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Originally posted by Capitalizt (and yes TAXES are one of these things).

government is an entity that can do things no private citizens or groups could accomplish. without government, necessary infrastructure could not exist for your free markets to work. taxes are the means for the government to accomplish building infrastructures. Taxes are absolutely vital for the creation of wealth. how well do you think the US economy would work without the highway system, the FAA, police forces, the SEC, and the university systems. Thank taxes for these vital services.

Additionally, the US government is the largest supporter of technological research in the world, which is instrumental in the creation of private wealth (which is accomplished by university research grants, military spending, private grants, etc....). So before you continue knocking the government, you should give credit to the US government for fostering the right environment for the creation of wealth, and providing forward guidance because free markets don't allows move forward.

with that said, i do think the US needs to lower its corporate tax rates from 35% to about 20%. The US has the second highest average corporate tax rate of all developed countries, it sits behind only Japan.

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Originally posted by guerra-monstru Trust me it isn't only in the US or UK.

I know

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Actually it is very possible for Americans to become decimillionaires in their lifetime. But many are just stupid when it comes to creating wealth from their money so many won't ever become decimillionaires. Look if you save money and invest it in the stock market(mutual fund) and you keeop putting money in each month. Chances are when you want to retire you are going to have over a million dollars and the retirement age for Americans is 67 so all you really need to live off for the remainder of your life is 800 000 dollars. But most don't have that sort of money because they don't invest in themselves. Blame American people for not being rich as they could be.

What percent of Americans can become millionaires by the time they retire?

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Of course there is enough capital to do this, but I get the sense that you (and other lefties) simply don't understand where this capital came from.. Capital is not a natural resource. It is not something that automatically renews itself regardless of the circumstances. Bad policies that discourage investment and risk taking will cause that pool of capital to dry up fairly quickly. Socialist legislation such as income and profit caps have an effect on incentives, and when looking at the economy you must take incentives into account. They have a huge effect on employment and everything else. You can't just take existing capital for granted...You must understand where it came from and WHY it exists in the first place.

Capital was perhaps the wrong word, I think I should have said wealth. Capital (I think) tends to refer to money, whereas wealth refers to a number of things (including money)

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I have no idea what you mean by "employment legislation". I don't think we have that in America. Companies hire and fire people as they need to. Obviously no company wants to hire more employees than they need. That would be a waste of money and make the enterprise much more likely to fail. In a free market, a business will always hire enough to get the job done, no more and no less. If they succeed, they can obviously hire more people. A successful businessman will create hundreds or THOUSANDS of new jobs for the unemployed, not because he is compassionate...but because it is IN HIS INTEREST to do so. He is motivated by profit, and this motivation (incentive) is what creates wealth for other people as well as himself. Adam Smith was 100% right with his invisible hand argument.

Employment legislation (and I was being sarcastic when I said they don't have it in America) refers to workers rights. Maybe there are no employment rights in America but you have unions so I find it hard to imagine there aren't some. It's stuff like hours workers are allowed to work, the amount of holidays they are entitled to, working conditions, sick pay, minimum wage, etc, etc. Without these, and other regulations that fend off the harshness of unabated capitalism, then companies would force workers to work longer hours for less pay. What you said about not going back to "workhouse conditions" well if there were no laws or regulations to stop companies doing anything they wanted to, then IMO workers would be find themselves in a similar position to 200 years ago when you worked for 18 hours, had a bit of a kip, then started work 6 hours later (Sunday mornings you get off for church!).

Yet you say this won't happen because there are too many alternatives, well you're arguing for eliminating all government interference in the economy which also includes abolishing anti-trust legislation, so tell me how many small companies would survive when the mega-corporations buy them up or force them out of business? How many jobs exactly does a mega-corporation that controls the market industry actually create? More or less than all the jobs in that industry today? Answer: Far far less. And hence, workers will be so desperate for those jobs those corporations can lower wages and increase hours...

Anyway, I think I've probably gone way off topic and we always end up like this because to you, there are only small businesses and to me, only mega-corporations

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Originally posted by George Smiley I know What percent of Americans can become millionaires by the time they retire?

More than you'd think. It just seems that most of them are horrible savers and investors and prefer to have the latest gadget and a nice car. Have you ever read The Millionaire Next Door?

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Originally posted by Shakka More than you'd think. It just seems that most of them are horrible savers and investors and prefer to have the latest gadget and a nice car. Have you ever read The Millionaire Next Door?

well, as for salaries, the top 90 percentile make more than $125,000 a year. with proper saving the top 10% of americans can easily save $1 million or more in at most 25 - 30 years. The average american, however, makes about $50,000 a year or less. That person will have a very difficult time saving more than $1 million. Especially considering people with lower incomes generally have more children, resulting in less disposible income.

If i had to guess, i would say that about 15% of americans have the ability to rather easily save more than $1 million. Perhaps another 10% could save more than $1 million by living an unamerican lifestyle. the rest of americans are fucked when social security runs dry. I would also guess that the retirement savings of americans generally don't follow any sort of straightline increase as salaries increase. I think that there is very little retirement savings for most people who make less than a certain amount, perhaps around $75K. Then, after that point, retirment savings increases in relation to the income. But i'm just taking a guess.

Last edited by jerZ07002 on May-29-2008 at 22:01

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Originally posted by Shakka More than you'd think. It just seems that most of them are horrible savers and investors and prefer to have the latest gadget and a nice car. Have you ever read The Millionaire Next Door?

Erm no funnily enough!

Can you give me the wage that you'd need to be earning to be able to save $1m by the time you retire? Or tell me how much a person would need to save each month and add their other outgoings on top of that?

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Originally posted by George Smiley Erm no funnily enough! Can you give me the wage that you'd need to be earning to be able to save $1m by the time you retire? Or tell me how much a person would need to save each month and add their other outgoings on top of that?

a person would need to save about $9k a year for 40 years, at an interest rate of 4.5% to earn $1million. not an easy task for most americans. You would need to make about $90,000 - $100,000 a year to do that comfortably if you have no children.

Last edited by jerZ07002 on May-29-2008 at 22:04

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Originally posted by jerZ07002 a person would need to save about $9k a year for 40 years, at an interest rate of 4.5% to earn $1million. not an easy task for most americans. You would need to make about $90,000 - $100,000 a year to do that comfortably if you have no children.

Heh, piece of piss innit?!

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Originally posted by George Smiley What percent of Americans can become millionaires by the time they retire?

Supposely the Americans' could have had 35 millionaire homes rather than the 5 millionaire homes they do. If the people had invested their money in products that would have grown over time like a mutual fund or real estate. But mostly mutual funds will make you a millionaire if you begin to invest early in your career and that will save you a lot of money if you wanted to make the same million as someone had begun earlier.

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Originally posted by George Smiley Can you give me the wage that you'd need to be earning to be able to save $1m by the time you retire? Or tell me how much a person would need to save each month and add their other outgoings on top of that?

All what would need to be put aside is 1080 dollars a year beginning your 29 birthday. Keep putting money into a growth fund and by the time you are 67 you will have a million dollars.

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Originally posted by jerZ07002 a person would need to save about $9k a year for 40 years, at an interest rate of 4.5% to earn $1million. not an easy task for most americans. You would need to make about $90,000 - $100,000 a year to do that comfortably if you have no children.

Not true