Actually, if a corporation commits crimes, the CEO, Officers and the BOARD of Directors should be held criminally responsible. I'm not talking about rogue employees, I'm talking about corporate policy and repeated actions.
Why should owners of the corporation be not liable?
If you really want corporate behavior to change, you've got to re-link the investors (owners) with the actions (and consequences of those actions) done by the corporation.
The way it stands now, corporate officers and directors are scapegoats for owners. This is one reason why they get paid such a ridiculous amount -- if the shit hits the fans, it's the officers and directors who are in the legal line of fire, while the owners merely take a hit to their portfolios.
I disagree 100%. I believe that your view is misguided, since it does not recognize things *as they are*, but instead *as you wish them to be*.
The fact of the matter is that our system is designed (first unintentionally, then intentionally) to be a two-party system. Third parties will always be on the fringe.
In a case like the Tea Parties, they are being absorbed into the Republican party. Why? Because they don't have a snowball's chance in hell outside of it. They did (rather, are doing) exactly what I am advocating... picking the side that better matches their views and then working to implement their views within that side.
You are only ineffective at doing good if you are ineffective at showing why your ideas are better.
Or if there is no audience for your ideas who have any power to accomplish anything in line with your ideas.
Big tax cuts and Government reductions have boosted this economy numerous times. Just ask Reagan.
Ask Reagan? He who cut taxes and blew up the deficit through massive increases in government spending?
then ask the posterboy Democrat President JFK; he cut taxes in the 60s and the economy boomed.
Ah, Kennedy, who cut taxes and increased spending also.
What government reductions are you talking about? The government grew under Reagan, and under Kennedy.
I'd say that your examples support my argument -- the deficit spending under Reagan and Kennedy helped the economy. Which is what I'm saying we need to do now -- well-planned deficit spending on domestic projects to improve infrastructure and stimulate spending among regular people (instead of lining the pockets of already-wealthy people). The key is to make it effective.
teh stimulus bill was $787 Billion and according to Recovery.org (which I question their metrics, but it's useful for now) they've created/saved 3,460,000 jobs. That's $227,456/job.
I agree, it was piss-poor the way the stimulus was spent. That doesn't mean that a stimulus is bad, it just means that the one we already had was bad. But as an aside, those 3.4 MM jobs in turn likely saved many more.
The real key to effective domestic spending would be to revitalize our manufacturing base, so that when people spend money on consumer goods, it doesn't all go overseas.
All the Austrian economists I've read blame Hoover's interference for turning a fairly minor recession into the Depression and FDR's for making it last so long.
Well, that's your problem right there.:)
You'll find that other economic schools of thought differ greatly from the Austrian viewpoint.
Suffice it to say that I think a lot of the Austrian school of economics is flat-out wrong, and so if that's where you're coming from, we'll never agree.
You think dirt bag liberals don't use every trick they can to hide money from taxes.
I said, and think, no such thing. Straw man.
Well they should care no matter what you want to say unless you are industrious enough and hard working enough to start your own business and bring it up to a multi-billion dollar company, which most people are not, then you need the rich both companies and individuals to hire you.
Oh I see, now you're equating personal income tax with corporate income tax. They are different things. Furthermore, a higher marginal tax rate does NOT remove the incentive to make more money and hiring more people if that's what's required to make more money.
You're completely confused and uneducated about economics, aren't you? You can parrot Glenn Beck or whoever you want, but it's patently clear that you have no understanding of *how things actually work*.
The difference for post WWII US was domestic spending. Post-WWII USA had an increase in non-war-related spending (like infrastructure investment, the GI bill, etc). But of course, you knew that, right? And post-WWII USA had far higher income taxes at the top levels than today... but you knew that also, right? For Canada: that article doesn't mention at all the impact of the US economic vitality from '94 to '08, which played a HUGE part in Canada's fiscal recovery. Without the burgeoning US market for Canadian goods, which was partly financed by US government spending, Canada's recovery would have looked very different, if it happened at all.
