Printing bank notes without having coins backing the bank notes is counterfeiting.
Precious metals are not magical. Gold has all properties of money: it stores value, it can be divided into units of account and it can be used as medium of exchange, it is also relatively rare and impossible to counterfeit itself, and it does not deteriorate over time. Unlike any paper currency, (trust in which I DO find amusing from a person who insists that gold as money is some sort of a paradox) gold actually has value that is backed up by thousands of years of human civilizations relying on gold for this function.
Capitalism is saving money and then using the saved money to create some business by organizing resources and labor to bring products/services to the market.
If savings and business is class warfare in your vocabulary , then I want more of that kind of warfare, because that's what raises standard of living for everybody.
"Using investments" is not equivalent to "working", sorry
- sure it is, but don't be sorry for not understanding such a basic concept. If the kind of investment you are talking about is investment into other people's ideas, then in order to make a proper investment you have to do due diligence, you have to manage the risk, you have to actively participate in the business.
If the kind of investment is for example buying a bunch of land and organizing farming on it, hiring labor, buying tools, then again, it's about management of money and resources and business, etc.
If investment is even just spending time to build something, to invent/innovate and then to try and push the product to the market, then investment was your time and capital that you sunk while doing all of this, and managing the business.
What about this is NOT work? Is it like giving birth and then doing all the tasks associated with bringing up a baby not work?
Everything you just stated could also be explain by the rise of the corporations and their sociopathic destruction of society
- nope. If gov't is not there to prop up a corporation to turn one into a preferred monopoly, to give it special privileges and statuses and special tax breaks and protections and stimulus and bail outs and regulations that favor that corporation while destroying the competition, then you won't have that.
It's because a corporation without gov't support is just a normal corporation, competing in the market.
Corporation with gov't support is a different beast and is no longer a normal corporation, it's a monopoly and it's gov't created.
How else can you explain the US's 'small government' policies (still no health care),
- I hope you are not serious about saying "small government" when you are talking about the US federal government, or are you? It's like Bernanke saying: we have a policy of a strong dollar, while printing another trillion under the table to give away to some friends in undisclosed locations.
Seriously, you are not saying that US has a 'small gov't policy'? They have various rhetoric, but they have no policy of small government. You don't have a small government that is involved in that many wars, that has that many departments, that is involved in that many industries, that is bailing out companies and banks etc., it's just not what can be called small government. What is the US federal gov't spending this year, is it around 4Trillion?
At the end of 2006 the total debt held by the public was 4.9 Trillion dollars. According to the Treasury dep't the average interest paid on that debt was 4.9% Interesting coincidence. So Annualized interest payment was 240Billion dollars
At the end of 2010 the publicly traded debt was 9.3 Billion dollars (that's 87% increase in 4 years) The average interest rate was only 2.3% So Annualized interest payment fell to 213Billion dollars
So average interest was 2.3% in 2010.
But in 5 years the publicly traded debt will be 15Trillion dollars. if interest rate is even only 7% at that point, then 50% of all revenue will be spent only to pay the INTEREST on that debt. Now think about that. 7% is actually very very small amount considering the speed at which the long term interests on US gov't bonds are rising today. I actually think that by the end of 2011 the interest on public debt will be 5% easy. If any of this sounds 'small' to you, then you and I have different understanding of that word.
All the matter's you just discussed are actually caused by corporation being overly involved in lobbying and distorting government
- I agree. But I do not see the corporations as the culprit here. Of-course you would be lobbying the politicians - that's the best bang for the buck. Look at what they did for the banks just 2 years ago! Bailed them out with trillions. GM? Insurance companies? It's insane. It makes total sense to 'invest' in politicians.
But that is my point. It is not that the corporations must be all put in line and forced not to spend money however they want.
It is about having a political system that does not have any power to influence outcomes in the economy for any entity whatsoever, only a government that does NOT decide economic outcomes is the kind of government that is IMMUNIZED to the private money, that's what's needed.
First of all, it's entirely possible to consume assets without producing anything.
- is that even a question?
Of-course you can consume without producing anything.
You can consume and consume and consume and keep consuming. The only question is this: who is giving you the stuff and why?
As long as you can somehow trick somebody or coerce somebody or do some Jedi mind control trick on somebody and keep them subsidizing your consumption, then yes, you can consume forever until they are dead or they snap out of it or you grow tired of eating.
I don't understand how that even made it into a point in your comment.
Saying "all consumers must produce" is just a restatement of the broken window fallacy.
- OK, I'll restate. All people who consume, must give something in return. Maybe they are not producing something specific, but maybe they are improving quality of life of someone else and that pays the bills.
Obviously there are charity cases, where people live just because somebody is taking care of all their needs. I don't disapprove, I don't argue, I don't envy at all, if those are healthy grown up people, then I am amused.
Secondly, the terms 'producer' and 'consumer' mean 'net producer' and 'net consumer'. You're using them interchangeably when they are in fact mutually exclusive.
- I don't even talk about any particular one individual, I am talking about the aggregate and the fact that USA has a trade deficit of 50Billion USD/month. I think that number speaks volumes.
The sane idea is actually fairly simple: stop government from spending. Do not allow them to spend, do not allow them to take in money, so deny them the taxes and do not allow them to steal your existing investments (do not be in US dollars).
If you are looking for the solution to this systematic problem, I mean fixing the US government, well vote only for libertarians. Convince everybody only to vote for libertarians.
But if you want something to help yourself, do make sure that your investments are not in USA, for that reason I gave you the link, through that hedge fund you can own foreign stocks, foreign income generating properties, basically foreign investments that are not tied to the US dollar. Save yourself first, that's the real advice.
First there's no such thing as real money it's an abstract symbol to facilitate trade. If it's not doing that it's worthless.
Money is more than just medium of exchange. Money is also Unit of Account and Store of Value. So before you spout nonsense, learn the topic.
The death tax kicks in after $1 million and every other transaction is taxed so why shouldn't it be taxed too.
- again, in most cases you have to liquidate investments. It's not money under a mattress, it's money that's working in economy. It maybe a company. But to say: any transaction must be taxed...
What transaction? Was something bought? Was something sold? What exactly is transacted? What GOODS changed hands with VALUE ADDED on top of that?
If nothing actually was produced or reduced, nothing was shifted and nothing was shipped, nothing was consumed and nothing was recreated, the only thing that happened was a piece of paper was signed. OK, somebody got their fee for a legal advice. What more can the state want?
Well clearly, the state sees it that all those income taxes previously paid on that same money is not enough. It's never enough.
You don't have to liquidate a company just to pay taxes on it.
- since when is liquid money laying around when death tax on a COMPANY needs to be paid? Taxing assets above 1Million at 55% and saying: don't worry, just pay the cash, don't dispose of the company. That's BS, give me a break, what are we, in pre-school here? If a company is 100Million, you have to liquidate 55% of it, you may as well liquidate the entire thing, a rare company will survive that kind of gutting.
People don't have to sell their houses to pay property taxes
- oh yeah? Set the rate at 55% and they will.
Right now their is a lower tax rate for liquidating stocks than for earning an income so I'm not sure what you're for here. Are you saying liquidating stocks should be encouraged over earning income, because that's the way it's setup now.
- I am saying that in order to pay the death tax, assets have to be liquidated.
Arguing that motivation for the super rich is related to the tax code is like arguing that the death penalty is a deterrent to psychopaths. Bill Gates would still become super rich regardless of what you tax him after the first $10,000,000 just like a psychopath is still going to murder regardless of the penalty. The inherited wealthy have done a phenomenal job of arguing that the tax code should favor them by convincing the middle class that it will effect them too when that hard work (never) pays off.
