Don't need any laws that are specific. Once you have a law making it illegal to kill somebody, it's good enough.
It's like those stupid laws that they add about driving and not switching your radio or talking on the phone. There are ALREADY laws that make it illegal to drive carelessly and obviously if you cause an accident that's all that matters. Same principle, and I am not sure who I am arguing with here, but it's not very useful.
the good thing about a private ponzi scam is that one can EXIT, take the losses and leave.
There is no difference between the way SS or any other ponzi scam is financed, but there is a difference that in case of government, even if you KNOW it's a scam, you can't get out.
(but the kids that are growing up now, they'll get nothing out of SS but will be paying through the nose in this employment market, they should just exist for real - leave USA and move somewhere else.)
By the way,/. broke URL links. GOOD JOB, IDIOTS. ------
SS is a ponzi scheme, it's financed not by any fund but it relies on current payers to pay to current beneficiaries, and the future beneficiaries have to rely on future payers.
Do you know what Reagan and Tip O'Neill actually did?
In 1984 the payroll tax was raised from 10.8 to 11.4% and kept creeping up. They increased the amount of income subject to tax from 32400USD to 37800USD in one year (16.6%). So SS was raised in total by over 20% in one year. Also SS was originally (in 40s and 50s) paid by employees, not by self employed. However self employed didn't have to pay employer payroll portion of the tax. In 1983 they started collecting the "employer" payroll portion of the tax, so the SS tax went up from 6.8% to 14% 106% increase in one year. This + the SS tax increase of 16.6% described above, the effective rate of tax increase on self employed individuals was 140% tax hike in one year, and kept getting worse.
Reagan also imposed income taxes on SS benefits for higher earning individuals, which is means testing and reduction in benefits.
Reagan basically cut SS benefits for higher income people by applying income tax to SS benefits, while increasing taxes on higher income people by 140%.
When Romney says he'll keep SS around, what he means he'll have to raise taxes. However Obama came out with payroll tax cut, and he's likely to cut payroll taxes further.
I wonder what Obama thinks he is doing with SS? From my POV of-course SS is theft pure and simple.
SS is a ponzi scam by definition of payment transfers and not having a fund, but it was also based on a lie, to make it LOOK like there was a fund by pretending that high income earners wouldn't have to participate (and they didn't have to participate at first.) As all ponzi scams go, over time it became more and more difficult to cover the benefits, so they increased taxes from 2% to now 12%. ----
Unfortunately/. links are broken, so here is the point again as stated in another comment:
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers. [wikipedia.org] - the gov't argued that SS payments are not earmarked, not actually going to be used for any purpose, but are only collected under general taxation powers of Congress.
Of-course the judge in the Supreme Court was very lazy, he didn't care (*was complicit*) and wrote this:
The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103. [cornell.edu]
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
The entire point of the court was to figure out whether SS taxes were Constitutional or not, and the judge said: I don't care, I'll leave the question open!
SS is absolutely clearly NOT SHOWN TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL in this judgment. At the very minimum it's a "maybe", but it's definitely not a "YES", which is what SCOTUS is SUPPOSED to show.
Let's start from the fact that it does NOT matter, whether there is lying about where the money goes or not. So, just in itself, lying is not necessary to have a ponzi scheme. In fact people who get into a ponzi scheme early on, may easily be aware of it, but they will likely benefit, so they don't care.
Secondly, gov't certainly lies about SS, lied about it from the start. Pretended that SS is an insurance system, even didn't start the payouts for 2 years after the program was started. All to pretend there is some fund. Of-course it was never a fund, and it's an easy to show fact:
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
The entire point of the court was to figure out whether SS taxes were Constitutional or not, and the judge said: I don't care, I'll leave the question open!
SS is absolutely clearly NOT SHOWN TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL in this judgment. At the very minimum it's a "maybe", but it's definitely not a "YES", which is what SCOTUS is SUPPOSED to show.
The only difference between a private and a government ran ponzi scam is that you can't GET OUT of a government ran ponzi scam, so that's the ONLY thing that keeps it alive once people recognize it what it is.
Try this: make it optional. Allow people to just opt out. How many, do you think, would take that offer immediately to stop paying the 12%? (12%, which will grow, it must, Reagan did it to keep the scam going.)
SS is a ponzi scam by definition - current beneficiaries are getting paid by current workers, and current workers are hoping to get paid by future workers. SS doesn't have any books, all of the funds are fake, they are moving fungible money back and forward.
If these workers are on the clock, then the employers are getting shafted.
The way to fix it is to have performance based pay. Here is a piece of work: do this work and you get this pay.
That's the way I am outsourcing some of the work nowadays, so it doesn't matter how many hours are spent working or watching porn (as your metered TV apparently shows now.)
