So basically a no border society and a fake idea that there is a gender pay gap despite evidence that it doesn't exist.
Please stick to this mantra. I'm begging you. PLEASE.
Economics Thread
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
So basically a no border society and a fake idea that there is a gender pay gap despite evidence that it doesn't exist.
Please stick to this mantra. I'm begging you. PLEASE.
57Brave
Well-known member
there is / was evidence to prove Tommy LaStella an All Star player.
In real life, gender inequality exists, yes to borders - no to hysteria attached to borders / immigrants
and yes, I will continue to shout it and sing it and pray it
...............
I will also continue to rail against unrestrained wealth for wealth's sake
In real life, gender inequality exists, yes to borders - no to hysteria attached to borders / immigrants
and yes, I will continue to shout it and sing it and pray it
...............
I will also continue to rail against unrestrained wealth for wealth's sake
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Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
Those seem to be problems you have with capitalism, not perversions of capitalism.
How is 1) not a logical consequence of capitalism?
If my widget factory makes me $1M/year, why wouldn’t I spend a small fraction of those bucks to influence lawmakers to make my business more profitable and my competitors’ chances to unseat me less successful? It’s the rational choice, isn’t it? If it turns out my widgets give workers cancer, why wouldn’t I spend $50K to get a representative to write a legal liability loophole for me rather that pay $500K in compensation? That’s a purely rational economic choice in which shareholder value is considered the greater good, right? Why would I spend $200K on innovation to develop new products to stay ahead of competitors when I could pay lobbyists and politicians $20K to game the rules to keep me on top? Hell, why wouldn’t I spend a substantial amount to elect legislators, appoint judges, and influence media that will advance my interests?
Why are those choices not a pure expression of capitalism? Because you have the charming expectation that capitalism is based on competition? Competition is predicated on rules, right? If we don’t agree on rules, we can’t have competition in any meaningful sense. Who makes the rules? Around here, elected representatives and judges who are in turn appointed by elected representatives. Who decided that elections should be subject to the influence of unlimited amounts of anonymous money? Judges who were appointed after decades of efforts to pack the judiciary with pro-corporate/anti-government philosophy favored by the corporate elite. The winners in the capitalist system created a world where elected representatives and the judges they appoint are dedicated to preserving the order that created those winners, and you’re arguing somehow that this is not an expression of capitalism in its essential form?
If the purest expression of capitalism is free actors making rational choices within a marketplace, why is regulatory capture and the purchase of lawmakers not an essential, rational,
choice within a capitalist system?
sturg33
I
This isn't true at all. These massive companies are massive because they provide services people demand. And they were once very small. Massive companies die all the time... Sears was the most massive company of all time and it is dead. Toys R Us was the largest toy company in the world and it is gone. Sports Authority was the largest sports retailer and it is gone.
5 of the largest companies 10 years ago are not in the top 10 today. You can look at the top 10 companies by decade and the amount of movement is staggering. A lot of the greatest companies today didn't even exist 25 years ago.
The problem with today's business environment is that government protects big business from competition via regulation and corporate subsidies. That is not a bug in capitalism, that is a bug in government
sturg33
I
The 57s of the world don't know how to read a job report
sturg33
I
Start a business?
Donate it to charity?
Invest it?
Let it sit in a bank that gets loaned to people?
Buys a mansion that requires 30 jobs to build?
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Who are you to tell someone what to do with their property?
sturg33
I
Yes but there was an enormous of deductions available that are not today. The effective tax rate never reached those levels.
The 70% rate was in 1980: In 1980, the top 1% of taxpayers contributed ~19% of total income tax revenue. The bottom 90% contributed about 52%.
In 2015, the top 1% contributed ~39% of total income tax revenue. The bottom 90% contributed 29.4%.
The 1% pay a far higher % of taxes today than back then. Likely due to different deductions as well as rich people not working as much... there is much less incentive to be successful if you can't reap much of the reward.
Under the Eisenhower 90% rates:
[TW]1081276985370988544[/TW]
Taxing the oblivion out of people won't drive growth.
