For Californicators

It=92s unbridled capitalism that can be dangerous, not the notion of capitalism.

The US government process isn=92t anywhere close to being socialism. The government operates as a socialistic democracy.

I personally wish Obama would just step out and let this latest crop of =93freedom=94 fighters step in with the caveat, if they don=92t fix things in two years just shut the f*** up and get the hell out.

With 65% of the federal budget consumed in entitlement spending, it=92s doubtful that much will change =85 too many tea bagger=92s sucking off the =93tit=94, along with a lot of other folks =85 including our boy =93jimmy= =94! haha!

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

Why?

not the notion of

You can break things in two years, but you can't fix much in two years. The long-term trend in the USA is to employ more and more well-paid useless government employees; have government absorb a bigger and bigger share of DDP; make less and import more; pass more and more laws and regulations; make it less and less interesting or affordable to have employees.

All that damage accumulates over the years. Get used to it.

One great improvement would be to eliminate income and business taxes and move to a national sales (sales, not VAT) tax. That's not going to happen.

John

...

Good point, I am guilty of conflating various economic models there.

That sounds a little closer to communism to me, but I suppose it's a bit of a sliding scale...

In theory you shouldn't have to be too rich to get started in capitalism -- especially today, when a lot of the economy revolves around "intellectual property" and you don't need anything more than a PC and an Internet connection to get started.

All these words are pretty "loaded" in that many people have a knee-jerk reaction to them as "bad," even though many of their tenants are found -- in varying degrees -- in all contemporary 1st-world economies.

I thought Cuba was pretty much finished with Castro's failing health as of a few years ago, but it looks like they have enough of a semblance of power transfer that it might be another decade or so.

---Joel

I don't think they believe that at all -- it's more that they figure that government should foricbly ensure that the carrot is being shared equally among the people, even though some people probably put a lot more effort into growing that carrot that others.

...this is why I think that -- even thoug it's clear the Republicans and Tea Partiers/Independents are going to gain a lot of seats next week -- in another two years it could easily flip-flop back to (close to) how it is now.

Yes, and sooner or later it has to fail.

The million dollar question, of course, is which jobs or benefits should we cut? I think this is generally more effective than tax hikes anyway...

---Joel

Well where would we be without monopoly legislation or controls on the likes of security trading. Greed will always win out without restrictions =85 or do you believe different?

Deficit spending has been US policy for quite sometime. We didn=92t dig this hole in two years. Check out when the US status changed from creditor to debtor nation. As a nation we=92ve ignored our fiscal responsibility for quite sometime. Now we have a population that is demanding entitlements that as a nation we can=92t afford.

I tend to agree ... but this trend didn't happen in two years.

My arguement is probably opposite your's .. I don't expect much to change regardless who's in office.

I want to see something a little bit more equitable ... a flat tax with no offset. That way everyone pays their fair share.

No, just slowly continue to degrade. Some of us (analog design engineers included!) will do OK, but a lot of worker-guy jobs are gone and probably won't come back.

John

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

Greed is universal, and not just among capitalists. But capitalists often build stuff to amass their empires; lefties don't.

Some modest regulation is reasonable to give the capitalism game some playing rules. Anti-trust, inside trading, anti-fraud, stuff like that.

We actually live in a post-capitalist society. The classis union villains, the "means of production" and "capital" itself, aren't as important as they were, and actually never were all that important. What's important is knowledge.

Certainly not. The inflection point was probably closer to 1950.

No disagreement. As long as the US electorate - the truly greedy party in this mess - continues to hire morons to go to Washington and do short-term thinking, things will continue downslope.

Do you want jobs, schools, industries, houses, health, or do you want fair?

John

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

The Free Market is the most brutal, merciless regulator there is. When you try for a "monopoly," someone will step in and compete, selling a better product for a lower price.

If you don't like "corporate greed," just don't buy their product. For example, I haven't bought a MICRO$~1 product in almost a decade.

You don't have that option when it comes to government/bureaucratic greed; you pay whether you like it or not.

Competition is good for the soul of a nation.

Personally, I'd rather see the "party of NO!" in power than the party of Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Thanks, Rich

good question.

believe me i've been paying more than my fair share for quite sometime. i'm one of the expendables according to obama ... not sure i'm after fair ... more like retaliation. (i know it's terrible, but it's how i feel).

i want to see the bastard that makes only 10K a year pay his share. he gets everything the feds have to offer me and more. but he doesn't pay a dime.

will a flat tax provide for the services you asked about? i think if setup correctly a flat tax system does stand a better shot than a federal sales tax.

ten

btw, if you're talking about microsoft ... who's really stepped in, apple, linux?

Joel Koltner wrote:

It's a nice theory. Problem is, the megacorp-friendly US Gov't will approve *any* merger these days and won't punish the monopolies/cartels when the megaliths use anti-competitive methods to crush the little guys. Ever see the 1975 movie "Rollerball" where single corporations control entire megalopolises?

Don't get me started on what a complete botch that has become with e.g. software patents as well as automatic and eternal copyright. Maybe SCOTUS will get that right one day. I'm not holding my breath.

It doesn't help that the NeoCon and NeoLiberal echo chambers purposely distort their definitions. It doesn't help that gov'ts which *don't* meet the definitions will **call** themselves by those names.

Yup. It's all in the details. Sloman talked about Germany, which is eating everyone else's lunch these days by striking a proper balance. ...and their not up to their asses in hock to China.

