EPTBankruptcy doesn't mean the company goes away.
President Obama Re-Elected - Page 998
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Hey guys! We'll be closing this thread shortly, but we will make an American politics megathread where we can continue the discussions in here. The new thread can be found here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=383301 | ||
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BluePanther
United States2776 Posts
Bankruptcy doesn't mean the company goes away. | ||
Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:41 BluePanther wrote: I think people misunderstand what filing for bankruptcy means. Bankruptcy doesn't mean the company goes away. I believe what they're saying is if the companies filed for bankruptcy and did not receive a government bailout, the companies would have collapsed as there was no other funding available at the time. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. | ||
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BluePanther
United States2776 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:45 Souma wrote: I believe what they're saying is if the companies filed for bankruptcy and did not receive a government bailout, the companies would have collapsed as there was no other funding available at the time. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. there is no way a company with that much capital collapses. | ||
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
On October 24 2012 03:00 sam!zdat wrote: Just filled out my ballot, mofos. That's right, my voice is being heard. go democracy how do you know it wont end up in the trash x) On October 24 2012 04:55 BluePanther wrote: there is no way a company with that much capital collapses. capital and assets arent the same thing. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6313 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:45 Souma wrote: I believe what they're saying is if the companies filed for bankruptcy and did not receive a government bailout, the companies would have collapsed as there was no other funding available at the time. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. Well jp Morgan also bought bear Stearns in the same crisis though admittedly with help of the fed.I am sure they could have worked something out. Besides the biggest issues were solvency related not liquidity . | ||
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TotalBalanceSC2
Canada475 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:55 BluePanther wrote: there is no way a company with that much capital collapses. Because being a massive blue-chip corporation with lots of cash really helped Nortel. (Not to mention if the companies had gone through structered bankruptcy and reorganized they would have likely had a LOT less employees. And of course POTUS is supposed to protect American jobs and that is just what the bailouts did.) | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:45 Souma wrote: I believe what they're saying is if the companies filed for bankruptcy and did not receive a government bailout, the companies would have collapsed as there was no other funding available at the time. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. GM most likely needed some amount of government assistance given the situation the financial markets were in. But government assistance can take many forms bailout plan chosen by the Obama administration ended up very expensive. Whether or not you think the cost was justified is a matter of opinion. The current cost estimate for the auto bailouts is ~$25B which doesn't include billions in tax credits GM / Chrysler were given or any interest payments the US treasury makes on the money it borrowed to pay for the bailouts. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On October 24 2012 04:29 Risen wrote: Hasn't Obama been in the lead the whole time, though? So it's not really a false strategy from Obama like it is from Romney. Jimmy Carter thought he was in the lead during the whole 1980 election until he suddenly wasn't. This election is going to be a repeat of that one. | ||
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jdsowa
405 Posts
In order for your vote to truly count, the election has to be decided by a single vote--so that either your guy is behind by one vote and you cast the tying vote, or it's tied and you cast the winning vote. That's the only scenario where your vote affects the outcome. And the likelihood of this happening is almost certainly smaller than your ever winning the lottery in your lifetime. Of course, your vote is counted, so when the final tally comes in, everyone will see that your guy won or lost by a margin of 4,793,212 votes instead of 4,793,211 votes. And that difference will almost certainly give your guy (or prevent the other guy from having) a policy "mandate" when they take office. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Like "inevitable hyperinflation" level of not happening? | ||
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JDub
