Stock Market Tanks: Winners & Losers in Tech

Yes, the U.S. department of agriculture says that food stamps are very efficient at stimulating the economy simply because all money 'given' to people is spent on goods. IMO the government should hand out money equal to inflation to everyone equally (even better if global). There's clearly a problem with equity and distribution and not scarcity. This isn't a problem education is going to solve. Do you guys know how many people are graduating ever year in China along with engineering degrees? A ton. Being intelligent and hard working means nothing these days.
 
My father was a world war 2 vet,worked in a foundry. He won $4000.00 in the N***** pool run by the mob back then. He bought a nice house. The guy next door owned a BIG plating factory. He told my dad he made 4 times what his average employee made, felt he was doing great. I was 5 when we moved. My father passed on when I was 9. Had three kid brothers, the youngest an infant. I worked cleaning parts in a garage, mechanics helper.mother worked making flying suits for the air force. After dad passed a Lb of hamburg had to last a week! Times were tough. Mom went thru the depression, she was tough!
Got my drivers license at 16 went to work for a contractor who had just gotten a job on a section of the Mass Pike. A union business agent from the Operating Engineers asked if I had a union book. I said no but I'm willing to join, ($2.50 an hour was a ton of money). Before he got back the draft board notified me. I figured if the Navy was good enough for my father it's good enough for me, I joined.and they made me a UDT/frog. Went to Korea in Jan-52 stayed till the treaty in 1956. Came home.
I have been around for a while and I can tell you the difference in life between then and now.
When I got home: A man working in a shop made 65-70 dollars a week, he could by a home and raise a family on that income.
I was lucky, teamster for 20 years, Operating Engineer for 22 yrs. I have 2 defined pensions (Defined is for life). In my OE local we had an Anuitty, in 1989 started out at $.50 an Hr., and was negotiated to $3.00 an hour. We could invest in a slew of money market funds. I had $168.000.00 dollars in it. Then time to retire it was Yr. 2000. Dot com bust, couldn't roll it out till after retirement papers went thru. Ended up with $50.000.00 loss of $118.000.00 in a matter of a few weeks.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is WHO in god's name would want to trust their retirement money in a 401k and subject to the whims of the market.
You can love Unions or hate em. I'm feel organized labor did a lot for the working American. Some say their past their prime. Maybe so but watch how fast Corporations will take away/reduce your constitutional rights. Hell, they already have in some cases. They love trade agreements, good for you, Right! I feel this country has gone down hill with respect to the working man. My son-in law makes about $100.00 more than I made as a teamster 35 Yrs.,ago.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Please clarify. The PIIGS are getting hammered and European banks are holding on to huge sums of their sovereign debt, an exposure that US banks don't have much of.

The ECB seems more concerned about inflation then the fact that the entire zone could be pulled back into a recession. Since approximately April, Italian markets are down 40%, Spanish 20% and even Germany's are down 13%.

In summary, I have no idea what you're talking about.
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Simple.
Two very practical reasons:

1) The truly rich in America never keep their money there, it's always Europe. Always.
2) Germany was leveled, twice, and they're STILL a banking powerhouse and lead the EU
 
Hooooo, boy, how I miss GenMay. This is gonna be fun...

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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The story about GE paying no taxes was false.

"Wealthier relative to the lowest income earners" is meaningless. If the poorest people are better off than they were before, does it matter if the millionaires are too?

fattypants said:
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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You're looking at a symptom (the rich and companies having more cash on hand) and jumping to a diagnosis (rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor) without any proof to back it up. You're also operating on the false assumption that the economy is a zero-sum game.

