Fleecing the rich

[Galt]

unions suck and kill jobs.

Yours is the type of mindset that would have been crying that Johnson Buggywhip Company was shutting down factories and blaming Henry Ford for being greedy.

There are immense benefits of moving a factory over to a spic village for $3 a day. Some benefits in the US, many others to that tiny little spic village. When $50 a year is the median income, $3 a day is life altering. It dramatically improves their standard of living, health, and increases their country's chances for not being beholden to other countries, and it brings in other industry to support the new factory (restaurants, suppliers, etc) creating a value chain. If you only care about Americans and screw the indiginous peoples of Sri Lanka, then who's the selfish bad guy? And let's be honest, I don't really give two shits about the indiginous peoples of Sri Lanka. But I also don't give two shits about the unskilled laborers here. At least I'm consistent. Why should you care as a human about the unionized American losing his job, so he can't afford his HDTV, but not for the starving guy in Indonesia whose life expectancy is 53, and has a 15% infant mortality rate? But "exploiting" is an improper term since it implies that one side is benefitting while the other gets worse or gets no improvement. Surely, Dell paying some Mexican $10,000 a year for a call-center job that would cost a Texan 500 miles away $40,000, benefits Dell.

But that extra profit for Dell doesn't just sit under their mattresses. Maybe it results in lower prices, which saves everyone money. Maybe it goes back into their R&D which means that they can expand into new areas, creating more design jobs in the US, just not manufacturing jobs. Maybe it gets paid out to investors, who can use it to spend, or just put it in the bank. Maybe they are greedy assholes and it just goes to the top 3 people in the company. They don't need it, so they just throw it in the bank. Once it's in the banking system, guess what - it goes right back into the economy. Loans for mortgages, business, whatever. LIkely, it's a combination of all of them. Profit is a good thing.

Playing isolationist and overpaying obsolete workers is a bad thing. It does nothing but stagnate development abroad, and the economy here. Britain traded with the US when we were a new country, poverty stricken and had nothing to offer. It probably even cost jobs in Britain. But it was in the long-term best interests of both nations.

But here are three final facts: 1) As a country has been hardcore outsourcing for at least 10 years, maybe a bit longer. Yet, why oh why have unemployment rates been in a freefall since about '92? Even after 9/11 unemployment barely got over 6%, whereas it was almost 8% in '92, and over 10% in the early 80s. Now it's under 5%. I thought we were losing all of our jobs? The reason is because #2) in spite of all the whining, job loss due to outsourcing accounts for about 1% of all job transitions (Forrester Research) in the US. And finally #3, declines in manufacturing aren't exclusively due to the US outsourcing, it's because manufacturing jobs are declining globally. It's an obsolete, buggywhip manufacturer type of job. Unions aren't going to stop it, nor should they - it will only hurt everyone in the long run.

[diceisgod]

LEWIS and Clark, you illiterate, no-nothing hack.

stop cutting and pasting arguments from the tin-foil hat society.
your grasp of any facts is slippery and practically non-existent.

You are a pathetic chicken hawk & a dirty old man. However, you do make a better spellchecker than you do a human being.

Maybe some 18 y/o girl will be so impressed by that she'll look beyond your other flaws...like your face, for example

[Galt]

LEWIS and Clark, you illiterate, no-nothing hack.

stop cutting and pasting arguments from the tin-foil hat society.
your grasp of any facts is slippery and practically non-existent.

It's "KNOW nothing", you gangly coked-up queen.

[diceisgod]

unions suck and kill jobs

Like I said, I ain't your econ professor nor am I some kind of political evangelist or preacher. So I'll just say that your post reminded me a bit of Reggie Valentine explaining to Duke & Duke that "you can't be too soft on people like that" - ie after Winthorp kamakazeed through their company Christmas Party etc (TP is on right now in fact).

Lastly, Chomsky puts together a more convincing and qualified argument on these isseus and many others. Morever & as you had noted, I let him do much of my research for me He don't do my thinking on all issues nor on every nuance of such though. Life's too short to take each of your stats, statements, and points and rip them apart but rest assured they can be..and to the point that you would blush & feel shame for posting such nonsense.

