Gordon Gekko endorses Bernie Sanders !!

TopHat24/7 wrote:Whilst I like/agree you closing statement.  I'm not sure what you mean by getting rich 'the old fashioned way'?

Do you mean tangible product based??

profitius wrote:

TopHat24/7 wrote:Whilst I like/agree you closing statement.  I'm not sure what you mean by getting rich 'the old fashioned way'?

Do you mean tangible product based??

What I mean by "old-fashioned way" is people being creative like inventors etc.

TopHat24/7 wrote:
Yeh, a lot of money is made by traders (not just talking about bankers here) and speculators here.  But the majority of major wealthy players are still in tangible product industries or where they've invented something, even if just an idea.

Wal-Mart, the Abuse of Eminent Domain and Corporate Welfare

By Stacy Mitchell
Published December 2003
Typical of shopping centers built decades ago, Alameda Square in Denver is a cheap, single-story strip of stores. It’s ugly and rundown. But that does not deter shoppers. Mostly Asian Americans, shoppers come from miles around to patronize more than a dozen locally-owned Asian businesses, including two grocery stores, two restaurants, a hair salon, a clothing shop, a jeweler and a bakery.
On a weekday afternoon, the parking lot buzzes with activity. Inside Pacific Ocean International Supermarket, the dingy exterior gives way to bright lights, shelves stocked with canned bamboo shoots and dried fish and aisles of shoppers.

Most of Alameda Square’s businesses are profitable. Together they generate about $125,000 a year in sales tax revenue. But if the city of Denver has its way, these small businesses will be evicted to make way for a Wal-Mart super-center. The city’s Urban Renewal Authority has threatened condemnation if the property owners refuse to sell and has offered Wal-Mart $10 million in public subsidies. That’s right: Tax dollars would go to one of the country’s most profitable and powerful corporations.

As big chains like Wal-Mart have grown and multiplied over the last decade, tens of thousands of independent businesses have closed. Most people assume that local retailers are being beaten fair-and-square by companies that offer consumers a better deal.
But as Alameda Square vividly illustrates, consumer choices are not all that’s driving the growth of corporate chains. Public policy plays a major role.

Wal-Mart leads the pack in attracting subsidies, this year collecting $10 million in Denver; $500,000 in Dallas; $36.7 million in Scottsdale, Ariz., (as part of a shopping center that includes Lowe’s); $9 million in Bartlesville, Okla.; and $17 million in Lewiston, Maine.
Local officials argue these big stores warrant subsidies because of the jobs and tax revenue they generate. But in most cases the big boxes do more harm than good.

Chris Nevitt, director of the Front Range Economic Strategy Center, one of several groups in Colorado fighting Denver’s plan for Alameda Square, points out that nearby grocery stores and competing businesses will lose sales to Wal-Mart.
“As these businesses shrink or close, hundreds of jobs will be lost, many of which provide higher wages and better benefits than Wal-Mart,’ he argues. Moreover, under the terms of the subsidy, Denver will not see a dime of new revenue until 2016.

Rarely are tax dollars given to local retaiiers. For them, it’s sink or swim in a sea of giant, subsidized competitors.

Some cities have gone so far as to condemn property owned by small businesses in order to turn it over to chain store developers. Last month, Wheat Ridge, Colo., designated property owned by three independent businesses as blighted. The three enterprises—a multi-generation, family-owned automotive repair shop, a billiards hall, and a kitchen cabinet business—will be booted for a Walgreens drugstore. The developer has also been given $500,000 in public subsidies.

Tax policy, too, is riddled with loopholes that benefit chain stores. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, about half the states allow national chains to avoid state income taxes by transferring profits earned locally to tax-free states such as Delaware. Small businesses, meanwhile, pay state income taxes on every penny of their earnings.

All of this adds up to a startlingly tilted playing field, a rigged system that can hardly be characterized as free enterprise. Our hometown businesses deserve better.

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/independent_business_walmart_eminent_domain/

profitius wrote:

TopHat24/7 wrote:Whilst I like/agree you closing statement.  I'm not sure what you mean by getting rich 'the old fashioned way'?

Do you mean tangible product based??

What I mean by "old-fashioned way" is people being creative like inventors etc. In a free society the cream will rise to the top. In a socialist society the cream is not allow to rise to the top. It more depends on who you know and what your views are rather than what you know.

profitius wrote:

TopHat24/7 wrote:Whilst I like/agree you closing statement.  I'm not sure what you mean by getting rich 'the old fashioned way'?

Do you mean tangible product based??

What I mean by "old-fashioned way" is people being creative like inventors etc. In a free society the cream will rise to the top. In a socialist society the cream is not allow to rise to the top. It more depends on who you know and what your views are rather than what you know.

Pr4wn wrote:It's not at all. Rich stupid kids often do better than poor clever kids..

Pr4wn wrote:

profitius wrote:

TopHat24/7 wrote:Whilst I like/agree you closing statement.  I'm not sure what you mean by getting rich 'the old fashioned way'?

Do you mean tangible product based??

What I mean by "old-fashioned way" is people being creative like inventors etc. In a free society the cream will rise to the top. In a socialist society the cream is not allow to rise to the top. It more depends on who you know and what your views are rather than what you know.

The cream rises to the top? Like our chancellor with his 2:1 in history? Far too often in a free society, it's the rich that rise to the top. We all know that.

Pr4wn wrote:It's not at all. Rich stupid kids often do better than poor clever kids. That doesn't scream free society to me.

Pr4wn wrote:It's not at all. Rich stupid kids often do better than poor clever kids. That doesn't scream free society to me.

profitius wrote:

Pr4wn wrote:It's not at all. Rich stupid kids often do better than poor clever kids. That doesn't scream free society to me.

Why not? Maybe the clever poor kid's parents were lazy or drug addicted

Good old every-man-for-himself libertarianism......If you can't eat or can't afford health insurance...You die...

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:

profitius wrote:

Pr4wn wrote:It's not at all. Rich stupid kids often do better than poor clever kids. That doesn't scream free society to me.

Why not? Maybe the clever poor kid's parents were lazy or drug addicted

and maybe they weren't.....Either way you're coming across as an ill informed tiresome little cretin..