- I am not making any such argument except these 2:
1. Liquidating assets is destructive to the economy, that's from an economic point of view. 2. Death tax is immoral. That's my personal position. I wouldn't pay it and I wouldn't recommend anybody to pay it, I would recommend people to move to other countries that do not behave like thieves.
It's not bullshit, it's exactly the point. The rich have forms of revenue that are taxed at lower rates than the forms of revenue that most people have
- it IS bullshit because dividends ARE taxed twice. Buffet is already paying taxes on a form of income that already was paid taxes on.
It's double taxation, first corporate (which is higher than personal) then personal on dividends.
Everything is taxed at each transaction, why do you defend the rich getting excused from this?
- I am anti government theft.
Go ahead and tell yourself that if Paris Hilton had to pay more in taxes people would loose their jobs.
- I do not want Paris Hilton to lose money unnecessarily and unfairly, which I consider death taxes to be. You do want her to pay, I argue that such ideas as yours come out of pure jealousy and noth
Could it be said that you don't favor *any* entity having influence over the direction of society, and the attendant economic impacts?
- correct.
I clearly understand and lament the problem with power vacuum, it is what it is, that's why I am not an anarchist. Gov't has a role. But that role must not be in dictating economic or social outcomes for entities or people. The US under the US Constitution was doing just fine for a while there, very well actually, right until the moment the Fed was created and income taxes as well. Then it went downhill. The Fed destroyed the currency and grew the gov't to impossible size and allowed ti to wage wars and take over economy. The income taxes destroyed ability of private individuals to save enough money to start enough of their own businesses to offset the damage gov't intervention was causing.
Today even if the income taxes are set to 0 (and I include payroll taxes into this as well) the gov't will not stop. It will simply print and borrow until the dollar collapses.
My wife and I are wondering whether our lifetime of savings will be stolen by the plutocrats who have grabbed the power when we will most need those resources as our competitive strength wanes through the natural effects of our aging.
- you probably would be better off moving to South America at this point, but that's just a general type of feeling, everybody decides on their own.
For worse or better, we're no longer "Dagny Taggart" or "John Galt". Sometime in the next 10-30 years, we will need to depend on the services of others, paid for by our savings. And the way things seems to be headed, just when we won't have the strength to fight back, we won't even be able to fall back on the resources that we've saved. My wife and I have never saved less than 40% of our incomes as an engineer (me) and clinical psychologist (her), and the last few years have been *brutal* for people who don't have government support (meaning, for example, the favorable tax treatment given to people who don't make a goddamned thing).
- I'd be surprised if US economy lasts past the next presidential election without the collapse of US bond market.
If you have investments in US equity/pension funds, you may want to think how to save your money from being inflated into nothingness. You may want to contact these people for a real financial advice.
Maybe you should start with easier reading then, the Constitution maybe, where it says specifically that only gold/silver coins are money.
Bank notes are legal tender, not backed by anything, and every new dollar US Fed prints and US gov't gets through US bond purchase through third parties such as GS, it's all counterfeiting.
It was not done however by heirs and heiresses of the already rich.
- oh yeah, the dreaded 'death' tax. Well think about this: to pay the death tax you have to liquidate a lot of investments. You don't actually believe that people with real money have it all stashed under a mattress, do you?
To liquidate investments that were made by people, thrifty enough to become uber-rich, now that's funny. What do you think happens when you liquidate investments?
You sell stock maybe, ok. You sell your company? Fire some people? Liquidate a business? Is that helpful?
Now, on the other hand - why bother working if you can't pass the fruits of your labor, for which you have already paid the taxes to your children?
Now how about this: how about liquidating all of the assets and then burning the money in a big bonfire? There is no tax on that. You won't have to pay a tax. How about liquidating the investments to buy a huge diamond and then just dropping it into the ocean?
So how come we want to do this, is it just about jealousy? I think it is, because it is irrational to liquidate working investments.
The third (changes) richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, said in 2007 that he paid 17.7%(without even trying to avoid paying higher taxes) on $46,000,000 that he made while his secretary paid 30% on the $60,000 he made. It is quite telling that self made billionaires will often admit that they pay less in taxes. It's the 75% of the rich that inherited their wealth and do less to help the economy than the guy who used to make your car that are lucky to have people like you on their side.
Buffet is paying taxes on dividends, which are taxed by gov't for income before they are paid to the shareholders. It's double taxation, Buffet knows it and it's posturing, because the REAL question is this: Why did Buffet have the government bail out his company with billions of dollars?
He is talking about taxes on dividends and comparing them to taxes on income, well that's bullshit, why doesn't he talk more about uncle Sam bailing him out with real money?
I am talking of-course about those, who hold real currencies, real money (gold), real wealth (equities in companies that actually produce things people use in other countries.)
Wealth is saved. Saved wealth is capital that can be invested.
I'll answer your question like this:
You will need those people because once you have nothing, you'll need something to start with, even tools and raw materials. Tools and raw materials. If somebody can provide you with tools and raw materials and food and energy, then that's an investment. If you CAN provide yourself with those things, then you are one of those who can do it yourself.
- seriously? Who is worshiping capitalism? Large monopolies? Government? Average Joe?
Large monopolies have very little to do with capitalism, they are gov't created, gov't subsidized, gov't protected from competition, gov't stimulated, gov't subsidized. All of this so that they return the favor to the gov't by re-electing those who want to be in power. It's a symbiotic relationship, but where is the 'capitalism' there?
What do you think 'capitalism' is? Capitalism has a meaning - it's really collecting, saving capital to invest it, to organize the investment around tools and labor and ideas so that profit can be generated and more capital can be re-invested.
So which of those who you think 'worship capitalism' actually worship it? Because in today's USA the savers are persona-non grata. The gov't has made it clear enough: do not save.
Do not save. Spend. Spend on consumables. Do not save and invest, spend instead. The gov't money does not come from savings or even just taxes, it's borrowed and then it's spent, how is that capitalism?
but we also tend to be an empathic and moral society (well, sometimes at least)
- I challenge this as well. We are not empathic and moral any more than the gov't that represents us. We are selfish and stupid and lazy, now that's true. That's why we go against the good economic policies towards bad ones. You think it is a good policy to have minimum wage?
It's a terrible policy. Minimum wage has created more unemployment than there was before it, minimum wage in USA actually, was designed to ensure that there is less competition to the labor union participants. But minimum wage creates unemployment and poverty. Is that moral and smart? Or is that stupid and bad policy? I say it's stupid and it is bad policy, because by pricing out some schmuck, who was making $3/hour from the market, because it is illegal to pay him that much, but at $5/hour he is a money LOSING proposition for a business, the gov't has done a bunch of stupid shit, that's unpaid for:
1. Unemployment (he should have been working) 2. Reduced possibility of future employment (people gain experience and move on from lower paying job to higher paying jobs.) 3. Increased gov't spending - now you have to pay the guy welfare. 4. Decreased individual initiative - you provide the wrong incentives. You can't turn this on and off easily. Once somebody is on welfare, he is on welfare for good (of-course there are always examples to the contrary). 5. Decreased economic activity - why shouldn't the job for $3/hour exist? Why can't we have grocery baggers and gas pump attendants and phone answering folk etc.?
The people get replaced with machines, ones the people cost more than the investment into machines, so minimum wage forces people to compete not only against each other, but also against capital (savings).
Was this good and was this moral?
Capitalism does not care about child labor laws
- Ha. Capitalism is what made it POSSIBLE to NOT have child labor. What do you think the 4-5 year old children were doing PRIOR to capitalism? Playing Nintendo? Capitalism and industrialization is what created the wealth, which allowed to reduce reliance on child labor, which actually allowed the people to stop being subsistence farmers, who needed a LOT of children to survive, so women started gaining their RIGHTS because of the WEALTH that capitalism provided. Rights, they are very much dependent on economic situation, not on just abstract ideas about what's moral or not.
pollution restrictions
- and there should not be pollution restrictions. The State does have a job - minimum military and justice system. And the justice system must work, it must be workable. And State should not own any property, all property must be private. Only private property owners CARE about their property. The 10Million Cap on deep w
what utter rubbish, you're telling me no poor or middle class person earned and built up their own wealth?
