Dude. You have to stop going here. I’m not just picking on you, but it seems that many people have it in for the free market because they sense that they are being blamed for their own problems. That’s not correct.
If I may start with a quote from the dictionary:
blame: “*a reproach for some lapse or misdeed *”
responsibility: “*a form of trustworthiness; the trait of being answerable to someone for something or being responsible for one’s conduct *” or perhaps “the proper sphere or extent of your activities”
My point is that the market does not blame you for any failures. It simply places the responsibility for your successes on you. There is a difference.
But we are only stuck here because you (and when I say you, I don’t mean you only, I mean you liberals <acknowledgingn that the term is not as useful as I’d like>) are insisting on defining the “problem” is such inflamatory terms.
In which you paint my position as having some religious context or overtones. It had none. I, in fact, said that discussing whether to have a tax cut or a tax increase were perfectly valid lines of discussion. You then interpreted that as shutting down discussion of tax cuts.
Inflamatory.
Right, and using words like attack are not inflamatory.
I’m sorry, jshore, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t run around claiming that economic activity which does not involve force is some sort of attack or war, and then cry fowl when conservatives call you on it.
Not at all. You enact policies which allow as many people as possible the freedom to create wealth. Then you discuss how those resources might be used without force to solve various problems.
Seriously, have you ever suggested a single solution to any of the problems you harp about that does not involve massive new taxes? Even a single one? I’m not claiming that taxes are evil, but you seem to believe “Is it the will of God that the income tax be [increased] in this way” as it were.
Ok, let’s hear one simgle suggestion that does not involve massive tax increases on this issue. Just one. Right now I am not even requiring that it be reasonable or have a good chance of working. If you can offer even one suggestion for making our society more egalitarian without massive taxes, I’m willing to listen.
Yes, Sam, but you are missing the point which is that right now the government is using the regressive social security taxes to pay part of government operations outside of social security. Now, you may be right that down the road, government will wake up and recognize that this is unsustainable (at least once there isn’t the surplus coming out of S.S. anymore) and that income taxes must be raised…by that time significantly, given how much will have to be paid back to the S.S. trust fund. But then, why should we have cut income taxes in the first place? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the income taxes in place now so we don’t just dig a deeper hole?
And, I am not so confident that the solution won’t involve cuts to social security, e.g. by increasing the retirement age or decreasing benefits…in which case, we will have had the net effect of taking money collected regressively through payroll taxes and using it to pay what was supposed to be paid with more progressively collecte income taxes.
Bush’s short-sighted policies of cutting taxes primarily on the wealthy is exactly what is pushing us in the direction you speak of where we will have heavily-taxed working people paying the burden in the future.
P.S. - In my opinion, many proponents of means-testing social security are suggesting this as a sort-of “divide and conquer” approach. I.e., they know that cutting social security is very unpopular now because everyone gets it, so they want to turn it into a purely-for-the-poor program so they can go after it like they do the social safety net programs. And, social security was never supposed to be purely an anti-poverty program on the one hand or purely a pension plan on the other where you pay in to your own account and then get the money back. It is sort of a hybrid between the two and I think the hybrid approach is a reasonable one. And, it does necessarily involve some intergenerational transfer both because the early recipients got more in than they paid out and because society has grown steadily wealthier over time.
Well, in fact, the Canadian suit against the US was still in arbitration, but the US suit against Canada haaad resulted in Canada being fined something like 15 million if I recall.
Look, this is certainly an issue. A treaty, encompassing a very new type of international law, signed a handful of years ago is still being wrangled over by the lawyers. The chapter in question does not amount to a repeal of environmental laws. If some companies’ lawyers are filing law suits which amount to that, we will have to interpret the treaties or even modify them to prevent that. It is certainly nothing to panic over, nor should we call for “never putting anything like that in any other treaties”.
Well, now this seems to go too far. Are you actually saying that suing governments over environmental laws should be outlawed in all cases? Certainly you can’t be saying that.
Well, perhaps you are saying that.
Of course not. However, it is somewhat misleading to take a quote from the administration about those tax cuts and imply that they meant it about the entire tax structure. Which is what your continual harping on them does.