[Galt]

Noam Chomsky hates America.

You are a simpleminded idiot who gets distracted by blinky lights and shiny things just long enough for jaded institutionalized theoretical do-nothings who are bitter and hate producers convince you that the movers of the world are the bad guys.

[diceisgod]

You're a good little monkey and exactly what the "movers" of the world intended to produce via the propaganda model and it's trappings (eg university studies, selective media coverage, etc),

You think top-down and heirarchical and therefore all & everything is based on some level of "better" (usually based on wealth) looking down and casting blame on the "lessers" (usually niggers). You gotta brain so abby normal, I doubt there is any hope of fixing it.

How marvelous.

[Galt]

do you accept the premise that if a company decided to move 15,000 manufacturing jobs to New Orleans that it would benefit the economy around New Orleans? It would raise housing prices due to increased demand. It would benefit the surrounding economy for food, clothing, cleaning, and other professional services creating more jobs for each of them? You understand that, right? That's logical and common sense?

Yet, why is it so difficult to comprehend that when you move thousands of jobs to some farm town in China or Bangladesh the same impact occurs? If not even moreso since in New Orleans it's adding more jobs to a very poor, yet industrialized area. In the third world areas, it's adding entire new economy to a completely impoverished area.

[HedCold]

i have no idea what the numbers are so its probably possible to refute this with actual facts, and dig touched on this, but...

a large percentage of our tax money goes to protect huge companies. we spend waaaay more than other countries on our army. we could probably cut it down from like 500 billion (?) to a third of that if we just focused on protecting our borders. but we don't, because it helps our big businesses to make sure our presence is felt around the world, protecting our financial interests.
you also have the research and development the army does that goes a long way to helping our businesses thrive.

so to act like they don't benefit from it just because we have social programs that are being run by retards and spewing money seems lame and selective.

[Galt]

well, I never said I disagreed that we spend waaaay too much on defense both in money and in policy - I think we do too much. I completely agree. But in Cowen's numbers he worked under the assumption that the rich benefited from national defense proportional to their share of income, so he's accepting your argument, and the numbers still stand.

And the tax breaks for companies like Exxon, merely lower their tax rate to a still obscene 41%. It's not like these huge companies don't pay taxes.

There are some ways that companies can lower their taxable base which are kind of shady and I'd be in favor of eliminating. But if a company gets a tax credit to build an employee base in a state, it's not because the state is stupid or loves big companies and hates the little guy. It's because they know that the taxes paid by the 10,000 jobs and additional taxes created by the supporting jobs within the value chain (restaurants, real estate, etc) as well as the increased real estate taxes from propped up value due to larger demand for houses, dramatically outstrips the tax credit for the company. I'm sure there is data for that too, which I don't have, and don't care to look for. But it's just a economic decision - both parties benefit. The state gets an increased tax base but the company saves money.

And that is the ONLY time when tax credits should be given to a company (or to build a stadium) - when a positive economic case can be made. I know a lot of states/cities pay for stadiums when there is no reason to do so, which is foolish.

[HedCold]

There are some ways that companies can lower their taxable base which are kind of shady and I'd be in favor of eliminating. But if a company gets a tax credit to build an employee base in a state, it's not because the state is stupid or loves big companies and hates the little guy. It's because they know that the taxes paid by the 10,000 jobs and additional taxes created by the supporting jobs within the value chain (restaurants, real estate, etc) as well as the increased real estate taxes from propped up value due to larger demand for houses, dramatically outstrips the tax credit for the company. I'm sure there is data for that too, which I don't have, and don't care to look for. But it's just a economic decision - both parties benefit. The state gets an increased tax base but the company saves money.

are you bringing this up because of the recent reports saying how microsoft misses out on paying alot of washington taxes because they distribute their product out of nevada? because on the surface it seems weird but when you realize all the taxes employees already pay and stuff, washington state would "suffer" alot more if microsoft completely moved to nevada instead.

[Galt]

No, it wasn't any specific reason, but your argument is my argument. I meant more like accounting rules that let companies "write off" a bunch of shit and take "one time expenses" which let them lower their accounting income, and pay lower taxes.

