patrick.net

tatupu70 says

Utterly ridiculous. Please tell me how a company car gets a 1%er into the middle class in income.

A $400k Rolls-Royce, a $2000/mo parking spot / garage, with a $50k/yr driver.

Even more expensive perks could include: a company house, a company vacation house, a company boat, a company plane, company chef and gardener for the company houses, company house cleaning staff for the same houses, one or several company personal assistants / pencil sharpners on the company payroll instead of having the executive paying for them out of his own take-home pay.

The POTUS official salary is $400k/yr. Do you really think anyone else making merely $400k a year can afford a White House with staff, Camp David, 747, and Chinook, not to mention the security staff and armored limo with protective motorcade? "Income" is whatever they say it is for the really rich and powerful.

OK, then how do you explain the extreme wealth disparity in the late 1920s? Or in the late 1800s?

Late 1920's extreme wealth disparity was the result of the FED blowing bubble; a lot of it was bubble paper wealth. Late 1800's extreme wealth disparity had a lot to do with the railroad industry, which to a large extent was once again government subsidized speculation. A major exception ironically was the Rockerfeller fortune, which actually didn't have much government help in its initial formation. The Rockerfellers didn't get involved with manipulating the government until the very end of the 19th century and the 20th century after their rivals, especially the banksters at the time led by Morgan, tried to use the government to checkmate them.

tatupu70 says

Bureaucrats spending someone else' money (whether in government or in big

corporation) tends to buy from established players instead of taking chances

with new upstarts; that spending pattern entrenches existing wealth disparity.

So what? You never mentioned how that affects wealth disparity. Regardless, it's an idiotic idea.

Are you really that dense? What do you think a government purchase program buying tens of thousands of IBM PC's in 1980 would do to the relative market position of IBM vs. Apple? What do you think DoD buying hundreds of thousands of iPad does today would do to the profitability and relative market position of Apple vs. Android competitors?

Bureaucratic purchasers tend to entrench established players in the market place, unlike individuals spending their own money tending to ferret out new and more cost effective alternatives.

Reality says

Are you really that dense? What do you think a government purchase program
buying tens of thousands of IBM PC's in 1980 would do to the relative market
position of IBM vs. Apple? What do you think DoD buying hundreds of thousands of
iPad does today would do to the profitability and relative market position of
Apple vs. Android competitors?

Save the insults. Like I said earlier, I don't care if it's Gates or Jobs that gets the money. It doesn't really make any difference in wealth disparity. Government purchases do very little to change disparity.

tatupu70 says

Save the insults. Like I said earlier, I don't care if it's Gates or Jobs that gets the money. It doesn't really make any difference in wealth disparity. Government purchases do very little to change disparity.

Apple in 1980 was a small startup company, IBM was a big established company. Gates' MSFT would get only $50 out of a $5000-10,000 price tag that the government paid IBM for a PC; no, the government bureaucrats wouldn't buy from Compaq, another startup at the time, either. You are clueless if you think government purchases make no difference. Why do you think there are thousands of lobbyists milling around in DC? and DC income and real estate have seen the largest increase in the country over the past decade or two?

New market entrants with innovative new solutions displacing old established players is how creative destruction of capital works in a free market place. That's how upward mobility is accomplished. That's how entrenched wealthy is displaced. That's how economic productivity is improved. Bureaucratic spending displacing individual free choice get in the way of all of that. That's why socialistic societies always stagnate.