- I am saying that once society is ruined, you need capital to start new businesses, and capital comes from savings.
Sure, a person with no savings CAN save something over time and start a business, I am not denying that it is one of the ways to do so, but it takes so much more time to do it that way, that in an impoverished society it is even harder.
You're telling me a banker or typical financier knows how to design or build anything other than debt and debt-notes?
- I am telling you, that if some 'financier' or a 'banker' survives this with some capital saved, then he will be able to invest that capital, and if not himself, somebody else may use that capital, but he will have to be organizing it.
You're telling me the only way to build or run a business is by going into debt and being in debt?
- I am saying the opposite, that capital is savings. So you need savings to be able to invest that saved capital and organize labor around it to produce anything, is that some surprise?
Most of the oligarchs in our current system with its mega-corporations have only made laws and procedures to shut out the small guy from becoming successful or participating in markets (for one example, the "food safety bill") and to lock us into buying their products while quashing alternatives
- correct.
we don't need those uber-rich parasites, we've already had to prop up, are continuing to prop up, their failed business models with debt laid upon us. Those who can invent, design, build don't need those people.
- unfortunately you will need those people. You can be as inventive as you like, but if all of your time is spent gathering food, you won't have any time at all to exercise your ingenuity.
It's hard TODAY to become a self-made entrepreneur, because you have to fee yourself while working on your own projects. Imagine a destroyed society, where stores have nothing, you can't exchange money because it's worthless, you need actual commodities to survive and you need to find those commodities.
In that situation your best bet is somebody with a lot of savings to restart businesses.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- random stuff, there are too many laws on the books now, instead laws need to be abolished.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- same.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- same
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- I wouldn't say Washington DC is that terrible of a place...
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
- the representative houses today need to be dissolved, how many of the representatives are in their double digit re-elections? Professional politicians need to go home.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
- the current problem is that the same people are there for decades.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- yeah, that seems to be the same problem now. But it's even worse, do people actually OWN their property today or is it all property of the state and banks?
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- appointed Judges.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- activist / party Judges
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance.
- income taxes, payroll taxes, inflation through printing and borrowing, future taxes based on debt
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- aside from the fact that physically the military is not sharing your quarters, the military is always there, with all that spending. You might as well say they are living in your house and you are paying their rent and everything.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- and today military is in the pocket of politicians, who use it for their own gain to keep being re-elected, because the military industrial complex never sees any spending cuts and military is always in a war of some sort
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
- UN, NAFTA
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
- or just spending obscene amounts of money, printed, borrowed and taxed
Yes, because Buffett clearly needs the masses to love him.
- well, I am sure that a cushy place is prepared for Buffet when the shit hits the fan in USA and there is a US bond crisis, and US ends up printing the US dollar out of existence, I am sure that he will be 'called upon' for his contributions to the society, he'll have some high up post in gov't and only populists will be able to be in government at that point.
I love it when the only businessmen Randians look up to are assholes who rape and pillage an economy and are proud of it. All it means that that is who they would like to be.
- random. Do you actually have any REAL argument against the point I made about the dividends being taxed twice and about the fact that Berkshire Hathaway was bailed out, because it was just as leveraged as the rest of them and US Fed was giving out hundreds of billions left right and center when that government/monopolistic shit exploded? No you do not. So fuck off.
Correction. You seem to not only be delusional about how important you are,
- random.
but are also sadly misguided about what quality of life is.
- quality of life is everything that you get. Did you have to hunt a bird or a pig or harvest your own crops to eat? No? You bought food at a store, right? That's quality of life.
Did you have to go harvest your own coffee beans when you visited that coffee shop to get a cup? No. That's quality of life.
When your head hurt, did you bash it against the wall? I hope not. There are pills for that. That's quality of life.
When you got all lonely, did you dial '1-800-get-a-whore' or whatever, or maybey you turned on TV or phone or your computer or maybe you drove your car to see some friends? That's quality of life.
Did you go to a vacation? Did you have to build your own airplane to fly there? That's quality of life.
Being able to use the goods and services provides you with quality of life. If you think you can have wonderful quality of life while living a 'simple life' at the 'edge of earth', picking food, using roots and leaves and dead mice to sooth your pain.... you are going to be surprised once you get into that situation. You will quickly find just how important all those things are, that you are dismissing so easily here.
I normally don' reply to the same person in different threads, but your posts were such a rare combination of sad, misguided and fantastic that I had to.
- what, no noun, just a bunch of adjectives?
that I had to. I actually feel sorry for you.
- oh, thank you, would you also make me a sandwich while you are at it? Vegetarian please.
Sad that you ruin your comment with a largely baseless shot against your favorite boogeyman, because you then move on to make a valid point:
- I made 2 valid points, your failure to recognize them doesn't diminish that fact.
This is not the problem caused by gubmint.
- I am somewhat tired of this discussion, if you want, you can go through my journal, I have plenty of stuff there, with links to many of my other posts that I link to specifically to avoid repeating the same thing over and over...
Countries where science and engineering are thriving, such as in Germany or Canada, have much larger government spending per capita and more social programs than the United States.
- I am actually a Canadian, born in the former USSR, currently in Germany, doing business in Asia. I disagree with you on all points, that Canada and Germany have thriving engineering, that more gov't money is spent there per capita, that there are more social programs than in USA, etc.
get stuck failing to explain why countries with government run healthcare (unlike ours, even under the recent reform) and sub-65 retirement ages have employment rates equal to or higher than ours, as well as more manufacturing.
- USA is still manufacturing more than Canada or Germany, it has a 50Billion/month trade deficit with China, but in terms of manufacturing it's manufacturing plenty.
The problem with USA is that it's manufacturing mostly weapons and it's doing various 'value added' stuff, assembling parts created elsewhere. As to unemployment in USA, that's quite simple. USA has a gov't that is bigger than any other government, with all the subcontractors, USA is in a number of wars that nobody else is in, USA is spending twice as much as it's getting revenue, so it's borrowing, and thus printing bonds and promises to pay dollars later, so it's taxing its future.
The REASON why USA has such outflow of capital is exactly because USA is overregulating, overtaxing, overburdening in more ways than ANYBODY ON THE PLANET.
Unfortunately for the US people, it's gov't has gone bat shit insane in terms of spending and growing, so now when anybody in US gov't is talking about 'cutting spending', they do not actually mean really stopping the spending. They mean to say: we will reduce the increase, by which we were going to increase the spending.
It's like if you worked for me, and I called you one morning and told you: congratulations! You are getting a pay raise!
You'd be like: Yahoo!
Then I'd say: that's right, from now on your salary is cut by 15%.
You'd be like: WTF?!
and then I'd hit you the way US gov't does: -Well, when I woke up this morning, I thought, why not cut this guy's salary by 30%? But by the time I came to work, I decided only to cut your salary by 15%. So you got a huge pay raise.
Now go, enjoy your day.
---
That's how US gov't 'cuts' spending.
--
Cut school sports, reduce pupil headcount per teacher
- Whatever. Department of education must be abolished.
Tariffs on imports. It's called "protectionism," and though it's a no-no when you have free trade policies that actually work, it's exactly what you do when something as silly as exchange rates causes lopsided export levels.
- whatever. Enjoy paying higher prices on everything then, because even the stuff that's manufactured in USA gets all the components from China and other countries, so all you'll do will only increase the end price for you and in reality US has no production capacity to satisfy the demand, that's why there is 50Billion/month trade deficit in the first place.
