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I've mostly given up following this topic, but i just stumbled upon http://drunkdialcongress.org/ and think its quite funny. Just the thought, not that I would really do that, or encourage anyone to do..
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That is a terrible move by republicans because if this drags on into November a lot of the things that were able to be sent out at start of October wont happen and they get hit even harder.
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On October 11 2013 07:49 Unentschieden wrote:
I don´t think the issue is simply "Americans are stupid (to elect Republicans)" but rather that the two party system leaves little alternative if you want to punish the Democrats via vote. Also the Republicans are being sabotaged by Teaparty "support".
True. When will America realise that they need more than 2 parties?
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lol'd
WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.
Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html
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On October 11 2013 08:09 darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 07:49 Unentschieden wrote:
I don´t think the issue is simply "Americans are stupid (to elect Republicans)" but rather that the two party system leaves little alternative if you want to punish the Democrats via vote. Also the Republicans are being sabotaged by Teaparty "support". True. When will America realise that they need more than 2 parties?
Reforms might be coming. At minimum they are going to look at Congress, at this point they would have to make an effort to become even more unpopular.
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I hate the two party system.
Maybe if there were only two issues to talk about it would work...All it does is lead people to not educate themselves on the individuals and the issues and just blindly fall in line with "their party."
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Looking on from an external point of view, this circus is an appalling example of terrible governance. Just awful.
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On October 11 2013 08:10 FallDownMarigold wrote:lol'd Show nested quote +WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.
Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-loss-of-sway-over-house-gop.html
Always gotta be careful with the Frankensteins you create.
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On October 11 2013 08:11 LuckyFool wrote:
I hate the two party system.
Maybe if there were only two issues to talk about it would work...All it does is lead people to not educate themselves on the individuals and the issues and just blindly fall in line with "their party."
Then you can have a system like UK. 3-4 main parties. At least one party can't take the country as a hostage this way. You don't have too many parties to take into account, so your 'uneducated' part is solved.
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Sadly tho the 2party system is here to stay. It would need a complete rewrite of the election system and barring a major civil revolution that isn't happening.
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On October 11 2013 03:33 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 03:26 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On October 11 2013 03:01 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 02:20 HellRoxYa wrote:On October 11 2013 01:53 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 01:20 mcc wrote:On October 11 2013 00:58 Vegetarian wrote:On October 10 2013 22:54 Alex1Sun wrote:On October 10 2013 21:31 Vegetarian wrote:
[quote]
It never ceases to amaze me how people can be so ignorant of very recent events. Low interest rates did predate "Quantitative Easing" they did not predate a federal reserve subsidized interest rate which is the same exact thing. Since you don't seem to understand the interest rate is determined by something called supply and demand. If the Federal Reserve prints money and buys bonds to keep rates at a certain level we can see that the demand is not real. It is artificial demand that is sustainable only so long as the Fed continues to print money and create inflation. Paul Krugman's article does not debunk anything, linking to it only highlights your lack of understanding of the issue. If you can't formulate a basic argument yourself it should reveal to you your true ignorance of the topic at hand.
Further, private and government spending are not equal. There is a reason why the countries that have tried the most centralized economic planning have always experienced the lowest standards of living. Spending is not equal to growth. In order for an economy to grow you need to gain increases in efficiency so that current products or alternatives can be produced with less resources, hence economic growth. This scenario is not compatible with government spending. When the government spends money it first has to take that money from people in the private sector. The government then diverts these resources away from productive individuals that are making a profit by meeting peoples demands in a free market to government monopolies. Monopolies exist when a single entity is the sole provider of a product or service in a given market. Because government sponsored monopolies exist by government decree competition is usually illegal, or unprofitable because of subsidies to the government monopoly. This creates an environment where the government service or product provider has very little incentive to improve or lower costs of their product or service because they are faced with no competition. It should really be obvious by now but if you divert money from people who are forced to compete against each other for market share and transfer it to a government monopoly which has no competition you will achieve a lower standard of living as the resources diverted to government can never be used as efficiently as the resources left in the private sector. I'll comment on the second part only. I feel that there is some truth in it, but only up to a certain point. Fully centralized economic planning is no doubt bad for economic development, as evidenced by the fall of USSR and many other pro-communistic regimes. However median living standards in US are quite subpar in comparison to most socialist/capitalist hybrid economies, such as Canada, Australia and a number of Western and Northern European countries. The problem, as I see it, is that unregulated markets (as well as a markets regulated by business-bribed governments) are prone to business oligopoly or even monopoly/duopoly, which leads to high business profits only for large businesses combined with crappy services, unfair prices and low median wages. Also modern consumers are often swayed by advertisements more than by quality or price. Therefore some control by the government as well as some limited products and services provided directly by the government appear to be the best solution. The main problem with this hybrid socialist/capitalist approach is that for it to be efficient the government should be relatively independent from the big business and no too corrupt. Unfortunately the later is not always the case (hint: Greece). As for the USA, it may well not be ready for more socialism right now, not sure... I agree that living standards are worse in the US than a lot of other seemingly socialist countries. However, I think the USA gets an unfair reputation of being a capitalist economy. Taxes are higher in the USA than in China and most other countries. USA Corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world. The government debt to GDP ratio, if you count unfunded liabilities, is the largest in the world. Regulations in the USA are so burdensome that many companies have been relocating and moving operations overseas. I've never heard of a way that I think regulation could work other than through the invisible hand of the market. The way I see it if the government is granted the power to regulate an industry then overnight one thing will change. The companies in that industry will no longer be competing against each other solely to provide a better product or service at a better value than their competition. Regulation introduces another way for companies to gain market share through lobbying the government to use the regulatory power to their advantage or to the detriment of their competitors. The most heavily regulated industry in the USA is finance and I don't think I am alone in considering it the most corrupt industry in this country, You say that consumers can be gullible and choose products wrongly in an unregulated market. But, government officials are no different except that they are in charge of spending other peoples money and not their own. This is also very subjective. In a free market no one can force you to buy a product or service so if someone chooses to buy a product or service they have made a determination that it is a beneficial transaction for them. Retailers also provide a check on manufacturers. Most stores are not going to want to stock faulty or contaminated products as they know they would eventually lose market share to a store that becomes known for better quality products or one that has a