BILL O'REILLY FEARS AN OBAMA TAX INCREASE ON THE RICH

[Laz]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

That depends on your definition of "wealth" in any given context and that question is suitable for a graduate seminar in economics, quite frankly. In my mind, in the context of macroeconomics when one talks of "creating" wealth, that must mean to bring into existence a tangible product that can be sold for more than the sum of it's various inputs. It is hard to think of a service that "creates" wealth directly. This definition is somewhat akin to the one that Adam Smith uses in Wealth of the Nations.

Smith's ideas were amplified by Henry George:

1. Wealth is material. Human qualities such as skill and mental acumen are not material, hence cannot be classified as wealth.
2. Wealth is produced by labor. Land possesses all the essentials of wealth but one -- it is not a product of labor, therefore it is not wealth.
3. Wealth is capable of satisfying human desire. Money is not wealth; it is a medium of exchange whereby wealth can be acquired. Nor are shares of stock, bonds or other securities classifiable as wealth. They are but the evidences of ownership. None of these satisfy desire directly; if they are destroyed, the sum total of wealth is not decreased.
4. Wealth has exchange value.”

I think that most instances that fall outside these parameters are instances of shuffling money from one pocket to another.

Of course the issue of what is "tangible" is a bit of an ill fit when it comes to things such as software, etc. I think that they are clearly tangible in this sense of the word.

That is the reason I asked. It is senseless to debate something without a common understanding of the fundamental issue.

So for the purpose of this disccussion are you limiting the definition of creating wealth to a process that results in a tangible product. Something you can pick up and hold? If you include software you have to include all audio, and video products as well. Since a book is a tangible product I would think it meets the base definition.

[Yssup Rider]

Another Rube spreading lies in an attempt to spook the great unwashed masses.

Maybe he'll quit creating jobs...

[TheDaliLama]

Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Another Rube spreading lies in an attempt to spook the great unwashed masses.

...

See there it is again.

Jeeeezzzz...... last year ya'll wanted an apology for everything and now this year everything is a lie.

You wouldn't know the truth if it bit you in the ass.

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by Laz

That is the reason I asked. It is senseless to debate something without a common understanding of the fundamental issue.

So for the purpose of this disccussion are you limiting the definition of creating wealth to a process that results in a tangible product. Something you can pick up and hold? If you include software you have to include all audio, and video products as well. Since a book is a tangible product I would think it meets the base definition.

Not sure that I'd include audio and video. That's just something that shuffles money from one place to another. And not all tangible manufacture creates wealth. Making bubble gum doesn't, for example. It just changes what someone might spend a candy dollar on. Pop tarts, bubble gum, etc., who cares?

To me, it has to be innovation. Something that adds value above and beyond it's mere labor and material inputs.

[Laz]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Not sure that I'd include audio and video. That's just something that shuffles money from one place to another. And not all tangible manufacture creates wealth. Making bubble gum doesn't, for example. It just changes what someone might spend a candy dollar on. Pop tarts, bubble gum, etc., who cares?

To me, it has to be innovation. Something that adds value above and beyond it's mere labor and material inputs.

By your definition very few people in the US create wealth. I think you are defining it too narrowly but as long as everyone uses the same definition for the discussion it does not matter.

So instead of wealth I will say Bill O'reilly creates value. His veiwers get information, His sponsors get people to see their product ads, his readers get information or entertainment, and the people watching his live shows are entertained and informed. The whole process of his business activity creates jobs for a lot of people directly ands indirectly and all of them receive value.

P.S. If you do not include audio and video you might as well throw out all TV and Ipod type devices since their function is to play the audio or video. There are many other problems with that definition but I do not want a debate about that here since that was not the objective of my question.

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by Laz

By your definition very few people in the US create wealth.

I very much agree with this statement, both in terms of it flowing from my definition and in terms of accurately reflecting my belief.

Originally Posted by Laz

If you do not include audio and video you might as well throw out all TV and Ipod type devices . . . "

Not sure I agree with this. If you invent a cheaper way to make a TV, that can create wealth in the sense that now folks can buy a TV and have money left over to buy an item that they would not otherwise buy. However, as to a TV program, I agree it creates no real wealth. It simply means folks spend on one item, instead of another. It doesn't increase net advertising dollars.

