On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
Yeah, an absolute failure that we so far know about. The private equity also chased Solyndra because the DoE and the Obama administration telegraphed its commitment to green energy. What's a better bet than being on the better side of a government guarantee.
The entire solar generation industry is subsidy driven around the world. Given the current sovereign debt crisis around the world, solar and renewables are bad position to be investing. That doesn't matter though because politicians have to pay back their donors, and that applies to both sides of the aisle. Some Republicans have to keep those energy subsidies for coal and oil coming too.
solar energy is good idea, but in it's current forms pretty much based off what bell labs did years ago it's a dirty teach, it requires the use of hydrocarbons to create solar panels. Things like solar water heating would be better among other things but pretty much something has to change in how we make solar energy into electricity else it's not a very green, green energy.
One of my co-workers has a house with solar water heating. The man basically redesigned his house, has a huge stone heat capacitor for a foundation and snaked his hot water pipes through foundation. IMO, the design for the house was a piece of work. That and the labor put in was probably worth as much as the cost of materials, and the investment recovery date is for the cost of materials is about 10 years. That's pretty good for renewable energies.
The investment recovery horizon for PV is estimated to be about 77 years, and by then those solar panels would have to be replaced. So PV is still a loser.
BTW, price of PV started dropping fast mid-2009 before the Sept 2009 date that the loan was approved. That still didn't stop more investors from throwing more money at Solyndra in 2010. Chalk that one up to misleading accounting practices.
On September 20 2011 08:00 Dyme wrote: What I don't understand is how people who earn (or at least get) more than ~4000-5000€ per month (after tax) could even want any more money. I have a plus of about 150€ per month (after paying for appartment etc), and I don't feel poor.
I wouldn't even know what to do with my money if I had 3k left after paying for everything important. Buying a house and a car. And then? A Money Bin? If you make 5000€ per month, does 1000€ more really make you happier?
(I am aware that that obviously isn't super rich yet, but why would anyone need/want more money ever?)
So that you can invest the leftover money and grow more money? And become richer? Then use the money you earn for charity? Or set up a business and help create more jobs? Or spend on greater luxuries that you can't afford on your current paycheck? (you spend, you help the businesses you purchase goods/services from, hence you help the economy, in case you don't get my point)
Why do you not want to be rich? IMO there are a lot of pros to be a rich person. If I'm a millionaire, my total tax payment is gonna be larger than your pathetic contribution, despite having a lower tax percentage than you.
And one last thing to keep in mind: Earning money isn't a zero sum game. Just because I earn more than you doesn't mean that you will get less money.
Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion.
Hey, I'm curious about how you come to this conclusion. Look here, a guy who earned a billion will definitely have the sense and money (obviously) to hire good accountants and financial consultants.
They are not going to lose that 1 billion that easily. Period. Unless they have the "poor man's mindset".
On August 17 2011 06:41 Megatronn wrote: If he's so concerned why doesn't he just give his money away to some poor families? o.o
Oh my god. He's donating his money already. And he's donating 99% of his wealth when he dies. He's talking about what he thinks would benefit the US as a nation. Stop acting like he's some selfish man, cuz he's not.
According to his statements that the rich should pay more taxes to the government, the fact that he's donating 99% of his wealth to charity when he dies is hypocritical. By donating to charities that HE favors, he denies the government about 60% of his wealth that would have been paid in estate taxes had he not made that selfish decision himself and left it to the government's better judgment.
Lol...are you serious?
Like really?
I'm speechless.
What don't you understand ? He will pay $0 estate taxes (death taxes) when he dies because he is directing his estate to go to charities, which HE chooses. Instead of paying taxes to the government, as he suggests in his "article", he does exactly what the Republicans believe in, which is demonstrate the willingness to direct his own money how HE sees fit, not as the government would. He's talking like a Liberal, but ACTING like a Conservative. Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
Ok I'm not an American, but I feel the need to speak up here. But why is it bad if Buffet donates his wealth to charities of his choosing instead of the government? Bottomline is WB is doing a good thing, why debate Conservative/Liberal ideological differences? Seems mighty petty to me.
People should stop politicizing everything and start contributing IMO. I'll be proud to be a hypocrite who contributes billions to my society. What about you, Kaitlin?
It is not bad if Buffet donates his wealth to charities, whether while he is living or upon his death. I am all for that as are pretty much all Conservatives. That is a fundamental Conservative concept, that we know how to put our money to better use than the government does. My criticism is not of his willingness to donate. It is that wrote an article that we should pay more to the government instead of spending it as we see fit, in direct contrast to his actions.
Still think you are politicizing here XD. Anyway, can you point me to this article? I'd like to read it.
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
On September 21 2011 09:31 Kiarip wrote:
On September 21 2011 09:02 semantics wrote:
On September 21 2011 07:07 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:23 Bibdy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:16 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:12 kemoryan wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:01 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 05:57 Sweepstakes wrote: [quote]
I think the real question that needs to be asked is are we really better off today because of de-regulation?
One financial crisis and rampant unemployment later, I'd have to believe the answer is no.
So how do we fix unemployment and the deficit? Raise taxes and take more from those that create wealth? Maybe every dollar earned should just be direct deposited into the Government's private bank account and issue our citizens vouchers for necessities. We should encourage people to excel by rewarding them with mediocrity, right?
When wages have been stagnating for many years and people have become more and more indebted, it is logical that the economy will enter in a slump partly due to reduced consumption. Rich won't invest in a slumping economy precisely because people can't consume any more goods, even if they have all the money in the world. Raising taxes on the rich is a way to redistribute that money in benefit of a vast majority of people thus increasing their ability to spend hence stimulating the economy.
At what point do you stop taking from those that have to give to those who have not? Where does it end?
At what point do you stop taking from those that have nothing to give, to those that do? Where does it end?
Slippery slope arguments go nowhere. Stick to the proposal put before you by Obama, not to some far flung distant future.
The proposal is, that people that are getting away with taxation-murder, are going to have to start paying their fair share. What's wrong with that?
^In response to Obama's proposal.
It can't be the video is dated march 31st it has nothing to do with obama's current proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/jobsact which is dated sept 8th
1.6 trillion dollars is this years budget short fall you make that up you start to reduce the defect, that video tries to take all that from the 3.8 trillion dollar expenditure for the year, ie it's playing you. It ignored what is already established revenue for the federal government which in large part is income tax and social insurance payments which in large part is payed by both the rich and the not so rich already. It also uses the word profits from previous years which likely wouldn't include what was already taxed away(profits is a broad term).
