So such countries may end up with more wealth, but it would be dead wealth, not doing anything useful for them. So I wouldn't worry too much about these guys running away after losing a couple more cents on their dollar.
If they have all the wealth, and via their capital, they're facilitating the guys who hire productive workers, why do you label them "dead wealth"? Would not all the business runners and productive workers "follow the money" to the other country if the rich people were forced out? It takes money to make money...we certainly wouldn't collapse, but it would hurt us more than you're giving it credit for.
No. I tell you my opinion then you do the Wikipedia thing and assume good faith. You do some constructive listening. You start from the premise that I'm a reasonably intelligent human being, and that my opinions have some kind of rational basis, even when they conflict with yours. Most of all, you try to act with civility, not just because it's the polite thing to do, but because it gets you in the habit of giving the other person's ideas a fair chance.
Have I not done these things? How am I not civil? Do you see me calling you a libtard or something? You still fail to respond to the line of civil dialogue i'm trying to have. I don't see why you seem to think that my intention is to demonstrate you a fool (seems like a waste of time there) rather than seek actual justification for your belief. More importantly, I don't see why you're so eager to be dismissive when I've clearly expressed an interest in carrying on a conversation in a reasonable fashion.
That edge case is more common than you think in the world of business. keep in mind 9 out of 10 business fail. The ones that succeed aren't always succeeding with ridiculous overflows of spending cash. Many are laden with debt. Many in fact run in the red for years, taking over a decade before making a profit. There's a bit of an exponential effect in business. In the beginning, you tend to be no better than middle class, often even less than middle class, as you try to get your business established. That period could last anywhere from months to years. When you finally "strike it big" and start pulling down the real bucks, that could have occurred after years and years of struggling, and it could have all been done with the intention of "making it worthwhile" from the big payout in the end when you sell the company. It's not all champagne and caviar in business.
But then you get the whole other category of people who pretty much do nothing, and earn money by providing money (or capital) they already have to people who need it. They don't even need to make any hard decisions there since they can hire people who do that - it may not be as efficient as running things yourself, but with large enough initial capital you still get plenty. If you look at the big picture, those people don't really contribute anything useful to the society as a whole. Their sole function is to aggregate wealth, and then rent out bits of that wealth to people who actually can do something useful with it (I don't mean just workers here, but also those small business owners taking credits etc). They neither create jobs, nor manage production, nor directly generate wealth.
If they're risking their wealth in the "system", they're creating jobs somewhere. If they withdrew all their wealth from the system and hid it under their mattress, you don't think the economy would see an impact? I'll agree they're certainly "working less" than people farther down the chain of business, but having them be willing to inject their capital into the system and put it as risk is valuable to the US.
But it shouldn't be taxed any lower than honest to God sweat of the brow compensation.
As A Republican, I 100% agree with you. Personally, I think capital gains should just be merged into income and taxed accordingly. The concept of the $1 CEO salary is stupid and that loophole should be closed. Sadly, neither side cares to deal with these real problems. They'd rather bitch about the proper positioning of a tax bracket (see Obama's dogged determination to indiscriminately fuck over everyone making 250k or more -- which funny enough would do absolutely nothing to the rich assholes using capital gains as a tax dodge)
For the same reason the incentives are there in the first place, to encourage the behavior. If you want to encourage people to go to school and get an education, why not give everyone the same deductions on school loans? I'm not at all surprised it's hard to find doctors these days. They come out of the school with an average of around 140k+ in debt (http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2012/05/22/10-med-schools-that-lead-to-the-most-debt). Then they get 150k salaries and are treated by the Obama administration as rockefellers when the truth is far different: https://benbrownmd.wordpress.com/
If saying an increase in taxes for income over $250,000 is a "tax on millionaires" is disingenuous, then how much more false is it that the Republicans claim that they're worried about people who are making $255,000/yr and say they're "concerned about the middle class"?
I'd say it probably is as disingenuous. However, it's fair to call the 255k the "working class" -- as I've said, those people do have far more in common with the middle class than they do with CEOs and oil tycoons. Heck, what do you even call that kind of salary in New York, or in San Franciso where the median house price is 700k? Hell, someone making 100k in Arkansas is worth a hell of alot more than someone making 200k+ in New York (http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=100000&city1=50501990&city2=53651000), but according to the government, the former deserves all sorts of handouts while the latter deserves to get his/her taxes hiked.
Wait a minute...so exactly what do you call a conversation then? You tell me your opinion, and then I just say nothing and accept it? You told me Obama is being cherry-picked and misinterpreted and that I should "look at the big picture". So I do exactly that and take his full term into account with multiple quotes and multiple issues, including several pieces of legislation. And in doing so, I find that my interpretation of Obama remains valid and is not simply "cherry-picked". And somehow that's a one-way conversation? I feel like the opposite is true -- you seem to be desiring a one-way conversation.
So I ask you, what was I supposed to do in this conversation when you expressed the opinion that I was simply cherry picking data in coming up with my opinion of Obama?
Do you understand how tax brackets work? If the cut off is $250k, that doesn't mean at $251k you're now paying the higher rate on all of your income.
Everybody pays the same on the first bracket. You, me, and your boss. If you make $251k, your taxes, under Obama's tax plan will stay exactly the same for the $250k, and you will pay (sit down now) an additional 3% of the additional $1k.
