No, it's not. It hasn't been for fifty years. You may not like the fact that it's not, but it doesn't change the fact.
- 40 years actually. It's just a bit over 40 years.
But that's what I said!
Federal reserve NOTE is an IOU. It used to be an IOU, that's what the definition of the word NOTE is.
No, they won't give you anything for it (though the "official" rate is 42 USD/troy ounce of very pure gold). They won't give you that stuff, that's exactly why when they print any more USD they counterfeit money.
Gold is money. USD is currency.
Those are 2 different things. Currency - notes that promise to pay money. Once the notes are invalid (will not be fulfilled), any newly printed currency is counterfeit.
US has defaulted on the promise to fulfill its obligations to pay gold for Federal reserve notes, that's when the value of printed USD became nothing and the rating of the debt became junk.
It's just US has a lot going for it, especially the fact that USD is still used as the reserve. But it's a false reserve, it has no value, so anybody buying US debt and/or holding US dollars is in trouble.
We are talking about government politicians, so what do you mean "people would just stop"? It's about kick backs, not about some silly notions of what's right or wrong in the market.
Besides, government love monopolies, they create, protect and nurture them and then bail them out when things go sour. It's because monopolies have extra cash to throw around, and who do you think gets that cash thrown onto?
When sovereign debt gets downgraded for a country that PRINTS its own currency (and in this case for a country that prints reserve currency), what is really downgraded is not the ability to PRINT money to give back whatever nominal interest and even principal.
What is downgraded is the very fact that the government of the country CAN print money and thus monetize the debt thus destroying the value of currency.
It may be subtle for you to understand, but that's what it is.
It also means that the entire country is downgraded, because national debt is the REFERENCE debt, all other debts of the States, cities, businesses and people in that country now MUST be downgraded, because the government can always tax anything, confiscate any asset from anybody in the country - business, state or individual, to pay back the debts/interest.
All of the US ratings are now absolutely below the AA+, there is no way to escape that little fact.
Also it makes no sense that the downgrade took US rating only to AA+ and not to junk, based on the fact that USA will print its currency to junk to "pay back" the nominal debt value.
Also it makes no sense that ratings of other countries, who hold large amounts of US debt are lower than US rating (even now). After all, before Japan or China or Germany can default, USA MUST default, because those countries hold Trillions of USD in T-bills or just currency.
I guess it's really unbelievable that so much open/free source software is out there. From really free software, like OpenBSD, to restricted license but Free source software, such as GNU/Linux or Apache. I guess those things don't actually exist? PostgreSQL - figment of my imagination, nothing else. I dreamt it, it doesn't exist.
No, I see your point, but when we talk about say MS vs GNU/Linux installations that were discussed a bit earlier on/. yesterday. When Bill Gates comes over to Tunisia it stops being about the project, it becomes purely about how large the bribe will be (which is actually illegal in USA under FCPA)
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash - it's selling 'forever stamps' today, and assuming it doesn't just dissolve over the next few years, it won't be able to make any money at that time and it will be in a worse fiscal shape than it is today, because the stamps sold today are basically protection against the 10% (current level) of monetary inflation that US Fed and Treasury are incurring on US population. Today the postal office cannot function already and they sell the forever stamps, tomorrow, they'll have to raise the prices but people will use those forever stamps and the postal office will either have to default on that stamp or dissolve, or there will be another bail out, and people use that as one of 'better' examples of government 'efficiency'.
Then people say things back to me thatmake no sense about how USPS is not or used to not have problems. Well yes, as long as there is a way to print more money the gov't will keep subsidizing these money losing programs, like military and wars, USPS, SS, Medicare, bank bail outs, stimulus programs, anything that is subsidized by government borrowing, printing and spending can go on for a while until the currency is destroyed.
The S&P downgrade was not just downgrading US debt risk, it was downgrading US CURRENCY.
Do you know what a USD is? Ben Bernanke does not. He believes a dollar is what it buys, though in USA the dollar has precise meaning (certain weight in gold or silver).
USD is a federal reserve note. Do you know what a "note" means? Note means an IOU. It's a promise note to give you gold or silver for your currency. But since 40 years ago when Nixon decided to default on the dollar (they did it a few times in history of USA, defaulted I mean), the IOU stopped being a promise note. It's not a promise by the Federal reserve bank to give you anything for that piece of paper/cotton/computer record.
Since the Federal reserve promises to give you nothing, that IOU is worthless, that is what S&P downgraded. They should have downgraded it to JUNK, because that's what US federal reserve note promises to you - nothing.
Because USD is a note, which now gives you nothing, it's worth 0, and this means that anything that the Fed buys is actually STOLEN by the Federal reserve. That's right, any asset they buy (and gov't "economists" are now suggesting that the Fed just buys out any assets - houses, businesses, etc), this means that Fed is completely openly STEALING those assets.
The US T-bills that are bought by the Fed, what do you think this does? This means that nobody else wants them, so Fed monetizes the debt and thus inflating the value of whatever USD denominated assets you have.