We are seeing this in high tax states of people leaving in exodus bc they no longer want to put up with (although ironically, they say they will vote for the same policies in their new state)
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
This isn't true at all. These massive companies are massive because they provide services people demand. And they were once very small. Massive companies die all the time... Sears was the most massive company of all time and it is dead. Toys R Us was the largest toy company in the world and it is gone. Sports Authority was the largest sports retailer and it is gone.
5 of the largest companies 10 years ago are not in the top 10 today. You can look at the top 10 companies by decade and the amount of movement is staggering. A lot of the greatest companies today didn't even exist 25 years ago.
The problem with today's business environment is that government protects big business from competition via regulation and corporate subsidies. That is not a bug in capitalism, that is a bug in government
How do you figure that? Is it not a capitalist imperative for those entities to try to sustain themselves by any means available? I mean, that’s quite in line with your past statements on the prerogatives of corporations.
Again, in the absense of government, would corporations by nature engage in pro-competitive or anti-competitive behavior?
sturg33
I
I don't think you understand how anything works.
First of all, the freedom to have control over your own belongings is a good enough answer. It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who mock freedom call the other side fascists... and get away with it from a friendly media.
As I've outlined before... money is a driving factor of most people and businesses. If you take that incentive away, you take away progress. I've outlined companies like Gilead, who make billions on a life saving drug, that never would have taken the risk without the incentive.
What if Elon Musk's motivation is to be insanely rich? In your world, I suspect we don't get paypal. We don't get Tesla. We don't get First Solar. We don't get Space X. We don't get the hyperloop.
Jeff Bezos is richest man on earth. Amazon has made everyone's lives easier and better thanks to Jeff Bezos. It's one of the largest employers in the world.
I could go on.
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Drives me crazy that the left has decided to make villains out of successful people, rather than look up to them as role models. I have friends who genuinely hate Musk for no reason other than he is insanely rich... yet he's one of the most transormative humans to ever walk this planet. Rather than be an inspiration, he's a villain because he's rich.
I would be miserable if I lived my entire life as envious as the left does.
sturg33
I
Yes... and the rich paid far less of the tax share back then.
I can honestly say that if I were getting taxed 70-90%, I would not work nearly as much
sturg33
I
If you mean pay, you are 100% unequivocally wrong. The data on this clear. If you wanted to be honest, you would simply state as such.
But you're not interested in being honest. You want equal outcomes. You want socialism, despite it's 100% failure rate.
This isn't true at all. These massive companies are massive because they provide services people demand. And they were once very small. Massive companies die all the time... Sears was the most massive company of all time and it is dead. Toys R Us was the largest toy company in the world and it is gone. Sports Authority was the largest sports retailer and it is gone.
5 of the largest companies 10 years ago are not in the top 10 today. You can look at the top 10 companies by decade and the amount of movement is staggering. A lot of the greatest companies today didn't even exist 25 years ago.
The problem with today's business environment is that government protects big business from competition via regulation and corporate subsidies. That is not a bug in capitalism, that is a bug in government
I think we should eliminate all contributions from corporate entities into government. I think big business and government are one and the same and we have a form of socialism already. I also believe companies like Walrmart/Home Depot/Amazon are not going to fail at anytime. Maybe you are right but the scope of those companies make it almost impossible for smaller businesses to operate.
sturg33
I
Government's pick winners and losers. Capitalism allows the market to decide.
I'll give you an example... the only reason taxi companies still exist is because government's are regulating them into surviving. Uber and Lyft are the product of capitalism, and dying taxi companies are the product of the government allowing it. What would the taxi companies do without this help? Perhaps they would innovate their own product faster and more effectively. Perhaps they wouldn't, and if they didn't, they'd be dead and a better and cheaper product would be available everywhere.
Big businesses hide behind government help all the time. You gave countless examples a few posts above talking about lobbying. The government obliging is not capitalism... it's corporatism and I don't support it.
sturg33
I
In our current environment, government lobbying isn't all that bad if it's done purely (and I know it's not). I used to work for a company that did product warranties. There were insurance protection laws the encompassed these warranties, even though they were not relevant at all. We had lobbyists to show law makers why they weren't relevant in an effort to get a law changed. I'm fine with that because the regulation on the books made no sense.
^ is a good argument for less regulation.
