money, IQ, and unintended consequences

On another thread Ruiz said something to the effect that the free market is more efficient than a government run economy and that is true. But what are the unintended consequences of this improved efficiency?

The unintended consequences are that, as the Bible puts it, "The fool and his money are soon parted." When it comes to handling money most of us are fools. An efficient economy makes it easier for the truly smart ones to separate the rest of from our money. It is THIS efficiency which causes the Gini index to grow.

All my life I have been good at taking tests (except math). I scored 98 percentile on the MENSA IQ test and that was my downfall because I have always thought I was smarter than I really was. Since I have gotten older I have become smarter are realized the people at the top of the food chain, the smarts chain, are MUCH smarter than I am.

Lets say that money smarts is sort of like IQ smarts. Through circumstances mostly beyond my control and a little bit of luck, my income puts me in the top 20% of the food chain and our owners, the very smart and very lucky people, want those in the bottom 80% to think that I am rich. But my money guy tells us that we can ONLY spend 10 times minimum wage - say 4 times median wage - if we don't want to out live our assets.

But the rich guys the other thread is talking about can spend 10 THOUSAND times minimum wage. From their heights, their perspective, you and I, all of us together, we are all human trash, a commodity to use up and throw away.

A long time ago before half of you were born there was a saying about the rich people (forget the names used), "Family B only talks to Family A and Family A only talks to God." That is a good non-numerical description of the food chain.

BUT the real problem is the IQ food chain may parallel the money food chain, but neither parallel the morality food chain. Or maybe it does. The very, very saintly (moral, decent, honest) high end of the morality food chain is as sparse as the top of the IQ and money chains.

The point I am trying to make is that economic efficiency works against the 80% of the human race. The same tide doesn't raise all boats. There are two kinds of tides and two kinds of boats.

 

Targus again demonstrates he doesn't know how to read. We received an inheritance from a death in the family.

David - thanks for the correction.

 

>Please point out to me where in the OP anything is said about an inheritance.

It was immaterial to the post.

Please point out to me where in the OP anything is said about my pension being my only source or revenue.

 

Yes, but I seldom take my own advise. <G>