As for New Zealand... the US is nowhere close to as socialist a system as NZ was in '86. But deficit spending and socialism, while sometimes related, are not the same thing. But you know better than to conflate those two like the author of that article did, right? Never mind the global economic impact on NZ... The Pacific Rim's recovery from their late-eighties disaster, the US market for NZ products, etc.
The fact is, you can't honestly compare any of those three situations to the current situation in the US. Post-WWII was extremely different, and, domestic spending *did* go up, to boot. I think it'd also be useful for you to look at tax rates in post-WWII US also... far higher than today. NZ and Canada benefited greatly from external factors that aren't there for the US.
There are plenty of possible other alternatives. The most obvious one is an actual free market
Oh, I agree on that one, emphatically. But in order to have an actual operating free market that would lead to a good outcome, we'd need regulation of the market to ensure the actors in the market can act freely with the real values of their choices explicit to them.
So we'd need:
1. Regulations to enforce internalization of externialities like pollution, social costs, etc. 2. Regulation to ensure equal access to capital to remove that particular barrier to entry 3. Regulation to ensure adequate disclosure of information so that actors in the market could make efficient choices 4. Regulation to ensure that markets do not get captured by a monopoly or oligopoly 5. Regulation to ensure that not only a subset of corporations can take advantage government functions in other areas (like the military, which is a necessary function of government)
6. Regulation and oversight to ensure there is no regulatory capture of items 1-4 above
In short, we'd end up with a system much like today's, if only we could get rid of regulatory capture.
No corporations at all.
Yes and no. People should be free to join together to mitigate risk, amass capital for large investments, etc. This is what a corporation was originally for. What I'd like to see is corporations not sheltering investors from non-financial risk. We'd see a lot less bad activity from corporations if the owners were personally liable for the evil sometimes done in the name of profit.
The parent to my post, you retard, when they argued that big government is the most inefficient way to allocate resources. I neither set up nor attacked a straw man, I countered the claim of the parent, since I believe something other than big government is the MOST inefficient way to allocate resources.
Obama put it very clearly. He would raise taxes even if it meant a decrease in tax receipts to the government. Like you, he is more concerned with some perverted idea of justice then actually doing the right thing.
Now THERE's a straw man.
You've just confirmed that you're a hypocrite in addition to being a fool.
I'll grant you that many lives have been lost, and even more have been set back or derailed by injuries. However, if I might direct you to historic recoveries and growth seen in a country after a war, I'd argue that "big picture", the result overall is quite positive, economically. Historic figures prove this out.
Stiglitz considers those figures. Have you read it?
It's important to note that this war is very different, in terms of economics, than prior wars (and for most of the prior wars, the economic impact is not as clear as you make it). For one thing, the amount of money going to security contractors; for another, the fact that it's the first war we've fought financed entirely by debt.
As for the R&D benefits, it's not actual wars that drive things like DARPA research -- that research would be happening if we went to war or not.
I'm just saying you're wrong about its costs, both short and long-term.
No, you're saying I'm wrong about the benefits. You didn't address costs at all. Please, give Stiglitz & Bilmes a read... it's enlightening.
I also reject any notion that a country can tax itself into prosperity. Its illogical and doesn't make sense. Look to Europe as an example of how well it works.
OK, I will. Wait, that's funny. The countries with the lower tax rates in Europe are generally the worst off economically, while the countries with the highest tax rates are generally the best off.
Are you sure you're not completely wrong about the impact of taxes on economic prosperity?
Millionaires are not the rich we're referring to, here. I personally know scores of millionaires, and I'm not particularly well connected.
It's the top 1%, or the top 5%, who are really getting richer as the rest of us get poorer.
Yes, there is some mobility. But you also have to realize that there have been incredible increases in wealth among the wealthy within the span of a single generation... and that statistics on dissipation of wealth over generations may not apply to now, or the future, since the framework of inheritances, tax rates, etc, has changed.
Within the context of the last twenty years of this incredible wealth accumulation -- yes, it is the same people.
Ah yes, corporations just last year got the idea that they could mobilize millions of people to elect representatives favourable to their policies. It's amazing it took them so long.
