Encouraging vegetarians to become butchers

[Boojatta]

They could also be encouraged to invest in meat packing companies.

Start from the assumption that a trade deficit is undesirable and a trade surplus is desirable.

For vegetarians to work as butchers and receive dividends from meat packing companies would tend to move vegetarians into a trade surplus situation and would tend to push non-vegetarians into a trade deficit situation.

Comments?

[applegrove]

1. Thanks for explaint the health savings accounts to me.

[vademocrat]

2. Could they refuse to cut meat like pharmacists refuse

to fill prescriptions?

[applegrove]

3. Think is if vegetable crops failed due to GW, then the vegetarians

would starve - though surrounded by meat.

[acmejack]

4. Like Hindus in India?

Or is that a myth? Better go to Snopes!

[applegrove]

6. Exactly. But if a poor person's stocks fail - not as if the government

will be there to replenish their account. Fact of the matter is you cannot buy multiple stocks with a little bit of money. You have to buy 100. So if you are poor and in a health savings account (like the ananolgy here: vegetarian=poor)you are more vulnerable to poor decisions and have less choice in which stocks you buy. You cannot buy the popular ones. You have to buy the cheaper - riskier ones.

Also too - the vegetarian is working in a meat plant and not eating meat - why the hell should they be funding wars in the middle east to subsidize meat eating?(which is a much higher user of fertilizer that crops).

[LeftyMom]

5. If there were a mass crop failure

Meat eaters would be SOL, since almost all of the animals raised for food in the US are fed on grain crops in confinement operations rather than pasture raised.

[applegrove]

7. I was making the analogy to poor people being in the stock market

when they don't have the finances or the intelligence to buy good stocks. What happens when your health care savings plan goes bust? Because having little money you have to buy much riskier stocks and end up trading in a situation where all the rich have much greater intell than you do?

I think the point is that why would the poor want to be in the much riskier stock market - when they don't have money. And would benefit from shared risk programs and savings accounts - instead of stocks.

That is what this vegetarian/butcher plant thing is about - no?

[LeftyMom]

8. To be perfectly honest,

I have yet to figure out exactly what the OP was getting at. :shrug:

[applegrove]

9. I think it is the new GOP mantra that social security, health care

savings plans, and all forms of risk have to be in the stock market so all the poor people will take their entitlements and put them in the stock market. Then they all have to vote for big oil and other policies.

I think that is what it is about.

[LeftyMom]

10. Ah.

Just what those of us with very little need, less security than we already have and more risk. *sigh*

[applegrove]

12. I think the working poor have more need for less risk - no?

[LeftyMom]

14. Certainly. nt

[Warpy]

28. Thank you

The whole thing was too murky for me to get anwhere near.

[Sammy Pepys]

21. OK..I think I've got it...

...but I would take exception to your example.

when they don't have the finances or the intelligence to buy good stocks.

None of that is a necesary requirement for getting into the stock market. I, and millions of other folks, use mutual funds for stock exposure. I started doing it right out of college for $20 a month. Yes, you need to do your research...but the stock picking is left up to the managers of the fund.

[applegrove]

24. See post #23. Who decides how big the stockbroker would be for

health care saving plan or the social security stock portfolio?

The biggest one wins. The one with the most resources and information & choice wins.

[rainy]

16. What the hell would the animals eat?

ALL nutrition begins with the plant. I could live off fruits and nuts. There are many plants in the wild that you can eat also if you know what they are.

[applegrove]

18. Well - they could eat GM crops.

[Sammy Pepys]

11. huh? n/t

....

[applegrove]

13. Why should poor & working poor people be in the stock market for

health or social security when they dont' have money and would benefit much more from a shared risk strategy like universal health care and shared risk over lives entitlements like the present social security?

That is what I get.

[Sammy Pepys]

19. What do you mean...

"be in the stock market for health or social security..."

Sorry...I'm confused with all the vegetarians/meateaters/trade surplus/trade deficit/stock market stuff!

[applegrove]

20. I thought the analogy could be "why would poor people want to be

in the stock market". vegetarians in meat factories. If a vegetarian was dependant on the salary of the meat packing plant - they might fight for meat (which they don't benefit from).

I thought it worked. I mean the whole "put the poor into the stockmarket" is about getting all americans to be for certain kinds of trade that result in no jobs but do result in profits for corporations. That is how it ties into trade.

[Sammy Pepys]

22. Stock market is not a bad place for anybody to be.....

..and you need to be rich or particularly intelligent to do it. Just buy a mutual fund.