I am contemplating something too. To make Opera my default, it's not right now, but I use them at the same time here, why do I even do it anymore? AdBlock Plus and my extensions..... I need to figure out how to port extensions to Opera and just move
I understand you are trolling, so your sig says, but for how long can you keep it up?
--
Long-term, sure. But there are costs associated with moving,
Looking at the list of current plants and plants closed in USA, the numbers of workers for just the Ford company is revealing that the long-term is here now.
The babies line was about the absurdity of your position
- why is my position absurd? I never talked about babies, I am talking about unemployment in USA, which is nominally over 9%, but in reality is over 20%.
A minimum-wage job is not a worthwhile use of anyone's time
? No? Really?
What if you are unemployed? What if you have over 20% unemployment? What if you have underproduction? What if you have huge debts and are printing fiat to support the debt based consumption? What if your kids are in colleges, getting worthless degrees, while without minimum wage laws at all, they could be hired for nominal fees and actually become apprentices, and learn at work to do something useful and then in 4 years, while other kids get their BSc in Sociology, these kids would have 4 years of work experience and NO mortgage without a house?
What if you don't produce anything and have 90% of your sea food imported from elsewhere? What if your money is quickly becoming worse than toilet paper, because you can't really use it for that, it's too dirty?
What if China will STOP subsidizing you (and it eventually will)?
So wait, is the money worthless or isn't it?
- USD is worthless for the Chinese, they can't buy anything for it, so they buy your debt, which means they are buying your FUTURE with worthless paper you give them.
Debt is deferred taxation, do you understand the concept? It means taxes that must be paid later. But who is going to pay that? I don't even think Chinese will get anything back (anything useful), even from your future generations, because your future generations will wake up and LEAVE. And WHO is going to give you anything when you are old? You think you'll have your SS check? Sure, the gov't will print it, but it won't be coming out of production and it won't buy anything.
If he's not cycling his profits through Ireland and paying less than 10% at the c
- maybe he isn't paying the taxes by using all the tricks available in accounting, then he shouldn't be in a position to preach about taxes, should he?
In any case, giving any money to government is destructive to the US economy in the long run. There is no difference if the money is coming from China or taxes, at this point it worsens the situation by causing greater debt, and this explodes the Keynesian heads in government, now they believe they have no choice but to keep interest at 0%, which PREVENTS the economy from restructuring, they print more money, and this worsens the situation.
This is a vicious cycle, that can only be interrupted by categorically denying any new money to the government.
Again, which is it? If the money is worthless then surely it makes no difference how it is distributed.
- printed currency is worthless. Printing currency makes it worthless. EARNED money is CAPITAL savings. Capital savings can be invested, organized with other resources - land and labor, to produce new value. Government confiscating earned money is surely destroying the wealth, because that's the money that is actually was produced for, earned, and it could be invested with by the people who earned it.
Of-course in today's USA there are too many people who got their millions from government itself,
No, it's not free market if there is FDA and government money in health care/insurance, which makes it impossible to compete with established monopolies.
Get the government money out of business, out of medical insurance, out of medical care, out of pharma, get rid of FDA and do one thing - enforce criminal and contract laws.
That's all there is to it. Enforce the laws that already make it ILLEGAL TO KILL people, regardless of how and why the people are killed.
Is that beyond the ability of government in your mind to do this? What it really is, it's unwillingness to admit that the system is corrupt and it's on the wrong track completely. That the entire idea of government dictating to free people how to live their lives, how to invest their money, how to spend their money, the idea of taxing work, the idea of setting cost of borrowing (interest rates), enforcing a fiat currency and printing the currency away while making it impossible to compete in money for private businesses, this idea is bankrupt. The entire idea is a failure. It's 100 years of complete and total failure, which needs to be erased and reworked.
I'm talking things like factories running below capacity because it would be a waste of money to hire the workers
- you won't find much of that in USA today, the tools do not stay idle. They are either sold or they are moved to other places (like Mexico, where a number of car makers moved their factories to).
Factory floors require rental payments/tax payments, if you are in a business of making money, then you won't be paying without producing something. What you do is, you quickly shift production somewhere else, move the tools, move your investment.
So you'd never feed a baby?
- I don't see babies, I see people who want to continue getting their SS or EI or whatever other gov't checks and they won't go and get a job that pays the same as EI pays, because why do that? It makes no sense.
These are the same people, who will vote to continue this nonsense in the future, by likely voting Democrat or Republican, but not for real liberties. Most of them won't vote for a libertarian like Ron Paul. I don't support these people. They are getting what they are voting for.