They've been working on it for ages, since the 80s. Only now were the conditions right (bad economy, democrat in office, fruits of earlier labor ready to be harvested).
Herbert Hoover *increased* spending massively; it only appears small in light of how much FDR increased it, but FDR campaigned in 1928 on the idea that Hoover was spending too much.
Hoover increased spending, until he reduced it partly in response to Roosevelt's campaigning. *That* is the austerity I'm referring to, and it's the one that tilted us further into the Depression.
I think there must be a rule that someone who begins a post with "Puh-lease" is almost guaranteed to know nothing of what he writes about.
I think there must be a rule that someone who begins a post with "Puh-lease" is almost guaranteed to know nothing of what he writes about.
I think there must be a rule that anonymous cowards who lack both critical thinking abilities and a real knowledge of US economics are almost guaranteed to write drivel that does nothing but display their ignorance.
Where exactly are you getting 4-7 trillion? The only thing I can figure is you're taking the entire DoD budget and aggregating them.
Stiglitz & Bilmes, and further papers by Stiglitz.
The problem with your tally is you're only considering current and past costs, and only budget costs. Lost productivity, costs of providing care to disabled vets, etc. And that's not even considering opportunity costs.
It's ridiculous to not consider the future costs we've been accumulating from these conflicts.
your first citation: where have you been? It's all over the fucking place. JFGI.
However, we DO know that Media Matters Inc. IS funded by a single man with an angenda to control the world cash flows, known as George Soros who recently directly donated a million with a specific agenda [CITATION [indyposted.com]].
So? It makes it worse that he's open about it, instead of doing it in secrecy like the Kochs? And Media Matters is NOTHING like the tea party.
[CITATION NEEDED]. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the Bush administration cost around $200 billion, but the Obama administration recently granted $390 billion for the same wars (NOT including the stimulus and health care bills) [CITATION [wikipedia.org]].
Oh, you fucking tool. $200 billion under Bush? That figure was an estimate in 2003, and it was *laughed at* because everyone knew it was extremely lowball. Here's the first citation... written by a Nobel prize-winning economist: Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict wherein the estimated total cost is 3-5 Trillion... and Stiglitz has subsequently published that they underestimated some of the costs, especially the cost of caring for the disabled vets returning home (to the tune of an additional 400 billion), and that the revised estimate is 4-7 Trillion dollars.
If there is anyone misinformed here, it is you. Because you disregard costs other than budgetary, which any economist knows is invalid.
@Red F. - Move to Europe you Socialist. Big Government is the most inefficient way to distribute resources or run anything. Especially, something as large as an economy.
No, corporate mon/oligopoly is the most inefficient way to distribute resources or run anything. And that's the alternative to big government.
Reducing the tax rate has been proven time and time again to create a major upturn in the economy.
No, this is not true. Reducing the tax rate has been proven time and time again to have a positive effect on the economy when coupled with deficit spending. Reducing the tax rate AND government expenditures has been shown time and time again to further depress the economy.
Then again, your world view is so warped at this point that you believe that million of individuals joining a movement for Limited Government is actually sponsored by wealthy people. If you'll buy that line instead of knowing that the majority of Tea Party funds come from individual non-wealthy members
Who pays the organizers of the events? Who paid to train those organizers? Who paid for the advocacy institutes that the "educated" tea partiers use to justify their beliefs?
You just don't want to believe that you've been had. Well, you have been had. You're dancing to the tune of millionaires and billionaires who are laughing their way to the bank as they are seeing limitations to their amassing of wealth disappear.
You know what the saddest thing is? That you don't even realize that the policies you advocate are detrimental to YOU.
So who do you support then? Republicans? Democrats?
Since we only really have the choice between two evils, I choose the Democrats.
Even if you don't agree with teabaggers you should support their activities. We need a multi-party system now.
I disagree. The tea party is an astroturf for the very wealthy, they are people being led to advocate for policies that aid the extremely wealthy. They have also aligned tightly with the Republican party, which means that any usefulness in re: 3rd parties is gone.