[CuteOldGuy]

Tex, you abhor the original meaning of the Constitution, but go back to Adam Smith for a definition of wealth? Let's see, what did Adam Smith say about the marketplace? About taxation? You seem to pick and choose whatever you feel like at the time.

So no one creates wealth? It is a zero-sum game? Well at least you got yours.

[Laz]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Not sure I agree with this. If you invent a cheaper way to make a TV, that can create wealth in the sense that now folks can buy a TV and have money left over to buy an item that they would not otherwise buy. However, as to a TV program, I agree it creates no real wealth. It simply means folks spend on one item, instead of another. It doesn't increase net advertising dollars.

What good is a TV without programming? Either one without the other is useless.

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Tex, you abhor the original meaning of the Constitution, but go back to Adam Smith for a definition of wealth? Let's see, what did Adam Smith say about the marketplace? About taxation? You seem to pick and choose whatever you feel like at the time.

So no one creates wealth? It is a zero-sum game? Well at least you got yours.

Adam Smith and John Locke were both about 200 years ahead of their time. Both just brilliant thinkers. Same to a only slightly lesser degree with David Hume. I think that Adam Smith is the second most influential economist in history.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Adam Smith and John Locke were both about 200 years ahead of their time. Both just brilliant thinkers. Same to a only slightly lesser degree with David Hume. I think that Adam Smith is the second most influential economist in history.

The Founding Fathers were ardent students and admirers of both Smith and Locke. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were products of that studied admiration. So how is it you tout for the theorists: Smith and Locke, and yet you reject the practitioners: Adams, Jefferson and Madison?

[TexTushHog]

I didn't know that I did reject Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

[I B Hankering]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

I didn't know that I did reject Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

Your answer to COG's post did not deal with this part of his question.

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Tex, you abhor the original meaning of the Constitution, but go back to Adam Smith for a definition of wealth?

[TexTushHog]

I don't think that anybody knows that the original meaning of the Constitution is. There is no "original meaning." A document cannot have meaning standing alone. It can only have meaning in relation to a reader or a situation.

Even if you ignore that heuristic issue, the document was written and adopted by a committee. Anybody who writes laws, rules, or constitutions knows -- and Madison acknowledges this in his Notes, as do other primary sources -- that sometimes the wording of a document is deliberately left loose so that it can be interpreted and adjusted to suit a unforeseen (indeed unforeseeable) set of circumstances in the future.

Some things the constitution made very specific so that arguments were settled at the time of the writing of the document. Counting slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of reapportionment is an example of that. Other things we know were debated and deliberately left quite unsettled because the framers knew that agreement was not possible after explicit debate. One example of that was whether the grant of power to the Federal government to regulate interstate commerce impliedly prohibited the States from regulating interstate commerce, too (what is now called the Dormant Commerce Clause). Others were either drafted intentionally, or unintentionally, in some fashion such that either we cannot determine their meaning (e.g. The Second Amendment) or their meaning isn't clear when applied to some entirely new technology (is it an unreasonable search and seizure when a heat sensing infrared camera is pointed at your house with the intent of seeing if you're growing dope inside).

And if you think that Madison wasn't smart enough to understand all of this, you have vastly underestimated one of the true geniuses of American politics and political science. If you want to see just how smart James Madison is, read Federalist Number 10, and when he uses the word "factions," substitute in your mind "ideological group" for that word. It then becomes a telling story of the political paralysis we find our self in today, and explains exactly how he designed the government in such a way that it would be paralyzed and force the public to side, slowly, with one faction or the other eventually.

I think Madison is a great candidate for the smartest man to have lived between the trio of Newton, Shakespeare, and/or Spinoza (who all lived around the same time) and Einstein.

[CuteOldGuy]

There is a plethora of writing describing what the Founders intended. That is a better resource than making it up as we go along. If the Constitution can mean anything we want it to mean, then we have no Constitution.

[TexTushHog]

You address none of the points that I raise and none of the writings that express what one or a few person thought the constitution meant when it was enacted address them either.