Stock Market Tanks: Winners & Losers in Tech

heatlesssun said:
Yeah, those household paid 0 in federal taxes, like GE correct? And if we taxed this group more wouldn't they have less money to spend in the general economy? I would submit that actually keeping taxes lower on this group helps the wealthy as much as anyone as these people then BUY more goods and services and those profits go to the wealthy.

And you just COMPLETELY ignore all data that shows that the wealthy are getting wealthier relative to the lowest income earners. If the rich were getting soaked and the poor were ripping them off HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
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I considered just ignoring his post hoping that it was just some kind of ironic joke. I don't know how anyone can look around and see unemployment running to its highest levels in three decades and seeing corporate profits running to their highest levels in that same period and think that the rich are the victims.

The New York Times said:
I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. [Warren] Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
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I know that this is about stocks and the recent crash but that is not the only place the government is lacking,I'm not going to begin to debate something that I honestly know nothing about,but there are quite a few things that I see working in a retail store that really diminish any faith I have in our government.

First,food stamps,I know something is wrong when I see people who drive brand new cars(I have nothing against any one who buys a new car or who actually needs assistance)with their fancy new Iphone 4's and wearing clothes that are surely expensive,pulling out a food stamp card to pay for their food and not real food,but junk food like chips,pop,candy,ice cream,ect.

Then I see people who are plain out working the system and do not even try to hide it,these people are the ones that have kids to get more welfare and will only work part time so they can continue to get the full benefit of welfare all while getting a gigantic tax refund at the end of the year,I mean 6 or 7 thousand dollars,for having kids and collecting welfare while they are likely not paying more than a few hundred dollars in for taxes for the entire year and the people who live together but do not put that on their forms or what ever you do to get welfare,so they can get the max benefit.Also people buying their junk food with food stamps then paying for beer or tobacco with cash,not just sometimes,but the same people all the time.

I once saw a customer bring in a check for $230,on the bottom of the check it said for house hold supplies,he wanted to buy a shit load of beer,like almost $100 dollars worth,I told him the check was for household supplies not beer,he said its his money he can buy what he want's(It was from an organization that is funded with government grants)I called the community action and was told that once the check is issued it can be used for anything just like cash,I was not happy with that answer so I refused to sell the beer or cash the check.Then there is also a guy that scraps metal,he is paid in cash and makes thousands of dollars a week,hes constantly bragging about it and he gets money from the same organization as the other guy to pay his "rent".

Another thing I have noticed is people selling their food stamps for cash so they can buy drugs,why the hell are people not drug tested before they can get government assistance If you work for the government you have to take drug test,so why not drug test the people who want money from the government.

These are only a few examples,so don't think only a few people are doing this,its a huge problem and I see it every day,no matter who I complain to it does not change a thing,I've pretty much given up trying at this point and lost faith not only in the government but most of american society as a whole.

My point is the government is hemorrhaging money all over the place(not just from the area I described),much like AMD was a few years ago,they need to trim down and focus on whats really needs to be done,stop the bleeding then start trying to find a way out of this mess,until then we are all gonna be in a world of hurt.
 
heatlesssun said:
Yeah, those household paid 0 in federal taxes, like GE correct? And if we taxed this group more wouldn't they have less money to spend in the general economy? I would submit that actually keeping taxes lower on this group helps the wealthy as much as anyone as these people then BUY more goods and services and those profits go to the wealthy.

And you just COMPLETELY ignore all data that shows that the wealthy are getting wealthier relative to the lowest income earners. If the rich were getting soaked and the poor were ripping them off HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
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Typical liberal talking points.
Do you care WHY GE paid 0 in federal taxes last year, in spite of the large profit that made?
They also paid 0 taxes the year before too. It's because GE had a LOSS of millions that year. The LOSS was so large, that they carried it forward into the next year and it completely wiped out thier profits for the following year.

If you loss $5,000 at the horse races, and a couple weeks later you won $5,000 what was your profit?
ZERO. And what would be your income tax on this amount? ZERO.

You want to know one of the reasons the wealthy are getting richer? When you have money, you can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to get around many the taxes and regulations. If you're poor, you have no money to tax, so it doesn't matter. It's the middle class that ends up getting squeezed by the taxes and regulations, which are just another form of tax.