Any tariff on import will only cause your prices to go up and will create shortages, but it will neither make US economy better, nor will it create any new US manufacturing capacity.
that's just Buffet being populist and trying to be liked by the masses, when in reality he is throwing a bunch of people under the bus where they clearly do not belong.
What Buffet is comparing is apples and pine-cones. He is talking about the DIVIDENDS that he is deriving from his investments, so from dividends you pay a lower percentage of income taxes than you would from just a salary, as his secretary does.
What Buffet is NOT telling you, is that the dividends are ALREADY TAXED FOR INCOME.
The dividends end up taxed twice by the government! So just because Buffet is paying less in number of percents from his dividends than his secretary in number of percents from her income, does not mean that the gov't is actually getting less from the money that those dividends are taken from, because the first thing that happens before dividends are paid is this: liabilities and taxes are paid and only then dividends are paid, and then there is a tax on them.
So please, give me a break.
Buffet has been on this for a while, aiming at people who do not understand the issue, being populist, while from the other side of his mouth he is praising the gov't for helping his company to survive by massive bailouts.
That's right, the fucking 'genius' of a businessman he is, isn't he? Dipping the hand into the pocket of uncle Sam, while yelling on TV how sorry he is for getting those miserly dividends.
The REAL story with Buffet is that his company was bailed out with billions upon billions of inflated government printed dollars.
Current policy is the problem, but it's always a fallacy to say "government is the problem."
- yeah, if by 'current policy' you mean the policy of governments to get entangled in economy and create monopolies and destroy competition, while simultaneously growing itself through counterfeiting bank notes, then I agree with you totally.
Unless you support anarchy (and by anarchy I don't mean some utopian Chompsky anarchy that never has nor will exist, I mean chaos), then government cannot be a problem in and of itself.
- government is a necessary evil, a spending item, a luxury.
Government is something that you build and you never grow. I support gov't to do a very small number of things: minimum military and justice system.
Government policy can be a problem, but here the problem is that the government isn't investing in education.
- I completely disagree, my points are made, I am against gov't doing anything beyond minimum military and justice system. Gov't has no role in anything else.
When you personify the government as some crazy anti-individual you only illustrate how out of touch you are with reality.
- show me where do I 'personify' gov't exactly? But it's uniform and it is following the same practices, working together in the same direction.
Way to cite your own post, btw.
- I hope you enjoy it. I rather do that than leave snark remarks about your comments to some third party ACs in the middle of the thread.
Here's the problem with your argument: manufacturing jobs will be lost to robots, so it really doesn't matter if we lose them to foreign countries in the short term
- robots are the way into the future, but those countries, to who USA is losing the production capacity right now will stop providing the US with the fruits of their labor and then USA will be sitting there, waving its dick in the desert - no robots, no products, nothing.
We need to create a society of educated individuals whose jobs cannot be replaced by computers, robots, and machines.
- no. What we NEED is to leave people alone so they take the economy to where it will be, not try to micromanage how people work, what they do, what they come up with, how they invest their money, etc.
This starts with education and it requires the government's support.
- that's very very sad, if you really believe that, because education and department of education have nothing to do with each other. USA had biggest economic growth without department of education. What is needed is again - leaving people alone.
Not only US gov't has no authority under the Constitution to get involved into education, but also it has no competence to do any of it either. The US gov't is a failure of enormous proportions and magnitudes, from the Fed's mandate to price stability, to the FDIC and Feddie/Fannie and 1-0% interest rates, causing massive asset bubbles and boom/bust cycles that were artificial all due to inflation and it will eventually completely destroy the US economy by monetizing all of its US bonds debt (and I expect the next QE will be in State bonds, then in muni bonds, then more corporate bail outs...)
I don't want anybody to be responsible for anybody. I don't want anybody to make me responsible for anybody.
I also trust the 'rich' to be much more responsible with their own money, than the gov't ever could.
You are saying that the gov't is more responsible or something? Aren't you in the loop? The US gov't has 14Trillion dollars in debt. 50Billion/month trade imbalance. Over 60Trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, most of which are various pension funds, secured only with gov't bonds.
Are you telling me that the gov't is BETTER at managing money than Jim Rogers?
If Jim Rogers becomes poor and cannot pay for his own retirement, that's Jim Rogers' problem. He'd have to find some way of getting out of that situation.
But I'll tell you something much MORE realistic: It's NOT going to be Jim Rogers, who will end up poor. It's the population of US of A and other Western nations, that are socialist/corporatist/not Free people who will be poor. They will not have their SS. They will not have their EI. They will not have their Medicare, etc.
And you know what, if the gov't didn't actually ROB those people all those years through taxes and inflation, those same people would have had an opportunity to save the money they paid in taxes and inflation and they could have invested it themselves, into their own ideas and businesses, and society would have been wealthier.
And you know what, wealthy societies do not allow poor and sick people just to drop dead, there are enough charitable people in the world, who donate the money they made and time and help those in need, this is not something new and it never required gov't to force this charity to happen.
What gov't did end up doing, is turning many generations of people into dependent people, who are not self reliant, who do not think for themselves, who hope that somebody else will take care of them. Too bad. The times are coming when this will stop, and it's because of the gov't and it's because the gov't caused the society to be poor.
Poor societies do NOT help anybody through charity, because poor societies do not have resources for charities, and gov'ts turn rich societies into poor societies.
Imagine for a second you had a machine with a button on it and a microphone, you push the button and say something into the microphone and the machine produces it. So you have this machine that can make whatever you want for you. Do you know what a socialist or a corporatist gov't would want to do? They would want to take that machine from you and make sure nobody ever sees it again. It's because they control you as long as you do not have your own means of survival. The prefer to have the majority of people to be poor rather than rich.
Being rich does not mean having cash. It means having wealth. Wealth is not cash. Cash can be counterfeited, wealth cannot. Cash is paper, wealth is whatever you need. That machine with that button would be wealth. If that machine was only printing dollars (cash) then it wouldn't produce wealth, it would just print/counterfeit cash.
Now, that machine would be the ultimate advance in efficiency. Would you still be trying to gain a competitive edge if you had that machine? What if every single person had that machine? What kind of competitive advantage could you have, if you had a machine that could give you every single thing possible that can be manufactured?
The point is that capitalism and industrialism are about production, are about increasing efficiencies of production and without gov't intervention they increase everybody's wealth, just like that machine. Before capitalism/industrialism you'd be a subsistence farmer or something similar, working just to feed yourself most of your life. With the advent of capitalism and industrialization, you now have something like that machine, but it doesn't produce everything yet and it doesn't give you everything for free yet because that machine does not have unlimited resources and energy and it's not fully automated.
So people are part of that machine, everybody is. But as a society, through competition, we are actually cooperating on creating that machine, that would produce everything as cheaply and as quickly as possible, with high quality and better results and better diversity of things we produce.
That's why you are no longer spending 90% of your waking time working for food. That's why you can spend time on/. You have that machine, not perfect, but pretty good already. The time you need to work was slashed in half or more, the amount of things you can get was increased by some orders of magnitude, the price for food is low, so is price for everything else when compared to the time you would have been a subsistence farmer.
Humans probably will never actually build the perfect machine, that does all of that, but we should not slow down the progress by introducing the artificial barriers on the path to production of that machine by putting the governments in front of that machine, that do not actually improve the quality of the machine, but take away from it, make parts of it more expensive than they should be, disconnecting and sabotaging that machine everywhere it can just so that the people in power can stay in power by making sure people are POORER than they can be.
Slashdot Mirror
All you need to know is that this research comes from the esteemed University of Baloney.
Gold is not a fiat currency :)
Printing bank notes without having coins backing the bank notes is counterfeiting.
