Bill of rights is irrelevant, as people's rights do not need to be 'recognized' by the government, the people's rights are inalienable. Amendments should never have existed, the problem with people they don't understand that they actually have all the rights and the government only has the rights that are given to it by the people. The government's rights are in the Constitution, and the government has long abandoned those principles and had its way with the law, by which it is supposed to be governed itself, simply because nobody challenges the government on this (and it should be challenged by the people.)
Whatever, you dumb ass. The States have the power to kick the federal government in the nuts if they just realize that they have been had with this entire scam, for over 100 years now.
Corporation is only a legal status, a way for government to remove liability from businesses, which is wrong. However corporation does not have to be public, so you are wrong there, I have a couple of corporations, both are private, no public shares.
As to Ford, he wasn't doing this out of goodness or anything, he wanted to keep the best workers working for him, which is simply market pressure on the side of labor supply.
As to SS, it's a piece of shit pyramid scam, which give an opportunity any sane individual would immediately opt out of as they should, because why should they pay into a scam, that already allowed the past beneficiaries to take out by 17 Trillion USD more than they put in? Anybody who is paying into it today won't get anything out of it, and they are paying the most in both, relative and absolute terms. Why the hell are people forced to pay into this piece of shit tax, when in fact they can take care of themselves just fine?
Roosevelt started SS (what an appropriate name) excluding people who were self employed or making more than 3 times the national average. They were excluded, and for a good reason - they were seen as people who could take care of themselves on their own and Roosevelt didn't want to make an impression that it was an income redistribution program, it was illegal actually (still is) by the Constitution, which is why US government argued against SS taxes being connected to SS benefits, even though they called taxes 'premiums', clearly to confuse the people into thinking this was an insurance program, which it never was:
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.
they also waited for 2 years, as if they were doing something with investing the first 2 years worth of taxes, but that's BS. The first person who got monthly payments out of the system, Ida May Fuller paid a total $24.75 into the so called 'fund' but got $22,888.92 out of it. Which explains where the 17 Trillion dollars went that were never paid into it but were taken out by those, who got the best deal out of that pyramid.
The only difference between a private pyramid scam and this SS scam, is that in a private scam once you figure it out, you stop paying into it. SS continues only because it's illegal not to pay into it. That's the only way it can continue to exist, while it is pyramid scam.
As to pensions plans, they should never be connected to the place of work, because people switch where they work often enough that it makes no sense, and besides that, companies disappear.
GM went bankrupt, and if it weren't for the fucking pieces of shit in government, who bailed them out, the union wouldn't have seen any money. The correct solution is private investment, but that would require government to take a step back and stop stealing people's money.
Do you think that semi pay 24,000 times as much in taxes and fees on a per-mile basis as you do? If not, then business owners are getting a lot more out of their road and fuel taxes than you are.
- aha, because obviously one business owner supplying food to thousands of people is getting more out of that road than those thousands of people. How far would you have people driving for food?
That's not what I said, is it? I said that Constitution must be ratified in order for States to agree to the federation. Didn't I say STATES? Yes, United States existed prior to ratification of the Constitution, but the Constitution is the law, under which the federal government operates, and if the law is broken, and it is, then the States have the contractual power to leave the federation. They should exercise their contractual rights.
actually it's not a simple promise, it's the foundation of the Union I believe, as the States had to ratify that particular historic document in order to agree to the federation. So the only question remains: how much longer before it's dissolved, because the contract has been not just completely broken, but crowds of people walked all over it, took a dump on it and used parts of it as toilet paper.
I have argued for a long time and US inflation is over 10 and closer to 13% a year, which makes US GDP negative year to year at least since 2003, (from where I decided to count), since they use the fake CPI as GDP deflator. USA has been in recession and actually depression for a long time now, there was no recovery, any 'jobless recovery' is BS, it was simply spending stimulus money, which does not make a recovery.
I said long ago/. needs an economics section - of-course in that thread every Keynesian came out to talk about my "insanity".
Of-course there needs to be an economics section, my explanations on whyUSD and bonds will be destroyed could be then filtered out by those, who don't care.