Meanwhile... how is Walmart any different than Sears? Walmart will die one day. Amazon will die one day. If we opened up our capitalistic market it would happen much faster.
I suppose its possible. I don't see using examples of retail companies before the online age as evidence of companies currently that will die. I'm a firm believe in small business and that is how more americans realize the American dream. I dont' think the increase in costs are what we are led to believe if Walmart was divested into 20-30 different companies owned by other families. I think workers would get paid more and that it would lead to more innovation as the competition would come from more participants.
I'm still just not sure what is the lefts argument against the economy right now?
Are we supposed to just hand deliver money to those that don't want to look for work?
Further - what is it going to show the American people if the government continues to be shut down and the economy continues to roll?
Are we supposed to just hand deliver money to those that don't want to look for work?
Further - what is it going to show the American people if the government continues to be shut down and the economy continues to roll?
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
Eh, well, all partly true, but not the whole story.
The high top marginal rates in the 50s didn’t mean that the people at the top were paying THAT much more, but they were paying more...more than top marginal rates have been in decades. Top earners then, as now, had plenty of ways to avoid the income tax. I experienced this to some degree while working in Europe. Some of the French and Belgian folks I worked with were not motivated to try to push their compensation beyond a certain point, because of the tax regime in those countries. Similar position to the tax regime earlier vs today.
And yeah, people are net leaving the highest-tax state, California. But not in numbers that amount to an exodus. About 1M net last year. Conservatives have been forecasting the collapse of California based on high taxes for how many years now? How likely does that really seem?
But the idea of higher rates is not growth. I’m not sure where you got that idea. It’s part of driving a stake through the idea that growth is universally positive, if the fruits of that growth are limited to the top echelon. You’re on record that growth is all. I’d be more content with less growth and more equity. Higher tax rates—on income, on investments, on capital gains—are one way to get there. If higher tax rates subsidize a more humane existence for the rest of the population, I’m all for it. If higher taxes mean more freedom for the many—ie no medical bankruptcy, no student debt penury, etc—I’m all for it. And the people who are paying more can, frankly, go kick rocks. What else are they going to do, if the people—that is to say, the government—determines that they pay the freight? Buy the government? Homey, you’ve just said that isn’t desirable. Capital influencing government isn’t a desirable outcome, right? You don’t want capital buying votes to avoid competition, but you DO want capital buying votes to avoid more taxes? Is that right?
I’m just not sure where you self-proclaimed capitalists stand on this. When and where is money interfering in government ok? When it’s putatively interfering in free markets, it’s bad. When it’s destroying and subverting labor, it’s fine.
sturg33
I
And you want the government to make this decision and then execute it?
I understand its a slippery slope but I really do believe that large corporate limits competition and therefore stifles capitalism.
sturg33
I
But this resulted in less revenue.
There will be a time when the money runs out... it's already happening in high tax states like California, Illinois, NJ, New York. The pension obligations alone are killing them, let alone all of the unfunded liabilities
Something will have to change... I'm guessing they will try to tax more... I'm guessing that won't work. Did you see California seriously propose a tax on texts? LOL
Economic growth is what pulls people out of poverty. There's a reason the poverty rate globally has collapsed over the last 30 years... Growth is what makes people have jobs, make money, etc.
Did you know there is a huge increase in suicide with each % of GDP decline?
Your idea of equity seems to be make the rich less rich... not make poor and middle class richer.
By funneling money through a bureaucratic inefficient system? Wouldn't you think we'd be better off if more people relied on themselves rather than the government?
Higher taxes don't mean this... and I've outlines many times that our medical and student loan system is a direct result in subsidies rather than market competition. I thought Obamacare was supposed to solve all that? Oh, costs went up? You don't say.
Well that is what happens today. The people decide it is OK to confiscate other people's money. The people decide it's OK to run trillion dollar deficits which is effectively stealing from people not even born yet, who have no say in the matter. Just because it happens, doesn't mean it's right.
I don't know what you're talking about. Seems like you made up a position I never stated to make your previous incorrect position seem more reasonable
I'm a self-proclaimed capitalist. Again, I'm not sure what your angle is with this weird position you've made up for me. I don't want money influencing our government. I want the market to work, and the government to protect the market by defending property rights.
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