Precious metals are not magical. Gold has all properties of money: it stores value, it can be divided into units of account and it can be used as medium of exchange, it is also relatively rare and impossible to counterfeit itself, and it does not deteriorate over time. Unlike any paper currency, (trust in which I DO find amusing from a person who insists that gold as money is some sort of a paradox) gold actually has value that is backed up by thousands of years of human civilizations relying on gold for this function.
start by reading his 'thank you' note, made me noxious.
Capitalism is saving money and then using the saved money to create some business by organizing resources and labor to bring products/services to the market.
If savings and business is class warfare in your vocabulary , then I want more of that kind of warfare, because that's what raises standard of living for everybody.
"Using investments" is not equivalent to "working", sorry
- sure it is, but don't be sorry for not understanding such a basic concept. If the kind of investment you are talking about is investment into other people's ideas, then in order to make a proper investment you have to do due diligence, you have to manage the risk, you have to actively participate in the business.
If the kind of investment is for example buying a bunch of land and organizing farming on it, hiring labor, buying tools, then again, it's about management of money and resources and business, etc.
If investment is even just spending time to build something, to invent/innovate and then to try and push the product to the market, then investment was your time and capital that you sunk while doing all of this, and managing the business.
What about this is NOT work? Is it like giving birth and then doing all the tasks associated with bringing up a baby not work?
Everything you just stated could also be explain by the rise of the corporations and their sociopathic destruction of society
- nope. If gov't is not there to prop up a corporation to turn one into a preferred monopoly, to give it special privileges and statuses and special tax breaks and protections and stimulus and bail outs and regulations that favor that corporation while destroying the competition, then you won't have that.
It's because a corporation without gov't support is just a normal corporation, competing in the market.
Corporation with gov't support is a different beast and is no longer a normal corporation, it's a monopoly and it's gov't created.
How else can you explain the US's 'small government' policies (still no health care),
- I hope you are not serious about saying "small government" when you are talking about the US federal government, or are you? It's like Bernanke saying: we have a policy of a strong dollar, while printing another trillion under the table to give away to some friends in undisclosed locations.
Seriously, you are not saying that US has a 'small gov't policy'? They have various rhetoric, but they have no policy of small government. You don't have a small government that is involved in that many wars, that has that many departments, that is involved in that many industries, that is bailing out companies and banks etc., it's just not what can be called small government. What is the US federal gov't spending this year, is it around 4Trillion?
At the end of 2006 the total debt held by the public was 4.9 Trillion dollars.
According to the Treasury dep't the average interest paid on that debt was 4.9%
Interesting coincidence.
So Annualized interest payment was 240Billion dollars
At the end of 2010 the publicly traded debt was 9.3 Billion dollars (that's 87% increase in 4 years)
The average interest rate was only 2.3%
So Annualized interest payment fell to 213Billion dollars
So average interest was 2.3% in 2010.
But in 5 years the publicly traded debt will be 15Trillion dollars.
if interest rate is even only 7% at that point, then 50% of all revenue will be spent only to pay the INTEREST on that debt.
Now think about that. 7% is actually very very small amount considering the speed at which the long term interests on US gov't bonds are rising today.
I actually think that by the end of 2011 the interest on public debt will be 5% easy.
If any of this sounds 'small' to you, then you and I have different understanding of that word.
All the matter's you just discussed are actually caused by corporation being overly involved in lobbying and distorting government
- I agree. But I do not see the corporations as the culprit here. Of-course you would be lobbying the politicians - that's the best bang for the buck. Look at what they did for the banks just 2 years ago! Bailed them out with trillions. GM? Insurance companies? It's insane. It makes total sense to 'invest' in politicians.
But that is my point. It is not that the corporations must be all put in line and forced not to spend money however they want.
It is about having a political system that does not have any power to influence outcomes in the economy for any entity whatsoever, only a government that does NOT decide economic outcomes is the kind of government that is IMMUNIZED to the private money, that's what's needed.
First of all, it's entirely possible to consume assets without producing anything.
- is that even a question?
Of-course you can consume without producing anything.
You can consume and consume and consume and keep consuming. The only question is this: who is giving you the stuff and why?
As long as you can somehow trick somebody or coerce somebody or do some Jedi mind control trick on somebody and keep them subsidizing your consumption, then yes, you can consume forever until they are dead or they snap out of it or you grow tired of eating.
I don't understand how that even made it into a point in your comment.
Saying "all consumers must produce" is just a restatement of the broken window fallacy.
- OK, I'll restate. All people who consume, must give something in return. Maybe they are not producing something specific, but maybe they are improving quality of life of someone else and that pays the bills.
Obviously there are charity cases, where people live just because somebody is taking care of all their needs. I don't disapprove, I don't argue, I don't envy at all, if those are healthy grown up people, then I am amused.
Secondly, the terms 'producer' and 'consumer' mean 'net producer' and 'net consumer'. You're using them interchangeably when they are in fact mutually exclusive.
- I don't even talk about any particular one individual, I am talking about the aggregate and the fact that USA has a trade deficit of 50Billion USD/month. I think that number speaks volumes.
The sane idea is actually fairly simple: stop government from spending. Do not allow them to spend, do not allow them to take in money, so deny them the taxes and do not allow them to steal your existing investments (do not be in US dollars).
If you are looking for the solution to this systematic problem, I mean fixing the US government, well vote only for libertarians. Convince everybody only to vote for libertarians.
But if you want something to help yourself, do make sure that your investments are not in USA, for that reason I gave you the link, through that hedge fund you can own foreign stocks, foreign income generating properties, basically foreign investments that are not tied to the US dollar. Save yourself first, that's the real advice.
First there's no such thing as real money it's an abstract symbol to facilitate trade. If it's not doing that it's worthless.
Money is more than just medium of exchange. Money is also Unit of Account and Store of Value. So before you spout nonsense, learn the topic.
The death tax kicks in after $1 million and every other transaction is taxed so why shouldn't it be taxed too.
- again, in most cases you have to liquidate investments. It's not money under a mattress, it's money that's working in economy. It maybe a company. But to say: any transaction must be taxed...
What transaction? Was something bought? Was something sold? What exactly is transacted? What GOODS changed hands with VALUE ADDED on top of that?
If nothing actually was produced or reduced, nothing was shifted and nothing was shipped, nothing was consumed and nothing was recreated, the only thing that happened was a piece of paper was signed. OK, somebody got their fee for a legal advice. What more can the state want?
Well clearly, the state sees it that all those income taxes previously paid on that same money is not enough. It's never enough.
You don't have to liquidate a company just to pay taxes on it.
- since when is liquid money laying around when death tax on a COMPANY needs to be paid? Taxing assets above 1Million at 55% and saying: don't worry, just pay the cash, don't dispose of the company. That's BS, give me a break, what are we, in pre-school here? If a company is 100Million, you have to liquidate 55% of it, you may as well liquidate the entire thing, a rare company will survive that kind of gutting.
People don't have to sell their houses to pay property taxes
- oh yeah? Set the rate at 55% and they will.
Right now their is a lower tax rate for liquidating stocks than for earning an income so I'm not sure what you're for here. Are you saying liquidating stocks should be encouraged over earning income, because that's the way it's setup now.
- I am saying that in order to pay the death tax, assets have to be liquidated.
Arguing that motivation for the super rich is related to the tax code is like arguing that the death penalty is a deterrent to psychopaths. Bill Gates would still become super rich regardless of what you tax him after the first $10,000,000 just like a psychopath is still going to murder regardless of the penalty. The inherited wealthy have done a phenomenal job of arguing that the tax code should favor them by convincing the middle class that it will effect them too when that hard work (never) pays off.
- I am not making any such argument except these 2:
1. Liquidating assets is destructive to the economy, that's from an economic point of view.
2. Death tax is immoral. That's my personal position. I wouldn't pay it and I wouldn't recommend anybody to pay it, I would recommend people to move to other countries that do not behave like thieves.
