It's about your grandparents and great grandparents, because they were the ones who put you into this cabal by voting the way that promoted their personal interests but completely neglected the eventual outcome. Now you are standing there, 17 Trillion USD were already paid out more in SS benefits than were collected in taxes, but the bonds are there and the taxes must be raised to pay for them! Well, maybe you think the Fed will save you by monetizing all that debt, after all this is the prevailing Keynesian policy that everybody seems to love so much. Of-course that's the same policy that is one of the larger reasons out there for the gambling in the market, which leads to inflating all sorts of bubbles instead of promoting actual savings and investments and businesses.
What investments in production capacity? The U.S. hasn't done that in any significant way for as long as I've been alive. It just outsources the labor to some other country where the cost of labor is cheaper.
- the U.S. has nothing to do with it. It's always done by private interest - individuals looking for a buck. In your lifetime (unless you were born prior to 1965), the conditions have been deteriorating, as U.S. was burning through the wealth created even before 1913, and obviously the monopoly wealth created between 1947 and 1965. The reasons for it are numerous, but the result of all those reasons was the same: increase labor costs, increase taxes, increase business costs by increasing regulations, protect monopolies, destroy competition, subsidize monopolies, destroy money by inflation, all of these are done by government.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great for the U.S. to invest in production capacity. I'm just not convinced that leaving the money in the hands of the same rich people who have repeatedly failed to invest in that capacity will miraculously cause that to happen. The extremely wealthy do not create jobs. The people who create jobs are the middle class workers who start small businesses.
- the rich have 'repeatedly failed' to invest?
The reason that USA has ANYTHING is because people were investing, and yes, majority of those who really invest are rich or became rich while working on their ideas (like Wozniak and Jobs, since those are the preferred examples of today).
Every single dollar that the rich are not spending on themselves is used as an investment. As I said previously: how exactly it's invested is a different topic, but the reasons that the investments are not done into USA's production capacity are again: government and everything it does.
I don't know how it happened that so many people are brainwashed not to understand this, but everything that government does is detrimental to investments because it's all about spending on things government wants to spend on, it's not about building anything that the market wants and needs. It's about taking investment capital out of private investments and putting into hands of people, who just want to spend it based on their political needs, but those have nothing to do with improving the economy.
Even when government supposedly wants to help the economy somehow, it's always failing miserably in every way possible. From the introduction of the Federal reserve and income taxes and to the new deal and SS and Medicare and every war and every department, be it energy or education or housing, whatever it touches, if money is involved, it's going to destroy it.
If you want production capacity, take the money from the rich and give it to the middle class.
- in absence of government preventing the economy from working that's EXACTLY what the market does!
But you cannot take away money from rich and give it to the middle class indiscriminately, it has to be done based on a good idea that market would want to see implemented, that's why the only real way to do so is not with government at all, but as loans - investments into capital.
There HAS to be cost associated with borrowing money, and government destroyed that cost as well now, with 0% interest, which obviously prevents anybody from being able to borrow anything (except government), who is going to lend you money at 0%? Only government.
Government is the force that destroys investment opportunities and you are blind to it to such a great extent, that your great idea is to take more money out of the private sector and give it to the government?
Government doesn't have the liquidity problem, it prints and borrows all it wants (especially since it was able to push interest rates down to 2% even on the long yielding curve). It's NOT the liquidity that is lacking, it never was, not when government is involved that can print.
What do you mean "GE doesn't know"? If it doesn't know, it better have good insurance, because that's what property and liberty rights are for and that's what gov't is for.
Where did I say you have to have money to sue? I said that it's gov't responsibility to protect liberties, property rights, enforce criminal and contract law and border protection.
What this means is that if you repeatedly cut the top 1% down to the mean and distribute it among everyone else, it doesn't take long before you have dramatically increased the overall standard of living.
- if you repeatedly cut the top 1% down to the mean and distribute it among everyone else, what you'll have is consumer spending that is financed not with credit but with money that otherwise would continue being used in investments (whether you like the investments that these are use for or not is a different topic), but you won't have the bottom population any wealthier for it.
