Before you blather about how valuable the handout was, consider how valuable the land was before the railroads existed. It wasn't much of a handout. It just appears big because of what the railroads did with the land.
Given that law is applied philosophy, this sort of thing is to be expected.
Your opinions notwithstanding, the CEO made some confidential information available, the equivalent of a public announcement, to a selective audience. Now whether or not he was right in doing so, he broke the law (or at least some regulations).
But that's not the end of it. Now that we see that this particular law/regulation leads to results that don't always make sense (assuming your interpretation is correct), we can choose to keep it despite those results or change the law appropriately.
There's also the possibility that he hasn't actually broken the law and the SEC has overreached itself. I think that the likely outcome in this case since the confidential information was just an arbitrary sales threshold that the business had been close to breaking for a couple of months (something which I gather was common knowledge at the time). In other words, that his defense for his actions is correct.
But the problem, is that they are not doing anything to lower the cost of space launches to make the exploration of outer space more affordable. They are just using existing technology, to send people there. And that is the reason why it fails.
New uses for existing technology does lower the cost of all that technology that gets used. Ever hear of "economies of scale"? Space technologies are an unusually fruitful target for the economy of scale coming from frequency of use in two primary ways -- more uses of the technology spread over the R&D costs and learning curve effects.
Sounds like the Moon and whatever else we can get to. Which is actually quite a bit of stuff.
but the reality of it is that space is empty, deadly and strewn with a few barren rocks here and there
Which we can turn into vast pieces of civilization and infrastructure which beggar anything we have on Earth today.
One could make a similar claim about any undeveloped resource on Earth today. All those barren rocks have elements and chemicals that we use today and turn into all sorts of marvelous things. The energy from the Sun works just as well and in the same way as we use it on Earth.
And I think eventually the cost of space access will get cheap enough where such activities become economical and part of what we do.
Should we allow commercial exploitation of the moon?
Absolutely! Because there is nothing better to do with the Moon. Not science, not military outposts, not international cooperation, not feelgood conservation of a sterile object.
Sending astronauts there to discover new things, to take moon rock back to earth for research, to set up a moon-based telescope or something akin to that is one thing.
A pretty low value thing since no has bothered to do anything about it for forty years.
Should we allow such endeavor to proceed in the first place?
My view is that unless you are doing something on the Moon, something happens that effects you directly, or someone is doing something that would be illegal no matter where it happened, you shouldn't have a say in what happens on the Moon.
For example, if you own property on the Moon (and you fulfill the conditions required from such ownership), then you should have a say in regulation of property. If someone does something, say putting up a giant logo, that you can see from Earth, then you should have a say. If someone kills a lot of people on the Moon, you should have a say.
But if you're whining because someone is changing a pristine, sterile environment you know nothing about nor shall ever see, then you should be kicked soundly out of the discussion.
The same way that most remaining uninhabited islands in Florida are being blocked from development - arguments about the impact of development on the surrounding ecology, economy, etc.
Most such islands are blocked by virtue of someone owning them who doesn't permit development.
If Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bernard Arnault, Amancio Ortega, and Larry Ellison each decided to start their own space program, imagine the environmental and economic impact that would have. Sooner or later, government would step in with regulations, safety standards, certifications, inspections, permits, waiting lists, engineering studies, licensing fees, etc. to ensure that these huge endeavors don't wreak havoc on the interests that our elected officials protect.
What environmental and economic impact? And why isn't current regulation good enough?
It was also a massively private-sponsored activity. Why pay attention only to public funding? It's the "one drop" rule for economic activities -- "There was a fed in the woodpile."
Well, my point is that no, what the Netflix CEO did was wrong.
Well, if it was wrong, and unlike you, I'm not saying it is (mostly because this sounds like a valid job activity for the CEO), then Netflix can discipline this guy for that. Not the SEC. Instead, this seems a good argument to limit more of what the SEC does.