But you know who HAS been supporting these people, you call "babies"? Those who still pay taxes AND the foreigners who are accumulating worthless US debt. They need to understand that it's not "babies" they are subsidizing. These are grown individuals, who are happy as a voting block to live on hand outs and not have to produce anything.
But if all of them have no money, each of them buys less, and as a result none of them can sell their full production capability
- money is not the question. It's not about liquidity, or Zimbabwe would have been the wealthiest, healthiest economy in the world.
It's about production. The people who do not produce cannot consume, that's all there is to it.
That's a fair question to ask the Chinese. But we're the guys who are getting the car engines and giving them pieces of paper, so why wouldn't we keep doing that as long as we can?
- sure, you can go ahead and do that. Of-course this means you are forgoing a healthy economy and you are just voting for more subsidies and debt spending.
Eventually the reality will catch up, but by the time it catches up, you will have nothing to work with at all and will have to have a giant repossession, a giant garage sale, selling your things back to other nations to get some food and tools to start some production.
You'll have to open your borders to foreign national companies to mine your natural resources, because you won't have the capital/tools to do so yourself. You'll be paying with terrible standard of living in the future by spending now and not producing. BUT you are right - you are selling your future to the Chinese, they are buying it for worthless money. Enjoy it.
Nope, it's because domestic companies either can't supply what people want, or are uncompetitive.
- that's what I said:
there is enough demand, but there is no production.
- it's exactly what I said.
I mean progressive taxation,
- you already have it. People with high pay, pay most of the taxes. Warren Buffet is an old liar when he says he pays less than his secretary.
His company pays 35% federal corporate income tax, that's HIS money, he is the largest shareholder. He pays (X-0.35*X) - 0.15(X-0.35*X), so about 44.5%.
Half of the population in USA aren't paying any federal income taxes.
wealth redistribution
- you CANNOT redistribute wealth. By "redistributing" money via taxes, you are only redistributing MONEY, but wealth is PRODUCTION CAPACITY. It's funny how simple misunderstanding of nomenclature makes such a huge difference. You CAN destroy wealth by taking away all of the investment capital and obviously you will cause more capital flight
- it's what the Fed is doing now, that's how you'll have dollar hyper inflation eventually.
the most abundant natural resources on planet
- without actual money (and destroyed dollar is not money), USA has no capital to organize tools/labor (which are necessary to extract the resources to sell).
This is by the way what will end up happening - USA will open its borders to foreign companies, who will come in and start extracting natural resources in exchange for real money, which USA will have to save and spend on products/tools/machines/food that it will have to buy from producing nations.
US has a gigantic domestic market
- no it does not.
In order for 2 people to trade, they have to exchange products. Not just fiat paper, they must be able to satisfy each other's demand for products.
Countries trade for comparative advantage, so do people, that's what money is - a value store, a way to exchange products by proxy and a way to keep score (unit of account).
US consumer is now vendor financed and is also debt financed with all the counterfeit dollars, but US consumer is not producing anything worth exchanging for, thus US consumer is not a legitimate consumer, because US consumer is not also a producer.
If I make tools and the other guy makes food, we can exchange food for tools and do the exchange in money. But if money is counterfeit paper, and I am not going to get anything for them, once I sell the tools, because the other stopped making food, then I don't want to give him the tools. It would be better for me to find somebody else who makes food to exchange with.
So there is no real market inside US. There is a huge demand, as all the vendor financed consumption and 53Billion USD/month trade deficits shows, but no real economy worth exchanging with.
If Congress, the Senate, and the President decide that Exxon isn't going to be allowed to sell its Alaskan & CONUS oil to anybody besides Americans.
- so by forcing Exxon to exchange actual product - oil for nothing (counterfeit currency), do you expect Exxon to continue oil production?
Why?
Of-course this will not happen, because the dollars are going to be completely worthless and the government would want PRODUCTS coming their way, so they WILL NOT do this, they will likely TAX Exxon more (IF they can, I am not sure they will be able to tax them more than they are taxing them now), but it's basically fascist economy at that point.
Fascism is about allowing private interests to produce but heavily taxing their work to subsidize government spending.
it's not going to be sold to anyone besides Americans.
- why would anybody WORK for worthless money? You won't get anything from Exxon at all in this sort of a deal, Exxon would just shift operations and would not sell you anything, because it won't produce anything under that kind of a regime, because the money that you offer doesn't buy anything.
they'd be nationalized in 3 hours
- confiscation of tools? Confiscation of their tools of labor? Well, of-course, then it's not just fascism, then it's basically Marxism/Communism. You will confiscate the tools of labor from a company and you think you'd have real production.
Of-course this has been done before, it failed miserably - USSR.
because the true value of the US dollar lies with its nearly infinite liquidity and network effects. Simply put, the dollar has value as currency because everyone else has vaults full of dollars to use as currency.