While I agree it would be better to have a multi-party system, they are not the kind of party I could support. Furthermore, given our current political system, we will not ever have a viable third party. So the best option is to throw your lot in with the party that better represents your views, and then work to make that party more closely aligned with your views.
It remains to be seen what will happen after the next election, but the idea that Republicans are responsible for deficits and debt ignores the fact that it was a Republican congress that balanced the budget in the first place and that it was a Republican president ("Read my hips") that signed off on the tax increases that made it possible.
Notice that I made no mention of political parties or individual politicians other than Hoover. I don't think Democrats or Republicans can fix the current economic problem -- but I'm damn well sure the tea party platform can't.
Your accounting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is way off. Maybe you should spend some time outside of the echo chamber.
Or, you know, you could bother to get educated about the subject. Stiglitz & Bilmes estimated the cost (originally) at 3-5 trillion; Stiglitz has revised the cost to 4-7 trillion based upon their original underestimation of the number and cost of disabled veterans returning to the US, among other things.
If you haven't read any of Stiglitz's work on the subject, or any of the papers published in their wake, maybe *you* need to spend some time outside the echo chamber.
The tax rate may have dropped, but the share of all federal taxes paid by the top 1% has increased: from 15.4% in 1979 to 28.1% in 2007. The total share paid by the top 20% has also increased, but not as dramatically: from 56% to 69%
That's misleading information It does not include relevant figures for the share of income or share of wealth for the top 1% and top 20% of earners.
The top 1% has seen their share of taxes go from 15.4% to 28.1%... sure... but they still have continued to increase in their share of wealth over the same period (20.5% of all wealth to 34.6% of all wealth). And as for income... for the same period, share of after-tax income for the top 1% went from 7.5% to 17.1%.
Boo-hoo, cry all you want to for the plight of the richest 1%... but realize that even with them paying a higher share of the income taxes in this country, they still more than doubled their share of after-tax income over that period. FWIW, the rise in their share of taxes paid is less than the rise in their share of after-tax income.
I failt to see any way you could consider the richest 1% worse off now than they were in 1979.
Hate to break it to you but the tea party formed way before any politician or media outlet even knew what it was
But not before people of extreme wealth were funding groups intended to spark something like the tea party. These are the elites who instigated and control (inasmuch as there is control) the tea party.
You're deluded if you think the tea party is pure grassroots. It's not. And if you consider yourself a tea partier, please ask yourself why people like the Kochs are willing to spend millions astroturfing a group you consider yourself a member of.
And as for the banning of Republican speakers... did that ont serve its intended purpose? Making the Republican party go hard right economically, to the eventual benefit of people like the Kochs?
The tea party is a name for the majority of americans who oppose the wasting of over 3 trillion dollars now by our government. It's not an organized group. There is no leadership. People in the tea party are just as angry at Republicans as they are Democrats, just the Dems more so since they are the ones responsible for the stimulus wastes.
Puh-lease. The tea party is the name for a group of people who have been led by the nose by millions and millions of dollars poured into "grassroots" network efforts by the extremely wealthy people who stand to benefit most from the anti-regulatory, anti-tax policies the tea party supports.
Please explain why you support the government wasting over 3 trillion dollars of borrowed Chinese money, and then please explain why people opposed to that make you so angry.
No need, as I don't believe the money is wholly wasted. What makes me angry is the 4-7 trillion dollars we've spent and have accrued liability for with pointless boondoggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people who blindly support those "wars". But that's beside the point.
The simple fact of the matter is that spending and tax reduction during economic downturn has been shown to be ineffective at best (the Hoover presidency shows how bad it can be). If you cut spending on programs that have domestic impact, you end up *further reducing* government revenue due to contraction... which makes the deficit even worse. Stimulus spending is an investment. Properly done ( national infrastructure, aid to local and state governments), stimulus spending, even if financed by debt, is the right course of action.
People who advocate government austerity in the face of a deep recession are asking for the recession to deepen, and for the deficit to get worse.
An objective test is required. I suggest a sample of ten babies of the same weight.