I get it. It's irrelevant. The point is that he's claiming he's not hiking taxes on the working class at all. When in fact, they're at the minimum seeing a small tax hike, possibly a moderate one. Also keep in mind all the other tax incentives are always drawn or cut off at similar levels. PPACA's "3% surcharge" for instance is at the same level. Obama's mortgage deduction is at the same level: http://www.houselogic.com/news/mortgage-interest-deduction/obama-budget-plan-mortgage-interest-deduction/
The tax benefits are cut off even way lower than that. Making Work Pay chopped off around 150k (http://taxes.about.com/od/deductionscredits/a/making_work_pay.htm). Student loan deductions are a similar incredibly low cutoff.
When it comes down to it, the people in the upper middle class range get hit the worst in taxes. They get none of the breaks/deductions/credits, and they get hit with all of the nasties intended for billionaires.
Now, I'm not saying people in that bracket can't afford to pay more taxes, but it's incredibly disingenuous to sell it to the people as a "tax on billionaires" when in fact you're nailing people with far more similarities to the middle class than to Bill Gates. It's also disingenuous to claim the tax hike isn't going to affect any of the working class when that's flat out untrue. Hell, if you're in an affluent field like medicine or law (doctor or lawyer), and you do nothing more than marry someone within your own trade, you're already breaching that income level, ignoring cost of living entirely.
I'm sorry but "I'm going to write 1000 pages without you and then offer you a chance to pitch an amendment to my grand plans" is not "working together or across the aisle". It's exactly what Obama stated, coming along for the ride with a pittance of consideration.
you have to look at the whole guy and what he's done
I am looking at the whole guy. I'm not seeing a guy that loves to reach across the aisle. Heck, his entire rhetoric is "Change", namely "you did it wrong, so we're gonna do it my way now." And everything he's done or said in office has confirmed this mindset. The stimulus bill went down the exact same way:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/11/president_obamas_i_won_to_repu.html
"The president added, "I won. So I think on that one, I trump you."
"drawn up, amended and negotiated in record time. "
"The bill's final passage would represent far less than the bipartisan victory Obama had hoped for weeks ago, a hope he tabled as it became clear that Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats were adamantly opposed to the size and contents of the bill.
Republican critics believe there are more targeted and effective ways to create jobs than the measures in the bill, including more spending on infrastructure and more tax relief."
In the House, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., blasted the bill as misguided.
"Republicans are not about saying 'No' but about saying 'Yes' to solutions that put Americans back to work," Pence said. "[This legislation] will not grow our economy. It will grow our government."
he compromise bill was crafted after intensive negotiations in recent days between the House, Senate and White House, although Republicans said repeatedly they felt excluded from the process. And on Friday, several said they did not think it was fair that they were being asked to vote on a 1,000-page-plus bill that was posted online only late Thursday night.
And you know the really sad thing? The Republican's concerns were dead on. The stimulus spending wasn't targetted at all -- it was just a bunch of tax rebates to the public. So it didn't actually stimulate the economy, because those people just used the money to pay down debt.
"Bipartisanship" is more than just listening to and then disregarding your opponent. It requires actual acceptance of some of their beliefs, even if it goes against your ideology (you think the Democrats under Clinton wanted to turn Welfare into workfare???). Obama is not willing to accept this. The Bush tax cuts are another example -- Obama is essentially holding them (and the economy) hostage on an ideological stance that the 250k+ income level see a tax hike.
I'm sorry, but being "part of the process" as a minority party is supposed to be 70/30 input, not 97/3. Though to be fair I'll grant that the Republicans are just as ideologically stubborn on refusing any and all tax hikes. Though I believe that stance is more reasonable since our economy is on eggshells and you aren't supposed to raise taxes during those periods. Point is, at best Obama is exactly the same in stubborness. He's not bipartisan.
Diablo 3 was a pyrrhic victory. It burned an INSANE amount of Blizz cred.
Like it matters. Have you forgotten the suing of bnetd into oblivion? Or how about the lack of LAN play in Starcraft 2? Or the requirement of an online account for Starcraft 2? Blizzard has been "burning cred" for years, but no one seems to care. Their games still sell like hotcakes. So they'll keep doing it.
Obamacare makes everybody get insurance. This is the provision that the anti-Obamacore crowd insists is unconstitutional, but it's also the provision that most impacts the "people pay for other people" problem.
So all Obama has done is forced these people to buy health insurance or pay a fine. All that "savings" we're getting in the system is coming out of their pockets.
Plus individual buyers of insurance can go to Insurance Exchanges, which create risk pools that lower premium costs; currently that kind of risk pooling is only available to people in (usually employer-provided) group health plans.
This is not going to have the effect you seem to think it is. 90% of the country was already on insurance prior to Obamacare and the insurance companies' margins are razor thin. Premiums are much more likely to go up, since no one can be turned down for pre-existing conditions anymore.
Plus you get more rational use of health care (seeing a doctor for preventive care instead of waiting until you're really sick and going to an ER), and that lowers costs
This is an assumption. It's like saying "well now that we've passed a subsidy on apples and exercise equipment, all Americans will eat well and exercise right!" Do you even have any statistics or polls on how many more people will engage in preventative care post-Obamacare?
These facts have been out there for years now, and yet people are still telling each other that Obamacare is about making them pay for other people's pills.
Because it is doing exactly that, quite literally. Just like Medicare and Medicaid were doing the exact same thing prior to Obamacare. And the last thing we need is a third ineffective and wildly expensive attempt by government to handle ballooning healthcare costs.
I think you missed the importance of the word 'net'. If someone is barely making the mortgage on a million dollar house, they most certainly don't have a net worth of $1 million. If the house is worth $1 million and the mortgage is for $900,000, the net worth is, at best, $100,000.