The USPS is suffering because it does not generate any revenue that is real. It's subsidized, and it was selling so called "forever stamps", and people were buying them, thinking that they would be able to USE those forever stamps in the future, thus protecting themselves from inflation, because stamps
Who says about abolishing farming in Germany (or France, etc.)? I am talking about subsidies that the businesses are getting from tax payers to keep producing overpriced products, which is basically a bail out, a perpetual stimulus to keep those people occupied in that industry. When you say: "everything costs more when made here but that's only cost to the consumer" - duh. Consumer is the market. Individuals are forced to pay for overpriced products because of the way the tax policy is set up, so instead of allowing the prices to fall by allowing the most efficient allocation of land, labor and capital, you have now a system, that forces prices to be higher while simultaneously creating an artificial imbalance of trade, which does not help the world in the long run and eventually will cause a depression in Germany just as well, as capital will leave (and it is leaving), to places with fewer controls.
Government grip on economy forces capital flight, creates monopolies and destroys competition, while causing this, "insignificant" from your point of view action of causing higher prices to end consumers.
So from your POV, having consumers overpay for products they want is insignificant somehow? And that's coming from somebody in a country, that overtaxes the workers to provide insane amounts of welfare to all sorts of people who are not working, because why work? You get almost the same amount of money from welfare as you'd get working in a low paying job, and you'll have to do actual work. And German tax payers are now in a position of having to bail out banks all over Europe, because bankers and government are basically one and the same, so any loss to a banker must be immediately absorbed by the tax payers, and in case of Europe, the tax payers are mostly in Germany (and France), but seriously, I am happy when I am in Switzerland, though that country also subsidizes food production, at least they are not subsidizing an entire continent with tax payer money.
Who do you think suffers from higher food costs, by the way? The rich? ?
Well, I am HERE in Germany right now, though I don't spend all of my time here and I disagree with you. Only government workers in Germany believe what you believe, I haven't heard anybody who is not a government worker espouse these ideas.
I move around plenty. Germany is doing this very extensively. It also uses taxes/printing/borrowing to subsidize various industries and consumer goods, there are people crossing the border to Germany from Italy to buy pasta, which was produced in Italy and bought up by Germany and subsidized to the point where it's cheaper for Italians to come to Germany to buy it.
There are laws here that make it impossible to sell food on global market, there are various special taxes making it extremely expensive to move food from one location to another, so local farmers are subsidized, which causes massive resource mis-allocation and I observed this entire ideology back in USA and Canada as well, where food is subsidized and this causes it to be much more expensive, because places where it could be grown cheaper (like Africa) are put out of business by these subsidies.
Germany should know better, but it clearly doesn't remember its own history even though it's still paying for it.
The economic sanctions imposed by the French and British against Germany, the entire 'reparations' idea basically caused so much harm to Germany economy, that it became politically weak and allowed we know who to come to power and thus WWII became inevitable.
Any trade restrictions are similar to such sanctions. This kinds of stuff leads to wars. OK, nobody is going to a war just because of some computer being denied sales but the important thing is the trend. If Germany keeps doing this shit - basically preventing trade from taking place and thus causing harm to all parties involved - the consumers and the producers, eventually this will result in a war. It won't be because of computers, but it may just well be because of food, energy, water sale restrictions, and this here sets more and more precedents for such sanctions.
Wars are always about economics, it's always about making somebody too poor while somebody else gaining from it, and eventually these imbalances result in some form of armed conflict.
It's ridiculous how a government court helps to destroy competition, government system is set up to create monopolies via all these "intellectual property" laws, and how at the end the CONSUMERS suffer due to fewer choices and higher prices.
When the revolt takes place against the banking system, it should also take upon the government destroying free market system. This does not help anybody but Apple in this case, and who cares? The consumers suffer, Apple should not even be on the radar of thinking for these so called 'socialist governments'.
Many things used to be legal. Ghandi was protesting salt tax and spend years in jail for it. You'd rather have Ghandi move somewhere else and not bother I take it?
USA did try the approach in government when it was not taxing income and was not regulating businesses, was not subsidizing businesses. It worked amazingly well, as USA became the world's largest inventor and producer of cheap manufacturing goods and became world's largest creditor nation.
Then the politicians and some bankers figured out how to crack the system and set up the IRS to collect income taxes, the Fed to counterfeit money and all the various unelected departments to control/subsidize businesses and created monopolies and destroyed competition, all while selling this idea to middle class by buying their vote with "free" money, which eventually backfired and turned the middle class into poor by destroying USA economy and now currency.
THIS doesn't work. This inflation and taxation an regulations screw up the poor. The rich people who are in government have enormous leverage against everybody else and you are the one who is refusing to listen to this fact.
But what's ridiculous is that the message is being treated with contempt without understanding it at all.
Problem is that what market needs is often not what the people need.