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81% Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83% Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107% Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154% Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89% Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58% Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363% Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184% Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172% Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130% Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103% Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51%
I still remember the best joke seen on/. back when there was a software problem reported on Spirit during the flight to Mars, there was some issue related to flash memory, so that's what comes to mind every time: The Spirit is willing but the flash is weak:)
well, I didn't specify which dollars, but you are right, if US went back to the sound money, the price for a laptop would be probably 10 bucks, not 100.
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($110 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.... Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. (Using the consumer price index, this was equivalent to $111.10 per day in 2008 dollars.) It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week
Assume 52 weeks in a year, that's USD132,600 a year.
That's take home pay, no unions, no government regulations, no income taxes.
What would be the equivalent pay today, if you take into account that there was no government involvement into health care or education or pension plans at that time, so people took care of their own health care, education and retirement, yet were able to do so on that salary and have a stay at home wife with a bunch of kids and they didn't have much credit, they paid out of pocket for all expenses? What would the equivalent salary be today?
BTW, a standard 4-seat open tourer Ford Model T cost 850USD.
- My point is that you are blaming corporations for the failure of the system, I am pointing out that corporations are perfectly capable of building products that people want to buy, while creating good paying jobs without unions or regulations, and the real difference between that time and now? Government involvement into the economy with all the spending, regulations, laws, income taxes, SS, Medicare, tuition loans, subsidies to monopolies, etc.
doubt government regulations have anything to do with it, because there are completely open phones on the market.
- again, I don't know, I am not in the phone business, but the 'completely open phones' on the market, are these US phones? Because I believe there is some government regulation against allowing completely open phone platforms, which most likely have to do with being able to spy on the conversations, track phones and probably has something to do with emergency services as well as with radio output.
I don't understand what your point is at all. On one hand you are saying: Ford was 'forced' to pay this because of market pressure, because he needed his workers. On the other hand you are saying: no way he could afford to pay his workers $104K year.
I am not saying he was paying $104K a year, I am saying he was paying 1.25 ounces of gold a week, which in current prices is $104K/year, and that's take home pay, and that's at time when people were paying for everything out of pocket and saving for their retirement themselves, so prices for insurance as well as for healthcare and education were extremely low, very affordable, because there was no government money in it, as it is today.
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($110 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.
Now, they are saying it's $110 today, but that's not counting real inflation, because dollars were gold/silver. 25USD at the time was enough to buy 1.25 ounces, which is equivalent to over 2000USD today at 1700USD/ounce.
Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. (Using the consumer price index, this was equivalent to $111.10 per day in 2008 dollars.) It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,
In fact I was wrong, it wasn't 10 hour days, it was 8 hour days, 6 day weeks, and that's without any unions, and at the time income taxes were 1% and only for a limited number of wealthiest people.
So I don't know what is with "neoconservative bullshit here" comment, but your comment looks quite biased, flamebaiting and also wrong.
Not in case of Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Ron Paul, Max Keiser.
You should actually see the video on my sig if you think he is 'lucky', and then watch the other videos with him starting from time he was able to get on TV, some time in 2002, when he started talking about the exact reasons for the incoming crash.
early 19 hundreds before, before any income taxes and without any unions, Ford was paying his assembly line workers $5/day.
That's probably 50cents/hour, if they worked 10 hours, which I believe they did.
So that would be 25USD/week. At the price of gold of 20USD/troy ounce, that was 1.25 ounces of gold. At current prices for gold, that's over $2000/week.
That's 104000 USD/year and that's take home pay, no income taxes, no unions.
A standard 4-seat open tourer Ford Model T cost 850USD.
Of-course there were no income taxes, no SS, no Medicare, etc. People took care of their own needs by paying out of pocket, yet they had home staying wives and a bunch of children, who they had to provide education out of pocket for as well as medical attention. Still, they could do it and they were paid better than current workers, who are part of union and with all the labor laws that exist today as well.
Sure, at 100% savings it would have taken a worker 8.5 month of work to save for Model T. However if instead they saved only 2 salaries a year, it would have taken 4 years to buy a car out of pocket, and how many people are buying cars out of pocket today?
As Iwrote in the previous discussion on this topic, it's not only about government debt.
All debt that US holds is now downgraded of-course, because sovereign debt is considered to be the least likely to default, so all debt must be downgraded in USA, because US government can in theory just raise taxes and even confiscate property from any businesses and individuals in US to pay its obligations.
