🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@iankenway Thats not really very fair, Trump played a huge roll in getting vaccines out in record time. His handling of the virus was actually one aea he did fairly well.

@freakwater It varies a lot based on what it is a leaf of and the condition. 250$ to 1000$ for anything relatively common and several 100 years old. But can easily get into the millions if its something special

An antique I just purchased. It is a page from a handwritten bible from 1480 (yes, 541 years old). It is in latin, with ornate capitals, and amazingly the red is still very vibrant and the gold gilding on the Q very much in tact.

For those interested it is the Book of Hours psalms.

I decided to take some extremely high resolution scans before sealing it in some acrylic and prepare it to be framed. Will put it on my wall tomorrow.

#Religion #Christianity #History #bible #writing #Antique #Calligraphy #Psalm #Psalms

@stux yes

@matrix Oh hell, who even cares at this point.

@matrix just double checked.. yup he announced he is ex-gay apparently... LOL this dude has a knack for creating drama at every level.

@matrix Wait, is he claiming to no longer be homosexual?

@realcaseyrollins They should be taking back the first one :)

@stux If you add a CAPTCHA you will find it significantly reduces spam accounts... We still get spam accounts but thankfully they are very managable since I added that feature.

@ejg

1 and 3a are just linguistically relevant, not technically so.. a sentence using definition 1:

"While looking at the man's collection of rare antique paintings it is clear the man has wealth" (a fancy way of saying your rich, as in wealthy).

The 3a definition is closer to the technical one, usage: "The man was clearly poor owning only the shirt off his back and his collection of copper ingots the wealth of which might only ironically sustain him for a month"

The definition of wealth you are using is a non-technical one, and clearly not helpful since we are well within the weeds now. The only real technical definition for wealth is closer to 3A, namely the value of everything a person owns

The real question is if you understand and are using the correct technically definition. In other words, do you understand the earlier point that stating a money value or net worth is not an accurate way to express wealth, walth is more abstract than that. Your ideas and time, particularly when famous for example has a wealth since people will pay you to talk to you

@FailForward

@ejg

It simply doesnt work that way.. the amount of money they have did not cause people to live below the poverty line. In fact quite the opposite, them having earned as much as they have is a symptom of the fact that there are far fewer people below the poverty line than would have been there if they never earned that money.

If a multibillionair had stopped at a few million when he had himself and all he could want sorted out and just retired rather than going on to be a multibillionair, there would be more poverty, not less.

Not sure how many times I need to repeat this but economics is **not** a zero sum game. No matter how much money one person earns that does not mean that it was at the expense of others, in fact, most of the time it is to the benefit of others.

@FailForward

@ejg

We cant have different definitions of wealth, the term is very well defined for us already. Perhaps you are using an incorrect definition of wealth you coined yourself, I dont know, but I am just using the established definition.

For starters, net worth is not wealth, though they have a relationship.. someone with 100$ in 1910 doesnt have the same wealth as 100$ in 2020, nor does a person with 100$ in NYC in worth have the same wealth as 100$ of someone in alabama. So lets be clear about that since you seem uncertain about how we are using our terms...

Second yes, some people on that list have a lot of money, some have something far greater than a lot of money... so? No matter how much money some people might have doesnt turn into a bad thing, again, how much they have, even when its a lot, doesnt imply you have less as a consequence of it. There is no "problem" there to solve just because someone has a lot of something.

@FailForward

@ejg

> Employing people doesn't necessarily generate wealth for them. The $15/hr they get lets them rent an apartment, own a car and pay for food.

Actually it does, relatively speaking. If those people had no work at all they would be generating negative wealth (destroying wealth). So while keeping them emloyed may generate very little wealth individually, perhaps even 0, it is still significantly more than if they had no job or income.

> That little old lady needs a better financial advisor, and to not put her entire retirement in one company.

Never claimed she had all her money in one company. Even if her portfolio is 1% amazon overall when you consider that money across **all** little old ladies with retirement funds its a huge amount. Also, presumably if the whole fallacy of "someone having a lot of money is bad" were true we would be talking about far more than amazon and bezos.

> Amazon being gone would allow others to grow to fill the void left behind, generating wealth for them.

Certainly true, and then you have brand new multi-billion dollar companies so it solved nothing. But more importantly this statement misses the point.. the point is simple, he isnt just generating wealth for him and his select cohort of friends.. he is generating wealth that old ladies, and minimum wage workers share in as well.

@FailForward

@realcaseyrollins they were beating the crowd with their batons even though they were behind the barriers. At one point you can see a cop pull a person over from the other side of the barrier, drag them into an open space and then beat him, even after he was cuffed.. yoiu hear the crowd chanting in disgust things like "We should do that to you!".. this was all just a few minutes before they surged and broke through the barriers.

@ejg

The wealth he is creating is for all americans, some just less directly than others. If overnight you took everything he owned and destroyed it (not took it from him, but destroyed the thing he created) a lot of people will be out of work and starving, little old ladies wiith reiterment funds will go bankrupt, a lot of people would be effected.

@FailForward

@realcaseyrollins It seemed obvious to me that the capitol police treatment of the people is what led to the riots. Especially if you watch the video of the police's treatment of the crowd prior to them storming them.

@FailForward That is somewhat moot becauSE eventually shared get sold, the longer you held them before selling and the more value the accumulated the more tax you spend when you liquidate. So all profit will eventually be taxed, not to do so means you never have the money to buy anything anyway. Even if you try to pull out dividends on your shares youd get taxed.

@FailForward @jlo

> Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are on the record that they actually SHALL and WANT to pay more taxes

They can donate more taxes then they owe if they want, nothing stopping them. No reason they have any right to speak for all rich people.

Moreover it is telling that the 2 people who are rich and ok with more taxes are the ones who are very old and on the verge of dying, and care a lot about their legacy and how they will be seen on their way out. But it will be the younger generation of rich who will bear this burden, not them.

> even if they wanted to, they cannot just send an invented gift bill to the state.

Of course they can, they can donate whatever they want to the state.. why not?

> Seriously, if somebody owns most of their wealth only on paper, how shall we tax them?

The same way we always have, by taxing a percentage of that wealth when it "moves"... rich eople are already taxed for the money they gained when it was income.

> Personally I think it’s the fault of the mid-level wealthy people (your usual backyard millionaires, which is maybe you, or your neighbour) who are blocking the right laws to be passed because they are afraid that their small nest egg will diminish.

More like we care about fairness and justice. Being taxed the extraordinary rate anyone in the upperclass already is, isnt fair and it isnt solving anything.. what problem is it your even trying to solvE? Most of the answer to this question make it clear that the problems being imagined are in some cases non existent and in others arent a problem where the solution is "we need to make rich people less rich"

In the end people are trying to solve a problem that doesnt exist and in doing so would make things worse IMO

@ejg