Except if they've been in the house for 20 years or so, in which case they're still paying the exact same payment, but their net worth is around a million. Why do you seem to think that everyone with high net worth has all kinds of disposable liquid cash? Hell, median net worth of the average 55 year old is 1 million (and I guarantee they're not all swelling with gobs of disposable income): http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/97/07/9707jw.pdf
Do you know how big a portion corporations pay? As a share of total revenues, it's about 1/3 of what it was in 1950, about 7%. And that's with record corporate profits. You think they're paying their share?
When you look at distribution of wealth in this country, having the bottom half of earners paying 2% of all revenues is actually really high.
Using the uber rich as an excuse to tax the upper middle class / small-biz segment of society is one of two things: Sleazy or naive/stupid.
If Obama wants to "punish millionaires" or "level the playing field", he shouldn't draw the line in the sand at ~200-250k income. There's a good chunk of people who are raging because they're struggling to reach the upper echelons and Obama is making it even harder
"In fact, in four industry sectors - utilities, manufacturing, mining and management of companies - the average Sub Chapter S Corporation is making its owner rich by President Obama's standards, generating more than $250,000 in income in 2007."
Yeah, the Demos have a lot to answer for. But I would submit that they can't begin to compete with the GOP for simple "my way or the highway" assholedness.
Did Obama not say to Republicans, "They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back"? How the hell can you not consider that "my way or the highway" assholedness? Moreover, how do you consider that mindset "honestly trying to reach out to the GOP"?
I think it's kind of false to include Social Security in the budget, since Social Security "spending" is really just giving back what we've promised people, and shouldn't really count as government spending since the spending is left to the populace, the government is just distributing the money.
But that's irrelevant. It's an expense in the budget because it's an outlay. It's mandatory spending we must pay year to year that is offset with incoming tax dollars. And those are tax dollars that could have easily better been spent in other places or even better invested by the individuals themselves had the government not taken them in the first place. It isn't just a simple matter of "X" dollars go in, 40 years later "X" dollars come out. I could have done alot of good with that money over that 40 years if I didn't have to pay OASI taxes. To me, that's lost wealth potential, so you better believe it's an expense.
We should without a doubt model our programs on those of other countries that have success with them. Countries like Germany, or the Netherlands. I'm sure you agree with that.
I don't like superlatives. I believe those countries are doing some things right, sure. I also believe circumstances over there are different than the US, and what works for them might not work for us (such as in regard to healthcare). Most importantly, I know Americans aren't going to be willing to pay a 40+% effective tax rate like many of the Europeans do. So it's better to say we should take all systems into account and figure out what's more effective and desired for us.
The problem is that isn't what the Tea Party is generally asking for. Rational, centrist Republicans want that, but unfortunately the party has been co-opted by religious radicals who feel that preventing abortion and family planning funding is more important than creating a successful society.
I agree, I miss the Tea Party prior to it being co-opted.
The solution isn't getting rid of government, or changing government so that it matches ones personal Christian ideology - it is creating a better, more effective government.
I agree here too. The problem is that I believe "a smaller central government" is a better, more effective government. It's a common theme among many of the successful countries as well. Just look at Canada, where each province has its own healthcare implementation.
Neither way comes from the far-side of ideologies. The US shouldn't become purely Socialist or Communist, just as it shouldn't become a pure free-market. Both sides of the spectrum have their problems, and the only way to solve those problems is by compromising, and accepting the best of both ideologies.
I entirely agree with you. However, the problem is this. Most libertarian/conservatives like me believe the country as a whole is more socialist than free market right now. We justify this by pointing out the 50+% of our taxes that go to social spending every year. The democrats on the other side think the country as a whole is more free market than socialist. They normally justify this by pointing to the wealth imbalance or the shitty implementation of the social programs. The problem is that both sides believe the other side should "compromise" and come "closer to the middle" when in reality they can't even agree on the starting point.
I'll accept that some Republicans have been very reasonable about compromising, and trying to create a more effective government. People like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie I find actually fairly reasonable. I may not agree with all of their policies, but I find them to be rational politicians.
Give it time. The insane racist ultra-religious bloc of baby boomers is slowly dying off. A new wave of republicans is on th
"The problems arose last year as the housing market softened, driving down home prices and making it more difficult for cash-strapped borrowers to sell their homes or refinance their way out of trouble.
The most dramatic fallout took place in the subprime market, which caters to people with blemished credit or other factors that make them a risk to lenders.
Those borrowers entered foreclosure at a rate of 2.43 percent, up from 2 percent the previous quarter. The percentages seem small, but they are far above norms, particularly in a healthy economy. "
Then "subprime" loans began to default at a rate still well below historical averages, causing the crisis. At the time of the first crisis (the collapse of the derivatives), subprime loans were defaulting at rates *below* historical norms.
Face it, the defaults proceeded the CDO collapse. They _had_ to. The value of a derivative can't collapse unless the underlying asset it's tied to collapses.
But I'll give you a chance to go edit Wikipedia and link to it again, but if it's like last time, Wikipedia won't say what you say it says.
A far step above your method of proof, namely stating "I'm right, believe me", and then going back to your own world.
But that's unrelated to my assertion, that the meltdown wasn't caused by subprime loans defaulting above historic levels. The *sole* cause of the crisis was rich white make bankers lying about risk. All it took was one loan defaulting to cause the whole system to collapse.