Also it obviously doesn't make sense to rate other countries, who are creditor nations to the USA at lower ratings than the debtor! That never made any sense. Why is Chinese debt more risky than US debt according to these rating agencies? New Zealand?
US Fed has been buying so much US Treasury debt in the last year, it's nearly the only entity that is buying any new US debt. That alone should have caused all of the rating agencies to downgrade US debt rating immediately.
Ah, how beautiful it is to observe market space competition, falling prices relative to dollars, (which are also falling BTW.). Just how much would all and any of this cost to the end consumer if there was no inflation caused by government money printing? How much electronics would cost today without any government regulations, taxes, subsidies altogether I wonder? 100 bucks for a fully loaded top quality laptop? One can only dream of a world where there is more competition in everything else, from healthcare, to education, to insurance, to travel, to energy, to food, etc.etc. arrrgh.
S&P downgrade is correct of-course, but it's nowhere near enough of a downgrade of US debt, which is all junk and will never be repaid in anything of any value.
Many believe that Tea Party got a win out of this debt ceiling deal, but that's just not true. The Win would have been if there was no debt ceiling hike at all, instead it's a loss, with the concessions being completely irrelevant. 2 Trillion spending cuts that are not real cuts, they are a so called 'cut' from a 9 Trillion base increase!
What kind of a cut is it, when the spending goes up by 7Trillion anyway? That's ridiculous, anybody arguing that's a cut is either mentally challenged or is a liar, or both (a politician).
Any actual cuts are about 25Billion this year. That's all, and that pocket change, less than a rounding error in the budget. The 2 Trillion is scheduled for cuts after next Congress is elected, but that means there will be no way to force the cuts either, and since the US economy is in recession, has been in recession and never left the recession based on real inflation numbers, by which the GDP should have been reduced (13% instead the fake 2% CPI). The reason this so called 'recovery' was jobless is because it was never a recovery in the first place.
Recovery would have allowed the economy to restructure bad debts, remove a bunch of dead weight from the economy, liquidate assets to repay debts and allow economy to start growing in private sector, which is the only sector that reduces trade deficit and creates meaningful jobs that can reduce the trade deficit. Any government created 'jobs' are welfare with a work condition attached to it, it doesn't produce anything.
There is no win in this deal, there is only loss for American and World economy. American - because it means depression continues and worsens, credit dries out and debt is monetized, USD is destroyed and US consumer is left without products to buy at all.
World - because USA CAN be an economic engine producing things the world needs, but instead USA CHOOSES to be a drag on the world, starting wars and building weapons instead of building cheap, high quality consumer goods to exchange for in the global markets.
US debt rating is junk, the debts won't be repaid, the USD will be hyper-inflated because US government does not have the political courage to do the right thing and cut government spending, which means stop Wars, SS, Medicare, government programs, cut government departments, cut income taxes, allow more business with less regulations of products and labor. There is no way this will be done politically, instead the politics of this thing will bring USD to its logical conclusion and US economy to an unfortunate situation, which will take hundreds of years to get out of.
Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings all maintained at least A ratings on AIG and Lehman Brothers up until mid-September of last year. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy Sept. 15; the federal government provided AIG with its first of four multibillion-dollar bailouts the next day.
Why do people care what these rating agencies say? The market is a much better rating agency than any establishment out there, the market downgrades USD all the time, it's not a surprise, you can't have vendor financed economy, you can't have consumption without production, you can't have "jobless recovery", you can't have stimulus creating jobs that are meaningful in that they reduce the trading deficit, you can't have debt that is constantly growing while real production is shrinking 10% a year (that's because GDP is overestimated year to year, because real inflation is around 13% but a much smaller deflater is used, some 2% CPI).
You cannot have an equitable economy with 18% unemployment or underemployment, 40% finance industry, 10% government industry, 50 million people on SS and under 11% manufacturing (probably mostly military and value added assembly from imported parts.)
You just can't have 50 billion dollars/month trade deficit, where you consume 50billion dollars/month more from imported goods, produced elsewhere, while exporting printed paper and not at least an equal amount of goods. It's not possible to do this forever, and USA has been doing it for a very long time because it's exporting inflation because USD is so called "reserve currency", so other governments make a huge mistake of buying and stockpiling it by inflating their own currencies.
