What do you ever mean, I am 100% against all income/payroll/corporate taxes. Always was, always will be. No gov't deserves any part of income. If some gov't spending must be funded, it must be funded from spending, because gov't is spending, so gov't spending needs to be proportionate to spending, not to earning, otherwise gov't is no longer a spending item that you use for something, but it is using you as a slave for its income.
No, obviously gov't does whatever it wants to do, that's the problem - that it doesn't adhere to the law and nobody holds it accountable.
As to the video - it's a prediction video, it's only about 20 months after 9/11 and it has the predictions for the things that were coming and they came true - total surrender of your liberties.
obviously this is completely unconstitutional, not authorized to the federal government of USA under the Constitution, violates all sorts of rights, from freedom of speech to illegal searches and presumption of innocence just to throw in there as well.
This is not going to do much, you want to define the spirit of what you want to say, but they are not interested. What you are proposing is similar to trying to create 'perfect DRM'.
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The real solution is to get away from that business model - government should not be in business of regulating business.
All of the business regulations, taxes and subsidies end up destroying the economy eventually, even the things that gov't does with the best of intentions.
You'd think - what possibly can go wrong with 'civil rights' act yes? Hah! Everything has gone wrong with it. It created more unemployment among minorities, not less, because employers just lost a bunch of rights and got themselves a bunch of obligations and certain employees got a bunch of entitlements that these employers are supposed to provide. Should the employers fail in any way (even in an imaginary way) to provide those entitlements, they will be dragged to court.
This raised price of employing certain groups of individuals, and their unemployment has tripled since that time the act was passed.
The problem is that politicians have something marketable, that can be bought. The problem is that politicians have goods for sale, and these goods shouldn't be in politicians' hands.
These goods - all of the regulative activity, taxes, subsidies, these goods make politicians an excellent return on investment, and anybody who wants to grow their business by special treatment, by destroying competition via special licensing, that provides only the buyer with ability to operate, gov't contracts and franchises, the free money that is flowing out of the Federal reserve - all of this should not be possible.
50% of people on the bottom of income do not pay income taxes.
The people who actually produce stuff, actually create jobs, they are the people who create that wealth that taxes are paid from.
Steve Jobs did MORE for society and economy than ANY politician or charity, because he increased the WEALTH of the economy by building products people wanted and his company provided employment and products.
Real wealth is created not in government halls by politicians, real wealth is always created privately, by people who build products. Gov't is there to confiscate the wealth and distribute it according to its desires, that's all, and it buys the votes with free cheese offerings to the bottom income earners.
Yeah, the bottom 50% of the people don't pay income tax.
But these are the people who are voting to get that free cheese, but it's not free and they are in business of selling their individual freedoms to get a gov't, that they think will give them something for free, empowering the gov't to take over everything, which allows certain enterprising individuals to take over everything, because it's easy with only one chocking point - the government.
no. I do not troll. My position is always on the side of free market, and all of the problems that you are assigning to 'ruthless capitalists' are created by the government intervention into the free market and destruction of it.
Free market regulations caused Henry Ford to hike salary to double what the standard was at the time, to $5/day, and it forced him to lower the work week to 5 days and work hours to 8 per day.
He was paying 25 dollars/week for 40 hours of work on his assembly lines while increasing productivity, and all of this was done without unions and people didn't pay any income taxes, there was no SS or Medicare or gov't guaranteed loans for houses or education, etc.
However, this was at the time when gold was almost $20/ounce, which means he was paying 1.25 ounces of gold per week or at current prices about $2100/week, which is about 105K/year (this fluctuates depending on the current price of gold, whatever).
This was take home pay, no income taxes, no payroll taxes. Today Ford workers make less than that BEFORE paying taxes, and due to inflation that money doesn't buy the same lifestyle at all, which allowed them at the time to be so productive that they could buy a car from their factory by saving 4 months of pay. They had a stay at home wife with 5-6 kids, whose education was paid privately, same with health care and insurance and pension investment.
The point is that free market regulations were causing capitalists to eventually lower the working hours while increasing the pay, while improving production efficiency and getting more out of any particular worker with less of their time spent at the factory.
Ford started that program due to high turn over. In a year after he introduced that (and he was hiring disabled workers NOBODY wanted to work at his assembly lines, and there were no unions in his shops, he was adamantly anti-union, which I agree with him on completely), his factory doubled the production capacity and lowered the prices for their product again.
