The Greatest Redistribution of Income in History

[daveman]

Your own explanation contradicts your premises. If indeed small businesses provide the majority of our jobs (I once heard the figure was somewhere around 90% of people worked for a small business, but that seems a bit high), then there must not be any significant issue of an overbearing government forcing small business to shut its doors. Most people are employed, even if unemployment rates remain high, so any complications caused by the government must not be so substantial, and most small businesses must apparently be able to be successful in the environment.

Also, your explanation deviates from what you said in the first place. You argued that not being able to outsource jobs could force companies to fold because they can't compete. Based on your most recent comment, this would mean that we're looking at large companies, but you also say that these very same companies are not only better suited to deal with government intrusion, but they also represent a smaller portion of the jobs market. Thus, the concern is exponentially less where the overall economy is concerned.

Of course, through all of that, the scenario you paint is that a company must either be able to outsource jobs to remain competitive, or will be forced to shut its doors if it must keep jobs here in the US. Assuming for a moment the company does go under. The only people losing their jobs would be the people who didn't have jobs in the first place, because those jobs were outsourced.

So you're claiming government intrusion into business is in no way responsible for outsourcing and unemployment?

 

[rhodescholar]

Nor do I. But then again, that was never suggested. You are painting a very difficult scenario, and presenting a false dilemma. Some amount of government regulation or involvement does not imply nor necessitate an eventual or attempted supreme and total control by the government.

In order to maintain a functional economy, the US needs to have jobs available in the country. And the government is right to attempt to retain jobs inside the country. If every and all jobs were outsourced somehow (wouldn't actually be possible, but for argument's sake), the economy would not survive because nobody would have a job with which to purchase the goods and services that American companies are offering. If a company cannot compete because they are "forced" to rely on American labor, then the company fails. It's a pretty piss poor excuse. Find a way to be competitive, or you accept that you didn't have what it takes. That's the American way, isn't it? Plenty of companies are able to compete by using American labor. As a matter of fact, there are foreign companies, like Toyota, who are able to be competitive in the US by relying on American labor and paying workers well more than would be the norm for a comparable company based in the US and outsourcing the labor.

The real problem with companies' ability to "compete" is that American business practices of the modern times favor gluttonously high compensation at the highest levels of the corporate world, with the people who sign their own paychecks eagerly engaging in irresponsible business for the sake of protecting their increasingly gluttonous wages and bonuses.

So work to strengthen shareholder proxy compensation votes - unlike the nonbinding BS one that passed yesterday - to reign in the corporate salaries.

 

[gekaap]

So you're claiming government intrusion into business is in no way responsible for outsourcing and unemployment?

I never claimed any position on the question. I've only objected to your arguments as being lacking.

But I would argue that government regulation is only one of many things that any business has to contend with, and that things like outsourcing and unemployment are caused by a multiplicity of factors. Saying that government intrusion is responsible for these things is so overly simplistic that it has no meaning. May as well say that water is responsible for rain.

 

[draper]

You don't actually know any conservatives in real life, do you?

There aren't too many of them around these parts. I think some of the tourists might be conservative...............

 

[georgephillip]

You are free to do as you choose... live by your decisions, efforts, achievements, etc... I certainly do not fault others in getting what they can in this free society... at least it is not involuntary confiscation of contributors to distribute thru government bureaucracy to con contributors, which is against the concept of a free society

So go for the gusto, idiot, shoot for the moon... go for that promotion from fry cook to cashier at McDonalds

.....Or, FIXING MARKETS, right??



*

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2iHksmF7m4&feature=related[/ame]

*

WHEN IS PHIL GRAMM GONNA PAY FOR HIS CRIME??!!!

HERE

*

What.....is he......

TOO BIG TO JAIL??!!!!​

In spite of Phil's and wife Wendy's contribution to Enron's demise and the regulatory changes that should have set off, the number of regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission assigned to police Wall Street actually declined from FY 2008 to 2009.