It's not bullshit, it's exactly the point. The rich have forms of revenue that are taxed at lower rates than the forms of revenue that most people have
- it IS bullshit because dividends ARE taxed twice. Buffet is already paying taxes on a form of income that already was paid taxes on.
It's double taxation, first corporate (which is higher than personal) then personal on dividends.
Everything is taxed at each transaction, why do you defend the rich getting excused from this?
- I am anti government theft.
Go ahead and tell yourself that if Paris Hilton had to pay more in taxes people would loose their jobs.
- I do not want Paris Hilton to lose money unnecessarily and unfairly, which I consider death taxes to be. You do want her to pay, I argue that such ideas as yours come out of pure jealousy and noth
Could it be said that you don't favor *any* entity having influence over the direction of society, and the attendant economic impacts?
- correct.
I clearly understand and lament the problem with power vacuum, it is what it is, that's why I am not an anarchist. Gov't has a role. But that role must not be in dictating economic or social outcomes for entities or people. The US under the US Constitution was doing just fine for a while there, very well actually, right until the moment the Fed was created and income taxes as well. Then it went downhill. The Fed destroyed the currency and grew the gov't to impossible size and allowed ti to wage wars and take over economy. The income taxes destroyed ability of private individuals to save enough money to start enough of their own businesses to offset the damage gov't intervention was causing.
Today even if the income taxes are set to 0 (and I include payroll taxes into this as well) the gov't will not stop. It will simply print and borrow until the dollar collapses.
My wife and I are wondering whether our lifetime of savings will be stolen by the plutocrats who have grabbed the power when we will most need those resources as our competitive strength wanes through the natural effects of our aging.
- you probably would be better off moving to South America at this point, but that's just a general type of feeling, everybody decides on their own.
For worse or better, we're no longer "Dagny Taggart" or "John Galt". Sometime in the next 10-30 years, we will need to depend on the services of others, paid for by our savings. And the way things seems to be headed, just when we won't have the strength to fight back, we won't even be able to fall back on the resources that we've saved. My wife and I have never saved less than 40% of our incomes as an engineer (me) and clinical psychologist (her), and the last few years have been *brutal* for people who don't have government support (meaning, for example, the favorable tax treatment given to people who don't make a goddamned thing).
- I'd be surprised if US economy lasts past the next presidential election without the collapse of US bond market.
If you have investments in US equity/pension funds, you may want to think how to save your money from being inflated into nothingness. You may want to contact these people for a real financial advice.
Maybe you should start with easier reading then, the Constitution maybe, where it says specifically that only gold/silver coins are money.
Bank notes are legal tender, not backed by anything, and every new dollar US Fed prints and US gov't gets through US bond purchase through third parties such as GS, it's all counterfeiting.
It was not done however by heirs and heiresses of the already rich.
- oh yeah, the dreaded 'death' tax. Well think about this: to pay the death tax you have to liquidate a lot of investments. You don't actually believe that people with real money have it all stashed under a mattress, do you?
To liquidate investments that were made by people, thrifty enough to become uber-rich, now that's funny. What do you think happens when you liquidate investments?
You sell stock maybe, ok. You sell your company? Fire some people? Liquidate a business? Is that helpful?
Now, on the other hand - why bother working if you can't pass the fruits of your labor, for which you have already paid the taxes to your children?
Now how about this: how about liquidating all of the assets and then burning the money in a big bonfire? There is no tax on that. You won't have to pay a tax. How about liquidating the investments to buy a huge diamond and then just dropping it into the ocean?
So how come we want to do this, is it just about jealousy? I think it is, because it is irrational to liquidate working investments.
The third (changes) richest man in the world, Warren Buffett, said in 2007 that he paid 17.7%(without even trying to avoid paying higher taxes) on $46,000,000 that he made while his secretary paid 30% on the $60,000 he made. It is quite telling that self made billionaires will often admit that they pay less in taxes. It's the 75% of the rich that inherited their wealth and do less to help the economy than the guy who used to make your car that are lucky to have people like you on their side.
- I have already commented on this here.
Buffet is paying taxes on dividends, which are taxed by gov't for income before they are paid to the shareholders. It's double taxation, Buffet knows it and it's posturing, because the REAL question is this: Why did Buffet have the government bail out his company with billions of dollars?
He is talking about taxes on dividends and comparing them to taxes on income, well that's bullshit, why doesn't he talk more about uncle Sam bailing him out with real money?
I am talking of-course about those, who hold real currencies, real money (gold), real wealth (equities in companies that actually produce things people use in other countries.)
Wealth is saved. Saved wealth is capital that can be invested.
I'll answer your question like this:
You will need those people because once you have nothing, you'll need something to start with, even tools and raw materials. Tools and raw materials. If somebody can provide you with tools and raw materials and food and energy, then that's an investment. If you CAN provide yourself with those things, then you are one of those who can do it yourself.
Most people won't be able to.
we worship capitalism
- seriously? Who is worshiping capitalism? Large monopolies? Government? Average Joe?
Large monopolies have very little to do with capitalism, they are gov't created, gov't subsidized, gov't protected from competition, gov't stimulated, gov't subsidized. All of this so that they return the favor to the gov't by re-electing those who want to be in power. It's a symbiotic relationship, but where is the 'capitalism' there?
What do you think 'capitalism' is? Capitalism has a meaning - it's really collecting, saving capital to invest it, to organize the investment around tools and labor and ideas so that profit can be generated and more capital can be re-invested.
So which of those who you think 'worship capitalism' actually worship it? Because in today's USA the savers are persona-non grata. The gov't has made it clear enough: do not save.
Do not save. Spend. Spend on consumables. Do not save and invest, spend instead. The gov't money does not come from savings or even just taxes, it's borrowed and then it's spent, how is that capitalism?
but we also tend to be an empathic and moral society (well, sometimes at least)
- I challenge this as well. We are not empathic and moral any more than the gov't that represents us. We are selfish and stupid and lazy, now that's true. That's why we go against the good economic policies towards bad ones. You think it is a good policy to have minimum wage?
It's a terrible policy. Minimum wage has created more unemployment than there was before it, minimum wage in USA actually, was designed to ensure that there is less competition to the labor union participants. But minimum wage creates unemployment and poverty. Is that moral and smart? Or is that stupid and bad policy? I say it's stupid and it is bad policy, because by pricing out some schmuck, who was making $3/hour from the market, because it is illegal to pay him that much, but at $5/hour he is a money LOSING proposition for a business, the gov't has done a bunch of stupid shit, that's unpaid for:
1. Unemployment (he should have been working)
2. Reduced possibility of future employment (people gain experience and move on from lower paying job to higher paying jobs.)
3. Increased gov't spending - now you have to pay the guy welfare.
4. Decreased individual initiative - you provide the wrong incentives. You can't turn this on and off easily. Once somebody is on welfare, he is on welfare for good (of-course there are always examples to the contrary).
5. Decreased economic activity - why shouldn't the job for $3/hour exist? Why can't we have grocery baggers and gas pump attendants and phone answering folk etc.?
The people get replaced with machines, ones the people cost more than the investment into machines, so minimum wage forces people to compete not only against each other, but also against capital (savings).
Was this good and was this moral?
Capitalism does not care about child labor laws
- Ha. Capitalism is what made it POSSIBLE to NOT have child labor. What do you think the 4-5 year old children were doing PRIOR to capitalism? Playing Nintendo? Capitalism and industrialization is what created the wealth, which allowed to reduce reliance on child labor, which actually allowed the people to stop being subsistence farmers, who needed a LOT of children to survive, so women started gaining their RIGHTS because of the WEALTH that capitalism provided. Rights, they are very much dependent on economic situation, not on just abstract ideas about what's moral or not.
pollution restrictions
- and there should not be pollution restrictions. The State does have a job - minimum military and justice system. And the justice system must work, it must be workable. And State should not own any property, all property must be private. Only private property owners CARE about their property. The 10Million Cap on deep w
what utter rubbish, you're telling me no poor or middle class person earned and built up their own wealth?