- oh god. Zimbabwe dollars. Somebody had houses full of this stuff. Surely, it must be very valuable? Soviet rubbles? Couldn't buy anything for them even if you had barges full of them.
forget what they taught you in high school, here is a lesson:
when Buffet complains about his taxes being 15%, he conveniently forgets to mention that his company is taxed 35% first, which is all his money, he is the largest shareholder, that's the money he didn't receive in dividends. So he is taxed at 35%, and then again at 15%.
Companies don't pay taxes, all taxes are paid by people.
Of-course this has nothing to do with lifestyle, but has everything to do with cutting into investments. Any amount of money a rich person isn't spending on himself goes to the improvement of the economy, because that's the money invested.
The only time money is benefiting the rich him/herself is when they actually spend it.
The entire idea of taxing income needs to be abolished (as well as all of the government spending associated with it.)
what we all know is that when Obama says: decrease in spending, the actual reality this means increase in taxes, and when he says: decrease taxes, he actually means increase spending.
random thoughts after listening to Obama's latest idiotic speech:
Also ending temporary spending measures, like "bringing troops home" is not a spending cut, unless the troops were supposed to be there forever in a permanent war.
Another 'spending cut' Obama says will come from reduced interest rates. Too bad the emergency low rates of today are not going to stay this low forever. Political BS.
Obama says: people who have done extraordinary well must do more... they are ALREADY doing more than anybody else. They are creating the wealth of the society.
Obama proposes more taxes: this means the burden is going to be shifted disproportionately onto the rich, not the poor.
Relying on poor and middle class is done by cutting spending, and Obama says he won't cut spending.
Middle class won't be better off when gov't recycles money from others to them, it destroys investment and destroys economy in the long run.
Those trucks, that Mr. Millionaire is running, they are bringing something to the stores, right? So if there were no stores and no trucks, you'd have to drive from manufacturer to manufacturer to do your daily shopping, right?
So who is getting a better deal and who is creating more efficiencies and who is allowing the road to be used much less, since there is none of this manufacturer to manufacturer driving?
Hmmmm. Mr. Millionaire really needs you much less than you need him.
Good luck here,/. has been hijacked by basically what amounts to a league of Marxist followers. They want everything, they want to pay for nothing. They want companies to pay all the taxes, they want "poor" to produce nothing and yet to be fed and clothed by someone.
Big Oil pays more taxes than any other industry obviously, and the liberals here would have you believe that Big Oil just came and stole their SS check.
Well, AFAIC there should be no income taxes at all, no SS checks, no wars, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no corporate welfare, no gov't propped monopolies or bail outs.
But you wont' find support here. Vote Ron Paul, that's the only way.
Primaries - that's where it matters. If he takes primaries, then it's almost a done deal (of-course they'll try assassination).
Nope, that happened on FDA's watch, so what did FDA do about that exactly?
AFAIC nothing. Just like SEC does nothing stopping the real investments disasters - Federal reserve destroying the money supply.
As to antifreeze - that's where private industry would provide much more support to consumers than any gov't agency could, because there would have been more competition in the field, and nobody is interested in killing their customers. The system that did kill these kids is the current system.
It's a good question - that's part of the problem. The richest of the rich who are criminals, in this case quite a number of bankers and politicians involved in the economic destruction.
Of-course if this does happen, people won't stop there, they'll have thirst for blood and will just attack anybody with any resources, so it may be a road to hell. Again, in case of Russia it lead to a terrible and prolonged civil war. Eventually they came just after the farmers, who had anything left. 30,000,000 people died in Ukraine from famine because of this.
-- What I am talking about is fixing the Constitution and getting government out of business. But gov't is necessary to protect borders and provide criminal and contract law protection as well as that of individual liberties and freedoms.
But this can be done at 1% of the current gov't cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't need any laws that are specific. Once you have a law making it illegal to kill somebody, it's good enough.
It's like those stupid laws that they add about driving and not switching your radio or talking on the phone. There are ALREADY laws that make it illegal to drive carelessly and obviously if you cause an accident that's all that matters. Same principle, and I am not sure who I am arguing with here, but it's not very useful.
the good thing about a private ponzi scam is that one can EXIT, take the losses and leave.
There is no difference between the way SS or any other ponzi scam is financed, but there is a difference that in case of government, even if you KNOW it's a scam, you can't get out.
(but the kids that are growing up now, they'll get nothing out of SS but will be paying through the nose in this employment market, they should just exist for real - leave USA and move somewhere else.)
T-Bill? Short term? You do mean a bond, right?
Anyway, writing yourself a check for a million dollars does not make you a millionaire, because it's an asset AND a liability at the same time.
