credits. IT is sometimes hard to remember, but the world is inhabited by many good people as well.

The world is also inhabited by people who feel guilty about what they have and what others dont have.  And those people donate to ease their own consciences.

How dare I question someone offering charity?  I question them because what they are getting is far better than what they are giving!

[Tripoli1711]

I agree with you 100% Troll.  Capitalism brings out the absolute best in human beings.  I also struggle constantly with whether to even post my thoughts when it is abundantly clear there is no way of ever convincing the other party of my viewpoint.  I still don't quite know where I stand.  I think overall its best to post it, because some who may be interested in silently reading the discussion will not be as steadfast in their position as the person with whom you are debating.

There are few guarantees in life IMO.  One of them is that there are good people and bad people.  Any system you could envision would allow for the bad people to exploit and take advantage of the good.  Overall the capitalist system adds another guarantee to our life, I believe, that is the guarantee of an opportunity to make something of yourself.  It is not a guarantee of a result but of a chance.  I think it affords the best chance of any system, and the greatest incentive to take your best chance of any system, and for generations industrious men and women making the most of their chance has done more good for the human condition than any other system anywhere at any time.

[Tripoli1711]

OK.  That makes more sense.  If you ever choose to distribute the corpus to yourself or your heirs as opposed to the charity, are you not then taxed upon the amount of the corpus of the trust?

[Dog Walker]

Capitalism fits the nature of human beings better than any other ecomomic system and the experiments of history have proved it.  Sentimental wishes won't change human nature.

Curse the industrial revolution all you want, but the world is a far better place for human beings now than it was in 1800.

[JC]

I agree with you 100% Troll.  Capitalism brings out the absolute best in human beings.  I also struggle constantly with whether to even post my thoughts when it is abundantly clear there is no way of ever convincing the other party of my viewpoint.  I still don't quite know where I stand.  I think overall its best to post it, because some who may be interested in silently reading the discussion will not be as steadfast in their position as the person with whom you are debating.

There are few guarantees in life IMO.  One of them is that there are good people and bad people.  Any system you could envision would allow for the bad people to exploit and take advantage of the good.  Overall the capitalist system adds another guarantee to our life, I believe, that is the guarantee of an opportunity to make something of yourself.  It is not a guarantee of a result but of a chance.  I think it affords the best chance of any system, and the greatest incentive to take your best chance of any system, and for generations industrious men and women making the most of their chance has done more good for the human condition than any other system anywhere at any time.

Maybe you can account for all the horrible occurrences through out the history of American Capitalism?  If you need me to name a few just let me know and I will. 

[JC]

Capitalism fits the nature of human beings better than any other ecomomic system and the experiments of history have proved it.  Sentimental wishes won't change human nature.

Curse the industrial revolution all you want, but the world is a far better place for human beings now than it was in 1800.

I would argue that humans dont have a nature and are mainly responding to their surroundings... If their surroundings require them to stick someone up at an ATM to feed their family or drug habit, you can damn well bet that most will do it.

[Dog Walker]

Come now, Stephen, you know that without capitalism those technological advances would still be sitting in some laboratory somewhere.  There were a lot of scientific discoveries in the 18th Century, but they didn't change the world until they were turned into businesses during the industrial revolution.  Lasers were a laboratory curiosity for a long time and magnetic resonance machines were first used to analyze the elements on a microscope slide.

It wasn't until someone thought, "Hey, I could make money with that." did any of those things impact our lives.

[NotNow]

Foundation accounts work like this:

If you have a million dollars.  Normally you would be taxed 34% of that million.  This leaves you with 660,000.

But if you take that million and agree to form a foundation endowment fund it moves from being taxed to tax free, so long as you donate the interest paid on the account to charity.

So if your foundation account pays 6% interest, at the end of the year, you would have 1 million plus 60,000.
By the rules, you would then contribute a portion of the interest (NOT the principal) to the charity of your choice.

Say you decide to contribute 30,000 of that interest rate, and pay someone 30,000 to administer it (your wife perhaps)

At the end of the year, after the donation, you have 1 million dollars.

Now say you had the same million dollars, and you decided to donate 60,000 to charity.

You would be taxed on 940,000 dollars or 319,000.  Your donation would be tax free of course, but you would end the year with 621,000.  That's a damn site less than if you had established the charity fund in the first place.

True enough, StephenDare!  But you left out the part that at the end of the term, the principle, that cool $1M, goes to the charity, not back to the donor or hiers.  It DOES save income and estate taxes, but is VERY good for the charity.

[NotNow]

I agree with you 100% Troll.  Capitalism brings out the absolute best in human beings.  I also struggle constantly with whether to even post my thoughts when it is abundantly clear there is no way of ever convincing the other party of my viewpoint.  I still don't quite know where I stand.  I think overall its best to post it, because some who may be interested in silently reading the discussion will not be as steadfast in their position as the person with whom you are debating.

There are few guarantees in life IMO.  One of them is that there are good people and bad people.  Any system you could envision would allow for the bad people to exploit and take advantage of the good.  Overall the capitalist system adds another guarantee to our life, I believe, that is the guarantee of an opportunity to make something of yourself.  It is not a guarantee of a result but of a chance.  I think it affords the best chance of any system, and the greatest incentive to take your best chance of any system, and for generations industrious men and women making the most of their chance has done more good for the human condition than any other system anywhere at any time.

Well said.

[Dog Walker]

I would argue that humans dont have a nature and are mainly responding to their surroundings

There is the root statement of Marxism.  Human beings as mechanisms.  That we are "tabula rasa", blank slates that are solely operated on by our environment.

It also flies in the face of the last hundred years of increasingly sophisticated neuroscience discoveries, but then most religious beliefs do.

[Tripoli1711]

"The entire industrial revolution has lead to the destruction of our environment, it has caused countless wars, terrorism, you name it all for global market dominance."

JC:  From my shallow knowledge of human history, this has been the case for all times.  The longer we go into the past, the smaller the "globe" to dominate was for the group of people, or tribe.. but the result was none the less the same.  Human beings have always committed these ills in the search of some sort of dominance.  I don't see where capitalism invented these problems or served to exacerbate them.