kind of hilarious to hear a liberal talk about "short-term thinking".

4/19/2011 11:41:52 PM

kind of hilarious to hear a [insert side you disagree with] talk about "short-term thinking".

I can play partisan mad libs too.

4/19/2011 11:43:31 PM

Quote :

"my proposal would be to tax them as regular income and allow the ROR's and interest rates to fix themselves around taxes, as the market should be able to handle automatically."

Although I don't have my finger right on it, I don't see anything wrong with how you're saying this.

Quote :

"But if you buy "collectibles" like art, gold, silver, memorabilia.... and use that as your investment? You get taxed at 28%. Be even more careful if its timber, animals, et then you might get busted for income or some kind of crazy k1 filing..."

F you Uncle Sam. Why don't I just submit you a life summary and let you decide how much money I deserve?

4/20/2011 9:22:12 AM

WE'RE NUMBER 1!!!
http://defendingthepublicgood.org/













[Edited on April 20, 2011 at 8:05 PM. Reason : add]

4/20/2011 8:03:21 PM

^ And if we could only shrink the government, we would dramatically improve our standing on those charts.

4/21/2011 12:30:06 AM

because god knows, if anything, france and sweden are known for small government.

[Edited on April 21, 2011 at 1:37 AM. Reason : ]

4/21/2011 1:36:57 AM

cake, bitches.

let them eat it!

4/21/2011 1:40:27 AM

Nothin alleviates third-world levels of income inequality like shrinking the government and letting capitalism really spread its wings

4/21/2011 9:09:28 AM

They are. If I recall correctly, several of the countries shown have a better economic freedom index rating than us. It is not necessarily the volume of government that matters, but how much damage it manages to do. Well, what government we have is particularly destructive.

For example, many of those overly paid CEOs were just bailed out by our government and justify their lavish pay on their ability to acquire bailouts from said government.

4/21/2011 9:10:58 AM

lol the economic freedom index (copyright the Heritage Foundation)

4/21/2011 9:14:45 AM

Quote :

"It is not necessarily the volume of government that matters"

Quote :

"if we could only shrink the government, we would dramatically improve our standing on those charts"

wait, wat?

4/21/2011 4:48:23 PM

Given our government is particularly damaging, shrinking it will help a lot. Given European governments are not all that damaging, shrinking them would only help a little. It isn't that complex.

4/21/2011 4:51:20 PM

Quote :

"if we could only shrink the government"

It seems that ONLY isn't really the right word then, according to you we need to make our government "less damaging" as according to the information you have provided there is no indication that shrinking the government would reduce the damage.

These are the premises that have supplied thus far
1. Europe has higher ranks
2. We have lower ranks
3. We have a large government
4. They have a larger government
5. They have a less damaging government
6. We have a more damaging government

I don't see any way to logically make a connection between these premises and the claim you make. This is of course because of the claim that you want to make, which is that shrinking the size of government makes it less damaging, which would seem to be at odds with premises 5 and 6.

4/21/2011 6:44:35 PM

I assume large is defined as some level of spending?

4/21/2011 7:45:35 PM

^^ You are quite right. But I see no reason to believe making our government larger as a share of GDP would cause the parts of it that are damaging to shrink. Governments tend to grow by passing more legislation, not by repealing old legislation.

To be more concrete, making our government larger would NOT cause our government to privatize air traffic control, amtrak, public lands, or the post office.

We must blame it on culture or tradition, or maybe an issue of size and distance. European governments just can't help but be competent. If Sweden slashed public spending in half, their government would still be just as competent at whatever it kept doing, it would just do less. Meanwhile, our government just can't help but screw up (much of) whatever it touches.

I think that is why Europeans opt for so much government: their government did more and more, and did it reasonably well, so voters accepted its growth. Meanwhile, Americans hate their government for good reason and vote to keep it smaller.

As I understand it, nearly all state government are far better run than the federal government. Even bankrupt California has better handled its books than the federal government.