Out here in Southern California, a company had been trying for 2 years to build a new fast food place. Last month they canceled the project and said they are through building in California and instead are going to concentrate on expanding in Texas. Another company (that started in California) reported that it cost over $200,000 more to build in California than to build in Texas, and that they will be doing most there future expantion in Texas. More lost jobs for California, and more new jobs for Texas.
 
nutzo said:
Lets also ignore the fact that the so called "Rich", pay a higher percentage of the income taxes than at any other time in the past 50 years.
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Weird, I heard the exact opposite from like ten different sources. Again, weird, ten different sources are all wrong...hmmmm


Bush (extended) tax cuts
 
StewieTheGreat said:
I know that this is about stocks and the recent crash but that is not the only place the government is lacking,I'm not going to begin to debate something that I honestly know nothing about,but there are quite a few things that I see working in a retail store that really diminish any faith I have in our government.

First,food stamps,I know something is wrong when I see people who drive brand new cars(I have nothing against any one who buys a new car or who actually needs assistance)with their fancy new Iphone 4's and wearing clothes that are surely expensive,pulling out a food stamp card to pay for their food and not real food,but junk food like chips,pop,candy,ice cream,ect.

Then I see people who are plain out working the system and do not even try to hide it,these people are the ones that have kids to get more welfare and will only work part time so they can continue to get the full benefit of welfare all while getting a gigantic tax refund at the end of the year,I mean 6 or 7 thousand dollars,for having kids and collecting welfare while they are likely not paying more than a few hundred dollars in for taxes for the entire year and the people who live together but do not put that on their forms or what ever you do to get welfare,so they can get the max benefit.Also people buying their junk food with food stamps then paying for beer or tobacco with cash,not just sometimes,but the same people all the time.

I once saw a customer bring in a check for $230,on the bottom of the check it said for house hold supplies,he wanted to buy a shit load of beer,like almost $100 dollars worth,I told him the check was for household supplies not beer,he said its his money he can buy what he want's(It was from an organization that is funded with government grants)I called the community action and was told that once the check is issued it can be used for anything just like cash,I was not happy with that answer so I refused to sell the beer or cash the check.Then there is also a guy that scraps metal,he is paid in cash and makes thousands of dollars a week,hes constantly bragging about it and he gets money from the same organization as the other guy to pay his "rent".

Another thing I have noticed is people selling their food stamps for cash so they can buy drugs,why the hell are people not drug tested before they can get government assistance If you work for the government you have to take drug test,so why not drug test the people who want money from the government.

These are only a few examples,so don't think only a few people are doing this,its a huge problem and I see it every day,no matter who I complain to it does not change a thing,I've pretty much given up trying at this point and lost faith not only in the government but most of american society as a whole.
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This is just the tip of the problem.
Multiple this by the thousands of different government programs.
You also have a breakdown in the culture, largely caused by these handouts. (why should I work so hard when I see so many people cheating the system). These handouts have destroyed a large portion of the populations work ethic. It used to be that many people wouldn't take welfare even if they qualified because they had too much pride.

The other part of the problem is that government has no incentive to reduce fraud.
In fact, for most of these programs, the more fraud there is, the more money they need and the more money the program gets. Great way to grow the your department. They only go after fraud when it gets so bad that it embarrasses some elected official.

You should also realize that those people with new cars using food stamps are counted as “poor” , with even more money coming to each state based on how many “poor” people they have.
 
nutzo said:
Typical liberal talking points.
Do you care WHY GE paid 0 in federal taxes last year, in spite of the large profit that made?
They also paid 0 taxes the year before too. It's because GE had a LOSS of millions that year. The LOSS was so large, that they carried it forward into the next year and it completely wiped out thier profits for the following year.

If you loss $5,000 at the horse races, and a couple weeks later you won $5,000 what was your profit?
ZERO. And what would be your income tax on this amount? ZERO.

You want to know one of the reasons the wealthy are getting richer? When you have money, you can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to get around many the taxes and regulations. If you're poor, you have no money to tax, so it doesn't matter. It's the middle class that ends up getting squeezed by the taxes and regulations, which are just another form of tax.