- I am saying that once society is ruined, you need capital to start new businesses, and capital comes from savings.
Sure, a person with no savings CAN save something over time and start a business, I am not denying that it is one of the ways to do so, but it takes so much more time to do it that way, that in an impoverished society it is even harder.
You're telling me a banker or typical financier knows how to design or build anything other than debt and debt-notes?
- I am telling you, that if some 'financier' or a 'banker' survives this with some capital saved, then he will be able to invest that capital, and if not himself, somebody else may use that capital, but he will have to be organizing it.
You're telling me the only way to build or run a business is by going into debt and being in debt?
- I am saying the opposite, that capital is savings. So you need savings to be able to invest that saved capital and organize labor around it to produce anything, is that some surprise?
Most of the oligarchs in our current system with its mega-corporations have only made laws and procedures to shut out the small guy from becoming successful or participating in markets (for one example, the "food safety bill") and to lock us into buying their products while quashing alternatives
- correct.
we don't need those uber-rich parasites, we've already had to prop up, are continuing to prop up, their failed business models with debt laid upon us. Those who can invent, design, build don't need those people.
- unfortunately you will need those people. You can be as inventive as you like, but if all of your time is spent gathering food, you won't have any time at all to exercise your ingenuity.
It's hard TODAY to become a self-made entrepreneur, because you have to fee yourself while working on your own projects. Imagine a destroyed society, where stores have nothing, you can't exchange money because it's worthless, you need actual commodities to survive and you need to find those commodities.
In that situation your best bet is somebody with a lot of savings to restart businesses.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- random stuff, there are too many laws on the books now, instead laws need to be abolished.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- same.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- same
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- I wouldn't say Washington DC is that terrible of a place...
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
- the representative houses today need to be dissolved, how many of the representatives are in their double digit re-elections? Professional politicians need to go home.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
- the current problem is that the same people are there for decades.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
- yeah, that seems to be the same problem now. But it's even worse, do people actually OWN their property today or is it all property of the state and banks?
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- appointed Judges.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- activist / party Judges
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance.
- income taxes, payroll taxes, inflation through printing and borrowing, future taxes based on debt
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- aside from the fact that physically the military is not sharing your quarters, the military is always there, with all that spending. You might as well say they are living in your house and you are paying their rent and everything.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- and today military is in the pocket of politicians, who use it for their own gain to keep being re-elected, because the military industrial complex never sees any spending cuts and military is always in a war of some sort
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
- UN, NAFTA
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
- or just spending obscene amounts of money, printed, borrowed and taxed
For protecting them, by a
Yes, because Buffett clearly needs the masses to love him.
- well, I am sure that a cushy place is prepared for Buffet when the shit hits the fan in USA and there is a US bond crisis, and US ends up printing the US dollar out of existence, I am sure that he will be 'called upon' for his contributions to the society, he'll have some high up post in gov't and only populists will be able to be in government at that point.
I love it when the only businessmen Randians look up to are assholes who rape and pillage an economy and are proud of it. All it means that that is who they would like to be.
- random. Do you actually have any REAL argument against the point I made about the dividends being taxed twice and about the fact that Berkshire Hathaway was bailed out, because it was just as leveraged as the rest of them and US Fed was giving out hundreds of billions left right and center when that government/monopolistic shit exploded? No you do not. So fuck off.
Correction. You seem to not only be delusional about how important you are,
- random.
but are also sadly misguided about what quality of life is.
- quality of life is everything that you get. Did you have to hunt a bird or a pig or harvest your own crops to eat? No? You bought food at a store, right? That's quality of life.
Did you have to go harvest your own coffee beans when you visited that coffee shop to get a cup? No. That's quality of life.
When your head hurt, did you bash it against the wall? I hope not. There are pills for that. That's quality of life.
When you got all lonely, did you dial '1-800-get-a-whore' or whatever, or maybey you turned on TV or phone or your computer or maybe you drove your car to see some friends? That's quality of life.
Did you go to a vacation? Did you have to build your own airplane to fly there? That's quality of life.
Being able to use the goods and services provides you with quality of life. If you think you can have wonderful quality of life while living a 'simple life' at the 'edge of earth', picking food, using roots and leaves and dead mice to sooth your pain.... you are going to be surprised once you get into that situation. You will quickly find just how important all those things are, that you are dismissing so easily here.
I normally don' reply to the same person in different threads, but your posts were such a rare combination of sad, misguided and fantastic that I had to.
- what, no noun, just a bunch of adjectives?
that I had to. I actually feel sorry for you.
- oh, thank you, would you also make me a sandwich while you are at it? Vegetarian please.
/.? The world is not centered around /. you know, maybe you should get out more.
Sad that you ruin your comment with a largely baseless shot against your favorite boogeyman, because you then move on to make a valid point:
- I made 2 valid points, your failure to recognize them doesn't diminish that fact.
This is not the problem caused by gubmint.
- I am somewhat tired of this discussion, if you want, you can go through my journal, I have plenty of stuff there, with links to many of my other posts that I link to specifically to avoid repeating the same thing over and over...
Countries where science and engineering are thriving, such as in Germany or Canada, have much larger government spending per capita and more social programs than the United States.
- I am actually a Canadian, born in the former USSR, currently in Germany, doing business in Asia. I disagree with you on all points, that Canada and Germany have thriving engineering, that more gov't money is spent there per capita, that there are more social programs than in USA, etc.
get stuck failing to explain why countries with government run healthcare (unlike ours, even under the recent reform) and sub-65 retirement ages have employment rates equal to or higher than ours, as well as more manufacturing.
- USA is still manufacturing more than Canada or Germany, it has a 50Billion/month trade deficit with China, but in terms of manufacturing it's manufacturing plenty.
The problem with USA is that it's manufacturing mostly weapons and it's doing various 'value added' stuff, assembling parts created elsewhere. As to unemployment in USA, that's quite simple. USA has a gov't that is bigger than any other government, with all the subcontractors, USA is in a number of wars that nobody else is in, USA is spending twice as much as it's getting revenue, so it's borrowing, and thus printing bonds and promises to pay dollars later, so it's taxing its future.
The REASON why USA has such outflow of capital is exactly because USA is overregulating, overtaxing, overburdening in more ways than ANYBODY ON THE PLANET.
Unfortunately for the US people, it's gov't has gone bat shit insane in terms of spending and growing, so now when anybody in US gov't is talking about 'cutting spending', they do not actually mean really stopping the spending. They mean to say: we will reduce the increase, by which we were going to increase the spending.
It's like if you worked for me, and I called you one morning and told you: congratulations! You are getting a pay raise!
You'd be like: Yahoo!
Then I'd say: that's right, from now on your salary is cut by 15%.
You'd be like: WTF?!
and then I'd hit you the way US gov't does: -Well, when I woke up this morning, I thought, why not cut this guy's salary by 30%? But by the time I came to work, I decided only to cut your salary by 15%. So you got a huge pay raise.
Now go, enjoy your day.
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That's how US gov't 'cuts' spending.
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Cut school sports, reduce pupil headcount per teacher
- Whatever. Department of education must be abolished.
Tariffs on imports. It's called "protectionism," and though it's a no-no when you have free trade policies that actually work, it's exactly what you do when something as silly as exchange rates causes lopsided export levels.
- whatever. Enjoy paying higher prices on everything then, because even the stuff that's manufactured in USA gets all the components from China and other countries, so all you'll do will only increase the end price for you and in reality US has no production capacity to satisfy the demand, that's why there is 50Billion/month trade deficit in the first place.