"But here’s the number that defies explanation: this year, the number of enforcement personnel, the people who go after the financial engineers, is expected to decline.

"You read that right.

"Despite the trillion dollar meltdown now underway, the number of SEC enforcement personnel will decline from 1,209 in fiscal year 2008 to to 1,177 in 2009. In all, the SEC expects to have 3,771 employees for 2009...

"Perhaps even more unsettling is a new report from Kotz, reported on this week (October 2008) by the New York Times and ABC News, which concludes that the top enforcement officials at the SEC quashed an investigation into possible insider trading at Pequot Capital Management, a big hedge fund.

"Kotz’s report sides with Gary J. Aguirre, a former SEC employee, who was fired in September 2005 after he tried to get testimony from John J. Mack, the current CEO of Morgan Stanley.

"Aguirre wanted to talk to Mack about the Pequot investigation. (In 2007, Mack’s compensation totaled $41.7 million even though Morgan Stanley’s earning fell by 57 percent.)

"Kotz’s report makes it clear that Aguirre was wrongly dismissed for being too vigilant in his investigation of Pequot and it says that the SEC gave 'preferential treatment' to Mack during the investigation.

"It further recommends that the agency’s chief of enforcement, Linda Thomson, as well as two other top regulators at the agency, face 'disciplinary and/or performance-based action' for their role in the tawdry affair. ."

Start filling US prisons with Wall Street parasites and their Republican AND Democratic enablers like Phil Gramn and Bill Clinton, then see how long it takes for Hope AND Change to appear.

From Enron...

 

[georgephillip]

Seems the stupid socialist goobers don't count higher corporate taxes and onerous regulations for driving business offshore.

We had much higher corporate and personal taxes than we had in the 70s or 80s or 90s.

We also had much higher levels of unionism than we've had ever since, too

Businesses didn't head off the third world nations back in the 1950s

Why not?

We also had gobs and gobs of jobs "offshored" to places like Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Taiwan.

Are those places better off or worse off for the trade?

Are we, Goober?

How's your household value holding up?

Looted any S&Ls lately?

 

[georgephillip]

I love it how some admire the ones who cornhole them on a daily basis.

No doubt.....

What Will Tea Party Members Do When Their Politicians Betray Them?

Ask Gabby Giffords.

 

[georgephillip]

Why are those bankers getting so rich? It's because the vast majority of the less that bright American public can't wait to run out and get the latest flat screen, i-pad, cell phone or other gadget we can't live without and putting it on that credit card. Someone gets to collect all that interest. Oh, life's so unfair.

"Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time?

"There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown.

"Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters.

"He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy.

"Talk about a market failure."

Foreclosure Phil

 

[georgephillip]

Says who?

Need - Wiki:

"Something required.

I've always tried to have few needs beyond food, clothing and shelter.

You don't get to decide what other people need, no matter how much you stamp your feet and whine about what's "fair".

Yeah, I do when "other people" crash the US economy, sending millions of real workers onto the unemployment roles and foreclosures through the roof.

Only corn-fed slaves would not object to getting fucked in their fat useless asses like that.

Possibly that explains your position...

 

[georgephillip]

Seems the stupid socialist goobers don't count higher corporate taxes and onerous regulations for driving business offshore.

That is saying if a corporate entity doesn't like the tax rate it's okay to move its activities to another country in spite of the damage it will cause to the economy of the Nation and the People that hosted and facilitated its growth. Corporations that engage in such betrayal are not motivated by survival but by greed.

I believe one of the U.S. economy's most serious problems today is such treacherous abandonment is tolerated without penalty or a hint of retaliation.

Corporations answer to their stock share holders.
Stock holders are majority ordinary US citizens, teachers, widows, union members, grocery workers, etc.
Corporations never pay taxes. PEOPLE pay taxes. All corporations do is COLLECT $ from their customers and pass it on to the government as taxes.
Corporations leave this country because consumers DEMAND a lower price for goods and services.
The WAL MART society. Check the shoes you are wearing. YOU support companies going over seas. Quit demanding it and it goes away. Lower the capital gains tax and corporate tax and ALL of the over seas $$ comes back lickity split.