By the way, /. broke URL links.
GOOD JOB, IDIOTS.
------
SS is a ponzi scheme, it's financed not by any fund but it relies on current payers to pay to current beneficiaries, and the future beneficiaries have to rely on future payers.
Do you know what Reagan and Tip O'Neill actually did?
In 1984 the payroll tax was raised from 10.8 to 11.4% and kept creeping up. They increased the amount of income subject to tax from 32400USD to 37800USD in one year (16.6%). So SS was raised in total by over 20% in one year. Also SS was originally (in 40s and 50s) paid by employees, not by self employed. However self employed didn't have to pay employer payroll portion of the tax. In 1983 they started collecting the "employer" payroll portion of the tax, so the SS tax went up from 6.8% to 14% 106% increase in one year. This + the SS tax increase of 16.6% described above, the effective rate of tax increase on self employed individuals was 140% tax hike in one year, and kept getting worse.
Reagan also imposed income taxes on SS benefits for higher earning individuals, which is means testing and reduction in benefits.
Reagan basically cut SS benefits for higher income people by applying income tax to SS benefits, while increasing taxes on higher income people by 140%.
When Romney says he'll keep SS around, what he means he'll have to raise taxes. However Obama came out with payroll tax cut, and he's likely to cut payroll taxes further.
I wonder what Obama thinks he is doing with SS? From my POV of-course SS is theft pure and simple.
SS is a ponzi scam by definition of payment transfers and not having a fund, but it was also based on a lie, to make it LOOK like there was a fund by pretending that high income earners wouldn't have to participate (and they didn't have to participate at first.) As all ponzi scams go, over time it became more and more difficult to cover the benefits, so they increased taxes from 2% to now 12%.
----
Unfortunately /. links are broken, so here is the point again as stated in another comment:
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers. [wikipedia.org] - the gov't argued that SS payments are not earmarked, not actually going to be used for any purpose, but are only collected under general taxation powers of Congress.
Of-course the judge in the Supreme Court was very lazy, he didn't care (*was complicit*) and wrote this:
The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103. [cornell.edu]
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
The entire point of the court was to figure out whether SS taxes were Constitutional or not, and the judge said: I don't care, I'll leave the question open!
SS is absolutely clearly NOT SHOWN TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL in this judgment. At the very minimum it's a "maybe", but it's definitely not a "YES", which is what SCOTUS is SUPPOSED to show.
Let's start from the fact that it does NOT matter, whether there is lying about where the money goes or not. So, just in itself, lying is not necessary to have a ponzi scheme. In fact people who get into a ponzi scheme early on, may easily be aware of it, but they will likely benefit, so they don't care.
Secondly, gov't certainly lies about SS, lied about it from the start. Pretended that SS is an insurance system, even didn't start the payouts for 2 years after the program was started. All to pretend there is some fund. Of-course it was never a fund, and it's an easy to show fact:
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers. - the gov't argued that SS payments are not earmarked, not actually going to be used for any purpose, but are only collected under general taxation powers of Congress.
Of-course the judge in the Supreme Court was very lazy, he didn't care (*was complicit*) and wrote this: The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103.
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
The entire point of the court was to figure out whether SS taxes were Constitutional or not, and the judge said: I don't care, I'll leave the question open!
SS is absolutely clearly NOT SHOWN TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL in this judgment. At the very minimum it's a "maybe", but it's definitely not a "YES", which is what SCOTUS is SUPPOSED to show.
The only difference between a private and a government ran ponzi scam is that you can't GET OUT of a government ran ponzi scam, so that's the ONLY thing that keeps it alive once people recognize it what it is.
Try this: make it optional. Allow people to just opt out. How many, do you think, would take that offer immediately to stop paying the 12%? (12%, which will grow, it must, Reagan did it to keep the scam going.)
no shit.
They should really get Bernie out of jail, he belongs in either the Fed or SS/Medicare board of trustees.
SS is a ponzi scam by definition - current beneficiaries are getting paid by current workers, and current workers are hoping to get paid by future workers. SS doesn't have any books, all of the funds are fake, they are moving fungible money back and forward.
I am sure you will totally agree.
Feds?
Maybe they should look into social security, medicare, Federal reserve and the entire government system first?
But they would certainly know it if they saw it.
If these workers are on the clock, then the employers are getting shafted.
The way to fix it is to have performance based pay. Here is a piece of work: do this work and you get this pay.
That's the way I am outsourcing some of the work nowadays, so it doesn't matter how many hours are spent working or watching porn (as your metered TV apparently shows now.)