The debt is the crisis, not maintaining the debt ceiling, which could have been beginning of a solution.
If you want to see somebody who has real credibility on this issue, on the issue of financial institution ratings in USA, look no further than my sig. Now that guy predicted and explained in vivid detail exactly how the financial industry was going to collapse and how the housing bubble would burst and most importantly he understood the underlying principles behind these events and explained them.
I understand this is 'tongue in cheek' sort of, but then if that is true, then I am correct, it makes them more money to sell the ability to break the devices out of jail and do whatever you want with them.
If this is how they do it and it makes them more profit, then it is what it is. They are not reaching many more consumers with it, just a very select few though, so it's still a very limited option.
I don't know why you are replying to me with that though. I never used Vista, I don't even know how. Once I had to help somebody with it, I couldn't even figure out how to view files, it was ultimately confusing, I gave about 10 seconds into the experience.
So would that decrease the overall market for iPhones then or would it increase it and would not Apple be able to sell more iPhones if more features were available, more people catered to that market, software or not? Would Apple also not gain ability to sell more devices to connect to their phone?
Is it your contention that iPhones would generate less profit for Apple in that case?
Slashdot Mirror
Bill of rights is irrelevant, as people's rights do not need to be 'recognized' by the government, the people's rights are inalienable. Amendments should never have existed, the problem with people they don't understand that they actually have all the rights and the government only has the rights that are given to it by the people. The government's rights are in the Constitution, and the government has long abandoned those principles and had its way with the law, by which it is supposed to be governed itself, simply because nobody challenges the government on this (and it should be challenged by the people.)
Whatever, you dumb ass. The States have the power to kick the federal government in the nuts if they just realize that they have been had with this entire scam, for over 100 years now.
Corporation is only a legal status, a way for government to remove liability from businesses, which is wrong. However corporation does not have to be public, so you are wrong there, I have a couple of corporations, both are private, no public shares.
As to Ford, he wasn't doing this out of goodness or anything, he wanted to keep the best workers working for him, which is simply market pressure on the side of labor supply.
As to SS, it's a piece of shit pyramid scam, which give an opportunity any sane individual would immediately opt out of as they should, because why should they pay into a scam, that already allowed the past beneficiaries to take out by 17 Trillion USD more than they put in? Anybody who is paying into it today won't get anything out of it, and they are paying the most in both, relative and absolute terms. Why the hell are people forced to pay into this piece of shit tax, when in fact they can take care of themselves just fine?
Roosevelt started SS (what an appropriate name) excluding people who were self employed or making more than 3 times the national average. They were excluded, and for a good reason - they were seen as people who could take care of themselves on their own and Roosevelt didn't want to make an impression that it was an income redistribution program, it was illegal actually (still is) by the Constitution, which is why US government argued against SS taxes being connected to SS benefits, even though they called taxes 'premiums', clearly to confuse the people into thinking this was an insurance program, which it never was:
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.
they also waited for 2 years, as if they were doing something with investing the first 2 years worth of taxes, but that's BS. The first person who got monthly payments out of the system, Ida May Fuller paid a total $24.75 into the so called 'fund' but got $22,888.92 out of it. Which explains where the 17 Trillion dollars went that were never paid into it but were taken out by those, who got the best deal out of that pyramid.
The only difference between a private pyramid scam and this SS scam, is that in a private scam once you figure it out, you stop paying into it. SS continues only because it's illegal not to pay into it. That's the only way it can continue to exist, while it is pyramid scam.
As to pensions plans, they should never be connected to the place of work, because people switch where they work often enough that it makes no sense, and besides that, companies disappear.
GM went bankrupt, and if it weren't for the fucking pieces of shit in government, who bailed them out, the union wouldn't have seen any money. The correct solution is private investment, but that would require government to take a step back and stop stealing people's money.
Do you think that semi pay 24,000 times as much in taxes and fees on a per-mile basis as you do? If not, then business owners are getting a lot more out of their road and fuel taxes than you are.
- aha, because obviously one business owner supplying food to thousands of people is getting more out of that road than those thousands of people. How far would you have people driving for food?