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
The spending is preserving jobs that aren't pulling their own weight, and it also makes the economy worse and worse.
Spending needs to be cut, and labor laws need to be removed for the most part so that the cost of labor can decline to a point where there's enough demand for it to give people jobs. It won't happen immediately, but continuously spending money on stimuli that don't create anything but simply allow people to preserve jobs that are not creating any wealth, and are not worth the pay that they receive is a much worse decision.
I don't want jobs and a growing econ. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a growing econ right now without the recession, and a contraction. at this point I JUST want them to cut debt, because that IS possible... for now, while the interest on our debt is still only 10% of our income.
And what happens when you cut out the 1.6 let's make it 2 trillion of the budget so we have a budget surplus and maybe could start paying off debt how many goverment jobs have just been lost? how many programs for the poor and elderly have you cut causing more job losses. Sense the bottom half of the american population spends shit ton more then they save it means they drive the consumer economy hurting them means stores cannot move products so they have to cut back, cut backs means ppl are less willing to invest as it's a shaky market, hell banks barely loan out as it is. long term it sets the economy to shrink not grow. Short term maybe small growth or just a flat no growth
Of course... because that's how real economy works... the economy NEEDS to shrink, because a lot of the jobs are unsustainable.
First of all government jobs don't create anything they're part of the bureaucracy. So when you cut them (of course in places where the budget needs to get cut anyways like regulation,) you basically just stop giving people a government hand-out of a considerable amount of cash (when compared to a welfare hand-out at least.) for doing work that does nothing positive in the country...
all those government jobs that oversee policies that are responsible for our struggling economy are triple-dipping on the economy hurt... 1) you're paying people money when we're in deficit 2) the people aren't creating anything or providing a service that anyone would actually be willing to pay that amount for, 3) the job is part of government program which hurts the economy... other government jobs that aren't as bad double dip, and some that are somewhat necessarily like police, and etc. only hurts us once (but police is state funded anyways.)
as for people that are gonna come off welfare... well they'll have a better shot at finding jobs once regulations are repealed. are some people going to be working for extremely low wages for a bit just to sustain themselves? probably... But as of right now they're funded by the government with money that's being printed, and is stealing purchasing power from the rest of the people (and it hurts the lower class that has jobs the most) so eventually the whole "living for extremely low wages just to sustain yourself" thing will happen anyways, just to way more people, while there are still some on government welfare.
and as for the consumer... that's the whole problem. We're spending more than we're producing. a lot of people that have jobs now that are protected by the government spending are jobs the services of which people shouldn't be able to afford in the first place, and it only sends either the people or the government into more debt, which of course will either lead to the eventual default and currency reconstruction (which will be pre-phased with hyperinflation) or it will make the recession/contraction a lot worse.
edit:
and the last part.. as for the banks... banks shouldn't be lending. why do you think interest rates are so low? they're to encourage banks to lend. They're artificial rates. all the banks which proceed to lend at these rates will default when the rates go up (and the rates MUST go up in order for savings to ever occur.)
Why do interest rates exist in the first place? They first of all hedge the risk of default by the loaner for the bank, they also reflect the supply - demand interaction for money. Right now rates should go up, once they go up banks will be more willing to loan, but less people will be willing to lend. Instead people will start to try to repay their debt, and then possibly save. Once a lot of people are saving the rates will be able to go back down again, because obviously if no one is lending, and everyone is loaning money to the bank, they're gonna want to lower the rates to pay less interest.
Of course... higher rates will lead to less people wanting to borrow to invest, but that's a good thing, because there's not that many people actually willing to lend in the first place, so every time a bank gives out a loan, most of it comes from the money they get from the FED, which of course has a chance of being no longer guaranteed because a lot of people want to shut it down, so that's why banks are cautious about lending now, even with these low rates.
Let me put this logic in perspective for you. Imagine this scenario:
There's overpopulation and famine creating a food shortage. People are trying their best to spread the food around and make sure nobody dies of starvation. They even discuss longterm plans to correct the food shortage in the long run, but ask for farmers to take a loss in profit and bare some hunger until this passes. You're the guy that busts into a meeting spouting nonsense of "just let some people die, then there'll be more than enough for everybody! We're just overpopulated and letting people die is nature's solution!"
You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be easily avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
On September 21 2011 17:08 aksfjh wrote: You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
If that's how you want to play it, then you are the guys who are like 7-year olds in a huge laboratory with a million chemical substances to use/combine without much idea of what will be the outcome.
You go for combinations of those substances that make many awsome looking bubbles (see what I did there?) and only realize your mistake with a big kaboooom. You are scared and frightened for a while, but will sneak back in to try something else little time later.
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
On September 21 2011 09:31 Kiarip wrote:
On September 21 2011 09:02 semantics wrote:
On September 21 2011 07:07 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:23 Bibdy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:16 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:12 kemoryan wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:01 Joedaddy wrote: [quote]
So how do we fix unemployment and the deficit? Raise taxes and take more from those that create wealth? Maybe every dollar earned should just be direct deposited into the Government's private bank account and issue our citizens vouchers for necessities. We should encourage people to excel by rewarding them with mediocrity, right?
When wages have been stagnating for many years and people have become more and more indebted, it is logical that the economy will enter in a slump partly due to reduced consumption. Rich won't invest in a slumping economy precisely because people can't consume any more goods, even if they have all the money in the world. Raising taxes on the rich is a way to redistribute that money in benefit of a vast majority of people thus increasing their ability to spend hence stimulating the economy.
At what point do you stop taking from those that have to give to those who have not? Where does it end?
At what point do you stop taking from those that have nothing to give, to those that do? Where does it end?
Slippery slope arguments go nowhere. Stick to the proposal put before you by Obama, not to some far flung distant future.
The proposal is, that people that are getting away with taxation-murder, are going to have to start paying their fair share. What's wrong with that?
It can't be the video is dated march 31st it has nothing to do with obama's current proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/jobsact which is dated sept 8th
1.6 trillion dollars is this years budget short fall you make that up you start to reduce the defect, that video tries to take all that from the 3.8 trillion dollar expenditure for the year, ie it's playing you. It ignored what is already established revenue for the federal government which in large part is income tax and social insurance payments which in large part is payed by both the rich and the not so rich already. It also uses the word profits from previous years which likely wouldn't include what was already taxed away(profits is a broad term).
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
The spending is preserving jobs that aren't pulling their own weight, and it also makes the economy worse and worse.