The point is that it is capitalism in free market that improves quality of life while creating things - wealth, everybody wants.
Government power corrupts that process and regulations, taxes, subsidies exist to corrupt that process and they sell it to the public by promising all sorts of free cheese.
1. Federal reserve bank is the entity that monetizes the debt, allows the Congress to borrow more, destroys money, does under the cover bailouts to the tune of trillions we can't even know about.
They are setting the PRICE of money itself (interest rates) and that's the ultimate power to destroy, because no one institution should be holding that sort of power in the first place, only market driven price discovery can tell us what the price of money should be, no human is smart enough to do this, no computer, nothing except for all of the individual decisions and individual points where supply and demand meet.
2. There cannot be a 'flat' income tax. Income tax STARTED as 'flat'. It was supposed to be paid by top 1% of earners at 1.5% income tax. You cannot start this way, it doesn't stay, it's immoral, but most importantly, it allows the camel to put the nose under the tent.
However another economic argument is that government is by its very nature is a CONSUMPTION item. Gov't doesn't produce, it doesn't create wealth, it takes wealth and it can only spend it (or waste it, depends which end of the stick you are at). As a consumption item, government total income must be proportionate to what people CONSUME, not to what people produce.
You can't run a household, where you decide to pay down the debts, but one of the kids doesn't get a cut in his allowance, instead he gets to draw from household income at whatever rate he wants and he just decided that he'll buy himself a Ferrari, so there goes your ability to live within your means. The kid should only be able to spend a percentage of what you decide to spend, not a percentage of what you earn if you want to take spending under control and pay down some debts and not to be thrown out on your ass out of your house and not to have your cars repossessed.
Before 1913 (when the Fed and income tax were established - nice trick, by the way, not a coincidence either), 50% of all federal income came from alcohol sales. Another 50% came from some other sale and excise taxes. This worked well and the economy was growing and dollar was strengthening and income tax was 0 and USA was the largest creditor nation, producer of cheap, high quality goods and people were living better every year, as things became cheaper and people were paid more (good example).
3. CIA and FBI have no useful functions. Those are massively corrupt, massively dangerous organizations, using drug war money to run illegal operations and now killing Americans not just undercover of darkness, but out, in the open, and people are cheering.
4. Wars must end, including the drug war, poverty war, every war. Whatever war gov't wages, it loses, because all wars a profitable only while they are continuing.
Good, you should try and put as many people like me six feet under then. Just 'wanting' it won't do the trick. How many people do you think you'll have to kill for your paradise, and do you think you are thefirstwhocame up withthat?
Oh, there is plenty to complain about, but here are the demands (that's my journal going over them, and on top there is a link to the original demand list).
There is plenty to complain about in reality.
Allowing the government to get away from the limits imposed upon it by its law - the Constitution.
Allowing the government to become the king maker, monopoly creator.
Allowing the government to grow to become now 10% of the so called 'economy'.
Allowing the government to wage unconstitutional constant wars and now kill people and specifically Americans without trial just by decree of the POTUS.
Allowing the government to save their preferred monopolies with all these bail outs and stimulus, artificial interest rates and insane borrowing, all of this of-course is destroying the economy and is shifting the problems towards the future generation of tax payers, though I don't think they signed up for this shit.
Allowing the government to become business, which is none of its business. All of the business regulations, income taxes, subsidies to businesses.
Allowing politicians to buy votes by promising free cheese (you know where you find 'free' cheese?)
All of this and more, like destroying the money, getting away from constitutional money, which means the restraints on the banking and government ability to print became only a virtual one - how much ink and paper do you have?
These protesters understand that they are screwed, but most of them have no idea what the actual problems are and where they really should be protesting.
White House, Congress, Senate, Federal Reserve, Supreme Court, CIA and FBI... all of the branches of government and some extra-governmental agencies.
Wall street is a symptom of the rot. The real problem is in the head.
The populist thing is to attack the top earners, completely disregarding the fact that it is the system that creates the economic imbalances, which of-course can be all traced back to abolishment of Constitutional principles, such as not making sure that the government only operates within its authorized limits and the direct results of that - inflatable fiat currency, taxing income at any level, regulating and subsidizing business, getting in the way of every attempt of the economy to fix the imbalances by recessions, etc.