That's not what I said, is it? I said that Constitution must be ratified in order for States to agree to the federation. Didn't I say STATES? Yes, United States existed prior to ratification of the Constitution, but the Constitution is the law, under which the federal government operates, and if the law is broken, and it is, then the States have the contractual power to leave the federation. They should exercise their contractual rights.
actually it's not a simple promise, it's the foundation of the Union I believe, as the States had to ratify that particular historic document in order to agree to the federation. So the only question remains: how much longer before it's dissolved, because the contract has been not just completely broken, but crowds of people walked all over it, took a dump on it and used parts of it as toilet paper.
I have argued for a long time and US inflation is over 10 and closer to 13% a year, which makes US GDP negative year to year at least since 2003, (from where I decided to count), since they use the fake CPI as GDP deflator. USA has been in recession and actually depression for a long time now, there was no recovery, any 'jobless recovery' is BS, it was simply spending stimulus money, which does not make a recovery.
I said long ago /. needs an economics section - of-course in that thread every Keynesian came out to talk about my "insanity".
Of-course there needs to be an economics section, my
explanations on why USD and bonds will be destroyed could be then filtered out by those, who don't care.
Explanations on recessions and Japan and US with its teaser rate mortgage
Some stuff on inflation
Ways to
fix the problems
why the crowds support the government policies
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81%
Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83%
Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107%
Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154%
Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89%
Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58%
Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363%
Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184%
Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 172%
Propane Dec 2003: 0.63 USD/Gallon, Apr 2011: 1.45 USD/Gallon, price up by over 130%
Wheat Dec 2003: 165.57 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 336.30 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 103%
Oranges Dec 2003: 583.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 881.00 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 51%
I still remember the best joke seen on /. back when there was a software problem reported on Spirit during the flight to Mars, there was some issue related to flash memory, so that's what comes to mind every time: The Spirit is willing but the flash is weak :)
well, I didn't specify which dollars, but you are right, if US went back to the sound money, the price for a laptop would be probably 10 bucks, not 100.
You can download the latest radio program here.
and it should not have been, electricity would have been much cheaper and more abundant, with more capacity, so would telecommunications providers. As to Internet, something was happening anyway, there were networks before TCP/IP was created and private companies were able to 'invent' telephone electrical switches just fine without government.
In the early 19 hundreds before, before any income taxes and without any unions, Ford was paying his assembly line workers $5/day.
From wikipedia:
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($110 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. ...
Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. (Using the consumer price index, this was equivalent to $111.10 per day in 2008 dollars.) It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week
$5/day, 6 days a week. That's $30/week.
Google document viewer: Historic gold prices
1 ounce of gold was just under 19USD. With 30 dollars, that's 1.5 ounces of gold.
At current prices (over USD1700/ounce) that makes it USD2550
Assume 52 weeks in a year, that's USD132,600 a year.
That's take home pay, no unions, no government regulations, no income taxes.
What would be the equivalent pay today, if you take into account that there was no government involvement into health care or education or pension plans at that time, so people took care of their own health care, education and retirement, yet were able to do so on that salary and have a stay at home wife with a bunch of kids and they didn't have much credit, they paid out of pocket for all expenses? What would the equivalent salary be today?
BTW, a standard 4-seat open tourer Ford Model T cost 850USD.
-
My point is that you are blaming corporations for the failure of the system, I am pointing out that corporations are perfectly capable of building products that people want to buy, while creating good paying jobs without unions or regulations, and the real difference between that time and now? Government involvement into the economy with all the spending, regulations, laws, income taxes, SS, Medicare, tuition loans, subsidies to monopolies, etc.
As I wrote on the previous topic, it's happening now
Moody's Backs US's AAA Rating, S&P Cuts Fannie, Others
That's what Schiff said on Saturday, BTW.
doubt government regulations have anything to do with it, because there are completely open phones on the market.
- again, I don't know, I am not in the phone business, but the 'completely open phones' on the market, are these US phones? Because I believe there is some government regulation against allowing completely open phone platforms, which most likely have to do with being able to spy on the conversations, track phones and probably has something to do with emergency services as well as with radio output.
I don't understand what your point is at all. On one hand you are saying: Ford was 'forced' to pay this because of market pressure, because he needed his workers. On the other hand you are saying: no way he could afford to pay his workers $104K year.