Any tariff on import will only cause your prices to go up and will create shortages, but it will neither make US economy better, nor will it create any new US manufacturing capacity.
that's just Buffet being populist and trying to be liked by the masses, when in reality he is throwing a bunch of people under the bus where they clearly do not belong.
What Buffet is comparing is apples and pine-cones. He is talking about the DIVIDENDS that he is deriving from his investments, so from dividends you pay a lower percentage of income taxes than you would from just a salary, as his secretary does.
What Buffet is NOT telling you, is that the dividends are ALREADY TAXED FOR INCOME.
The dividends end up taxed twice by the government! So just because Buffet is paying less in number of percents from his dividends than his secretary in number of percents from her income, does not mean that the gov't is actually getting less from the money that those dividends are taken from, because the first thing that happens before dividends are paid is this: liabilities and taxes are paid and only then dividends are paid, and then there is a tax on them.
So please, give me a break.
Buffet has been on this for a while, aiming at people who do not understand the issue, being populist, while from the other side of his mouth he is praising the gov't for helping his company to survive by massive bailouts.
That's right, the fucking 'genius' of a businessman he is, isn't he? Dipping the hand into the pocket of uncle Sam, while yelling on TV how sorry he is for getting those miserly dividends.
The REAL story with Buffet is that his company was bailed out with billions upon billions of inflated government printed dollars.
Current policy is the problem, but it's always a fallacy to say "government is the problem."
- yeah, if by 'current policy' you mean the policy of governments to get entangled in economy and create monopolies and destroy competition, while simultaneously growing itself through counterfeiting bank notes, then I agree with you totally.
Unless you support anarchy (and by anarchy I don't mean some utopian Chompsky anarchy that never has nor will exist, I mean chaos), then government cannot be a problem in and of itself.
- government is a necessary evil, a spending item, a luxury.
Government is something that you build and you never grow. I support gov't to do a very small number of things: minimum military and justice system.
Government policy can be a problem, but here the problem is that the government isn't investing in education.
- I completely disagree, my points are made, I am against gov't doing anything beyond minimum military and justice system. Gov't has no role in anything else.
When you personify the government as some crazy anti-individual you only illustrate how out of touch you are with reality.
- show me where do I 'personify' gov't exactly? But it's uniform and it is following the same practices, working together in the same direction.
Way to cite your own post, btw.
- I hope you enjoy it. I rather do that than leave snark remarks about your comments to some third party ACs in the middle of the thread.
Here's the problem with your argument: manufacturing jobs will be lost to robots, so it really doesn't matter if we lose them to foreign countries in the short term
- robots are the way into the future, but those countries, to who USA is losing the production capacity right now will stop providing the US with the fruits of their labor and then USA will be sitting there, waving its dick in the desert - no robots, no products, nothing.
We need to create a society of educated individuals whose jobs cannot be replaced by computers, robots, and machines.
- no. What we NEED is to leave people alone so they take the economy to where it will be, not try to micromanage how people work, what they do, what they come up with, how they invest their money, etc.
This starts with education and it requires the government's support.
- that's very very sad, if you really believe that, because education and department of education have nothing to do with each other. USA had biggest economic growth without department of education. What is needed is again - leaving people alone.
Not only US gov't has no authority under the Constitution to get involved into education, but also it has no competence to do any of it either. The US gov't is a failure of enormous proportions and magnitudes, from the Fed's mandate to price stability, to the FDIC and Feddie/Fannie and 1-0% interest rates, causing massive asset bubbles and boom/bust cycles that were artificial all due to inflation and it will eventually completely destroy the US economy by monetizing all of its US bonds debt (and I expect the next QE will be in State bonds, then in muni bonds, then more corporate bail outs...)
There is nobody to bail out the US gov't.
How about a sculpture of Jesus with HUGE KNOCKERS and hundred dollar bills in his both hands. Think it will sell?
I don't want anybody to be responsible for anybody. I don't want anybody to make me responsible for anybody.
I also trust the 'rich' to be much more responsible with their own money, than the gov't ever could.
You are saying that the gov't is more responsible or something? Aren't you in the loop? The US gov't has 14Trillion dollars in debt. 50Billion/month trade imbalance. Over 60Trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, most of which are various pension funds, secured only with gov't bonds.
Are you telling me that the gov't is BETTER at managing money than Jim Rogers?
If Jim Rogers becomes poor and cannot pay for his own retirement, that's Jim Rogers' problem. He'd have to find some way of getting out of that situation.
But I'll tell you something much MORE realistic: It's NOT going to be Jim Rogers, who will end up poor. It's the population of US of A and other Western nations, that are socialist/corporatist/not Free people who will be poor. They will not have their SS. They will not have their EI. They will not have their Medicare, etc.
And you know what, if the gov't didn't actually ROB those people all those years through taxes and inflation, those same people would have had an opportunity to save the money they paid in taxes and inflation and they could have invested it themselves, into their own ideas and businesses, and society would have been wealthier.
And you know what, wealthy societies do not allow poor and sick people just to drop dead, there are enough charitable people in the world, who donate the money they made and time and help those in need, this is not something new and it never required gov't to force this charity to happen.
What gov't did end up doing, is turning many generations of people into dependent people, who are not self reliant, who do not think for themselves, who hope that somebody else will take care of them. Too bad. The times are coming when this will stop, and it's because of the gov't and it's because the gov't caused the society to be poor.
Poor societies do NOT help anybody through charity, because poor societies do not have resources for charities, and gov'ts turn rich societies into poor societies.
Imagine for a second you had a machine with a button on it and a microphone, you push the button and say something into the microphone and the machine produces it.
So you have this machine that can make whatever you want for you.
Do you know what a socialist or a corporatist gov't would want to do? They would want to take that machine from you and make sure nobody ever sees it again.
It's because they control you as long as you do not have your own means of survival. The prefer to have the majority of people to be poor rather than rich.
Being rich does not mean having cash. It means having wealth. Wealth is not cash. Cash can be counterfeited, wealth cannot. Cash is paper, wealth is whatever you need. That machine with that button would be wealth. If that machine was only printing dollars (cash) then it wouldn't produce wealth, it would just print/counterfeit cash.
Now, that machine would be the ultimate advance in efficiency. Would you still be trying to gain a competitive edge if you had that machine? What if every single person had that machine? What kind of competitive advantage could you have, if you had a machine that could give you every single thing possible that can be manufactured?
The point is that capitalism and industrialism are about production, are about increasing efficiencies of production and without gov't intervention they increase everybody's wealth, just like that machine. Before capitalism/industrialism you'd be a subsistence farmer or something similar, working just to feed yourself most of your life. With the advent of capitalism and industrialization, you now have something like that machine, but it doesn't produce everything yet and it doesn't give you everything for free yet because that machine does not have unlimited resources and energy and it's not fully automated.
So people are part of that machine, everybody is. But as a society, through competition, we are actually cooperating on creating that machine, that would produce everything as cheaply and as quickly as possible, with high quality and better results and better diversity of things we produce.
That's why you are no longer spending 90% of your waking time working for food. That's why you can spend time on /. You have that machine, not perfect, but pretty good already. The time you need to work was slashed in half or more, the amount of things you can get was increased by some orders of magnitude, the price for food is low, so is price for everything else when compared to the time you would have been a subsistence farmer.
Humans probably will never actually build the perfect machine, that does all of that, but we should not slow down the progress by introducing the artificial barriers on the path to production of that machine by putting the governments in front of that machine, that do not actually improve the quality of the machine, but take away from it, make parts of it more expensive than they should be, disconnecting and sabotaging that machine everywhere it can just so that the people in power can stay in power by making sure people are POORER than they can be.