The movie "Lincoln" two weeks too late

You are one sick puppy. ...Jim Thompson

And totally unknown by people who don't want to know, on the basis that Republicans can do no wrong.

A pile of money is the same as a pile of shovels, picks, and anything els e

, not if it's

Or any taxation at all. If you want to turn the USA into a tax-haven, you are going to have to find some other way of paying for stuff like roads and defence. Tax havens are typically very small, with very little infra-structure to pay for.

And US capital isn't so much hiding overseas as invested overseas, exploiting cheaper labour than it can find at home. When it's done it's job of building up China's economy until it can compete with the USA on both productivity and volume, it will presumably go off to Africa to find some more cheap labour to organise and train.

Jim has this bizarre idea that people who disagree with him are motivated by hate, rather than the rather more obvious fact that he's posting total nonsense.

A despicable lack of the right kind of ignorance? Or should I say the far-right kind of ignorance? But Jim's silly ideas are shared by so many of the right wing-nuts who post here that he probably counts as a middle of the road nitwit in the US.

But he does know an amazing number of things that ain't so.

A minority opinion. Lincoln didn't invent conscription, and it remained popular for quite some time.

That's the problem with federations. The greatest good for the greatest number leaves any number of minorities worse off than they might have been. At the moment the US is being run in a way that benefits the top 1% of the income distribution a lot more than it benefits anybody else.

It would make more sense to get excited about that than Lincoln's tolerance of conscription - he's been dead for a while now, while the fat cats are always with us, and as busy as ever cornering a disproportionate share of the cream. James Arthur thinks that they should get more, but he's a right-wing nitwit's right-wing nitwit.

Wow, 10 sigma past LaLa land.

Utterly different from the original.

?-)

ke

sks to borrow it for a year.  You loan it to Joe.

ster, finished more jobs.

.  So, you ask Joe for part of his added profit.  You split the benefit .

as he needed--pick, shovel, or other.  It's the same.  He pays you back , with interest.  That's your share.

se--more versatile.  It benefits everyone, amplifies productivity.  But , not if it's stuck overseas, hiding from double-taxation.

I meant the money, already taxed, would, if repatriated, be subject to additional US tax, at one of the world's highest rates. They're added, not compounded; 'tacked on' is perhaps a better phrasing, but awkward when trying for 'pithy'.

Repatriating adds another inefficiency. Compliance costs are obviously incurred in 1. foreign operations, 2. US tax planning, plus

1. in reconciling the optimum strategy between the two.

But, back up out of the weeds, whatever the hit, the perverse incentive quite obviously drives capital overseas--people go to great lengths to do it--and directs a lot of top-notch human creativity into totally unproductive channels.

Apple is, of course, the lodestar of tax innovation. "Think different."

ke

...

Two examples in one post:

"Tea bagger" is the same as calling someone a "ni....er." Both are hateful.

Calling people racist, who aren't, is hateful. And, insincere--actual racists don't mind being called racist. The slur isn't meant for them.

James Arthur

ike

I'm not a Republican, and I'm not planning on becoming one. But, I've spoken to lots, and met few good ones who called themselves that this last cycle. Most won.

But, I'm sure your sample is bigger and better, and that you know more about us all than we do. As always.

I can't decide which is more ignorant... miso or Slowman... both certainly are "standards" >:-} ...Jim Thompson

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It's not that they're ignorant, it's that they know so much that isn't so. (with apologies to the Gipper)

Like basic economics. miso doesn't think repatriating capital advantages us; bill thinks taking plus redistribution creates gain, rather than waste.

If we believed those, we'd be progs too.

Big surprise: people earning more money actually live better than those earning less. What is this world coming to?

And healthier as well. Slowman is an idiot. Don't troll-feed the idiot. ...Jim Thompson

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Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson claiming that anybody else is ignorant is a trifle ironic. One wonders which of the things he thinks to be true that ain't so, might have prompted that deluded claim, but this is certainly two more of them.

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But you still believe that the Republicans can do no wrong, and the Democrats are responsible for everything that goes wrong. You may not be a Republican, but you certainly act like part of the Republican propaganda machine.

hat this

So what? Election victory in the US is very likely to go to whoever can buy more television advertising, or have it bought for them. It says very little about civic responsibility or any other personal virtue.

Since I tend to look at population wide samples, and notice aspects of the statistics that you don't, I may well know more about it than you do - you suffer from particularly restrictive tunnel vision. I certainly don't claim to know more than you all do, as even you should be well aware, but when - for instance - josephkk claims that Al Jazeera is a British rag I do get to feel that I do know more than some of you.

n't like

ve

The quote is usually atrributed to Will Rogers

While James Arthur thinks that borrowing to pay for deficit funding stimulus spending is taking, and that deficit funded stimulus spending is waste, while letting a depression shut down a quarter of the economy and dismantle previously functional businesses isn't.

Not sharing James Arthur's particular brand of wilful ignorance is scarcely knowing stuff that ain't so, but James Arthur has been too rigorously brain-washed to be aware of this.

Probably not, but you would be slightly less ignorant reactionaries - you do have plenty of other misconceptions which also need work.

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was he needed--pick, shovel, or other.  It's the same.  He pays you ba ck, with interest.  That's your share.

else--more versatile.  It benefits everyone, amplifies productivity.  B ut, not if it's stuck overseas, hiding from double-taxation.

Unless there was a convenient tax loophole, as there often is. The headline US corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world but the proportion of US corporate profit paid out in corporate tax is relatively low

, but

Granting the nature of the insights on show, "taking the pith" is a better description.

Rubbish. People have been investing capital overseas as long as there have been countries with the military clout to ensure that the local robbers barons won't steal it. Tax breaks are a fairly minor motivation.

The founding tax evaders had the same basic idea back in 1776. They did use a different mechanism and exploited Radical Enlightenment propagandists - like Tom Paine - to put a liberal gloss on their merchantilist antics, but wrote a Moderate Enlightenment constitution to maintain their grip on the economy.

I hope that he meets Phil during one of his violent & psychotic rages.

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al...

Scarcely. Nobody has lynched a member of the Tea Party faction yet.

The Tea Party's political philosophy disadvantages Americans of African descent more often than it disadvantages people of northern European descent. The intent may not be racist, but the results are.

r isn't meant for

Obviously not. It's meant to call the attention of everybody else to the consequences of their behaviour, and discourage people from voting for them, in much the same way that you call me socialist - meaning communist - and proceed to claim that I support any number of moronic social programs that the communists worked themselves out of power by endorsing, despite the fact that European socialist tradition (which I do endorse) rejected that sort of inept elite-driven social engineering long before Lenin put it into practice in Russia.

This is a case of the deeply encrusted pot calling the kettle black.

In fact the reference was to the fact that top 5% of the US income distribution had seen it's income go up by 5% between 2010 and 2011, while the lower 80% of the distributions had seen their incomes remain stable or decline - mostly decline.

Cameo is almost as ill-informed as Jim Thompson.

Probably true. Jim Thompson isn't consistently or reliably ill- informed, though he does still get a lot of things wrong/

One of Jim's more persistent delusions is that people who disagree with him are idiots, rather than better informed than he is (which is no great achievement).

Ambiguous and implausible. Neither Phil nor I goes in for violent or psychotic rages. Phil Allison is easily provoked to intemperate language, but we've got no evidence that he breaks things when he is typing out his communications - and a keyboard would be unlikely to remain functional if exposed to psychotic violence.

Perhaps Michael Terrell's physical disabilities might make his own episodes of psychotic rage (if he were to suffer from them) less destructive, but I'm still more or less able-bodied, and I've no reason to suppose that Phil isn't either.