The real cause of the problem is of-course in the mirror - people voting for somebody who is promising them free cheese. That's how one gets caught in a mousetrap.
Here is what I would demand if I wanted to FIX THE GAME and not just prolong the problem and create more disparity and cause more poverty:
1. End the Federal reserve bank. 2. End IRS, income/corporate/payroll taxes. 3. End CIA and FBI. 4. End all WARS and bring troops home, enforce the Constitution and stop illegality of having undeclared wars. 5. End FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie. 6. End FDA, EPA, dep't of energy, agriculture, education, small business... down the list of all departments that hold unelected power. 7. Constitutional amendment to prevent federal government from passing any business regulations, any subsidies, any spending on any projects that are not military, criminal and contract law. This includes subsidies to businesses, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, labor laws, and 'civil right acts' (which are entitlements/obligations), subsidies to any businesses. 8. Restore the Constitution by enforcing it. 9. Only allow government to be paid for by sales taxes and reduce spending to only what is authorized by the Constitution.
My point is very simple: if you think you can enforce your ideas in this regard upon people, you have another surprise coming to you. Not that I personally want to be Genghis Khan of DNA, not at all.
No, I want as ruthless competitors as possible, even the kind who would want to buy politicians (and honestly, what a great investment that is.)
That's why the politicians should not have the power to change the outcome of any business success or failure, and any personal success or failure either. Competition is paramount, and government is the entity that ends it because it has the power to regulate, tax and subsidize.
he was a greedy businessman that ran a multi-national corporation...
- wish there were more like him. I need greedy businessman that run multi-national corporations to get rich and in the process to come out with all sorts of innovation in products that I don't personally own, but I see a lot of people owning and many design decisions propagate into all sorts of products that I probably end up owning.
Apple contracts to build a laptop in the far east for $100 using slave labor, and manipulated currencies
- Too bad he wasn't able to build them for 10 cents a pop.
AFAIC the prices always should go down, never up. Of-course that's not what governments want.
Then Apple Caymans, who owes no taxes of any kind, is a corp controlled by Apple USA. Apple Caymans then buys the laptop for $100 from the far east and sells it to Apple USA for $1000. The $900 profit is all profit, they pay no taxes on it.
- I hope he ended up paying 0% on any income he made from his work.
Apple USA retails the laptop for $1100 for a $100 profit that they pay some US corporate income tax on.
- a single penny paid in income/corporate/payroll taxes is a penny that is a loss of productivity and investment and a penny that ends up growing some part of government and subsidizing either companies or individuals, which has a multiplier effect of more loss of productivity, and this lost money is used to buy products somebody else makes, and that has a multiplier effect of counterfeiting purchasing power and stealing from those, who produce stuff sold for that money.
This is just another reason why US based manufacturers are screwed by the world market. They have to pay full US taxes on their full profits, the other businesses don't.
- what US manufacturers? Kidding, almost 7% of US economy is still in manufacturing and agriculture. So USA still makes tanks and cruise missiles, somebody has to make them, POTUS has a list of people he doesn't like.
Lastly: what you should want is your government to stop destroying productivity of Americans. Nobody wants to hire Americans, they are too expensive, and not only because of their salaries (which in a normal free market would not be a problem anyway, supply and demand tend to meet at some point), but the problem is of-course the expense of all of the regulations, lawsuits that are brought on by all the labor 'rights' and civil 'rights' etc., which are not rights, but obligations upon the minority - employers, to provide the majority - employees (the voting block that politicians cater to) with entitlements.
USA is losing its economy because it's voting to lose its economy.
And yay, he was yet another ruthless capitalist, yawn!
- AFAIC ruthless capitalists do much more good for society than any charities or politicians. Ruthless capitalists actually push products that make them rich while making the society wealthy.
Of-course as more and more sales taxes are collected, the income taxes are not going anywhere.
It was pathetic to watch all of the TV actors (so called 'journalists') asking Ron Paul - what about FEMA?
Well here is what about FEMA: if federal government didn't take all that money from the pockets of people who live in different states via income taxes, the local governments or whatever institutions that people would set up, would have access to more revenue. In USA people pay taxes on many many levels, not just federal, but also state and municipal and sales and excise and import and fuel and who knows what else, not including all sorts of things that are not generally understood to be taxes, but they ARE - like parking tickets, speeding tickets, anything that cops are used to collect. All sorts of other fees, based on government monopolies.