I am contemplating something too. To make Opera my default, it's not right now, but I use them at the same time here, why do I even do it anymore? AdBlock Plus and my extensions..... I need to figure out how to port extensions to Opera and just move
I understand you are trolling, so your sig says, but for how long can you keep it up?
--
Long-term, sure. But there are costs associated with moving,
Looking at the list of current plants and plants closed in USA, the numbers of workers for just the Ford company is revealing that the long-term is here now.
The babies line was about the absurdity of your position
- why is my position absurd? I never talked about babies, I am talking about unemployment in USA, which is nominally over 9%, but in reality is over 20%.
A minimum-wage job is not a worthwhile use of anyone's time
? No? Really?
What if you are unemployed?
What if you have over 20% unemployment?
What if you have underproduction?
What if you have huge debts and are printing fiat to support the debt based consumption?
What if your kids are in colleges, getting worthless degrees, while without minimum wage laws at all, they could be hired for nominal fees and actually become apprentices, and learn at work to do something useful and then in 4 years, while other kids get their BSc in Sociology, these kids would have 4 years of work experience and NO mortgage without a house?
What if you don't produce anything and have 90% of your sea food imported from elsewhere?
What if your money is quickly becoming worse than toilet paper, because you can't really use it for that, it's too dirty?
What if China will STOP subsidizing you (and it eventually will)?
So wait, is the money worthless or isn't it?
- USD is worthless for the Chinese, they can't buy anything for it, so they buy your debt, which means they are buying your FUTURE with worthless paper you give them.
Debt is deferred taxation, do you understand the concept? It means taxes that must be paid later. But who is going to pay that? I don't even think Chinese will get anything back (anything useful), even from your future generations, because your future generations will wake up and LEAVE. And WHO is going to give you anything when you are old? You think you'll have your SS check? Sure, the gov't will print it, but it won't be coming out of production and it won't buy anything.
If he's not cycling his profits through Ireland and paying less than 10% at the c
- maybe he isn't paying the taxes by using all the tricks available in accounting, then he shouldn't be in a position to preach about taxes, should he?
In any case, giving any money to government is destructive to the US economy in the long run. There is no difference if the money is coming from China or taxes, at this point it worsens the situation by causing greater debt, and this explodes the Keynesian heads in government, now they believe they have no choice but to keep interest at 0%, which PREVENTS the economy from restructuring, they print more money, and this worsens the situation.
This is a vicious cycle, that can only be interrupted by categorically denying any new money to the government.
Again, which is it? If the money is worthless then surely it makes no difference how it is distributed.
- printed currency is worthless. Printing currency makes it worthless. EARNED money is CAPITAL savings. Capital savings can be invested, organized with other resources - land and labor, to produce new value. Government confiscating earned money is surely destroying the wealth, because that's the money that is actually was produced for, earned, and it could be invested with by the people who earned it.
Of-course in today's USA there are too many people who got their millions from government itself,
No, it's not free market if there is FDA and government money in health care/insurance, which makes it impossible to compete with established monopolies.
Get the government money out of business, out of medical insurance, out of medical care, out of pharma, get rid of FDA and do one thing - enforce criminal and contract laws.
That's all there is to it. Enforce the laws that already make it ILLEGAL TO KILL people, regardless of how and why the people are killed.
Is that beyond the ability of government in your mind to do this? What it really is, it's unwillingness to admit that the system is corrupt and it's on the wrong track completely. That the entire idea of government dictating to free people how to live their lives, how to invest their money, how to spend their money, the idea of taxing work, the idea of setting cost of borrowing (interest rates), enforcing a fiat currency and printing the currency away while making it impossible to compete in money for private businesses, this idea is bankrupt. The entire idea is a failure. It's 100 years of complete and total failure, which needs to be erased and reworked.
I'm talking things like factories running below capacity because it would be a waste of money to hire the workers
- you won't find much of that in USA today, the tools do not stay idle. They are either sold or they are moved to other places (like Mexico, where a number of car makers moved their factories to).
Factory floors require rental payments/tax payments, if you are in a business of making money, then you won't be paying without producing something. What you do is, you quickly shift production somewhere else, move the tools, move your investment.
So you'd never feed a baby?
- I don't see babies, I see people who want to continue getting their SS or EI or whatever other gov't checks and they won't go and get a job that pays the same as EI pays, because why do that? It makes no sense.
These are the same people, who will vote to continue this nonsense in the future, by likely voting Democrat or Republican, but not for real liberties. Most of them won't vote for a libertarian like Ron Paul. I don't support these people. They are getting what they are voting for.
But you know who HAS been supporting these people, you call "babies"? Those who still pay taxes AND the foreigners who are accumulating worthless US debt. They need to understand that it's not "babies" they are subsidizing. These are grown individuals, who are happy as a voting block to live on hand outs and not have to produce anything.