Except that the meltdown was already in progress about a year a half before they even started mentioning derivatives. And it was a hell of alot more than "one loan". There were record numbers of foreclosures: http://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/ECONREV/PDF/4q07Edmiston.pdf
"Residential foreclosures in the United States have been rising very rapidly since 2006. In the second quarter of 2007, the share of outstanding mortgages in some stage of foreclosure stood at 1.4
percent, near historic highs and up from less than 1 percent a year earlier. The number of mortgages entering the foreclosure process reached an all-time high in mid-2007"
"In the second quarter of 2007, 0.65 percent of all
mortgages entered foreclosure. To put this Chart into perspective, before 2006 the new foreclosure rate reached 0.5 percent of all mortgages only
once. Since the third quarter of 2006, the new foreclosure rate has persistently
been near or above that rateâ"an unprecedented event over the
last 38 years."
Do you research this stuff at all? Hell, just look at Chart 4 -- the subprime ARM foreclosure spike began in mid-2005.
Crashing prices caused speculators and rich people to default. Then the market went into a free fall. If the rich and speculators hadn't defaulted, the full crash wouldn't have happened. If the bankers hadn't committed trillions of dollars of fraud, the crash wouldn
Then there's countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland...
Many/most of those countries are not socialist at all -- at best they spend a bit more on social programs (and pay for it with higher taxes). Almost none of them have state ownership of business. The vast majority are heavily engaged in the private sector, and let the private market handle their services. They're social market economies, same as the US, just with higher taxes and an extra program or two.
The US has the same debt to gdp ratio as Germany... without nearly as many social programs. For instance, Germany has universal healthcare and free higher education.
"In 2002, total U.S. social welfare expenditure constitutes roughly 35% of GDP, with purely public expenditure constituting 21%, publicly supported but privately provided welfare services constituting 10% of GDP and purely private services constituting 4% of GDP. This compared to France and Sweden whose welfare spending ranges from 30% to 35% of GDP.["
We just happen to be pisspoor at implementing effective programs at the public level (another reason people toss so many barbs at the government). We spend the money and get no bang for our buck, no increase in effectiveness. Another interesting observation from Chart I.11 is that there's plenty of countries that spend more in private social expenditure than public that are doing quite well: Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Germany. That's right, Germany and the Netherlands share more similarities with the US than they do with the "socialist" European countries they're often paired with. They just do it way better than we do.
The US has put themselves in a situation where they are spending as much as Socialist countries, but without getting any of the benefits of social programs. Instead they get lots of bombs. Fantastic.
I can see you agree with me. The difference, however, is that the spending is not only going towards bombs (well at least not in lieu of social spending -- defense has it's ~20% piece too). It is going towards social spending, just very ineffectively. And this is exactly why Republicans call for reform (rather than "more programs"). If we can't even do these right, what would make you think we should tack on a few more before figure out what we're doing wrong? (especially considering our debt problem). We're spending about 5 times what we spend on defense on social programs, yet the only complaints from the Democrats are about "the bloated defense budget". I don't get it.
Real people get hurt. A heck of a lot more by corporations than by the government.
You seriously underplay the harm done by government, probably because you attribute it to other factors. For instance, take the state of healthcare in this country. That industry is heavily regulated (even moreso with Obamacare in play) and the government funnels a ludicrous amount of money into it (close to a trillion dollars a year on Medicare/Medicaid alone). And are you happy with your healthcare? Is anyone? I'd certainly call that "harm", especially considering all the good that trillion dollars could have done elsewhere (even if it was just in your pocket!). That's over $3000 a person, a year. Hell, most HDHPs have a maximum out-of-pocket expense of around $6000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-deductible_health_plan). You'd be halfway there (for everybody) with just the money recouped from those wasteful programs.
Or how about wars? The wars our government has engaged in has done alot of damage, not only to our citizens, but also our economy.
Or how about the fiscal cliff? Or all the budget stalling? The lowering of our credit rating? You think that hasn't greatly impacted our lives? Or stalled the economic recovery? (in turn greatly impacting our lives...).
I'm sorry, but I definitely believe the government does way more damage than you give them credit for, even if that damage is as simple as taking money people need to live their lives and squandering it on poorly implemented ideas.
No, I'm saying that the default rate among the poor was flat, and it was mainly the rich that defaulted above historical rates. The meltdown wasn't triggered by the poor people.
"The immediate cause or trigger of the crisis was the bursting of the United States housing bubble which peaked in approximately 2005â"2006.[6][7] High default rates on "subprime" and adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), began to increase quickly thereafter."
"As part of the housing and credit booms, the amount of financial agreements called mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which derive their value from mortgage payments and housing prices, greatly increase.....These institutions as well as certain regulated banks had also assumed significant debt burdens while providing the loans described above and did not have a financial cushion sufficient to absorb large loan defaults or MBS losses."
It's the same concept as a margin call. The foreclosures dropped the housing prices which triggered the defaults on the credit default swaps. The other way around makes no sense -- a CDS _can't_ default if housing values don't drop, and even if it did, it wouldn't affect the homeowner, just the bank who made the bad investment.
*sigh* I'm sorry you're so out of touch with reality that you can only see monsters on one side but not the other. Maybe someday you'll dig a little deeper than the loudest and ugliest.
When it came down to it, those compromises were put in to get his own party on board. Couple that with the fact the entire 1000-page monstrosity was written behind closed doors by a single partisan side and I find it hard to give Dems credit for "compromise". There's a difference between hashing out something together and hashing out something on your own and then trying to buy off the other side with riders.