They'll be able to buy more stuff with less credit, but they won't be better off at the end, specifically because the investments into actual production capacity would have been cut dramatically.
By taking other people's investment money and 'sharing' it among everybody, you just end up with somewhat more stuff you bought in the short term, and nothing to buy in the long term, because you just destroyed the investment capital.
The bigger problem I have with your post is the assumption that the rich have predominantly earned their money.
- this is completely irrelevant! Yes, some have taken it from governments, because governments were handing out the cash to those, who knew how to take it.
This problem needs to be stopped at the source, because it can't be solved at the receiving end, there is always somebody else in line for government money.
But the question of whether somebody earned the money or not is absolutely irrelevant, the only relevant question is: what is the government doing to prevent people from investing locally and instead they either gamble or invest abroad.
Very few people actually want to gamble with their money, majority just want some security and a revenue stream, and this means their money is used to fund some investment strategy, some form of business.
Real economic activity is not in buying stuff - this is just a trivial consequence of production. Real economic activity is in producing stuff, and the only real production that market needs takes place when somebody has their own money on the line - skin in the game, no riskless gambling that gov't has been forcing people to engage into since 1971.
I suggest mounting them on White House, Senate, Congress and Supreme Court officials as well as Federal reserve and all other department members, connect them to youtube and have some payback.
The only correct solution is to reform the tax code.
The reform must happen in tandem with spending reform, because the only income, payroll, corporate and sales taxes that gov't should be able to collect is 0.
Let them do what is absolutely necessary and survive on excise/import/vice taxes.
Why is it unfortunate that companies avoid paying some taxes? It's very fortunate.
What is US gov't doing anyway, that you support so much? Which wars do you like? Is it the Afghan war? Iraq? War on drugs maybe? Maybe it's war on poverty?
How about war on education? War on energy independence? War on your liberties?
How about reforming the tax code, not the 9 9 9 Hermain, I can't count, Cain (which in reality is 18 9 9, if somebody bothered to look at the actual statement and realize that companies wouldn't be able to deduct salaries from their revenue), but really reforming it, as in 0 0 0.
0 Income tax, 0 corporate tax, 0 sales tax.
Also 0 payroll tax.
That's all that government should get.
To achieve this, of-course gov't spending would have to be cut, something like 99.99% cut. Now they can actually charge excise and import and vice taxes and do what is actually Constitutional instead of doing everything else.
A business within free market competes with other businesses for the customers based on product quality/price.
A business within a non-free market can obviously compete with other businesses based on buying politicians, this is absolutely normal and to be expected (and I would do exactly that, presented an opportunity).
As I always contend - there is only one thing that is reliable, it's human greed. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Human greed can be a positive, constructive thing, when it's bound by the free market limitations of what competition is.
Human greed can be totally devastating, if it is allowed to get various powers that have nothing to do with free market, but instead are types of powers that governments have over individuals. That's why we want free market - market free of government intervention, so that the greed would be used for constructive, productive, wealth creating things and not for destructive, anti-competitive, power-buying activities that lead to market distortion and economy destruction.
I love the fact that people greedy - they build things for me and they want me to buy those things and they compete with each other based on quality and price.
I hate politicians and I hate all governments. Governments in my eyes are ALWAYS wrong. There is NO good that comes from government. Nothing good comes from government. Anything and everything that governments do is always bad.
That's because they also are full of people who are greedy, but individuals are captive audience, not customers but are prisoners of that system and they don't have to provide me with anything I would want to buy at prices I would be willing to pay.
that's what property rights are about. With gov't out of business, there is no public property, everything is privately owned, and gov't is for protecting personal liberties and freedoms, property rights and border security. That's an expense item that does make sense.
So when a company owns part of the lake, other people own parts of it and properties adjacent to it. If they pollute it, that's what the court system is supposed to be for - protecting the right of individuals to their property, and gov't power can be used in a class action suit.