In reality the people in USA are extremely overtaxed and over-regulated, which combined with inflation via destruction of currency by printing, are the main causes of the economic demise of USA (same with Europeans, but they don't spend as much on a number of things, because they do those things completely publicly, rather than creating a monopoly and then giving the job of providing that monopoly service to some for-profit organization, which now has government monopoly handed to them, of-course health care and education and wars are more expensive).
In reality USA needs to abolish income and corporate and payroll taxes, stop all government subsidies, stop all subsidies to all individuals and to all corporations, all wars, including terror and drug and war on poverty, because regardless of what war is fought, it is always lost.
You can't WIN a war, which is profitable as long as it is IN PROGRESS.
Wars should be UNPROFITABLE, that's why it's important to have Congress vote on them and have taxes raised on them (or bonds sold domestically to raise revenue.)
Wars must NOT BE PROFITABLE. Otherwise they will never stop, and wars, regardless of what Krugman believes, are NOT a good way to fix the economy.
Half of the population loading cartridges and another half emptying them out, while some dark-skinned people are killed and assets destroyed is not a good way to run an economy, it does not produce any wealth, only poverty and misery.
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Back to taxes - I am sure that Amazon is going to get some tax breaks here, while other small online competitors will be forced out of business because they won't be able to collect them over the Internet. Just one more nail in the economic coffin.
The ONLY way to make this a good thing is to STOP all income taxes and only THEN introduce some sales taxes.
What you are observing here is a bunch of government officials congratulating each other, I am sure, this has nothing to do with some special tax breaks that Amazon will get from the Great State of Tennessee, while ALL OTHER online stores will have to collect these taxes, Amazon will surely be excluded for enough time not only to affect the small brick and mortar stores, but also any online stores that are selling to Tennessee.
What you just saw there, if you watched the video, was a bunch of racketeers, congratulating themselves on making plenty of money for themselves.
You are about as likely to get your wish fulfilled, as some religious group trying to stop people from watching porn. I believe the suggestions thrown back at proponents of either of these ideas in both cases will be about the same.
It's a very logical response. It makes perfect, absolutely perfect sense to suggest that you off yourself if you want to reduce population.
You shouldn't take it as an attack on you, after all, you are the one suggesting something that will have to be enforced, and you are talking about a fundamental thing that biological organisms do. If you feel strongly about reducing the population, then you should reduce it. Try and reduce it by forcing others, you'll get a violent response (don't you know that people, like all other organisms on this planet only exist because life forces itself to exist?) Those who disagree fundamentally take themselves out of the gene pool, which ensures that the gene pool only has those, who don't try to artificially reduce the propensity of life to spread.
All growth spreads until it is no longer able to sustain itself, and this happens organically. If people multiply to a point, where they can no longer actually sustain the growth, there will be shrinking, this is a natural process, there are no static systems. All systems are always moving - either increasing or shrinking, shifting and changing. It's impossible for them to be 'stable' naturally, and trying to do this in unnatural manner (like the Chinese tried), leads to other problems, that will eventually rebalance the system. So girls were killed and boys were selected for, now they have maybe 100,000,000 shortage of girls. This will lead to conflict and war, rebalancing the equation again, reducing the male population by at least half of that 100 million, but this will happen naturally.
All forms of control over natural sovereignty of individuals (the natural rights), will be met with violence.
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What do you ever mean, I am 100% against all income/payroll/corporate taxes. Always was, always will be. No gov't deserves any part of income. If some gov't spending must be funded, it must be funded from spending, because gov't is spending, so gov't spending needs to be proportionate to spending, not to earning, otherwise gov't is no longer a spending item that you use for something, but it is using you as a slave for its income.
No, obviously gov't does whatever it wants to do, that's the problem - that it doesn't adhere to the law and nobody holds it accountable.
As to the video - it's a prediction video, it's only about 20 months after 9/11 and it has the predictions for the things that were coming and they came true - total surrender of your liberties.
US federal government is not authorized to take such steps, it is not authorized and thus it is not allowed to do so. You should watch this.
obviously this is completely unconstitutional, not authorized to the federal government of USA under the Constitution, violates all sorts of rights, from freedom of speech to illegal searches and presumption of innocence just to throw in there as well.