Spending needs to be cut, and labor laws need to be removed for the most part so that the cost of labor can decline to a point where there's enough demand for it to give people jobs. It won't happen immediately, but continuously spending money on stimuli that don't create anything but simply allow people to preserve jobs that are not creating any wealth, and are not worth the pay that they receive is a much worse decision.
I don't want jobs and a growing econ. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a growing econ right now without the recession, and a contraction. at this point I JUST want them to cut debt, because that IS possible... for now, while the interest on our debt is still only 10% of our income.
And what happens when you cut out the 1.6 let's make it 2 trillion of the budget so we have a budget surplus and maybe could start paying off debt how many goverment jobs have just been lost? how many programs for the poor and elderly have you cut causing more job losses. Sense the bottom half of the american population spends shit ton more then they save it means they drive the consumer economy hurting them means stores cannot move products so they have to cut back, cut backs means ppl are less willing to invest as it's a shaky market, hell banks barely loan out as it is. long term it sets the economy to shrink not grow. Short term maybe small growth or just a flat no growth
Of course... because that's how real economy works... the economy NEEDS to shrink, because a lot of the jobs are unsustainable.
First of all government jobs don't create anything they're part of the bureaucracy. So when you cut them (of course in places where the budget needs to get cut anyways like regulation,) you basically just stop giving people a government hand-out of a considerable amount of cash (when compared to a welfare hand-out at least.) for doing work that does nothing positive in the country...
all those government jobs that oversee policies that are responsible for our struggling economy are triple-dipping on the economy hurt... 1) you're paying people money when we're in deficit 2) the people aren't creating anything or providing a service that anyone would actually be willing to pay that amount for, 3) the job is part of government program which hurts the economy... other government jobs that aren't as bad double dip, and some that are somewhat necessarily like police, and etc. only hurts us once (but police is state funded anyways.)
as for people that are gonna come off welfare... well they'll have a better shot at finding jobs once regulations are repealed. are some people going to be working for extremely low wages for a bit just to sustain themselves? probably... But as of right now they're funded by the government with money that's being printed, and is stealing purchasing power from the rest of the people (and it hurts the lower class that has jobs the most) so eventually the whole "living for extremely low wages just to sustain yourself" thing will happen anyways, just to way more people, while there are still some on government welfare.
and as for the consumer... that's the whole problem. We're spending more than we're producing. a lot of people that have jobs now that are protected by the government spending are jobs the services of which people shouldn't be able to afford in the first place, and it only sends either the people or the government into more debt, which of course will either lead to the eventual default and currency reconstruction (which will be pre-phased with hyperinflation) or it will make the recession/contraction a lot worse.
edit:
and the last part.. as for the banks... banks shouldn't be lending. why do you think interest rates are so low? they're to encourage banks to lend. They're artificial rates. all the banks which proceed to lend at these rates will default when the rates go up (and the rates MUST go up in order for savings to ever occur.)
Why do interest rates exist in the first place? They first of all hedge the risk of default by the loaner for the bank, they also reflect the supply - demand interaction for money. Right now rates should go up, once they go up banks will be more willing to loan, but less people will be willing to lend. Instead people will start to try to repay their debt, and then possibly save. Once a lot of people are saving the rates will be able to go back down again, because obviously if no one is lending, and everyone is loaning money to the bank, they're gonna want to lower the rates to pay less interest.
Of course... higher rates will lead to less people wanting to borrow to invest, but that's a good thing, because there's not that many people actually willing to lend in the first place, so every time a bank gives out a loan, most of it comes from the money they get from the FED, which of course has a chance of being no longer guaranteed because a lot of people want to shut it down, so that's why banks are cautious about lending now, even with these low rates.
Let me put this logic in perspective for you. Imagine this scenario:
There's overpopulation and famine creating a food shortage. People are trying their best to spread the food around and make sure nobody dies of starvation. They even discuss longterm plans to correct the food shortage in the long run, but ask for farmers to take a loss in profit and bare some hunger until this passes. You're the guy that busts into a meeting spouting nonsense of "just let some people die, then there'll be more than enough for everybody! We're just overpopulated and letting people die is nature's solution!"
You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be easily avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
Not the best analogy. If there is enough food for 900 people to survive until the next harvest, but there are 1000 people in the community, then trying to keep everyone alive will ensure that everyone will receive 9/10ths of the food they need to survive. Hence, everyone dies.
That guy would actually be correct and it is the primary reason why during periods of deprivation, arctic tribes would leave their elderly, wounded and infants to die.
As for the actual topic:
could someone explain to me why you support lower tax rates for higher income earners? Why not just abolish taxes for the rich altogether? Then they would be able to make more jobs.
On August 17 2011 06:41 Megatronn wrote: If he's so concerned why doesn't he just give his money away to some poor families? o.o
Oh my god. He's donating his money already. And he's donating 99% of his wealth when he dies. He's talking about what he thinks would benefit the US as a nation. Stop acting like he's some selfish man, cuz he's not.
According to his statements that the rich should pay more taxes to the government, the fact that he's donating 99% of his wealth to charity when he dies is hypocritical. By donating to charities that HE favors, he denies the government about 60% of his wealth that would have been paid in estate taxes had he not made that selfish decision himself and left it to the government's better judgment.
Lol...are you serious?
Like really?
I'm speechless.
What don't you understand ? He will pay $0 estate taxes (death taxes) when he dies because he is directing his estate to go to charities, which HE chooses. Instead of paying taxes to the government, as he suggests in his "article", he does exactly what the Republicans believe in, which is demonstrate the willingness to direct his own money how HE sees fit, not as the government would. He's talking like a Liberal, but ACTING like a Conservative. Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
Ok I'm not an American, but I feel the need to speak up here. But why is it bad if Buffet donates his wealth to charities of his choosing instead of the government? Bottomline is WB is doing a good thing, why debate Conservative/Liberal ideological differences? Seems mighty petty to me.
People should stop politicizing everything and start contributing IMO. I'll be proud to be a hypocrite who contributes billions to my society. What about you, Kaitlin?
It is not bad if Buffet donates his wealth to charities, whether while he is living or upon his death. I am all for that as are pretty much all Conservatives. That is a fundamental Conservative concept, that we know how to put our money to better use than the government does. My criticism is not of his willingness to donate. It is that wrote an article that we should pay more to the government instead of spending it as we see fit, in direct contrast to his actions.
Still think you are politicizing here XD. Anyway, can you point me to this article? I'd like to read it.