- markets are individuals. I am NOT talking about the stock market or any such nonsense that has nothing to do with reality and lives in a government spiked bubble. I am talking about line ups for Apple's products, I am talking about people paying for gas every day, and very few electric vehicles on the roads, I am talking about people producing what others are buying, etc.
BS. None of those guys were born with anything more than anybody else.
But that's NOT the point here, the piece of shit troll "hazel" is trolling that everybody who has made it sells their principles and buys into government, which is the exact opposite with these guys.
The other trolling of his is that my perception of successful people is that they got their wealth by immoral means. Now that's a troll.
So your comment is off-topic, as it has nothing to do with the questions here.
...One of Wall Streetâ(TM)s giant investment banks had gone bankrupt, and the remaining three were poised to follow. A.I.G., the worldâ(TM)s most famous insurer, was at deathâ(TM)s door.
Many of our largest industrial companies, dependent on commercial paper financing that had disappeared, were weeks away from exhausting their cash resources. Indeed, all of corporate Americaâ(TM)s dominoes were lined up, ready to topple at lightning speed. My own company, Berkshire Hathaway, might have been the last to fall, but that distinction provided little solace.
then he thanks them
Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic â" and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective....
then he thanks them a bit more
So, again, Uncle Sam, thanks to you and your aides. Often you are wasteful, and sometimes you are bullying. On occasion, you are downright maddening. But in this extraordinary emergency, you came through â" and the world would look far different now if you had not.
Your grateful nephew,
Warren
Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.
Today Buffet is again 'investing' into the banks, the people don't understand that his investments are preferred stock, not common stock, so he gets 10% dividends paid before anybody else gets their 1% (and it will have to be cut, so that Buffet can get paid.)
As Buffet gets paid, his companies get bailed out, the people who are on the hook for it are foreign creditors and eventually US taxpayers, and eventually just all US citizens.
As Buffet gets paid on one hand, he talks about raising income taxes on 'the rich', without getting into too much detail on how he personally benefits from these taxes, especially the estate tax, as his company liquidates companies at whole sale prices when cash must be raised to pay the death tax (which is theft, obviously, who here thinks that in a family anybody who uses money that they didn't earn directly must pay income taxes on it in the money pool? If your kid or your S.O. buys something with money you earned, or you buy something with money they earned, shouldn't you be forced to pay income taxes by this logic?)
--
So, Hazel whatever, when you talk about how "libertarian is not good enough in his own eyes", why don't you put a stick through your own eye?
Anyone he regards as successful must therefore have got there through immoral means.
- what a bunch of BS. Absolute non-sequitur and putting words into my mouth that I have never in my life spouted.
YOU ARE A TROLL, never mind what the moderation says.
but don't abide by a sophomoric list of principles
Fucking BS as well. You have just said that Peter Schiff, Mark Faber, Jim Rogers and similar guys have no principles? They are rich, but they are rich on their own feet, not because of government, but always despite it.
So I have just two words: fuck you. Nothing else for you.
It's hard for me to leave anymore comments here under my name, everything is moderated down as a 'troll', people don't like the message, so they think I am trolling them, so there is a limit on number of comments I can leave and I do need to call it a night, it is night where I am.
However you are missing the forest for the trees. As government is providing any specific company or a number of companies in any specific industry with money and promises these companies that it will bring in customers via regulations and such, it is creating a monopoly or maybe an oligopoly, but what is hilarious about this case is that this company, with HALF A BILLION dollars of credit from US gov't and promise of customers has failed anyway.
I find it to be extremely hilarious and telling. Of-course in reality the gov't isn't interested in this alternative energy at all, OIL is where all the action is - that's the stuff that gets most gov't money, with wars, liability caps for deep water drilling, etc.etc.
When your only alternatives are two companies charging the same overinflated rates, how is that a free market?
- Free Market by DEFINITION is what you have when there is no government involvement into it.
By definition.
As long as market is allowed to operate enough time without government involvement the market will find the correct prices, will find the right quality.
Of-course you have government printing free money, bailing out companies, buying out private debt, forcing investors to lose money (GM and shareholders, inflation,etc.)
There is no free market as long as government is allowed to destroy the market by regulations, taxes and subsidies, and especially as long as using a competing currency (gold/silver) is impossible due to special taxation provisions, which treat these Constitutional money as if it's just a commodity, while printing the fiat into the eventual hyper inflation.
The subsidies to the companies, the government franchises, the so called public utilities that are just government monopolies, all of this destroys competition.
Thinking that any government action, even if it is superficially directed at breaking larger entities into smaller ones makes sense is against free market, not for it. If these companies form a more efficient entity and start more competition by providing LOWER prices, and Sprint and others are forced to LOWER their prices, then you are complaining that this is putting Sprint out of business.
If they are charging whatever they are charging today for SMS, etc., you are complaining that their charges are TOO HIGH?
So you believe that the prices must go down, but you believe that prices going down will hurt companies and competition?
And people are moderating all of my comments in this thread as 'troll'?