I am not saying he was paying $104K a year, I am saying he was paying 1.25 ounces of gold a week, which in current prices is $104K/year, and that's take home pay, and that's at time when people were paying for everything out of pocket and saving for their retirement themselves, so prices for insurance as well as for healthcare and education were extremely low, very affordable, because there was no government money in it, as it is today.
Just in case you start with your nonsense again, here is some data from Wikipedia:
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($110 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.
Now, they are saying it's $110 today, but that's not counting real inflation, because dollars were gold/silver. 25USD at the time was enough to buy 1.25 ounces, which is equivalent to over 2000USD today at 1700USD/ounce.
Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying workers. (Using the consumer price index, this was equivalent to $111.10 per day in 2008 dollars.) It also set a new, reduced workweek, although the details vary in different accounts. Ford and Crowther in 1922 described it as six 8-hour days, giving a 48-hour week,
In fact I was wrong, it wasn't 10 hour days, it was 8 hour days, 6 day weeks, and that's without any unions, and at the time income taxes were 1% and only for a limited number of wealthiest people.
So I don't know what is with "neoconservative bullshit here" comment, but your comment looks quite biased, flamebaiting and also wrong.
Not in case of Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Ron Paul, Max Keiser.
You should actually see the video on my sig if you think he is 'lucky', and then watch the other videos with him starting from time he was able to get on TV, some time in 2002, when he started talking about the exact reasons for the incoming crash.
early 19 hundreds before, before any income taxes and without any unions, Ford was paying his assembly line workers $5/day.
That's probably 50cents/hour, if they worked 10 hours, which I believe they did.
So that would be 25USD/week. At the price of gold of 20USD/troy ounce, that was 1.25 ounces of gold. At current prices for gold, that's over $2000/week.
That's 104000 USD/year and that's take home pay, no income taxes, no unions.
A standard 4-seat open tourer Ford Model T cost 850USD.
Of-course there were no income taxes, no SS, no Medicare, etc. People took care of their own needs by paying out of pocket, yet they had home staying wives and a bunch of children, who they had to provide education out of pocket for as well as medical attention. Still, they could do it and they were paid better than current workers, who are part of union and with all the labor laws that exist today as well.
Sure, at 100% savings it would have taken a worker 8.5 month of work to save for Model T. However if instead they saved only 2 salaries a year, it would have taken 4 years to buy a car out of pocket, and how many people are buying cars out of pocket today?
As Iwrote in the previous discussion on this topic, it's not only about government debt.
All debt that US holds is now downgraded of-course, because sovereign debt is considered to be the least likely to default, so all debt must be downgraded in USA, because US government can in theory just raise taxes and even confiscate property from any businesses and individuals in US to pay its obligations.
Also it obviously doesn't make sense to rate other countries, who are creditor nations to the USA at lower ratings than the debtor! That never made any sense. Why is Chinese debt more risky than US debt according to these rating agencies? New Zealand?
US Fed has been buying so much US Treasury debt in the last year, it's nearly the only entity that is buying any new US debt. That alone should have caused all of the rating agencies to downgrade US debt rating immediately.
Ah, how beautiful it is to observe market space competition, falling prices relative to dollars, (which are also falling BTW.). Just how much would all and any of this cost to the end consumer if there was no inflation caused by government money printing? How much electronics would cost today without any government regulations, taxes, subsidies altogether I wonder? 100 bucks for a fully loaded top quality laptop? One can only dream of a world where there is more competition in everything else, from healthcare, to education, to insurance, to travel, to energy, to food, etc.etc. arrrgh.
S&P downgrade is correct of-course, but it's nowhere near enough of a downgrade of US debt, which is all junk and will never be repaid in anything of any value.
Many believe that Tea Party got a win out of this debt ceiling deal, but that's just not true. The Win would have been if there was no debt ceiling hike at all, instead it's a loss, with the concessions being completely irrelevant. 2 Trillion spending cuts that are not real cuts, they are a so called 'cut' from a 9 Trillion base increase!
What kind of a cut is it, when the spending goes up by 7Trillion anyway? That's ridiculous, anybody arguing that's a cut is either mentally challenged or is a liar, or both (a politician).
