Rich Getting Richer?

[Gob]

Cool Wayne County and Detroit are on the rebound...

More images here....

[rubato]

Detroit has been collapsing steadily for > 50 years. It is not an example of anything happening recently. That trajectory was decided long ago by different forces.

Keep up?

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Roob, you are no better an amateur psychologist than you are a human being.

Now if you could respond to my actual question (quoted below for your convenience) rather than stamping your feet and threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue you can talk to me about substance and being on-topic.

So how do you equate being "too busy to "go out" very often for much of anything" with having the shedloads of free time which you associate definitively with affluence?

Alternatively you can just carry on with your little tanty...

It is obvious that affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints.

The most important constraints in human life are those of time because time is the only quantity which is always limited. No matter if you are worth 100 or 10,000 times as much as anyone else you will never live much longer than they will. So that the way you can tell if someone is affluent is whether their time is mostly entailed voluntarily or involuntarily.

Only a stupid person would even attempt to argue the point.



yrs,
rubato

[dales]

Let me argue the point.


No matter if you are worth 100 or 10,000 times as much as anyone else you will never live much longer than they will.


No one knows how much time they have, no one.

A rich man could die tonite, so could a poor one.

But I do get your point, rubato..................at least I believe I do.

One's time on Earth is finite, use it wisely.

[Lord Jim]

Only a stupid person would even attempt to argue the point.

The defining characteristic of affluence is free time.

Only a stupid person would make a statement like that in the first place, but it takes a truly stupefyingly stupid person of stupendous proportions to keep returning to the subject to remind everyone of just how stupid he is....

[rubato]

Let me argue the point.


No matter if you are worth 100 or 10,000 times as much as anyone else you will never live much longer than they will.


No one knows how much time they have, no one.

A rich man could die tonite, so could a poor one.

But I do get your point, rubato..................at least I believe I do.

One's time on Earth is finite, use it wisely.

If money could buy time Bill Gates could live > 20,000 times as long as I will. Just multiplying that by my current age gets 1,120,000 years.

But in fact he can never live much more that 2x my current age (and then with luck). The effect of his wealth is that he can choose how to spend every second of every hour of every day; and direct the use of the seconds of the hours of the days of a lot of other people as well.

If you compared my income to someone making $25,000 year: I can choose to clean house or hire a housekeeper to do it for me, I can choose to take care of the garden or hire someone to do it for me, I can paint my house and fix the woodwork when the termites get to it or pay someone to do it for me. In other words, I have much greater freedom to choose how my time will be spent.

It is difficult to believe any significant number of people would even attempt to contest the fact. But it just goes to show how personal hatred will make people say things which are on the face of it, remarkably inane.

(This is not directed at your response Dales)

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

I know, rube.

I'm actually on your side on this.

[Gob]

DETROIT (WWJ) – The men and women of the Detroit Police Department believe the city is too dangerous to enter, and they want citizens to know it.

Detroit Police Officer Association (DPOA) Attorney Donato Iorio said officers are holding the “Enter At Your Own Risk” rally at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in front of Comerica Park to remind the public that the officers are overworked, understaffed, and at times, fearful for their lives.

“Detroit is America’s most violent city, its homicide rate is the highest in the country and yet the Detroit Police Department is grossly understaffed,” Iorio told WWJ’s Kathryn Larson. “The DPOA believes that there is a war in Detroit, but there should be a war on crime, not a war on its officers.”

[Econoline]

It is obvious that affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints.

The most important constraints in human life are those of time because time is the only quantity which is always limited. No matter if you are worth 100 or 10,000 times as much as anyone else you will never live much longer than they will. So that the way you can tell if someone is affluent is whether their time is mostly entailed voluntarily or involuntarily.

Now, that's a much more accurate and understandable way of stating the point you were trying to make. (If you'll recall, I understood and--sort of--agreed with your point and defended you back in the thread where you first stated it--even though I didn't think it really applied to the story that started that thread.) Thanks, rubato, for coming back and clarifying what you meant.

Only a stupid person would even attempt to argue the point.

But NO thanks for that flaming turd you just had to toss in at the end. Was that really necessary? (You must really crave the contempt with which many here regard you.)

[rubato]

My goal in life is not to make stupid people feel better about themselves or to make stupid arguments appear as positions which a reasonable person might hold.


No one even presented a cogent argument which contradicted the idea that affluence = more free time. It was never about thought or reason for them. And it never will be.


yrs,
rubato

[Sean]

I think you are a very bitter man Rooby.

Have you ever noticed that you are the only member here who seems to derive no pleasure whatsoever from this board?

Have you ever stopped to wonder why that is?

[rubato]

You appear to have lost the thread of the discussion, dear.

Again.

Now if you wanted to dive in and be the very first person to advance a cogent argument showing why affluence does not equal free time?

If you can.

yrs,
rubato

[Sean]

Do me a favour!

Did you think that nobody would notice you changing your statement over time until it became something completely different and almost coherent?

And now you want people to argue against the new statement rather than the idiotic one you were originally called on?

You poor little man. Maybe you should learn to debate on a Justin Bieber forum before you try it with adults...

