Actually, the people making the loans to people with no verified income, job, or assets seem to be mostly fine. They acutally knew what they were doing, the people in trouble are the people who bought the mortgages from them not knowing or caring that there was nothing backing them up but the inflated price of the houses the mortgages were against.
Many mortgage bundles were rated AAA which means "no risk at all" that contained a significant portion of subprime loans that would eventually default.
Banks made a tiny minority of subprime loans (25% or less), they, however, own a disproportionate amount of no asset loans because they bought them because they were bundled as low risk bonds that made good returns (at least until the housing market crashed and the default rate jumped up).
Well, when you introduce guns into the equation, he shoots you and frames the neighbour on the other side, so when your friends or family try to take vengeance they get embroiled in a feud with the wrong people.
Hobbes summarized that life style as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Many anarchists fail to think through the absolute paranoia and brutality that's needed to survive in that type of anarchy. It's also why anarchy gets replaced by government, sooner or later.
I hope you realize, of course, that the authors of the articles you are linking to are blinded by their ideologies. The Soros life insurance issue seems pretty far fetched, and given that they don't bother to quantify exactly how much Soros makes, it's little more than a transparent (but apparent effective on you) ad Hominem attack.
The second article is even more ridiculous. Gore doesn't really believe in climate change? He's creating the climate change controversy solely for the benefit of investments he made in green companies? Do you understand how blindly stupid that charge is? If he didn't believe in climate change there'd be no reason for him to invest in those companies in the first place. It should be no surprise that he's investing in companies that are offering a solution to a something he believes is going to be a giant problem in the future. Giving that situation you'd have to be a giant mysanthrope to not invest in green companies. Honestly, are you brainwashed or just stupid?
I think the problem in Hawaii was that they didn't actually want it to be universal free child health care and they canceled the program because it was too popular.
Or would they? You see it's not the base salary that corrupts. In theory, a corrupt politician should be pretty much willing to work for free, he sees opportunities to make money from his power to make binding decisions. If can award a no bid contract for $1 billion to his friend the oil guy, then the oil guy would almost certainly be willing to send him a kick back of $10 million for his largesse.
Reducing the pay scale only makes the job less tempting to honest men.
Piracy can drive sales up or down. I think people need to address the reasons why piracy is an issue. I mean sure, everyone likes to have free stuff, but, a large part of the supposed decline of computer gaming has nothing to do with piracy.
A lot of new games are just lacking. I never bothered to finish the latest version of Heroes of Might and Magic because they changed the old 2-d interface into a 3-d one and it's just not as much fun. Plus I have like 200+ game CDs. If I want to continue playing HoMM, I have to put the CD in the drive. Just like almost every other PC game. I accept that for console games because they (for the most part) don't install on my computer and they give me handy little compact cases to store the game in. PC games, on the other hand install everyone on to my hard drive and then require to have the damn CD in the drive any way. Frankly, I can't be bothered to buy any more games that are going to give me the worst of all worlds.
Stardock's one of the few companies I will still buy games from, because they don't act like giant dicks.
Hmm. So your ideal solution would be a system where the amount you paid in taxes determined how much say you had in the government?
I sincerely doubt that "magic pony" accurately sums up any plan in Obama's platform. If that were the case, McCain would have a lot better ammunition to use against him than Ayers. Then again, maybe, it's just that McCain's plans are even more magical and he's wary of throwing stones in a glass house.
Plus, I did a quick check on those income tax rates: Ireland: 41%, New Zealand: 39% (plus a 1.4% surtax), Mexico: 35%, Korea: 35%. Currently the US max is 35% and seems to begin at a much higher minimum amount than the other countries you listed. After the tax cuts expire it would be back up to 39.4%, right?
The U.S. tax burden is actually relatively light as long as you don't include health care costs.
See the gang analogy just doesn't work on me. I understand what your saying and I even sympathize a bit, but I have to think you're outraged because of the way you look at things. You might be happier if you look at taxes as a cost of business. Nobody really likes them, but they are essential to keep government working.
Of course you could argue that government isn't necessary, but I think Somalia is a pretty good indication that Hobbes was essentially correct. Without any government, life tends to be "nasty, brutish, and short". The rest of it is an argument on what does or does not go "too far enough".
On the second: What now? How is Obama going to dictate how you spend money on health insurance for your employees? How is he going to run your business for you?
On to last few points: Who tells you that you are bad person for creating jobs? I'm betting you're reading that insult into the fact your have to pay taxes. My point wasn't that the world is a terrible place, but that as far as I know all of the industrialized nations tend to have similar tax rates. Usually with taxes, the golden rule still applies: "You get what you pay for". Although, it's true you can often get less than that, too.
Chill out there. I'm not creating a hell anywhere, and I'm not trying to prevent you from doing anything. I'm just asking "Why?"