more favorable return policy. Lastly, the market really does self-regulate. GMO products are not labelled by the FDA in the USA, yet there is a private company that certifies products as non gmo and puts their stamp/reputation on products they approve. http://www.nongmoproject.org/ This company and others like consumerlab.com for vitamin supplements, and consumerreports indirectly regulate industries by offering reviews and tests of products. Companies like this would lose market share or go out of business if they approved a product that was later determined to be faulty as they would lose credibility if this occurred. On the other hand if a government regulatory agency like the FDA approves a drug that later turns out be unsafe the FDA does not lose its monopoly. Considering that you link to mises.org I assume you are one of those people who claim that displayed preference is actual preference. That is contrary to what we know about human brain. The argument that the fact that government organizations consist of humans means they cannot know better than singular human is of course nonsensical. There is something called expertise, some people just know better. Of course the hard thing is to make sure that the decisions are made by the people with actual expertise and prevent them from bending the system for their gain. In many areas of life this actually is successfully done. Properly designed organizations of the type like FDA and other regulatory agencies work pretty well. Much better than self-regulatory attempts in many cases. Self-regulatory agencies do not solve one-off scams that do not care about repeat customers. You can argue that if you buy something from such a business it is your fault, but history shows that such a scenario is extremely common even in completely unregulated markets and thus solving it is a task of the government as per its task description. As for your examples of self-regulatory agencies, you can do better. There are actually successful examples of such that are relevant. Those two that you mentioned cannot lose basically anything by doing anything as GMOs vs non-GMO is completely irrelevant as both of those products are checked by FDA for health hazards. Same goes for vitamin supplements. And so what they are actually doing ? Checking if there is some GMO in the product, who cares, there is probably no functional difference. And vitamin supplements are one big scam, sorry, in 99% completely unnecessary product whose sales are driven purely by misinformed consumers. EDIT: Also US taxes are not higher than in most other developed countries. Also for you previous post, can you provide any example of welfare state going bankrupt, you say it is inevitable, but the incidence of such events is rather low (non-existent basically). The FDA has a horrendous track record of approving unsafe drugs, artificial sweeteners, and other food additives. You also make no argument as to how government regulation can overcome my arguments against it. How do you see government regulation solving scams better than the free market? Can you give an explanation? I have already given lengthy ones. I am also curious about these extremely common scenarios you speak of in unregulated markets can you give even one example? GMO vs non GMO is not irrelevant. The FDA approves gmo food because large agricultural firms in the USA lobby the FDA despite the growing evidence that they are not safe for human consumption. GMOS are banned or restricted in all of the EU, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other developed countries. Contrary to your post vitamin supplements are not tested by the FDA. Consumerlab.com tests them for purity and traces of heavy metals and other toxins. And, I think you have it backwards on vitamin supplements. I think they are definitely necessary in the modern environment if you are trying to achieve optimal health. I am not arguing you cant survive to age 70 without supplements, but with soil erosion and modern environmental toxins you will be hard pressed to have optimal health without taking any supplements. The concept is simple: Government institutions work for the people, private institutions (businesses) work for their shareholders. Safe food is a public issue, where whoever handles it should be responsible to those it affects. This very basic argument leads up to conclude that it should not be handled by private interests. If you have a problem with the FDA it's probably because it, like many if not most other government institutions in the US, is bought and paid for by private interests. Pretending this problem of corruption would magically go away if you directly shifted it over to the private sector is a ridiculous claim. Clean up the FDA and make it work like intended instead of pretending that it can't work. As usual the problem is that you need reform in the US. No corruption, no lobbying (or at least, reasonable lobbying). The problem is not, however, that the government handles issues of safety for the population. It doesn't help that one half in US political debates maintain this vision of government = bad because it leads politicians from that side to time and again validate their arguments by literally making the government not work optimally. Even clearer when they make parts of the government not work at all, like right now. Or when they make sure actual improvements to healthcare (don't really care if you're against big government, single-payer systems are more economical, even if you don't also find them inherently moral like I do) are reduced to something like the ACA, which is just a hollow shell of what it could be. Lastly, what the hell does "soil erosion" and "environmental toxins" have to do with eating food without supplements? The problem is eating the right food, not that the right food cannot be found. Although the latter is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the US, but not because of soil erosion or environmental issues. (It's because of social attitudes and big business which together create a situation where fast food restaurants and fast food in stores becomes more and more popular while healthy alternatives are left unsold, leading stores and restaurants that serve these healthy alternatives to either change their stock or menu or close) I already posted a decent amount about what government regulation actually does in the market in the last two pages. I won't go into detail here I will just say that you have it backwards and government institutions do not work for the people they work for special interests while businesses can only appease their shareholders by increasing the value of their company which they can only do by offering better products or services to the people than their competitors. You argue that countries with high taxation rate have lower living conditions, then when someone argue that "socialists" countries have both higher taxation rate and living conditions, you respond that the US does not really have a low taxation rate if you compare it to... China. Your whole point of view are based on nothing but the negation of what is. No, you should reread my posts if you even read them in the first place. Countries that have a high taxation rate will have lower economic growth than countries with a lower tax rate. And this is very evident in socialist countries that experienced higher rates of growth before they instituted higher tax rates and welfare states. Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. Lower taxes do not stimulate growth, and higher taxes do not harm economic growth, there is very little correlation between taxation and economic growth. source: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9 If you don't believe this source you're free to look up the one million other studies, graphs and data that all lead to the same conclusion. There's also no theoretical reasoning behind it, because governments are not burning the money they're collecting through taxes, they're spending it. If you, a company or your government makes an investment makes no difference in terms of economic growth.
So let me get this straight. Someone that is self-employed is going to work the exact same amount of hours if you tax him at 10% as opposed to 90%? This actually sounds logical to you?
The government can not know better than professional investors as to what investments are the best use of societies scarce resources. Again, how does it make sense to you that government officials would be as good at trading as professional investors. Clearly the government is going to make bad investments thereby wasting societies scarce resources at a much higher rate then someone whose lively hood depends on them making correct investments with their own money, not taxpayers. This stuff really should not be that difficult to understand.
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Private investors clearly know nothing about investing since they needed trillions of dollars from taxpayers to keep their businesses afloat after they made so many terrible investments.
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On October 11 2013 08:16 Gorsameth wrote:
Sadly tho the 2party system is here to stay. It would need a complete rewrite of the election system and barring a major civil revolution that isn't happening.
I think a default could possibly spark such a revolution.