If you believe that the companies are overcharging for SMS, then you should be FOR competition, so if AT&T merges with T-Mobile, then to survive others would have to LOWER PRICES. So where would be the FIRST place to lower prices?
It's going to be where it does not COST anything to lower prices, so Spring just may lower SMS prices, and this would force others (including AT&T) to do the same, and you are arguing AGAINST lowering prices while complaining about high prices?
I am tired. I believe this site has gone insane, with everybody on it. Good night.
How the hell do you figure that this is primarily related to pro-union legislation?
- where did I say that? What else did you read into my comment that was not there?
they want to prevent less actual competition in a market (read, a less "free" market). If AT&T absorbed T-Mobile it would basically be the death of Sprint.
- the market was going to decide what was going to happen to Sprint and AT&T and T-Mobile. Instead the government decided.
Given how government handles any decisions related to economics (and I gave a good example in my comment, about the alternative energy fiasco), why do you trust the government to make any economic decisions?
If AT&T and T-Mobile merged, and Sprint suffered, that would have been the decision of the buyers, if they decided to switch to AT&T/T-Mobile. Because what you just said was this:
"If the merger is allowed, another company would get hurt". HOW? By LOWER PRICES FROM AT&T and T-MOBILE MERGED TOGETHER?
Isn't THAT what the market WANTS (people, individuals)? LOWER PRICES? Are you saying that if AT&T and T-Mobile were able to merge and to use their economy of scale to provide better/cheaper service then Sprint would have suffered, SO WHAT?
SO WHAT IF SPRINT SUFFERED?
Market is NOT about companies, but that's what government makes it out to be, when they prevent mergers based on the idea that another company "would suffer".
It's about customers, if customers saw a better deal from AT&T and T-Mobile merged company and switched from Sprint, this would have created COMPETITION FFS.
What an idiotic idea from everybody on this stupid fucking site, from commenters to moderators, who can't see shit out of their asses. Fucking stupid, there is no other name for you, fucking idiots.
You want LOWER prices, not HIGHER. That's why you let the market work. If one company suffers, what the fuck do you care? It means that they must compete, and it means there can be more competition, but if the merged larger enterprise gave you better deals, you fucking say THANK YOU, you fucking retards! It wasn't your money spent merging them.
And yes, with all the new tech out there, if somebody can figure out how to start another company - they should be allowed to do so, and government should stay the fuck away from creating monopolies, like they did with AT&T in the first place, 100 years ago, when they literally destroyed thousands of competitors by giving that one preferred company status of a national resources, or whatever was the deal.
Let's skip with the first part, it's irrelevant, let's look at the second part, the one about 2-3 companies and choices.
When market needs choices, market provides choices. Government doesn't know anything about what market needs and most important thing is: government doesn't have the authority to dictate (to the formerly free individuals) what market must do.
The entire anti-trust idea is ridiculous on its face, when the reality is that all monopolies that exist are based on preferential government treatment. Any business that can take majority of business in free market is only able to do so as long as it provides the market with the products at acceptable prices/quality ratio. If the market is unsatisfied with the price/quality ratio of the product by a 'monopoly' (in reality an economy of scale) that is created in a free market, monopolies then form to occupy the niche that is left by the unsatisfied market, and these niche players can eventually supersede the former 'monopoly'.
Any time the anti-trust was used, it was used destructively, not productively. Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly by the time it was broken up and Alcoa aluminum was selling aluminum at prices that could not be beat.
There is nothing virtuous about competition for the sake of competition. Competition is only needed by the market when the price/quality ratio is unsatisfying. If there is a way to fit in another product at a cheaper price/with more/better quality, then the market will provide space for that product. Also consumers are fickle (unless they are Apple users I suppose), and they will change their buying habits in a heart beat if they figure something else is better.
In case of AT&T and T-Mobile the merger could be useful as they would have bigger coverage, would have economies of scale, and in the current US market, they could at least keep prices where they are today without raising them longer even with all the inflation that the government produces. Maybe they could come up with cheaper plans as well, to get more people in.
In any case, it's not government's role at all to regulate businesses, and all the monopolies that you are worried about today, ALL of them are created/propped up by governments.
Banks, GM, etc. should have all gone under (Berkshire would have gone under too, by the way, they were in deep trouble with AIG, fuck Buffet, the corporatist weasel.)
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. It hasn't been for fifty years. You may not like the fact that it's not, but it doesn't change the fact.
- 40 years actually. It's just a bit over 40 years.
But that's what I said!
Federal reserve NOTE is an IOU. It used to be an IOU, that's what the definition of the word NOTE is.
No, they won't give you anything for it (though the "official" rate is 42 USD/troy ounce of very pure gold). They won't give you that stuff, that's exactly why when they print any more USD they counterfeit money.
Gold is money.
USD is currency.
Those are 2 different things. Currency - notes that promise to pay money. Once the notes are invalid (will not be fulfilled), any newly printed currency is counterfeit.