Out here in Southern California, a company had been trying for 2 years to build a new fast food place. Last month they canceled the project and said they are through building in California and instead are going to concentrate on expanding in Texas. Another company (that started in California) reported that it cost over $200,000 more to build in California than to build in Texas, and that they will be doing most there future expantion in Texas. More lost jobs for California, and more new jobs for Texas.
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For those unaccustomed to the loopholes and shelters of the corporate tax code, GE's success at avoiding taxes is nothing short of extraordinary. The company, led by Immelt, earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but it paid not a penny in taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, were offshore. In fact, GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558

I bet GE made a ton of cash from those people not paying taxes as well. Sure, liberal talking points. Logical and reason and facts have nothing to do with it
 
J32P said:
Weird, I heard the exact opposite from like ten different sources. Again, weird, ten different sources are all wrong...hmmmm


Bush (extended) tax cuts
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10 talking heads on MSNBC & CNN don't count :)

How about the numbers from the IRS themselves (taken from a Wall Street Journal report)

How we take the richest 1% (around $388,000)
In 1990, they paid 25% of all taxes, while they earned 14% of the nation's income.
In 2000, they paid 37% of all taxes
In 2005, they paid 39% of all taxes
In 2006, they paid 40% of all taxes, which is the highest share in over 40 years.
This is while they earned 22% of the nation's income.
2006 was the most recient data available at the time of the report.

Now if you do the math, you will see that the percentage of taxes paid by the top 1% grew by 60% (from 25% to 40%). You will also see that thier percentage of the nations income grew by 57% (14% to 22%).

So while it's true that the rich are getting a bigger share of the nations income (57% more) thier tax burden has grown accordingly (60% more).
 
It seems that people are so blinded by their politics that they declare facts to be "liberal".

Maybe they should stop letting political extremists do the thinking for them and just look around, perhaps even think for themselves.

The gap between the rich and the poor is higher than ever (unless the Census Bureau is a liberal, too!), unemployment is close to its highest rate in 30 years (unless you consider the Department of Labor a liberal), and corporations are making more money than ever (unless you consider the Dow Jones a liberal).

It's hard to believe that the rich are victims of the poor...unless you think reality itself is liberal.
 
heatlesssun said:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558

I bet GE made a ton of cash from those people not paying taxes as well. Sure, liberal talking points. Logical and reason and facts have nothing to do with it
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That just goes to prove my earlier point, that the rich can hier people to avoid the taxes, unlike your average person. In the case of large corporations, even bribe, I mean donate to politicians to pass laws that benefit themselves.

How many times has the CEO of GE been to the whitehouse the last couple years?
 
nutzo said:
I don't have number on the federal level to argue with you, but at the state level (out here in California) I'd completely disagree. I've tried to get intosome of the city/state IT jobs a few years ago, and it was almost impossible due to the huge number of people that where applying (that wouldn’t happen if they were under paying). The pay was the same or a little better than the private sector, but the benefits where easily worth an extra $15k/year. After the last couple years, private sector pay is down, so the government jobs now pay a lot more, plus they still get the benefits. We even have life guards that make over $150K a year.

While costs are up, service has gone down. If there’s an accident, many police departments won’t send out an officer unless someone is hurt. In some cities they will even send you a BILL if they send someone out.
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State governments are a completely different story, especially in states like Cali where unions are extremely powerful. You also have the issues like those local politicians that were paying them selves million dollar salaries. I have a few relatives that were retirees from the NYS system and make extremely nice retirements and pay almost nothing for benefits. At the state level, employee costs are often one of if not the highest costs. At the Federal level its something like less than 2%.

On the Federal level the insane retirement packages never existed and the one that was a more traditional retirement was phased out in the 80s (only people who worked before then can collect it). Federal salaries are also capped by law in all appropriated agencies (does not apply to thinks like the Postal Service which have pretty crazy salaries). Executive pay in Federal service is about 1/100 what is is in private industry and IT pay is also much much lower. Starting pay for Federal IT with a Master's degree is under 60k but contractors often pay 30-40% more than that (and of course are billed back to the government at a much, much higher rate than that). It is extremely hard to recruit talented IT people into government jobs (it isn't uncommon for the top 2-3 applicants to turn down the job when they get an offer). You can look up the pay scales on OPM.gov if you're interested and benefits. For example one of the most used health insurance plans have premiums of $200+ per pay period and then they still have fairly large deductibles and co-pays. Also no paid dental or vision, employee pays 100%. I've worked both sides of the fence and can say the contractor side was much, much better there.