That's why government needs to be cut.
Ron Paul 2012.
because you are a racist?
This is not going to do much, you want to define the spirit of what you want to say, but they are not interested. What you are proposing is similar to trying to create 'perfect DRM'.
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The real solution is to get away from that business model - government should not be in business of regulating business.
All of the business regulations, taxes and subsidies end up destroying the economy eventually, even the things that gov't does with the best of intentions.
You'd think - what possibly can go wrong with 'civil rights' act yes? Hah! Everything has gone wrong with it. It created more unemployment among minorities, not less, because employers just lost a bunch of rights and got themselves a bunch of obligations and certain employees got a bunch of entitlements that these employers are supposed to provide. Should the employers fail in any way (even in an imaginary way) to provide those entitlements, they will be dragged to court.
This raised price of employing certain groups of individuals, and their unemployment has tripled since that time the act was passed.
People buy politicians left right and center.
The problem is that politicians have something marketable, that can be bought. The problem is that politicians have goods for sale, and these goods shouldn't be in politicians' hands.
These goods - all of the regulative activity, taxes, subsidies, these goods make politicians an excellent return on investment, and anybody who wants to grow their business by special treatment, by destroying competition via special licensing, that provides only the buyer with ability to operate, gov't contracts and franchises, the free money that is flowing out of the Federal reserve - all of this should not be possible.
50% of people on the bottom of income do not pay income taxes.
The people who actually produce stuff, actually create jobs, they are the people who create that wealth that taxes are paid from.
Steve Jobs did MORE for society and economy than ANY politician or charity, because he increased the WEALTH of the economy by building products people wanted and his company provided employment and products.
Real wealth is created not in government halls by politicians, real wealth is always created privately, by people who build products. Gov't is there to confiscate the wealth and distribute it according to its desires, that's all, and it buys the votes with free cheese offerings to the bottom income earners.
Yeah, the bottom 50% of the people don't pay income tax.
But these are the people who are voting to get that free cheese, but it's not free and they are in business of selling their individual freedoms to get a gov't, that they think will give them something for free, empowering the gov't to take over everything, which allows certain enterprising individuals to take over everything, because it's easy with only one chocking point - the government.
when there is a market for conflict images, "conflict images" will be produced to satisfy that demand.
Or maybe you're just trolling.
no. I do not troll. My position is always on the side of free market, and all of the problems that you are assigning to 'ruthless capitalists' are created by the government intervention into the free market and destruction of it.
Free market regulations caused Henry Ford to hike salary to double what the standard was at the time, to $5/day, and it forced him to lower the work week to 5 days and work hours to 8 per day.
He was paying 25 dollars/week for 40 hours of work on his assembly lines while increasing productivity, and all of this was done without unions and people didn't pay any income taxes, there was no SS or Medicare or gov't guaranteed loans for houses or education, etc.
However, this was at the time when gold was almost $20/ounce, which means he was paying 1.25 ounces of gold per week or at current prices about $2100/week, which is about 105K/year (this fluctuates depending on the current price of gold, whatever).
This was take home pay, no income taxes, no payroll taxes. Today Ford workers make less than that BEFORE paying taxes, and due to inflation that money doesn't buy the same lifestyle at all, which allowed them at the time to be so productive that they could buy a car from their factory by saving 4 months of pay. They had a stay at home wife with 5-6 kids, whose education was paid privately, same with health care and insurance and pension investment.
The point is that free market regulations were causing capitalists to eventually lower the working hours while increasing the pay, while improving production efficiency and getting more out of any particular worker with less of their time spent at the factory.
Ford started that program due to high turn over. In a year after he introduced that (and he was hiring disabled workers NOBODY wanted to work at his assembly lines, and there were no unions in his shops, he was adamantly anti-union, which I agree with him on completely), his factory doubled the production capacity and lowered the prices for their product again.
The point is that it is capitalism in free market that improves quality of life while creating things - wealth, everybody wants.
Government power corrupts that process and regulations, taxes, subsidies exist to corrupt that process and they sell it to the public by promising all sorts of free cheese.
Do you know where you find free cheese?
1. Federal reserve bank is the entity that monetizes the debt, allows the Congress to borrow more, destroys money, does under the cover bailouts to the tune of trillions we can't even know about.