Let me explain briefly why the rich are getting richer and companies are having record profits. The reason is that companies are scared. Scared of the possibility of a double-dip recession. Scared of the effects of Obamacare. And scared of the continuing stream of regulation coming from Washington DC. So instead of investing that money in expansion or new ventures, they're hoarding it.

fattypants said:
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.
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Have you been living under a rock for the last three years? Let's see how many ways I can come up with off the top of my head:
1) the "Permitorium", or the arbitrary slowdown/stoppage of the permitting process for oil/gas permits in the Gulf of Mexico
2) shafting GM and Chrysler bondholders in order to minimize damage to the UAW from a bankruptcy
3) Delta Smelt
4) Obamacare
5) Frank-Dodds
6) The EPA ruling that Texas' air quality efforts didn't meet their (arbitrary and arbitrarily-enforced) standards, even though a) it's been proven that emissions in question stay within TX and b) air quality has been continuously improving
7) Tax breaks for uneconomic "green" products
8) Gas mileage standards
9) NLRB filing (and entirely baseless) suit against Boeing for building their new plant in the Carolinas (in order to avoid hiring more union workers)
10) TARP

That's just since Obama became president. Do you need me to go on?
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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What he's arguing is that taxing the rich ends up hurting the poor. The same goes for taxing corporations. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but pretty much every scheme dreamed up to "help" the poor has ended up hurting them. Taxing the rich, or taxing corporations, means that there's less money to invest in expansion or new business. Expansion and new business means jobs. So higher taxes = fewer jobs.

heatlesssun said:
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....

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.
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It's only in the combination of globalization and government overreach that we have a problem. Government interference drives up costs for companies, and globalization allows them to go elsewhere to get things done. If the politicians in Washington want companies to create jobs in the US, they need to make the US an attractive place to do business. Unfortunately, they've been very actively doing the precise opposite.

And while ideally it would be better to deal with the deficit and debt during boom times, the problem is that our politicians (on both sides, but more especially the Democrats) have, at all times, fought any effort to deal with deficits.

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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There were plenty of safety regs in place to prevent the Deepwater Horizon disaster. And lots of company safety policies as well. The problem wasn't a lack of regulation and policy. It was a lack of enforcement.

Bubbles and crashes are part of a normal economic cycle. The only way to eliminate the booms and busts is to eliminate growth altogether. See USSR.
fattypants said:
Our taxes vs. our GDP is among the lowest on the planet. Our government isn't stifling anything.

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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You are ignoring an important part of the equation: compliance costs. All regulations cost money, even if they don't impose taxes. For example, how many billions of dollars per year do Americans spend on tax preparation? As another example, what business with 40-49 employees will want to hire the 50th employee and suddenly be subject to the mandates in Obamacare? This is the kind of thing that stifles growth.

As for this last comment, I'm going to break it up.
heatlesssun said:
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.
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On the face, true. But when you look at the context, it's a whole different thing. The Ryan plan moves Medicare away from the completely-socialized system we currently have, provides lots more options, and is voluntary. Obamacare moves the entire rest of the health insurance industry towards a socialized system, reduces choices (e.g. no more high-deductible plan plus HSA for you!), and is mandatory.
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.
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As opposed to Obamacare, in which everyone is forced to subsidize health insurance for people who have no investment in their own health, or who wait until they're severely ill before getting insurance? How is that better?[/quote] 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.[/quote]Stupidity is stupidity, no matter who's saying it--republican or democrat.
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.
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Please name me one socialized health care system in the world that meets the following criteria:
1) high accessibility (low wait times, sufficient doctors/providers)
2) quality of care
3) low cost
4) the system is solvent
The fact is that there is none. Here in the US, we fail on #3, but everything else is good. In the UK, they fail at #1 and #4.

As for cost, while it is high (and rising much faster than inflation), Obamacare is only making it worse. Guess who's going to end up paying for those new taxes on medical device makers and pharmaceutical companies? Guess who ends up paying the higher premiums because they're being forced to subsidize people with pre-existing conditions?

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 they 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.
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Here's how I define "leech": someone who receives money without contributing value to the economy. While you may not think that a millionaire contributes to the economy, they actually do. When millionaires invest their money, they are injecting capital into businesses that they think will be successful, businesses which will make money because they make a product someone wants. When millionaires do so, not only do they make money, but they create jobs (that's good, right?) and give consumers something they want.

If the poor are not benefiting from their purchases, then why are they making those purchases? Nobody is forcing them to buy a cell phone or a big TV or an Escalade with spinners.

I highly recommend reading Economics in One Lesson (PDF).
 
