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Ft_bstrd
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 10:53 pm: | 
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In Rocco's twisted universe, the wealthy only have wealth because they stole it from the middle class and keep the middle class down.
Unions and those who advocate redistribustion of wealth (yeah, you are a socialist) are seen as Robin Hood, the good guys, the great equalizers.
The world is a zero sum game and the wealth only flows one direction.
I always wonder, though, if he understands that until recently over HALF of every dollar of wealth in the hands of the rich is confiscated and redistributed.
Nah, that would require more thought than spewing retread, spoon fed union clap trap.
I made less in 2010 than I would have liked, but I'm proud to say I earned every dollar I made. I didn't have to have some thick necked thug with a NJ accent coerce my pay out of my employer. |
Kenm123t
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 10:56 pm: |
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Hate will destroy you Letting some one else get you into a foaming spitting anger just illustrates your lack of self control. If you wish to have your position considered build a compelling arguement ( your postion on the matter) Build a logical and legal case for your position If not legal at this time detail what would need to be in the Bill and why assertions such as the rich are greedy are pointless. Who are you to determine who is or isnt greedy. At one time Americans would never accept aid from any one. Todays news details how millions of americans are disabled and dont even know it and companies now have to prove why they dont have to make accomodations. I have knee problem from Motocross in my teens I can get grant money for my company to accomodate me I own the place I get along fine so far. I dont want or need anyone else money. I just want to keep what I earn for my family Thats my responsibility no one elses. If I am responsible for others cradle to grave I get to buy and sell them ! |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 08:29 am: |
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Sure, turn off Faux News - Turn on the Daily Show.
Oddly Jon Stewart is making the same point that Aussie denies. Corporations like GE are finding it beneficial, because of high US tax rates to eliminate jobs in the US and move them overseas. What do you do when Faux News and the comedy news all tell you that corporate tax rates are too high? Some still think the answer is higher corporate taxes.
I have a question for those that believe in Keynesian economics like BO does. Are you running your personal finances in the same way? Why or why not? I know this will be difficult to answer because it probably hasn't been covered on the comedy channel. |
Sayitaintso
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 09:03 am: |
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Are you running your personal finances in the same way? Why or why not?
I agree with most (if not all) of what you've said but you know that is a silly question...
It is an apples and oranges comparison, macro vs. micro economics |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 09:07 am: |
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I don't know... Running excessive debts seems bad to me... Micro or macro. |
Sayitaintso
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 09:44 am: |
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Without a doubt, but Keynseian econ is more than just running up debt to try to support an inefficent position. My understanding is that its mostly about gov't intervention (with all the various tool at its disposal, deficit spending being one of them) to smooth out the economy. Sort of a "big brother" knows better kinda thing, or I'm smarter than you so trust me to handle things. |
Ft_bstrd
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 09:52 am: |
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Worse yet, it's about pulling resources out of the market in order to pump those same resources back into the market.
It's like moving $20 from your left pocket to your right pocket and stating you are $20 richer.
With the Federal government, the $20 loses $11.58 in value as it passes your zipper on its way to the right pocket. |
Sayitaintso
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 10:00 am: |
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The $11.58 doen't disappear.... it just gets "reallocated" based on where big brother thinks it will be of better use. Because, like I said, big brother is smarter than the folks that actually create wealth. (someone really needs to invent a sarcasm font)
The better uses: handouts to the poor/elderly, gov't employees, military/public safety, gifts to other countries, and any number of other things gov't spends money on. |
Court
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 10:08 am: |
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>>>>It's like moving $20 from your left pocket to your right pocket and stating you are $20 richer.
But they are good at it. . . . . that's PRECISELY what Government Motors did when they "paid back" the loan. They did indeed, with another loan, albeit less visible, from the federal government.
What GM has done has been a shell game that would impress even Bernie Madoff.
When the federal government started twisting all the rules to make their deal with GM and the UAW . . and in doing so, screwed a lot of folks who had purchased bonds in good faith . . they forever relinquished their right to say anything about Wall Street chicanery . . Wall Street has never approached what the feds did in the GM deal.
By the way . . . . thanks to all of you for paying for it . .. and for sending Ford to an all time low of around $1.00 when I bought it in 2008. I won;t sell it until you folks sort out this capital gains argument.
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Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 10:31 am: |
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Sayitaintso, you are taking my fun away by talking reason. I was hoping to see if the "stop watching Faux News" crowd could think their way to an answer. Any answer.
I do think there's examples of deficit spending that works on the micro level though. An example would be a student loan to further your education in an area that is likely to have a good ROI. Macro level would be something like the interstate highway project or TVA where you are making an investment in the nations infrastructure. I don't see stimulus projects that are adding to the nations infrastructure though.
The closest I see is road projects. Looking locally we had a road resurfaced near my home. It took them 2 summers to get it done (they finally finished it just after Thanksgiving last year). This road was in OK condition before this and is a main road through town with numerous small business on it. Unfortunately for the businesses, it's pretty much all street parking in that area, and that conflicts with a road project. Many businesses simply closed up shop. I have a friend that owns some of the commercial real estate in that area and of the businesses that are left, almost no one is paying their rent. With many vacant stores already, it's pretty pointless to toss them out of their stores so he is letting them slide hoping things will get better someday. His store is in the same boat, so he knows first hand the situation they are in. With less open stores there's less draw to the downtown area too.