They are setting the PRICE of money itself (interest rates) and that's the ultimate power to destroy, because no one institution should be holding that sort of power in the first place, only market driven price discovery can tell us what the price of money should be, no human is smart enough to do this, no computer, nothing except for all of the individual decisions and individual points where supply and demand meet.
2. There cannot be a 'flat' income tax. Income tax STARTED as 'flat'. It was supposed to be paid by top 1% of earners at 1.5% income tax. You cannot start this way, it doesn't stay, it's immoral, but most importantly, it allows the camel to put the nose under the tent.
However another economic argument is that government is by its very nature is a CONSUMPTION item. Gov't doesn't produce, it doesn't create wealth, it takes wealth and it can only spend it (or waste it, depends which end of the stick you are at). As a consumption item, government total income must be proportionate to what people CONSUME, not to what people produce.
You can't run a household, where you decide to pay down the debts, but one of the kids doesn't get a cut in his allowance, instead he gets to draw from household income at whatever rate he wants and he just decided that he'll buy himself a Ferrari, so there goes your ability to live within your means. The kid should only be able to spend a percentage of what you decide to spend, not a percentage of what you earn if you want to take spending under control and pay down some debts and not to be thrown out on your ass out of your house and not to have your cars repossessed.
Before 1913 (when the Fed and income tax were established - nice trick, by the way, not a coincidence either), 50% of all federal income came from alcohol sales. Another 50% came from some other sale and excise taxes. This worked well and the economy was growing and dollar was strengthening and income tax was 0 and USA was the largest creditor nation, producer of cheap, high quality goods and people were living better every year, as things became cheaper and people were paid more (good example).
3. CIA and FBI have no useful functions. Those are massively corrupt, massively dangerous organizations, using drug war money to run illegal operations and now killing Americans not just undercover of darkness, but out, in the open, and people are cheering.
4. Wars must end, including the drug war, poverty war, every war. Whatever war gov't wages, it loses, because all wars a profitable only while they are continuing.
5. FDIC is a huge part of the reason for the 2008 crash. The banks have the moral hazard of so called 'gov't insurance', which is not insurance, real insurance has assets and risk assessment, gov't doesn't. This is a moral hazard system, designed not to 'keep your deposits safe', but designed to prop up the banks in the Great Depression, which also was started by the Federal reserve as a recession and then turned by gov't bail outs and stimulus money into a depression (that's a comment I left long ago).
FDIC was designed to get people to loan to banks again (by the way, they said these were 'deposits', they weren't. These are LOANS to banks.) - you may want to listen to this, or if you just want to hear about FDIC, fast forward to minute 54. That's a Congressional hearing on sound money and FDIC came up, I long ago stated the same thing obviously, but here is a good source just from last month's hearing.
Money didn't 'vanish overnight' in the Great Depression. Less t
Good, you should try and put as many people like me six feet under then. Just 'wanting' it won't do the trick. How many people do you think you'll have to kill for your paradise, and do you think you are the first who came up with that?
Oh, there is plenty to complain about, but here are the demands (that's my journal going over them, and on top there is a link to the original demand list).
There is plenty to complain about in reality.
Allowing the government to get away from the limits imposed upon it by its law - the Constitution.
Allowing the government to become the king maker, monopoly creator.
Allowing the government to grow to become now 10% of the so called 'economy'.
Allowing the government to wage unconstitutional constant wars and now kill people and specifically Americans without trial just by decree of the POTUS.
Allowing the government to save their preferred monopolies with all these bail outs and stimulus, artificial interest rates and insane borrowing, all of this of-course is destroying the economy and is shifting the problems towards the future generation of tax payers, though I don't think they signed up for this shit.
Allowing the government to become business, which is none of its business. All of the business regulations, income taxes, subsidies to businesses.
Allowing politicians to buy votes by promising free cheese (you know where you find 'free' cheese?)
All of this and more, like destroying the money, getting away from constitutional money, which means the restraints on the banking and government ability to print became only a virtual one - how much ink and paper do you have?
These protesters understand that they are screwed, but most of them have no idea what the actual problems are and where they really should be protesting.
White House, Congress, Senate, Federal Reserve, Supreme Court, CIA and FBI... all of the branches of government and some extra-governmental agencies.
Wall street is a symptom of the rot. The real problem is in the head.