You do realize that basically every other successful country in the world is MORE Socialist than the USA, right? So if the US is becoming less successful relative to the rest of the world, wouldn't the solution logically be more Socialism, rather than less?
Except that every other country in the world has been scaling back (in some cases drastically) it's own social expenditures (see the austerity mess in socialist France for instance). Hell, just look at Greece as a poster child example. They had the second-lowest index of economic freedom and all kinds of social golden parachutes. And now they're bankrupt. Hardly pinnacles of success to aspire to.
If Socialism is so bad, why are countries such as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Swetzerland in the top 5 lists of best countries to live in?
I'm not sure you understand what socialism is if you think those countries are examples.
Norway is probably the closest with the government owning a fair chunk of the companies within it.
Sweden isn't a great example. They're almost entirely private, and they've been scaling back the welfare state ever since falling behind in GDP growth.
The Netherlands is going through austerity talks as we speak that are drastically altering the social handouts there as well.
Switzerland is the worst example. They're not much different from the US with their "force people to buy private insurance healthcare scheme", low taxes, high income disparity, and general free market love.
And why do you leave out the failures? France (more socialist than any of your examples) isn't exactly all smiles and unicorns.
And the leap from "governments not doing everything right 100% of the time" to "thus, governments do everything wrong 100% of the time" is why the rest of the world laugh at Americans as ignorant and prejudiced nincompoops.
Except that the number of people that believe governments do it wrong 100% of the time is about equivalent to the number of people that believe governments do it right 100% of the time. In reality, it's the 70/30 and 80/20 believers that are the vast majority of voters. It's your own bias that makes them seem like an anarchist or a socialist (pick your side).
A government agency could be doing something where its own interests trump yours.
A corporation is guaranteed to have its own interests trump yours.
I must counter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
A corporation has far more of a motivation to "get things right" than does government, particularly when presidents come into play. Hell, most of their policy doesn't even take effect until they're out of office. That way the aftereffects ain't their problem.
I'd rather take the government, because experience shows that most of the time, they work for the public.
That's your opinion -- I believe the historical track record shows the opposite. And even when they are trying to work for the people, they're doing it way wrong, and in ways that persist for decades. Corporations attempting the same shenanigans would have gone bankrupt long ago. (such as the postal office pension pre-funding idea -- genius! not)
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If they have all the wealth, and via their capital, they're facilitating the guys who hire productive workers, why do you label them "dead wealth"? Would not all the business runners and productive workers "follow the money" to the other country if the rich people were forced out? It takes money to make money...we certainly wouldn't collapse, but it would hurt us more than you're giving it credit for.
Have I not done these things? How am I not civil? Do you see me calling you a libtard or something? You still fail to respond to the line of civil dialogue i'm trying to have. I don't see why you seem to think that my intention is to demonstrate you a fool (seems like a waste of time there) rather than seek actual justification for your belief. More importantly, I don't see why you're so eager to be dismissive when I've clearly expressed an interest in carrying on a conversation in a reasonable fashion.
That edge case is more common than you think in the world of business. keep in mind 9 out of 10 business fail. The ones that succeed aren't always succeeding with ridiculous overflows of spending cash. Many are laden with debt. Many in fact run in the red for years, taking over a decade before making a profit. There's a bit of an exponential effect in business. In the beginning, you tend to be no better than middle class, often even less than middle class, as you try to get your business established. That period could last anywhere from months to years. When you finally "strike it big" and start pulling down the real bucks, that could have occurred after years and years of struggling, and it could have all been done with the intention of "making it worthwhile" from the big payout in the end when you sell the company. It's not all champagne and caviar in business.
If they're risking their wealth in the "system", they're creating jobs somewhere. If they withdrew all their wealth from the system and hid it under their mattress, you don't think the economy would see an impact? I'll agree they're certainly "working less" than people farther down the chain of business, but having them be willing to inject their capital into the system and put it as risk is valuable to the US.
As A Republican, I 100% agree with you. Personally, I think capital gains should just be merged into income and taxed accordingly. The concept of the $1 CEO salary is stupid and that loophole should be closed. Sadly, neither side cares to deal with these real problems. They'd rather bitch about the proper positioning of a tax bracket (see Obama's dogged determination to indiscriminately fuck over everyone making 250k or more -- which funny enough would do absolutely nothing to the rich assholes using capital gains as a tax dodge)
For the same reason the incentives are there in the first place, to encourage the behavior. If you want to encourage people to go to school and get an education, why not give everyone the same deductions on school loans? I'm not at all surprised it's hard to find doctors these days. They come out of the school with an average of around 140k+ in debt (http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2012/05/22/10-med-schools-that-lead-to-the-most-debt). Then they get 150k salaries and are treated by the Obama administration as rockefellers when the truth is far different: https://benbrownmd.wordpress.com/
I'd say it probably is as disingenuous. However, it's fair to call the 255k the "working class" -- as I've said, those people do have far more in common with the middle class than they do with CEOs and oil tycoons. Heck, what do you even call that kind of salary in New York, or in San Franciso where the median house price is 700k? Hell, someone making 100k in Arkansas is worth a hell of alot more than someone making 200k+ in New York (http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=100000&city1=50501990&city2=53651000), but according to the government, the former deserves all sorts of handouts while the latter deserves to get his/her taxes hiked.
So I ask you, what was I supposed to do in this conversation when you expressed the opinion that I was simply cherry picking data in coming up with my opinion of Obama?