Given that disasters, like BP, happen because gov't gives limited liability protection, caps their liability for drilling at 70million, while it is clear that actual damages will be thousands if not millions of times that, a company would have to acquire proper insurance if it doesn't want to be destroyed, and limited personal liability for top management wouldn't exist with gov't out of business either. So this would give a pretty good incentive to think about such actions before doing them, because this wouldn't be an offense happening in a fit of passion or rage, this would be a calculated move by an entity, trying to make money on their product. So it's always premeditated.
Gov't giving limited personal liability protection, capping monetary liability and having this 'public ownership', so denying actual property rights, all of this actually provides fertile soil to all of these environmental abuses.
Both are scary, because it's not the technology you should be afraid of but the power using that technology. So if you are tagged as something (Jew/Communist/Terrorist/rich), if you are tagged correctly, depending what side of history you are on, you can be then targeted for whatever purpose.
Tagging is worthless by itself, it's the targeting application that gives it value.
As I said - free market is only free when it is free of government intervention. Once it is no longer free of government intervention, it is automatically no longer a free market, it is a distorted market, which sends out the wrong signals, which are not to compete based on user expectations and product quality/price, etc., but to use the distorting power that can be bought (and if a politician has power, then he is for sale, unless he is an ideological politician, which is probably one in 100,000).
It's not a matter of semantics, it IS the definition, that a free market is only free of government intervention. It's not free of anything else.
What do you THINK the word 'free' means in this context? Ponies?
Free market capitalist is not given any opportunities to run government or to buy government but also he is by definition not ruled by government.
Free market is by definition free of government intervention.
Once there is government intervention, then BY DEFINITION there is NO free market capitalism anymore. So at any moment that government starts regulating businesses, they stop being free market oriented businesses, their obvious response is to compete not by creating a better product at a lower price, but instead by compete by buying power.
Government shouldn't be allowed in business, saying that it is ran by 'free market capitalist' is obviously skewing the reality, which is that government is ran by those, who do not want free market capitalism (for themselves at least), they want to create and maintain a monopoly for themselves, captivating the audience (not customers - prisoners of the system), and when they get in trouble because they are not challenged by any competition in any way, they expect a government bail out.
"At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day," John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.
"Just think how much meat that is. That's a hell of a lot of cheeseburgers... it's a whole lot of duck-billed dinosaurs they needed to be chowing down on."
Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs were common plant-eaters that lived alongside T. rex, making them an obvious meal for the giant meat-eaters.
if you are anything like a duck-billed dinosaur, you should watch out.
Efficiency is a matter of survival for companies that compete with each other and it's a matter of prices going down, not up, but you are right, governments are not about efficiencies.
But this the exact reason why governments shouldn't be allowed to touch money unless it is strictly for the purposes that are authorized and the money shouldn't be coming out of income taxes, it should be completely proportionate to spending that people do, not to suppress and oppress people's ability to invest and reinvest, which is what actually grows the economy.
If? So some spending does not need to be funded? Republican.
- all government spending must be funded. My point is that 99.99% of what gov't is actually doing it shouldn't be doing, so none of that should be funded. Whatever you imagined there in your head when you said 'Republican' - I am not a member of any party.
You are all for massive hikes in sales taxes
- gov't spending was funded just fine prior to introduction of the income taxes (they used to be 0, did they teach you that?) with alcohol sales taxes and excise taxes.
As to 'massive' - that's your interpretation of what I said, that's not what I said.
99.99% of gov't spending should be CUT first, then the remaining 0.01% needs to be funded with excise/import/sales taxes.
All income taxes must be abolished OBVIOUSLY, what is not clear? And again - I am not a member of any party.
Just admit it - you want an oligarchy that lives off the backs of the poor - but only after draining the middle class of any vestiges of wealth they themselves have.
- whatever that means.
I am against all government regulations, all gov't subsidies, all income taxes, all payroll taxes, all corporate taxes.
Gov't is a SPENDING item, it must be funded PROPORTIONATELY to SPENDING that is done, not to income, which is absolutely none of gov'ts business.