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On October 11 2013 08:19 Vegetarian wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 03:33 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2013 03:26 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On October 11 2013 03:01 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 02:20 HellRoxYa wrote:On October 11 2013 01:53 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 01:20 mcc wrote:On October 11 2013 00:58 Vegetarian wrote:On October 10 2013 22:54 Alex1Sun wrote:
[quote]
I'll comment on the second part only. I feel that there is some truth in it, but only up to a certain point. Fully centralized economic planning is no doubt bad for economic development, as evidenced by the fall of USSR and many other pro-communistic regimes. However median living standards in US are quite subpar in comparison to most socialist/capitalist hybrid economies, such as Canada, Australia and a number of Western and Northern European countries.
The problem, as I see it, is that unregulated markets (as well as a markets regulated by business-bribed governments) are prone to business oligopoly or even monopoly/duopoly, which leads to high business profits only for large businesses combined with crappy services, unfair prices and low median wages. Also modern consumers are often swayed by advertisements more than by quality or price. Therefore some control by the government as well as some limited products and services provided directly by the government appear to be the best solution. The main problem with this hybrid socialist/capitalist approach is that for it to be efficient the government should be relatively independent from the big business and no too corrupt. Unfortunately the later is not always the case (hint: Greece). As for the USA, it may well not be ready for more socialism right now, not sure... I agree that living standards are worse in the US than a lot of other seemingly socialist countries. However, I think the USA gets an unfair reputation of being a capitalist economy. Taxes are higher in the USA than in China and most other countries. USA Corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world. The government debt to GDP ratio, if you count unfunded liabilities, is the largest in the world. Regulations in the USA are so burdensome that many companies have been relocating and moving operations overseas. I've never heard of a way that I think regulation could work other than through the invisible hand of the market. The way I see it if the government is granted the power to regulate an industry then overnight one thing will change. The companies in that industry will no longer be competing against each other solely to provide a better product or service at a better value than their competition. Regulation introduces another way for companies to gain market share through lobbying the government to use the regulatory power to their advantage or to the detriment of their competitors. The most heavily regulated industry in the USA is finance and I don't think I am alone in considering it the most corrupt industry in this country, You say that consumers can be gullible and choose products wrongly in an unregulated market. But, government officials are no different except that they are in charge of spending other peoples money and not their own. This is also very subjective. In a free market no one can force you to buy a product or service so if someone chooses to buy a product or service they have made a determination that it is a beneficial transaction for them. Retailers also provide a check on manufacturers. Most stores are not going to want to stock faulty or contaminated products as they know they would eventually lose market share to a store that becomes known for better quality products or one that has a more favorable return policy. Lastly, the market really does self-regulate. GMO products are not labelled by the FDA in the USA, yet there is a private company that certifies products as non gmo and puts their stamp/reputation on products they approve. http://www.nongmoproject.org/ This company and others like consumerlab.com for vitamin supplements, and consumerreports indirectly regulate industries by offering reviews and tests of products. Companies like this would lose market share or go out of business if they approved a product that was later determined to be faulty as they would lose credibility if this occurred. On the other hand if a government regulatory agency like the FDA approves a drug that later turns out be unsafe the FDA does not lose its monopoly. Considering that you link to mises.org I assume you are one of those people who claim that displayed preference is actual preference. That is contrary to what we know about human brain. The argument that the fact that government organizations consist of humans means they cannot know better than singular human is of course nonsensical. There is something called expertise, some people just know better. Of course the hard thing is to make sure that the decisions are made by the people with actual expertise and prevent them from bending the system for their gain. In many areas of life this actually is successfully done. Properly designed organizations of the type like FDA and other regulatory agencies work pretty well. Much better than self-regulatory attempts in many cases. Self-regulatory agencies do not solve one-off scams that do not care about repeat customers. You can argue that if you buy something from such a business it is your fault, but history shows that such a scenario is extremely common even in completely unregulated markets and thus solving it is a task of the government as per its task description. As for your examples of self-regulatory agencies, you can do better. There are actually successful examples of such that are relevant. Those two that you mentioned cannot lose basically anything by doing anything as GMOs vs non-GMO is completely irrelevant as both of those products are checked by FDA for health hazards. Same goes for vitamin supplements. And so what they are actually doing ? Checking if there is some GMO in the product, who cares, there is probably no functional difference. And vitamin supplements are one big scam, sorry, in 99% completely unnecessary product whose sales are driven purely by misinformed consumers. EDIT: Also US taxes are not higher than in most other developed countries. Also for you previous post, can you provide any example of welfare state going bankrupt, you say it is inevitable, but the incidence of such events is rather low (non-existent basically). The FDA has a horrendous track record of approving unsafe drugs, artificial sweeteners, and other food additives. You also make no argument as to how government regulation can overcome my arguments against it. How do you see government regulation solving scams better than the free market? Can you give an explanation? I have already given lengthy ones. I am also curious about these extremely common scenarios you speak of in unregulated markets can you give even one example? GMO vs non GMO is not irrelevant. The FDA approves gmo food because large agricultural firms in the USA lobby the FDA despite the growing evidence that they are not safe for human consumption. GMOS are banned or restricted in all of the EU, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other developed countries. Contrary to your post vitamin supplements are not tested by the FDA. Consumerlab.com tests them for purity and traces of heavy metals and other toxins. And, I think you have it backwards on vitamin supplements. I think they are definitely necessary in the modern environment if you are trying to achieve optimal health. I am not arguing you cant survive to age 70 without supplements, but with soil erosion and modern environmental toxins you will be hard pressed to have optimal health without taking any supplements. The concept is simple: Government institutions work for the people, private institutions (businesses) work for their shareholders. Safe food is a public issue, where whoever handles it should be responsible to those it affects. This very basic argument leads up to conclude that it should not be handled by private interests. If you have a problem with the FDA it's probably because it, like many if not most other government institutions in the US, is bought and paid for by private interests. Pretending this problem of corruption would magically go away if you directly shifted it over to the private sector is a ridiculous claim. Clean up the FDA and make it work like intended instead of pretending that it can't work. As usual the problem is that you need reform in the US. No corruption, no lobbying (or at least, reasonable lobbying). The problem is not, however, that the government handles issues of safety for the population. It doesn't help that one half in US political debates maintain this vision of government = bad because it leads politicians from that side to time and again validate their arguments by literally making the government not work optimally. Even clearer when they make parts of the government not work at all, like right now. Or when they make sure actual improvements to healthcare (don't really care if you're against big government, single-payer systems are more economical, even if you don't also find them inherently moral like I do) are reduced to something like the ACA, which is just a hollow shell of what it could be. Lastly, what the hell does "soil erosion" and "environmental toxins" have to do with eating food without supplements? The problem is eating the right food, not that the right food cannot be found. Although the latter is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the US, but not because of soil erosion or environmental issues. (It's because of social attitudes and big business which together create a situation where fast food restaurants and fast food in stores becomes more and more popular while healthy alternatives are left unsold, leading stores and restaurants that serve these healthy alternatives to either change their stock or menu or close) I already posted a decent amount about what government regulation actually does in the market in the last two pages. I won't go into detail here I will just say that you have it backwards and government institutions do not work for the people they work for special interests while businesses can only appease their shareholders by increasing the value of their company which they can only do by offering better products or services to the people than their competitors. You argue that countries with high taxation rate have lower living conditions, then when someone argue that "socialists" countries have both higher taxation rate and living conditions, you respond that the US does not really have a low taxation rate if you compare it to... China. Your whole point of view are based on nothing but the negation of what is. No, you should reread my posts if you even read them in the first place. Countries that have a high taxation rate will have lower economic growth than countries with a lower tax rate. And this is very evident in socialist countries that experienced higher rates of growth before they instituted higher tax rates and welfare states. Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. Lower taxes do not stimulate growth, and higher taxes do not harm economic growth, there is very little correlation between taxation and economic growth. source: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9 If you don't believe this source you're free to look up the one million other studies, graphs and data that all lead to the same conclusion. There's also no theoretical reasoning behind it, because governments are not burning the money they're collecting through taxes, they're spending it. If you, a company or your government makes an investment makes no difference in terms of economic growth. So let me get this straight. Someone that is self-employed is going to work the exact same amount of hours if you tax him at 10% as opposed to 90%? This actually sounds logical to you? The government can not know better than professional investors as to what investments are the best use of societies scarce resources. Again, how does it make sense to you that government officials would be as good at trading as professional investors. Clearly the government is going to make bad investments thereby wasting societies scarce resources at a much higher rate then someone whose lively hood depends on them making correct investments with their own money, not taxpayers. This stuff really should not be that difficult to understand.