4/21/2011 11:15:21 PM

Quote :

"nearly all state government are far better run than the federal government."

Odd considering one has the "glorious" power to print money and the other doesn't. I think we went off the rails when we let the banking sector take over government. Other nations didn't seem to have nearly the effect that we did.

4/22/2011 6:44:03 AM

Quote :

"To be more concrete, making our government larger would NOT cause our government to privatize air traffic control, amtrak, public lands, or the post office."

And you think that if we privatized those we would suddenly have less homelessness, murders, and infant mortality?

Quote :

"If Sweden slashed public spending in half, their government would still be just as competent at whatever it kept doing, it would just do less."

That's not necessarily true, in fact I would say it's more likely that with government spending halved, it would do poorly in all of those charts.

Quote :

"Even bankrupt California has better handled its books than the federal government."

Millions of investors disagree with you, and they're willing to put money on it.

4/22/2011 9:10:37 AM

Maybe not less, but certainly not more. I know of no mechanism for non-police spending to cause murder or homelessness.

4/22/2011 10:10:35 AM

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/people-or-rules/237832/

[Edited on April 26, 2011 at 12:06 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/26/2011 12:06:03 AM

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/hartmann-corporate-ceos-have-secret-they-dont-want-you-know-about

Quote :

""The real reason House Republicans want to keep the typical worker's pay secret is that it may embarrass some companies to reveal that they pay their CEO in the range of 400 times what they pay their typical worker," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who added the requirement to the mammoth financial reform bill last year. Income inequality has been growing rapidly in the United States since the 1970s, and recent academic research has indicated that the growth of executive pay is one of the key reasons. Executive compensation at the nation's largest firms has more than quadrupled in real terms since the 1970s, according to research by Carola Frydman from MIT's Sloan School of Management and Raven Molloy of the Federal Reserve, even as pay for 90 percent of America has stalled. Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2011/06/25/20110625exec-pay0625.html#ixzz1Qc1vkUON "

6/28/2011 6:26:45 PM

Unless you are a share holder, what they are paid is none of your damn business.

6/28/2011 11:17:14 PM

^how about the shareholders get to approve CEO salaries?

6/29/2011 12:58:27 PM

Quote :

"The Senate voted 53-45 in favor of the procedural motion, but Democratic leaders needed 60 to take the bill up. Current tax law allows companies to benefit in a variety of ways when they move jobs overseas, including deducting the costs of closing American plants. The proposed bill would have raised taxes on companies that move manufacturing jobs out of the country and provide a tax incentive for companies that decide to bring them back. Senator Debbie Stabenow, D-MI, said it was an attempt to protect American workers and the bill "sends a simple message: stop shipping our jobs overseas." But Republicans said they worried the bill could hurt the competitiveness of large American companies that still have a lot of American workers even if they do move some manufacturing plants to nations with cheaper labor."

[Edited on July 6, 2011 at 2:46 PM. Reason : http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017896-503544.html]

7/6/2011 2:46:03 PM

i'm just going to assume this is typical pryderi shitstaining and not read anything here

7/6/2011 3:17:43 PM

Quote :

"^how about the shareholders get to approve CEO salaries?"

Shareholders have the right to replace the board, which currently sets the CEO salary, they also have the right to change how the company is run (changing the corporate constitution, as it were), so they could easily put themselves in charge of not only approving CEO salary but setting it directly. So far, I know of no shareholders that have chosen to do so.

Again, if you are not a shareholder, then it is none of your business how the shareholders are choosing CEO salaries, either directly or by electing other people to set it.