But your interpretation is about some idea that it's done 'off the backs of the poor'. Except that in the actual free market capitalist economies, that USA used to be prior to the Fed's and income tax introduction, and what China has today, the poor were becoming not quite so poor.
Working to make enough money to feed yourself, to buy nice stuff that all those rich bastards create in their businesses, when they could be chilling on some beach instead. Yeah, quite a terrible consequence of competition and capitalism. Totally worse than what people USED to be doing - subsistence farming and hunting/gathering. It's awful, all this stuff that the capitalism has created: from washing machines to automobiles and airplanes and personal computers and cellphones. Just awful.
Those fucking rich bastards, how dare they not just take their money and retire, but they just keep working and investing and building products and actually providing people with salaries and gov't with taxes. Parasites.
Strict protection of individual liberties and private property and contract law is the only way to prevent pushing the external costs out, from socializing any of the risk while privatizing the profits.
Once gov't has the power to regulate, it is bought. There is no way around it. Any politician who enters the gov't machine, that has the power to regulate business immediately becomes the proxy for any money interests that can buy him and that's going to be that way forever until all of your politicians are actual robots.
Competition was flourishing in USA before gov't introduced all sorts of regulations. Realize that it was gov't that killed 4000 phone start ups when they gave monopoly power to AT&T early last century.
It is only possible to have real competition when gov't does not prevent that from happening.
Slashdot Mirror
I left a comment that explains what the problem is, there is a link to the list of the demands there and my take on these demands.
let's put it this way - it's good for a 4-5 year old but simply embarrassing for somebody who has a college debt to come up with a list like that.
The reason that Glass Steagal was there in the first place was to offset another horrible mis-allocation and moral hazard created by the government - FDIC.Congressional hearing on soundness of money, scroll to minute 50 and watch 5 minutes.
It's about your grandparents and great grandparents, because they were the ones who put you into this cabal by voting the way that promoted their personal interests but completely neglected the eventual outcome. Now you are standing there, 17 Trillion USD were already paid out more in SS benefits than were collected in taxes, but the bonds are there and the taxes must be raised to pay for them! Well, maybe you think the Fed will save you by monetizing all that debt, after all this is the prevailing Keynesian policy that everybody seems to love so much. Of-course that's the same policy that is one of the larger reasons out there for the gambling in the market, which leads to inflating all sorts of bubbles instead of promoting actual savings and investments and businesses.
But don't worry, the white knight in the shining armor will come out with another brilliant 3d chess type strategy to save the day.
Obviously all of this is possible because have short memories and they don't even bother to learn about their own history even if it only happened 50 years ago, that the markets serve people's interests better than governments do (bonus points for government data used in the presentation.)
And now, the people are occupying Wall Street with demands that give the Communist Manifesto itself run for its money, even though we know just how wrong Marx was.
But I guess these are the same people who sincerely do not have an answer to a simple question, what is economy - consumption or production?
---
Main problem identified? Ignorance.
Solutions? Vote for people who actually know their shit even if you believe it goes against your own personal short term gain for once.
says something named 'Mindless'.
What investments in production capacity? The U.S. hasn't done that in any significant way for as long as I've been alive. It just outsources the labor to some other country where the cost of labor is cheaper.
- the U.S. has nothing to do with it. It's always done by private interest - individuals looking for a buck. In your lifetime (unless you were born prior to 1965), the conditions have been deteriorating, as U.S. was burning through the wealth created even before 1913, and obviously the monopoly wealth created between 1947 and 1965. The reasons for it are numerous, but the result of all those reasons was the same: increase labor costs, increase taxes, increase business costs by increasing regulations, protect monopolies, destroy competition, subsidize monopolies, destroy money by inflation, all of these are done by government.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great for the U.S. to invest in production capacity. I'm just not convinced that leaving the money in the hands of the same rich people who have repeatedly failed to invest in that capacity will miraculously cause that to happen. The extremely wealthy do not create jobs. The people who create jobs are the middle class workers who start small businesses.
- the rich have 'repeatedly failed' to invest?