People always sell businesses in bad times. Why? Because people panic and want to get their money out now while they still can.
Let's see the highest marginal tax rate is 35%, to that you add federal unemployment taxes, social security (6.2% for employees, 12.4% for yourself), and Medicare (1.45% for employees, 2.9% for yourself), and property taxes.
Now, as I understand the taxes that Obama has made a part of his platform fall into 2 categories. The first are Bush's tax cuts which will expire anyway and the second is an actual tax increases on capital gains. So, it is the expiration of the temporary Bush cuts that's driving these sales or the proposed increase in the capital gains tax rate?
On the other hand, I'm not sure there's anywhere you can really go where taxes are going to be much less than that. Ireland might be a good choice, I hear that if you incorporate there you can get a 0% corporate tax rate. Of course, if you factor in health insurance, there's a few countries who's tax burden, while higher, is less than your combined tax+health insurance rate. However, I'm guessing that's not terribly appealing to you.
I suppose you're right. Even charity in her opinion should have been a trade arrangement. At the very least the person receiving the charity should be grateful for it.
Though that becomes somewaht sinister when you think about how that encourages people to abuse those they're supposed to be taking care of, under the guise of "expressing sufficient gratitude".
I still don't see it. I hardly sounds like the tax increases that Obama is proposing are going to be catastrophic, it mostly appears to be a rollback of the tax cuts that Bush pushed through. Seeing as how the U.S. wasn't exactly a war-torn dystopia of despair 8 years ago, I'm a little lost as to why every small business owner should be selling their business and fleeing the country.
That's easy. Poorly designed electoral systems which lead to a 2 party duopoly. The U.S. needs massive electoral reform and the rise of some additional parties to diversify the real choices offered to voters. Having only 2 parties to choose from leads to voters having to choose the least corrupt party every time they vote, but the 2 party system makes it easy to subvert a large portion of voters by constantly campaigning against "the other guys".
It's really just a big mess.
I hope you realize that's political sloganeering there. Traditionally most small business owners have leaned towards the Democrats and (they employ about 60% of American workers?), larger corporations tend to lean Republican. Poor white people lean towards the Republicans while poor minorities lean Democratic.
As Bill Maher used to say "The Democrats are funded by a slightly less scary group of special interests [than the Republicans]".
Not quite, she pushes the "government altruism is bad, personal greed is good". Officially, she claimed that the only charity should be personal charity. The idea being that all taxes were government confiscation of property and therefore bad, though sometimes necessary for defense of country. Her argument was that any government charitable actions were nothing more than vote pandering with money stolen from noble industrialists.
She was quite the idealist and, I think, she had a bit of a fetish for businessmen. Hew view of the world was quite probably warped by her experiences with communism when she was young. She obviously idolized those who were "productive" and dismissed those who were not as "evil".
Guess what? You probably shouldn't be a Republican.
Just about the only thing that Republicans will do that you approve of, is cut taxes. They've shown they won't cut spending to match either so it's inevitable that that bill has to come due and taxes will rise even higher than they were before they were cut. You just might want to vote differently.
And to answer the follow up, people aren't prejudiced against Republicans. They're upset with the behaviour of Republican Politicians, Republican Pundits, the Republican Party and the voters who seem to excuse any amount of insanity as long as it comes with tax cuts.
Personally, I want my government to be based on reason and best practices, not faith and war and that's why I can't vote for the current Republican party. And if you're an objectivist, you just might want to think a little more closely about what steps are actually a good idea to get better government (even if better for you is only less) and which are not. "Starving the Beast" isn't working.
Besides, there are people who are just looking for a reason to sue YouTube. And that would be just about every single media company in existence. If they can bankrupt YouTube that means they get another chance to own the pipe as well as it's contents, which provides strategic advantage to their content.
I'm just not sure where you got the "everybody does this" part. As far as I know, it's mostly the Republicans who have been appointing unqualified friends into positions of power and firing people who upset them.
Please feel free to provide some evidence that the Clinton administration engaged in similar behaviour.
The problem has less to do with the fact that she has the power to fire the guy who displeased her and more to with the fact that she used that power over something as petty and meaningless as this.
And it's part of a pattern of cronyism and petty high school level politics. Which, I suppose isn't terribly surprising because her government is studded with people from her high school who have been appointed to positions with which they have no expertise or experience. She appointed a friend to be in charge of an agriculture board because she "has liked cows since she was a little girl". She has repeatedly fired people for such indignities as not supporting her enough and, heaven forbid, disagreeing with her.
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Dumbass. I'm not even a liberal, just someone who dislikes half-assed lies and moronic conspiracy theories.
There's conservative and then there's stupid. A good conservative uses his brain, you make other conservatives look bad.
Actually, the people making the loans to people with no verified income, job, or assets seem to be mostly fine. They acutally knew what they were doing, the people in trouble are the people who bought the mortgages from them not knowing or caring that there was nothing backing them up but the inflated price of the houses the mortgages were against.
