US Politics Mega-thread - Page 950

On March 22 2014 06:20 WhiteDog wrote:

Wait my answer was off.

You can redistribute the income coming from capital, but about "distributing capital" in itself (we are talking about housing, means of production, patterns, etc.), then you are talking about communism or mixed form of capitalism. Capitalism is based on the idea of the private property, and if capital is giving a better income than work, then people who already have capital can accumulate it faster (since they have a higher income), so it does tend to concentrate itself in a few hands.

Now you can argue for a collectivisation of the means of production (like communist) and thus prevent the accumulation and concentration, but distributing it in itself aside from that seems complicated.

On March 22 2014 06:54 nunez wrote:

like johnny is doing in his robot utopia? ;>

On March 22 2014 07:05 IgnE wrote:
I think we are using accumulation to mean slightly different things. I mean accumulation in the sense that capital becomes stagnant and so accumulates, halting growth, drying up liquidity, and creating crisis. I think whitedog is using it in the sense of wealth condensation at the top or capital accumulation by the rich. The two are related but not the same. Corrext me if I'm wrong.

On March 22 2014 07:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

If I'm not mistaken Mr. Dog's accumulation is wealth growing relative to the the economy (capital as % of income grows).

I'm not sure what you mean by capital stagnating. Could you give an example?

On March 22 2014 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:


If I had to guess a good example is apple hiding hundred billion dollars of cash in a safe in San Marino instead of having it in the hands of costumers generating economic growth.

It's quite funny actually: Apple is sitting on 150 billion bucks in cash but borrows money, because if they'd get their cash reserves back in the US they'd have to pay taxes, and good god who's doing that nowadays anyway?

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/why-fabulously-wealthy-apple-is-borrowing-money/ (Related article from last year)

On March 22 2014 07:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Apple doesn't have money in a safe though... they have ~whatever billion in cash and marketable securities. So money available to be invested / borrowed.

It's not all in the US either. Apple is a "US" company but that doesn't mean that all it's assets are in the US or all it's income falls under US tax jurisdiction.

On March 22 2014 07:52 Nyxisto wrote:


They literally own about 150 billion bucks in cash. (http://bgr.com/2013/10/02/apple-cash-reserves-147-billion-dollars/) And most of it(~100 billion) sits around in tax heavens and actually does nothing. You can not seriously argue that a system that makes stuff like this possible puts its capital to the best use. If you'd pump that money into Greece right now you'd probably start the next industrial revolution over there.

On March 22 2014 08:03 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

They literally have about 150 billion in the financial system available to be borrowed / invested. They literally do not have 150 billion sitting in a scrooge mc duck vault.

A federal judge has struck down Michigan's ban on gay marriage, the latest in a series of decisions overturning similar laws across the U.S.

Judge Bernard Friedman ruled Friday after a trial that mostly focused on the impact of same-sex parenting on children. Two nurses who've been partners for eight years claimed the ban violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution.

It was not clear if gay marriages could begin immediately.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he was filing a request with a federal appeals court to suspend Friedman's decision and prevent same-sex couples from marrying.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia issue licenses for same-sex marriage. Since December, bans on gay marriage have been overturned in Texas, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia, but appeals have put those cases on hold.

Two nurses, Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer, want to get married, but the original purpose of their 2012 lawsuit was to overturn Michigan's ban on joint adoptions by same-sex couples.

“Our family is ecstatic. We have waited so long for the day when I could call Jayne my legal wife and when both of us could have peace of mind knowing our three children would finally have two legal parents. Knowing that day will soon be upon us means the world to us," DeBoer said.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Cleanup workers have contained about 34,000 gallons of crude that spewed from a broken oil pipeline in northwestern North Dakota, a state health official said Friday.

North Dakota Water Quality Director Dennis Fewless said the breach occurred Thursday morning on Hiland Crude LLC's pipeline about 6 miles northeast of Alexander. A gasket on the above-ground pipeline appears to have failed near a compressor station, spewing about 800 barrels of crude, Fewless said. A barrel holds 42 gallons.

Fewless said about half the oil migrated off the site but has been contained and no water sources are threatened. Hiland gave a lower estimate than state inspectors did for how much oil escaped the site, saying in a statement that "approximately 100 barrels of crude left the location, with an undetermined amount contained on location."

The Enid, Okla.-based company said the environmental impact "is limited to contaminated soil, which is being removed from the site."

Fewless said the cleanup likely will continue for a few days. The McKenzie County Sheriff's Department said a road to the spill site has been closed until the work is completed.

The spill occurred about 5 a.m. Thursday and Hiland notified North Dakota regulators about six hours later, Fewless said. State health inspectors have been on the scene since Thursday.

To be cost-effective, any source of power has to produce more energy than it consumes. Oil companies would hardly turn a profit, for example, if extracting a barrel of oil required the energy output of a second barrel of oil.

The same holds true of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Though renewable projects pay the lion's share of both their energetic and financial costs up front, they still have to recover those costs over a lifetime of service and continue to produce value if they are to yield a net-energy surplus.

Thanks to dramatic improvements in the manufacture of both wind and solar technologies, that appears to be more than possible. A new study published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science finds that wind and solar not only produce enough power to be energetically sustainable but could support grid-scale energy storage as well.

"What we're saying is that theoretically, it is now theoretically possible to have this perfect world that's just based on wind and solar," said Charles Barnhart, a postdoctoral scholar with the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University and a co-author of the study. Rather than using existing "stock" fuels like fossil fuels, he said, renewables put out enough excess energy to fuel their own expansion.

While the majority of deployed renewables yield surplus benefits, those benefits aren't necessarily equal, said Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University and co-author of the study, in a release from the institution.

"Within a few months, a wind turbine generates enough electricity to pay back all of the energy it took to build it," she said. "But some photovoltaics have an energy payback time of almost two years."

On March 22 2014 08:11 Sub40APM wrote:

in their last 10-k they say they have 14 billion in cash, and another 26 billion or so in short term securities.

On March 23 2014 02:36 itsjustatank wrote:


'cash' as in deposit accounts, which go on to make more money because of lending.

i would suggest anyone who wants to continue commenting on this issue while having zero knowledge about money supply read this first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States

On March 23 2014 03:16 GreenHorizons wrote:


So I've taken some econ classes and read the article and another on the money multiplier. Perhaps someone could help me understand how these ideas are not just globally approved Ponzi schemes (besides that schemers essentially promise to keep the lions share of the profits instead of baiting with unrealistic returns for the investor generated by loaning out the Ponzi money?)

I mean as a result of these schemes the vast majority of the worlds wealth actually only exists on paper or 1's and 0's, or in IOU's. One promise to pay paid for by another paid for by another promise, and another and so on...

I guess the only significant difference I'm picking up on right now is that when these Ponzi's run out of money they can just print more?