The reason that USA has ANYTHING is because people were investing, and yes, majority of those who really invest are rich or became rich while working on their ideas (like Wozniak and Jobs, since those are the preferred examples of today).
Every single dollar that the rich are not spending on themselves is used as an investment. As I said previously: how exactly it's invested is a different topic, but the reasons that the investments are not done into USA's production capacity are again: government and everything it does.
I don't know how it happened that so many people are brainwashed not to understand this, but everything that government does is detrimental to investments because it's all about spending on things government wants to spend on, it's not about building anything that the market wants and needs. It's about taking investment capital out of private investments and putting into hands of people, who just want to spend it based on their political needs, but those have nothing to do with improving the economy.
Even when government supposedly wants to help the economy somehow, it's always failing miserably in every way possible. From the introduction of the Federal reserve and income taxes and to the new deal and SS and Medicare and every war and every department, be it energy or education or housing, whatever it touches, if money is involved, it's going to destroy it.
If you want production capacity, take the money from the rich and give it to the middle class.
- in absence of government preventing the economy from working that's EXACTLY what the market does!
But you cannot take away money from rich and give it to the middle class indiscriminately, it has to be done based on a good idea that market would want to see implemented, that's why the only real way to do so is not with government at all, but as loans - investments into capital.
There HAS to be cost associated with borrowing money, and government destroyed that cost as well now, with 0% interest, which obviously prevents anybody from being able to borrow anything (except government), who is going to lend you money at 0%? Only government.
Government is the force that destroys investment opportunities and you are blind to it to such a great extent, that your great idea is to take more money out of the private sector and give it to the government?
Government doesn't have the liquidity problem, it prints and borrows all it wants (especially since it was able to push interest rates down to 2% even on the long yielding curve). It's NOT the liquidity that is lacking, it never was, not when government is involved that can print.
What do you mean "GE doesn't know"? If it doesn't know, it better have good insurance, because that's what property and liberty rights are for and that's what gov't is for.
Where did I say you have to have money to sue? I said that it's gov't responsibility to protect liberties, property rights, enforce criminal and contract law and border protection.
What this means is that if you repeatedly cut the top 1% down to the mean and distribute it among everyone else, it doesn't take long before you have dramatically increased the overall standard of living.
- if you repeatedly cut the top 1% down to the mean and distribute it among everyone else, what you'll have is consumer spending that is financed not with credit but with money that otherwise would continue being used in investments (whether you like the investments that these are use for or not is a different topic), but you won't have the bottom population any wealthier for it.
They'll be able to buy more stuff with less credit, but they won't be better off at the end, specifically because the investments into actual production capacity would have been cut dramatically.
By taking other people's investment money and 'sharing' it among everybody, you just end up with somewhat more stuff you bought in the short term, and nothing to buy in the long term, because you just destroyed the investment capital.
The bigger problem I have with your post is the assumption that the rich have predominantly earned their money.
- this is completely irrelevant! Yes, some have taken it from governments, because governments were handing out the cash to those, who knew how to take it.
This problem needs to be stopped at the source, because it can't be solved at the receiving end, there is always somebody else in line for government money.
But the question of whether somebody earned the money or not is absolutely irrelevant, the only relevant question is: what is the government doing to prevent people from investing locally and instead they either gamble or invest abroad.
Very few people actually want to gamble with their money, majority just want some security and a revenue stream, and this means their money is used to fund some investment strategy, some form of business.
Real economic activity is not in buying stuff - this is just a trivial consequence of production. Real economic activity is in producing stuff, and the only real production that market needs takes place when somebody has their own money on the line - skin in the game, no riskless gambling that gov't has been forcing people to engage into since 1971.
And Keynesian 'economics' - FTFY.
I suggest mounting them on White House, Senate, Congress and Supreme Court officials as well as Federal reserve and all other department members, connect them to youtube and have some payback.
Correct.
The only correct solution is to reform the tax code.
The reform must happen in tandem with spending reform, because the only income, payroll, corporate and sales taxes that gov't should be able to collect is 0.