US has defaulted on the promise to fulfill its obligations to pay gold for Federal reserve notes, that's when the value of printed USD became nothing and the rating of the debt became junk.
It's just US has a lot going for it, especially the fact that USD is still used as the reserve. But it's a false reserve, it has no value, so anybody buying US debt and/or holding US dollars is in trouble.
We are talking about government politicians, so what do you mean "people would just stop"? It's about kick backs, not about some silly notions of what's right or wrong in the market.
Besides, government love monopolies, they create, protect and nurture them and then bail them out when things go sour. It's because monopolies have extra cash to throw around, and who do you think gets that cash thrown onto?
When sovereign debt gets downgraded for a country that PRINTS its own currency (and in this case for a country that prints reserve currency), what is really downgraded is not the ability to PRINT money to give back whatever nominal interest and even principal.
What is downgraded is the very fact that the government of the country CAN print money and thus monetize the debt thus destroying the value of currency.
It may be subtle for you to understand, but that's what it is.
It also means that the entire country is downgraded, because national debt is the REFERENCE debt, all other debts of the States, cities, businesses and people in that country now MUST be downgraded, because the government can always tax anything, confiscate any asset from anybody in the country - business, state or individual, to pay back the debts/interest.
All of the US ratings are now absolutely below the AA+, there is no way to escape that little fact.
Also it makes no sense that the downgrade took US rating only to AA+ and not to junk, based on the fact that USA will print its currency to junk to "pay back" the nominal debt value.
Also it makes no sense that ratings of other countries, who hold large amounts of US debt are lower than US rating (even now). After all, before Japan or China or Germany can default, USA MUST default, because those countries hold Trillions of USD in T-bills or just currency.
I guess it's really unbelievable that so much open/free source software is out there. From really free software, like OpenBSD, to restricted license but Free source software, such as GNU/Linux or Apache. I guess those things don't actually exist? PostgreSQL - figment of my imagination, nothing else. I dreamt it, it doesn't exist.
No, I see your point, but when we talk about say MS vs GNU/Linux installations that were discussed a bit earlier on /. yesterday. When Bill Gates comes over to Tunisia it stops being about the project, it becomes purely about how large the bribe will be (which is actually illegal in USA under FCPA)
Well it's basic stuff and it happens in every country.
The politicians are running the places and they are running them to their own advantage. The only question on any one of their mind is this:
"Does this make ME more money?"
The flow chart is then very simple:
1. No? Forget about it.
2. Yes? Let's do it.
There is no such thing as: "If Congress doesn't act we will default", this means they are bankrupt, that's all there is to it.
At the risk of being moderated down further I must say anyway that this does not surprise me at the least, I've said that on multiple occasions that this is what is coming to the USPS
Quote:
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash - it's selling 'forever stamps' today, and assuming it doesn't just dissolve over the next few years, it won't be able to make any money at that time and it will be in a worse fiscal shape than it is today, because the stamps sold today are basically protection against the 10% (current level) of monetary inflation that US Fed and Treasury are incurring on US population. Today the postal office cannot function already and they sell the forever stamps, tomorrow, they'll have to raise the prices but people will use those forever stamps and the postal office will either have to default on that stamp or dissolve, or there will be another bail out, and people use that as one of 'better' examples of government 'efficiency'.
Then people say things back to me that make no sense about how USPS is not or used to not have problems. Well yes, as long as there is a way to print more money the gov't will keep subsidizing these money losing programs, like military and wars, USPS, SS, Medicare, bank bail outs, stimulus programs, anything that is subsidized by government borrowing, printing and spending can go on for a while until the currency is destroyed.
The S&P downgrade was not just downgrading US debt risk, it was downgrading US CURRENCY.
--
Everything goes back to the question of fiscal responsibility, and there is no such thing in USA at all anymore.
Do you know what a USD is? Ben Bernanke does not. He believes a dollar is what it buys, though in USA the dollar has precise meaning (certain weight in gold or silver).
USD is a federal reserve note. Do you know what a "note" means? Note means an IOU. It's a promise note to give you gold or silver for your currency. But since 40 years ago when Nixon decided to default on the dollar (they did it a few times in history of USA, defaulted I mean), the IOU stopped being a promise note. It's not a promise by the Federal reserve bank to give you anything for that piece of paper/cotton/computer record.
Since the Federal reserve promises to give you nothing, that IOU is worthless, that is what S&P downgraded. They should have downgraded it to JUNK, because that's what US federal reserve note promises to you - nothing.
Because USD is a note, which now gives you nothing, it's worth 0, and this means that anything that the Fed buys is actually STOLEN by the Federal reserve. That's right, any asset they buy (and gov't "economists" are now suggesting that the Fed just buys out any assets - houses, businesses, etc), this means that Fed is completely openly STEALING those assets.
The US T-bills that are bought by the Fed, what do you think this does? This means that nobody else wants them, so Fed monetizes the debt and thus inflating the value of whatever USD denominated assets you have.