Mohonri said:
It's only in the combination of globalization and government overreach that we have a problem. Government interference drives up costs for companies, and globalization allows them to go elsewhere to get things done. If the politicians in Washington want companies to create jobs in the US, they need to make the US an attractive place to do business. Unfortunately, they've been very actively doing the precise opposite.
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Yes government overreach drives up costs. So do you want to drink Chinese water, breath Chinese air, have your kinds play when any toy that comes out of China, work under Chinese conditions?

Business will ALWAYS complain about regulations, almost anything from their point of view is 'overreach'. Not saying that sometimes they don't have a point but in general if it impacts a bottom line, business want like it. Even when the regulation itself isn't costly, like labeling, business tends to like to keep consumers ill-informed as a dumber consumer is an easier one to manipulate.
 
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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Wrong .

It may come as a surprise that US companies pay the highest taxes in the world. Yes, you read that right. American businesses, large and small and across all industries pay from 35% to 41.6% of their income in combined state and federal taxes. Compare that to socialist France where companies pay only 34.4% in taxes, to China where the rate is 25%, or Russia which levies a mere 24%. Corporations in Ireland, Europe's fastest growing economy for the
last 18 years, pay just 12.5% in taxes.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/us_companies_pay_the_highest_t.html
 
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.
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Great post. One of our big problems in this country is the class warfare that's promoted by the left. It does nothing to solve our problems, and in fact it only makes them worse. This goes against one of the 10 commandments "thou shall not covet thy neighbors goods" and also one of the 7 deadly sins "Envy".


aireyc said:
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.
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There was a study I read many years ago, where they compared the income and lifestyles of the poor to the lower middle class. The poor where recieving walfare, food stamps or other government benefits, while the lower middle class was not. The total income (when including the benefits) for the poor people was higher than the middle class people in the study, yet the middle class people had a much better life overall. (more suff, better nutrition, etc.)

The difference was in how they spent thier money. The lower middle class people where frugal, used coupons, cooked meals at home, stayed married, didn;t have kids they couldn't afford, etc. Meanwhile the poor people bought prepared food, had kids while single, etc.

Thier conclusion was that if we could get these poor people to behave more like the lower middle class, we could save alot on walfare, while improving these peoples lives.


aireyc said:
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.
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I've worked in small businesses for over 25 years, and this happens all the time.
One company I worked at ran into this problem with a combinantion of federal and state regulations that kicked in at 25 employees. This was a fast growing company, and we where actually turning business way, instead of hiring more people. I talked to the owner, and she told me they had to keep the company under 25 people. Besides the direct costs of the regulations, they would have had to hire a full time person just to handle all the extra paperwork, and it wasn't worth the hassle/cost to grow past 24.
 
nutzo said:
Wrong .

It may come as a surprise that US companies pay the highest taxes in the world. Yes, you read that right. American businesses, large and small and across all industries pay from 35% to 41.6% of their income in combined state and federal taxes. Compare that to socialist France where companies pay only 34.4% in taxes, to China where the rate is 25%, or Russia which levies a mere 24%. Corporations in Ireland, Europe's fastest growing economy for the
last 18 years, pay just 12.5% in taxes.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/us_companies_pay_the_highest_t.html
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On paper they do but you have to look at all of the kickbacks that companies receive especially when they promise jobs. Apple just built a data center near me in a hard hit area. Sweet deal, the land was practically given to them and they got a number of breaks.

The tax code is simply a complex mess, honestly I doubt anyone has good idea what many companies actually pay in taxes simply because it's so complicated.
 
heatlesssun said:
Yes government overreach drives up costs. So do you want to drink Chinese water, breath Chinese air, have your kinds play when any toy that comes out of China, work under Chinese conditions?

Business will ALWAYS complain about regulations, almost anything from their point of view is 'overreach'. Not saying that sometimes they don't have a point but in general if it impacts a bottom line, business want like it. Even when the regulation itself isn't costly, like labeling, business tends to like to keep consumers ill-informed as a dumber consumer is an easier one to manipulate.
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If such regulations are so good, then it should be Congress that passes them, rather than some unaccountable, unelected, appointed bureaucrat whose highest priority is his/her own job security. If CO2 is a pollutant, for example, then let Congress pass a law stating such. The problem is that we have regulatory agencies effectively creating laws without the population having any say in them.

heatlesssun said:
On paper they do but you have to look at all of the kickbacks that companies receive especially when they promise jobs. Apple just built a data center near me in a hard hit area. Sweet deal, the land was practically given to them and they got a number of breaks.