You've been living in a libertarian talking point cave for too long. You're getting an echo.
1. Yes, assuming he gets the same utility from his work that he did before. The % doesn't mean anything unless.
2. You've invented some mythical group of people called investors who allocate resources based on maximal efficiency. This group does not exist. You then say that the government is going to fuck up investments because... Oh wait you didn't have any reason for that.
So we're left to take you on your word that "government is bad" or something or other. Sorry, not very convincing.
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On October 11 2013 08:19 Vegetarian wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 03:33 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2013 03:26 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On October 11 2013 03:01 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 02:20 HellRoxYa wrote:On October 11 2013 01:53 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 01:20 mcc wrote:On October 11 2013 00:58 Vegetarian wrote:On October 10 2013 22:54 Alex1Sun wrote:
[quote]
I'll comment on the second part only. I feel that there is some truth in it, but only up to a certain point. Fully centralized economic planning is no doubt bad for economic development, as evidenced by the fall of USSR and many other pro-communistic regimes. However median living standards in US are quite subpar in comparison to most socialist/capitalist hybrid economies, such as Canada, Australia and a number of Western and Northern European countries.
The problem, as I see it, is that unregulated markets (as well as a markets regulated by business-bribed governments) are prone to business oligopoly or even monopoly/duopoly, which leads to high business profits only for large businesses combined with crappy services, unfair prices and low median wages. Also modern consumers are often swayed by advertisements more than by quality or price. Therefore some control by the government as well as some limited products and services provided directly by the government appear to be the best solution. The main problem with this hybrid socialist/capitalist approach is that for it to be efficient the government should be relatively independent from the big business and no too corrupt. Unfortunately the later is not always the case (hint: Greece). As for the USA, it may well not be ready for more socialism right now, not sure... I agree that living standards are worse in the US than a lot of other seemingly socialist countries. However, I think the USA gets an unfair reputation of being a capitalist economy. Taxes are higher in the USA than in China and most other countries. USA Corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world. The government debt to GDP ratio, if you count unfunded liabilities, is the largest in the world. Regulations in the USA are so burdensome that many companies have been relocating and moving operations overseas. I've never heard of a way that I think regulation could work other than through the invisible hand of the market. The way I see it if the government is granted the power to regulate an industry then overnight one thing will change. The companies in that industry will no longer be competing against each other solely to provide a better product or service at a better value than their competition. Regulation introduces another way for companies to gain market share through lobbying the government to use the regulatory power to their advantage or to the detriment of their competitors. The most heavily regulated industry in the USA is finance and I don't think I am alone in considering it the most corrupt industry in this country, You say that consumers can be gullible and choose products wrongly in an unregulated market. But, government officials are no different except that they are in charge of spending other peoples money and not their own. This is also very subjective. In a free market no one can force you to buy a product or service so if someone chooses to buy a product or service they have made a determination that it is a beneficial transaction for them. Retailers also provide a check on manufacturers. Most stores are not going to want to stock faulty or contaminated products as they know they would eventually lose market share to a store that becomes known for better quality products or one that has a more favorable return policy. Lastly, the market really does self-regulate. GMO products are not labelled by the FDA in the USA, yet there is a private company that certifies products as non gmo and puts their stamp/reputation on products they approve. http://www.nongmoproject.org/ This company and others like consumerlab.com for vitamin supplements, and consumerreports indirectly regulate industries by offering reviews and tests of products. Companies like this would lose market share or go out of business if they approved a product that was later determined to be faulty as they would lose credibility if this occurred. On the other hand if a government regulatory agency like the FDA approves a drug that later turns out be unsafe the FDA does not lose its monopoly. Considering that you link to mises.org I assume you are one of those people who claim that displayed preference is actual preference. That is contrary to what we know about human brain. The argument that the fact that government organizations consist of humans means they cannot know better than singular human is of course nonsensical. There is something called expertise, some people just know better. Of course the hard thing is to make sure that the decisions are made by the people with actual expertise and prevent them from bending the system for their gain. In many areas of life this actually is successfully done. Properly designed organizations of the type like FDA and other regulatory agencies work pretty well. Much better than self-regulatory attempts in many cases. Self-regulatory agencies do not solve one-off scams that do not care about repeat customers. You can argue that if you buy something from such a business it is your fault, but history shows that such a scenario is extremely common even in completely unregulated markets and thus solving it is a task of the government as per its task description. As for your examples of self-regulatory agencies, you can do better. There are actually successful examples of such that are relevant. Those two that you mentioned cannot lose basically anything by doing anything as GMOs vs non-GMO is completely irrelevant as both of those products are checked by FDA for health hazards. Same goes for vitamin supplements. And so what they are actually doing ? Checking if there is some GMO in the product, who cares, there is probably no functional difference. And vitamin supplements are one big scam, sorry, in 99% completely unnecessary product whose sales are driven purely by misinformed consumers. EDIT: Also US taxes are not higher than in most other developed countries. Also for you previous post, can you provide any example of welfare state going bankrupt, you say it is inevitable, but the incidence of such events is rather low (non-existent basically). The FDA has a horrendous track record of approving unsafe drugs, artificial sweeteners, and other food additives. You also make no argument as to how government regulation can overcome my arguments against it. How do you see government regulation solving scams better than the free market? Can you give an explanation? I have already given lengthy ones. I am also curious about these extremely common scenarios you speak of in unregulated markets can you give even one example? GMO vs non GMO is not irrelevant. The FDA approves gmo food because large agricultural firms in the USA lobby the FDA despite the growing evidence that they are not safe for human consumption. GMOS are banned or restricted in all of the EU, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other developed countries. Contrary to your post vitamin supplements are