Personally, I think making most of these regulations voluntary is a good idea. It separates the men from the boys. If your company can't be bothered to do simple or equitable information control just because it's no longer illegal, that's great for investors to know. Frankly, I think we could get away with just good accounting regulations and immediate notification of all insider trades (with no restriction on timing of insider trading).
The EU already resents Switzerland's status. No way it'd let the UK have a similar deal.
I was thinking more that the UK takes that deal rather than the EU gives it. See how that works?
If the US wants to "compete" by becoming a sweatshop economy, we Europeans can't stop you. But we don't have to go the same way.
I doubt it'll happen in the US either. We have people drizzling down their legs at the thought of eight year olds working ten hour days merely because some crusty politician tried a minor fix, like delaying a minimum wage increase for a few years or making environmental regulation more sensible.
There will come a point where "roots and grubs" will sound like a good deal, provided it's accompanied by reasonable working hours, healthcare, retirement and unemployment benefits.
Go give it a try. It'll be an object lesson to anyone else who thinks you can do that.
I imagine the other poster did read your post. That apparently is not a defense against unwarranted criticism. Here's the statement of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The courts aren't Congress. So technically, they can abridge your speech without violating the First Amendment, though possibly violating other parts of the Constitution in the process (such as divisions of power). It is worth noting that courts do on occasion order people not to discuss particulars of certain evidence and other things presented in a case and a number of courts have rules against photography in the courtroom.
But slander and libel have additional characteristics beyond being speech. As the grandparent noted, they are fraudulent and/or harmful actions. That is the basis on which defamation law is based.
A more extreme example would be an explosive device that is triggered by a certain phrase. If I intentionally say that phrase in order to kill someone (even if I had nothing to do with the device, either planning, construction, or deployment), then I'm committing murder. The crime is the harm committed (someone getting blown up) not the speech. Hence, I don't believe the First Amendment would apply here.
it would be a violation of the First Amendment, for instance, if a website could successfully sue you, after the fact, for posting comments without paying a fee to do so (assuming that there was no valid contract between you and the website requiring such payment). In essence, it's the difference between an affirmative charge/fine for making speech versus paying for a particular means of making that speech.
The actual part of the Constutition this would violate is the clause against ex post facto law which is in the original Constitution.
The historians I've seen say that if the US had put off the invasion from October 1945 to March/April 1946, it would be almost certain that between a quarter and a half of all Japanese are DEAD by that time - they'd have starved to death. I doubt even the Japanese leadership could have maintained social cohesion in the face of 20-30 million dead. Japan doesn't so much as surrender as fall apart, and the US "invades" a country that doesn't functionally exist anymore.
That's some good optimism there. You might even be right (though I think they would be able to scrounge enough food). I just don't see the evidence for your optimism.
Even if that many people die, what's going to break the social cohesion? Just let the dissenters and other problems die first, assuming there are enough of them to matter. It's a lot of people, but there's some evidence to indicate that it's not enough people.
It's worth remembering that the Japanese had at times experienced nearly 100% losses before they stopped fighting in the islands. And there are historical cases of people in similar circumstances fighting to lower population levels than that.
For example, consider the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870. This was a very similar situation with a fascist government and fanatical population keeping up a war beyond any level of common sense. Paraguay supposedly lost somewhere between 60% and 90% of its entire population before it stopped fighting. I believe the core provinces supporting the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) probably experienced similar losses before they were overrun.
So I simply don't buy that a mere loss of 20-30% of Japan's population without an invasion, would be sufficient.
These have more than paid off for themselves. Entire countries could effectively go "energy independent" on nuclear, if you cut out all the CIA-funded/aided "green party" propaganda. France proved that more or less. But hell, even they now succumb to the CIA shit.
They can even Heat Their Houses with electricity in France !
Well, I'd consider the CIA-funded propaganda some sort of green energy subsidy then. And a remarkably harmful one, if true. Kinda on the level of shipping heroin to GIs.