I get it. It's irrelevant. The point is that he's claiming he's not hiking taxes on the working class at all. When in fact, they're at the minimum seeing a small tax hike, possibly a moderate one. Also keep in mind all the other tax incentives are always drawn or cut off at similar levels. PPACA's "3% surcharge" for instance is at the same level. Obama's mortgage deduction is at the same level: http://www.houselogic.com/news/mortgage-interest-deduction/obama-budget-plan-mortgage-interest-deduction/
The tax benefits are cut off even way lower than that. Making Work Pay chopped off around 150k (http://taxes.about.com/od/deductionscredits/a/making_work_pay.htm). Student loan deductions are a similar incredibly low cutoff.
When it comes down to it, the people in the upper middle class range get hit the worst in taxes. They get none of the breaks/deductions/credits, and they get hit with all of the nasties intended for billionaires.
Now, I'm not saying people in that bracket can't afford to pay more taxes, but it's incredibly disingenuous to sell it to the people as a "tax on billionaires" when in fact you're nailing people with far more similarities to the middle class than to Bill Gates. It's also disingenuous to claim the tax hike isn't going to affect any of the working class when that's flat out untrue. Hell, if you're in an affluent field like medicine or law (doctor or lawyer), and you do nothing more than marry someone within your own trade, you're already breaching that income level, ignoring cost of living entirely.
Really??? That's some crazy rose-tinted lenses you have there. It also doesn't jive with the way the healthcare bill went down (written behind closed doors, republican suggestions summarily shot down, etc, etc): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/17/AR2009101701810.html
I'm sorry but "I'm going to write 1000 pages without you and then offer you a chance to pitch an amendment to my grand plans" is not "working together or across the aisle". It's exactly what Obama stated, coming along for the ride with a pittance of consideration.
I am looking at the whole guy. I'm not seeing a guy that loves to reach across the aisle. Heck, his entire rhetoric is "Change", namely "you did it wrong, so we're gonna do it my way now." And everything he's done or said in office has confirmed this mindset. The stimulus bill went down the exact same way: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/11/president_obamas_i_won_to_repu.html
"The president added, "I won. So I think on that one, I trump you."
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/13/news/economy/house_final_stimulus/index.htm:
"drawn up, amended and negotiated in record time. "
"The bill's final passage would represent far less than the bipartisan victory Obama had hoped for weeks ago, a hope he tabled as it became clear that Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats were adamantly opposed to the size and contents of the bill. Republican critics believe there are more targeted and effective ways to create jobs than the measures in the bill, including more spending on infrastructure and more tax relief."
In the House, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., blasted the bill as misguided. "Republicans are not about saying 'No' but about saying 'Yes' to solutions that put Americans back to work," Pence said. "[This legislation] will not grow our economy. It will grow our government."
he compromise bill was crafted after intensive negotiations in recent days between the House, Senate and White House, although Republicans said repeatedly they felt excluded from the process. And on Friday, several said they did not think it was fair that they were being asked to vote on a 1,000-page-plus bill that was posted online only late Thursday night.
And you know the really sad thing? The Republican's concerns were dead on . The stimulus spending wasn't targetted at all -- it was just a bunch of tax rebates to the public. So it didn't actually stimulate the economy, because those people just used the money to pay down debt.
"Bipartisanship" is more than just listening to and then disregarding your opponent. It requires actual acceptance of some of their beliefs, even if it goes against your ideology (you think the Democrats under Clinton wanted to turn Welfare into workfare???). Obama is not willing to accept this. The Bush tax cuts are another example -- Obama is essentially holding them (and the economy) hostage on an ideological stance that the 250k+ income level see a tax hike.
I'm sorry, but being "part of the process" as a minority party is supposed to be 70/30 input, not 97/3. Though to be fair I'll grant that the Republicans are just as ideologically stubborn on refusing any and all tax hikes. Though I believe that stance is more reasonable since our economy is on eggshells and you aren't supposed to raise taxes during those periods. Point is, at best Obama is exactly the same in stubborness. He's not bipartisan.
Like it matters. Have you forgotten the suing of bnetd into oblivion? Or how about the lack of LAN play in Starcraft 2? Or the requirement of an online account for Starcraft 2? Blizzard has been "burning cred" for years, but no one seems to care. Their games still sell like hotcakes. So they'll keep doing it.
How does this "solve" anything? The people not buying health insurance are young and/or poor: http://pittnews.com/newsstory/young-people-comprise-most-uninsured-demographic/
So all Obama has done is forced these people to buy health insurance or pay a fine. All that "savings" we're getting in the system is coming out of their pockets.
This is not going to have the effect you seem to think it is. 90% of the country was already on insurance prior to Obamacare and the insurance companies' margins are razor thin. Premiums are much more likely to go up, since no one can be turned down for pre-existing conditions anymore.
This is an assumption. It's like saying "well now that we've passed a subsidy on apples and exercise equipment, all Americans will eat well and exercise right!" Do you even have any statistics or polls on how many more people will engage in preventative care post-Obamacare?
Because it is doing exactly that, quite literally. Just like Medicare and Medicaid were doing the exact same thing prior to Obamacare. And the last thing we need is a third ineffective and wildly expensive attempt by government to handle ballooning healthcare costs.