[applegrove]

23. But - in terms of choosing stocks - a smaller broker is at a disadvantage

to a greater one? So the rich elites were out of GM years ago - where an american worker - may not have been. See - in the stock market there are winners and loosers. Why Bush wouldn't put a portion of the SS in the stock market administered by the government - because things like AARP already dominate the market in terms of the huge amounts made in each trade.

A big financial corporation want to dominate. So Bush SS proposal had lots of smaller investment groups. One reason why it was so unfair.

It is a truth that someone with only a few hundred dollars a year would have a hard time buying up some great but expensive stock (just before it splits). Whereas a rich person through there broker would not be limited by that.

Also too the idea that in the short term - a person retires and needs the money if they are the working poor or lower middle class - at the time they need the money. They sell when they need the cash to buy groceries or when they get sick. Whereas a richer person could stay in a bull market and take out a mortgage on their house. What happens if you retire and the stock market plunges? And for those 5 years the market it crap?

I'm not saying to ignore the potential of the market - I'm saying that it isn't in the best interest of someone who will need that exact money in the stocks if they get sick or retire. The people who will clean up will be the brokers and clients who never have to make a choice to sell and can always buy up stocks from these people at a discount (if you sell a rising stock because you need to buy groceries - some rich person will be there to buy). And though they may give your market price on that day - they had the choice not to sell on that day but to buy.

If stock markets are going to grow over the long term as they have - great. Put some of the SS in the market. But you can do it in a shared risk way that will not put the very people who need the "entitlement" at a dis-advantage.

That way - with a huge SS fund in the market - when people need that SS check - stocks could be sold from some company not doing so well while on the whole - the stock portfolio of the retired worker would actually be improved by the sale of that less growth stock. And so would everybody elses. Instead of dis-advantage re: the market - advantage for the worker.

Trust me. Stockmarket types make billions on trading stocks with people who have less information (choice) than they do.

Like the kid who wants all the marbles and cannot quite see why nobody wants to play.

Grow up!

[Sammy Pepys]

25. I think you and I are...

...several miles apart here.

First off, all of your stuff about brokerage and individual stock purchases is not what I'm talking about.

If a person needs money in the short term or is retired, they should have minimal assets in the stock market, whether through inidivdual equities or mutual funds, unless they can absorb some share price fluctuation in either.

For some folks (younger ones, mostly) it might be worth it to have some SS funds put into the market through mutual funds (I'm not a fan of this proposal, but honestly it would make sense). For older folks, it probably would not. That much we agree on, it seems.

But it would not be done through the purchase of individual shares...it would probably be done the way 401(k)s, 403(b), TSp and other retirement benefit programs are...through mutual funds...which in a way do exactly what you're talking about in terms of spreading risk. I bought into my first mutual fund for $20. It held (at the time) around 50-60 different stocks, and had a total assets of nearly $100M dollars.

[applegrove]

26. That is why I am saying Bush SS plan and Medicare Health Savings

funds are wrong for people who are risk averse. I think we agree on that. I am against Bush's plans. Because they make the risk greater for people who are risk averse. Whereas shared risk plans like SS, & some form of shared risk over a lifetime health plan work.

Not that you ignore the stock-market. But that the risk should match the people who the program is directed at - not benefit the people who the program is not directed at. It is political. That is why Bush wants the middle class, working class in more risky ventures. To tie them to the stock market though it is not of benefit to lessening risk.

To me the vegetarian was given some false tie to the meat market - though it was naturally not a fit.

I think we do agree.

I'm not saying 401ks are bad. They are great. Just that it isn't a solution for the increasing majority of Americans who struggle their whole lives. Nor is it a solution to health care. In health care the risk of illness is reduced by regular check-ups. Which people will avoid if they have to pay out - of pocket for.

[zbdent]

15. Not only that, but the vegetarians/vegans could keep a person

from buying meat because of their "conscience", just like the pharmacists who don't want to dispense the "morning-after" pill . . .

[bananas]

17. But vegetarians are already in a trade surplus situation

and carnivores are already in a trade deficit situation.

[IndyOp]

27. This is smart. When the dollars falls relative to the Euro, Yen, and Yuan

- investments in meat will be as solid as investments in gold. :thumbsup:

------------

P.S. I am in over my head when I visit the Economy Forum - so I am pretty proud that I recognized this post was a spoof before reading the other replies! :dunce:

[Boojatta]

29. You would be able to trust a vegetarian butcher who is an employee to not

eat any of the meat.