But yes, screw nuclear subsidies too. If it's a "best investment ever" then that's an indication that the those governments shouldn't ever be in the investment business.
Well, free market was at the beginning the topic of the thread.
I wasn't pretending that wealth transfer wasn't happening (though it's not as bad as CEO pay would indicate). But that I disagree with the accusation that wealth transfer on "free markets" is somehow going to be worse than what we have now.
My view is that we were going to see an increase in wealth disparity over the past few decades just due to the decline in the value of labor relative to capital. But the US and the rest of the developed world have implemented a host of policies that make that particular problem worse.
The clique of plutocrats is IMHO mostly due to government interference over perhaps a century with the business and labor. For example, why pay a CEO 400 times average, when you can pay him 40 times average for the same work and pretty much get the same outcome? What owner of a business would really do that (well, if they were simultaneously the CEO, it would be a means of drawing capital out of the business while reducing their taxes to a degree)? Not a one alive. Yet that is what we see.
The answer is that the people making those decisions don't own the business. They're playing with OPM (Other Peoples' Money). As long as the business doesn't do anything sufficiently embarrassing, they're good).
At least with mutual funds, the investor usually has a choice (though it's quite easy to hide such decisions, most people don't look at what fund approved the CEO's latest generous package). But for pension funds or government interventions (including subsidies and guaranteed loans) there isn't a real choice there.
OPM plays a big role in the modern business world because peoples' investment options are greatly crippled unless you happen to be at the level of the "accredited investor" (as defined in the US). It means you get to play in the not very profitable sandbox with the rest of the toddlers while middlemen get to fondle your money, even if you invest directly in stocks.
Government assists by controlling what markets exist, what can be offered as a security, who can offer stock shares on a public market, providing the illusion of security, and so on. End result is that you are pretty isolated from what you supposedly own and just aren't able to make many decisions on that investment. Unless you're pretty wealthy and proactive, that is.
If this program were really in effect, then the companies in question wouldn't have been able to afford a loan. What's painfully obvious here is that the government decided who the winners and losers would be and then understated the risk of default, either deliberately or through sheer incompetence.
As to the guarantees for nuclear power, I have no trouble getting rid of them. Go for it.
If you need evidence of wealth transfer to plutocrats
Where's the free market in that? As far as I can tell, this particular bit of wealth transfer is due to a small clique which happens to control executive funding at many publicly traded companies. And membership in that clique seems to be controlled by a bunch of pension and mutual funds.
You completely neglect the market forces at work in the 1800's before the trust busting days of the US government.
And the markets. Those trusts were bleeding market share. It probably wouldn't have been fast enough for you since the process was happening over decades.
But let's suppose you are right. That still doesn't justify the vast majority of what the US does. A need to prevent monopolies doesn't lead to the government regulating so much of US society or shoveling so much money around.
When Peter had billions in cash flow going unused except to pad the bank accounts of those already mega-rich, and Paul had a winning business idea but no funding since he wasn't part of the good old boy network. You may be too young to know the dangers of vast wealth accumulation, but pick up a history book some time and you will find out all about it. An economy that favors the big over the small never wins in the long run.
So to fix this alleged problem, you suggest government action? Here's a few of the problems I spot right now. First, the US government has no particular expertise in this area. The private market simply is far better for funding this sort of thing. Second, the mega-rich good old boys play this political game far better than Paul ever could. Third, the US government has driven wealth accumulation in numerous ways, such as regulations and bureaucratic mazes that favor big, established players, a huge revenue stream that can and is suborned by that good old boy network, and discouraging the use of US labor (by driving up the cost of it).
There are cases where investors may not be willing to stick it out long enough to see a return.
One such case is businesses that will never make a positive return on investment.
but there is a role for government to support research in technologies that have a longer time horizon to be realized that most investors can stomach.