Except if they've been in the house for 20 years or so, in which case they're still paying the exact same payment, but their net worth is around a million. Why do you seem to think that everyone with high net worth has all kinds of disposable liquid cash? Hell, median net worth of the average 55 year old is 1 million (and I guarantee they're not all swelling with gobs of disposable income): http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/97/07/9707jw.pdf
Using the uber rich as an excuse to tax the upper middle class / small-biz segment of society is one of two things: Sleazy or naive/stupid.
If Obama wants to "punish millionaires" or "level the playing field", he shouldn't draw the line in the sand at ~200-250k income. There's a good chunk of people who are raging because they're struggling to reach the upper echelons and Obama is making it even harder
http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/11/how-much-money-do-small-business-owners-make.html
"In fact, in four industry sectors - utilities, manufacturing, mining and management of companies - the average Sub Chapter S Corporation is making its owner rich by President Obama's standards, generating more than $250,000 in income in 2007."
Did Obama not say to Republicans, "They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back"? How the hell can you not consider that "my way or the highway" assholedness? Moreover, how do you consider that mindset "honestly trying to reach out to the GOP"?
http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/forums/f4/extra-weight-us-vs-eu-20965/
But that's irrelevant. It's an expense in the budget because it's an outlay. It's mandatory spending we must pay year to year that is offset with incoming tax dollars. And those are tax dollars that could have easily better been spent in other places or even better invested by the individuals themselves had the government not taken them in the first place. It isn't just a simple matter of "X" dollars go in, 40 years later "X" dollars come out. I could have done alot of good with that money over that 40 years if I didn't have to pay OASI taxes. To me, that's lost wealth potential, so you better believe it's an expense.
I don't like superlatives. I believe those countries are doing some things right, sure. I also believe circumstances over there are different than the US, and what works for them might not work for us (such as in regard to healthcare). Most importantly, I know Americans aren't going to be willing to pay a 40+% effective tax rate like many of the Europeans do. So it's better to say we should take all systems into account and figure out what's more effective and desired for us.
I agree, I miss the Tea Party prior to it being co-opted.
I agree here too. The problem is that I believe "a smaller central government" is a better, more effective government. It's a common theme among many of the successful countries as well. Just look at Canada, where each province has its own healthcare implementation.
I entirely agree with you. However, the problem is this. Most libertarian/conservatives like me believe the country as a whole is more socialist than free market right now. We justify this by pointing out the 50+% of our taxes that go to social spending every year. The democrats on the other side think the country as a whole is more free market than socialist. They normally justify this by pointing to the wealth imbalance or the shitty implementation of the social programs. The problem is that both sides believe the other side should "compromise" and come "closer to the middle" when in reality they can't even agree on the starting point.
Give it time. The insane racist ultra-religious bloc of baby boomers is slowly dying off. A new wave of republicans is on th
Ok, I'll provide another one then: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061400513.html
"The problems arose last year as the housing market softened, driving down home prices and making it more difficult for cash-strapped borrowers to sell their homes or refinance their way out of trouble. The most dramatic fallout took place in the subprime market, which caters to people with blemished credit or other factors that make them a risk to lenders. Those borrowers entered foreclosure at a rate of 2.43 percent, up from 2 percent the previous quarter. The percentages seem small, but they are far above norms, particularly in a healthy economy. "
Umm, data or cite? By mid-2007, subprime default was already well above norms. The earliest time you could possibly say CDOs were getting wonky was mid 2007, though it's probably closer to mid 2008 (just look at the graph spikes): http://mbaadmin.americaeconomia.com/system/files/value.pdfP Even this article chalks "first feeling the tremors" to early 2007: http://bonds.about.com/od/derivativesandexotics/a/CDO.htm
Face it, the defaults proceeded the CDO collapse. They _had_ to. The value of a derivative can't collapse unless the underlying asset it's tied to collapses.
A far step above your method of proof, namely stating "I'm right, believe me", and then going back to your own world.
Except that the meltdown was already in progress about a year a half before they even started mentioning derivatives. And it was a hell of alot more than "one loan". There were record numbers of foreclosures: http://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/ECONREV/PDF/4q07Edmiston.pdf
"Residential foreclosures in the United States have been rising very rapidly since 2006. In the second quarter of 2007, the share of outstanding mortgages in some stage of foreclosure stood at 1.4 percent, near historic highs and up from less than 1 percent a year earlier. The number of mortgages entering the foreclosure process reached an all-time high in mid-2007"
"In the second quarter of 2007, 0.65 percent of all mortgages entered foreclosure. To put this Chart into perspective, before 2006 the new foreclosure rate reached 0.5 percent of all mortgages only once. Since the third quarter of 2006, the new foreclosure rate has persistently been near or above that rateâ"an unprecedented event over the last 38 years."
Do you research this stuff at all? Hell, just look at Chart 4 -- the subprime ARM foreclosure spike began in mid-2005.
Many/most of those countries are not socialist at all -- at best they spend a bit more on social programs (and pay for it with higher taxes). Almost none of them have state ownership of business. The vast majority are heavily engaged in the private sector, and let the private market handle their services. They're social market economies, same as the US, just with higher taxes and an extra program or two.
Yet we spend a similar amount of money as the Europeans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States#cite_note-Alber-2
"In 2002, total U.S. social welfare expenditure constitutes roughly 35% of GDP, with purely public expenditure constituting 21%, publicly supported but privately provided welfare services constituting 10% of GDP and purely private services constituting 4% of GDP. This compared to France and Sweden whose welfare spending ranges from 30% to 35% of GDP.["
We're #5 in net social expenditure (Chart I.11:): http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5kg2d2d4pbf0.pdf?expires=1346275390&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=0275BC0FEE97626156C26F9ECF2EDF34
We just happen to be pisspoor at implementing effective programs at the public level (another reason people toss so many barbs at the government). We spend the money and get no bang for our buck, no increase in effectiveness. Another interesting observation from Chart I.11 is that there's plenty of countries that spend more in private social expenditure than public that are doing quite well: Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Germany. That's right, Germany and the Netherlands share more similarities with the US than they do with the "socialist" European countries they're often paired with. They just do it way better than we do.