Exactly. And there is much reasoned debate that we can have on this issue. But when you use inflamatory language and hyperbole to make the point, I call it class warfare. Notice that in those other threads, I used the term very lightly. Because we had reasoned debates on these issues.
No, not quite. I’m simply saying that considering social security seperately is not entirely out of bounds. I did not mean to imply that it has to be considered seperately. In fact, I think it cannot be ignored, as I indicated in those other threads.
I have not seen a good debunking of the 201X date. Can you link to such a thing? My understanding was that the 201X date was linked to population aging projections. Did I mis something?
I am saying that, say, a Canadian company should not be able to sue the U.S. government (or the California state government) claiming lost revenues because of impacts to sales of their products due to environmental laws. And, vice versa.
I lost you…What quite am I taking from the administration about those tax cuts? My point is that whenever the Democrats try to discuss how much of the cuts goes to who or anything of this sort, it is immediately derided as “class warfare”.
Well, I may get a bit carried away in the frustration of the apparent failure of people to see how this whole taxation thing is working but I hardly think my language is that inflammatory…After all, the “class warfare” terminology was initially used by the Bush side of the argument.
And yet, you have repeatedly made statements about the poor not paying taxes and stuff which are manifestly untrue unless you are ignoring social security (and all the state and local taxes that also tend to be regressive).
Well, this is sort of a chicken-and-egg argument. I would say that I am resorting to “inflammatory terms” only out of frustration at having the argument phrased in ways that does not even appear to allow questioning of basic issues involving trade policy and taxation policy…Namely: Who are those who are advocating the policy choices that are made? Who are the winners and losers? What other policy choice might exist?
Yes, but statements like “enact policies which allow as many people as possible the freedom to create wealth” are basically “motherhood statements”. I.e., anyone will claim that their policies do this and it comes down to such things as whether you believe in supply-side economics (which is often more religious belief than scientifically based, as I understand it) . In practice, especially under the current administration (although the Clinton Administration is certainly not without fault too), this has seemed to mean that one enacts policies that seem to align with and benefit certain subgroups like multinational corporations and the wealthy. What I am trying to get at is the question of whether these policies are automatically the best policies.
Well, I disagree that I have talked of massive new taxes. The reason we are focussing on taxes is only because those on our side of the issue are necessarily in a reactive mode since the Congress and Presidency are in Republican hands and what we are getting is massive tax cuts going in large part to the very wealthy. We are simply arguing that these are in fact counterproductive given what has happened in terms of inequality in our society (as well as being fiscally irresponsible). Hell, we aren’t even talking about what might be done to stop the growth of inequality, let alone reduce it. We are stuck on just trying (so far unsuccessfully) to prevent policies that will likely lead to the acceleration of this growth!
That said, I think there are some ideas out there concerning what might be done to reduce (or slow the increase of) inequality. As I have mentioned before, this book “The Winner-Take-All Society” discusses some. But, at this point, it is kind of premature to be talking about taking constructive steps in this direction when we are having enough trouble just trying to stop destructive steps.
Well, in most or many cases, sure. And if there are only 2 cases in court since the passing of NAFTA, and if the outcome of those cases is dubious, then I still don’t see a reason to panic.
The quote you keep harping about where the administration claimed that the biggest percentage cuts went to the poor instead of the rich. I think I am bring too much information from other threads in here. Sorry if I am.
And my point is that whenever Democrats try to discuss such things, the invariably do so in an inflamatory and “class warfare” manner. Having said that, I will admit that liberals get painted over broadly with that brush.
The inflammatory part is your assumption that all wealth is some sort of public trust. You don’t see it as inflamatory, but it is to those of us who believe that our lives and wealth belongs to us individually.
But this is not the case either. The times we have gotten into this, we have discovered that the federal tax system is anything but regressive. Each and every time, you have claimed that the State taxes are on the whole regressive. More than that, you have claimed that they are regressive enough to make up for and even reverse the progressivity of the federal tax system. However, you have consistently failed to prove this. I have never made much out of it because I acknowledge that proving the effects of the State tax structure either way is incredibly difficult. Especially for this forum. However, you still need to give some sort of evidence if you are going to rely on this point for your position. Unless things have changed, Nevada, for instance does not have a sales or income tax. I’d call that pretty progressive. Clearly, they are not the norm. However, you at least could show that States collect enough taxes to even be able to reverse the trend of progressivity in the federal system. Even assuming massive regressive tax structures int he States, do they collect enough taxes to reverse the trend?