But if all of them have no money, each of them buys less, and as a result none of them can sell their full production capability
- money is not the question. It's not about liquidity, or Zimbabwe would have been the wealthiest, healthiest economy in the world.
It's about production. The people who do not produce cannot consume, that's all there is to it.
That's a fair question to ask the Chinese. But we're the guys who are getting the car engines and giving them pieces of paper, so why wouldn't we keep doing that as long as we can?
- sure, you can go ahead and do that. Of-course this means you are forgoing a healthy economy and you are just voting for more subsidies and debt spending.
Eventually the reality will catch up, but by the time it catches up, you will have nothing to work with at all and will have to have a giant repossession, a giant garage sale, selling your things back to other nations to get some food and tools to start some production.
You'll have to open your borders to foreign national companies to mine your natural resources, because you won't have the capital/tools to do so yourself. You'll be paying with terrible standard of living in the future by spending now and not producing. BUT you are right - you are selling your future to the Chinese, they are buying it for worthless money. Enjoy it.
Nope, it's because domestic companies either can't supply what people want, or are uncompetitive.
- that's what I said:
there is enough demand, but there is no production.
- it's exactly what I said.
I mean progressive taxation,
- you already have it. People with high pay, pay most of the taxes. Warren Buffet is an old liar when he says he pays less than his secretary.
His company pays 35% federal corporate income tax, that's HIS money, he is the largest shareholder. He pays (X-0.35*X) - 0.15(X-0.35*X), so about 44.5%.
Half of the population in USA aren't paying any federal income taxes.
wealth redistribution
- you CANNOT redistribute wealth. By "redistributing" money via taxes, you are only redistributing MONEY, but wealth is PRODUCTION CAPACITY. It's funny how simple misunderstanding of nomenclature makes such a huge difference. You CAN destroy wealth by taking away all of the investment capital and obviously you will cause more capital flight
what you need is an electron microscope and a few bottles of Tequila. In reality you don't need the microscope of-course, Tequila is enough.
First kindergartens, now government.
I can see it:
-Johnson.
-Yes sir.
-I need that top-secret report on my desk now, Johnson.
-Yes sir, right away sir.
Brings an iPad.
-Johnson. Reduct these, these and these words out of it and send it to the newspapers.
-Yes sir.
Later in Rupert Murdoch controlled News of the World latest reincarnation:
-I just received this in the mail. It's an entire iPad. I don't know why they have white out all over the screen, but let me wash that right off.
US could truly print its way out of debt
- it's what the Fed is doing now, that's how you'll have dollar hyper inflation eventually.
the most abundant natural resources on planet
- without actual money (and destroyed dollar is not money), USA has no capital to organize tools/labor (which are necessary to extract the resources to sell).
This is by the way what will end up happening - USA will open its borders to foreign companies, who will come in and start extracting natural resources in exchange for real money, which USA will have to save and spend on products/tools/machines/food that it will have to buy from producing nations.
US has a gigantic domestic market
- no it does not.
In order for 2 people to trade, they have to exchange products. Not just fiat paper, they must be able to satisfy each other's demand for products.
Countries trade for comparative advantage, so do people, that's what money is - a value store, a way to exchange products by proxy and a way to keep score (unit of account).
US consumer is now vendor financed and is also debt financed with all the counterfeit dollars, but US consumer is not producing anything worth exchanging for, thus US consumer is not a legitimate consumer, because US consumer is not also a producer.
If I make tools and the other guy makes food, we can exchange food for tools and do the exchange in money. But if money is counterfeit paper, and I am not going to get anything for them, once I sell the tools, because the other stopped making food, then I don't want to give him the tools. It would be better for me to find somebody else who makes food to exchange with.
So there is no real market inside US. There is a huge demand, as all the vendor financed consumption and 53Billion USD/month trade deficits shows, but no real economy worth exchanging with.
If Congress, the Senate, and the President decide that Exxon isn't going to be allowed to sell its Alaskan & CONUS oil to anybody besides Americans.
- so by forcing Exxon to exchange actual product - oil for nothing (counterfeit currency), do you expect Exxon to continue oil production?
Why?
Of-course this will not happen, because the dollars are going to be completely worthless and the government would want PRODUCTS coming their way, so they WILL NOT do this, they will likely TAX Exxon more (IF they can, I am not sure they will be able to tax them more than they are taxing them now), but it's basically fascist economy at that point.
Fascism is about allowing private interests to produce but heavily taxing their work to subsidize government spending.
it's not going to be sold to anyone besides Americans.