"In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3% of all privately held stock, 60.6% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate.

"Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America."

btw, my shoes were made in the USA (both pairs)

How about yours?

Who Rules America

 

[georgephillip]

Seems the stupid socialist goobers don't count higher corporate taxes and onerous regulations for driving business offshore.

That is saying if a corporate entity doesn't like the tax rate it's okay to move its activities to another country in spite of the damage it will cause to the economy of the Nation and the People that hosted and facilitated its growth. Corporations that engage in such betrayal are not motivated by survival but by greed.

I believe one of the U.S. economy's most serious problems today is such treacherous abandonment is tolerated without penalty or a hint of retaliation.

So you want to prevent damage to the economy by forcing companies to stay in country? What if they can't compete and decide to go out of business? Are you going to force them to stay open?

Take your time. I can tell you haven't given this any thought.

Get a Real Job

"Since the 1980s, corporate raiders have borrowed high-interest 'junk bond' credit to take over companies and make money by stripping assets, cutting back long-term investment, research and development, and paying out depreciation credit to their financiers.

"Financially parasitized companies use corporate income to buy back their stock to support its price – and hence, the value of stock options that financial managers give themselves – and borrow yet more money for stock buybacks or simply to pay out as dividends.

"When the process has run its course, they threaten their work force with bankruptcy that will wipe out its pension benefits if employees do not agree to 'downsize' their claims and replace defined-benefit plans with defined-contribution plans (in which all that employees know is how much they pay in each month, not what they will get in the end).

"By the time this point has been reached, the financial managers have paid themselves outsized salaries and bonuses, and cashed in their stock options – all subsidized by the government’s favorable tax treatment of debt leveraging."

Possibly if you had been forced to compete for a job during the last twenty years this would all be clear to you.

Take your time.

Ruling on Behalf of Wall Street

 

[Londoner]

During the postwar years, government taxed and regulated capital on behalf of the middle class. Excessive wealth at the top was eliminated in favor of broadly shared prosperity. When the economy grew, everybody was included.

Did the economy die because Washington made sure the middle class was solvent? Nope. The middle class -- who had money to spend -- helped create the greatest consumption economy on earth. The high level of demand forced business to innovate and add more jobs. Trickle up wealth.

In the 70s Business finally got the economic conditions to undermine the compact they had with Labor and the middle class. In order to make it happen, they purchased a political party, the GOP. They created a machine which pumped money into elections in order change laws so that the middle class was cut out of the loop in favor of the narrow accumulation of wealth. On the ideological front, they pumped money into think tanks and mass media for the purpose of turning people against government. Additionally, they used the culture war (mostly centering on race, family, and religion) to flip the South and Heartland.

As they began to undermined middle class wages and benefits, they started to hand out more and more credit cards. They had no choice. They needed to sustain the economy with something.

The Reagan Revolution got one thing terribly, terribly wrong. The Free Market does not create a middle class. (The money doesn't really trickle down) Indeed, the biggest threat to profits is the formation of an expensive, entitlement-fed middle class along a major supply chain. Share holders hate expensive labor. This is why globalization is necessary -- so capital can always migrate to the cheapest labor market.

Without a solid middle class consumer -- like we had during the postwar years -- there will never be sufficient demand to warrant job growth or investment. High unemployment will linger for decades, as the wealthy consolidate power over the government and doctrinal systems. This is what capital does. It buys whatever it has to buy to make the highest return, including Government and public opinion.

 

[georgephillip]

Why are those bankers getting so rich? It's because the vast majority of the less that bright American public can't wait to run out and get the latest flat screen, i-pad, cell phone or other gadget we can't live without and putting it on that credit card. Someone gets to collect all that interest. Oh, life's so unfair.

I don't know about that. Consumption drives the economy.