The USPS is suffering because it does not generate any revenue that is real. It's subsidized, and it was selling so called "forever stamps", and people were buying them, thinking that they would be able to USE those forever stamps in the future, thus protecting themselves from inflation, because stamps
Yeah, but the upside is huge. Imagine all those mice with all those neat hair styles? It would be a blast.
Who says about abolishing farming in Germany (or France, etc.)? I am talking about subsidies that the businesses are getting from tax payers to keep producing overpriced products, which is basically a bail out, a perpetual stimulus to keep those people occupied in that industry. When you say: "everything costs more when made here but that's only cost to the consumer" - duh. Consumer is the market. Individuals are forced to pay for overpriced products because of the way the tax policy is set up, so instead of allowing the prices to fall by allowing the most efficient allocation of land, labor and capital, you have now a system, that forces prices to be higher while simultaneously creating an artificial imbalance of trade, which does not help the world in the long run and eventually will cause a depression in Germany just as well, as capital will leave (and it is leaving), to places with fewer controls.
Government grip on economy forces capital flight, creates monopolies and destroys competition, while causing this, "insignificant" from your point of view action of causing higher prices to end consumers.
So from your POV, having consumers overpay for products they want is insignificant somehow? And that's coming from somebody in a country, that overtaxes the workers to provide insane amounts of welfare to all sorts of people who are not working, because why work? You get almost the same amount of money from welfare as you'd get working in a low paying job, and you'll have to do actual work. And German tax payers are now in a position of having to bail out banks all over Europe, because bankers and government are basically one and the same, so any loss to a banker must be immediately absorbed by the tax payers, and in case of Europe, the tax payers are mostly in Germany (and France), but seriously, I am happy when I am in Switzerland, though that country also subsidizes food production, at least they are not subsidizing an entire continent with tax payer money.
Who do you think suffers from higher food costs, by the way? The rich? ?
Well, I am HERE in Germany right now, though I don't spend all of my time here and I disagree with you. Only government workers in Germany believe what you believe, I haven't heard anybody who is not a government worker espouse these ideas.
I move around plenty. Germany is doing this very extensively. It also uses taxes/printing/borrowing to subsidize various industries and consumer goods, there are people crossing the border to Germany from Italy to buy pasta, which was produced in Italy and bought up by Germany and subsidized to the point where it's cheaper for Italians to come to Germany to buy it.
There are laws here that make it impossible to sell food on global market, there are various special taxes making it extremely expensive to move food from one location to another, so local farmers are subsidized, which causes massive resource mis-allocation and I observed this entire ideology back in USA and Canada as well, where food is subsidized and this causes it to be much more expensive, because places where it could be grown cheaper (like Africa) are put out of business by these subsidies.
It's not just one event, there is a trend. It's in everything in Germany, from food to automobiles, to clothing, chemicals, whatever.
You are a troll, that's all there is to it.
Germany should know better, but it clearly doesn't remember its own history even though it's still paying for it.
The economic sanctions imposed by the French and British against Germany, the entire 'reparations' idea basically caused so much harm to Germany economy, that it became politically weak and allowed we know who to come to power and thus WWII became inevitable.
Any trade restrictions are similar to such sanctions. This kinds of stuff leads to wars. OK, nobody is going to a war just because of some computer being denied sales but the important thing is the trend. If Germany keeps doing this shit - basically preventing trade from taking place and thus causing harm to all parties involved - the consumers and the producers, eventually this will result in a war. It won't be because of computers, but it may just well be because of food, energy, water sale restrictions, and this here sets more and more precedents for such sanctions.
Wars are always about economics, it's always about making somebody too poor while somebody else gaining from it, and eventually these imbalances result in some form of armed conflict.
It's ridiculous how a government court helps to destroy competition, government system is set up to create monopolies via all these "intellectual property" laws, and how at the end the CONSUMERS suffer due to fewer choices and higher prices.
When the revolt takes place against the banking system, it should also take upon the government destroying free market system. This does not help anybody but Apple in this case, and who cares? The consumers suffer, Apple should not even be on the radar of thinking for these so called 'socialist governments'.
Many things used to be legal. Ghandi was protesting salt tax and spend years in jail for it. You'd rather have Ghandi move somewhere else and not bother I take it?
USA did try the approach in government when it was not taxing income and was not regulating businesses, was not subsidizing businesses. It worked amazingly well, as USA became the world's largest inventor and producer of cheap manufacturing goods and became world's largest creditor nation.
Then the politicians and some bankers figured out how to crack the system and set up the IRS to collect income taxes, the Fed to counterfeit money and all the various unelected departments to control/subsidize businesses and created monopolies and destroyed competition, all while selling this idea to middle class by buying their vote with "free" money, which eventually backfired and turned the middle class into poor by destroying USA economy and now currency.
THIS doesn't work. This inflation and taxation an regulations screw up the poor. The rich people who are in government have enormous leverage against everybody else and you are the one who is refusing to listen to this fact.
But what's ridiculous is that the message is being treated with contempt without understanding it at all.