[diceisgod]

Yet, why is it so difficult to comprehend that when you move thousands of jobs to some farm town in China or Bangladesh the same impact occurs?

It's not diff to comprehend. It's just not what happens. You are the one indulging in theoretical delusions now. I leave you to them. In fact, I think I have a few weeks/months of pain in the ass moving bullshit to deal with. In the morning, I have my own LEWIS & Clarking to begin.

[Filzy]

Here's how I look at it.
Free trade is not evil. Yes, a US company may move over seas, but there is walys another company from another land or a new US company that will take it's place. Example: GM has factories in mexico. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and I think VW and BMW have factories here. I could be wrong, but I know Toyota ans Subaru have them here in the US. From the last I read, BMW is considering opening up a factory here, as well as VW. I think Erricson cell phones have a factory here, not sure. But this is from the last I read into the economy. Everything changes.
The rich are rich because they didn't rip off or anything else. I'm against leveling the frield because they don't always pocket it. Why be punished for making money? because someone else won't do it and they're envious because of the opportunities the rich take and run with? That sounds more like childishness to me. money does go into R&D to make things more efficent and or effective. Also, they are giving employees raises. Look at the big bad oil companies. the reason why they have money is because of supply/demand, not because of greed. so they are finding ways of getting more oil efficently, or are just sitting on the money because they are not allowed to look for more oil. It's a no-win situation.
I don't want the gov't running a shop. To me, that's counter productive, but of course, I've always done my own thing. I don't throw anyone under a bus if I want to get ahead, I do through hard work.
If big buisness is bad, then how come they're always chipping in for the working class? Image or self serving, sometimes, they could just be giving back as a token of gratitude.
Unions were important back in the day, but from my personal experience, the Union bosses are not looking out for their members, they are only looking for themselves now. I was screwed by a union, becasue they didn't help me when I was having a battle with a boss. I got rail roaded for simply speaking up. I am personally against a union, but it doesn't mean all are bad. There are good unions out there.
Sadly, it's just turned into a sheep mentality with unions now, imo.
The whole McJobs thing, they are sometimes just stepping stones pay for bigger things, like a college education or a trade school. I am in a trade, and there will always be a need for welders, until machines can replace us. vbut even then, when that machine breaks down, we are there to take it's place. That's progress.
Sometimes, the poor are the poor because they cannot or will not step up to make for a better life. Why bother earning it when you can get it for free?
Look, I am a blue collared guy, I know if I get fired or laid off from one spot, I have another place to work in that trade. It's not the end of the world.
Why do we punish those who chase the dreams and earn the rewards for it? Because de don't have it? That's pretty childish if you ask me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of rich people, but I know easy comes and easy goes.
Look I know some of us have a sense of entitlment, sometimes, we have to work up the ladder to make where we are. If Bloomberg and Gates can do it, so can most of us. it's just a natter of getting off our asses and getting it.

[Rooner]

Bottom line is that the rich and the billion dollar companies that pay all these taxes dont seem to be suffering all that badly now do they?

I work for a billion dollar pharmaceutical that regularly tells me that my lower than normal year end raise for all my hard work is due to the recent poor performance of the company, and yet the company feels the need to put 50" lcd tvs in hallways for people to walk past.

Point being, I believe the majority of the money these companies make, AND the taxes that our government collects is being completely mismanaged. So unless youre going to revamp the entire system from the ground up to make it fair and just for everyone, these discussions are moot.

So fuck the rich and fuck these companies, fleece away, theyll get over it and find a way to fuck over someone to make up the difference. Most likely it will be me when they ship my job to Bangalore.

[sink]

galt knows what he is talking about. i agree with his fiscal policy views, but i must ask you this question. Seeing as how you feel that way, who the fuck do you vote for in the upcoming election that mirrors the closest to your fiscal beliefs? I can't seem to find one.

[Galt]

Ron Paul is always the answer regardless of the question.

[Gooch]

if the Jeopardy question is who is a steaming pile of fecal-matter

[Mad]

Who is John McCain.

[sink]

some liberal replublican canidate i think

[Rooner]

Doesnt really matter who you vote for, theyre all lying double talkers who will have to eventually cave to the true powers that be, no matter what they promise.