I strongly disagree. Government doesn't have the expertise to make good investments of this sort. Nor does it have the incentives to do so (there's no advantage to government officials whether R&D works or not). And please remember the opportunity costs. This money doesn't form out of the void. It comes from current or future taxpayers. Anything the government does with that money comes at the cost of what those taxpayers could have done with the money.
The wealth transfer religion is that of the demagogs insisting that the unregulated market cures all ills.
What evidence do you have for this assertion? Let us keep in mind that there is no "unregulated market" aside from a few toy markets and in a sense the black markets (where if you trade on them, you already risk going to jail and other punishments, so they aren't going to be pretty). So there just isn't a whole lot of evidence for this assertion that unregulated markets transfer wealth to plutocrats.
Instead, I think the simple explanation is that the value of labor has declined in recent decades due to a vast expansion of the global pool of labor. And the value of capital has not declined. This already favors those who own capital over those who work.
So what has the US done in response? It has made US labor more expensive to hire and punished businesses for hiring people (such as the regulation and cost surges employers experience at both the first employee hired and the 50th employee hired). This is insane.
But sure, let's do a two minute hate for the nonexistent, unregulated market which is the source of all our self-inflicted woes.
Well, the previous poster did call it a loan guarantee. As to whether or not it is a "grant", it's indistinguishable from a grant to the people that received money from that loan that would otherwise not happen and the bank that made that loan who would otherwise have to deal with the default instead of a fairly risk-free investment. All of this happened at considerable taxpayer expense.
Government has a vital role to play in keeping the economy moving. This is done through tax incentives, loans, stimulus programs and grants.
The problem is that the wrong corporations capture these incentives. Obsolete industries and industries which are doing fine without incentives tend to capture most of them... (i.e. General Electric receives enough government incentives that they pay no taxes but they are a perfectly viable business to stand on their own.)
The government that has the money to keep the economy moving, has the money to flush down sinkholes and does. It's almost like they have no incentive to actually keep the economy moving.
They didn't have a fighter that could reach a B-29s ceiling.
And a bomber at the B-29's ceiling wouldn't be doing much. The US would use up a lot of bombs and planes even if they received no losses due to Japanese defenses.
America had basically achieved air superiority over the Japanese Islands. That's still doctrinal warfare. Air superiority before invasion.
And that's what I was getting to. At some point, the US would need to either invade or leave Japan alone. It's too costly to just bomb them unproductively year after year.
I was listening to Nigel Farage on Sunday Politics the other week and his economic plan is simply scary as hell. Effectively he accepts that pulling out of the EU will cost us trade and cause billions in lost income to are economy, but the way he believes we'll make this up is by the reduction in red tape allowing companies to increase output. In other words, he imagines the UK becoming a country where workers are forced to become sweatshop workers that are made to work long hours for extremely low wages and that this will somehow create a massive increase in industrial output to match the massive loss in sales to Europe.
Well, if the UK is truly that far gone due to the nefarious workings of the EU, you might as well bite the bullet before withdrawing from the EU means roots and grubs.
Personally, I can't help but think that there's a happy medium where you have access to the EU's market, but not the bullshit that comes with full EU membership. Friends with benefits. Switzerland and Norway probably have figured that out and maybe the UK ought to study that.
My view is that while Nigel Farage is probably one of the best political options out there for the UK, there's too many Brits either afraid of "sweat shops", "long hours", and all that 19th century crap or angling for some free lunch from Big Brother for him to be more than a minority leader. Oh, it'll make it easier for my country's self-maimed economy (the US) to compete.
Obviously, you don't have any knowledge of salmon farming or you would know that salmon farming *does* make the real estate used for it unusable after a period of time with current methods. Decades for recovery.
How? I see nothing mentioned on the internet about this alleged problem even from sites that discuss the relative sustainability of salmon farming.
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Before you blather about how valuable the handout was, consider how valuable the land was before the railroads existed. It wasn't much of a handout. It just appears big because of what the railroads did with the land.