The tax code is simply a complex mess, honestly I doubt anyone has good idea what many companies actually pay in taxes simply because it's so complicated.
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Let me explain how corporate income tax works. Businesses get money from selling stuff, and they spend some of that money on expenses (people, rent, equipment, etc). They're taxed (by the feds) 40% on whatever's left. Then the business owners (whether they're business partners, owners, stock holders, whatever) get taxed again (15%) when the company gives out dividends.

The kickbacks aren't from the federal government, unless it's a "loan" to some politically-favored industry (*cough*solar*cough). The kickbacks/tax incentives/whatever come from the states. And that's how it's supposed to work. States compete with each other to provide the best climate for businesses, so that businesses will move there.
 
nutzo said:
There was a study I read many years ago, where they compared the income and lifestyles of the poor to the lower middle class. The poor where recieving walfare, food stamps or other government benefits, while the lower middle class was not. The total income (when including the benefits) for the poor people was higher than the middle class people in the study, yet the middle class people had a much better life overall. (more suff, better nutrition, etc.)
Click to expand...

nutzo said:
I've worked in small businesses for over 25 years, and this happens all the time.One company I worked at ran into this problem with a combinantion of federal and state regulations that kicked in at 25 employees. This was a fast growing company, and we where actually turning business way, instead of hiring more people. I talked to the owner, and she told me they had to keep the company under 25 people. Besides the direct costs of the regulations, they would have had to hire a full time person just to handle all the extra paperwork, and it wasn't worth the hassle/cost to grow past 24.
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I've seen this too but at some level it is an excuse. I don't want to deal with the rules of growing my bossiness so I won't. Do we have to give business everything on s silver plater. Oh its too costly, oh too much regulation. Good grief, grow an pair. There's this thing called risk and it seems like all business want to do these things and if they can't see an obvious path to a gold mine they don't even want to bother.

I'm not saying we can't ease rules that don't make sense but we simply can't just say "Oh you don't like this rule, forget about it" EVERY time there are complaints from business. There's got to be SOME balance.
 
Mohonri said:
If such regulations are so good, then it should be Congress that passes them, rather than some unaccountable, unelected, appointed bureaucrat whose highest priority is his/her own job security. If CO2 is a pollutant, for example, then let Congress pass a law stating such. The problem is that we have regulatory agencies effectively creating laws without the population having any say in them.
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Then you turn the regulatory structure into nothing but a political quagmire. One day the rules are this, the next day their are no rules, then a disaster happens and then there are too many rules.

Mohonri said:
Let me explain how corporate income tax works. Businesses get money from selling stuff, and they spend some of that money on expenses (people, rent, equipment, etc). They're taxed (by the feds) 40% on whatever's left. Then the business owners (whether they're business partners, owners, stock holders, whatever) get taxed again (15%) when the company gives out dividends.

The kickbacks aren't from the federal government, unless it's a "loan" to some politically-favored industry (*cough*solar*cough). The kickbacks/tax incentives/whatever come from the states. And that's how it's supposed to work. States compete with each other to provide the best climate for businesses, so that businesses will move there.
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But a lot of federal money goes directly to the states which helps enable states to incitivise business.
 
Isn't Wall Street where the most sick gamblers go to lose other people's money?
 