Any actual cuts are about 25Billion this year. That's all, and that pocket change, less than a rounding error in the budget. The 2 Trillion is scheduled for cuts after next Congress is elected, but that means there will be no way to force the cuts either, and since the US economy is in recession, has been in recession and never left the recession based on real inflation numbers, by which the GDP should have been reduced (13% instead the fake 2% CPI). The reason this so called 'recovery' was jobless is because it was never a recovery in the first place.
Recovery would have allowed the economy to restructure bad debts, remove a bunch of dead weight from the economy, liquidate assets to repay debts and allow economy to start growing in private sector, which is the only sector that reduces trade deficit and creates meaningful jobs that can reduce the trade deficit. Any government created 'jobs' are welfare with a work condition attached to it, it doesn't produce anything.
There is no win in this deal, there is only loss for American and World economy. American - because it means depression continues and worsens, credit dries out and debt is monetized, USD is destroyed and US consumer is left without products to buy at all.
World - because USA CAN be an economic engine producing things the world needs, but instead USA CHOOSES to be a drag on the world, starting wars and building weapons instead of building cheap, high quality consumer goods to exchange for in the global markets.
US debt rating is junk, the debts won't be repaid, the USD will be hyper-inflated because US government does not have the political courage to do the right thing and cut government spending, which means stop Wars, SS, Medicare, government programs, cut government departments, cut income taxes, allow more business with less regulations of products and labor. There is no way this will be done politically, instead the politics of this thing will bring USD to its logical conclusion and US economy to an unfortunate situation, which will take hundreds of years to get out of.
In reality none of these rating agencies have any credibility, don't forget, Lehman Brothers, AIG and all other financial institutions that completely failed all had top ratings by these companies.
Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings all maintained at least A ratings on AIG and Lehman Brothers up until mid-September of last year. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy Sept. 15; the federal government provided AIG with its first of four multibillion-dollar bailouts the next day.
Why do people care what these rating agencies say? The market is a much better rating agency than any establishment out there, the market downgrades USD all the time, it's not a surprise, you can't have vendor financed economy, you can't have consumption without production, you can't have "jobless recovery", you can't have stimulus creating jobs that are meaningful in that they reduce the trading deficit, you can't have debt that is constantly growing while real production is shrinking 10% a year (that's because GDP is overestimated year to year, because real inflation is around 13% but a much smaller deflater is used, some 2% CPI).
You cannot have an equitable economy with 18% unemployment or underemployment, 40% finance industry, 10% government industry, 50 million people on SS and under 11% manufacturing (probably mostly military and value added assembly from imported parts.)
You just can't have 50 billion dollars/month trade deficit, where you consume 50billion dollars/month more from imported goods, produced elsewhere, while exporting printed paper and not at least an equal amount of goods. It's not possible to do this forever, and USA has been doing it for a very long time because it's exporting inflation because USD is so called "reserve currency", so other governments make a huge mistake of buying and stockpiling it by inflating their own currencies.
The debt is the crisis, not maintaining the debt ceiling, which could have been beginning of a solution.
If you want to see somebody who has real credibility on this issue, on the issue of financial institution ratings in USA, look no further than my sig. Now that guy predicted and explained in vivid detail exactly how the financial industry was going to collapse and how the housing bubble would burst and most importantly he understood the underlying principles behind these events and explained them.
Here are his thoughts on this S&P downgrade, and if you care to listen to an opinion of somebody with credibility, that would be it.
This thread is getting too long if it takes me posting the same thin over and over to get the point across.
Obviously iPhones are locked due to government regulations and/or private contracts with phone companies.
Apple could make more money by selling a way to open the phones and by selling more devices/apps into the aftermarket.
I understand this is 'tongue in cheek' sort of, but then if that is true, then I am correct, it makes them more money to sell the ability to break the devices out of jail and do whatever you want with them.
If this is how they do it and it makes them more profit, then it is what it is. They are not reaching many more consumers with it, just a very select few though, so it's still a very limited option.
I don't know why you are replying to me with that though. I never used Vista, I don't even know how. Once I had to help somebody with it, I couldn't even figure out how to view files, it was ultimately confusing, I gave about 10 seconds into the experience.
So would that decrease the overall market for iPhones then or would it increase it and would not Apple be able to sell more iPhones if more features were available, more people catered to that market, software or not? Would Apple also not gain ability to sell more devices to connect to their phone?
Is it your contention that iPhones would generate less profit for Apple in that case?