[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Hebdomad

The medium income of a country is useless because outliners will distort that figure wildly.

Yes, many methods have their shortcomings. But what if you took a more wholistic approach the the problem? Compare the median income to the mean; are they different? Why? Or consider the Gini Coefficient. Compare levels and growth in Real GDP per capita before and after Purchasing Power Parity - what would that imply? Using various measures and acknowledging their shortcomings means that you get a picture that is more useful than just one single "awesome" measure, or GDP* as a whole. In many respects, the differences between the measures is more important than the measure itself. And when comparing different countries or the same country in different times, then the flaws in the measures are also consistant. Provided that those flaws are not critical to the point, its largely irrelevent.


*The IMF only uses GDP, not even GDP per capita, to base all their conclusions and etc on. This is one core reason why they're shit at their jobs.

I briefly came across some philosopher/economics/person who argued that an economic system should be judged on how it helps the lower stratum of society. That seems the most laudable position.

It is laudable, but its not taking the whole economy into account. Many problems with measurement in the past have been because certain groups have been omitted arbitarily from the classification. Slaves, convicts, the homeless, destitute, ethnic groups, religious groups, military personnel, and so on. Usually, this has caused problems and either unacknowledged misery to continue, or unchecked cronyism to proliferate.

I think focusing on the fate of one specific group (in this case, the poor, which is a bit different to the usual practice but its the general principle that i'm talking about) is a bad thing. You need to see how everyone in an economy interacts with that economy otherwise you'll get systemic problems that you wont detect.

but a good like gold does not promote reinvestment, does not help those worse off than you, and only serve to sustain your social position, realised by your wealth, in relation to others.

Gold does both. Well, it will definately "serve to sustain your social position" during a time of recession or adverse risk, because those who hold gold as a hedge against these things will do better than those who dont. Which comes to my main point; Gold is used as a hedge to shield current capital against future (or current) risk - once that risk is over, the money is then re-invested into whatever makes the highest returns (be it shares, real estate etc). So, that means that a proportion of the after-recession money actually comes from gold to re-start the economy.

So, Gold promotes investment into the future, at least to an extent, though not right now.

It seems an unfortunate human predilection to voraciously seek social esteem and status. In the feudal epoch, bloodline served this person. In this epoch, capital and the goods that capital affords serves this purpose. As I should have articulated by now, I am against this positional (social esteem and status) predilection of humanity, and I am thus against the use of capital for this purpose.

Being against a fundamental aspect of humanity seems pretty futile. Everyone chooses to display their social status or whatever in different ways. Whether it is through bling, a good suit, a nice tie, a flashy car/house/boat, driving to work when you could easily take the bus/train, going on overseas holidays at every opportunity and then telling everyone about your fantastic time when you got home. Some people show their class by how the speak, by what they say, and what they dont say. Some show it by what they do, and what they dont do. Its a fundamental part of human nature that cannot be overridden with an economic system. Much better to celebrate these traits and then generate an economic system that enhances it, and put it to good use. Essentially, that's what capitalism did with greed: even Adam Smith recognised that. Supressing these traits in people is at best draconian-totalitarian, but even then you wont be successful.

Why not be a positive person?