If it's moral to use oil, then it's moral to invest in its extraction and processing. Unless you live a pre-industrial lifestyle, yours is a pretty hypocritical stance.
Most retail traders lose money, the institutional traders make money off the backs of ordinary people trying to play the markets. The average person doesn't have the time or the knowledge to do the necessary research to reliably make money, nor can they afford to risk their savings on what is essentially gambling.
I'm not sure how relevant your anecdote is compared to the statistics.
The problem is you're quoting two people known largely for their disastrous economic policies. America has been on a tax-cutting binge for decades and the result is economic stagnation. Thatcher turned entire regions of Britain into economic wastelands. Perhaps you could quote someone who has a shred of credibility.
You have to feed them grain if you want beef in anywhere near the same quantities you have available today.
Is there even enough grazing land in the world to sustain current beef-eating levels? Probably not or they wouldn't be cutting down the rainforests to make room for cattle.
Interesting to hear people defend meat eating with 'nature' arguments, as they stuff down yet another portion of heavily-processed, industrial meat they 'hunted' in the supermarket.
Humans evolved as scavengers, not hunters. How would a human hunt a deer in the wild? We don't have the speed to catch it, nor the jaws to tear it apart. Try biting into the side of a whole pig and see how far you get.
If you want to eat as per your nature, then go around eating whatever berries, nuts and roots you can find, and pick whatever meat's left on the bones of an animal left by a real predator.
I don't think there are enough resources for everyone to eat meat like they do in the West. Especially as most meat is grown on crops rather than grazing.
When the oil goes, we definitely won't be able to afford to grow all the grain to feed the animals, and it's back to meat being a rare luxury for everyone but the elite.
Historically, most of the sheep grazed in Scotland were for wool, not meat. The people ate oats.
The thing about most high-income jobs (i.e. management and finance), is that there's no way of knowing if anyone else couldn't do those jobs. How does anyone know if anyone other than Ballmer, either in Microsoft in the industry in general, wouldn't have done a better job?
Price elasticity only works in a competitive industry, whereas management recruitment is a very incestuous closed-shop. When a company wants a CEO, the first thing they do is call a recruitment company to go and poach someone else's CEO and offer him a higher salary. In this way, executive salaries spiral as they sit on each others boards and hire each other.
Um, according to that graph, most countries have lower unemployment than the US. What would the US unemployment level be without the government borrowing so much money to prop up the economy?
And do you think there are no areas in the US with 20% unemployment? I'd rather walk through Spain after dark than Detroit or Oakland.
As for Europeans, I live in Germany. We have high taxes, and we enjoy superb public transportation, almost free education up to the Doctorate level, public healthcare and so on. By I assure you, Germans are getting awfully pissed about paying for bail outs of some countries (I am looking at you, Greece) who can't seem to balance their cheque books.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that bailout designed to protect German and French banks who were heavily vested in Greek debt? I doubt the average German is paying for this bailout, if anything they're making money off it, they can borrow money cheaper and lend it to Greece at a higher interest rate.
And that's a pretty ungrateful attitude considering how much the Germany economy has benefited from the Euro which has come partly at the expense of places like Greece.
Also, income taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation because it discourages people from working
This is actually total horseshit. For most high-paid jobs that end up in the top brackets, there are way more people willing to do the job than positions available. No-one's going to turn down a seven figure paper-shuffling job because they only get half of it.
Ballmer is rich, and therefore must have stolen the money from the Government!
Have you any idea how much money corporations like Microsoft make from the government? And I don't just mean directly, like millions of schools buying Windows, but by indirectly reinforcing the dominance of Windows software in the marketplace, and copyright laws.
Every single penny that Ballmer has made has come from ordinary people, one way or another. If he doesn't like our taxes, he's free not to take our money in the first place.
What amuses me is how America's system of 'trickle down economics', whereby they keep average wages down whilst all the proceeds of growth are sucked up by a largely non-producing elite, has left it in such dire economic straits that only reckless borrowing (both private and government) keeps the whole house of cards propped up, yet no-one actually questions this system. It's as if the more the system fails, the more people believe in it. The more money made by the rich at the expense of the workers, the more people think taxes on the rich are too high; the more average people struggle to stay afloat, the more people think wages are too high and unions should be crushed so people can earn even less.
After firing millions of workers, corporate profits are soaring. So what do the people do? Vote for the candidates backed by those corporations. It's almost as if the American people are committing economic suicide.