There are definitely jobs in government that are overpaid, mostly legacy jobs that people have occupied for 20+ year (HR, Admin assistants, etc). The problem is the unions fight any attempt to revamp the system so that in demand skill sets (IT, legal, etc) get paid what they are worth and admin are capped at market rate. Again the problem where neither party has the best interests of the country at heart. The Dems would rather protect the unions at any cost and enforce the status quo while the Republicans would love to have every Gov't job contracted out to their friends.

Back on topic, I really hope the market goes back up but at this point I think a 2nd recession is pretty much unavoidable.
 
nutzo said:
This is just the tip of the problem.
Multiple this by the thousands of different government programs.
You also have a breakdown in the culture, largely caused by these handouts. (why should I work so hard when I see so many people cheating the system). These handouts have destroyed a large portion of the populations work ethic. It used to be that many people wouldn't take welfare even if they qualified because they had too much pride.

The other part of the problem is that government has no incentive to reduce fraud.
In fact, for most of these programs, the more fraud there is, the more money they need and the more money the program gets. Great way to grow the your department. They only go after fraud when it gets so bad that it embarrasses some elected official.

You should also realize that those people with new cars using food stamps are counted as “poor” , with even more money coming to each state based on how many “poor” people they have.
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I completely agree on all points and that is exactly what I mean,I was pretty sure I stated that this is just one area that I can actually see and have personal experience with.

It makes me mad and a little sad that our society has fallen so far,I would never even think about asking for a hand out unless I was on the street and my family was in dire need and that is what welfare is for.

I also do not mind paying taxes,everyone should have to pay taxes and if you get some kind of welfare you should not be entitled to any kind of refund,I don't think any one should be entitled to any sort of refund unless you overpaid on your taxes,not from credits and deductions,that part has always boggled my mind,why would the government give away money for nothing,it had to come from somewhere and that was probably from people like me,who pay in thousands of dollars at the least a year,while others who pay little to nothing get back large sums of money,all while milking the government for welfare.

I think I'm done talking about this,cause it makes me sick to think about a once proud,patriotic society on its knees begging for a hand out they don't really need and at the same time punishing the people that have values and work ethic.
 
fattypants said:
It seems that people are so blinded by their politics that they declare facts to be "liberal".

Maybe they should stop letting political extremists do the thinking for them and just look around, perhaps even think for themselves.

The gap between the rich and the poor is higher than ever (unless the Census Bureau is a liberal, too!), unemployment is close to its highest rate in 30 years (unless you consider the Department of Labor a liberal), and corporations are making more money than ever (unless you consider the Dow Jones a liberal).

It's hard to believe that the rich are victims of the poor...unless you think reality itself is liberal.
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I never said those facts are liberal, however they are the result of governmental policies supported by liberals. The more the government keeps interfearing in the market, the bigger the gap beween the rich and poor will grow.
 
nutzo said:
I never said those facts are liberal, however they are the result of governmental policies supported by liberals. The more the government keeps interfearing in the market, the bigger the gap beween the rich and poor will grow.
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Where is the government interfering with the market? Are you talking about the $700 billion a year we spend on the military, which is $400 billion more per year than ten years ago? Yeah, that's a pretty big interference in the market, but it wasn't liberals that did that.
 
nutzo said:
I never said those facts are liberal, however they are the result of governmental policies supported by liberals. The more the government keeps interfearing in the market, the bigger the gap beween the rich and poor will grow.
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Huh? Liberal policy usually involves taxing the rich more. Are you claiming that taxing the rich makes them richer?
 
StewieTheGreat said:
I also do not mind paying taxes,everyone should have to pay taxes and if you get some kind of welfare you should not be entitled to any kind of refund,I don't think any one should be entitled to any sort of refund unless you overpaid on your taxes,not from credits and deductions,that part has always boggled my mind,why would the government give away money for nothing,it had to come from somewhere and that was probably from people like me,who pay in thousands of dollars at the least a year,while others who pay little to nothing get back large sums of money,all while milking the government for welfare.
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This I agree with 100%. I have no issue paying taxes when fairly applied as I feel they are necessary for upkeep of the services that I make use of as a citizen and protection of our way of life. The refundable tax credits are a joke on the middle class though. I grew up in a poor area, got two degrees, worked hard for years, and now make a fairly decent living, more than average. The problem is most of my relatives didn't. Every February they get tax "refunds" for more than I even pay in taxes even though they earn little if any income and that doesn't include all the other benefits they collect throughout the year. That is not sustainable and people should never get back more in taxes then they paid in. I have no issue with the poor paying no taxes, but getting "free" money back is really a joke on the rest of us. Just because you pump out kids you already can't afford doesn't mean you should be paid for them.
 