Let them do what is absolutely necessary and survive on excise/import/vice taxes.
Why is it unfortunate that companies avoid paying some taxes? It's very fortunate.
What is US gov't doing anyway, that you support so much? Which wars do you like? Is it the Afghan war? Iraq? War on drugs maybe? Maybe it's war on poverty?
How about war on education? War on energy independence? War on your liberties?
How about reforming the tax code, not the 9 9 9 Hermain, I can't count, Cain (which in reality is 18 9 9, if somebody bothered to look at the actual statement and realize that companies wouldn't be able to deduct salaries from their revenue), but really reforming it, as in 0 0 0.
0 Income tax, 0 corporate tax, 0 sales tax.
Also 0 payroll tax.
That's all that government should get.
To achieve this, of-course gov't spending would have to be cut, something like 99.99% cut. Now they can actually charge excise and import and vice taxes and do what is actually Constitutional instead of doing everything else.
A business within free market competes with other businesses for the customers based on product quality/price.
A business within a non-free market can obviously compete with other businesses based on buying politicians, this is absolutely normal and to be expected (and I would do exactly that, presented an opportunity).
As I always contend - there is only one thing that is reliable, it's human greed. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Human greed can be a positive, constructive thing, when it's bound by the free market limitations of what competition is.
Human greed can be totally devastating, if it is allowed to get various powers that have nothing to do with free market, but instead are types of powers that governments have over individuals. That's why we want free market - market free of government intervention, so that the greed would be used for constructive, productive, wealth creating things and not for destructive, anti-competitive, power-buying activities that lead to market distortion and economy destruction.
I love the fact that people greedy - they build things for me and they want me to buy those things and they compete with each other based on quality and price.
I hate politicians and I hate all governments. Governments in my eyes are ALWAYS wrong. There is NO good that comes from government. Nothing good comes from government. Anything and everything that governments do is always bad.
That's because they also are full of people who are greedy, but individuals are captive audience, not customers but are prisoners of that system and they don't have to provide me with anything I would want to buy at prices I would be willing to pay.
Capice?
that's what property rights are about. With gov't out of business, there is no public property, everything is privately owned, and gov't is for protecting personal liberties and freedoms, property rights and border security. That's an expense item that does make sense.
So when a company owns part of the lake, other people own parts of it and properties adjacent to it. If they pollute it, that's what the court system is supposed to be for - protecting the right of individuals to their property, and gov't power can be used in a class action suit.
Given that disasters, like BP, happen because gov't gives limited liability protection, caps their liability for drilling at 70million, while it is clear that actual damages will be thousands if not millions of times that, a company would have to acquire proper insurance if it doesn't want to be destroyed, and limited personal liability for top management wouldn't exist with gov't out of business either. So this would give a pretty good incentive to think about such actions before doing them, because this wouldn't be an offense happening in a fit of passion or rage, this would be a calculated move by an entity, trying to make money on their product. So it's always premeditated.
Gov't giving limited personal liability protection, capping monetary liability and having this 'public ownership', so denying actual property rights, all of this actually provides fertile soil to all of these environmental abuses.
Both are scary, because it's not the technology you should be afraid of but the power using that technology. So if you are tagged as something (Jew/Communist/Terrorist/rich), if you are tagged correctly, depending what side of history you are on, you can be then targeted for whatever purpose.
Tagging is worthless by itself, it's the targeting application that gives it value.
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
As I said - free market is only free when it is free of government intervention. Once it is no longer free of government intervention, it is automatically no longer a free market, it is a distorted market, which sends out the wrong signals, which are not to compete based on user expectations and product quality/price, etc., but to use the distorting power that can be bought (and if a politician has power, then he is for sale, unless he is an ideological politician, which is probably one in 100,000).
It's not a matter of semantics, it IS the definition, that a free market is only free of government intervention. It's not free of anything else.
What do you THINK the word 'free' means in this context? Ponies?
Free market capitalist is not given any opportunities to run government or to buy government but also he is by definition not ruled by government.
Free market is by definition free of government intervention.
