Reddit reviews GE GTE18GTHWW 17.5 Cu. Ft. White Top Freezer Refrigerator - Energy Star

>Investors are bitching about that, but we should be OK that personal income has been stagnant for a decade.

I didn't say you had to be okay with it, I just tried to set an approximate timeline for the trend you were claiming existed. Besides, "stagnant" to me implies no motion, when the graph clearly shows that real median personal income has been increasing pretty quickly since it bottomed out in 2012 and is on its way to hitting an all-time high. Again, I'm in favor of redistributing gains so that they're Pareto efficient when doing so is practical and beneficial.

> And while I agree with growing the pie, I just don't see how the mighty get mightier and then agree to income redistribution.

I think it's important to design systems of government (and support reforms towards one) so that things like this are less likely to happen (there's a good book that gets into similar subjects called Why Nations Fail), but I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that it's possible to do these things in the US. Consider how different the world might be if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact had been enacted years ago. It's also worth considering that the wealthiest, most densely populated areas of the country tend not to support the party famous for opposing redistribution.

>I use refrigerators as an example of this. You will notice that companies are coming out with $3000 to $5000 refrigerators with computers and LCD screens in them. Why? Because they realize that people making $50k a year can't afford a new refrigerator.

As far as I can tell, none of these things are correct.

• Here's a $619 75 cubic foot fridge with a freezer top; there's 4857913987 vaguely similar freezers to be found at around the same price point if you browse around
  
  
• If people making $50k/year can't afford a new fridge, why are these companies (or you, for that matter) giving up free money by not designing and selling some? I doubt the marginal cost of a new fridge like that is above $1,000, given that there are plenty of new ones available for less than that today.
  
  
• 97.8% of Americans in poverty own a fridge. I'd consider that number to be about 2.2% too low, but it's clear that pretty much everyone has a fridge.
  
  >I don't want people to need safety nets.
  
  By providing safety nets, you give people the freedom to leave dead-end unproductive jobs, retrain, and find useful work. This, in turn, is a good way to prevent them from needing safety nets. Nobody wants people to have to rely on safety nets, but there are plenty of reasons to have them available when people don't have a choice.
  
  The money a company gets to pay its employees doesn't come out of nowhere; it only exists if that company can convince people to give it money in exchange for something those people value more than said money.
  
  If you give everyone money no matter what they're doing, your economy (and your government) will eventually be dedicating so much capital and labor to useless things that it will collapse. You may be able to pay horse-and-buggy drivers, farmers, candlemakers, coal miners, and scribes for a few years, but the outside world is going to (not literally, but you get the idea) invent cars, modern agricultural techniques, light bulbs, other energy sources, and the printing press whether you allow those things into your country or not.
  
  >People using safety nets have no buying power
  
  You can really trivially design e.g. a NIT to give them exactly the buying power you think they should have without ever introducing a poverty trap (a point at which earning more money causes them to lose money because of the loss of benefits).