Problem is that what market needs is often not what the people need.
- markets are individuals. I am NOT talking about the stock market or any such nonsense that has nothing to do with reality and lives in a government spiked bubble. I am talking about line ups for Apple's products, I am talking about people paying for gas every day, and very few electric vehicles on the roads, I am talking about people producing what others are buying, etc.
So WTF are you talking about?
BS. None of those guys were born with anything more than anybody else.
But that's NOT the point here, the piece of shit troll "hazel" is trolling that everybody who has made it sells their principles and buys into government, which is the exact opposite with these guys.
The other trolling of his is that my perception of successful people is that they got their wealth by immoral means. Now that's a troll.
So your comment is off-topic, as it has nothing to do with the questions here.
It doesn't matter if the message is right or wrong, it is not a troll.
Now that is fine quality trolling you are doing there.
Warren Buffet publically thanked the US government for bailing him out, with all his 'wisdom', he was betting on the mortgage market right before it collapsed.
...One of Wall Streetâ(TM)s giant investment banks had gone bankrupt, and the remaining three were poised to follow. A.I.G., the worldâ(TM)s most famous insurer, was at deathâ(TM)s door.
Many of our largest industrial companies, dependent on commercial paper financing that had disappeared, were weeks away from exhausting their cash resources. Indeed, all of corporate Americaâ(TM)s dominoes were lined up, ready to topple at lightning speed. My own company, Berkshire Hathaway, might have been the last to fall, but that distinction provided little solace.
then he thanks them
Well, Uncle Sam, you delivered. People will second-guess your specific decisions; you can always count on that. But just as there is a fog of war, there is a fog of panic â" and, overall, your actions were remarkably effective. ...
then he thanks them a bit more
So, again, Uncle Sam, thanks to you and your aides. Often you are wasteful, and sometimes you are bullying. On occasion, you are downright maddening. But in this extraordinary emergency, you came through â" and the world would look far different now if you had not.
Your grateful nephew,
Warren
Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.
Today Buffet is again 'investing' into the banks, the people don't understand that his investments are preferred stock, not common stock, so he gets 10% dividends paid before anybody else gets their 1% (and it will have to be cut, so that Buffet can get paid.)
As Buffet gets paid, his companies get bailed out, the people who are on the hook for it are foreign creditors and eventually US taxpayers, and eventually just all US citizens.
As Buffet gets paid on one hand, he talks about raising income taxes on 'the rich', without getting into too much detail on how he personally benefits from these taxes, especially the estate tax, as his company liquidates companies at whole sale prices when cash must be raised to pay the death tax (which is theft, obviously, who here thinks that in a family anybody who uses money that they didn't earn directly must pay income taxes on it in the money pool? If your kid or your S.O. buys something with money you earned, or you buy something with money they earned, shouldn't you be forced to pay income taxes by this logic?)
--
So, Hazel whatever, when you talk about how "libertarian is not good enough in his own eyes", why don't you put a stick through your own eye?
Anyone he regards as successful must therefore have got there through immoral means.
- what a bunch of BS. Absolute non-sequitur and putting words into my mouth that I have never in my life spouted.
YOU ARE A TROLL, never mind what the moderation says.
but don't abide by a sophomoric list of principles
Fucking BS as well. You have just said that Peter Schiff, Mark Faber, Jim Rogers and similar guys have no principles? They are rich, but they are rich on their own feet, not because of government, but always despite it.
So I have just two words: fuck you. Nothing else for you.
It's hard for me to leave anymore comments here under my name, everything is moderated down as a 'troll', people don't like the message, so they think I am trolling them, so there is a limit on number of comments I can leave and I do need to call it a night, it is night where I am.
However you are missing the forest for the trees. As government is providing any specific company or a number of companies in any specific industry with money and promises these companies that it will bring in customers via regulations and such, it is creating a monopoly or maybe an oligopoly, but what is hilarious about this case is that this company, with HALF A BILLION dollars of credit from US gov't and promise of customers has failed anyway.
I find it to be extremely hilarious and telling. Of-course in reality the gov't isn't interested in this alternative energy at all, OIL is where all the action is - that's the stuff that gets most gov't money, with wars, liability caps for deep water drilling, etc.etc.
When your only alternatives are two companies charging the same overinflated rates, how is that a free market?
- Free Market by DEFINITION is what you have when there is no government involvement into it.
By definition.
As long as market is allowed to operate enough time without government involvement the market will find the correct prices, will find the right quality.
Of-course you have government printing free money, bailing out companies, buying out private debt, forcing investors to lose money (GM and shareholders, inflation,etc.)
There is no free market as long as government is allowed to destroy the market by regulations, taxes and subsidies, and especially as long as using a competing currency (gold/silver) is impossible due to special taxation provisions, which treat these Constitutional money as if it's just a commodity, while printing the fiat into the eventual hyper inflation.
The subsidies to the companies, the government franchises, the so called public utilities that are just government monopolies, all of this destroys competition.
