Contribute? I employ 18 people, and provide them and their families salaries, bonuses, 401K, vacations, and health care. I pay their unemployment insurance, over half of their social security, and their workman's comp insurance. I pay income tax to the feds and to the state, several taxes to the city, and a bunch of "fees" to various governments. I design and sell and support products for medical research, transportation, semiconductor fab, all sorts of useful stuff. I and my company donate to lots of charities. I support bookkeepers, tax accountants, estate planners, and lawyers.
What do you contribute to society?
America lost the last election. We're past the tipping point: expect more class division, more racial separation, more poverty, more crime, economic nasties, a permanently unemployed underclass, more potholes.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser drivers and controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
And make a useful income out of it. Around here you are less constructive.
The richest 1% of America lost the last election. The remaining 99% won't do all that well, because they neglected to throw out enough Tea Party Republicans, but it was one small step towards getting your income inequality down, rather than boosting it some more.
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What would you expect? Your GINI coefficient - at 40.8% - is higher than Russia's at 40.1%. The United Kingdom's is depressingly high at
36%, and Australia isn't much better at 35.2%. France and Canada are a bit better at 32.65 and 32.7%, closely followed by the Dutch at 30.9%. Germany - at 28.3% - is probably the target you ought to aim at. Norway, Sweden and Denmark at 25.8%, 25% and 24.7% aren't doing any better - economically - than Germany, though they do seem to be very nice places to live.
If you persist in ripping off your working class and middle class citizens to make the top 1% even richer, you have to be promoting more crime. poverty and racial separation. You aren't spending enough on health and education to maintain the productivity of your working class - which would seem to be at least 80% of your population - and it's scarcely surprising that your economy isn't growing like it used to.
Somebody who could manage a bit of critical thinking might have been able to see that for himself, but you get your ideas on economics from the same sources as you get your ideas on climate change, and uncritically swallow the most implausible rubbish as long as it is being pushed by the right kind of right-wing nitwit.
is that markets aren't entirely rational, and goes on from there to ignore most modern economics. There are more constructive things to be done with stimulus money than to pay people to dig holes and then pay other people to fill them, but since the whole point of stimulus spending is to fool people into thinking that the economy is active, this - minimal - approach does work.
There are two problems with that, 1.) over 4 years and many trillions of dollars has not stimulated the economy. 2.) Most of the money has gone to dig and refill holes and cause other market dislocations, see corn for ethanol to add to motor fuel, and many other boondoggles, Solyndra is chump change compared to some of them.
designed to achieve, and does - in fact - achieve, what abundantly clear that James Arthur's ideological blinkers blind him to reality.
and seems to think that the Great Depression was some kind of salutary cold bath for the US economy, he's in no position to claim that anybody else hasn't studied basic economics. His whole position is based in demented right-wing cloud-cuckoo-land
Well what is your background in economics? You haven't shown anything yet, James is at least a successful entrepreneur at least once.
US economy has been fooled into growing at between 1% and 2% per year over the past couple of years of stimulus spending.
You mean in spite of stimulus mis-spending.
up-dated, but the neo-Keynesian synthesis still defines economic orthodoxy. As with anthropogenic global warming, there are "experts" around who will tell the extremely well-off whatever nonsense the well-off want to hear and are prepared to pay for, but only people with a severely impaired capacity for critical thinking take them seriously. James Arthur - unsurprisingly - is unwilling to believe in anthropogenic global warming, opting for the grand climatologist conspiracy theory instead.
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Real markets are; moreover to the extent that they are not, they cease to be markets, the stock exchanges are a classic example.
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people who couldn't be relied on to spend it, where it's less effective.
hungry or discontented, but ti would stimulate the wider economy.
Not really, as the money would only be dissipated as none of it would be used to improve productivity or bring new products to market.
started shrinking at about 6% per year. People would have been made unemployed, factories and businesses wopuld have been shut down and sold off for a few cents on the dollar, and the output and productivity would have gone through the floor, as they did in the Great Depression.
productivity? The few people left in employment would have been the most productive, and their bargaining position would have been weak, so their wages would have gone down, raising productivity per deflated dollar, and increasing the return on what capital investment could still be gainfully employed, but it would have been a very destructive way of "raising productivity".
What in the heck do think we have been doing? It is a replay including the stimulus spending, with (in comparison) a muted crash and lame slow "recovery" with much stimulus spending (just like the great depression) which is helping even less this time because is being pissed away on foolish non-growth-producing boondogles.
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but merely figments of James Arthur's brain-washed imagination.
The scheduled tax increases are not illusory, they are already statutory.
It would be a lot lower if it were shrinking at 6% per year. Business always complains that taxes are too high, and tells anybody silly enough to listen that any further increase will put them out of business. Sometimes they are telling the truth, but too many have cried wolf for too long for this to be taken seriously.
Not so, it was thwarted by pissing away too much on pie-in-the-sky liberal no-return programs (agw / green energy) and some on corporate welfare (corn ethanol).
Never happen. Look at the fraud costs for Medicare, Obamacare is Medicare on mega-steroids. The fraud will hit a trillion dollars annually and all add to the national debt.
Typical leftists, envies and covets his neighbor's success. I think I'll arrange for my Harley buddies to do a drive-by at Schoen's place every morning at 2AM ;-) ...Jim Thompson
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I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
is that markets aren't entirely rational, and goes on from there to ignore most modern economics. There are more constructive things to be done with stimulus money than to pay people to dig holes and then pay other people to fill them, but since the whole point of stimulus spending is to fool peopl e into thinking that the economy is active, this - minimal - approach does work.
The US economy started shrinking at 1.6% per quarter immediately after the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and only stopped shrinking after the stimulus package was put in place. Without the stimulus package it would have kept on shrinking at 6% per year (1.5% per quarter) as it did for the three years of the Great Depression. 1% to 2% growth per year isn't marvellous, but it's a lot better than -6%.
