Re: Retirement account and buying car
To add to what rebelx listed above, nobody needs to be worried that by saving in a 401k acct that you're taking money away from circulation which apparently somebody claim harms the poor.
To the contrary, such investment in 401k actually puts the money in circulation since whatever vehicle you invest in, that vehicle (whether bank govt or company) uses that money to run and expand its business thus adding jobs, taxes for welfare and more goods to consume thus making goods more affordable for the poor.
So I could ague that it is by NOT saving that you harm the poor.
Peace Tariq Akhtar
That is very funny indeed! And funnier still is that Rebel X agrees with you.
To what end will people argue to support their stances. Had you put value and actual worth to your words then we could see exactly how you construct can provide money to the poor.
Ummm Let's see ...
If a bank "makes" money from someone's savings and lends it to a company to expand. Does that company get the money interest free? Nope ... So already the benefits are reducing. The company pays its rich people who manage it a lot of money and they are taxed and then it pays for all the material a portion of that is taxed and the other employees and they are taxed a small amount.
So far all these people are not poor ... they are working people. The tax money goes to the tax offices.
Civic buildings, civil servants and the likes councillors, are all paid from this money. A portion of that tax money goes to the poor. The people who coordinate the distribution are all paid from it. Then you get the people who need it from welfare. International benefits? The scope of taxes is mainly internal.
Governments are paid by large organisations such as IMF. On interest. To support their poor!
Cuts are taken by their governments and phew so on ...
Charity organisations ensure money goes to where it needs to go more effectively and there is no decanting process of portions of money being slowly clipped away.
It's easy enough to make your bold claim but it's quite hard to do the maths. I won't attempt it!
Taking money out of circulation is not the crux of the argument. Taking money out of ethical dynamics i.e. spending more to sell more then those who have the biggest buying power will spend more and those who spend more gain more selling power and so on.
Consumerism does not lessen the extents between the rich and poor it exploits it. To argue otherwise is futile.
Only when people say that they have enough and this extra cash could be given rather than spent then we have proper dynamics. That people will not waste wealth by buying too much ... buying too much will cause inflation. Inflation hurts the poor.