United States976 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:27 jdsowa wrote: Voting is pointless. In order for your vote to truly count, the election has to be decided by a single vote--so that either your guy is behind by one vote and you cast the tying vote, or it's tied and you cast the winning vote. That's the only scenario where your vote affects the outcome. And the likelihood of this happening is almost certainly smaller than your ever winning the lottery in your lifetime. Of course, your vote is counted, so when the final tally comes in, everyone will see that your guy won or lost by a margin of 4,793,212 votes instead of 4,793,211 votes. And that difference will almost certainly give your guy (or prevent the other guy from having) a policy "mandate" when they take office. And by induction, nobody's vote counts, so there is no point in anybody voting. Your argument is silly, but used way too often by people who don't vote. Everyone's vote counts. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On October 23 2012 14:26 jdseemoreglass wrote: Ummm, that's exactly what I said. The value of something owned is the utility that it has to others. And therefore, a company or group of laborers who own a non-running vehicle have an item of little utility to others, and therefore of little value regardless of the labor expended to produce it. Yes, Marx would agree, but you are equivocating on some terms. Adam Smith and Ricardo both use a labor theory of value. I'm not a Smith or Ricardo scholar so I'm not going to try to represent them - but you should understand that the "stupid" labor theory, the idea that the value of something is determined by the labor that goes into it, is the object of Marx's critique... NOT his position. Ricardo is the one who thought the closest thing to this, although Smith also has a fairly naive labor theory (although his whole theory apparently doesn't make much use of it). Also we should note that Marx's theory is a descriptive one, not a normative one. That is, he's not saying how value should work in communism, he's saying how value does work in capitalism (people make this mistake a lot). We must distinguish between different types of value. The first is use-value: this is the value that you get from a commodity when you use it, obviously (note to somebody's thing about Britney Spears chewing-gum: the person who bought this would presumably believe that they will derive some psychological use-value form possessing it. That doesn't make it not stupid, of course, and the person may find that after buying it it really wasn't as useful as he might have thought at first and regret purchasing it - it will then be much harder to turn chewing gum into money than it was to turn money into chewing gum. This is the asymmetry between the commodity-money-commodity exchange and the money-commodity-money exchange, and it is fundamental to Marx's analysis). The problem with use-values is of course that you can't compare them. Then are not commensurate with each other. Just think about it. I have a hammer and a sandwich. They are both useful - one is heavy and I can hit things with it, the other is food. But how do they get compared? You can't. For that you need: Exchange-value. For now we can think of this as "price" though Marx makes a technical distinction that we don't need to go into(1). Exchange value is the value of a commodity on a market, and it has exchange value because it has use-value to others. But the question is: what is it that is being compared when you compare the exchange-values of two commodities? It can't just be the number of hours required to produce that thing, because that's obviously a stupid idea, and it can't be use-values, because we've already said those can't be compared. What are you comparing? What is the "value" that enables all sorts of heterogenous commodities to be compared to one another and therefore acquire exchange value? For this, Marx appeals to the notion of value defined as "socially necessary abstract labor-time." Let's unpack that a little. Why is it abstract? It's abstract because different workers are differently good at working! Because the concrete labors of different workers are as heterogenous and incommensurate as a hammer and a sandwich, you need to appeal to abstract labor in order to hold them up to a measuring stick. Why is it socially necessary? Because only socially necessary labor time imparts value. If I expend a bunch of labor making an enormous statue of my penis out of butter, that was a lot of labor but it was not socially necessary (because it has no use-value to others) and therefore has no value. So the value of something is always dependent on a whole host of things, including technological level, average standard of living, relations of production, and so on. Once this value is embodied in a commodity, however, it can be devalued. This is what happens when something becomes obsolete (or when JD's car stops running). The socially necessary abstract labor-time embodied in that commodity turns out not to have been socially necessary after all (because the thing is obsolete) and so the commodity loses value. Efforts on the part of the capitalist to avoid devaluation are central to the dynamics of capitalism. (And this is the analysis opened up to Marx due to his rejection of Say's Law, which you can look up for yourself). [(1)Marx denies, against classical economics, that supply and demand are sufficient to explain exchange values. Rather, supply and demand equilibrate prices around exchange values, which are based on value as socially necessary abstract labor-time. Supply and demand explain the movements of price around exchange values, but they do not explain the point around which this equilibration occurs. This issue is a major point of contention in Marxian theory and is referred to as the "Transformation Problem."] Hopefully this helps clear things up a little bit. It's not the best presentation of the topic but this is off the top of my head. I'm sure I've made some mistakes and lacunae so I'll try to answer any questions or objections to the best of my ability - this side of Marxian theory (the political economy) is still pretty new to me. | ||