We have an global economy that needs SOMEONE to spend some money right now. I have no desire to "tax the rich" out of spite or envy. If reducing regulations and giving them tax breaks will get things going, more power to that.

My concern is that if we do all these things, give businesses and the wealthy EVERYTHING they want, what guarantees will we have that if we give these things to American businesses that they will actually invest IN AMERICA?

Politically we're backed into a corner. Uncle Sam in spite of our big debt could borrow enough cash to fix and update our infrastructure for next to nothing on the interest but that's not going to happen. Right now the only option the average person has is for the wealthy to do SOMETHING.

So if we need to do this and that to remove uncertainty fine. But something tells me that if we do everything that business wants we're going to get shafted and all they'll do is what they have been doing, moving more and more labor to low wage markets.

Let's not pretend that business and the wealthy are angels, they aren't. They are capitalists and all they want to do is make money. I'm not saying that a bad thing, it's just that business doesn't care how that gets done.

Waiting it out is no longer an option, we need aggressive action NOW. Either government does some borrowing or we incentivise business or both. WHATEVER it takes and its time to put the damn politics aside and do the job.

It's time to move past this Tea Party agenda of killing government off and worry the economy otherwise the Tea Party won't have to worry about killing off government because the people will be dead.
 
The world is still adjusting from the effects of globalization. The dust may settle soon, but it should provide a picture of our economy, the political landscape, and the world.

TwistedAegis gave a good wrack of the hammer and nailed it.
 
EngrChris said:
The world is still adjusting from the effects of globalization.
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Globalization is by FAR the biggest issue surrounding employment in the US but it's easier to blame government and regulations and no one has any good ideas as to how to deal with the effects of globalization. I remember seeing Alan Greenspan at a congressional hearing some years ago, very interesting hearing in that the main subject was globalization and the understanding that it would have a negative impact on US employment with NO ONE having a real clue how to deal with it.

A big problem with our political discourse is that we are focused on the WRONG issues. That insane debt ceiling debate is a great example Now was simply NOT the time to have that debate and not under those circumstances. The good news is that polls are showing that people are getting it FINALLY. You don't worry about high cholesterol levels (the debt and deficit) DURING a heart attack.
 
A easy and straight forward way is to make us more competitive with less taxes and regulations. In other words, to make business easier and straight forward to do here, or it goes somewhere else.
 
EngrChris said:
A easy and straight forward way is to make us more competitive with less taxes and regulations. In other words, to make business easier and straight forward to do here, or it goes somewhere else.
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Again we can do those things but there needs some kind of assurances and intelligence about. We love to talk about fewer regulations look at what happens when business are left to their own desires. There's bubbles and crashes and bodies and blown up old rigs all around from improperly regulated businesses.
 
The current and the past administrations with congress was to kick the can down the road. Well, we're stuck and now tomorrow is today, ops.
 
EngrChris said:
A easy and straight forward way is to make us more competitive with less taxes and regulations. In other words, to make business easier and straight forward to do here, or it goes somewhere else.
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We already do that. Our taxes on business are some of the lowest on earth. The only countries lower than us are third-world shitholes.

And yet they still send labor overseas because it's cheaper.

Turns out that they just want to make money, and tax breaks just get fed into their bottom line.
 
heatlesssun said:
Again we can do those things but there needs some kind of assurances and intelligence about. We love to talk about fewer regulations look at what happens when business are left to their own desires. There's bubbles and crashes and bodies and blown up old rigs all around from improperly regulated businesses.
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Very true. But, everything has a risk, it can be made negligible but never eliminated.
 
fattypants said:
We already do that. Our taxes on business are some of the lowest on earth. The only countries lower than us are third-world shitholes.