While the Wall Street has SOME people who have their fingers in the current problems, the actual 'right' people are not there at all.
With a friendly list of demands like this one who needs enemies?
The populist thing is to attack the top earners, completely disregarding the fact that it is the system that creates the economic imbalances, which of-course can be all traced back to abolishment of Constitutional principles, such as not making sure that the government only operates within its authorized limits and the direct results of that - inflatable fiat currency, taxing income at any level, regulating and subsidizing business, getting in the way of every attempt of the economy to fix the imbalances by recessions, etc.
The real cause of the problem is of-course in the mirror - people voting for somebody who is promising them free cheese. That's how one gets caught in a mousetrap.
Here is a list of demands, there is a link there to the original source and I look at it in detail.
Obviously I have done a review of the demands that were put forward (and admittedly more demands were put forward after those ones as well), but generally the people protesting Wall Street have their anger directed at the wrong problem.
Here is what I would demand if I wanted to FIX THE GAME and not just prolong the problem and create more disparity and cause more poverty:
1. End the Federal reserve bank.
2. End IRS, income/corporate/payroll taxes.
3. End CIA and FBI.
4. End all WARS and bring troops home, enforce the Constitution and stop illegality of having undeclared wars.
5. End FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie.
6. End FDA, EPA, dep't of energy, agriculture, education, small business... down the list of all departments that hold unelected power.
7. Constitutional amendment to prevent federal government from passing any business regulations, any subsidies, any spending on any projects that are not military, criminal and contract law. This includes subsidies to businesses, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, labor laws, and 'civil right acts' (which are entitlements/obligations), subsidies to any businesses.
8. Restore the Constitution by enforcing it.
9. Only allow government to be paid for by sales taxes and reduce spending to only what is authorized by the Constitution.
10. Money is gold.
My point is very simple: if you think you can enforce your ideas in this regard upon people, you have another surprise coming to you. Not that I personally want to be Genghis Khan of DNA, not at all.
No, I want as ruthless competitors as possible, even the kind who would want to buy politicians (and honestly, what a great investment that is.)
That's why the politicians should not have the power to change the outcome of any business success or failure, and any personal success or failure either. Competition is paramount, and government is the entity that ends it because it has the power to regulate, tax and subsidize.
he was a greedy businessman that ran a multi-national corporation...
- wish there were more like him. I need greedy businessman that run multi-national corporations to get rich and in the process to come out with all sorts of innovation in products that I don't personally own, but I see a lot of people owning and many design decisions propagate into all sorts of products that I probably end up owning.
Apple contracts to build a laptop in the far east for $100 using slave labor, and manipulated currencies
- Too bad he wasn't able to build them for 10 cents a pop.
AFAIC the prices always should go down, never up. Of-course that's not what governments want.
Then Apple Caymans, who owes no taxes of any kind, is a corp controlled by Apple USA. Apple Caymans then buys the laptop for $100 from the far east and sells it to Apple USA for $1000. The $900 profit is all profit, they pay no taxes on it.
- I hope he ended up paying 0% on any income he made from his work.
Apple USA retails the laptop for $1100 for a $100 profit that they pay some US corporate income tax on.
- a single penny paid in income/corporate/payroll taxes is a penny that is a loss of productivity and investment and a penny that ends up growing some part of government and subsidizing either companies or individuals, which has a multiplier effect of more loss of productivity, and this lost money is used to buy products somebody else makes, and that has a multiplier effect of counterfeiting purchasing power and stealing from those, who produce stuff sold for that money.
This is just another reason why US based manufacturers are screwed by the world market. They have to pay full US taxes on their full profits, the other businesses don't.
- what US manufacturers? Kidding, almost 7% of US economy is still in manufacturing and agriculture. So USA still makes tanks and cruise missiles, somebody has to make them, POTUS has a list of people he doesn't like.
Lastly: what you should want is your government to stop destroying productivity of Americans. Nobody wants to hire Americans, they are too expensive, and not only because of their salaries (which in a normal free market would not be a problem anyway, supply and demand tend to meet at some point), but the problem is of-course the expense of all of the regulations, lawsuits that are brought on by all the labor 'rights' and civil 'rights' etc., which are not rights, but obligations upon the minority - employers, to provide the majority - employees (the voting block that politicians cater to) with entitlements.
