'Screw the Market! Socialism to the Rescue' says London's Major

[Last Conformist]

You could use oil revenue improve education and health ...

[Lawrence of Arabia]

you could, but how can you improve education when you have bad teachers, or parents who don't want to bring their kids to school?

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
you could, but how can you improve education when you have bad teachers, or parents who don't want to bring their kids to school?

Give your money to a rich country

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
"the poor" have never benefited from oil. look at saudi arabia, russia, iraq, iran, venezuela, all countries have dictatorships and large quantities of poor because of oil.

Even Norway?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
you could, but how can you improve education when you have bad teachers, or parents who don't want to bring their kids to school?

Higher wages can attract better teachers. Free lunch for pupils has convinced more than a few third-world parents they don't actually need the kids back at the farm. Tends to improve the academic preformance of the kids already there too.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
around 70% of a country's wealth comes from workers salaries, not capital profits. you need to make jobs for the people.

What the hell? How do you come up with this number? There's no way it is anywhere near this.

edit: Are you using the term "wealth" as Adam Smith used it?

[Kidlicious]

Saudi Arabia's problem is too high of a birth rate. If their women become more liberated they could eliminate a lot of problems caused by high birth rate.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by LordShiva


Give your money to a rich country

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Even Norway?

one statistical outlier that has nothing to do with the trend.

Higher wages can attract better teachers. Free lunch for pupils has convinced more than a few third-world parents they don't actually need the kids back at the farm. Tends to improve the academic preformance of the kids already there too.

where are you going to attract better teachers from if no one is educated in the country or if those who are educated don't want to be teachers (the elite)? its a trap - you cannot get teachers because there is no one educated, and no one gets educated because there are no good teachers. plus the incentives to not go to school and to go work to make money for you family way outweigh those of theoretical higher wages in a distant/ uncertain future.

What the hell? How do you come up with this number? There's no way it is anywhere near this.

edit: Are you using the term "wealth" as Adam Smith used it?

"The ratio of labor income has reamined about 0.7 of total income over a long period of time. (This figure is produced from US national income accounts data. Labor income is compensation of employees. Total income is the sum of labor income, corporate profits, net interest, rental income, and depreciation." (N. Gregory Mankiw, 'Macroeconomics', 5th edition, chapter 3, pg 73., quote is sourced US department of Commerce)

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
"The ratio of labor income has reamined about 0.7 of total income over a long period of time. (This figure is produced from US national income accounts data. Labor income is compensation of employees. Total income is the sum of labor income, corporate profits, net interest, rental income, and depreciation." (N. Gregory Mankiw, 'Macroeconomics', 5th edition, chapter 3, pg 73., quote is sourced US department of Commerce)

Ok first that's income, not wealth. Second he's wrong, it's less than 50% unless you don't count depreciation. And if you do it's about 65%. Either way it's decreasing since 1929.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

1. wealth is derived from income. you can only acquire wealth through income
2. and why wouldnt you not count depreciation?
lets see some sources. mine are from an eminent economist and the US dept of commerce and theres a graph here that shows an increase from 1960 to 1969, and no change from 1960 to 2000.

[Kidlicious]

Arrgh! Damn escape button. I lost a post.

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
1. wealth is derived from income. you can only acquire wealth through income

You said that 70% of wealth comes from wages, not that 70% of income goes to wages.

2. and why wouldnt you not count depreciation?

You normally count depreciation when calculating income. Economists do things differently sometimes I know.

edit: Since those recieving profits own the things depreciating I think it's more appropriate to compare wages to depreciation as well, but it's interesting to look at both ways of measuring income. When you measure two different ways wages change quite a bit but profits don't change that much.

[Kidlicious]

Does the graph look like this? This is not including depreciation.

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthw...cro/index.html

[Barnabas]

saudi arabians cant live of oil forever, and then they will have serious roblems with giving water and food to their large population

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
saudi arabians cant live of oil forever, and then they will have serious roblems with giving water and food to their large population

Even worse, they'll have serious problems giving money to London