Well, now you're just inducing selection bias. What if all babies who weigh 5 kilos have a splatter radius of only 0.2 meter, and all babies that weigh 7 kilos have a splatter radius of 2 meters? Then your objective test would be inherently flawed as to the predicted result of dropping a 200 kg slug of silicon on a baby.
What we need to do is to take a random sample of babies, of sufficient number compared to the total population of babies to achieve a low margin of error, split them into a control and a test group, and *then* drop the slugs of silicon on them.
Oh, also, for true statistical rigor, make sure to stab the babies with a pencil in both eyes first to ensure the study is double-blind.
Unions are like any other special interest group in this country, they never know when to quit. They cut off workers at the knees, imposing unreasonable dues and ridiculous work requirements. They are a true, government enforced dictatorship. Everywhere they go jobs are lost. Welcome to America, the country that used to have manufacturing jobs - thanks to the unions. GM, for example, has to add $3,000 for each vehicle they sell, just to pay insane union pensions. Do unions care that GM can't sell cars because of this? No. Is it ever suggested that maybe worker wages should go down so the company can stay in business? No.
Don't blame the unions for the pensions. GM fucked up big time in the 80s when they deferred so much salary cost into pensions. GM royally fucked up when they time and time again decided to issue dividends instead of fully funding their pension obligations. That's not the union's fault, that's GM management's fault.
Intelligent people don't join unions. This is because intelligent people don't fall for the sucker-dream of unbiased advocates who are "on my side". We happen to be our own advocates, thank you very much.
Fat lot of good that's gonna do for you. Can't you read the writing on the wall? Anything you can do, someone from a cheaper place can do cheaper. It's only a matter of time before it catches up across all industries except retail clerking -- and even that is going away due to automation and online shopping. Once upon a time, it was only drudgework and call center jobs that were shipped offshore. Now even tax prep and analysis, management, higher-level IT jobs are being shipped offshore. Even medical practice can be largely offshored via teleconferencing. You think you have any power in negotiating for yourself against a company 10,000 times your size and 1,000,000 times your assets? Good fucking luck.
You've bought into the FUD about unions spread by the richest people. Will you sing a different song when business realizes that it's just as easy (but cheaper!) to find intelligence among workers in India, China, Brazil, or Nigeria?
The best thing to happen would be if workers across the world unionized. Then we could raise standards-of-living across the board, and here in the US we wouldn't be at such a competitive disadvantage.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should owners of the corporation be not liable?
If you really want corporate behavior to change, you've got to re-link the investors (owners) with the actions (and consequences of those actions) done by the corporation.
The way it stands now, corporate officers and directors are scapegoats for owners. This is one reason why they get paid such a ridiculous amount -- if the shit hits the fans, it's the officers and directors who are in the legal line of fire, while the owners merely take a hit to their portfolios.
The fact of the matter is that our system is designed (first unintentionally, then intentionally) to be a two-party system. Third parties will always be on the fringe.
In a case like the Tea Parties, they are being absorbed into the Republican party. Why? Because they don't have a snowball's chance in hell outside of it. They did (rather, are doing) exactly what I am advocating... picking the side that better matches their views and then working to implement their views within that side.
Or if there is no audience for your ideas who have any power to accomplish anything in line with your ideas.
Ask Reagan? He who cut taxes and blew up the deficit through massive increases in government spending?
Ah, Kennedy, who cut taxes and increased spending also.
What government reductions are you talking about? The government grew under Reagan, and under Kennedy.
I'd say that your examples support my argument -- the deficit spending under Reagan and Kennedy helped the economy. Which is what I'm saying we need to do now -- well-planned deficit spending on domestic projects to improve infrastructure and stimulate spending among regular people (instead of lining the pockets of already-wealthy people). The key is to make it effective.
I agree, it was piss-poor the way the stimulus was spent. That doesn't mean that a stimulus is bad, it just means that the one we already had was bad. But as an aside, those 3.4 MM jobs in turn likely saved many more.
The real key to effective domestic spending would be to revitalize our manufacturing base, so that when people spend money on consumer goods, it doesn't all go overseas.