That's a philosophical argument.
Given that law is applied philosophy, this sort of thing is to be expected.
Your opinions notwithstanding, the CEO made some confidential information available, the equivalent of a public announcement, to a selective audience. Now whether or not he was right in doing so, he broke the law (or at least some regulations).
But that's not the end of it. Now that we see that this particular law/regulation leads to results that don't always make sense (assuming your interpretation is correct), we can choose to keep it despite those results or change the law appropriately.
There's also the possibility that he hasn't actually broken the law and the SEC has overreached itself. I think that the likely outcome in this case since the confidential information was just an arbitrary sales threshold that the business had been close to breaking for a couple of months (something which I gather was common knowledge at the time). In other words, that his defense for his actions is correct.
But the problem, is that they are not doing anything to lower the cost of space launches to make the exploration of outer space more affordable. They are just using existing technology, to send people there. And that is the reason why it fails.
New uses for existing technology does lower the cost of all that technology that gets used. Ever hear of "economies of scale"? Space technologies are an unusually fruitful target for the economy of scale coming from frequency of use in two primary ways -- more uses of the technology spread over the R&D costs and learning curve effects.
What, precisely, is being "explored" here?
Sounds like the Moon and whatever else we can get to. Which is actually quite a bit of stuff.
but the reality of it is that space is empty, deadly and strewn with a few barren rocks here and there
Which we can turn into vast pieces of civilization and infrastructure which beggar anything we have on Earth today.
One could make a similar claim about any undeveloped resource on Earth today. All those barren rocks have elements and chemicals that we use today and turn into all sorts of marvelous things. The energy from the Sun works just as well and in the same way as we use it on Earth.
And I think eventually the cost of space access will get cheap enough where such activities become economical and part of what we do.
Should we allow commercial exploitation of the moon?
Absolutely! Because there is nothing better to do with the Moon. Not science, not military outposts, not international cooperation, not feelgood conservation of a sterile object.
Sending astronauts there to discover new things, to take moon rock back to earth for research, to set up a moon-based telescope or something akin to that is one thing.
A pretty low value thing since no has bothered to do anything about it for forty years.
Should we allow such endeavor to proceed in the first place?
My view is that unless you are doing something on the Moon, something happens that effects you directly, or someone is doing something that would be illegal no matter where it happened, you shouldn't have a say in what happens on the Moon.
For example, if you own property on the Moon (and you fulfill the conditions required from such ownership), then you should have a say in regulation of property. If someone does something, say putting up a giant logo, that you can see from Earth, then you should have a say. If someone kills a lot of people on the Moon, you should have a say.
But if you're whining because someone is changing a pristine, sterile environment you know nothing about nor shall ever see, then you should be kicked soundly out of the discussion.
The same way that most remaining uninhabited islands in Florida are being blocked from development - arguments about the impact of development on the surrounding ecology, economy, etc.
Most such islands are blocked by virtue of someone owning them who doesn't permit development.
If Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bernard Arnault, Amancio Ortega, and Larry Ellison each decided to start their own space program, imagine the environmental and economic impact that would have. Sooner or later, government would step in with regulations, safety standards, certifications, inspections, permits, waiting lists, engineering studies, licensing fees, etc. to ensure that these huge endeavors don't wreak havoc on the interests that our elected officials protect.
What environmental and economic impact? And why isn't current regulation good enough?
It was also a massively private-sponsored activity. Why pay attention only to public funding? It's the "one drop" rule for economic activities -- "There was a fed in the woodpile."
Well, my point is that no, what the Netflix CEO did was wrong.
Well, if it was wrong, and unlike you, I'm not saying it is (mostly because this sounds like a valid job activity for the CEO), then Netflix can discipline this guy for that. Not the SEC. Instead, this seems a good argument to limit more of what the SEC does.