The reason the bankers are effectively resurrecting the Robber Baron era is they are permitted by our corrupt government to perpetrate usury.


American Express
301 N. Walnut St, #1002, Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Apex Credit Cards
1000 N. West St, Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Bank of America
1100 N. French St, Wilmington, Delaware 19884

Chase Manhattan Bank
500 White Clay Center Dr, Newark, Delaware 19711

Discover Card Services
P.O. Box 15251, Wilmington, DE 19886


Note the corporate address of some of the biggest usurers: Who was the Senator of that state for decades? (Now) vice-President Joe Biden.

It is no surprise to me that I've never heard President "Change" addressing the problem of credit card interest.

Two of the best selling points for public banks modeled on the State Bank of North Dakota example involve mortgage interest rates of 2% and capping credit card interest rates at 6%.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Biden or Obama or any other Republican OR Democrat to start that conversation.

 

[georgephillip]

During the postwar years, government taxed and regulated capital on behalf of the middle class. Excessive wealth at the top was eliminated in favor of broadly shared prosperity. When the economy grew, everybody was included.

Did the economy die because Washington made sure the middle class was solvent? Nope. The middle class -- who had money to spend -- helped create the greatest consumption economy on earth. The high level of demand forced business to innovate and add more jobs. Trickle up wealth.

In the 70s Business finally got the economic conditions to undermine the compact they had with Labor and the middle class. In order to make it happen, they purchased a political party, the GOP. They created a machine which pumped money into elections in order change laws so that the middle class was cut out of the loop in favor of the narrow accumulation of wealth. On the ideological front, they pumped money into think tanks and mass media for the purpose of turning people against government. Additionally, they used the culture war (mostly centering on race, family, and religion) to flip the South and Heartland.

As they began to undermined middle class wages and benefits, they started to hand out more and more credit cards. They had no choice. They needed to sustain the economy with something.

The Reagan Revolution got one thing terribly, terribly wrong. The Free Market does not create a middle class. (The money doesn't really trickle down) Indeed, the biggest threat to profits is the formation of an expensive, entitlement-fed middle class along a major supply chain. Share holders hate expensive labor. This is why globalization is necessary -- so capital can always migrate to the cheapest labor market.

Without a solid middle class consumer -- like we had during the postwar years -- there will never be sufficient demand to warrant job growth or investment. High unemployment will linger for decades, as the wealthy consolidate power over the government and doctrinal systems. This is what capital does. It buys whatever it has to buy to make the highest return, including Government and public opinion.

I remember receiving two to four mailings every month trying to entice me to take advantage of "pre-approved" credit. Funny, I haven't seen any lately.

When I read your synopsis of the last forty years and compare it to my personal experiences over that time, I can't believe I didn't see what was coming.

Possibly, had the internet been available before the Gipper's arrival in DC more workers like myself who didn't finish college would have been ahead of our impending economic demise.

Do you have any thoughts on what the US/Global economy may look like in the Fall of 2012?

 

[georgephillip]

Corporations answer to their stock share holders.
Stock holders are majority ordinary US citizens, teachers, widows, union members, grocery workers, etc.
Corporations never pay taxes. PEOPLE pay taxes. All corporations do is COLLECT $ from their customers and pass it on to the government as taxes.
Corporations leave this country because consumers DEMAND a lower price for goods and services.
The WAL MART society. Check the shoes you are wearing. YOU support companies going over seas. Quit demanding it and it goes away. Lower the capital gains tax and corporate tax and ALL of the over seas $$ comes back lickity split.

I don't think so.

Lowering the corporate tax, which already lowers itself via the most brazenly imaginative loopholes in the history of the tax-law craft, cannot compete with Indian and Mexican workers who are paid $1 an hour rather than the $10 - $15 an hour an American worker would rightfully demand. What we are seeing today is exactly what Ross Perot warned us about -- ". . .a Giant Sucking Sound!" He was right.