This is more responding to Kaitlin. Donating your money to the poor is not a conservative thing to do. The people that donate the most to nonprofit organizations are rich democrats (republicans tend to donate to their churches more, <- obviously a generalization). Being a Liberal does not necessarily mean you think the government is the most efficient way to spend your money (in fact nobody thinks that). Warren Buffett isn't conservative. He's just rich.
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
On September 21 2011 09:31 Kiarip wrote:
On September 21 2011 09:02 semantics wrote:
On September 21 2011 07:07 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:23 Bibdy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:16 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:12 kemoryan wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:01 Joedaddy wrote: [quote]
So how do we fix unemployment and the deficit? Raise taxes and take more from those that create wealth? Maybe every dollar earned should just be direct deposited into the Government's private bank account and issue our citizens vouchers for necessities. We should encourage people to excel by rewarding them with mediocrity, right?
When wages have been stagnating for many years and people have become more and more indebted, it is logical that the economy will enter in a slump partly due to reduced consumption. Rich won't invest in a slumping economy precisely because people can't consume any more goods, even if they have all the money in the world. Raising taxes on the rich is a way to redistribute that money in benefit of a vast majority of people thus increasing their ability to spend hence stimulating the economy.
At what point do you stop taking from those that have to give to those who have not? Where does it end?
At what point do you stop taking from those that have nothing to give, to those that do? Where does it end?
Slippery slope arguments go nowhere. Stick to the proposal put before you by Obama, not to some far flung distant future.
The proposal is, that people that are getting away with taxation-murder, are going to have to start paying their fair share. What's wrong with that?
It can't be the video is dated march 31st it has nothing to do with obama's current proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/jobsact which is dated sept 8th
1.6 trillion dollars is this years budget short fall you make that up you start to reduce the defect, that video tries to take all that from the 3.8 trillion dollar expenditure for the year, ie it's playing you. It ignored what is already established revenue for the federal government which in large part is income tax and social insurance payments which in large part is payed by both the rich and the not so rich already. It also uses the word profits from previous years which likely wouldn't include what was already taxed away(profits is a broad term).
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
The spending is preserving jobs that aren't pulling their own weight, and it also makes the economy worse and worse.
Spending needs to be cut, and labor laws need to be removed for the most part so that the cost of labor can decline to a point where there's enough demand for it to give people jobs. It won't happen immediately, but continuously spending money on stimuli that don't create anything but simply allow people to preserve jobs that are not creating any wealth, and are not worth the pay that they receive is a much worse decision.
I don't want jobs and a growing econ. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a growing econ right now without the recession, and a contraction. at this point I JUST want them to cut debt, because that IS possible... for now, while the interest on our debt is still only 10% of our income.
And what happens when you cut out the 1.6 let's make it 2 trillion of the budget so we have a budget surplus and maybe could start paying off debt how many goverment jobs have just been lost? how many programs for the poor and elderly have you cut causing more job losses. Sense the bottom half of the american population spends shit ton more then they save it means they drive the consumer economy hurting them means stores cannot move products so they have to cut back, cut backs means ppl are less willing to invest as it's a shaky market, hell banks barely loan out as it is. long term it sets the economy to shrink not grow. Short term maybe small growth or just a flat no growth
Of course... because that's how real economy works... the economy NEEDS to shrink, because a lot of the jobs are unsustainable.
First of all government jobs don't create anything they're part of the bureaucracy. So when you cut them (of course in places where the budget needs to get cut anyways like regulation,) you basically just stop giving people a government hand-out of a considerable amount of cash (when compared to a welfare hand-out at least.) for doing work that does nothing positive in the country...
all those government jobs that oversee policies that are responsible for our struggling economy are triple-dipping on the economy hurt... 1) you're paying people money when we're in deficit 2) the people aren't creating anything or providing a service that anyone would actually be willing to pay that amount for, 3) the job is part of government program which hurts the economy... other government jobs that aren't as bad double dip, and some that are somewhat necessarily like police, and etc. only hurts us once (but police is state funded anyways.)
as for people that are gonna come off welfare... well they'll have a better shot at finding jobs once regulations are repealed. are some people going to be working for extremely low wages for a bit just to sustain themselves? probably... But as of right now they're funded by the government with money that's being printed, and is stealing purchasing power from the rest of the people (and it hurts the lower class that has jobs the most) so eventually the whole "living for extremely low wages just to sustain yourself" thing will happen anyways, just to way more people, while there are still some on government welfare.
and as for the consumer... that's the whole problem. We're spending more than we're producing. a lot of people that have jobs now that are protected by the government spending are jobs the services of which people shouldn't be able to afford in the first place, and it only sends either the people or the government into more debt, which of course will either lead to the eventual default and currency reconstruction (which will be pre-phased with hyperinflation) or it will make the recession/contraction a lot worse.
edit:
and the last part.. as for the banks... banks shouldn't be lending. why do you think interest rates are so low? they're to encourage banks to lend. They're artificial rates. all the banks which proceed to lend at these rates will default when the rates go up (and the rates MUST go up in order for savings to ever occur.)
Why do interest rates exist in the first place? They first of all hedge the risk of default by the loaner for the bank, they also reflect the supply - demand interaction for money. Right now rates should go up, once they go up banks will be more willing to loan, but less people will be willing to lend. Instead people will start to try to repay their debt, and then possibly save. Once a lot of people are saving the rates will be able to go back down again, because obviously if no one is lending, and everyone is loaning money to the bank, they're gonna want to lower the rates to pay less interest.
Of course... higher rates will lead to less people wanting to borrow to invest, but that's a good thing, because there's not that many people actually willing to lend in the first place, so every time a bank gives out a loan, most of it comes from the money they get from the FED, which of course has a chance of being no longer guaranteed because a lot of people want to shut it down, so that's why banks are cautious about lending now, even with these low rates.
Let me put this logic in perspective for you. Imagine this scenario:
There's overpopulation and famine creating a food shortage. People are trying their best to spread the food around and make sure nobody dies of starvation. They even discuss longterm plans to correct the food shortage in the long run, but ask for farmers to take a loss in profit and bare some hunger until this passes. You're the guy that busts into a meeting spouting nonsense of "just let some people die, then there'll be more than enough for everybody! We're just overpopulated and letting people die is nature's solution!"
This is retarded.
If there's not enough food to feed all the people than someone WILL die.
See here's the problem with your logic... you think redistributing stuff there's not enough can make up for the shortage... It can't. It's not mathematically possible do you realize that? The sad thing is that in your scenario the liberal economist would probably have the farmers starve, and then they'd die, and when there's no more farmers there's no more food, and then everyone else would die.