not tested by the FDA. Consumerlab.com tests them for purity and traces of heavy metals and other toxins. And, I think you have it backwards on vitamin supplements. I think they are definitely necessary in the modern environment if you are trying to achieve optimal health. I am not arguing you cant survive to age 70 without supplements, but with soil erosion and modern environmental toxins you will be hard pressed to have optimal health without taking any supplements. The concept is simple: Government institutions work for the people, private institutions (businesses) work for their shareholders. Safe food is a public issue, where whoever handles it should be responsible to those it affects. This very basic argument leads up to conclude that it should not be handled by private interests. If you have a problem with the FDA it's probably because it, like many if not most other government institutions in the US, is bought and paid for by private interests. Pretending this problem of corruption would magically go away if you directly shifted it over to the private sector is a ridiculous claim. Clean up the FDA and make it work like intended instead of pretending that it can't work. As usual the problem is that you need reform in the US. No corruption, no lobbying (or at least, reasonable lobbying). The problem is not, however, that the government handles issues of safety for the population. It doesn't help that one half in US political debates maintain this vision of government = bad because it leads politicians from that side to time and again validate their arguments by literally making the government not work optimally. Even clearer when they make parts of the government not work at all, like right now. Or when they make sure actual improvements to healthcare (don't really care if you're against big government, single-payer systems are more economical, even if you don't also find them inherently moral like I do) are reduced to something like the ACA, which is just a hollow shell of what it could be. Lastly, what the hell does "soil erosion" and "environmental toxins" have to do with eating food without supplements? The problem is eating the right food, not that the right food cannot be found. Although the latter is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the US, but not because of soil erosion or environmental issues. (It's because of social attitudes and big business which together create a situation where fast food restaurants and fast food in stores becomes more and more popular while healthy alternatives are left unsold, leading stores and restaurants that serve these healthy alternatives to either change their stock or menu or close) I already posted a decent amount about what government regulation actually does in the market in the last two pages. I won't go into detail here I will just say that you have it backwards and government institutions do not work for the people they work for special interests while businesses can only appease their shareholders by increasing the value of their company which they can only do by offering better products or services to the people than their competitors. You argue that countries with high taxation rate have lower living conditions, then when someone argue that "socialists" countries have both higher taxation rate and living conditions, you respond that the US does not really have a low taxation rate if you compare it to... China. Your whole point of view are based on nothing but the negation of what is. No, you should reread my posts if you even read them in the first place. Countries that have a high taxation rate will have lower economic growth than countries with a lower tax rate. And this is very evident in socialist countries that experienced higher rates of growth before they instituted higher tax rates and welfare states. Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. Lower taxes do not stimulate growth, and higher taxes do not harm economic growth, there is very little correlation between taxation and economic growth. source: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9 If you don't believe this source you're free to look up the one million other studies, graphs and data that all lead to the same conclusion. There's also no theoretical reasoning behind it, because governments are not burning the money they're collecting through taxes, they're spending it. If you, a company or your government makes an investment makes no difference in terms of economic growth. So let me get this straight. Someone that is self-employed is going to work the exact same amount of hours if you tax him at 10% as opposed to 90%? This actually sounds logical to you? The government can not know better than professional investors as to what investments are the best use of societies scarce resources. Again, how does it make sense to you that government officials would be as good at trading as professional investors. Clearly the government is going to make bad investments thereby wasting societies scarce resources at a much higher rate then someone whose lively hood depends on them making correct investments with their own money, not taxpayers. This stuff really should not be that difficult to understand.
Where do you think most government officials worked? A lot of the top people in government used to work in the private sector and were doing fairly well at it. One of the big issues which is basically unsolvable unfortunately is that there is a big rotating door between the public and private sector that often creates problems.
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On October 11 2013 03:35 m4inbrain wrote:Show nested quote +Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. The US has a nominal tax of 35%. Effectively, you don't. It's a case of "look dat number is higher than yours, therefore im right" - it's not. You leave half the important stuff in the dark, i guess willingly, to support your argument. Let me cite something as well: "NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- U.S. corporations pay one of the highest tax rates in the world. There's little debate about that. Still, some argue the difference in the overall tax burden for U.S. companies isn't nearly as great it appears. In fact, the United States collects less corporate tax relative to the overall economy than almost any other country in the world. And that's a more objective measure of tax burden. Different accounting rules around the world means what's counted as income in one country isn't counted in another -- that makes comparisons of tax rates misleading. U.S. corporate tax collections totaled only 1.7% of GDP in 2009, the most recent year for which complete data is available, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. On that measure, the United States had the third lowest corporate tax burden, behind France and Germany. The worldwide average was 2.8%." "U.S. businesses have another edge over countries with lower tax rates: They don't pay a Value Added Tax or VAT, a type of sales tax. All other developed nations raise a significant part of their tax revenue through VATs, but it is not included in the comparisons of corporate tax collections." So please, if you compare "burdens" on corporations, don't just look at the direct taxations, because that would be stupid.
If you want to look at effective tax rate, then you should actually look at it. The study I will link to reviewed 13 other studies and found an effective U.S tax rate of 27.9% compared to an average of 20.3%. http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/sr195.pdf
The following study looked only at the industrial and automotive sectors and found that the USA had an effective tax rate of 30.9% compared to the United Kingdom's 16.7% rate. http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/industrial-products/publications/assets/pwc-industrial-products-tax-rate-benchmarking-report-2013.pdf
In the United States we also pay what is called a sales tax. It varies by state but averages roughly 10%.
