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"The most wealthy of us can afford to pay a little more"

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LAN_403

Carbon_Rod

Sun Apr 17 2011, 01:40AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

@Pinky's Brain

Actually, you are quite close to understanding these types of macroeconomic bubbles.

Historically, back in the 1930's the USA was injecting funds into Europe, and Germany was expending capital indirectly creating artificial demand on US manufacturers. Who, wanted to grow and match said demand by taking loans from the stock exchange, expanding credit lines, and thereby amplifying the effect.
...note this was quite a few years before WWII started, and an international policy of appeasement was still in effect (much how people treat China today).

China is still growing even though the US money cycle had a "cool-down" period, and still shows the same economic precursors of a "super-bubble" almost a billion people will face.

So we fed the red dragon that guards our gold, and now it's too fat to allow us access.
(just paraphrasing an old Chinese proverb in a humorous way.)

Democracy was an interesting experiment...

magnet18

Sun Apr 17 2011, 02:16AM

Registered Member #3766 Joined: Sun Mar 20 2011, 05:39AM
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Posts: 624

one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Pinky's Brain

Sun Apr 17 2011, 04:15PM

Registered Member #2901 Joined: Thu Jun 03 2010, 01:25PM
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Posts: 837

They are perfectly suited, they go through a rigorous interview process and have to meet the personal approval of the Davos crowd before they run.

Unconstrained greed is the problem. Greed by the lower class for welfare and ecologically unsustainable consumption. Greed by the rich for unsustainable wealth concentration. We had a golden age where consumption could increase ever more and nature was ripe for the raping and labour was valuable enough for the greed of the lower classes to be able to provide balance against the greed of the rich. That balance is gone, which has resulted in the rich owning government, and nature is tapped out.

Dr. Shark

Tue Apr 19 2011, 04:49AM

Registered Member #75 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 09:30AM
Location: Montana, USA
Posts: 711

So you probably don't believe in global warming either?

Grenadier wrote ...

So obama just made a speech [snip]
*puts on flameproof suit*

Steve Conner

Tue Apr 19 2011, 09:28AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Pinky's Brain wrote ...

We had a golden age where consumption could increase ever more and nature was ripe for the raping and labour was valuable enough for the greed of the lower classes to be able to provide balance against the greed of the rich. That balance is gone, which has resulted in the rich owning government, and nature is tapped out.

That pretty much sums up the problem. I blame science for curing a bunch of diseases and allowing the population to grow, accompanied by the construction of ever more effective nature-raping machinery.

Of course I am myself a scientist, and delighted to be not dead of plague. This shows the human capacity to believe two mutually exclusive things at once, as does bitching about climate change while driving a car, flying in a plane, owning a home, or even being alive, consuming resources and breathing out CO2.

The best environmentalist is a dead one, because that way his carbon footprint will be lower. To paraphrase the old 60s slogan: If you're alive, you're part of the problem.

Ash Small

Tue Apr 19 2011, 10:56AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

Dr. Shark wrote ...

So you probably don't believe in global warming either?

Grenadier wrote ...

So obama just made a speech [snip]
*puts on flameproof suit*

Personally, I think the author of that article is biased.....

James

Tue Apr 19 2011, 05:48PM

Registered Member #3610 Joined: Thu Jan 13 2011, 03:29AM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 506

Oh boy, I try to avoid politics all together but I'm stuck waiting for something so I'll chime in here. First I'll mention that I don't fall neatly into any of the usual buckets of conservative/liberal/democrat/republican as I think is true of most sensible people.

Firstly, the tax rate today, particularly on the upper class is the lowest it's ever been. Back in the 1950s which many anti-tax conservatives hearken back to, it was much higher in the top tier, although I don't have hard numbers.

Next, as has already been mentioned I think, millionaires don't create jobs. Companies don't hire people because they have money. CEOs don't take their multi-million dollar bonuses, rush out and hire a bunch of workers they don't need. They hire people because there is demand for the products and they need employees to make and sell them. Demand for products is created primarily by middle class consumers having money to buy them, so in the grand scheme of things, the middle class creates jobs, and the middle class is the one getting screwed the most all around. A problem we have right now is lack of liquidity. Companies have lots of money, but they're sitting on it. They won't hire people they don't need in hopes that people will spend money and create demand, but if demand increases they will hire people to cope with it.

Now I have nothing against the rich, but I agree that they can afford to pay a bit more. The rich are already rich, they can already afford whatever commodities they want, so making them a bit richer does not trickle down with any significance. Additionally, I hear a great deal of people spouting off "facts" that are simply incorrect. For example the tax increases beyond $250K of household income. A lot of people mistakenly believe that this applies to small business owners who's business takes in more than 250K a year, it doesn't. A lot more believe that if your income crosses this point that your tax on all of your income jumps up, it doesn't. If you make $260K a year, only that last $10K will be taxed higher. Now it's fine to disagree with a plan, but one should understand the plan first.

Anyway, the US national deficit is at a level so astronomical that most people cannot even really visualize it. There is no possible way to get out of it by cutting spending or raising taxes alone. Both will need to be done, and even then it would take a miracle.

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