Many mortgage bundles were rated AAA which means "no risk at all" that contained a significant portion of subprime loans that would eventually default.
Banks made a tiny minority of subprime loans (25% or less), they, however, own a disproportionate amount of no asset loans because they bought them because they were bundled as low risk bonds that made good returns (at least until the housing market crashed and the default rate jumped up).
Well, when you introduce guns into the equation, he shoots you and frames the neighbour on the other side, so when your friends or family try to take vengeance they get embroiled in a feud with the wrong people.
Hobbes summarized that life style as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Many anarchists fail to think through the absolute paranoia and brutality that's needed to survive in that type of anarchy. It's also why anarchy gets replaced by government, sooner or later.
...
I hope you realize, of course, that the authors of the articles you are linking to are blinded by their ideologies. The Soros life insurance issue seems pretty far fetched, and given that they don't bother to quantify exactly how much Soros makes, it's little more than a transparent (but apparent effective on you) ad Hominem attack.
The second article is even more ridiculous. Gore doesn't really believe in climate change? He's creating the climate change controversy solely for the benefit of investments he made in green companies? Do you understand how blindly stupid that charge is? If he didn't believe in climate change there'd be no reason for him to invest in those companies in the first place. It should be no surprise that he's investing in companies that are offering a solution to a something he believes is going to be a giant problem in the future. Giving that situation you'd have to be a giant mysanthrope to not invest in green companies. Honestly, are you brainwashed or just stupid?
I think the problem in Hawaii was that they didn't actually want it to be universal free child health care and they canceled the program because it was too popular.
...
Or would they? You see it's not the base salary that corrupts. In theory, a corrupt politician should be pretty much willing to work for free, he sees opportunities to make money from his power to make binding decisions. If can award a no bid contract for $1 billion to his friend the oil guy, then the oil guy would almost certainly be willing to send him a kick back of $10 million for his largesse.
Reducing the pay scale only makes the job less tempting to honest men.
I'm not sure that it does.
Piracy can drive sales up or down. I think people need to address the reasons why piracy is an issue. I mean sure, everyone likes to have free stuff, but, a large part of the supposed decline of computer gaming has nothing to do with piracy.
A lot of new games are just lacking. I never bothered to finish the latest version of Heroes of Might and Magic because they changed the old 2-d interface into a 3-d one and it's just not as much fun. Plus I have like 200+ game CDs. If I want to continue playing HoMM, I have to put the CD in the drive. Just like almost every other PC game. I accept that for console games because they (for the most part) don't install on my computer and they give me handy little compact cases to store the game in. PC games, on the other hand install everyone on to my hard drive and then require to have the damn CD in the drive any way. Frankly, I can't be bothered to buy any more games that are going to give me the worst of all worlds.
Stardock's one of the few companies I will still buy games from, because they don't act like giant dicks.
Hmm. So your ideal solution would be a system where the amount you paid in taxes determined how much say you had in the government?
I sincerely doubt that "magic pony" accurately sums up any plan in Obama's platform. If that were the case, McCain would have a lot better ammunition to use against him than Ayers. Then again, maybe, it's just that McCain's plans are even more magical and he's wary of throwing stones in a glass house.
Plus, I did a quick check on those income tax rates: Ireland: 41%, New Zealand: 39% (plus a 1.4% surtax), Mexico: 35%, Korea: 35%. Currently the US max is 35% and seems to begin at a much higher minimum amount than the other countries you listed. After the tax cuts expire it would be back up to 39.4%, right?
The U.S. tax burden is actually relatively light as long as you don't include health care costs.
On the first issue:
See the gang analogy just doesn't work on me. I understand what your saying and I even sympathize a bit, but I have to think you're outraged because of the way you look at things. You might be happier if you look at taxes as a cost of business. Nobody really likes them, but they are essential to keep government working.
Of course you could argue that government isn't necessary, but I think Somalia is a pretty good indication that Hobbes was essentially correct. Without any government, life tends to be "nasty, brutish, and short". The rest of it is an argument on what does or does not go "too far enough".
On the second:
What now? How is Obama going to dictate how you spend money on health insurance for your employees? How is he going to run your business for you?
On to last few points:
Who tells you that you are bad person for creating jobs? I'm betting you're reading that insult into the fact your have to pay taxes. My point wasn't that the world is a terrible place, but that as far as I know all of the industrialized nations tend to have similar tax rates. Usually with taxes, the golden rule still applies: "You get what you pay for". Although, it's true you can often get less than that, too.
Chill out there. I'm not creating a hell anywhere, and I'm not trying to prevent you from doing anything. I'm just asking "Why?"
People always sell businesses in bad times. Why? Because people panic and want to get their money out now while they still can.