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On October 11 2013 08:19 Vegetarian wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 03:33 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2013 03:26 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On October 11 2013 03:01 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 02:20 HellRoxYa wrote:On October 11 2013 01:53 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 01:20 mcc wrote:On October 11 2013 00:58 Vegetarian wrote:On October 10 2013 22:54 Alex1Sun wrote:
[quote]
I'll comment on the second part only. I feel that there is some truth in it, but only up to a certain point. Fully centralized economic planning is no doubt bad for economic development, as evidenced by the fall of USSR and many other pro-communistic regimes. However median living standards in US are quite subpar in comparison to most socialist/capitalist hybrid economies, such as Canada, Australia and a number of Western and Northern European countries.
The problem, as I see it, is that unregulated markets (as well as a markets regulated by business-bribed governments) are prone to business oligopoly or even monopoly/duopoly, which leads to high business profits only for large businesses combined with crappy services, unfair prices and low median wages. Also modern consumers are often swayed by advertisements more than by quality or price. Therefore some control by the government as well as some limited products and services provided directly by the government appear to be the best solution. The main problem with this hybrid socialist/capitalist approach is that for it to be efficient the government should be relatively independent from the big business and no too corrupt. Unfortunately the later is not always the case (hint: Greece). As for the USA, it may well not be ready for more socialism right now, not sure... I agree that living standards are worse in the US than a lot of other seemingly socialist countries. However, I think the USA gets an unfair reputation of being a capitalist economy. Taxes are higher in the USA than in China and most other countries. USA Corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world. The government debt to GDP ratio, if you count unfunded liabilities, is the largest in the world. Regulations in the USA are so burdensome that many companies have been relocating and moving operations overseas. I've never heard of a way that I think regulation could work other than through the invisible hand of the market. The way I see it if the government is granted the power to regulate an industry then overnight one thing will change. The companies in that industry will no longer be competing against each other solely to provide a better product or service at a better value than their competition. Regulation introduces another way for companies to gain market share through lobbying the government to use the regulatory power to their advantage or to the detriment of their competitors. The most heavily regulated industry in the USA is finance and I don't think I am alone in considering it the most corrupt industry in this country, You say that consumers can be gullible and choose products wrongly in an unregulated market. But, government officials are no different except that they are in charge of spending other peoples money and not their own. This is also very subjective. In a free market no one can force you to buy a product or service so if someone chooses to buy a product or service they have made a determination that it is a beneficial transaction for them. Retailers also provide a check on manufacturers. Most stores are not going to want to stock faulty or contaminated products as they know they would eventually lose market share to a store that becomes known for better quality products or one that has a more favorable return policy. Lastly, the market really does self-regulate. GMO products are not labelled by the FDA in the USA, yet there is a private company that certifies products as non gmo and puts their stamp/reputation on products they approve. http://www.nongmoproject.org/ This company and others like consumerlab.com for vitamin supplements, and consumerreports indirectly regulate industries by offering reviews and tests of products. Companies like this would lose market share or go out of business if they approved a product that was later determined to be faulty as they would lose credibility if this occurred. On the other hand if a government regulatory agency like the FDA approves a drug that later turns out be unsafe the FDA does not lose its monopoly. Considering that you link to mises.org I assume you are one of those people who claim that displayed preference is actual preference. That is contrary to what we know about human brain. The argument that the fact that government organizations consist of humans means they cannot know better than singular human is of course nonsensical. There is something called expertise, some people just know better. Of course the hard thing is to make sure that the decisions are made by the people with actual expertise and prevent them from bending the system for their gain. In many areas of life this actually is successfully done. Properly designed organizations of the type like FDA and other regulatory agencies work pretty well. Much better than self-regulatory attempts in many cases. Self-regulatory agencies do not solve one-off scams that do not care about repeat customers. You can argue that if you buy something from such a business it is your fault, but history shows that such a scenario is extremely common even in completely unregulated markets and thus solving it is a task of the government as per its task description. As for your examples of self-regulatory agencies, you can do better. There are actually successful examples of such that are relevant. Those two that you mentioned cannot lose basically anything by doing anything as GMOs vs non-GMO is completely irrelevant as both of those products are checked by FDA for health hazards. Same goes for vitamin supplements. And so what they are actually doing ? Checking if there is some GMO in the product, who cares, there is probably no functional difference. And vitamin supplements are one big scam, sorry, in 99% completely unnecessary product whose sales are driven purely by misinformed consumers. EDIT: Also US taxes are not higher than in most other developed countries. Also for you previous post, can you provide any example of welfare state going bankrupt, you say it is inevitable, but the incidence of such events is rather low (non-existent basically). The FDA has a horrendous track record of approving unsafe drugs, artificial sweeteners, and other food additives. You also make no argument as to how government regulation can overcome my arguments against it. How do you see government regulation solving scams better than the free market? Can you give an explanation? I have already given lengthy ones. I am also curious about these extremely common scenarios you speak of in unregulated markets can you give even one example? GMO vs non GMO is not irrelevant. The FDA approves gmo food because large agricultural firms in the USA lobby the FDA despite the growing evidence that they are not safe for human consumption. GMOS are banned or restricted in all of the EU, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other developed countries. Contrary to your post vitamin supplements are not tested by the FDA. Consumerlab.com tests them for purity and traces of heavy metals and other toxins. And, I think you have it backwards on vitamin supplements. I think they are definitely necessary in the modern environment if you are trying to achieve optimal health. I am not arguing you cant survive to age 70 without supplements, but with soil erosion and modern environmental toxins you will be hard pressed to have optimal health without taking any supplements. The concept is simple: Government institutions work for the people, private institutions (businesses) work for their shareholders. . Safe food is a public issue, where whoever handles it should be responsible to those it affects. This very basic argument leads up to conclude that it should not be handled by private interests. If you have a problem with the FDA it's probably because it, like many if not most other government institutions in the US, is bought and paid for by private interests. Pretending this problem of corruption would magically go away if you directly shifted it over to the private sector is a ridiculous claim. Clean up the FDA and make it work like intended instead of pretending that it can't work. As usual the problem is that you need reform in the US. No corruption, no lobbying (or at least, reasonable lobbying). The problem is not, however, that the government handles issues of safety for the population. It doesn't help that one half in US political debates maintain this vision of government = bad because it leads politicians from that side to time and again validate their arguments by literally making the government not work optimally. Even clearer when they make parts of the government not work at all, like right now. Or when they make sure actual improvements to healthcare (don't really care if you're against big government, single-payer systems are more economical, even if you don't also find them inherently