Personally, I think making most of these regulations voluntary is a good idea. It separates the men from the boys. If your company can't be bothered to do simple or equitable information control just because it's no longer illegal, that's great for investors to know. Frankly, I think we could get away with just good accounting regulations and immediate notification of all insider trades (with no restriction on timing of insider trading).
The EU already resents Switzerland's status. No way it'd let the UK have a similar deal.
I was thinking more that the UK takes that deal rather than the EU gives it. See how that works?
If the US wants to "compete" by becoming a sweatshop economy, we Europeans can't stop you. But we don't have to go the same way.
I doubt it'll happen in the US either. We have people drizzling down their legs at the thought of eight year olds working ten hour days merely because some crusty politician tried a minor fix, like delaying a minimum wage increase for a few years or making environmental regulation more sensible.
There will come a point where "roots and grubs" will sound like a good deal, provided it's accompanied by reasonable working hours, healthcare, retirement and unemployment benefits.
Go give it a try. It'll be an object lesson to anyone else who thinks you can do that.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The courts aren't Congress. So technically, they can abridge your speech without violating the First Amendment, though possibly violating other parts of the Constitution in the process (such as divisions of power). It is worth noting that courts do on occasion order people not to discuss particulars of certain evidence and other things presented in a case and a number of courts have rules against photography in the courtroom.
But slander and libel have additional characteristics beyond being speech. As the grandparent noted, they are fraudulent and/or harmful actions. That is the basis on which defamation law is based.
A more extreme example would be an explosive device that is triggered by a certain phrase. If I intentionally say that phrase in order to kill someone (even if I had nothing to do with the device, either planning, construction, or deployment), then I'm committing murder. The crime is the harm committed (someone getting blown up) not the speech. Hence, I don't believe the First Amendment would apply here.
it would be a violation of the First Amendment, for instance, if a website could successfully sue you, after the fact, for posting comments without paying a fee to do so (assuming that there was no valid contract between you and the website requiring such payment). In essence, it's the difference between an affirmative charge/fine for making speech versus paying for a particular means of making that speech.
The actual part of the Constutition this would violate is the clause against ex post facto law which is in the original Constitution.
I think you replied to one of my other posts. I apologize, if I didn't quite grok your intent (as appears to be the case) in my reply to that post.
The historians I've seen say that if the US had put off the invasion from October 1945 to March/April 1946, it would be almost certain that between a quarter and a half of all Japanese are DEAD by that time - they'd have starved to death. I doubt even the Japanese leadership could have maintained social cohesion in the face of 20-30 million dead. Japan doesn't so much as surrender as fall apart, and the US "invades" a country that doesn't functionally exist anymore.
That's some good optimism there. You might even be right (though I think they would be able to scrounge enough food). I just don't see the evidence for your optimism.
Even if that many people die, what's going to break the social cohesion? Just let the dissenters and other problems die first, assuming there are enough of them to matter. It's a lot of people, but there's some evidence to indicate that it's not enough people.
It's worth remembering that the Japanese had at times experienced nearly 100% losses before they stopped fighting in the islands. And there are historical cases of people in similar circumstances fighting to lower population levels than that.
For example, consider the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870. This was a very similar situation with a fascist government and fanatical population keeping up a war beyond any level of common sense. Paraguay supposedly lost somewhere between 60% and 90% of its entire population before it stopped fighting. I believe the core provinces supporting the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) probably experienced similar losses before they were overrun.
So I simply don't buy that a mere loss of 20-30% of Japan's population without an invasion, would be sufficient.
These have more than paid off for themselves. Entire countries could effectively go "energy independent" on nuclear, if you cut out all the CIA-funded/aided "green party" propaganda. France proved that more or less. But hell, even they now succumb to the CIA shit. They can even Heat Their Houses with electricity in France !
Well, I'd consider the CIA-funded propaganda some sort of green energy subsidy then. And a remarkably harmful one, if true. Kinda on the level of shipping heroin to GIs.
But yes, screw nuclear subsidies too. If it's a "best investment ever" then that's an indication that the those governments shouldn't ever be in the investment business.