Thinking that any government action, even if it is superficially directed at breaking larger entities into smaller ones makes sense is against free market, not for it. If these companies form a more efficient entity and start more competition by providing LOWER prices, and Sprint and others are forced to LOWER their prices, then you are complaining that this is putting Sprint out of business.
If they are charging whatever they are charging today for SMS, etc., you are complaining that their charges are TOO HIGH?
So you believe that the prices must go down, but you believe that prices going down will hurt companies and competition?
And people are moderating all of my comments in this thread as 'troll'?
If you believe that the companies are overcharging for SMS, then you should be FOR competition, so if AT&T merges with T-Mobile, then to survive others would have to LOWER PRICES. So where would be the FIRST place to lower prices?
It's going to be where it does not COST anything to lower prices, so Spring just may lower SMS prices, and this would force others (including AT&T) to do the same, and you are arguing AGAINST lowering prices while complaining about high prices?
I am tired. I believe this site has gone insane, with everybody on it. Good night.
ad-hominem at +3 Insightful. Good.
you demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of the issue
oh yeah?
Here is what I think about your "understanding" of anything.
How the hell do you figure that this is primarily related to pro-union legislation?
- where did I say that? What else did you read into my comment that was not there?
they want to prevent less actual competition in a market (read, a less "free" market). If AT&T absorbed T-Mobile it would basically be the death of Sprint.
- the market was going to decide what was going to happen to Sprint and AT&T and T-Mobile. Instead the government decided.
Given how government handles any decisions related to economics (and I gave a good example in my comment, about the alternative energy fiasco), why do you trust the government to make any economic decisions?
If AT&T and T-Mobile merged, and Sprint suffered, that would have been the decision of the buyers, if they decided to switch to AT&T/T-Mobile. Because what you just said was this:
"If the merger is allowed, another company would get hurt". HOW? By LOWER PRICES FROM AT&T and T-MOBILE MERGED TOGETHER?
Isn't THAT what the market WANTS (people, individuals)? LOWER PRICES? Are you saying that if AT&T and T-Mobile were able to merge and to use their economy of scale to provide better/cheaper service then Sprint would have suffered, SO WHAT?
SO WHAT IF SPRINT SUFFERED?
Market is NOT about companies, but that's what government makes it out to be, when they prevent mergers based on the idea that another company "would suffer".
It's about customers, if customers saw a better deal from AT&T and T-Mobile merged company and switched from Sprint, this would have created COMPETITION FFS.
What an idiotic idea from everybody on this stupid fucking site, from commenters to moderators, who can't see shit out of their asses. Fucking stupid, there is no other name for you, fucking idiots.
You want LOWER prices, not HIGHER. That's why you let the market work. If one company suffers, what the fuck do you care? It means that they must compete, and it means there can be more competition, but if the merged larger enterprise gave you better deals, you fucking say THANK YOU, you fucking retards! It wasn't your money spent merging them.
And yes, with all the new tech out there, if somebody can figure out how to start another company - they should be allowed to do so, and government should stay the fuck away from creating monopolies, like they did with AT&T in the first place, 100 years ago, when they literally destroyed thousands of competitors by giving that one preferred company status of a national resources, or whatever was the deal.
Let's skip with the first part, it's irrelevant, let's look at the second part, the one about 2-3 companies and choices.
When market needs choices, market provides choices. Government doesn't know anything about what market needs and most important thing is: government doesn't have the authority to dictate (to the formerly free individuals) what market must do.
The entire anti-trust idea is ridiculous on its face, when the reality is that all monopolies that exist are based on preferential government treatment. Any business that can take majority of business in free market is only able to do so as long as it provides the market with the products at acceptable prices/quality ratio. If the market is unsatisfied with the price/quality ratio of the product by a 'monopoly' (in reality an economy of scale) that is created in a free market, monopolies then form to occupy the niche that is left by the unsatisfied market, and these niche players can eventually supersede the former 'monopoly'.
Any time the anti-trust was used, it was used destructively, not productively. Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly by the time it was broken up and Alcoa aluminum was selling aluminum at prices that could not be beat.
There is nothing virtuous about competition for the sake of competition. Competition is only needed by the market when the price/quality ratio is unsatisfying. If there is a way to fit in another product at a cheaper price/with more/better quality, then the market will provide space for that product. Also consumers are fickle (unless they are Apple users I suppose), and they will change their buying habits in a heart beat if they figure something else is better.
In case of AT&T and T-Mobile the merger could be useful as they would have bigger coverage, would have economies of scale, and in the current US market, they could at least keep prices where they are today without raising them longer even with all the inflation that the government produces. Maybe they could come up with cheaper plans as well, to get more people in.
In any case, it's not government's role at all to regulate businesses, and all the monopolies that you are worried about today, ALL of them are created/propped up by governments.
Banks, GM, etc. should have all gone under (Berkshire would have gone under too, by the way, they were in deep trouble with AIG, fuck Buffet, the corporatist weasel.)