7/11/2011 9:27:31 AM

didn't want to make a new thread for this... found this quite surprising and interesting. yes, it is a couple of years old, but still very relevant.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aOsOLE8uiNOg

Vatican Says Islamic Finance May Help Western Banks in Crisis

Quote :

"March 4 (Bloomberg) -- The Vatican said banks should look at the rules of Islamic finance to restore confidence amongst their clients at a time of global economic crisis. “The ethical principles on which Islamic finance is based may bring banks closer to their clients and to the true spirit which should mark every financial service,” the Vatican’s official newspaper Osservatore Romano said in an article in its latest issue late yesterday. Author Loretta Napoleoni and Abaxbank Spa fixed income strategist, Claudia Segre, say in the article that “Western banks could use tools such as the Islamic bonds, known as sukuk, as collateral”. Sukuk may be used to fund the “‘car industry or the next Olympic Games in London,” they say. Pope Benedict XVI in an Oct. 7 speech reflected on crashing financial markets saying that “money vanishes, it is nothing” and concluded that “the only solid reality is the word of God.” The Vatican has been paying attention to the global financial meltdown and ran articles in its official newspaper that criticize the free-market model for having “grown too much and badly in the past two decades.” The Osservatore’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, said that “the great religions have always had a common attention to the human dimension of the economy,” Corriere della Sera reported today."

for those who are interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking

7/27/2011 7:47:39 PM

Nope. such would at best be of no help and would perhaps be detrimental. As the charging of interest is legal, we don't need to construct elaborate fictions to pretend we are not.

7/28/2011 1:23:51 AM

Quote :

"in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue-collar male workers has fallen by 12%."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/01/us-debt-deal-tea-party

8/2/2011 9:29:47 AM

Well of course. After the mancession rendered the male population unemployed, of course their incomes fell. DuH. The only fix for this is to end the recession, but Bush and Obama thought it would be great fun to see if this recession could be as long as the great depression by imposing similar "bold, persistent experimentation" to that of FDR.

[Edited on August 2, 2011 at 9:48 AM. Reason : .,.]

8/2/2011 9:45:43 AM

^^ DOES THAT MEAN I'M IN THE TOP 1%?

8/2/2011 2:50:46 PM

^ https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

8/2/2011 4:47:56 PM

8/3/2011 6:36:06 PM

^^ HAHAHA

8/4/2011 11:20:00 AM

[Edited on August 12, 2011 at 12:24 PM. Reason : ]

8/12/2011 12:22:44 PM

nice redx

8/12/2011 1:02:29 PM

Quote :

"While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors. These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places. Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=buffett%20and%20taxes&st=cse

8/16/2011 1:36:42 PM

Scumbag Buffet: Calls for higher tax rates --> Tries to get out of as many taxes as he can

8/16/2011 1:44:44 PM

exactly. if he wants to pay more taxes, then there's a box he can check on his returns. He just wants to hit other people even harder so they can't challenge his wealth

8/16/2011 4:44:36 PM

when the majority of your income is from investments, you're only going to pay 15% on that money.

8/16/2011 5:26:31 PM

but he can always pay more than he's supposed to. but he won't

8/16/2011 5:34:41 PM

^wouldn't it be more productive to criticize the point instead of the man?

you say Warren Buffet is a hypocritical ass, alright. now address the tax situation in this country. should the wealthiest 1% be required to pay more than they do today?

8/16/2011 5:58:34 PM

Given that they end up paying a lower percentage than the middle class, yes. The question we have to first answer is why are they paying such a low percentage, and that's because we tax income rather than consumption. Tax consumption, and you'd see these ultra-rich individuals paying out a lot more.

[Edited on August 16, 2011 at 6:06 PM. Reason : ]

8/16/2011 6:05:47 PM

I suspect everyone here would agree Buffet should be paying more. Not by increasing tax rates, but by repealing Obama's stimulus, 40% of which was tax deductions for the rich (green energy, hybrid cars, etc)

[Edited on August 16, 2011 at 11:15 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/16/2011 11:12:31 PM

Quote :

"Given that they end up paying a lower percentage than the middle class, yes. The question we have to first answer is why are they paying such a low percentage, and that's because we tax income rather than consumption. Tax consumption, and you'd see these ultra-rich individuals paying out a lot more."

What? The lower class puts almost 100% of their income into consumption. The ultra rich mostly invest and save it. Are you fucking stupid or insane or both?