I can't recall the stats exactly, and it's for British universities, but the general gist was that state-educated students generally got the best results (but they were also more likely to drop out). The thing about private schools is that they coach mediocre rich kids to look smarter than they really are.
There's a big market for private tutors, hired by rich parents desperate not to waste the tens of thousands they spent on private school fees, so they pay again to hothouse their kids into Oxford or wherever. Once they get there, they're usually outperformed by poor kids from normal schools who had to actually work to get there.
Then why do other countries have so much more social mobility than countries like the US and UK with elitist education systems? I'm sure I've read that poor kids with lesser grades in high school perform better in university than privately-schooled kids with better grades.
America's debt, as a proportion of GDP, isn't historically high. Over time, the economy grows, which means the government has more money to pay back the interest, as well as your savings gaining interest. For savers, government borrowing provides a relatively safe place to park your money. Even with all this quantitative easing, it's not like US gilts aren't selling, which means investors don't think the dollar is going to decline significantly in value.
The main difference between household debt and government debt, is that household debt doesn't affect the economy. If a private citizen stops spending, no-one notices. If a government stops spending, it cripples the economy and reduces tax revenues.
So if the American government reduced spending, it won't actually reduce the budget deficit by anywhere near the same amount. Paradoxically, it may actually increase the deficit as the economy declines with the reduced demand.
But then, you're probably a Democrat.;)
On the contrary, I'm not American, and have no affiliation to either of your two near-identical parties.
Citation needed. I can think of several countries with much bigger governments than America which seem to have much more stable and sustainable economies. Also lower crime, better infrastructure, better education and so on.
Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
And the last time it crashed because it was all based on smoke and mirrors. Does this mean we can now look forward to another dot-com style stock bubble? What interests me about that link is the stock market growing several times that of the economy. Is it any wonder we keep getting recession after recession?
As for these election results, I can understand Americans not liking the Democrat party, but why the fuck would anyone vote for the Republicans?
If Google had not used any loopholes and paid, say $3B more in taxes, then $3B would be passed on to its customers in the form of increased costs,
Considering the profit motives of a corporation, if they could increase their prices they would have done so already. Those three billion in taxes would have come out of shareholder profits.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interesting theory, but it's somewhat out of place in a story about how an economy based on low corporation taxes has totally collapsed.
If it's moral to use oil, then it's moral to invest in its extraction and processing. Unless you live a pre-industrial lifestyle, yours is a pretty hypocritical stance.
Most retail traders lose money, the institutional traders make money off the backs of ordinary people trying to play the markets. The average person doesn't have the time or the knowledge to do the necessary research to reliably make money, nor can they afford to risk their savings on what is essentially gambling.
I'm not sure how relevant your anecdote is compared to the statistics.
The problem is you're quoting two people known largely for their disastrous economic policies. America has been on a tax-cutting binge for decades and the result is economic stagnation. Thatcher turned entire regions of Britain into economic wastelands. Perhaps you could quote someone who has a shred of credibility.
Yeah, that's the problem, science workers just get paid too much money...
You have to feed them grain if you want beef in anywhere near the same quantities you have available today.
Is there even enough grazing land in the world to sustain current beef-eating levels? Probably not or they wouldn't be cutting down the rainforests to make room for cattle.
Interesting to hear people defend meat eating with 'nature' arguments, as they stuff down yet another portion of heavily-processed, industrial meat they 'hunted' in the supermarket.
Humans evolved as scavengers, not hunters. How would a human hunt a deer in the wild? We don't have the speed to catch it, nor the jaws to tear it apart. Try biting into the side of a whole pig and see how far you get.
If you want to eat as per your nature, then go around eating whatever berries, nuts and roots you can find, and pick whatever meat's left on the bones of an animal left by a real predator.
I don't think there are enough resources for everyone to eat meat like they do in the West. Especially as most meat is grown on crops rather than grazing.
When the oil goes, we definitely won't be able to afford to grow all the grain to feed the animals, and it's back to meat being a rare luxury for everyone but the elite.
Historically, most of the sheep grazed in Scotland were for wool, not meat. The people ate oats.
Is your computer made in America?
The thing about most high-income jobs (i.e. management and finance), is that there's no way of knowing if anyone else couldn't do those jobs. How does anyone know if anyone other than Ballmer, either in Microsoft in the industry in general, wouldn't have done a better job?
