Study: $21 trillion hoard hidden from taxman by global elite

  On 7/25/2012 at 5:22 PM, theSun said:

the mistake made by society is the assumption that money = evolutionary advantage. this will fuck up humans for many many generations.

 

side note - in the 50s, there was the idea that gradually, as society became more efficient, humans would work less, and we would all enjoy lives of leisure. while tech advantages have certainly made more things possible, i don't think it has translated to a decrease in work for common folk.

in the 50s, the income gap was way less than than it is now. Coincidentally, the top tax-rate was way higher than it is now, and yet the 50s saw a huge jump in job creation.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/job-creators-of-1955/

Fuck supply-side economists in their silly asses.

im ashamed to admit i had a very libertarian viewpoint on economics until I read some Joseph Schumpeter and some other articles people have linked me over the years. its easy to get wrapped up in the "perfect world" answers, but its never that simple.

A "free market". One of the most useless and intentionally confusing concepts ever proposed.

Schumpeter is awesome. free markets have never existed anywhere, and anyone who tells you elsewise is straight up lying to yo' ass.

Big on arses today chenlinger.

i would think free markets create black ones just by their nature? clever, esp when entire gov. agencies are devoted to fighting them.

  On 7/23/2012 at 7:17 PM, vamos scorcho said:

"humanity" barely exists. as Dunsty say Melancholia - "Earth is evil," "nobody will miss it." and that's true.

 

there are two ways to go ... either say "fuck it" and give up on humanity itself, declare it worthless and horrible

 

or make the choice to smile, hug, and look upward. this truly is the culmination of nihilism, we've reached that point.

 

now it is a choice we all must face. band together in positivity or drown in nihilism

 

Transformers 3 is a masterpiece of nihilism, and will be remembered as a cultural touchstone in 50 years or more, if we pull out.

woah, this hit me pretty hard

  On 7/30/2012 at 4:23 AM, mafted said:

i would think free markets create black ones just by their nature? clever, esp when entire gov. agencies are devoted to fighting them.

the whole problem is the false paradigm of the "free market". There literally is no such thing that can be attained. You can have increments of "freedom", but that again is completely subjective and dependent on the interpreter (ie. how they as an individual benefit from certain self-perceived "freedoms" of the market).

That's why it annoys me when max keiser refers to getting back to the free market. The term is so ingrained in his mind that even though he isn't for an actual free market in everything his show stands for, he still goes on about it as though it existed and had benefits. Mental disconnect.

There comes a tiping point at which the incentive to adhere to a system is lost through these immbalances. Monetary value only works if the majority of people have trust in the concept that it can and should be exchanged for goods and services. However it's considered normal that a bank can hold a dollar of one customer and then based on that lend 20 to 30 times that amount.

That's why you buy 10% of your free income into gold (maybe silver). Sure it fluctuates, but over all you haven't the money to buy a farm so why not buy something that once the bankers die is still considered buy the people with guns, to mean something.

epic grammar there delet

lol

lol gold.

shiny rocks bro. they're awesome.

Are the gold hoarders going to eat their gold when it all goes to hell? I doubt shiny metal has any practical value in a post-apocalyptic world.

  On 7/31/2012 at 10:16 PM, azatoth said:

Are the gold hoarders going to eat their gold when it all goes to hell? I doubt shiny metal has any practical value in a post-apocalyptic world.

when we become as uneducated as people 50,000 years ago, then yeah, shiny metal will be valuable.

Forget 50,000 years ago - gold had virtually no practical value until it became a part of electronics (fun fact - your cell phone and computer both have gold in them). Otherwise it was all about "the shiny". The primary use of gold is still to make jewelry.

If we go post-apocalyptic while I'm alive, any fool who tries to trade gold for food in these parts is going to get laughed at.

  On 8/1/2012 at 5:43 AM, chenGOD said:

Forget 50,000 years ago - gold had virtually no practical value until it became a part of electronics (fun fact - your cell phone and computer both have gold in them). Otherwise it was all about "the shiny". The primary use of gold is still to make jewelry.

 

If we go post-apocalyptic while I'm alive, any fool who tries to trade gold for food in these parts is going to get laughed at.

wait a couple of years after the bombs drop. you are putting way too much faith in humanity.

Well if it's not flooded out, come up to the Cascadia region - the WATMM commune will be in full effect here.

considering it's only made via supernovas and it's electric and exotic properties, i would bet even aliens want gold. there was a thing on History about some old Mayan prophecy about gods coming from the sky in search of it.. plausible, but yea who knows.

like I said - useful with the discovery of electricity. In a post-apocalyptic world with presumably little manufacturing, what good is that gonna do you?

We can synthesize gold in nuclear reactors by the way.

i think you are still underrating an undereducated post-apoc humanity, and the "shiny shiny" of the material.

  On 8/1/2012 at 5:22 PM, mafted said:

considering it's only made via supernovas and it's electric and exotic properties, i would bet even aliens want gold. there was a thing on History about some old Mayan prophecy about gods coming from the sky in search of it.. plausible, but yea who knows.

fuck the history channel that steaming pile of shitty fuckshit fuck them

  On 8/1/2012 at 6:45 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

i think you are still underrating an undereducated post-apoc humanity, and the "shiny shiny" of the material.

I'm not disagreeing with you - I know people now who think gold is a good store of value. It will only get worse when people have no access to the internet and other forms of currency.

I'm just trying to show why it's an idiotic idea that gold should have some form of intrinsic value.

The value of gold as NOTHING to do do with electricity.

It has all to do with

A) The fact that it is rare

and

B) The fact that it is practicaly inalterable, and this is the most important one and why civilizations always kept gold for trading value, just because it's pretty much always going to be the same thing 1000 years from now

edit: it's value sure has raised because we use it in cell phones and what not, but it's not at the primary cause of it's appeal and thus it's value