For those on the anti-regulatory kick, you do realize that regulations can often HELP businesses. Just look at the recent financial crisis. Look at the parts that failed and look at the parts that didn't. There is a CLEAR pattern, the better regulated commercial banks survived. The lesser regulated big investment banks, what happened to them? Oh that's right, THEY ALL COLLAPSED!
 
heatlesssun said:
Then you turn the regulatory structure into nothing but a political quagmire. One day the rules are this, the next day their are no rules, then a disaster happens and then there are too many rules.
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And this is different from the current situation HOW? The situation you describe is PRECISELY what happens when you have an unaccountable bureaucracy with the power to arbitrarily make up regulations. For example, after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a whole bunch of new safety regulations were imposed. Whether you agree or disagree with them (I tend to disagree, since there were already lots of safety regs in place--they were simply unenforced), if those regulations make sense, then they could have easily been passed by Congress. Instead, you have situations where Congress has to pass a law to undo a regulation put in place by an appointee. That seems a bit tail-wagging-the-dog-ish to me. The whole point of my earlier statement is that proposed regulations would get bogged down in the legislature, which is a Good Thing.
But a lot of federal money goes directly to the states which helps enable states to incitivise business.
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First of all, please point me to link documenting this.

Secondly, why should the federal government be funding it?
 
LeninGHOLA said:
There are also quite a few states that pay much more to the federal gov than they get back ;)
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Yes, good old unfunded mandates, it does indeed go both ways but overall for most states they do tend to get a lot of help especially when they have disasters.
 
I remember reading somewhere that GM went down 4 percent even after posting record profits. Yesterday's plunge was just crazy.
 
Aaron11 said:
I remember reading somewhere that GM went down 4 percent even after posting record profits. Yesterday's plunge was just crazy.
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There's an old saying, that the stock market has predicted 9 of the last 5 recessions.
 
This thread was coming along beautifully right up until people started flinging around 'liberal' and 'conservative' and pretending that there's an actual difference anymore. A huge reason why nothing will change is because the government and media together has done a truly AWESOME job of turning the middle class against itself. All the way to the point that people will deliberately vote against their own interests just so they can stick with their 'party' and/or spite the 'left' or the 'right'.
 
heatlesssun said:
Highway money, infrastructure project money, unemployment, Medicaid, etc.
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Why should the funding for these come from the federal level (after being pulled out of the states' citizens' pockets)?

heatlesssun said:
Yes, good old unfunded mandates, it does indeed go both ways but overall for most states they do tend to get a lot of help especially when they have disasters.
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Again, why should this be the purview of the federal government? Would it not be better/more efficient/less political for the states to handle their own disaster funds? Disaster relief funds don't exactly come out of thin air (QE1 and QE2 notwithstanding...)--they come out of taxes paid by individuals and companies.
 
Mohonri said:
Why should the funding for these come from the federal level (after being pulled out of the states' citizens' pockets)?

Again, why should this be the purview of the federal government? Would it not be better/more efficient/less political for the states to handle their own disaster funds? Disaster relief funds don't exactly come out of thin air (QE1 and QE2 notwithstanding...)--they come out of taxes paid by individuals and companies.
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States don't have the resources to handle disasters like Cat 5 hurricanes. It makes FAR more sense to do this at the federal level than to have these types of things done state by state when they aren't usually need and can be moved from place to place as needed. A simple matter of economy of scale of not often used resources.
 
King of Heroes said:
This thread was coming along beautifully right up until people started flinging around 'liberal' and 'conservative' and pretending that there's an actual difference anymore. A huge reason why nothing will change is because the government and media together has done a truly AWESOME job of turning the middle class against itself. All the way to the point that people will deliberately vote against their own interests just so they can stick with their 'party' and/or spite the 'left' or the 'right'.
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HA I was just about to post this, you beat me too it. :) Gotta address a few things here...

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. People need to realize that the income tax is NOT a tax on wealth, it's a tax on wealth creation. If you have a million dollars in the bank, you don't pay income tax on the million dollars, just in the interest it earns (and not even that depending on how you invest your million dollars).
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The "rich" make much less of their money from income, so quoting their share of income alone is misleading. Let's look at total wealth, shall we?

People are saying that the rich aren't getting richer at the expense of the poor. That may be true in absolute terms, but in relative terms (which absolutely are important!) it's not the case. And I'm not even talking about "the poor," I'm talking about the bottom 80% of America.

In 1983, the bottom 80% of Americans owned 18.7% of the net worth of America. Still a pretty low number, right? By 2007, it was only 15%.