Well, free market was at the beginning the topic of the thread.
I wasn't pretending that wealth transfer wasn't happening (though it's not as bad as CEO pay would indicate). But that I disagree with the accusation that wealth transfer on "free markets" is somehow going to be worse than what we have now.
My view is that we were going to see an increase in wealth disparity over the past few decades just due to the decline in the value of labor relative to capital. But the US and the rest of the developed world have implemented a host of policies that make that particular problem worse.
The clique of plutocrats is IMHO mostly due to government interference over perhaps a century with the business and labor. For example, why pay a CEO 400 times average, when you can pay him 40 times average for the same work and pretty much get the same outcome? What owner of a business would really do that (well, if they were simultaneously the CEO, it would be a means of drawing capital out of the business while reducing their taxes to a degree)? Not a one alive. Yet that is what we see.
The answer is that the people making those decisions don't own the business. They're playing with OPM (Other Peoples' Money). As long as the business doesn't do anything sufficiently embarrassing, they're good).
At least with mutual funds, the investor usually has a choice (though it's quite easy to hide such decisions, most people don't look at what fund approved the CEO's latest generous package). But for pension funds or government interventions (including subsidies and guaranteed loans) there isn't a real choice there.
OPM plays a big role in the modern business world because peoples' investment options are greatly crippled unless you happen to be at the level of the "accredited investor" (as defined in the US). It means you get to play in the not very profitable sandbox with the rest of the toddlers while middlemen get to fondle your money, even if you invest directly in stocks.
Government assists by controlling what markets exist, what can be offered as a security, who can offer stock shares on a public market, providing the illusion of security, and so on. End result is that you are pretty isolated from what you supposedly own and just aren't able to make many decisions on that investment. Unless you're pretty wealthy and proactive, that is.
So your complaint is basically "hey we are doing it this way already, surely it is the best way, better not change it!"
Good thinking.
Well, it does have the virtue of working better going for it. I guess I'm just tired of seeing vast sums of money flushed down the public commode.
If this program were really in effect, then the companies in question wouldn't have been able to afford a loan. What's painfully obvious here is that the government decided who the winners and losers would be and then understated the risk of default, either deliberately or through sheer incompetence.
As to the guarantees for nuclear power, I have no trouble getting rid of them. Go for it.
If you need evidence of wealth transfer to plutocrats
Where's the free market in that? As far as I can tell, this particular bit of wealth transfer is due to a small clique which happens to control executive funding at many publicly traded companies. And membership in that clique seems to be controlled by a bunch of pension and mutual funds.
You completely neglect the market forces at work in the 1800's before the trust busting days of the US government.
And the markets. Those trusts were bleeding market share. It probably wouldn't have been fast enough for you since the process was happening over decades.
But let's suppose you are right. That still doesn't justify the vast majority of what the US does. A need to prevent monopolies doesn't lead to the government regulating so much of US society or shoveling so much money around.
When Peter had billions in cash flow going unused except to pad the bank accounts of those already mega-rich, and Paul had a winning business idea but no funding since he wasn't part of the good old boy network. You may be too young to know the dangers of vast wealth accumulation, but pick up a history book some time and you will find out all about it. An economy that favors the big over the small never wins in the long run.
So to fix this alleged problem, you suggest government action? Here's a few of the problems I spot right now. First, the US government has no particular expertise in this area. The private market simply is far better for funding this sort of thing. Second, the mega-rich good old boys play this political game far better than Paul ever could. Third, the US government has driven wealth accumulation in numerous ways, such as regulations and bureaucratic mazes that favor big, established players, a huge revenue stream that can and is suborned by that good old boy network, and discouraging the use of US labor (by driving up the cost of it).
There are cases where investors may not be willing to stick it out long enough to see a return.
One such case is businesses that will never make a positive return on investment.
but there is a role for government to support research in technologies that have a longer time horizon to be realized that most investors can stomach.