- why would anybody WORK for worthless money? You won't get anything from Exxon at all in this sort of a deal, Exxon would just shift operations and would not sell you anything, because it won't produce anything under that kind of a regime, because the money that you offer doesn't buy anything.
they'd be nationalized in 3 hours
- confiscation of tools? Confiscation of their tools of labor? Well, of-course, then it's not just fascism, then it's basically Marxism/Communism. You will confiscate the tools of labor from a company and you think you'd have real production.
Of-course this has been done before, it failed miserably - USSR.
because the true value of the US dollar lies with its nearly infinite liquidity and network effects. Simply put, the dollar has value as currency because everyone else has vaults full of dollars to use as currency.
- oh god. Zimbabwe dollars. Somebody had houses full of this stuff. Surely, it must be very valuable? Soviet rubbles? Couldn't buy anything for them even if you had barges full of them.
somewhere just to exchange your dollars
That was the very private industry you claimed would never do that. It DID do that - nope. I didn't say just 'private'.
I said FREE MARKET, which means market free of government intervention and which means market that provides competition.
As to killing people - there is already criminal law against killing people, even if it's done by negligence, the law would still apply.
because of postgresql?
businesses don't pay taxes - individuals pay taxes.
forget what they taught you in high school, here is a lesson:
when Buffet complains about his taxes being 15%, he conveniently forgets to mention that his company is taxed 35% first, which is all his money, he is the largest shareholder, that's the money he didn't receive in dividends. So he is taxed at 35%, and then again at 15%.
Companies don't pay taxes, all taxes are paid by people.
Of-course this has nothing to do with lifestyle, but has everything to do with cutting into investments. Any amount of money a rich person isn't spending on himself goes to the improvement of the economy, because that's the money invested.
The only time money is benefiting the rich him/herself is when they actually spend it.
The entire idea of taxing income needs to be abolished (as well as all of the government spending associated with it.)
what we all know is that when Obama says: decrease in spending, the actual reality this means increase in taxes, and when he says: decrease taxes, he actually means increase spending.
random thoughts after listening to Obama's latest idiotic speech:
Also ending temporary spending measures, like "bringing troops home" is not a spending cut, unless the troops were supposed to be there forever in a permanent war.
Another 'spending cut' Obama says will come from reduced interest rates. Too bad the emergency low rates of today are not going to stay this low forever. Political BS.
Obama says: people who have done extraordinary well must do more... they are ALREADY doing more than anybody else. They are creating the wealth of the society.
Obama proposes more taxes: this means the burden is going to be shifted disproportionately onto the rich, not the poor.
Relying on poor and middle class is done by cutting spending, and Obama says he won't cut spending.
Middle class won't be better off when gov't recycles money from others to them, it destroys investment and destroys economy in the long run.
Those trucks, that Mr. Millionaire is running, they are bringing something to the stores, right? So if there were no stores and no trucks, you'd have to drive from manufacturer to manufacturer to do your daily shopping, right?
So who is getting a better deal and who is creating more efficiencies and who is allowing the road to be used much less, since there is none of this manufacturer to manufacturer driving?
Hmmmm. Mr. Millionaire really needs you much less than you need him.
Good luck here, /. has been hijacked by basically what amounts to a league of Marxist followers. They want everything, they want to pay for nothing. They want companies to pay all the taxes, they want "poor" to produce nothing and yet to be fed and clothed by someone.
Big Oil pays more taxes than any other industry obviously, and the liberals here would have you believe that Big Oil just came and stole their SS check.
Well, AFAIC there should be no income taxes at all, no SS checks, no wars, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no corporate welfare, no gov't propped monopolies or bail outs.
But you wont' find support here. Vote Ron Paul, that's the only way.
Primaries - that's where it matters. If he takes primaries, then it's almost a done deal (of-course they'll try assassination).
Nope, that happened on FDA's watch, so what did FDA do about that exactly?
AFAIC nothing. Just like SEC does nothing stopping the real investments disasters - Federal reserve destroying the money supply.
As to antifreeze - that's where private industry would provide much more support to consumers than any gov't agency could, because there would have been more competition in the field, and nobody is interested in killing their customers. The system that did kill these kids is the current system.
It's a good question - that's part of the problem. The richest of the rich who are criminals, in this case quite a number of bankers and politicians involved in the economic destruction.
Of-course if this does happen, people won't stop there, they'll have thirst for blood and will just attack anybody with any resources, so it may be a road to hell. Again, in case of Russia it lead to a terrible and prolonged civil war. Eventually they came just after the farmers, who had anything left. 30,000,000 people died in Ukraine from famine because of this.
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What I am talking about is fixing the Constitution and getting government out of business. But gov't is necessary to protect borders and provide criminal and contract law protection as well as that of individual liberties and freedoms.
But this can be done at 1% of the current gov't cost.