Thanks very much for the link. However, it assumes that the Social Security system has some sort of trust fund. This is odd, in my opinion. That trust fund is simply IOUs from the general fund. Paying those IOUs back will take a greater and greater amounts of money from the general fund starting in 2017. That is, the general fund will loose the income from the SS surplus investments, and have to start paying money out in the form of interest.
If you are going to say that payroll taxes must be considered taxes just like all othe taxes (which I can probably agree with), then you need to agree IMHO that Social Security expenditures are in fact expenditures.
Fair enough. You have not actually suggested that we have to have large new taxes. However, you also never seem able to acknowledge that other options might be available. Somehow, you never seem able to acknowledge that individuals are entitled to their own wealth.
You and I seem to go round and round on this. Perhaps I should stop taunting you and avoid hijacking another thread before we get parodied again.
I just had an odd thougt. What if we could come up with terms for both sides to use that were not so segragationist or inflamatory.
How about this for a start. I propose that we both agree that 1/2 of a person’s income should be off limits for government confiscation. Assuming the person earned the money without the use of fraud or force, 1/2 of it should be unrevocably his.
In exchange, I propose that the other half is completely up for grabs in terms of social engineering, wealth redistribution or anything else as long as we also pay for defence and the justice system with it.
Now, we can argue about whether 1/2 and 1/2 is enough in either direction. We can argue about what constitutes force or fraud. We can also argue about which social engineering programs are more worthy. But we can also drop the warfare context. You don’t have to keep saying that the rich are ripping of the poor in regards the 1/2 of their wealth they get to keep, and I can stop offering analogies to theft regarding the 1/2 that the government can take.
Would some such proposal help reduce the flames? Should this be its own thread?
I think we should eat the unemployed (after we take whatever useful organs they have and give them to the employed people). We eat them when they run out of savings and have nothing left to offer consumer America. Eating them would lower the costs of beef and chicken because these manufacturers would be competing against the ever increasing supply of unemployed people. And if you thought you would get eaten if you lost your job, you would save more money, which helps the banking system and you would work harder and for less pay! Which would make businesses happy, which would make all the employed freetraders here happy. See, there’s a creative solution for everything…
Ha! It doesn’t seem like there is any other way to get you and your ilk to look at all sides of the issue. Let me again try to summarize my points:
As I’ve said before, I’m not religiously against outsourcing or productivity enhancements {that lead to lower pricing} AS LONG AS THESE LOST JOBS ARE BEING REPLACED BY EQUAL OR BETTER JOBS. Problem is, that isn’t happening. A country with too many marginal or unemployed people is not going to be a strong country.
Therefore, we have an excess of marginally employed or unemployed people that need some kind of serious help in fitting into this new economic paradigm. That help doesn’t exist right now and the new industry that people are supposed to be able to fit into doesn’t seem to exist either. Furthermore, it SEEMS that if we continue on the trail of ever increasing outsourcing and productivity improvement, that more and more people will be added to the marginally/unemployed groups.
IMO, the government, which sets economic and social policy for us, has been happy to allow unrestricted outsourcing and productivity improvement because of the benefits we have reaped BUT it has not adequately addressed what happens to people caught up in that web nor how to best help them.
btw: I tired to make the above short so Pervert doesn’t have to waste a lot of brain cycles parsing too many individual thoughts.
How about answering a simple question then. If you want the jobs replaced, how fast does it have to happen? You keep saying that it isn’t happening, but it is in some cases. You also keep saying that we have an excess of unemployed people, but even your own conspiracy driven numbers don’t show that.
How about this for short? You are wrong. If not in each and every premise on which your thesis is based, then on the majority of them.
Sheese. Why does everyone have to keep repeating the same thing over and over for you? We went through the BLS stuff already. We know that approximately 3 million jobs have been lost in the last 3 years through outsourcing, recession and productivity gains and have not been replaced by EQUAL OR BETTER jobs. Why can’t you retain what has gone before??? Go back and read what has gone before! Do me a favor and don’t reply to my posts.