I strongly disagree. Government doesn't have the expertise to make good investments of this sort. Nor does it have the incentives to do so (there's no advantage to government officials whether R&D works or not). And please remember the opportunity costs. This money doesn't form out of the void. It comes from current or future taxpayers. Anything the government does with that money comes at the cost of what those taxpayers could have done with the money.
The wealth transfer religion is that of the demagogs insisting that the unregulated market cures all ills.
What evidence do you have for this assertion? Let us keep in mind that there is no "unregulated market" aside from a few toy markets and in a sense the black markets (where if you trade on them, you already risk going to jail and other punishments, so they aren't going to be pretty). So there just isn't a whole lot of evidence for this assertion that unregulated markets transfer wealth to plutocrats.
Instead, I think the simple explanation is that the value of labor has declined in recent decades due to a vast expansion of the global pool of labor. And the value of capital has not declined. This already favors those who own capital over those who work. So what has the US done in response? It has made US labor more expensive to hire and punished businesses for hiring people (such as the regulation and cost surges employers experience at both the first employee hired and the 50th employee hired). This is insane.
But sure, let's do a two minute hate for the nonexistent, unregulated market which is the source of all our self-inflicted woes.
Loan guarantees are not grants.
Well, the previous poster did call it a loan guarantee. As to whether or not it is a "grant", it's indistinguishable from a grant to the people that received money from that loan that would otherwise not happen and the bank that made that loan who would otherwise have to deal with the default instead of a fairly risk-free investment. All of this happened at considerable taxpayer expense.
Government has a vital role to play in keeping the economy moving. This is done through tax incentives, loans, stimulus programs and grants. The problem is that the wrong corporations capture these incentives. Obsolete industries and industries which are doing fine without incentives tend to capture most of them... (i.e. General Electric receives enough government incentives that they pay no taxes but they are a perfectly viable business to stand on their own.)
The government that has the money to keep the economy moving, has the money to flush down sinkholes and does. It's almost like they have no incentive to actually keep the economy moving.
They didn't have a fighter that could reach a B-29s ceiling.
And a bomber at the B-29's ceiling wouldn't be doing much. The US would use up a lot of bombs and planes even if they received no losses due to Japanese defenses.
America had basically achieved air superiority over the Japanese Islands. That's still doctrinal warfare. Air superiority before invasion.
And that's what I was getting to. At some point, the US would need to either invade or leave Japan alone. It's too costly to just bomb them unproductively year after year.
I was listening to Nigel Farage on Sunday Politics the other week and his economic plan is simply scary as hell. Effectively he accepts that pulling out of the EU will cost us trade and cause billions in lost income to are economy, but the way he believes we'll make this up is by the reduction in red tape allowing companies to increase output. In other words, he imagines the UK becoming a country where workers are forced to become sweatshop workers that are made to work long hours for extremely low wages and that this will somehow create a massive increase in industrial output to match the massive loss in sales to Europe.
Well, if the UK is truly that far gone due to the nefarious workings of the EU, you might as well bite the bullet before withdrawing from the EU means roots and grubs.
Personally, I can't help but think that there's a happy medium where you have access to the EU's market, but not the bullshit that comes with full EU membership. Friends with benefits. Switzerland and Norway probably have figured that out and maybe the UK ought to study that.
My view is that while Nigel Farage is probably one of the best political options out there for the UK, there's too many Brits either afraid of "sweat shops", "long hours", and all that 19th century crap or angling for some free lunch from Big Brother for him to be more than a minority leader. Oh, it'll make it easier for my country's self-maimed economy (the US) to compete.
Obviously, you don't have any knowledge of salmon farming or you would know that salmon farming *does* make the real estate used for it unusable after a period of time with current methods. Decades for recovery.
How? I see nothing mentioned on the internet about this alleged problem even from sites that discuss the relative sustainability of salmon farming.