And yet they still send labor overseas because it's cheaper.

Turns out that they just want to make money, and tax breaks just get fed into their bottom line.
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High interest rates and low material costs. Maxmaing profits with the lowest costs available. China is a good example of income and quality of life extremes. Our future could be that way. I'm not too sure.
 
HOCP4ME said:
Huh? Liberal policy usually involves taxing the rich more. Are you claiming that taxing the rich makes them richer?
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You obviously don't understand things too well. Liberal policies span a broad spectrum, and "taxing the rich" is merely a class warfare tactic used to suck in the liberal voters (incompetents). The reality is that the bottom 50% of the country aren't producing anything of value, and they are merely a financial drain on our society. They aren't the business owners. They aren't the ones investing large sums of money. They aren't the ones creating jobs. From an economic standpoint, the bottom 50% are the parasites.

In my line of work I deal with a lot of the not-so-fortunate. One trend I see over and over is that these people continually spend money on credit (go into debt) in hopes of earning an easy living, but they have no idea what they are doing. They are like the lottery players who have no money to their name. They are clueless. They aren't educated even though they were passed through the public school system. They think 1 - 1 is 2, not 0. And they're getting poorer and poorer in hopes of one day becoming wealthy all the while they are dishing out money to other people who are getting richer and richer. And that made me realize...

The poor aren't poor because of the rich, but the rich are rich because of the poor. If you understand that, you understand our problem.

Taking this back to the original question, the liberal mentality is one of enforcement. It's one of setting policy in hopes of controlling the outcome. It's cutting carbon emissions to save the planet. It's injecting fake money into the economy in hopes of creating jobs. It's establishing regulations that merely cripple business. Here's an example:

Obamacare has a provision which basically exempts small businesses who don't provide insurance from certain fees if they have less than 50 employees. This is a liberal regulation. If a small business has 49 employees and doesn't have any major growth plans, that business is probably not going to hire the 50th employee and expose itself to thousands of dollars in fees. Why would it? That business may want to hire an extra 10 or 20 people down the line, but due to Obamacare you're going to have 10 to 20 people who stay out of work.

You have liberal policies which encourage the poor to stay poor (welfare, extended unemployment benefits, free cell phones, "Free money if you can't afford to even pay your taxes!") You have liberal policies that limit growth, such as the Obamacare example. And finally, you have things like the stimulus which give away money to the banks in hopes of encouraging investing, but as has occurred in the past few years, the banks are just sitting on that money.

As another thought, if you tax the rich, you're not taxing the wealth, but the income. In other words, if someone is already rich, raising his or her taxes merely stifles future investment, but that person maintains his or her wealth. You're not really hurting the rich person, but you're hurting everyone else who would otherwise reap the rewards of investment.

When you have a policy that keeps the poor poor, discourages the middle class from growing wealthy, while simultaneously discouraging investment (higher taxes on rich), but giving that same group free money (stimulus), the result is a larger gap between the rich and the poor.
 
aireyc said:
The reality is that the bottom 50% of the country aren't producing anything of value, and they are merely a financial drain on our society. They aren't the business owners. They aren't the ones investing large sums of money. They aren't the ones creating jobs. From an economic standpoint, the bottom 50% are the parasites.
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99% of the actual labor isn't anything of value? That's like saying that worker bees are parasites because they don't lay eggs like the queen.

And don't pretend that the rich are creating jobs, either. We have more millionaires and billionaires than we have ever had and our employment rate is at its worst since the 50s.
 
fattypants said:
99% of the actual labor isn't anything of value? That's like saying that worker bees are parasites because they don't lay eggs like the queen.

And don't pretend that the rich are creating jobs, either. We have more millionaires and billionaires than we have ever had and our employment rate is at its worst since the 50s.
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More people too with the more millionaires and billionaires.
Since the Cold War, did creating and growing existing industries help to close the employment rate? I wonder.
 
Just a thing to add. As a conservative, I don't feel it's possible for us to dictate job growth. The government is merely stifling the recovery. Since the economy is cyclical, you're going to have bubbles and corrections, but that can take care of itself over time.