But still income is important; in 1982 the top 1% brought in 12.8% of income, the bottom 80% brought in 48.1%. By 2006 the top 1% brought in 21.3% and the bottom 80% brought in 38.6%. Nearly the entire relative loss of the bottom 80% accrued to the top 1% over this timeframe.

Take a look at this very illuminating graph of CEO pay, corporate profits and labors pay.

Figure_9.gif



Now I know that some of those stats are going to put people up in arms, and I want to say that I'm not suggesting all of this is a result of some nefarious plot. Much of this is due to globalization and automation, in which those who own the capital thus accrue the profits.

The question to ask ourselves is, what type of society do we want in the future? How do we engage all citizens productively? Just looking at history, vastly unequal societies with large numbers of unegaged citizens are unstable, and no matter if you're liberal, conservative or a lizard person, you should want this continue to continue to succeed into the future.
 
Also a quick note to those demonizing TARP - 47% of it was tax cuts. I thought those were always good, right?
 
I always learned that in our world (as in the global economy) money doesn't really come from thin air, even with money printing it is affected by interest rates and level of foreign investment. If we take money from one place it must come from somewhere else. So the wealthy getting super wealthy just means they either "earned" it or ripped off everyone else!
 
King of Heroes said:
This thread was coming along beautifully right up until people started flinging around 'liberal' and 'conservative' and pretending that there's an actual difference anymore. A huge reason why nothing will change is because the government and media together has done a truly AWESOME job of turning the middle class against itself. All the way to the point that people will deliberately vote against their own interests just so they can stick with their 'party' and/or spite the 'left' or the 'right'.
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It's getting to the point where Democrats and Republicans want their own country, Democratica and Republica. If people wanna stick to their party to the end, they're limiting Democracy. Bad enough as it is we're stuck between two choices.

The propaganda they spew out is enormous. The word liberal is especially annoying. Nobody knows what a liberal is, and nobody ever claims to be one. If you ever play World of Warcraft, you get to hear retarded politics, usually about liberals. I'm sure it has something to do with Fox 5, but I wouldn't know since I don't watch TV anymore.

Some reason, since Bush was elected president, we get messages brought to you by some candidate. Plus, even the news media can't cover news properly. It's either about some massive disaster that's covered 100% of the time for a week, or some celebrity that only trailer parks care about. I get more important news from HardOCP then I do from CNN or Fox 5, and this websites specializes in computer technology. I'd trust 4chan over CNN as far as news is concerned.

People need to realize that there's some really wealthy fat cats, which if they aren't smarter then you, can afford to pay for someone who is, and will do anything in their power to become even wealthier. They're doing it through corporations, through media, and through our government. With methods of influence, physiology, materialism, and your greed. They can and have made you literally believe that this is the best way to do things, no questions asked.

Did you really believe that we should have saved those banks and car companies? Failing is as important in our economy as succeeding. If we save them, then what's preventing them from screwing up again? They made you believe that giving them a huge amount of money would save America, and all they did was give themselves a bigger bonus. You just sat there not knowing wtf is going on. That's how good they're at manipulating you.
 
Ashbringer said:
Did you really believe that we should have saved those banks and car companies? Failing is as important in our economy as succeeding. If we save them, then what's preventing them from screwing up again? They made you believe that giving them a huge amount of money would save America, and all they did was give themselves a bigger bonus. You just sat there not knowing wtf is going on. That's how good they're at manipulating you.
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Manipulating us? We don't get a say about it until the next election. Then we, the people, have been putting our 2c in by first throwing out the Republican majority, and when that didn't help, throwing our the Democrat majority. We might as well be Russia and have only 1 real candidate, cause our only 2 real candidates aren't doing any better.
 
The biggest monster takedown i saw this year is Nintendo. theyr market share is decreasing at an incredible speed.
 
The propaganda they spew out is enormous. The word liberal is especially annoying. Nobody knows what a liberal is, and nobody ever claims to be one. If you ever play World of Warcraft, you get to hear retarded politics, usually about liberals. I'm sure it has something to do with Fox 5, but I wouldn't know since I don't watch TV anymore.
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Liberal is someone who wants change. Did you got to high school? Or are you still in it? For example Obama was a liberal. He wanted change in health care. He wanted a bigger government to help fix out problems. He got what he wanted - he is a liberal in the classic sense of the word.