8/17/2011 11:59:13 AM

Quote :

"exactly. if he wants to pay more taxes, then there's a box he can check on his returns. He just wants to hit other people even harder so they can't challenge his wealth"

He doesn't just "want to pay more taxes". He thinks people in his class pay too little in taxes and it's bad for the country. If he just paid extra taxes himself, he'd drain his pockets, not make so much as a dent in the debt, and end up accomplishing absolutely nothing as Washington continues to tax the rich less than he believes they should. It'd be the most pointless gesture in history.

8/17/2011 12:00:53 PM

Quote :

"What? The lower class puts almost 100% of their income into consumption. The ultra rich mostly invest and save it. Are you fucking stupid or insane or both?"

Yes, the lower class puts almost 100% into consumption...of food and energy. Just happens to be the areas hit hardest by inflation...but I thought inflationary monetary policy was great for the people?

Are you not familiar with a VAT? You can tax different classes of goods at different rates. The point is that taxes should be collected when money is actually spent, not before it is spent. That will encourage saving, something we desperately need in this country.

8/17/2011 12:07:23 PM

We're in a demand shock right now, that's what's causing the ongoing lag in the recovery. More saving is the exact fucking opposite of what we need right now. Could you be more clueless?

8/17/2011 12:08:24 PM

You dumbass. You have no idea what's wrong with the economy. We just need more spending, right? We should take Krugman's advice and stage a fake alien invasion to ramp up production and provide "stimulus":

Quote :

"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat, and really, inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months,” he mused. “And then if we discovered, ‘Whoops! We made a mistake. There aren’t actually any space aliens ...’ ” the spending would leave us better off."

This is the lunacy that has become commonplace in mainstream economics. May God have mercy on our souls.

8/17/2011 12:15:38 PM

Quote :

"You dumbass. You have no idea what's wrong with the economy. We just need more spending, right? "

Yes, more spending would get us out of this mess quite quickly. 0% taxes for the rich wont create jobs unless there is demand. Fun fact: The private sector doesn't give a fuck where spending comes from, whether it's from wages or from government spending doesn't matter at all to their bottom line. We have low unemployment because there is no demand, which is because people don't have jobs and their wages haven't moved in over 30 years. Unemployed, underpaid people aren't going to create demand.

Do you seriously dispute that our problem right now is NOT a lack of demand?



And please, a musing about a hypothetical situation in a blog is not "mainstream economic discussion". Funny, it's also strangely reminiscent of a speech a certain president made to the fucking U.N. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA

8/17/2011 12:22:49 PM

Quote :

"Yes, more spending would get us out of this mess quite quickly. 0% taxes for the rich wont create jobs unless there is demand. Fun fact: The private sector doesn't give a fuck where spending comes from, whether it's from wages or from government spending doesn't matter at all to their bottom line. We have low unemployment because there is no demand, which is because people don't have jobs and their wages haven't moved in over 30 years. Unemployed, underpaid people aren't going to create demand. "

Where would the spending come from? More debt? More inflation? Think about what you're saying. You're looking at the symptom of the disease (people aren't spending as much as they would be in a healthy, growing economy), saying that if we just stimulate spending, regardless of the cost, we will get a healthy, growing economy again. That is insane, and it ignores that the borrowed money has to be paid back with interest.

It's the equivalent of having a diseased lawn, ripping up blades of grass from the neighbor's lawn, sticking those blades directly into the ground, then standing back and wondering why the lawn isn't getting healthy again. The demand needs to be generated by the market, not by a central planner. The government doesn't know how to allocate resources, only the market (read: people) does. Until we allow interest rates to rise and allow resources to be reallocated, I guarantee that we will not experience growth.

Quote :

"And please, a musing about a hypothetical situation in a blog is not "mainstream economic discussion". Funny, it's also strangely reminiscent of a speech a certain president made to the fucking U.N. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA"

Reagan was a Keynesian.

[Edited on August 17, 2011 at 12:34 PM. Reason : ]

8/17/2011 12:33:36 PM