Let's see the highest marginal tax rate is 35%, to that you add federal unemployment taxes, social security (6.2% for employees, 12.4% for yourself), and Medicare (1.45% for employees, 2.9% for yourself), and property taxes.
Now, as I understand the taxes that Obama has made a part of his platform fall into 2 categories. The first are Bush's tax cuts which will expire anyway and the second is an actual tax increases on capital gains. So, it is the expiration of the temporary Bush cuts that's driving these sales or the proposed increase in the capital gains tax rate?
On the other hand, I'm not sure there's anywhere you can really go where taxes are going to be much less than that. Ireland might be a good choice, I hear that if you incorporate there you can get a 0% corporate tax rate. Of course, if you factor in health insurance, there's a few countries who's tax burden, while higher, is less than your combined tax+health insurance rate. However, I'm guessing that's not terribly appealing to you.
I suppose you're right. Even charity in her opinion should have been a trade arrangement. At the very least the person receiving the charity should be grateful for it.
Though that becomes somewaht sinister when you think about how that encourages people to abuse those they're supposed to be taking care of, under the guise of "expressing sufficient gratitude".
I still don't see it. I hardly sounds like the tax increases that Obama is proposing are going to be catastrophic, it mostly appears to be a rollback of the tax cuts that Bush pushed through. Seeing as how the U.S. wasn't exactly a war-torn dystopia of despair 8 years ago, I'm a little lost as to why every small business owner should be selling their business and fleeing the country.
As opposed to how they're taxed now and the wealth they've created or earned is redistributed now?
You might notice that the only parts of the world that don't do that, are the parts you probably don't want to try to live in.
I'm just curious what makes you think Obama will be catastrophic for Small Business owners?
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
As long as you vote Republican they have no incentive to do anything differently.
That's easy. Poorly designed electoral systems which lead to a 2 party duopoly. The U.S. needs massive electoral reform and the rise of some additional parties to diversify the real choices offered to voters. Having only 2 parties to choose from leads to voters having to choose the least corrupt party every time they vote, but the 2 party system makes it easy to subvert a large portion of voters by constantly campaigning against "the other guys". It's really just a big mess.
I hope you realize that's political sloganeering there. Traditionally most small business owners have leaned towards the Democrats and (they employ about 60% of American workers?), larger corporations tend to lean Republican. Poor white people lean towards the Republicans while poor minorities lean Democratic. As Bill Maher used to say "The Democrats are funded by a slightly less scary group of special interests [than the Republicans]".
Not quite, she pushes the "government altruism is bad, personal greed is good". Officially, she claimed that the only charity should be personal charity. The idea being that all taxes were government confiscation of property and therefore bad, though sometimes necessary for defense of country. Her argument was that any government charitable actions were nothing more than vote pandering with money stolen from noble industrialists. She was quite the idealist and, I think, she had a bit of a fetish for businessmen. Hew view of the world was quite probably warped by her experiences with communism when she was young. She obviously idolized those who were "productive" and dismissed those who were not as "evil".
Guess what? You probably shouldn't be a Republican.
Just about the only thing that Republicans will do that you approve of, is cut taxes. They've shown they won't cut spending to match either so it's inevitable that that bill has to come due and taxes will rise even higher than they were before they were cut. You just might want to vote differently.
And to answer the follow up, people aren't prejudiced against Republicans. They're upset with the behaviour of Republican Politicians, Republican Pundits, the Republican Party and the voters who seem to excuse any amount of insanity as long as it comes with tax cuts.
Personally, I want my government to be based on reason and best practices, not faith and war and that's why I can't vote for the current Republican party. And if you're an objectivist, you just might want to think a little more closely about what steps are actually a good idea to get better government (even if better for you is only less) and which are not. "Starving the Beast" isn't working.
Besides, there are people who are just looking for a reason to sue YouTube. And that would be just about every single media company in existence. If they can bankrupt YouTube that means they get another chance to own the pipe as well as it's contents, which provides strategic advantage to their content.
That's ok, if you can't be bothered to back up your claims with actual evidence, I'm just not going to believe you.
[[Citation Needed]]
I'm just not sure where you got the "everybody does this" part. As far as I know, it's mostly the Republicans who have been appointing unqualified friends into positions of power and firing people who upset them.
Please feel free to provide some evidence that the Clinton administration engaged in similar behaviour.
The problem has less to do with the fact that she has the power to fire the guy who displeased her and more to with the fact that she used that power over something as petty and meaningless as this.
And it's part of a pattern of cronyism and petty high school level politics. Which, I suppose isn't terribly surprising because her government is studded with people from her high school who have been appointed to positions with which they have no expertise or experience. She appointed a friend to be in charge of an agriculture board because she "has liked cows since she was a little girl". She has repeatedly fired people for such indignities as not supporting her enough and, heaven forbid, disagreeing with her.