Ryan Seacrest Makes $15 Million A Year

I think to deny that part of human nature is naive, in fact most realize it...thus all this demand they "need" to pay more.

But what's ironic is since people do want money and things and are selfish, by putting people in charge of taking money and redistributing it....it's bound to get f**ked up. That's why there's so much waste and fraud with these things.

I didn't say cutting the grass was the same as hosting TV so I don't get what that was about.

Society is suffering from a collective delusion brought on by living under capitalism. When your inside of something its hard to see outside. Ask the serfs' -- they bought into and loved feudalism. When the enlightenment came around, it suddenly dawned on people that the assumptions about "human nature" made by the Church and the Barons were incredibly self-referential to the Feudalistic system.

Consider this - the median income of American families is $45,000, while the mean is $60,000. Most Americans families are losing money (the median family, whoever they are, are losing $15,000) from the fact that a few are overpaid. Money just doesn't come from thin air.  Everything Seacrest gets in his private bank account is money that could be in your wallets and paying food and bills for you.

RoyFairbank wrote: Society is suffering from a collective delusion brought on by living under capitalism. When your inside of something its hard to see outside. Ask the serfs' -- they bought into and loved feudalism. When the enlightenment came around, it suddenly dawned on people that the assumptions about "human nature" made by the Church and the Barons were incredibly self-referential to the Feudalistic system. Consider this - the median income of American families is $45,000, while the mean is $60,000. Most Americans families are losing money (the median family, whoever they are, are losing $15,000) from the fact that a few are overpaid. Money just doesn't come from thin air.  Everything Seacrest gets in his private bank account is money that could be in your wallets and paying food and bills for you.

Define "society."  Society isn't suffering.  Relatively speaking, the US is doing far better than literally half the planet.  Also, learn the difference between "you're" and "your."  I am, by the way, well under the average (I make less than $2000 monthly with a soon to be family of five), and guess what?  I love capitalism!

Ryan is in the entertainment business- almost everyone else isn't.  He makes what he makes because he reaches more people than others.  Good for Ryan Seacrest for working hard in the entertainment business and making what he got.  I don't frown because of his success. 

You do.  How sad.

As for families losing money, I know. Wanna hear a real gut puncher? We just fall inside the "upper middle class" bracket.

First, like anything uniform...this is flawed because we live in NJ which is expensive as hell. Both my parents work and we lived paycheck to paycheck for large stretches of time.
The reason is government actually. We're choked with taxes, the price of everything going up (which can be dealt with) subsidies and trade barriers that make things more expensive than they should be.
A lot of the things we pay for via taxes are wasteful (for reasons I stated in the last post) or just not necessary.

Bad historical understanding of the 20th century. The Soviet Economy was actually relatively competitive with the US, despite being based on a ruined 3rd world country and being completely isolated from the world economy.

The whole thing about "what would we do if we took away the profit motive?" is kind of a moot point after 70 years of Soviet economic growth.

You could argue that the problems it experienced were the result of its non-capitalism, or that its problems were the result of its isolation, poor condition going in and the Stalinist coup-de-tat. History bears out the later interpretation. No one who is sane denies the Soviet Union functioned at a high level, however, with a higher standard of living than many large capitalist countries and nearly all third world capitalist countries. On the basis of America and the world, the Soviet System would have inevitably even been more productive, even if you were to say its problems were a product of some intrinsic boogeyman preventing countries from being non-capitalist.

JJLehto wrote:  That's doomed to fail. Why? PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE. Overall, we like money, we want things. It's not f**king capitalism, it's our nature. Trying to deny this is dumb. I think this is false and probably could look up some science to prove that but I'm too lazy tonight. We put people in charge of redistributing money, this is inherently flawed.  This is probably true.

I think this battle between top-down and bottom-up organization is a waste of time because no matter what we want, both processes will happen. We can make policies to try to make both processes work better, and if they are in line with current culture, that can help.

RoyFairbank wrote: Bad historical understanding of the 20th century. The Soviet Economy was actually relatively competitive with the US, despite being based on a ruined 3rd world country and being completely isolated from the world economy. The whole thing about "what would we do if we took away the profit motive?" is kind of a moot point after 70 years of Soviet economic growth. You could argue that the problems it experienced were the result of its non-capitalism, or that its problems were the result of its isolation, poor condition going in and the Stalinist coup-de-tat. History bears out the later interpretation. No one who is sane denies the Soviet Union functioned at a high level, however, with a higher standard of living than many large capitalist countries and nearly all third world capitalist countries. On the basis of America and the world, the Soviet System would have inevitably even been more productive, even if you were to say its problems were a product of some intrinsic boogeyman preventing countries from being non-capitalist.

First, I would say I'm going back farther than the 20th century. Like it or not capitalism has been the greatest thing for "regular" people. This you can't deny, surely?

It's also not capitalism that's the problem...it's corporatism.
Some brief examples: Our banking system: There are laws restricting what they can do. Good right?
Well...Canada had a freer banking system and they have avoided the panics and bank runs that plague or system.

Our healthcare is insanely expensive and puts a drag on regular people, right? Yes, but there are laws that inhibit competition, and we can't buy from other countries. This is why senior sneak into Mexico and Canada, because they can't buy it here.

There are subsidies that make products more expensive than they should be, products we buy.
Programs we pay for, even if well intended, are plagued with issues and may not be necessary.

What about our current crisis? For decades all these successful companies were, well successful. Why did they suddenly become so crazy greedy and irresponsible? Well...the government encouraged them to make more loans even if people couldn't really afford it. Normally this would be risky, but thanks to history they were assured of a bailout, and they got it. You can see how this would lead to stupid ass risk?
In a free market they would be less inclined to be dumb, and if they did it anyway well, there'd be no bailout...funded by people like us.

If you don't wanna accept it that's fine, but what I'm saying is capitalism is not the problem, but government interfering with it...
Notice we never had another "New Deal" Think it could be the only time it was done turned an already bad depression into one that lasted 10+ years?

If you want communism, that's fine but realize we don't really have free markets, so that can't be blamed.





Edited by JJLehto - May 02 2012 at 21:36

Too much for me there to comment on but in line with JJ's last post, I would be a lot less upset about incomes like Seacrest's if they were taxed more.

Edited by Textbook - May 02 2012 at 23:12

The T wrote: Socalism, class warfare, death panels, war on Christmas