The only thing I don't get about politics is all the people that voted for Obama griping about him now. He TOLD us what he wanted. He wanted a government that would try to 'fix' out problems. And he delivered..

Of course he forgot what even Ronald Reagan knew - the government sucks at fixing most problems and at best should just concentrate on doing things the private sector can't do very well.
 
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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heatlesssun said:
States don't have the resources to handle disasters like Cat 5 hurricanes. It makes FAR more sense to do this at the federal level than to have these types of things done state by state when they aren't usually need and can be moved from place to place as needed. A simple matter of economy of scale of not often used resources.
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"States don't have the resources" --Um, where do you think the money comes from in the first place? From residents of states. And they don't have to pay that cost every year, either--they can save up a Rainy Day fund for that kind of stuff, or *gasp* buy insurance. Sticking the federal government involved merely subjects disaster relief to greater political whims and inefficiencies.

TwistedAegis said:
The "rich" make much less of their money from income, so quoting their share of income alone is misleading. Let's look at total wealth, shall we?

...<stats>....

People are saying that the rich aren't getting richer at the expense of the poor. That may be true in absolute terms, but in relative terms (which absolutely are important!) it's not the case. And I'm not even talking about "the poor," I'm talking about the bottom 80% of America.
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You're making a very dangerously false assumption here--that the value of goods and services produced (and the number of dollars in circulation) is static. If in fact the value of goods and services produced stays the same, then you might be correct that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor. However, that basis is false. The price of goods and services (as compared to per capita GDP) has fallen drastically. Yes, the distribution of wealth appears to have shifted. But are the people at the bottom end of the distribution *worse off*? No.
The question to ask ourselves is, what type of society do we want in the future? How do we engage all citizens productively? Just looking at history, vastly unequal societies with large numbers of unegaged citizens are unstable, and no matter if you're liberal, conservative or a lizard person, you should want this continue to continue to succeed into the future.
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Unengaged citizens? Like the 47% who don't pay any income tax?

TwistedAegis said:
Also a quick note to those demonizing TARP - 47% of it was tax cuts. I thought those were always good, right?
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You're confusing TARP (the bank bailouts) with the ARRA (aka "Stimulus"). And while everyone enjoys paying less in taxes, such a change will only have a significant effect if it is *permanent*.

MrSneis said:
I always learned that in our world (as in the global economy) money doesn't really come from thin air, even with money printing it is affected by interest rates and level of foreign investment. If we take money from one place it must come from somewhere else. So the wealthy getting super wealthy just means they either "earned" it or ripped off everyone else!
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You're making the same mistake TwistedAegis is making--assuming that the real cost of goods and services never changes. How much of a person's income is spent on food today vs. 20 years ago? A lot less. Where do price drops like that come from? From companies and individuals investing the time, money, and effort to find ways of improving the yield of crops. And who do you think has the resources to engage in such R&D? That's right, the wealthy.

The second mistake you're making is that the market (or gov't, or some other entity) is "taking" money from somewhere and "putting" it somewhere else. You're ignoring the fact that by and large, it's a market transaction, which means it's voluntary and both parties are benefiting. The seller receives more in payment than he/she invested in production, and the buyer spends less than he/she would have had he/she done the production themselves.
 
Mohonri said:
"States don't have the resources" --Um, where do you think the money comes from in the first place? From residents of states. And they don't have to pay that cost every year, either--they can save up a Rainy Day fund for that kind of stuff, or *gasp* buy insurance. Sticking the federal government involved merely subjects disaster relief to greater political whims and inefficiencies.
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You're missing the point, ALL states can pool together at the Federal level can spread the risk and cost. It's just simple economy of scale that I'm talking about. I've never heard a state wanting to be solely responsible for its own disaster relief.
 
heatlesssun said:
You're missing the point, ALL states can pool together at the Federal level can spread the risk and cost. It's just simple economy of scale that I'm talking about. I've never heard a state wanting to be solely responsible for its own disaster relief.
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There's a key difference here, though--if states were left alone to handle their disaster-preparedness plans, they could opt in or out as they wish. With things set up on a federal level, individual states don't have that option to opt out. So states like, oh, let's choose Oregon, which doesn't get much in the way of natural disasters (at least in recent memory), end up subsidizing states like Texas and Florida which regularly get pounded by hurricanes.