As to how fast does job replacement happen - ideally within 6 months of a job being lost.
iamme99, you list a number of problems you perceive and yet you do not propose any remedies. Just ranting about how bad you think things are is meaningless. especially considering things are worse in pretty much any other place in the world. If you tell us what remedies you propose I can tell you my opinion. It would be helpful if you explain why you think the remedies you propose will work, why you think they will not have other negative effects, examples of countries who have tried them with good results and citations of expert economists who have praised such measures. All that will go a long way in advancing the debate. If you just want to rant we have a forum for that at the end of the hall, on the right hand side.
Reports have suggested that < 300000 jobs have been off-shored. Fine, let us ban out-sourcing and get those jobs back (thus completely ignoring the possibility that companies and industries can fold down and lay off thousands as a result). Who do you blame for the remaining 90% of the jobs lost and how are we going to legislate and get them back? Please let me know.
Well, because you keep missing the point. Let me spell it out.
We lost 3 million jobs in 3 years.
So what?
I’m sorry, but 3 million jobs in this economy is simply not so earth shattering that we need to restructure society to take care of it. I know it sounds like a huge number, but in an economy the size of the United States it simply is not. All the hand wringing and politician mongering you are talking about is just that. Chicken little fear mongering with very little basis in facts.
So, go ahead and have your littel rant about the end of the American dream. I’ll stop responding to you and just go on living that dream.
I again addressed the problems as I see them a few posts back in reply to your so-called “stupid” post of mine. I have recommended solutions here and in other similar threads on SDMB. But you don’t like them because you feel they threaten your perceived “freedom” of paying the lowest possible price for anything. Let’s be honest - it doesn’t matter what is proposed, what is cited, it’s clear that you don’t agree there is a problem, that everything is just fine and dandy right now, that everything will work out in the end. I don’t agree with that viewpoint. I have provided cites where others also acknowledge that there are serious problems. Furthermore, I don’t make any promises that what I have proposed will work. And it is simply not fair to ask people to continually rehash and rephrase what has gone before. The record exists, go back and look it.
And, outsourcing is a small piece of the 3 million jobs, < 10%. I am still waiting for iamme99’s solution to getting back the remaining 90% of the lost jobs.
I agree that if the 300k number is correct, it isn’t that big a number. I posted a cite here or in the other thread on unemployment that said there are those who study these things who think the number might be a lot higher. Whatever. Although offshoring is a growing problem, it appears from the articles Businessweek ran last week (also previously cited), that the real issue is productivity increases. If productivity gains keep accumulating as they are predicted to do so, then more and more people are going to lose their jobs. A number of people like to throw historical examples around here as a justification for not needing to worry about what is happening now. But by historical standards, we are far behind normal job creation based on where we are relative to the last recession we were in. Therefore, something has changed. Which means that maybe we need to look at doing something different than was done before, so we can stop the apparently ever increasing job bleed.
The possible solutions MIGHT include putting restrictions on outsourcing, requiring corporations to replace every outsourced job with an equivalent domestic job, taxing corporations more to provide for training for ALL displaced workers (because of both outsourcing and automation acceleration), not just manufacturing jobs lost, taxing wealthy people more to provide training and/or support for the white collar unemployed and a whole host of other possibilities.
I will again repeat what has gone before by again contending that there is both a revenue and social cost to people being unemployed. The more that are unemployed, the more cost. Whether you or anyone else agrees or disagrees that there is a problem, the reality is that there are a LOT of articles being written about job loss in the media. It is one of the major issues in the upcoming election. Politicians ARE going to address this issue because a lot of their constituents want them to do “something”. They are not simply going to be able to turn their backs on this issue as they have done in the past. The only open question is WHAT will they do?
Why not simply federalize all business and put them all under government control? I mean, if you are going to force them to hire some useless person for every job displaced through either outsourcing or automation, tax them for training of people, etc…why not just put them entirely under government control? Seems thats where you are headed.
Weren’t these kinds of ‘reforms’ tried somewhere in the past? Its on the tip of my tongue…