Your political system has an unfortunate tendency to treat all government expenditure as pork-barrels to be exploited for local political advantage. The real weakness of the stimulus program is that it hasn't put the money in the hands of people who can be relied on to spend it. If you can't even see that it has been doing it's job, there's not a lot of point in listening to you complaining that it hasn't done whatever job you think it ought to have been doing.
gned to achieve, and does - in fact - achieve, what abundantly clear that J ames Arthur's ideological blinkers blind him to reality.
d seems to think that the Great Depression was some kind of salutary cold b ath for the US economy, he's in no position to claim that anybody else hasn 't studied basic economics. His whole position is based in demented right-w ing cloud-cuckoo-land
Which doesn't stop him posting total nonsense about the economy. Deal with the argument, rather than making irrelevant appeals to - obviously - irrelevant pseudo-expertise.
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S economy has been fooled into growing at between 1% and 2% per year over t he past couple of years of stimulus spending.
The stimulus spending hasn't been rigorously targeted at the poor, who can be relied upon to spend every cent that they get - Paul Krugman (who, with a Nobel Prize in Economics, does look rather like an expert) has complained about this - and to tht extent it has been miss- spent. James Arthur's claim that it shouldn't have been spent at all is simple lunacy.
-dated, but the neo-Keynesian synthesis still defines economic orthodoxy. A s with anthropogenic global warming, there are "experts" around who will te ll the extremely well-off whatever nonsense the well-off want to hear and a re prepared to pay for, but only people with a severely impaired capacity f or critical thinking take them seriously. James Arthur - unsurprisingly - i s unwilling to believe in anthropogenic global warming, opting for the gran d climatologist conspiracy theory instead.
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How unfortunate that your economy is run by unreal markets. I suggest you retreat to some third world country where the economy consists entirely of real markets in real market squares. Your standard of living will decline substantially, but the economic reality you'll have to deal with will be simple enough for you to understand.
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ple who couldn't be relied on to spend it, where it's less effective.
hungry or discontented, but ti would stimulate the wider economy.
The wider economy is one of those irrational - unreal - markets th
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rted shrinking at about 6% per year. People would have been made unemployed , factories and businesses wopuld have been shut down and sold off for a fe w cents on the dollar, and the output and productivity would have gone thro ugh the floor, as they did in the Great Depression.
ity? The few people left in employment would have been the most productive, and their bargaining position would have been weak, so their wages would h ave gone down, raising productivity per deflated dollar, and increasing the return on what capital investment could still be gainfully employed, but i t would have been a very destructive way of "raising productivity".
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but merely figments of James Arthur's brain-washed imagination.
t would be a lot lower if it were shrinking at 6% per year. Business always complains that taxes are too high, and tells anybody silly enough to liste n that any further increase will put them out of business. Sometimes they a re telling the truth, but too many have cried wolf for too long for this to be taken seriously.
rted shrinking at about 6% per year. People would have been made unemployed , factories and businesses wopuld have been shut down and sold off for a fe w cents on the dollar, and the output and productivity would have gone thro ugh the floor, as they did in the Great Depression.
ity? The few people left in employment would have been the most productive, and their bargaining position would have been weak, so their wages would h ave gone down, raising productivity per deflated dollar, and increasing the return on what capital investment could still be gainfully employed, but i t would have been a very destructive way of "raising productivity".
Since you can't tell the difference between an economy shrinking at 6% per year, and an economy growing at between 1% and 2% per year, your opinions aren't to be taken seriously. The "much" stimulus spending during the Great Depression wasn't exactly large scale. Look at the numbers sometime - you will find them embarrassingly small.
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but merely figments of James Arthur's brain-washed imagination.
And don't seem to be crippling the economy.
t would be a lot lower if it were shrinking at 6% per year. Business always complains that taxes are too high, and tells anybody silly enough to liste n that any further increase will put them out of business. Sometimes they a re telling the truth, but too many have cried wolf for too long for this to be taken seriously.
They can't even toss out illegal immigrants, or at least not all that rapidly. It happens to be one of the local political issues. I'm a native-born citizen, so they can't toss me out at all - and they'd be mad if they did, because I'm spending the pensions that I earned in the UK in Australia, which doesn't help the UK economy (now) and does help the Australian economy.
It was the choice between that and a crater in the economic road big enough to accommodate three double-decker buses.
You see them in the UK when an old sewer under a road collapses. The Republican Party is channelling some remarkably antiquated and toxic economic delusions at the moment, and a pothole does have it's charms when compared with the alternative.
This is straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. The real fraud in US health care is that it costs half-as much again per head as the French and German systems which deliver universal health care of the same quality that the fully insured US citizen gets.
You spend roughly $1x10^12 on health care, at the moment, so it's hard to see where you get your trillion dollar fraud from - somebody is presumably creaming off the $300B that you wouldn't be spending if you system was as economical as the French, German or Dutch systems, or the $500 billion that you wouldn't be spending if you had to wait in line for non-urgent operations, like the inhabitants of the U.K.
And you are a raging statist, a welfare statist to be more accurate. Do you have fascist tendencies as well?
I tend to be near minarchist, the State (federal) has been given tasks to attend to and it is not taking care of them properly and meddling with a bunch of things that are NOT its job. It NEEDS correcting.
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Seems like your experience tends to be second hand and dealing with the worst cases primarily.
Whereas josephkk, who thinks that 1% to 2% per year economic growth is the same as a 6% per year shrinkage, is a model of well-informed sanity.
There is actually a very good case for heavily taxing energy derived from non-renewable resources, but the argument is way too complicated for josephkk to follow.
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