No, I think you might be missing a critical point. We are not talking about the leisure calss capitalist on the one hand and the sit at home welfare recipient on the other. First of all, sit at home welfare simply doesn’t exist anymore because lifetime benefits are capped at 60 months and second of all, we are talking about the distribution of wealth between capityal and LABOR not teh distribution fo welath between capital and folks taht sit on their ass.
Some of them sell us oil.
I think he meant productive labor as opposed to digging holes and filling them back up again. Of course capital makes us MORE productive but capital is usually seen as a productivity multiplier. It is the huge capital stock that helps makes American workers the msot productive workers int he world, its not JUST because we work that much harder or more efficiently than other workers. Noone is saying that capital should get NO returns.
Ina closed system this may be true but when your market is in the US and your production is in China, you are effectively improving the overall welfare of the WOLRD’S working class by moving jobs from the US to China and lowering the cost of products.
We are talking about increasing the top marginal rate by 4.6%. The sort of distortion you are talking about really requires significantly higher taxes.
Just FYI but I think Korea had somerthing pretty close to a command economy until just a couple of decades ago. Comapnies like Samsung and Hyundai made their fortunes with government projects and government directed development. There are entire cities surrounding Seoul that were built at the request of the government.
Agreed rent seeking is more accurately (although incompletely) described by you.
But rentseeking behaviour can often occur in the absence of government and regulation.
The ravages of unfettered capitalism are certain, corruption is not.
I agree with you. Most third world nations have noone to blame but their own leaders for their poverty.
Someone like Der Trihs might respond that we are accomplices in their poverty because we support and do business with these kleptocracies because we frankly don’t give a shit where we buy our oil and natural resources from.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand closed up 0.58% on Monday.
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Growing up in my mother’s store in the lower east side on Orchard Street, I knew a lot of orthodox Jews and none of them were named Kip or Travis.
Deficit spending is implicit in the Constitution. It even has a few things to say about our sovereign debt.
We also wouldn’t be here if Bush never cut taxes.
Of course the wars were not exactly pushed by the CATO institute but the same folks who carry water for the CATO institute also carried water for the wars and I think we agree the wars are a lorge part of why we are where we are.
He can read and do simple math, unlike the tea baggers.
I agree with you. I thought I was being ironic. I guess the irony doesn’t translate as well on the interweb.
And Western countries doubtlessly do some nasty shit. Like I said, it’s not like we’re all angels.
But cutting off trade and investment would be a hideous evil that would doom millions to poverty and death. It’s also nearly impossible, anyway.
For instance, oil. How’re you going to NOT buy oil from Saudi Arabia? the U.S. could, say, make efforts to import a greater percentage of its oil from Canada and Norway and places like that, but oil is essentially fungible; all you’d be doing is making other people buy Saudi oil instead of Canadian or Norwegian oil.
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Okay, so what happens if the GOP offers a plan that avoids said catastrophe and Great Depression? I mean, it’ll include a lot of other stuff he dislikes, but if it’s got that covered, then what does the went-without-saying principle dictate?
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Then he’s obliged to strongly consider it. But I haven’t seen one. You simply cannot tackle the U.S. deficit without either allowing some taxes to increase - tax hikes, letting cuts expire, whatever - or essentially ending entire sections of federal spending, which would cause economic catastrophe. There is no way around it. It’s math. Cuts here and there are not enough.
When did the GOP offer a deal that involved more taxes?
Obviously not. You had something taht you thought in your head and then the rest of us saw a statement about taxation. I was not the only person who responded to your idiotic statement with the observation that the statement was and idiotic statement about taxation. So, at the very least, it was not perfectly clear.
In a conversation about taxes it seems a bit odd to claim that your invitiation for people who think their taxes are too low can write check to teh Treasury was not about taxation. But at least you seem to be conceding that this is a stupid idea.
Like I said, I’m not the only one that thought you were talking about taxation.
Its how democracies work. If you don’t like it, come up with a new gform of government where the rich control everything… wait, that not a NEW form of government, we have actually tried that sort of thing in the past.
Well, he’s an idiot who thinks that saying this sort of shit is going to get Republicans to vote for him. Either that or he was using it as cover to hide the fact that he showed absolutely no leadership in December when he let the Republicans extend the bush tax cuts for another two years.
And right now we are not talking about cutting taxes or doing nothing, we are talking about choosing between tax increases and spending cuts and I don’t see how the sort of tax increases we are talking about are any more harmful than the sort of spending cuts we are talking about.
What so he can fold again when they take the econmy hostage over that issue as well?
I don’t care if it’s 60 months or 600. I pay the sit-at-home rich guy when he contributes something of value, and pay the sit-at-home poor guy when he contributes nothing of value. I was asked whether the former bothers me; it doesn’t; I supply the labor, he supplies the stuff, we split the result; what do I care whether he sits on his ass for five months or five years?
Now, if some other guy sits on his ass for five months or five years, and asks to split the result without supplying labor or stuff – you’re right, that’s a different discussion altogether – and one I mentioned only to emphasize why it doesn’t bother me to cut in a guy who actually supplies something of value: I’m already cutting in guys who supply nothing of value, so why not cut in a guy who makes it worth my while?
What do you want, then? They say that they will send the economy over the cliff if he doesn’t give in, your plan is for him to say “Fuck you, you haven’t got the guts to shoot!” You sure about that?
Sure I agree BUT… not to sound like a Republican, we do in fact have immense untapped resources in teh USA that can tide us over until the eggheads figure out how to achieve grid parity with wind solar and other renewables.
2/3 of our oil consumption is for transportation. 95% of our transportation is powered by oil. We should increase the cafe standards to improve national fuel efficiency. We should improve rail infrastructure to get more of our freight delivered by rail. It is a national security issue and an economic Achilles heel. We have effectively given oil exporting countries a lever on the welfare of our economy. They raise the price of oil high enough and they might as well put up toll booths on our interstates.
Second is industrial use for manufacturing, this accounts for about 25% of oil consumption. There is probably not much we can do about that
About 4% of oil is used to heat homes. If there was ever a shovel ready project it would be to subsidize brigning gas lines into every residential neighborhood in the USA. Sure you make people buy their own oil burning furnaces but you don’t have to make them pay for bringing the gas line from the street to their house.
It only accounts for 2% of oil consumption but we shouldn’t have any electricity powered by oil except in Hawaii.
We have enough natural gas to supply the world’s evnergy needs for at least a century. The problem is that gas is hard to transport so we can generally only use it where it is produced unless you liquify it, which increases the cost significantly.
Yeah I’m pretty sure. For the same reason I’m pretty sure that you don’t negotiate with hostage takers in other situations either. It encourages hostage taking and coercive behaviour.
And you don’t care how the results are split?
Noone… NOONE is saying that the idle rich deserve nothing for being born rich (I have not heard any calls for the nationalization of inherited wealth), we are saying that capital in general along with the representatives of capital (managers, CEOS. etc) are getting an increasingly large share of the results compared to times when America had a strong and growing middle class. A middle calss that was able to purchase and consume the products of all that labor and capital.
Of course I care. I know how much I’d value the stuff the rich guy would be contributing, he knows how much he’d value the labor I’m contributing, and the moral magic of consent kicks in whenever offer and acceptance meet.
How can folks with capital get so big a cut of the results, unless the labor in question truly is worth so little?
There is another option. Obama could just raise the debt limit himself.