I don't view the government as something we should look to when we want jobs. If we're not at full employment and the government isn't setting ridiculous regulations, it's either the system being manipulated and the government is not enforcing the required law (collusion, malfeasance, etc), or it's just a shift in the economy as new jobs require new skills. If we're at full employment, the unemployed shouldn't be given handouts, but forced (since they would have no other choice) to create their own work instead of sucking off the rest of us.

If the society at large feels that the less fortunate should be taken care of without anything required of them, that same society should voluntarily donate to charities. If the society at large isn't inclined to do so, why should the minority be allowed to force the majority's actions?

Liberal policies are great in some alternate reality, but they're just not sustainable in the long run. If every single person in a society can not take advantage of a government program without negative effect on the society, that program should not exist. Welfare doesn't work if everyone is collecting.
 
EngrChris said:
More people too with the more millionaires and billionaires.
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The 2010 census bureau data showed that the difference is rising. There are more rich, but there are far more poor. Maybe the census bureau is a liberal?

EngrChris said:
Since the Cold War, did creating and growing existing industries help to close the employment rate? I wonder.
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It seems to have helped China, since that's where our businesses are creating millions of new jobs. Certainly not here, though.
 
aireyc said:
Just a thing to add. As a conservative, I don't feel it's possible for us to dictate job growth. The government is merely stifling the recovery.
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Our taxes vs. our GDP is among the lowest on the planet. Our government isn't stifling anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

The only countries lower than us are mostly nasty places to live. I wouldn't want to live in a single country below us on the list (and yes, I've lived in Korea). But there's a lot of nice countries above us on the list.
 
fattypants said:
Our taxes vs. our GDP is among the lowest on the planet. Our government isn't stifling anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

The only countries lower than us are mostly nasty places to live. I wouldn't want to live in a single country below us on the list (and yes, I've lived in Korea). But there's a lot of nice countries above us on the list.
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Hong Kong? Taiwan? that's pretty shortsighted of you to say that "mostly nasty places to live." There are a lot of decent countries below the US.
 
aireyc said:
You have liberal policies which encourage the poor to stay poor (welfare, extended unemployment benefits, free cell phones, "Free money if you can't afford to even pay your taxes!") You have liberal policies that limit growth, such as the Obamacare example. And finally, you have things like the stimulus which give away money to the banks in hopes of encouraging investing, but as has occurred in the past few years, the banks are just sitting on that money.
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If you think Obamacare limits growth have you bothered to understand the Ryan plan and its replacement of Medicare. You might be surprised by just how similar the ideas are. Both essentially run on the concept of exchanges and require almost everyone buy insurance. While the Ryan plan doesn't require everyone buy in it almost wouldn't work unless everyone did simply because you end up putting the oldest and sickest people on private insurance and without pretty much every young and healthy person on a plan the premiums would be astronomical. People throw around Obamacare and don't seem to understand that most of it are ideas that have been floated around by both the left AND right for many years. The truth of the matter is that even India has universal coverage and China's system isn't dissimilar to Obamacare. The big difference in the US is the COST of medicine compared to the rest of the world, something Obamacare had NOTHING to do with.

Judging by your post you obviously think that poor people are just leaches that are lazy. Well some are. And guess what, a number of wealthy are too. The the difference is that the wealthy actually have the power to nuke the ENTIRE economy when the game the system. And gee, I wonder who benefits from all that stuff the poor buy like cell phones and such? Obviously not the poor.
 
Taxing the rich may indeed stifle investment.That may be a good thing, they invest in companies that ship jobs overseas anyhow.
 
aireyc said:
You obviously don't understand things too well. Liberal policies span a broad spectrum, and "taxing the rich" is merely a class warfare tactic used to suck in the liberal voters (incompetents). The reality is that the bottom 50% of the country aren't producing anything of value, and they are merely a financial drain on our society. They aren't the business owners. They aren't the ones investing large sums of money. They aren't the ones creating jobs. From an economic standpoint, the bottom 50% are the parasites.

In my line of work I deal with a lot of the not-so-fortunate. One trend I see over and over is that these people continually spend money on credit (go into debt) in hopes of earning an easy living, but they have no idea what they are doing. They are like the lottery players who have no money to their name. They are clueless. They aren't educated even though they were passed through the public school system. They think 1 - 1 is 2, not 0. And they're getting poorer and poorer in hopes of one day becoming wealthy all the while they are dishing out money to other people who are getting richer and richer. And that made me realize...