Price elasticity only works in a competitive industry, whereas management recruitment is a very incestuous closed-shop. When a company wants a CEO, the first thing they do is call a recruitment company to go and poach someone else's CEO and offer him a higher salary. In this way, executive salaries spiral as they sit on each others boards and hire each other.
Um, according to that graph, most countries have lower unemployment than the US. What would the US unemployment level be without the government borrowing so much money to prop up the economy?
And do you think there are no areas in the US with 20% unemployment? I'd rather walk through Spain after dark than Detroit or Oakland.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that bailout designed to protect German and French banks who were heavily vested in Greek debt? I doubt the average German is paying for this bailout, if anything they're making money off it, they can borrow money cheaper and lend it to Greece at a higher interest rate.
And that's a pretty ungrateful attitude considering how much the Germany economy has benefited from the Euro which has come partly at the expense of places like Greece.
This is actually total horseshit. For most high-paid jobs that end up in the top brackets, there are way more people willing to do the job than positions available. No-one's going to turn down a seven figure paper-shuffling job because they only get half of it.
Have you any idea how much money corporations like Microsoft make from the government? And I don't just mean directly, like millions of schools buying Windows, but by indirectly reinforcing the dominance of Windows software in the marketplace, and copyright laws.
Every single penny that Ballmer has made has come from ordinary people, one way or another. If he doesn't like our taxes, he's free not to take our money in the first place.
Europeans.
What amuses me is how America's system of 'trickle down economics', whereby they keep average wages down whilst all the proceeds of growth are sucked up by a largely non-producing elite, has left it in such dire economic straits that only reckless borrowing (both private and government) keeps the whole house of cards propped up, yet no-one actually questions this system. It's as if the more the system fails, the more people believe in it. The more money made by the rich at the expense of the workers, the more people think taxes on the rich are too high; the more average people struggle to stay afloat, the more people think wages are too high and unions should be crushed so people can earn even less.
After firing millions of workers, corporate profits are soaring. So what do the people do? Vote for the candidates backed by those corporations. It's almost as if the American people are committing economic suicide.
I can't recall the stats exactly, and it's for British universities, but the general gist was that state-educated students generally got the best results (but they were also more likely to drop out). The thing about private schools is that they coach mediocre rich kids to look smarter than they really are.
There's a big market for private tutors, hired by rich parents desperate not to waste the tens of thousands they spent on private school fees, so they pay again to hothouse their kids into Oxford or wherever. Once they get there, they're usually outperformed by poor kids from normal schools who had to actually work to get there.
Then why do other countries have so much more social mobility than countries like the US and UK with elitist education systems? I'm sure I've read that poor kids with lesser grades in high school perform better in university than privately-schooled kids with better grades.
America's debt, as a proportion of GDP, isn't historically high. Over time, the economy grows, which means the government has more money to pay back the interest, as well as your savings gaining interest. For savers, government borrowing provides a relatively safe place to park your money. Even with all this quantitative easing, it's not like US gilts aren't selling, which means investors don't think the dollar is going to decline significantly in value.
The main difference between household debt and government debt, is that household debt doesn't affect the economy. If a private citizen stops spending, no-one notices. If a government stops spending, it cripples the economy and reduces tax revenues.
So if the American government reduced spending, it won't actually reduce the budget deficit by anywhere near the same amount. Paradoxically, it may actually increase the deficit as the economy declines with the reduced demand.
On the contrary, I'm not American, and have no affiliation to either of your two near-identical parties.
Citation needed. I can think of several countries with much bigger governments than America which seem to have much more stable and sustainable economies. Also lower crime, better infrastructure, better education and so on.
When someone tries to equate household spending to government spending, you know you're dealing with an economic illiterate.
Ah...
And the last time it crashed because it was all based on smoke and mirrors. Does this mean we can now look forward to another dot-com style stock bubble? What interests me about that link is the stock market growing several times that of the economy. Is it any wonder we keep getting recession after recession?
As for these election results, I can understand Americans not liking the Democrat party, but why the fuck would anyone vote for the Republicans?
What the hell does the NYT have to do with any of this?
They don't give a shit about the privacy of users who consider their personal information so private they plaster it all over the Internet.
Considering the profit motives of a corporation, if they could increase their prices they would have done so already. Those three billion in taxes would have come out of shareholder profits.
Except for all the evidence over the last three decades that it doesn't actually work?