You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be easily avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
WTF? what toolbox? You're just in denial. There's no fix for the economy. There's no decision that will directly lead to prosperity in the short run at all. There's 2 options... continue shuffling the constantly decreasing amount of limited resources while continuing to struggle the economy until the point when the government will just shrug its shoulders and say... "I'm sorry you guys are just not producing enough, there's nothing we can do to save you." which will inevitably happen... Or STOP inflating our currency, start repaying our debts at the cost of accepting a lower standard of living... start saving and rebuilt our economy for real... So there's no good answer to the problem... but there's a RIGHT answer.
If you really believe that we can fix this with one of our "21st century solutions" naively optimistic...
The US Federal debt right now is around 14 trillion... do you know what else is around 14 trillion?
Our GDP... that's right our GDP, the majority of which is consumption in the first place is 14 trillion dollars, pretty much as big as our debt. This means that if the government confiscated EVERYTHING that americans produce for an entire year, sold it to non-americans, cut all government spending only then would we be able to pay off our national debt. and that's actually not even true, because like I said a huge portion of our GDP are services which don't create any wealth in the first place.
But yeah... I'm sure your 21st century solutions have the wonderful power of ignoring mathematics.
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
On September 21 2011 09:31 Kiarip wrote:
On September 21 2011 09:02 semantics wrote:
On September 21 2011 07:07 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:23 Bibdy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:16 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:12 kemoryan wrote: [quote]
When wages have been stagnating for many years and people have become more and more indebted, it is logical that the economy will enter in a slump partly due to reduced consumption. Rich won't invest in a slumping economy precisely because people can't consume any more goods, even if they have all the money in the world. Raising taxes on the rich is a way to redistribute that money in benefit of a vast majority of people thus increasing their ability to spend hence stimulating the economy.
At what point do you stop taking from those that have to give to those who have not? Where does it end?
At what point do you stop taking from those that have nothing to give, to those that do? Where does it end?
Slippery slope arguments go nowhere. Stick to the proposal put before you by Obama, not to some far flung distant future.
The proposal is, that people that are getting away with taxation-murder, are going to have to start paying their fair share. What's wrong with that?
It can't be the video is dated march 31st it has nothing to do with obama's current proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/jobsact which is dated sept 8th
1.6 trillion dollars is this years budget short fall you make that up you start to reduce the defect, that video tries to take all that from the 3.8 trillion dollar expenditure for the year, ie it's playing you. It ignored what is already established revenue for the federal government which in large part is income tax and social insurance payments which in large part is payed by both the rich and the not so rich already. It also uses the word profits from previous years which likely wouldn't include what was already taxed away(profits is a broad term).
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
The spending is preserving jobs that aren't pulling their own weight, and it also makes the economy worse and worse.
Spending needs to be cut, and labor laws need to be removed for the most part so that the cost of labor can decline to a point where there's enough demand for it to give people jobs. It won't happen immediately, but continuously spending money on stimuli that don't create anything but simply allow people to preserve jobs that are not creating any wealth, and are not worth the pay that they receive is a much worse decision.
I don't want jobs and a growing econ. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a growing econ right now without the recession, and a contraction. at this point I JUST want them to cut debt, because that IS possible... for now, while the interest on our debt is still only 10% of our income.
And what happens when you cut out the 1.6 let's make it 2 trillion of the budget so we have a budget surplus and maybe could start paying off debt how many goverment jobs have just been lost? how many programs for the poor and elderly have you cut causing more job losses. Sense the bottom half of the american population spends shit ton more then they save it means they drive the consumer economy hurting them means stores cannot move products so they have to cut back, cut backs means ppl are less willing to invest as it's a shaky market, hell banks barely loan out as it is. long term it sets the economy to shrink not grow. Short term maybe small growth or just a flat no growth
Of course... because that's how real economy works... the economy NEEDS to shrink, because a lot of the jobs are unsustainable.
First of all government jobs don't create anything they're part of the bureaucracy. So when you cut them (of course in places where the budget needs to get cut anyways like regulation,) you basically just stop giving people a government hand-out of a considerable amount of cash (when compared to a welfare hand-out at least.) for doing work that does nothing positive in the country...
all those government jobs that oversee policies that are responsible for our struggling economy are triple-dipping on the economy hurt... 1) you're paying people money when we're in deficit 2) the people aren't creating anything or providing a service that anyone would actually be willing to pay that amount for, 3) the job is part of government program which hurts the economy... other government jobs that aren't as bad double dip, and some that are somewhat necessarily like police, and etc. only hurts us once (but police is state funded anyways.)
as for people that are gonna come off welfare... well they'll have a better shot at finding jobs once regulations are repealed. are some people going to be working for extremely low wages for a bit just to sustain themselves? probably... But as of right now they're funded by the government with money that's being printed, and is stealing purchasing power from the rest of the people (and it hurts the lower class that has jobs the most) so eventually the whole "living for extremely low wages just to sustain yourself" thing will happen anyways, just to way more people, while there are still some on government welfare.
and as for the consumer... that's the whole problem. We're spending more than we're producing. a lot of people that have jobs now that are protected by the government spending are jobs the services of which people shouldn't be able to afford in the first place, and it only sends either the people or the government into more debt, which of course will either lead to the eventual default and currency reconstruction (which will be pre-phased with hyperinflation) or it will make the recession/contraction a lot worse.
edit:
and the last part.. as for the banks... banks shouldn't be lending. why do you think interest rates are so low? they're to encourage banks to lend. They're artificial rates. all the banks which proceed to lend at these rates will default when the rates go up (and the rates MUST go up in order for savings to ever occur.)
Why do interest rates exist in the first place? They first of all hedge the risk of default by the loaner for the bank, they also reflect the supply - demand interaction for money. Right now rates should go up, once they go up banks will be more willing to loan, but less people will be willing to lend. Instead people will start to try to repay their debt, and then possibly save. Once a lot of people are saving the rates will be able to go back down again, because obviously if no one is lending, and everyone is loaning money to the bank, they're gonna want to lower the rates to pay less interest.
Of course... higher rates will lead to less people wanting to borrow to invest, but that's a good thing, because there's not that many people actually willing to lend in the first place, so every time a bank gives out a loan, most of it comes from the money they get from the FED, which of course has a chance of being no longer guaranteed because a lot of people want to shut it down, so that's why banks are cautious about lending now, even with these low rates.