moral like I do) are reduced to something like the ACA, which is just a hollow shell of what it could be. Lastly, what the hell does "soil erosion" and "environmental toxins" have to do with eating food without supplements? The problem is eating the right food, not that the right food cannot be found. Although the latter is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the US, but not because of soil erosion or environmental issues. (It's because of social attitudes and big business which together create a situation where fast food restaurants and fast food in stores becomes more and more popular while healthy alternatives are left unsold, leading stores and restaurants that serve these healthy alternatives to either change their stock or menu or close) I already posted a decent amount about what government regulation actually does in the market in the last two pages. I won't go into detail here I will just say that you have it backwards and government institutions do not work for the people they work for special interests while businesses can only appease their shareholders by increasing the value of their company which they can only do by offering better products or services to the people than their competitors. You argue that countries with high taxation rate have lower living conditions, then when someone argue that "socialists" countries have both higher taxation rate and living conditions, you respond that the US does not really have a low taxation rate if you compare it to... China. Your whole point of view are based on nothing but the negation of what is. No, you should reread my posts if you even read them in the first place. Countries that have a high taxation rate will have lower economic growth than countries with a lower tax rate. And this is very evident in socialist countries that experienced higher rates of growth before they instituted higher tax rates and welfare states. Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. Lower taxes do not stimulate growth, and higher taxes do not harm economic growth, there is very little correlation between taxation and economic growth. source: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9 If you don't believe this source you're free to look up the one million other studies, graphs and data that all lead to the same conclusion. There's also no theoretical reasoning behind it, because governments are not burning the money they're collecting through taxes, they're spending it. If you, a company or your government makes an investment makes no difference in terms of economic growth. So let me get this straight. Someone that is self-employed is going to work the exact same amount of hours if you tax him at 10% as opposed to 90%? This actually sounds logical to you? The government can not know better than professional investors as to what investments are the best use of societies scarce resources. Again, how does it make sense to you that government officials would be as good at trading as professional investors. Clearly the government is going to make bad investments thereby wasting societies scarce resources at a much higher rate then someone whose lively hood depends on them making correct investments with their own money, not taxpayers. This stuff really should not be that difficult to understand.
Most people don't actually work for numbers, they work for quality of life. The paycheck is just a means to an end. What matters is they're comfortable and can retire comfortably. The numbers and percentages are only as good as what they provide.
Take the total range of pay disparity that's existed throughout the ages. 10% of a paycheck that places you comfortably in society is better than 100% of a slave-wage. So, yes, someone who is self-employed, in this vague hypothetical, may work just as hard for ten-percent as ninety-percent - if the surrounding context is all the same. He's still earning more than others, the harder he works -- that is the actual driving force in a free-market, and progressive income taxes don't do anything to disrupt this.
Progressive income-tax brackets, such as ours, might slightly curve-away that incentive as you reach the highest brackets, theoretically, except then you look at the actual statistics of income-disparity and realize that despite "being punished for success", wealthy people still somehow manage to be wealthier than everyone else by a wide margin. Who knew that 62% of a million dollars is still a whole lot better than 70% of a hundred-thousand? The rich pay higher taxes, but guess what? They're still the richest people around.
Also, I think the right-wing needs to separate the concepts of efficiency and production, as they are not always one and the same.
Pure markets are great at creating production, but there is no reason to think they're "resource efficient". They can just as well be "resource hogs". Markets want to pool and retain as many resources as possible -- why is that always a good thing, exactly? Is that concept not sometimes problematic?
Do you really think our private-insurance-run healthcare is more efficient than single-payer healthcare? It surely isn't. It hogs resources within an unnecessary middle-man system of insurance-sales. If you don't define bureaucracy as something that exists purely in government, our private-run medical-infrastructure is the worst bureaucratic mess in the world, and that's not the gubermint's fault.
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On October 11 2013 08:27 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2013 08:19 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:33 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2013 03:26 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote:On October 11 2013 03:01 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 02:20 HellRoxYa wrote:On October 11 2013 01:53 Vegetarian wrote:On October 11 2013 01:20 mcc wrote:On October 11 2013 00:58 Vegetarian wrote:[quote] I agree that living standards are worse in the US than a lot of other seemingly socialist countries. However, I think the USA gets an unfair reputation of being a capitalist economy. Taxes are higher in the USA than in China and most other countries. USA Corporate taxes are some of the highest in the world. The government debt to GDP ratio, if you count unfunded liabilities, is the largest in the world. Regulations in the USA are so burdensome that many companies have been relocating and moving operations overseas. I've never heard of a way that I think regulation could work other than through the invisible hand of the market. The way I see it if the government is granted the power to regulate an industry then overnight one thing will change. The companies in that industry will no longer be competing against each other solely to provide a better product or service at a better value than their competition. Regulation introduces another way for companies to gain market share through lobbying the government to use the regulatory power to their advantage or to the detriment of their competitors. The most heavily regulated industry in the USA is finance and I don't think I am alone in considering it the most corrupt industry in this country, You say that consumers can be gullible and choose products wrongly in an unregulated market. But, government officials are no different except that they are in charge of spending other peoples money and not their own. This is also very subjective. In a free market no one can force you to buy a product or service so if someone chooses to buy a product or service they have made a determination that it is a beneficial transaction for them. Retailers also provide a check on manufacturers. Most stores are not going to want to stock faulty or contaminated products as they know they would eventually lose market share to a store that becomes known for better quality products or one that has a more favorable return policy. Lastly, the market really does self-regulate. GMO products are not labelled by the FDA in the USA, yet there is a private company that certifies products as non gmo and puts their stamp/reputation on products they approve. http://www.nongmoproject.org/ This company and others like consumerlab.com for vitamin supplements, and consumerreports indirectly regulate industries by offering reviews and tests of products. Companies like this would lose market share or go out of business if they approved a product that was later determined to be faulty as they would lose credibility if this occurred. On the other hand if a government regulatory agency like the FDA approves a drug that later turns out be unsafe the FDA does not lose its monopoly. Considering that you link to mises.org I assume you are one of those people who claim that displayed preference is actual preference. That is contrary to what we know about human brain. The argument that the fact that government organizations consist of humans means they cannot know better than singular human is of course nonsensical. There is something called expertise, some people just know better. Of course the hard thing is to make sure that the decisions are made by the people with actual expertise and prevent them from bending the system for their gain. In many areas of life this actually is successfully done. Properly designed organizations of the type like FDA and other regulatory agencies work