Well, that's your problem right there. :)
You'll find that other economic schools of thought differ greatly from the Austrian viewpoint.
Suffice it to say that I think a lot of the Austrian school of economics is flat-out wrong, and so if that's where you're coming from, we'll never agree.
I said, and think, no such thing. Straw man.
Oh I see, now you're equating personal income tax with corporate income tax. They are different things. Furthermore, a higher marginal tax rate does NOT remove the incentive to make more money and hiring more people if that's what's required to make more money.
You're completely confused and uneducated about economics, aren't you? You can parrot Glenn Beck or whoever you want, but it's patently clear that you have no understanding of *how things actually work*.
The difference for post WWII US was domestic spending. Post-WWII USA had an increase in non-war-related spending (like infrastructure investment, the GI bill, etc). But of course, you knew that, right? And post-WWII USA had far higher income taxes at the top levels than today... but you knew that also, right?
For Canada: that article doesn't mention at all the impact of the US economic vitality from '94 to '08, which played a HUGE part in Canada's fiscal recovery. Without the burgeoning US market for Canadian goods, which was partly financed by US government spending, Canada's recovery would have looked very different, if it happened at all.
As for New Zealand... the US is nowhere close to as socialist a system as NZ was in '86. But deficit spending and socialism, while sometimes related, are not the same thing. But you know better than to conflate those two like the author of that article did, right? Never mind the global economic impact on NZ... The Pacific Rim's recovery from their late-eighties disaster, the US market for NZ products, etc.
The fact is, you can't honestly compare any of those three situations to the current situation in the US. Post-WWII was extremely different, and, domestic spending *did* go up, to boot. I think it'd also be useful for you to look at tax rates in post-WWII US also... far higher than today. NZ and Canada benefited greatly from external factors that aren't there for the US.
Oh, I agree on that one, emphatically. But in order to have an actual operating free market that would lead to a good outcome, we'd need regulation of the market to ensure the actors in the market can act freely with the real values of their choices explicit to them.
So we'd need:
1. Regulations to enforce internalization of externialities like pollution, social costs, etc.
2. Regulation to ensure equal access to capital to remove that particular barrier to entry
3. Regulation to ensure adequate disclosure of information so that actors in the market could make efficient choices
4. Regulation to ensure that markets do not get captured by a monopoly or oligopoly
5. Regulation to ensure that not only a subset of corporations can take advantage government functions in other areas (like the military, which is a necessary function of government)
6. Regulation and oversight to ensure there is no regulatory capture of items 1-4 above
In short, we'd end up with a system much like today's, if only we could get rid of regulatory capture.
Yes and no. People should be free to join together to mitigate risk, amass capital for large investments, etc. This is what a corporation was originally for. What I'd like to see is corporations not sheltering investors from non-financial risk. We'd see a lot less bad activity from corporations if the owners were personally liable for the evil sometimes done in the name of profit.
The parent to my post, you retard, when they argued that big government is the most inefficient way to allocate resources. I neither set up nor attacked a straw man, I countered the claim of the parent, since I believe something other than big government is the MOST inefficient way to allocate resources.
Now THERE's a straw man.
You've just confirmed that you're a hypocrite in addition to being a fool.
Stiglitz considers those figures. Have you read it?
It's important to note that this war is very different, in terms of economics, than prior wars (and for most of the prior wars, the economic impact is not as clear as you make it). For one thing, the amount of money going to security contractors; for another, the fact that it's the first war we've fought financed entirely by debt.
As for the R&D benefits, it's not actual wars that drive things like DARPA research -- that research would be happening if we went to war or not.
No, you're saying I'm wrong about the benefits. You didn't address costs at all. Please, give Stiglitz & Bilmes a read... it's enlightening.
No, I align with evil because aligning solely with my heart is idealistic and ineffective.
Far better that I have limited positive impact than have no impact at all.
OK, I will. Wait, that's funny. The countries with the lower tax rates in Europe are generally the worst off economically, while the countries with the highest tax rates are generally the best off.
Are you sure you're not completely wrong about the impact of taxes on economic prosperity?
