OT: Trump: "China thinks we are dumb SOBs"

state plan. The majority of the states have their own

rate plus a rate based on your unemployment record. If

paying some serious dollars. Other wise, it is about 1% of

system (new employer vs old), etc.

me running my business, I should find one with a higher

profits, well, then time to scream bloody murder. No reason

some slub too dumb to keep his job. Unless of course, it

Ink futures.

What I always find fascinating about these USA politics threads is how resentful many Americans are of their politicians, government (including everything state, federal, presidential, etc.), taxes, etc.

And yet Americans are also often so very proud of their "democracy" and economic system - so much so that they like to force their systems onto other countries even if they have to flatten the place first.

To my understanding, "democracy" is about having a government of the people, for the people and by the people. If democracy works in a country, then you've got the government you asked for.

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to then say you have a great democratic system but a terrible government?

Or are there two distinct groups of Americans - those who think their country is a successful democracy, and those who think the government is so bad?

Or is it simply that I, as a non-American, simply don't understand?

I'm perplexed too.

Perhaps democracy in USA is like disk space: the more you have, the more you want, even if you have plenty of GiB already :-)

It's a little more complicated, but, basically, wealth redistribution isn't popular with those who produce it.

"The government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." --G.B. Shaw

-- Cheers, James Arthur

But who "produces" the wealth? Most people in any society work to "produce wealth", taken in a very general sense. Yet that wealth is very unevenly distributed - typically it is those who are already wealthy who get the lion's share (by owning companies). These are not the people that are producing the wealth.

The situation you have at the moment in the USA is that the people of below average means (the great majority of the population, since most wealth is in the top few percent) get very little government-controlled redistribution of wealth compared to other industrial countries. I can understand that the "haves" don't want to give to the "have nots", and therefore object to any moves by the government to redistribute wealth better. But do the "have nots" also dislike the government in the same way?

On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:21:12 -0600, Mark Walsh wrote: ...

See "Tea Party." ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Actually, these so called wealthy business owners are the only reason that any wealth is created. The companies where the less wealthy earn their living only exist because someone put their personal assets on the line to create and operate those companies.

And yes, the wealth created is very unevenly distributed. When times are good, I expect to get the lion's share as a return on both my time and my investment. Last year when times were tough, my employees consumed more wealth than they produced. I didn't get a paycheck last year, but I avoided laying off any employees. This was only partly because I'm a really nice guy. I retained some loyal, motivated, and very talented people who will produce much more than they consume in the future.

The wealth was very unevenly distributed, it came straight out of my pocket and went into theirs. I don't begrudge them a single penny. But this redistribution of wealth was my decision. It was based on a sound long term business strategy.

But when the government takes my wealth for redistribution to the "deserving", whether it's through some fuzzy headed notion of fairness or outright pandering by the politicians to buy votes, I go nuts. Thirty years ago, I owned the clothes on my back and has less than $100 in my pocket. America gave me the opportunity to achieve whatever my talents and drive were capable of. As much as I hate my taxes and the utter waste that they are squandered on, I really hate what is happening to the American dream. These notions of fairness are killing off the middle class and flattening it into a poorer, but "fairer" class. It doesn't seem to matter which party is in power, we see the promise of America being snuffed out. Short of taking up arms, I hope someone has a solution.

Mark Walsh

/ w

ing

nd

to

is

very

o

that

t o

re

e

oided

ce

ll

et

s

term

Back to the original topic. It's worst when the US government is redistributing wealth to the Chinese elite. China is not a free country, but we are free trading for the benefit of the top population, in the name of the bottom. If new tax/tariff creates a trade war, so be it. China is already at trade war to the US, only one sided.

/ w

ing

nd

to

is

very

o

that

t o

re

e

oided

ce

ll

et

s

term

years

hey

it

ty is

king

Thanks for the post

A question James may have failed to carefully consider.

Yes, and clearly worded.

The rules have also been crafted to maintain that system of uneven distribution with varying degrees of success in varying systems around the world. In the US, better so than in many others.

Jon

how

(including

and

onto

is

way?

Of course not. =20 The addict and the pusher despise each other in entirely different ways.

To the original topic. =A0It's worst when the US government is

I'm from Vermont, but I've lived in North Africa for 3 years and China for 2. Traveling around, especially to smaller town and villages, I see more evidence of "Redistribution" in the form of clean water projects, roads, schools and Health Care facilities than I do in poor, rural America. I'm not happy to say that.

My thumbnail sketch of the Chinese people is: Hardworking and Happy. And every time I walked along a trail or dirt road into some tiny village, people greeted me, and usually fed me. China is still So relieved to just have FOOD, especially the older people, who act much like the Depression survivors did in the USA when I was a kid in the

50's.. I could never leave my Mother-in-Law's house without a pile of food!

Reading the Chinese press (I used to do photos for the Shenzhen Daily) and talking to my Chinese friends on Skype, there is a lot of activity in combating corruption and high-flying Communist Party members. Shenzhen, near where I lived: The Mayor is in jail for corruption. The Fire Chief is in jail for taking bribes.

The Chinese people are VERY forthright with their ideas and their complaints! What country had over 100 instances of (Government statement) "Serious Civil Unrest"?? Where Police stations were attacked by a mob, Police cars overturned, etc? The USA? Did I miss that? No, China.

The Chinese people are changing China, and they will keep on changing it. It may not be "Democratic", but the rate of change is just as fast or faster!