What is needed is authoritative federal action, import tariffs and forceful reversal of all the things Reagan, Clinton and Bush did to sabotage what was a well-oiled economic system until that corporatist puppet/movie actor got elected in 1980.

Would I advocate a step in the direction of isolationism? Yes. Why not? It's either that or eventually being swallowed by China.

Your version is a liberal's dream.
Corporations pay NO taxes ever.
PEOPLE PAY TAXES.
All corporations do is add on to the COGS for taxes and collect it and pass it on.

Corporations ARE people.

 

[georgephillip]

Or maybe your hatred is reserved for Arabs only?

Fuck the Gipper on February 6th.

Not only are you fucking stupid, but historically clueless, if you think FDRs policies were in any way economically helpful. Go check the rate of unemployment from the 1920 through the early 1940s to see how the New Deal impacted them, I dare you. Assuming you have the brains to track them on the web.

As for the crybaby whiners complaining about how other people make more money than they do - get off your fucking ass and get a job that pays more, you lazy fucking turds.

I'd be surprised if a lazy, not-so-bright fool like you isn't working in a public union in some city pushing paper back and forth waiting for your pension at age 50...

Feel free to link to any evidence showing how the WPA increased US unemployment during the 1930s.

Then explain why middle and upper-middle class US families have handed over $12,500 every year since 1980 to the richest 1% of Americans.

 

[georgephillip]

Very few have made more bad choices than I have; however, I've also been working full time since the mid 60s, so I've experienced personally the redistribution of wealth that's taken place in this country since Japan and Germany rebuilt their economies after WWII. My own laziness and poor choices don't change the fact that since the mid 70s it has become impossible for a middle class family to live on one income.

Fucking hilarious, how an idiot on the Far Left is whining about how the middle class has fallen behind.

Well fuckbrain, maybe you and your fellow leftist asshole maybe should not have been so sympathetic to the hordes of illegal and legal immigrants flowing into this country by the millions, eh?

Or how about the massive taxes and fees that the middle class is paying to their local governments to ensure public workers' benefits and pensions are protected no matter what the larger economy is doing?

Tell me again why the Leftists like you keep defending these leeches?

"In 1967, the middle 60 percent of households received over 52 per cent of all income. In 1998, it was down to 47 per cent. The share going to the poor has also fallen, with the top 20 per cent seeing their share rise." Those of you with children need to think about what this economy is likely to be like 30-40 years from now if it doesn't change trajectory.

No doubt, the country is stratifying into a large mass of poor and a tiny group of wealthy, but it has been leftists' policies that have helped to accelerate this issue. Huge hordes of illegal aliens with their health care and housing needs, along with their children's public school costs covered by the tax dollars of everyone else, living in the country for free, nah that hasn't harmed the middle class

Any contributions by migrants to our current economic catastrophe are dwarfed by Wall Street's. Does your "intellect" work will enough to process "junk bonds"?

"Since the 1980s, corporate raiders have borrowed high-interest 'junk bond' credit to take over companies and make money by stripping assets, cutting back long-term investment, research and development, and paying out depreciation credit to their financiers.

"Financially parasitized companies use corporate income to buy back their stock to support its price – and hence, the value of stock options that financial managers give themselves – and borrow yet more money for stock buybacks or simply to pay out as dividends.

"When the process has run its course, they threaten their work force with bankruptcy that will wipe out its pension benefits if employees do not agree to 'downsize' their claims and replace defined-benefit plans with defined-contribution plans (in which all that employees know is how much they pay in each month, not what they will get in the end).

"By the time this point has been reached, the financial managers have paid themselves outsized salaries and bonuses, and cashed in their stock options – all subsidized by the government’s favorable tax treatment of debt leveraging...

"Something has to give politically if the economy is to change course.

"More to the point, what has to give is favoritism for Wall Street at the expense of the economy at large.

"What has made the U.S. economy uncompetitive is primarily the degree to which debt service has been built into the cost of living and doing business.