Millionaires are not the rich we're referring to, here. I personally know scores of millionaires, and I'm not particularly well connected.
It's the top 1%, or the top 5%, who are really getting richer as the rest of us get poorer.
Yes, there is some mobility. But you also have to realize that there have been incredible increases in wealth among the wealthy within the span of a single generation... and that statistics on dissipation of wealth over generations may not apply to now, or the future, since the framework of inheritances, tax rates, etc, has changed.
Within the context of the last twenty years of this incredible wealth accumulation -- yes, it is the same people.
So why is Newscorp donating millions to the Republican cause?
Fox News wants its owner to become richer. And because of that, Fox News DOES care about elections.
They've been working on it for ages, since the 80s. Only now were the conditions right (bad economy, democrat in office, fruits of earlier labor ready to be harvested).
Hoover increased spending, until he reduced it partly in response to Roosevelt's campaigning. *That* is the austerity I'm referring to, and it's the one that tilted us further into the Depression.
I think there must be a rule that anonymous cowards who lack both critical thinking abilities and a real knowledge of US economics are almost guaranteed to write drivel that does nothing but display their ignorance.
Stiglitz & Bilmes, and further papers by Stiglitz.
The problem with your tally is you're only considering current and past costs, and only budget costs. Lost productivity, costs of providing care to disabled vets, etc. And that's not even considering opportunity costs.
It's ridiculous to not consider the future costs we've been accumulating from these conflicts.
So? It makes it worse that he's open about it, instead of doing it in secrecy like the Kochs? And Media Matters is NOTHING like the tea party.
Oh, you fucking tool. $200 billion under Bush? That figure was an estimate in 2003, and it was *laughed at* because everyone knew it was extremely lowball. Here's the first citation... written by a Nobel prize-winning economist: Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict wherein the estimated total cost is 3-5 Trillion... and Stiglitz has subsequently published that they underestimated some of the costs, especially the cost of caring for the disabled vets returning home (to the tune of an additional 400 billion), and that the revised estimate is 4-7 Trillion dollars.
If there is anyone misinformed here, it is you. Because you disregard costs other than budgetary, which any economist knows is invalid.
No, corporate mon/oligopoly is the most inefficient way to distribute resources or run anything. And that's the alternative to big government.
No, this is not true. Reducing the tax rate has been proven time and time again to have a positive effect on the economy when coupled with deficit spending. Reducing the tax rate AND government expenditures has been shown time and time again to further depress the economy.
Who pays the organizers of the events? Who paid to train those organizers? Who paid for the advocacy institutes that the "educated" tea partiers use to justify their beliefs?
You just don't want to believe that you've been had. Well, you have been had. You're dancing to the tune of millionaires and billionaires who are laughing their way to the bank as they are seeing limitations to their amassing of wealth disappear.
You know what the saddest thing is? That you don't even realize that the policies you advocate are detrimental to YOU.
Since we only really have the choice between two evils, I choose the Democrats.
I disagree. The tea party is an astroturf for the very wealthy, they are people being led to advocate for policies that aid the extremely wealthy. They have also aligned tightly with the Republican party, which means that any usefulness in re: 3rd parties is gone.
While I agree it would be better to have a multi-party system, they are not the kind of party I could support. Furthermore, given our current political system, we will not ever have a viable third party. So the best option is to throw your lot in with the party that better represents your views, and then work to make that party more closely aligned with your views.
Notice that I made no mention of political parties or individual politicians other than Hoover. I don't think Democrats or Republicans can fix the current economic problem -- but I'm damn well sure the tea party platform can't.
Or, you know, you could bother to get educated about the subject. Stiglitz & Bilmes estimated the cost (originally) at 3-5 trillion; Stiglitz has revised the cost to 4-7 trillion based upon their original underestimation of the number and cost of disabled veterans returning to the US, among other things.
If you haven't read any of Stiglitz's work on the subject, or any of the papers published in their wake, maybe *you* need to spend some time outside the echo chamber.
That's misleading information It does not include relevant figures for the share of income or share of wealth for the top 1% and top 20% of earners.