A couple of things really piss me off about this road project (BTW it was one that had signs stating it was part of the Community Reinvestment Act)... Two years to resurface the road with new curbs is ridiculous. It wasn't part of another project of replacing sewers or anything like that. It was so poorly done that it is already failing after it's first winter. They actually had to replace a section of a full lane width about 10 feet long that simply sank. Very poorly done. Somehow they chose to do this when there's a bridge over the RR tracks very near by that is failing so bad that they closed all traffic over it last year. It's been closed to heavy traffic for a few years now. Why chose an optional road project when you have a needed road project that is being put off until funding is available?
The bottom line though is that these sorts of government funded projects don't tend to boost the economy when the boost is needed. Instead it drains financial resources when they are scarce, forcing borrowing, deepening the current recession for a benefit that hopefully will come, often times decades later.
FB is also dead on right about losses when government takes our money, further compounding the problem. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 10:33 am: |
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When the federal government started twisting all the rules to make their deal with GM and the UAW . . and in doing so, screwed a lot of folks who had purchased bonds in good faith . . they forever relinquished their right to say anything about Wall Street chicanery . . Wall Street has never approached what the feds did in the GM deal.
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Two_seasons
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 10:54 am: |
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GM bond holders got screwed.
Still scratching my head as to why they haven't went after the gob'ment on this one. They got pushed back to the end of the line and the UAW moved to the front.
I wonder if, now that the UAW are living large on that deal, do they still own that golf course in Michigan? Bought and paid for with what else, union dues of course.
On a side note, IAM union here (and the unions in general) in WI is pushing for one Joanne Kloppenberg for WI Supreme Court justice. There is a minor problem however, she has never been a judge...period! But ready for the top job? Same old same old around here. And so far, I've heard that the unions and lefties are in by $3M on this "get out the vote" campaign.
Last election cycle, 2010, saw the union dump over $60M down the toilet for three specific races...Reid and I can't remember the other two.
As a dues paying union member, this crap chaps my hide real bad. I've asked "wouldn't this money be better spent on our brothers and sisters in need"? You know, like set up a childrens fund for sick children, so Mom and Dad can take care of their child without the worry about the mortgage. Unions are only about control these days. I guess they always were, but today it is so crystal clear to me with what I've witnessed out in Madison. |
Two_seasons
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 11:10 am: |
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Sifo, I'd bet that two year road project you refer to was done by your local Public Works dept.
Here in Waukesha, the SEIU represents everyone except the dept. heads. They, the Public Works thugs, resurfaced a one mile stretch with new curbing a few years ago. Took them about 4 months to complete. Outsourced, it would have been a couple of days project. Businesses affected too, but these people (city employees) by and large don't care as they don't/haven't ever, owned a business.
Around here they have bumper stickers on the EMPTY transit buses and city vehicles (all brand new of course) which reads "FLEET WATCH-we report suspicious activity to law enforcement". So I made my own bumper sticker that said "SEIU THUGGERY WATCH-I report you to my neighbors".
(Message edited by two_seasons on March 30, 2011) |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 11:20 am: |
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I don't think it was Public Works. They had pretty old looking equipment that had been obviously relabeled from other contractors. I don't remember the name of the contractor, but it wasn't one that I've seen in the area before. I think it was just a matter of free money available for quick jobs creating a demand that opened up a temporary market for the Johny Come Lately contractors that don't know how to do the job. |
Aussie2126
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 11:30 am: |
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<<<<By the way . . . . thanks to all of you for paying for it . .. and for sending Ford to an all time low of around $1.00 when I bought it in 2008. I won;t sell it until you folks sort out this capital gains argument. <<<<<
Wow.. Most charts list the low as $1.43 - great buy.
So.. bought at a 30% discount from what most of us see,
the price is now $14.90 for a 1500% gain in two and a half years,
but we don't want to sell until we get the 15% capital gains situation figured out.
Your absolutely right.... a simple headed liberal like me just does not understand this high finance thing. |
Nobuell
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 04:08 pm: |
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Sifo,
If you are talking about the Calumet Ave project, the duration was ridicules. It almost seemed like they planed the way all of the businesses were impacted at one time. The traffic was impacted so badly that nobody went to the bushiness for 2 years because of the hassle.
The bridge you mentioned has since been torn down with no mention of replacement.
The contractor was not one of the big companies that routinely do the large road projects amazingly fast in the area. |
Reindog
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 04:15 pm: |
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quote:Your absolutely right.... a simple headed liberal like me just does not understand this high finance thing.
Nor grammar, amongst other things.  |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 04:27 pm: |
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If you are talking about the Calumet Ave project...
Nope. Lombard. Nice to see it's not the sole example though! |
Court
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 05:00 pm: |
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>>> Most charts list the low as $1.43 - great buy.