Once there is government intervention, then BY DEFINITION there is NO free market capitalism anymore. So at any moment that government starts regulating businesses, they stop being free market oriented businesses, their obvious response is to compete not by creating a better product at a lower price, but instead by compete by buying power.
Government shouldn't be allowed in business, saying that it is ran by 'free market capitalist' is obviously skewing the reality, which is that government is ran by those, who do not want free market capitalism (for themselves at least), they want to create and maintain a monopoly for themselves, captivating the audience (not customers - prisoners of the system), and when they get in trouble because they are not challenged by any competition in any way, they expect a government bail out.
it's just a piece of plastic! How bad can that be?
All of these patent laws and copyright laws - all they do is promote innovation and competition, don't they?
Seriously. At least put that into this body.
"At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day," John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.
"Just think how much meat that is. That's a hell of a lot of cheeseburgers ... it's a whole lot of duck-billed dinosaurs they needed to be chowing down on."
Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs were common plant-eaters that lived alongside T. rex, making them an obvious meal for the giant meat-eaters.
if you are anything like a duck-billed dinosaur, you should watch out.
Efficiency is a matter of survival for companies that compete with each other and it's a matter of prices going down, not up, but you are right, governments are not about efficiencies.
But this the exact reason why governments shouldn't be allowed to touch money unless it is strictly for the purposes that are authorized and the money shouldn't be coming out of income taxes, it should be completely proportionate to spending that people do, not to suppress and oppress people's ability to invest and reinvest, which is what actually grows the economy.
If? So some spending does not need to be funded? Republican.
- all government spending must be funded. My point is that 99.99% of what gov't is actually doing it shouldn't be doing, so none of that should be funded. Whatever you imagined there in your head when you said 'Republican' - I am not a member of any party.
You are all for massive hikes in sales taxes
- gov't spending was funded just fine prior to introduction of the income taxes (they used to be 0, did they teach you that?) with alcohol sales taxes and excise taxes.
As to 'massive' - that's your interpretation of what I said, that's not what I said.
99.99% of gov't spending should be CUT first, then the remaining 0.01% needs to be funded with excise/import/sales taxes.
All income taxes must be abolished OBVIOUSLY, what is not clear? And again - I am not a member of any party.
Just admit it - you want an oligarchy that lives off the backs of the poor - but only after draining the middle class of any vestiges of wealth they themselves have.
- whatever that means.
I am against all government regulations, all gov't subsidies, all income taxes, all payroll taxes, all corporate taxes.
Gov't is a SPENDING item, it must be funded PROPORTIONATELY to SPENDING that is done, not to income, which is absolutely none of gov'ts business.
But your interpretation is about some idea that it's done 'off the backs of the poor'. Except that in the actual free market capitalist economies, that USA used to be prior to the Fed's and income tax introduction, and what China has today, the poor were becoming not quite so poor.
Working to make enough money to feed yourself, to buy nice stuff that all those rich bastards create in their businesses, when they could be chilling on some beach instead. Yeah, quite a terrible consequence of competition and capitalism. Totally worse than what people USED to be doing - subsistence farming and hunting/gathering. It's awful, all this stuff that the capitalism has created: from washing machines to automobiles and airplanes and personal computers and cellphones. Just awful.
Those fucking rich bastards, how dare they not just take their money and retire, but they just keep working and investing and building products and actually providing people with salaries and gov't with taxes. Parasites.
No, it's the exact opposite.
Strict protection of individual liberties and private property and contract law is the only way to prevent pushing the external costs out, from socializing any of the risk while privatizing the profits.
Once gov't has the power to regulate, it is bought. There is no way around it. Any politician who enters the gov't machine, that has the power to regulate business immediately becomes the proxy for any money interests that can buy him and that's going to be that way forever until all of your politicians are actual robots.
Competition was flourishing in USA before gov't introduced all sorts of regulations. Realize that it was gov't that killed 4000 phone start ups when they gave monopoly power to AT&T early last century.
It is only possible to have real competition when gov't does not prevent that from happening.