pretty well. Much better than self-regulatory attempts in many cases. Self-regulatory agencies do not solve one-off scams that do not care about repeat customers. You can argue that if you buy something from such a business it is your fault, but history shows that such a scenario is extremely common even in completely unregulated markets and thus solving it is a task of the government as per its task description. As for your examples of self-regulatory agencies, you can do better. There are actually successful examples of such that are relevant. Those two that you mentioned cannot lose basically anything by doing anything as GMOs vs non-GMO is completely irrelevant as both of those products are checked by FDA for health hazards. Same goes for vitamin supplements. And so what they are actually doing ? Checking if there is some GMO in the product, who cares, there is probably no functional difference. And vitamin supplements are one big scam, sorry, in 99% completely unnecessary product whose sales are driven purely by misinformed consumers. EDIT: Also US taxes are not higher than in most other developed countries. Also for you previous post, can you provide any example of welfare state going bankrupt, you say it is inevitable, but the incidence of such events is rather low (non-existent basically). The FDA has a horrendous track record of approving unsafe drugs, artificial sweeteners, and other food additives. You also make no argument as to how government regulation can overcome my arguments against it. How do you see government regulation solving scams better than the free market? Can you give an explanation? I have already given lengthy ones. I am also curious about these extremely common scenarios you speak of in unregulated markets can you give even one example? GMO vs non GMO is not irrelevant. The FDA approves gmo food because large agricultural firms in the USA lobby the FDA despite the growing evidence that they are not safe for human consumption. GMOS are banned or restricted in all of the EU, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other developed countries. Contrary to your post vitamin supplements are not tested by the FDA. Consumerlab.com tests them for purity and traces of heavy metals and other toxins. And, I think you have it backwards on vitamin supplements. I think they are definitely necessary in the modern environment if you are trying to achieve optimal health. I am not arguing you cant survive to age 70 without supplements, but with soil erosion and modern environmental toxins you will be hard pressed to have optimal health without taking any supplements. The concept is simple: Government institutions work for the people, private institutions (businesses) work for their shareholders. Safe food is a public issue, where whoever handles it should be responsible to those it affects. This very basic argument leads up to conclude that it should not be handled by private interests. If you have a problem with the FDA it's probably because it, like many if not most other government institutions in the US, is bought and paid for by private interests. Pretending this problem of corruption would magically go away if you directly shifted it over to the private sector is a ridiculous claim. Clean up the FDA and make it work like intended instead of pretending that it can't work. As usual the problem is that you need reform in the US. No corruption, no lobbying (or at least, reasonable lobbying). The problem is not, however, that the government handles issues of safety for the population. It doesn't help that one half in US political debates maintain this vision of government = bad because it leads politicians from that side to time and again validate their arguments by literally making the government not work optimally. Even clearer when they make parts of the government not work at all, like right now. Or when they make sure actual improvements to healthcare (don't really care if you're against big government, single-payer systems are more economical, even if you don't also find them inherently moral like I do) are reduced to something like the ACA, which is just a hollow shell of what it could be. Lastly, what the hell does "soil erosion" and "environmental toxins" have to do with eating food without supplements? The problem is eating the right food, not that the right food cannot be found. Although the latter is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the US, but not because of soil erosion or environmental issues. (It's because of social attitudes and big business which together create a situation where fast food restaurants and fast food in stores becomes more and more popular while healthy alternatives are left unsold, leading stores and restaurants that serve these healthy alternatives to either change their stock or menu or close) I already posted a decent amount about what government regulation actually does in the market in the last two pages. I won't go into detail here I will just say that you have it backwards and government institutions do not work for the people they work for special interests while businesses can only appease their shareholders by increasing the value of their company which they can only do by offering better products or services to the people than their competitors. You argue that countries with high taxation rate have lower living conditions, then when someone argue that "socialists" countries have both higher taxation rate and living conditions, you respond that the US does not really have a low taxation rate if you compare it to... China. Your whole point of view are based on nothing but the negation of what is. No, you should reread my posts if you even read them in the first place. Countries that have a high taxation rate will have lower economic growth than countries with a lower tax rate. And this is very evident in socialist countries that experienced higher rates of growth before they instituted higher tax rates and welfare states. Someone argued that, but just like you they were unable to source their claims since USA corporate taxes are the highest of any developed country in the world. Nothing is stopping you from comparing tax rates of the USA to EU countries, I chose to compare USA taxes to China because I found it amusing that the communists have lower rates of taxation than we do. Lower taxes do not stimulate growth, and higher taxes do not harm economic growth, there is very little correlation between taxation and economic growth. source: http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9 If you don't believe this source you're free to look up the one million other studies, graphs and data that all lead to the same conclusion. There's also no theoretical reasoning behind it, because governments are not burning the money they're collecting through taxes, they're spending it. If you, a company or your government makes an investment makes no difference in terms of economic growth. So let me get this straight. Someone that is self-employed is going to work the exact same amount of hours if you tax him at 10% as opposed to 90%? This actually sounds logical to you? The government can not know better than professional investors as to what investments are the best use of societies scarce resources. Again, how does it make sense to you that government officials would be as good at trading as professional investors. Clearly the government is going to make bad investments thereby wasting societies scarce resources at a much higher rate then someone whose lively hood depends on them making correct investments with their own money, not taxpayers. This stuff really should not be that difficult to understand. You've been living in a libertarian talking point cave for too long. You're getting an echo. Excellent argument.1. Yes, assuming he gets the same utility from his work that he did before. The % doesn't mean anything unless. Not sure how you don't get such a basic concept but the higher the tax rate the less incentive anyone has to work beyond the point of being able to afford to survive. If you have enough money that you don't need to work and the government says it will take 90% of what you make if you choose to work, clearly many start ups will be to risky, you will be less inclined to want to work, and obviously economic growth will suffer.
2. You've invented some mythical group of people called investors who allocate resources based on maximal efficiency. This group does not exist. You then say that the government is going to fuck up investments because... Oh wait you didn't have any reason for that. I really wonder what world you think your living in. Have you heard of venture capitalists? Investment banks? The stock market??? People in the private sector invest money everyday with the goal of making a profit. The profit motive causes them to only make investments that they deem are a good use of their resources. The government lacks a profit motive and the investments that they make will be based on lobbyists and politics not on what is the best use of the resources the government took from the private sector.
So we're left to take you on your word that "government is bad" or something or other. Sorry, not very convincing. You don't have to take my word for it you just have to take an introductory economics class.
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EPT