Regards, Terry King ..On the Red Sea at KAUST.edu.sa snipped-for-privacy@terryking.us

(Okay, a longer answer to your question, specifically about the situation in America...)

We're not a democracy (at least we weren't supposed to be)--that's nothing more than mob rule. We're a constitutional, representative republic.

The idea was that wise statesmen, chosen by the People for their honesty and wisdom, do what's good for the country, constrained by certain rules (the Constitution). That's been short-circuited; the Constitution is by the board. Now we have politicians, simply buying as many votes as they possibly can, by taking and recklessly re- dispensing other peoples' money.

Though fewer and fewer people (roughly 1/4th) pay any federal tax at all, and federal benefits promised wend ever higher--well beyond our ability to ever pay them--those receiving federal benefits (> 1/2 the population) are more and more convinced it's not enough--that they're being cheated.

You're witnessing a classless society reduced to class warfare, between those who contribute and those who don't, instituted by the Democrats. (Republicans have their problems, but the envy strategy is the operative one today, promoted by the President.)

An extremely productive people, we've been able to grow wealthy even carrying quite a large unproductive load (a historically impossible one). But, it's growing faster than productivity, a heavy burden. And now, those carrying it are balking, teetering backwards, like GM did before it failed.

It's a battle between zero-order thinking ("poor people exist, so we must give them money") and higher-order thinkers ("why are they poor, what's causing that?", "what makes that better?", and "how do we help

*them* make themselves better?").

Zero-order types are qualitative. They don't and can't do numbers, don't test their theories, and can't--they don't get it. And the results are ruinous.

Example: we've now spent over $15.9T on Johnson's "War On Poverty" since he declared it in the 1960's.[1] That's more than the entire national debt--more than the time integral of *all* our deficits since independence--yet it's only increased all the things it was made to cure. It didn't work.[2] And, Mr. Obama has the answer: we're not spending enough.

[1]

-Poor "Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, government has spent $15.9 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dol=ADlars) on means-tested welfare."

[2] "If total means-tested welfare spending were simply converted into cash benefits, the sum would be nearly four times the amount needed to raise the income of all poor families above the official poverty line." --ibid

Demagogues, and those who don't understand how value is created (how products, markets, & companies work, taxes, the wealth of nations, etc.) blame a variety of strawmen; their theory is "luck and unfair advantage"; their cure is redistribution.

In their possibly heart-felt but misplaced zeal to punish their imagined enemies, the Administration's applying massive damping and dynamic loss terms (regulation, and tax, respectively) to all businesses, debasing / destroying the very fount source of our communal success, of the American dream. That kills jobs, and drives them offshore.

Cast aside the rhetoric, and that's the philosophical crisis, what's behind things. And, long out of money, ever deeper in debt, and nearly unable to borrow more--a society driven literally to ruin funding these zero-order entitlement / prosperity theories--a day of reckoning looms near, increasing the urgency of the debate.

Mr. Obama's solution?

Spend more. And, for good measure, punish people who produce.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

"Whatever a politician's talking about, he's talking about money."

Thank you for your explanations - it sheds a little light on how you (and, I think, a fair number of Americans) view the USA. It is not always easy for Europeans to understand this way of thinking - especially for those of us living in more socialist countries such as Norway.

I used the term "democracy" in a very rough sense. A representative democracy (or representative republic) is one step removed from the direct vote-on-issues democracy of modern Switzerland or ancient Athens, but it is still a democracy - the general public vote on how their country is to be run.

This sounds like you don't think your country's democracy works very well. That's certainly how it looks to me too, on the outside. To my mind, the USA has for years had a number of fundamental failings in its election systems (at least for the presidential elections, which are the ones that get the most international attention). Some of the principles of European democracy which are missing in the USA are anonymity (USA insists on dividing themselves into Democrates and Republicans), fairness (it doesn't really matter how you decide who can vote, but the rules should be the same across the country), equal weighting (votes for people in "safe" states are effectively meaningless, while those in "swing" states have far more real influence), and free voting on the day (you need a total ban of publication of all results, prognosis, predictions, etc., from the minute the first voting station opens, to the minute the last station closes).

It certainly sounds like something is unfair somewhere. Of course, /any/ tax system is going to sound unfair to somebody!

I can't really comment so much about the rest of your post - your system is, I think, too different from the way of life over here for direct comparisons to be relevant. And while I have no doubt that our system is better in many ways, I have no idea how the USA could be changed for the better - even if Americans also think that it is better.

It was sarcasm, wasn't it?

--
Andrew

Yup.

"The ensuing retaliatory tariffs by U.S. trading partners reduced American exports and imports by more than half and contributed to the severity of the Great Depression".

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Hard to say.

Proposed tariffs that are levied on the carbon content of imports, if congruent to costs of domestic carbon licensing (that would mean that US citizens pay the same for the carbon emitted in what they buy, regardless of where it happens.)

Under that scenario, the World Trade Organization whose job it is to police trade policies, published a study a few years ago stating that such carbon tariffs would pass muster and would be legal under current international-trading rules.

See this testimony to Congress:

So tm's comment about designing this around environmental costs, targeted at carbon tariffs specifically, could work technically within existing international law, it seems.

Jon

Whether it would be good, is a question for economists, I suppose. ;)

Jon

Keep in mind that US CO2 emissions are about 4x per capita of Chinese emissions..

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com