Let me put this logic in perspective for you. Imagine this scenario:
There's overpopulation and famine creating a food shortage. People are trying their best to spread the food around and make sure nobody dies of starvation. They even discuss longterm plans to correct the food shortage in the long run, but ask for farmers to take a loss in profit and bare some hunger until this passes. You're the guy that busts into a meeting spouting nonsense of "just let some people die, then there'll be more than enough for everybody! We're just overpopulated and letting people die is nature's solution!"
This is retarded.
If there's not enough food to feed all the people than someone WILL die.
See here's the problem with your logic... you think redistributing stuff there's not enough can make up for the shortage... It can't. It's not mathematically possible do you realize that? The sad thing is that in your scenario the liberal economist would probably have the farmers starve, and then they'd die, and when there's no more farmers there's no more food, and then everyone else would die.
You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be easily avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
WTF? what toolbox? You're just in denial. There's no fix for the economy. There's no decision that will directly lead to prosperity in the short run at all. There's 2 options... continue shuffling the constantly decreasing amount of limited resources while continuing to struggle the economy until the point when the government will just shrug its shoulders and say... "I'm sorry you guys are just not producing enough, there's nothing we can do to save you." which will inevitably happen... Or STOP inflating our currency, start repaying our debts at the cost of accepting a lower standard of living... start saving and rebuilt our economy for real... So there's no good answer to the problem... but there's a RIGHT answer.
If you really believe that we can fix this with one of our "21st century solutions" naively optimistic...
The US Federal debt right now is around 14 trillion... do you know what else is around 14 trillion?
Our GDP... that's right our GDP, the majority of which is consumption in the first place is 14 trillion dollars, pretty much as big as our debt. This means that if the government confiscated EVERYTHING that americans produce for an entire year, sold it to non-americans, cut all government spending only then would we be able to pay off our national debt. and that's actually not even true, because like I said a huge portion of our GDP are services which don't create any wealth in the first place.
But yeah... I'm sure your 21st century solutions have the wonderful power of ignoring mathematics.
Did you just say that government jobs don't create anything but a bureaucracy? You're so willing to espouse an anti-government stance at any price, even at the price of civilization? Are you sure that there are no worthy public works projects, or infrastructure projects or public education projects that create long term value that you can fund now?
How much civilization are you prepared to rollback? How many regulations do you want to strike down till you're at the labour and product standards of China? In reply to a thread in which Warren Buffett says he and those of his class have thrived disproportionately, you advocate tilting the balance even further by cutting the very services that the poor use to stay afloat.
Obama just started pushing tax increases on the wealthy. There's one of your tools that you've been neglecting. It's not even especially new, progressive taxation has been around for a bit, in case you hadn't noticed.
See here's the problem with your logic... you think redistributing stuff there's not enough can make up for the shortage... It can't. It's not mathematically possible do you realize that? The sad thing is that in your scenario the liberal economist would probably have the farmers starve, and then they'd die, and when there's no more farmers there's no more food, and then everyone else would die.
To take up your example: 1000 People need Food. 900 People have food. 100 "have to die". Unfortunate but understandable.
BUT atm were at this point (just to take your example): 1000 People need Food. 100 People feed Kaviar to their Cats and mix Gold in their Drinks. 200 People eat very good. 200 People "eat ok/balanced". 200 People "eat trash/crap" 300 People would starve because 100 people are decadent assholes.
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
I have no confidence in the federal government's execution on creating jobs. Look at Solyndra. That's a total loss of more than half a billion dollars in loans on 1000 jobs that lasted less than 2 years and Solyndra only lasted that long because it had other investors that got wiped out, too. Growth rates of 0% is better than creating jobs that require a million dollars of new money to sustain.
OTOH, the Republicans aren't going to get us out of debt either. It's pretty hopeless.
Solyndra was 1 company, also privite venture invested double to what the government did =p so what does that say about private venture?
$38.6 billion loan guarantee program 535? million to Solyndra which didn't work out, 1.3% of that loan guarantee program The expected failure rate was like 5% to 10% of the loans if you're just counting what has been loaned out already thats put it around 3% for the failure of solyndra Tax payer losses i've seen numbers around 525 million clearly a big loss on that investment If the program kept/ gained 65k jobs is hard to say after all it's all speculation to if a job would have been lost if not for the influx of cash etc.
On September 21 2011 09:31 Kiarip wrote:
On September 21 2011 09:02 semantics wrote:
On September 21 2011 07:07 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:23 Bibdy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:16 Joedaddy wrote:
On September 21 2011 06:12 kemoryan wrote: [quote]
When wages have been stagnating for many years and people have become more and more indebted, it is logical that the economy will enter in a slump partly due to reduced consumption. Rich won't invest in a slumping economy precisely because people can't consume any more goods, even if they have all the money in the world. Raising taxes on the rich is a way to redistribute that money in benefit of a vast majority of people thus increasing their ability to spend hence stimulating the economy.
At what point do you stop taking from those that have to give to those who have not? Where does it end?
At what point do you stop taking from those that have nothing to give, to those that do? Where does it end?
Slippery slope arguments go nowhere. Stick to the proposal put before you by Obama, not to some far flung distant future.
The proposal is, that people that are getting away with taxation-murder, are going to have to start paying their fair share. What's wrong with that?
It can't be the video is dated march 31st it has nothing to do with obama's current proposal http://www.whitehouse.gov/jobsact which is dated sept 8th
1.6 trillion dollars is this years budget short fall you make that up you start to reduce the defect, that video tries to take all that from the 3.8 trillion dollar expenditure for the year, ie it's playing you. It ignored what is already established revenue for the federal government which in large part is income tax and social insurance payments which in large part is payed by both the rich and the not so rich already. It also uses the word profits from previous years which likely wouldn't include what was already taxed away(profits is a broad term).
On September 21 2011 08:06 Kiarip wrote: The defense spendings are huge, but the spendings on the actual military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq don't compare at all in costs to the defense spendings or the social security or medicaid. Kinda makes you wonder how many operations the government may be running without the people knowing about it.
anyways... Ron Paul for example said he would literally immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq... but that won't be enough to cut the deficit. Not even close. Still he would rather cut spending than raise taxes, and that's a good thing imo. The problem with all the taxing that the Left wants to do is that they try to use the money they save on the tax-cuts immediately on their garbage programs. I think it's pretty obvious that the Democrats won't get us out of Debt. That's why they propose these plans to cut "a trillion over 10 years," because then they can spend a whole lot now, while saying that most of the cuts should come later, but the government will not be mandated to make those cuts once they get there, not to mention the fact that a trillion in 10 years is nowhere near enough.