[Lord Jim]

Now if you wanted to dive in and be the very first person to advance a cogent argument showing why affluence does not equal free time?

The argument has been made quite cogently a number of times, but you are simply too much of an imbecile to grasp it.

There are huge numbers of affluent people who work 80-100 hours a week or more, and have little or no free time...

That may be their choice, but that is a reality. So for them, affluence certainly DOES NOT "equal" free time...

(I would be puzzled at why you can't grasp something so simple and widely known, but you have demonstrated such a remarkable facility for not being able to grasp simple things that are widely known, that I long ago stopped puzzling over it; the fact is you're just a very dim bulb)

Here is what in fact happened:

You made a statement, staggering in it's ignorance for a middle aged supposedly college educated, (or even high school educated) man:

The defining characteristic of affluence is free time.

A statement that demonstrated that you simply did not know the meaning of the word "affluence"

Numerous reputable sources were presented to you, not one of which had "free time" as even "a" "defining characteristic" let alone "the" "defining characteristic" as you had so ignorantly claimed....

And what did you present in response to back up your ignorant claim?

Well, not surprisingly, absolute bupkiss...

Instead, you have made repeated dishonest attempts, (dishonesty, being along with stupidity, ignorance, and nastiness one of the four pillars upon which your whole persona is based.) to ignore what you actually said, (rather than either support it, or stop being a punk and admit you got it wrong, or even just drop it completely) to "re-write" what you actually said in ways that in no way shape or form reflect what you actually said, and then try to claim that this new formulation is what you actually said...

You've done it again in this thread....

Every time you do this, you may rely on me to point out your dishonesty, and remind you again of what you actually said. So once again here is what you actually said, word for word verbatim:

The defining characteristic of affluence is free time.

So rube, are you now at long last prepared to provide one shred of evidence to back up that statement? Or are you at long last prepared to admit it was wrong? Or are you at least prepared to STFU about your fuck up?

Or are you going to continue with your usual sleazebag routine of ignoring what you actually said and pretending that you actually said something else?

(I'm going to predict that he'll go with #4. Yeah, I know that's a pretty easy one, but somebody else took the Psychic Of The Week title last week, and I'm determined to win it back even if it means I have to wrack up some points with some easy wins... )

[Econoline]

The original statement seemed to be deliberately more provocative than sensible (though I think I saw what he was trying to get at before, and I'm not at all surprised that most others didn't)--and I for one am willing to see the most recent statement as a long-overdue clarification of his original statement.

[Joe Guy]

No one even presented a cogent argument which contradicted the idea that affluence = more free time. It was never about thought or reason for them. And it never will be.

Affluence is defined as having "an abundance of money, property, and other material goods; riches; wealth."
(from Dictionary.com)

Affluence is not defined as having an abundance of free time.

To put it simply, the amount of free time one has does not define a person. There are patients in nursing homes, people who don't work and live off of welfare or general assistance, retired people who live off of their Social Security, children up to the age of 18 who go to school and spend the rest of their time playing. There are people in the hospital in a coma. Many people who are physically unable to work or play. People who work 40 hour weeks and spend the rest of their days on the internet and/or drinking and watching tv all at the same time.

The above people have more free time than most people would ever want.

Would you call them affluent?

[Econoline]

That's why I think that saying "affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints" makes much more sense. It's both more general, and more accurate.

eta: And yes, I can see how "freedom from involuntary time constraints" could be called "free time" but I think the former is a much better, more accurate way to put it.

[Lord Jim]

Code: Select all

I for one am willing to see the most recent statement as a long-overdue clarification of his original statement. 

Your generosity is quite overwhelming....

Where do you see where he says he was "clarifying" anything? (and BTW this isn't the first time he's pulled this with that completely erroneous statement he originally made)

What he's doing is trying to substitute what he's saying now for what he said then, and trying to act like that's what he was saying all along....

Though they are two entirely different things....

(Gee, for a fella who doesn't think much of Mitt Romney, he sure seems to be a great admirer of some of his methods...)

[Lord Jim]

"affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints" makes much more sense.

Yes, and it's a completely different statement from the one he originally made:

The defining characteristic of affluence is free time.

And also btw, completely different from another statement he's made in this thread:

affluence = more free time

(Which may be true, but isn't necessarily true, for the reasons I pointed out...)

And even the best of the three completely different statements:

affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints

is seriously flawed, since there are plenty of "involuntary constraints" one is not free from, no matter how affluent one may be..(One is not free from the constraint against murdering one's butler for example, no matter how affluent one may be or how much one might wish to do so)

A better way to put that would be:

"affluence = freedom from many involuntary constraints that others are subjected to"

So what we have from rube are three completely different statements:

One that may frequently be true, but isn't in all circumstances (affluence = more free time)

One that is largely true, but incomplete: (affluence = freedom from involuntary constraints)

And a third, his original statement; which he has never admitted was erroneous:(The defining characteristic of affluence is free time. ) that is absolutely 100% wrong.....

And he tries to claim that all three of these three completely different statements are the same thing, and represent the same position.

[dales]