Correct. November 2008
It, along with metals, was a great buy. Tough to think that the company with the rights to the vehicle for 34 years was gonna tank.
It was, of course, just a couple months later, in June 2009 when GM . . with help from the government declared bankruptcy.
It was a record year for many middle sized hedge funds. |
Reindog
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 05:34 pm: |
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That is why I didn't buy F until it was ~$4.
I sold happy at $8. You smarter. Me happy.
You rich. Me poor. You give me my fair share of your gains.
Basically, this is the Diana Moon Glampers view of the world that monsieur Aussie subscribes to.
Hey, its only fair and lets do it for the children.
God, I would make a great Democrat. Wait, strike the "God" out of that last sentence. How am I doing so far?
-Nastier Homer. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 05:42 pm: |
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Hey! I didn't buy any Ford stock (that I'll admit to). Court owes me even more money than Reindog! Liberalism is great! |
Ft_bstrd
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 06:43 pm: |
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Yeah, I didn't have the money to buy Ford because his grandfather took it from my grandfather. Court invested MY MONEY!
Friggin' robber baron.  |
Court
| | Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 06:35 am: |
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Court does nothing . . . I'm not allowed to . . . I leave it to the "Queen of all Hedge Funds".
And I confess I don't even understand the terminology. . . . I'm a dumb construction worker.
I'd make a great democrat. |
Two_seasons
| | Posted on Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 10:23 am: |
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Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon...Winston Churchill
Few are those today who know how to be a statesman. |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 07:29 am: |
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http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/31 /shah_gop_budget_would_kill_70000_children
Typical, and utterly dishonest. In so many ways.
So if a given program is to be "cut" 67% ( a figure I find unlikely ) is it larger, or smaller than the same line item 3 years ago? Bet you it's still bigger.
Correct my errors here, please. Didn't the D's get into power in 2007? So they did the budget in 2008...on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal _budget
note the chart.
Deficits_vs._Debt_Increases_-_2009
So, obviously, it's George Bush's fault. ( for not veto'ing every spending bill from 2007 on. ) |
Sayitaintso
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 09:57 am: |
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Two things from the article jumped out at me right away, without even thinking about whether the figures they are throwing around are accurate.
Shah said that such a cut "would be, really, the most dramatic stepping back away from our humanitarian responsibilities around the world in decades."
Somehow the term "humanitarian responsibilities around the world" strikes me as troublesome when there are humanitarian responsibilities at home that are not being addressed. Not to mention that I have a problem with any individual country (the US or any other country) being responsible for anything in the rest of the world that it did not directly cause to happen.
And the big one..
Shah argued that foreign assistance is crucial to the long term economic recovery because it helps develop markets for American goods.
Does anyone want to take a guess at how long it would take for the parts of the world that cant take care of their own people and need need humanitarian assistant to be capable of purchasing American goods?
Side note:
I don't know how we got here from a discussion that started with unions but I'll go with it. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:05 am: |
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Does anyone want to take a guess at how long it would take for the parts of the world that cant take care of their own people and need need humanitarian assistant to be capable of purchasing American goods?
Side note:
I don't know how we got here from a discussion that started with unions but I'll go with it.
You almost tied the circle together. We will eventually help, will only be helped when they are producing the products that we had been producing before. They will do it at a fraction of the cost of a union shop in the US. We will then be purchasing goods from that country while losing jobs in the US with the unions demanding yet more money and benefits. |
Sayitaintso
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:09 am: |
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And they STILL wont be able to afford what we are producing..... |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:10 am: |
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They won't have to. They will be smart enough to build their own economy purchasing their own goods. |
Blake
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 12:02 pm: |
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This report puts it all in perspective. This should be mandatory knowledge in order to keep the right to vote.
quote:Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.
...
Where are the productivity gains in government? Consider a core function of state and local governments: schools. Over the period 1970-2005, school spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, doubled, while standardized achievement test scores were flat. Over roughly that same time period, public-school employment doubled per student, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington. That is what economists call negative productivity.
But education is an industry where we measure performance backwards: We gauge school performance not by outputs, but by inputs. If quality falls, we say we didn't pay teachers enough or we need smaller class sizes or newer schools. If education had undergone the same productivity revolution that manufacturing has, we would have half as many educators, smaller school budgets, and higher graduation rates and test scores.
(Message edited by blake on April 01, 2011) |
Blake
| | Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 12:25 pm: |
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Another excerpt pertinent to this thread:
quote:Most reasonable steps to restrain public-sector employment costs are smothered by the unions. Study after study has shown that states and cities could shave 20% to 40% off the cost of many services—fire fighting, public transportation, garbage collection, administrative functions, even prison operations—through competitive contracting to private providers. But unions have blocked many of those efforts. Public employees maintain that they are underpaid relative to equally qualified private-sector workers, yet they are deathly afraid of competitive bidding for government services.
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Aesquire
| | Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2011 - 08:46 am: |
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http://www.andrewklavan.com/2011/03/10/koc-your-pu blic-sector-union-at-work-2/ |
Court
| | Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2011 - 10:31 am: |
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Scary part about ... It's written as satire yet is perfectly accurate. |
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