You do know cuts to programs show a direct link to increase in unemployment and slows the econ, take at look at any of the EU nations under heavy austerity measures their growth is often 0%. You want to cut debt but you want jobs and a growing econ? That's apples and oranges.
The spending is preserving jobs that aren't pulling their own weight, and it also makes the economy worse and worse.
Spending needs to be cut, and labor laws need to be removed for the most part so that the cost of labor can decline to a point where there's enough demand for it to give people jobs. It won't happen immediately, but continuously spending money on stimuli that don't create anything but simply allow people to preserve jobs that are not creating any wealth, and are not worth the pay that they receive is a much worse decision.
I don't want jobs and a growing econ. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a growing econ right now without the recession, and a contraction. at this point I JUST want them to cut debt, because that IS possible... for now, while the interest on our debt is still only 10% of our income.
And what happens when you cut out the 1.6 let's make it 2 trillion of the budget so we have a budget surplus and maybe could start paying off debt how many goverment jobs have just been lost? how many programs for the poor and elderly have you cut causing more job losses. Sense the bottom half of the american population spends shit ton more then they save it means they drive the consumer economy hurting them means stores cannot move products so they have to cut back, cut backs means ppl are less willing to invest as it's a shaky market, hell banks barely loan out as it is. long term it sets the economy to shrink not grow. Short term maybe small growth or just a flat no growth
Of course... because that's how real economy works... the economy NEEDS to shrink, because a lot of the jobs are unsustainable.
First of all government jobs don't create anything they're part of the bureaucracy. So when you cut them (of course in places where the budget needs to get cut anyways like regulation,) you basically just stop giving people a government hand-out of a considerable amount of cash (when compared to a welfare hand-out at least.) for doing work that does nothing positive in the country...
all those government jobs that oversee policies that are responsible for our struggling economy are triple-dipping on the economy hurt... 1) you're paying people money when we're in deficit 2) the people aren't creating anything or providing a service that anyone would actually be willing to pay that amount for, 3) the job is part of government program which hurts the economy... other government jobs that aren't as bad double dip, and some that are somewhat necessarily like police, and etc. only hurts us once (but police is state funded anyways.)
as for people that are gonna come off welfare... well they'll have a better shot at finding jobs once regulations are repealed. are some people going to be working for extremely low wages for a bit just to sustain themselves? probably... But as of right now they're funded by the government with money that's being printed, and is stealing purchasing power from the rest of the people (and it hurts the lower class that has jobs the most) so eventually the whole "living for extremely low wages just to sustain yourself" thing will happen anyways, just to way more people, while there are still some on government welfare.
and as for the consumer... that's the whole problem. We're spending more than we're producing. a lot of people that have jobs now that are protected by the government spending are jobs the services of which people shouldn't be able to afford in the first place, and it only sends either the people or the government into more debt, which of course will either lead to the eventual default and currency reconstruction (which will be pre-phased with hyperinflation) or it will make the recession/contraction a lot worse.
edit:
and the last part.. as for the banks... banks shouldn't be lending. why do you think interest rates are so low? they're to encourage banks to lend. They're artificial rates. all the banks which proceed to lend at these rates will default when the rates go up (and the rates MUST go up in order for savings to ever occur.)
Why do interest rates exist in the first place? They first of all hedge the risk of default by the loaner for the bank, they also reflect the supply - demand interaction for money. Right now rates should go up, once they go up banks will be more willing to loan, but less people will be willing to lend. Instead people will start to try to repay their debt, and then possibly save. Once a lot of people are saving the rates will be able to go back down again, because obviously if no one is lending, and everyone is loaning money to the bank, they're gonna want to lower the rates to pay less interest.
Of course... higher rates will lead to less people wanting to borrow to invest, but that's a good thing, because there's not that many people actually willing to lend in the first place, so every time a bank gives out a loan, most of it comes from the money they get from the FED, which of course has a chance of being no longer guaranteed because a lot of people want to shut it down, so that's why banks are cautious about lending now, even with these low rates.
Let me put this logic in perspective for you. Imagine this scenario:
There's overpopulation and famine creating a food shortage. People are trying their best to spread the food around and make sure nobody dies of starvation. They even discuss longterm plans to correct the food shortage in the long run, but ask for farmers to take a loss in profit and bare some hunger until this passes. You're the guy that busts into a meeting spouting nonsense of "just let some people die, then there'll be more than enough for everybody! We're just overpopulated and letting people die is nature's solution!"
This is retarded.
If there's not enough food to feed all the people than someone WILL die.
See here's the problem with your logic... you think redistributing stuff there's not enough can make up for the shortage... It can't. It's not mathematically possible do you realize that? The sad thing is that in your scenario the liberal economist would probably have the farmers starve, and then they'd die, and when there's no more farmers there's no more food, and then everyone else would die.
You and other hocus-pocus Austrian Economists would gladly throw people under a bus for "mistakes" nobody made or could not be easily avoided. You're the guys who would still be using unsanitary tools for medical surgery and blame infections on the natural course. The 21st century gives us an enormous toolbox to fix the economy (along with other things), and your advice is "let's just level it and start over:"
WTF? what toolbox? You're just in denial. There's no fix for the economy. There's no decision that will directly lead to prosperity in the short run at all. There's 2 options... continue shuffling the constantly decreasing amount of limited resources while continuing to struggle the economy until the point when the government will just shrug its shoulders and say... "I'm sorry you guys are just not producing enough, there's nothing we can do to save you." which will inevitably happen... Or STOP inflating our currency, start repaying our debts at the cost of accepting a lower standard of living... start saving and rebuilt our economy for real... So there's no good answer to the problem... but there's a RIGHT answer.
If you really believe that we can fix this with one of our "21st century solutions" naively optimistic...
The US Federal debt right now is around 14 trillion... do you know what else is around 14 trillion?
Our GDP... that's right our GDP, the majority of which is consumption in the first place is 14 trillion dollars, pretty much as big as our debt. This means that if the government confiscated EVERYTHING that americans produce for an entire year, sold it to non-americans, cut all government spending only then would we be able to pay off our national debt. and that's actually not even true, because like I said a huge portion of our GDP are services which don't create any wealth in the first place.
But yeah... I'm sure your 21st century solutions have the wonderful power of ignoring mathematics.