The top 1% has seen their share of taxes go from 15.4% to 28.1%... sure... but they still have continued to increase in their share of wealth over the same period (20.5% of all wealth to 34.6% of all wealth). And as for income... for the same period, share of after-tax income for the top 1% went from 7.5% to 17.1%.
Boo-hoo, cry all you want to for the plight of the richest 1%... but realize that even with them paying a higher share of the income taxes in this country, they still more than doubled their share of after-tax income over that period. FWIW, the rise in their share of taxes paid is less than the rise in their share of after-tax income.
I failt to see any way you could consider the richest 1% worse off now than they were in 1979.
But not before people of extreme wealth were funding groups intended to spark something like the tea party. These are the elites who instigated and control (inasmuch as there is control) the tea party.
You're deluded if you think the tea party is pure grassroots. It's not. And if you consider yourself a tea partier, please ask yourself why people like the Kochs are willing to spend millions astroturfing a group you consider yourself a member of.
And as for the banning of Republican speakers... did that ont serve its intended purpose? Making the Republican party go hard right economically, to the eventual benefit of people like the Kochs?
Puh-lease. The tea party is the name for a group of people who have been led by the nose by millions and millions of dollars poured into "grassroots" network efforts by the extremely wealthy people who stand to benefit most from the anti-regulatory, anti-tax policies the tea party supports.
No need, as I don't believe the money is wholly wasted. What makes me angry is the 4-7 trillion dollars we've spent and have accrued liability for with pointless boondoggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people who blindly support those "wars". But that's beside the point.
The simple fact of the matter is that spending and tax reduction during economic downturn has been shown to be ineffective at best (the Hoover presidency shows how bad it can be). If you cut spending on programs that have domestic impact, you end up *further reducing* government revenue due to contraction... which makes the deficit even worse. Stimulus spending is an investment. Properly done ( national infrastructure, aid to local and state governments), stimulus spending, even if financed by debt, is the right course of action.
People who advocate government austerity in the face of a deep recession are asking for the recession to deepen, and for the deficit to get worse.
Those of us who respect the privacy of our friends/acquaintances?
Seriously, what kind of asshole are you that you'd dig through someone's personal files without asking their consent?
Hell, I may be *curious* about what images/vids they have... but to actually go through with it and snoop on them? What a dick you must be.
Well, now you're just inducing selection bias. What if all babies who weigh 5 kilos have a splatter radius of only 0.2 meter, and all babies that weigh 7 kilos have a splatter radius of 2 meters? Then your objective test would be inherently flawed as to the predicted result of dropping a 200 kg slug of silicon on a baby.
What we need to do is to take a random sample of babies, of sufficient number compared to the total population of babies to achieve a low margin of error, split them into a control and a test group, and *then* drop the slugs of silicon on them.
Oh, also, for true statistical rigor, make sure to stab the babies with a pencil in both eyes first to ensure the study is double-blind.
Don't blame the unions for the pensions. GM fucked up big time in the 80s when they deferred so much salary cost into pensions. GM royally fucked up when they time and time again decided to issue dividends instead of fully funding their pension obligations. That's not the union's fault, that's GM management's fault.
Fat lot of good that's gonna do for you. Can't you read the writing on the wall? Anything you can do, someone from a cheaper place can do cheaper. It's only a matter of time before it catches up across all industries except retail clerking -- and even that is going away due to automation and online shopping. Once upon a time, it was only drudgework and call center jobs that were shipped offshore. Now even tax prep and analysis, management, higher-level IT jobs are being shipped offshore. Even medical practice can be largely offshored via teleconferencing. You think you have any power in negotiating for yourself against a company 10,000 times your size and 1,000,000 times your assets? Good fucking luck.
You've bought into the FUD about unions spread by the richest people. Will you sing a different song when business realizes that it's just as easy (but cheaper!) to find intelligence among workers in India, China, Brazil, or Nigeria?
The best thing to happen would be if workers across the world unionized. Then we could raise standards-of-living across the board, and here in the US we wouldn't be at such a competitive disadvantage.