If you get tunnelvision on the individual, you'll miss the big picture. Like all forms of power, an infrastructure forms. (Mugabe's generals in Zimbabwe is another example.)

Bingo. I'm reminded how 3rd-party candidates in the USA aren't invited to the Red-/Blue-controlled Presidential "debates". In fact they are threatened with arrest

Four (of many) beauties about the sales tax:

1. It's totally and immediately visible

1. It's voluntary. If you don't want to pay tax this week, don't buy that TV or SUV. We could exempt basics, like reasonable food, rent, clothing. It should tax goods and services.

2. It's easy to collect: no forms, no CPAs, no lawyers involved.

1. It's charged on sales of Chinese imports just like domestic products. The corporate income tax kills US manufacturers but doesn't touch overseas companies. The income taxes also encourage businesses and zillionaires to domicile in the Bahamas, or at least stash their income there.

But liberals, and most economists, are so stupid they prefer "fair"

John

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

That is actually funny and not a trait of socialists at all. It is rampant consumerism that drives US households to ever higher levels of endebtedness. The same problem has reached the UK too. Credit was too easy with no sensible checks on ability to repay (after all banks could make money repackaging NINJA loans wrapped with gold foil as AAA CDOs). It all worked perfectly with bonuses galore until the music stopped.

Because the big guys with the money and resources can buy politicians and then drive prices up and labour costs down to below subsistence levels by forming monopolies and cartels. A spiral down to the lowest common denominator of bad practice is all too easy. That is actually what the original Liberal Free Traders fought for against Corn Laws of the vested interests of the grain merchants and major landowners.

You only have to look at the Victorian ironmasters or cotton mill owners in England to see what happens. Incidentally the same things that inspired Engels to sponsor Marx. A handful of mostly quakers stood up for and treated their employees fairly (something you were arguing against recently as if it was a weakness). Some of them are now global brands like Pilkingtons & Cadbury so they were doing something right.

Or closer to home you could look at Standard Oil

Given a chance the business model of annihilate all competition, get everyone hooked on your product and then raise prices through the roof works all too well.

You still have something of a problem explaining why most of the big increases in GDP spend occur during Republican Presidencies.

VAT is in effect a sales tax (producers get to reclaim VAT paid for raw materials and components). The admin in the intervening levels is a bit tedious, but otherwise people find all sorts of creative ways to move stuff around that are not sales. Cross border carousel fraud is still a problem in the EU particularly in certain countries.

Regards, Martin Brown

And there in lies the crux of the problem ...

The thing about a flat tax with no offset is you make 10k and the tax is 10% you pay your 1k. Make a bilzzion you pay your 10%.

No exclusions, no deductions.

Everybody living in the US benefits from things like the military, coast guard, national guard, etc... make people contribute their share.

What would be fair is to charge people for citizenship. Establish a minimum yearly income for US citizen member ship. If you can=92t make it you=92re not a citizen. If you make it but aren=92t intellectually competent or can't pass a logic test, you don=92t earn all the rights of citizens that are or can, such as voting and rights to long term entitlements. It's just a matter of access ... make this a tier'd system. The more stuff you want the harder you have to work or perform.

This is reform I could really get behind.

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

I disagree. Provided I have enough to live on comfortably I have no particular need of solid gold bath taps or mobile phone chassis nor would I want them. I strongly prefer health over wealth but this is because at university I knew someone fabulously wealthy but always poorly. YMMV

So you are no longer a pure unbridled capitalist then. Unbridled capitalism specialises in monopolies, fraud and insider trading. You can make far more money with no risk if you can manipulate the market. You only have to look at Madoff as a prime example - he fooled plenty of very hard nosed capitalists by promising unreasonable ROI.

Yes they were and they are. No-one is ever going to set up their own semicon fab line or deep ocean oil well now by starting in a garage.

A handful of guys with absolutely paradigm shifting new technologies might make it as a start up but even then it requires venture capital support and business angels to succeed (something America does much better than the UK where seedcorn money is very thin on the ground).

NB. The royalties for the monoclonal antibody patent (if the patent had been executed correctly) would have paid for all UK science research.

And problem solving or transferable skills. Who you know is still also very important at higher levels.

I could not agree more. And the Teapot Party pretty much exemplifies the danger of morons voting for charismatic populist morons who tell them what they want to hear. It is a very dangerous development quite reminiscent of Germany in the 1930's. I find the extreme hatred and polarisation of recent US politics very difficult to understand.

Short term thinking is all that Western politicians will ever do. Their planning horizon is no further away than the next election and in the US often the next political fund raiser. Japanese have a joke about it.

That is incidentally why AGW is such a problem. It won't really hurt any of us - the next generation and the ones after that will pay.

You set up a false dichotomy. But then you know that.

Regards, Martin Brown

They've been trying this since about 1913, and it's failed miserably - the bazillionaires just hide their income; they're the ones who bribe the lawsmakers to give them all the loopholes.

Just tax what they spend.

Cheers! Rich

things.http://google.com/search?tbs=nws:1&q=Fiorina+infection

Bootleggers. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Bullshit. Covet just means "desire." Remember, they were Divine Edicts from the God of Power, and it was a sin to want anything - you were just supposed to suffer in silence and take whatever the ones in power deigned to award you.

The ones they consistently break are "Thou shalt not steal", "Thou shalt not kill," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Thanks, Rich