USA is losing its economy because it's voting to lose its economy.
And yay, he was yet another ruthless capitalist, yawn!
- AFAIC ruthless capitalists do much more good for society than any charities or politicians. Ruthless capitalists actually push products that make them rich while making the society wealthy.
I want as many ruthless capitalists as possible.
Of-course as more and more sales taxes are collected, the income taxes are not going anywhere.
It was pathetic to watch all of the TV actors (so called 'journalists') asking Ron Paul - what about FEMA?
Well here is what about FEMA: if federal government didn't take all that money from the pockets of people who live in different states via income taxes, the local governments or whatever institutions that people would set up, would have access to more revenue. In USA people pay taxes on many many levels, not just federal, but also state and municipal and sales and excise and import and fuel and who knows what else, not including all sorts of things that are not generally understood to be taxes, but they ARE - like parking tickets, speeding tickets, anything that cops are used to collect. All sorts of other fees, based on government monopolies.
In reality the people in USA are extremely overtaxed and over-regulated, which combined with inflation via destruction of currency by printing, are the main causes of the economic demise of USA (same with Europeans, but they don't spend as much on a number of things, because they do those things completely publicly, rather than creating a monopoly and then giving the job of providing that monopoly service to some for-profit organization, which now has government monopoly handed to them, of-course health care and education and wars are more expensive).
In reality USA needs to abolish income and corporate and payroll taxes, stop all government subsidies, stop all subsidies to all individuals and to all corporations, all wars, including terror and drug and war on poverty, because regardless of what war is fought, it is always lost.
You can't WIN a war, which is profitable as long as it is IN PROGRESS.
Wars should be UNPROFITABLE, that's why it's important to have Congress vote on them and have taxes raised on them (or bonds sold domestically to raise revenue.)
Wars must NOT BE PROFITABLE. Otherwise they will never stop, and wars, regardless of what Krugman believes, are NOT a good way to fix the economy.
Half of the population loading cartridges and another half emptying them out, while some dark-skinned people are killed and assets destroyed is not a good way to run an economy, it does not produce any wealth, only poverty and misery.
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Back to taxes - I am sure that Amazon is going to get some tax breaks here, while other small online competitors will be forced out of business because they won't be able to collect them over the Internet. Just one more nail in the economic coffin.
The ONLY way to make this a good thing is to STOP all income taxes and only THEN introduce some sales taxes.
What you are observing here is a bunch of government officials congratulating each other, I am sure, this has nothing to do with some special tax breaks that Amazon will get from the Great State of Tennessee, while ALL OTHER online stores will have to collect these taxes, Amazon will surely be excluded for enough time not only to affect the small brick and mortar stores, but also any online stores that are selling to Tennessee.
What you just saw there, if you watched the video, was a bunch of racketeers, congratulating themselves on making plenty of money for themselves.
You are about as likely to get your wish fulfilled, as some religious group trying to stop people from watching porn. I believe the suggestions thrown back at proponents of either of these ideas in both cases will be about the same.
It's a very logical response. It makes perfect, absolutely perfect sense to suggest that you off yourself if you want to reduce population.
You shouldn't take it as an attack on you, after all, you are the one suggesting something that will have to be enforced, and you are talking about a fundamental thing that biological organisms do. If you feel strongly about reducing the population, then you should reduce it. Try and reduce it by forcing others, you'll get a violent response (don't you know that people, like all other organisms on this planet only exist because life forces itself to exist?) Those who disagree fundamentally take themselves out of the gene pool, which ensures that the gene pool only has those, who don't try to artificially reduce the propensity of life to spread.
All growth spreads until it is no longer able to sustain itself, and this happens organically. If people multiply to a point, where they can no longer actually sustain the growth, there will be shrinking, this is a natural process, there are no static systems. All systems are always moving - either increasing or shrinking, shifting and changing. It's impossible for them to be 'stable' naturally, and trying to do this in unnatural manner (like the Chinese tried), leads to other problems, that will eventually rebalance the system. So girls were killed and boys were selected for, now they have maybe 100,000,000 shortage of girls. This will lead to conflict and war, rebalancing the equation again, reducing the male population by at least half of that 100 million, but this will happen naturally.
All forms of control over natural sovereignty of individuals (the natural rights), will be met with violence.
With your nick name, you should off yourself right away in the name of your ideology.