The poor aren't poor because of the rich, but the rich are rich because of the poor. If you understand that, you understand our problem.

Taking this back to the original question, the liberal mentality is one of enforcement. It's one of setting policy in hopes of controlling the outcome. It's cutting carbon emissions to save the planet. It's injecting fake money into the economy in hopes of creating jobs. It's establishing regulations that merely cripple business. Here's an example:

Obamacare has a provision which basically exempts small businesses who don't provide insurance from certain fees if they have less than 50 employees. This is a liberal regulation. If a small business has 49 employees and doesn't have any major growth plans, that business is probably not going to hire the 50th employee and expose itself to thousands of dollars in fees. Why would it? That business may want to hire an extra 10 or 20 people down the line, but due to Obamacare you're going to have 10 to 20 people who stay out of work.

You have liberal policies which encourage the poor to stay poor (welfare, extended unemployment benefits, free cell phones, "Free money if you can't afford to even pay your taxes!") You have liberal policies that limit growth, such as the Obamacare example. And finally, you have things like the stimulus which give away money to the banks in hopes of encouraging investing, but as has occurred in the past few years, the banks are just sitting on that money.

As another thought, if you tax the rich, you're not taxing the wealth, but the income. In other words, if someone is already rich, raising his or her taxes merely stifles future investment, but that person maintains his or her wealth. You're not really hurting the rich person, but you're hurting everyone else who would otherwise reap the rewards of investment.

When you have a policy that keeps the poor poor, discourages the middle class from growing wealthy, while simultaneously discouraging investment (higher taxes on rich), but giving that same group free money (stimulus), the result is a larger gap between the rich and the poor.
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this post reads something out of a typical mainstream conservative blog or talk show. I just had to read a couple sentences in "50% add nothing of value."
 
EngrChris said:
High interest rates and low material costs. Maxmaing profits with the lowest costs available. China is a good example of income and quality of life extremes. Our future could be that way. I'm not too sure.
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Don't you mean either India or America? China has brought quite a lot of people out of poverty.
 
Did anyone know that American used to tax the wealthy by up to 70%? This was in the past, and the money was used to do amazing things for Americans. I believe it was Reagan who changed that, but I maybe wrong.

If we could tax the rich that much in the past, why not do the same today?
 
mndeg said:
Don't you mean either India or America? China has brought quite a lot of people out of poverty.
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aireyc said:
Just a thing to add. As a conservative, I don't feel it's possible for us to dictate job growth. The government is merely stifling the recovery. Since the economy is cyclical, you're going to have bubbles and corrections, but that can take care of itself over time.

I don't view the government as something we should look to when we want jobs. If we're not at full employment and the government isn't setting ridiculous regulations, it's either the system being manipulated and the government is not enforcing the required law (collusion, malfeasance, etc), or it's just a shift in the economy as new jobs require new skills. If we're at full employment, the unemployed shouldn't be given handouts, but forced (since they would have no other choice) to create their own work instead of sucking off the rest of us.

If the society at large feels that the less fortunate should be taken care of without anything required of them, that same society should voluntarily donate to charities. If the society at large isn't inclined to do so, why should the minority be allowed to force the majority's actions?

Liberal policies are great in some alternate reality, but they're just not sustainable in the long run. If every single person in a society can not take advantage of a government program without negative effect on the society, that program should not exist. Welfare doesn't work if everyone is collecting.
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Eh? More like more 'liberal' policies need to be implemented. Think about it. In capitalism all capital flows upwards. A lot of it is used to make more money, for no particular reason other than to make money. Labor will always get a smaller slice of the pie as one person can easily be replaced with another as everyone has a college education these days. We as humans have a much greater capacity to produce, manufacture, invent, and design than anytime in history but the owners of capital reap the large majority of the gains from the above. What does everyone else get? Perhaps an iPad2, maybe a cool electric car, but things that are necessities such as housing and food will forever be inflating due to current global central banking policies.
 
mndeg said:
Think about it. In capitalism all capital flows upwards.
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Why is obvious thing SO hard for people to see. Even when poor people supposedly soak the rich all they end up doing is taking that money and buying goods and services at a profit for the wealthy. This is why wealth is concentrated at the top. Even when you just give a poor person money a good deal of it goes to the wealthy.
 
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