Well the current situation is more like there is way more than enough food to feed everyone, but a tiny fraction of the population has way more food than they could ever eat, and don't want to share any with people who are starving.
Just curious, why isn't Somalia evolving into a utopia?
On August 17 2011 06:46 FoeHamr wrote: don't richest people in this country pay the most taxes already?
Number wise yes, but not percentage wise. I think he mentions it in his article. He pays around 17% while his coworkers pay around 30? HE did mention it.
What a crock of crap. I don't mean you, as I know Buffett said it, but first, his tax records are not public, so he can claim whatever the fuck he wants and nobody can verify it. Not even the IRS can come out and call him a liar, as they are bound by disclosure laws. Second, payroll taxes are capped at a certain amount, so his fellow employees pay payroll taxes on their entire income where he does not. He pays the same taxes as they do, and more, up to the cap that applies to social security taxes. Third, he said a lot of his income is from capital gains, which when compared to the wages his employees are making, it's apples and oranges. Fourth, he most certainly has dividend income, which is taxed at a lower rate these days, but that income is being double taxed anyways, as the corporation paying the dividend has already paid tax on that, a rate that you can be sure Mr. Buffett is not including in his 17% calcuation. Fifth, I'm sure Mr. Buffett has plenty of private foundations in his name that he contributes to annually, which he determines how the money is to be spent in charitable ways. These contributions are deducted from his income before calculating his taxes, even though he dictates how the money is spent, instead of the government. Sixth, it's safe to say that his 17% number is based on his total income before all these deductions that he is taking and not based on his taxable income, whereas his "coworkers" do not have deductions to that extent.
Misleading at best.
The most accurate post in the first 2 pages.
Can someone answer this question:
Who actually pays the taxes that 'evil' corporations pay.
Answer: the consumer. So raise taxes all you want. The actual producer won't pay a dime of it.
I started to say more, but found it was just repeating the quoted post for the most part. When you are like me and actually paying taxes you'll realize just how hypocritical the likes of Gates and Buffet really are. There is always something behind the curtain.
I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. Or, from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. One theory works, the other does not.
On August 17 2011 06:46 FoeHamr wrote: don't richest people in this country pay the most taxes already?
Number wise yes, but not percentage wise. I think he mentions it in his article. He pays around 17% while his coworkers pay around 30? HE did mention it.
What a crock of crap. I don't mean you, as I know Buffett said it, but first, his tax records are not public, so he can claim whatever the fuck he wants and nobody can verify it. Not even the IRS can come out and call him a liar, as they are bound by disclosure laws. Second, payroll taxes are capped at a certain amount, so his fellow employees pay payroll taxes on their entire income where he does not. He pays the same taxes as they do, and more, up to the cap that applies to social security taxes. Third, he said a lot of his income is from capital gains, which when compared to the wages his employees are making, it's apples and oranges. Fourth, he most certainly has dividend income, which is taxed at a lower rate these days, but that income is being double taxed anyways, as the corporation paying the dividend has already paid tax on that, a rate that you can be sure Mr. Buffett is not including in his 17% calcuation. Fifth, I'm sure Mr. Buffett has plenty of private foundations in his name that he contributes to annually, which he determines how the money is to be spent in charitable ways. These contributions are deducted from his income before calculating his taxes, even though he dictates how the money is spent, instead of the government. Sixth, it's safe to say that his 17% number is based on his total income before all these deductions that he is taking and not based on his taxable income, whereas his "coworkers" do not have deductions to that extent.
Misleading at best.
The most accurate post in the first 2 pages.
Can someone answer this question:
Who actually pays the taxes that 'evil' corporations pay.
Answer: the consumer. So raise taxes all you want. The actual producer won't pay a dime of it.
I started to say more, but found it was just repeating the quoted post for the most part. When you are like me and actually paying taxes you'll realize just how hypocritical the likes of Gates and Buffet really are. There is always something behind the curtain.
I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. Or, from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. One theory works, the other does not.
The "virtue of egoism", hum?
What you tax is not the company altogether, but the dividend that the shareholders are getting. So the consumers are not hit, at all. The ones who are hit are the people who owe the company if the company makes a lot of money (if it doesn't, they don't get that much dividend anyway).
Anyway, Warren Buffet is one of the rare ultra-rich businessmen that I respect. He made his fortune by investing on the long term rather than speculating, he does something somehow useful with it, and he is not a plain egoistic asshole who fight for his class and his personal interest.
Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion.
Hey, I'm curious about how you come to this conclusion. Look here, a guy who earned a billion will definitely have the sense and money (obviously) to hire good accountants and financial consultants.
They are not going to lose that 1 billion that easily. Period. Unless they have the "poor man's mindset".
Sam Walton lost a Billion dollars in a single day/week back in the 80's.
I don't think he was dumb by any extent. Slim what'shisname, Mexican Petrol magnate, lost a metric ton of money in the last crash. Actually slipped to #2 or 3 on the big list that matters.
So yes, uber rich lose tremendous sums of money at times, but they can afford to. It makes the news, maybe not in your lifetime, but it's happened.
On September 22 2011 01:18 cydial wrote: You don't make the weak strong by taking strength from those that already have it.
You mean that if by taxing the richest you can afford a universal healthcare and free education so that the poorer category of your population can go to hospital if they break a leg or have a decent education for their children, it doesn't make their life better?
That's what we are talking about. Either cutting American already minimalist social system or raising taxes for people who have an obscene amount of money.
Yes it's easier to make $1 million dollars if you already have $1 billion. What you can't grasp is that it's easier to lose $1 billion if you already have $1 billion.
Hey, I'm curious about how you come to this conclusion. Look here, a guy who earned a billion will definitely have the sense and money (obviously) to hire good accountants and financial consultants.
They are not going to lose that 1 billion that easily. Period. Unless they have the "poor man's mindset".
Sam Walton lost a Billion dollars in a single day/week back in the 80's.
I don't think he was dumb by any extent. Slim what'shisname, Mexican Petrol magnate, lost a metric ton of money in the last crash. Actually slipped to #2 or 3 on the big list that matters.
So yes, uber rich lose tremendous sums of money at times, but they can afford to. It makes the news, maybe not in your lifetime, but it's happened.
And it's unimportant. How many people who don't earn billions (or even millions) lost everything over night to do things that are out of their control? Millions? Or Billions of people? It affected (and affects) them a bit more than Carlos Slim being richest or thrid-richest man on the planet.
So does Obama want to tax the super rich so he can give more money to the super rich? Or so he can start more wars? Killing innocent people can be costly.
EPT