" Post-classical 'junk economics' treats interest and fees as payment for the 'service' for providing credit. But interest (like economic rent and monopoly price extraction) is a transfer payment to bankers with the privilege of credit creation.

"The beneficiaries of providing tax favoritism for debt are the super-rich at the top of the economic pyramid – the 2 per cent whom Obama’s tax giveaway will benefit by over $700 billion."

It's not the migrants.
It's not public unions.
It is the debt, Stupid.

Obama's Greatest Betrayal

 

[DiamondDave]

Or maybe your hatred is reserved for Arabs only?

Fuck the Gipper on February 6th.

Not only are you fucking stupid, but historically clueless, if you think FDRs policies were in any way economically helpful. Go check the rate of unemployment from the 1920 through the early 1940s to see how the New Deal impacted them, I dare you. Assuming you have the brains to track them on the web.

As for the crybaby whiners complaining about how other people make more money than they do - get off your fucking ass and get a job that pays more, you lazy fucking turds.

I'd be surprised if a lazy, not-so-bright fool like you isn't working in a public union in some city pushing paper back and forth waiting for your pension at age 50...

Feel free to link to any evidence showing how the WPA increased US unemployment during the 1930s.

Then explain why middle and upper-middle class US families have handed over $12,500 every year since 1980 to the richest 1% of Americans.

1) Complete winger link
2) Show any law where funds are taken from middle and upper-middle class persons to be redistributed to 'the rich'
3) How is something they never earned in the first place taken away from anyone?

You are a fucking idiot.... I would suggest help for your mental illness

 

[georgephillip]

Are you drinking?

Weren't income tax rates around 90% during Ike's Administration?

Should we compare corporate tax rates then and now?

Idiot, the 90% rate was only on income OVER a certain amount, NOT all income for those earning over, say $4 MM -just like the system today, but if you had a brain you'd know that.

As for combined income taxes, sales taxes, fees, property taxes, etc., combined, the amount of money being transferred from the public to the state is at its peak. Ever hear of Tax Freedom day?

Worry more about the amount of money being transferred from the bottom 98% of Americans to the richest 2%, Baudelaire.

"It is a reflection of how one-sided today’s class war has become that Warren Buffet has quipped that 'his' side is winning without a real fight being waged.

"No gauntlet has been thrown down over the trial balloon that the president and his advisor David Axelrod have sent up over the past two weeks to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 per cent for 'just' two more years.

"For all practical purposes the euphemism 'two years' means forever – at least, long enough to let the super-rich siphon off enough more money to bankroll enough more Republicans to be elected to make the tax cuts permanent.

"...(t)hanks largely to the $13 trillion Wall Street bailout – while keeping the debt overhead in place for America’s 'bottom 98 per cent' – this happy 2 per cent of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (~75 per cent) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains).

"This is nearly double what it received a generation ago.

"The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising."

Ever hear of Bastille Day?

 

[DiamondDave]

Ever hear of personal responsibility??

Now.. I'll point out again

Or maybe your hatred is reserved for Arabs only?

Fuck the Gipper on February 6th.

Not only are you fucking stupid, but historically clueless, if you think FDRs policies were in any way economically helpful. Go check the rate of unemployment from the 1920 through the early 1940s to see how the New Deal impacted them, I dare you. Assuming you have the brains to track them on the web.

As for the crybaby whiners complaining about how other people make more money than they do - get off your fucking ass and get a job that pays more, you lazy fucking turds.

I'd be surprised if a lazy, not-so-bright fool like you isn't working in a public union in some city pushing paper back and forth waiting for your pension at age 50...

Feel free to link to any evidence showing how the WPA increased US unemployment during the 1930s.

Then explain why middle and upper-middle class US families have handed over $12,500 every year since 1980 to the richest 1% of Americans.

1) Complete winger link
2) Show any law where funds are taken from middle and upper-middle class persons to be redistributed to 'the rich'
3) How is something they never earned in the first place taken away from anyone?

You are a fucking idiot.... I would suggest help for your mental illness