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imareaver3
United States906 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:39 JDub wrote: And by induction, nobody's vote counts, so there is no point in anybody voting. Your argument is silly, but used way too often by people who don't vote. Everyone's vote counts. No, there isn't a point to anyone voting. It's an irrational decision on the part of the voter. I'm personally in favor of mandatory voting laws (non-voters get a small amount withheld from their tax refunds/something similar) for just that reason. | ||
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BluePanther
United States2776 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:08 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote: And of course POTUS is supposed to protect American jobs Actually I don't really think it's any of his business... | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France8183 Posts
On October 24 2012 00:50 Swazi Spring wrote: I'm pretty sure all of those Egyptians who thought they would get a secular, capitalist, and democratic government are not happy with the outcomes of the elections as well. Also, the elections were reportedly rife with electoral fraud, which throws their validity into question. That remind me when an American president was elected despite obvious fraud and that the non democratically nominated supreme court decided that it was ok. I'm pretty sure all of those American who thought they would get a secular and democratic president were not happy with the election when a conservative moron called George Bush got "elected". Ah, double standard. Anyway. The point is, MB got elected. You prefer Mubarak? Don't say anything in your whole life about believing in Democracy. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:32 TheTenthDoc wrote: Look, can we all agree that Romney's introduction to the editorial-"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed"-is flat out not happening? Like "inevitable hyperinflation" level of not happening? Too early to tell, really. Right now GM's market share is at its lowest level since 1922 (Source) but its profitable again and the fundamentals seem pretty good. Though the playing field still isn't level (GM doesn't pay federal taxes - must be nice!) and a lot can change as time goes on. | ||
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TotalBalanceSC2
Canada475 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:46 BluePanther wrote: Actually I don't really think it's any of his business... Then why is everyone saying "Mr. President how will you help me get a job" and then voting based on the answer? The president clearly is expected to do what is best for the American economy and depending on how you want to look at things, that includes protecting American jobs (which is likely how most voters look at it). The job of an elected official is to represent the wishes of those that elected him. | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:45 imareaver3 wrote: No, there isn't a point to anyone voting. It's an irrational decision on the part of the voter. I'm personally in favor of mandatory voting laws (non-voters get a small amount withheld from their tax refunds/something similar) for just that reason. Of course there's a point to voting. It allows one to say, "Look, I didn't vote for that idiot!" when the opposition party's candidate gets elected and screws up the country. It also allows one to say, "I voted for that great man," if the President you voted for ends up being excellent and you can rub it into the faces of the nay-sayers. Other than that... it's just civic duty, really. | ||
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mordek
United States12705 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:52 TotalBalanceSC2 wrote: Then why is everyone saying "Mr. President how will you help me get a job" and then voting based on the answer? The president clearly is expected to do what is best for the American economy and depending on how you want to look at things, that includes protecting American jobs (which is likely how most voters look at it). The job of an elected official is to represent the wishes of those that elected him. I think a lot of people think the president is responsible for a lot more than he really should be or is in reality. Which reminds me of a question I wanted to ask you guys: If you made a list of everything the president has obvious influence over and could rank them in most influenced by the president to least, what would that look like? I feel like this would help prioritize issues to vote on. I don't agree with everything either candidate has to say but I believe I could look at what the president actually affects most and can decide from there. Thoughts? | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
On October 24 2012 05:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Too early to tell, really. Right now GM's market share is at its lowest level since 1922 (Source) but its profitable again and the fundamentals seem pretty good. Though the playing field still isn't level (GM doesn't pay federal taxes - must be nice!) and a lot can change as time goes on. I dunno, three years is enough that we would be seeing the signs of collapse if they were as inevitable as Romney portrayed them in his op-ed. It certainly doesn't seem to be "virtually guaranteed." I guess his response is also predicated on the fact that the companies would remain the same vis a vis management and the like, which did change somewhat, so maybe that makes it slightly different? | ||
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