I can see you agree with me. The difference, however, is that the spending is not only going towards bombs (well at least not in lieu of social spending -- defense has it's ~20% piece too). It is going towards social spending, just very ineffectively. And this is exactly why Republicans call for reform (rather than "more programs"). If we can't even do these right, what would make you think we should tack on a few more before figure out what we're doing wrong? (especially considering our debt problem). We're spending about 5 times what we spend on defense on social programs, yet the only complaints from the Democrats are about "the bloated defense budget". I don't get it.
You seriously underplay the harm done by government, probably because you attribute it to other factors. For instance, take the state of healthcare in this country. That industry is heavily regulated (even moreso with Obamacare in play) and the government funnels a ludicrous amount of money into it (close to a trillion dollars a year on Medicare/Medicaid alone). And are you happy with your healthcare? Is anyone? I'd certainly call that "harm", especially considering all the good that trillion dollars could have done elsewhere (even if it was just in your pocket!). That's over $3000 a person, a year. Hell, most HDHPs have a maximum out-of-pocket expense of around $6000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-deductible_health_plan). You'd be halfway there (for everybody) with just the money recouped from those wasteful programs.
Or how about wars? The wars our government has engaged in has done alot of damage, not only to our citizens, but also our economy.
Or how about the fiscal cliff? Or all the budget stalling? The lowering of our credit rating? You think that hasn't greatly impacted our lives? Or stalled the economic recovery? (in turn greatly impacting our lives...).
I'm sorry, but I definitely believe the government does way more damage than you give them credit for, even if that damage is as simple as taking money people need to live their lives and squandering it on poorly implemented ideas.
So the rich were the ones that got subprime loans? Because it's well documented that the wave of historical defaults originated in the subprime market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble#Subprime_mortgage_industry_collapse
Prime mortgages didn't default until way later in the game: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-06-08-home-loan-foreclosures-subprime_N.htm
I still don't follow -- you're saying the derivatives market collapsed BEFORE all the foreclosures? Because I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis#Background_and_timeline_of_events
"The immediate cause or trigger of the crisis was the bursting of the United States housing bubble which peaked in approximately 2005â"2006.[6][7] High default rates on "subprime" and adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), began to increase quickly thereafter."
"As part of the housing and credit booms, the amount of financial agreements called mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which derive their value from mortgage payments and housing prices, greatly increase.....These institutions as well as certain regulated banks had also assumed significant debt burdens while providing the loans described above and did not have a financial cushion sufficient to absorb large loan defaults or MBS losses."
It's the same concept as a margin call. The foreclosures dropped the housing prices which triggered the defaults on the credit default swaps. The other way around makes no sense -- a CDS _can't_ default if housing values don't drop, and even if it did, it wouldn't affect the homeowner, just the bank who made the bad investment.
*sigh* I'm sorry you're so out of touch with reality that you can only see monsters on one side but not the other. Maybe someday you'll dig a little deeper than the loudest and ugliest.
The only reason he dropped it was because he couldn't sell it to Blue Dogs: http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/1092-Blue-Dogs-Don-t-Want-a-Public-Option-That-Works
When it came down to it, those compromises were put in to get his own party on board. Couple that with the fact the entire 1000-page monstrosity was written behind closed doors by a single partisan side and I find it hard to give Dems credit for "compromise". There's a difference between hashing out something together and hashing out something on your own and then trying to buy off the other side with riders.
Except that every other country in the world has been scaling back (in some cases drastically) it's own social expenditures (see the austerity mess in socialist France for instance). Hell, just look at Greece as a poster child example. They had the second-lowest index of economic freedom and all kinds of social golden parachutes. And now they're bankrupt. Hardly pinnacles of success to aspire to.
I'm not sure you understand what socialism is if you think those countries are examples.
Norway is probably the closest with the government owning a fair chunk of the companies within it.
Sweden isn't a great example. They're almost entirely private, and they've been scaling back the welfare state ever since falling behind in GDP growth.
The Netherlands is going through austerity talks as we speak that are drastically altering the social handouts there as well.
Switzerland is the worst example. They're not much different from the US with their "force people to buy private insurance healthcare scheme", low taxes, high income disparity, and general free market love.
And why do you leave out the failures? France (more socialist than any of your examples) isn't exactly all smiles and unicorns.
Except that the number of people that believe governments do it wrong 100% of the time is about equivalent to the number of people that believe governments do it right 100% of the time. In reality, it's the 70/30 and 80/20 believers that are the vast majority of voters. It's your own bias that makes them seem like an anarchist or a socialist (pick your side).
I must counter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor A corporation has far more of a motivation to "get things right" than does government, particularly when presidents come into play. Hell, most of their policy doesn't even take effect until they're out of office. That way the aftereffects ain't their problem.
That's your opinion -- I believe the historical track record shows the opposite. And even when they are trying to work for the people, they're doing it way wrong, and in ways that persist for decades. Corporations attempting the same shenanigans would have gone bankrupt long ago. (such as the postal office pension pre-funding idea -- genius! not)