Or, in other words, if it's so great, then why does the government have to force everyone to participate?
 
Mohonri said:
There's a key difference here, though--if states were left alone to handle their disaster-preparedness plans, they could opt in or out as they wish. With things set up on a federal level, individual states don't have that option to opt out. So states like, oh, let's choose Oregon, which doesn't get much in the way of natural disasters (at least in recent memory), end up subsidizing states like Texas and Florida which regularly get pounded by hurricanes.

Or, in other words, if it's so great, then why does the government have to force everyone to participate?
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But it's the UNITED STATES. We all are supposed to chip in when we fight a foreign war but we have the choice of opting out when an AMERICAN town gets wiped off of the map due to a tornado? There's something fundamentally wrong about that for a true nation.
 
Mohonri said:
There's a key difference here, though--if states were left alone to handle their disaster-preparedness plans, they could opt in or out as they wish. With things set up on a federal level, individual states don't have that option to opt out. So states like, oh, let's choose Oregon, which doesn't get much in the way of natural disasters (at least in recent memory), end up subsidizing states like Texas and Florida which regularly get pounded by hurricanes.

Or, in other words, if it's so great, then why does the government have to force everyone to participate?
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No, Oregon has plenty of natural disasters. The last few years they've been hit by severe forest fires due to...government cuts in the federal forest service! Their economy, infrastructure, and education system has been crumbling for the past decade. Oregon has active fault lines and volcanoes, too. The bulk of their economy relies on federal dollars. They would be the last state to opt out from federal assistance. You couldn't have picked a worse state to illustrate your example.

The rest of your posts, and I read the entire thread up to this point, are similarly filled with inaccuracies and nonsense.
 
heatlesssun said:
But it's the UNITED STATES. We all are supposed to chip in when we fight a foreign war but we have the choice of opting out when an AMERICAN town gets wiped off of the map due to a tornado? There's something fundamentally wrong about that for a true nation.
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Please define for me what you mean by "true nation." Is there any reason why a town and its residents couldn't take out insurance against natural disaster?
mope54 said:
No, Oregon has plenty of natural disasters. The last few years they've been hit by severe forest fires due to...government cuts in the federal forest service! Their economy, infrastructure, and education system has been crumbling for the past decade. Oregon has active fault lines and volcanoes, too. The bulk of their economy relies on federal dollars. They would be the last state to opt out from federal assistance. You couldn't have picked a worse state to illustrate your example.

The rest of your posts, and I read the entire thread up to this point, are similarly filled with inaccuracies and nonsense.
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Ok, so let's say Oregon has lots of natural disasters, and everyone knows about it. Then why shouldn't the state/county/city governments be prepared for those disasters?

As for inaccuracies and nonsense, please be specific as to which points are false and how, so I can respond properly.
 
GuyClinch said:
Liberal is someone who wants change. Did you got to high school? Or are you still in it? For example Obama was a liberal. He wanted change in health care. He wanted a bigger government to help fix out problems. He got what he wanted - he is a liberal in the classic sense of the word.

The only thing I don't get about politics is all the people that voted for Obama griping about him now. He TOLD us what he wanted. He wanted a government that would try to 'fix' out problems. And he delivered..

Of course he forgot what even Ronald Reagan knew - the government sucks at fixing most problems and at best should just concentrate on doing things the private sector can't do very well.
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Bump this post
 
Mohonri said:
Please define for me what you mean by "true nation." Is there any reason why a town and its residents couldn't take out insurance against natural disaster?
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In times of crisis it is the better part of human nature that people band together and help each other out and in part it is the very reason we have nation states, so that the whole becomes greater than its parts and helps to protect those is sever distress. When a an entire town is destroyed and its people are left without homes, schools, clean water I can think of no better purpose of government than to help people in that situation.

I simply can't any true nation's government can ignore a part of itself that's been devastated leaving people homeless and with basic necessities by the thousands.
 
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