His additional income he created by himself.
He’ll be rich and happy.
You’re probably not in the same place thus you can’t understand. He probably should have say back and done nothing. Would you be happy then? Likely not.
Funny how Hyde thinks “capitalism” was invented c. 1800. You know what happened in the period Hyde is talking about, that actually drove prosperity?
Technological advancement, the development of fossil fuels, and imperialism. Neither elitist capitalism in the sense practiced by Romney, nor Hyde’s “efficient allocation of resources” really had much to do with it–and they’re not even the same thing.
I’m insulted on behalf of the Stalinists who dragged an agrarian economy kicking and screaming into an industrial society and a military superpower. Or I would be, if your rhetoric had any basis in empiricism or relation to reality.
Actually, a society with nothing but capitalists would be hilariously stagnant. What you want are engineers, natural resources, and frankly, government subsidy here and there. Real capitalists know this, that’s why they make the big bucks. 
Man, I thought you were smart. Evil, but smart. It’s sad to see someone I sorta halfway respected exposed as a looney.
As any *true *self-made man will tell you, the first million is always the hardest. Once you have money, it’s a lot easier to make more of it.
Look, I don’t resent Romney for being rich. I just don’t think that his wealth is any special achievement. You tie a rich donkey to a post, and eventually, it’ll get richer.
I see Romney as more of a post than a donkey, but maybe that’s just me.
I really don’t understand this obsession with brothels.
Big buildings or even whole blocks with lots of people working there for just one thing. Married men risking their families and everything. Their reputations, money and even lives.
I mean seriously, I’ve tasted broth and it’s really not that special.
Ah, Wall Street.
He used his line-item veto to nullify key provisions of it.
The stupid and weak like Romney?
Ah yes, prosperity and happiness.
It seems you aren’t even familiar with the apologists for your religion. Disappointing.
Then there’s this entire chapter.
At the behest of socialists and against continued protestations from capitalists.
How is Mitt Romney different in this regard? Or has he recently come out against huge subsidies for agribusiness?
Seriously, explain the difference to me between Romney and Obama in their willingness to hand out big bucks and regulatory breaks to businesses with lobbying dollars. When has Romney even indicated he would be different in this regard? Granted, he takes few strong stances on anything, but if he’d come out against yearly truckfuls of money for the corn industry I think I’d have heard of it by now.
Hey Martin, don’t you know that you’re supposed to use smiley faces when you’re making jokes so people don’t take you seriously?
Martin,
My problem is not with Capitalism, it’s with Corporatism (no, that’s not a new term), which is the economic system that has been in place in the United States since the election of Ronald Reagan.
You might get another perspective from this page.
Are you saying that Bain’s goal at Staples (and at other companies they took over) was an increase in efficiency and productivity.
Because if you are you are making a serious accusation that Romney was not acting in the best interests of his investors and of Bain. Simply put, Romney’s goal and duty was to get the company in whatever shape was necessary to sell it off for the maximum profit. If that involved making it more efficient, fine. If that involved laying off critical staff to make the balance sheet look better, fine also. It was no concern of Bain’s if the company lived or died after they sold it, thus the ones that went bankrupt.
I personally benefited from this nonsense. When AT&T split up they offered an incredibly generous buyout so that Bob Allen could get rid of Lucent in an IPO, and reducing headcount was a part of this. About 1/3 of my center left (we had plenty of funding) including my entire management chain. And it was all done in just a few weeks. I strongly suspect layoffs due to Romney company care were more about the bottom line than about efficiency. Remember, they got their fees no matter what.
BTW I’m not attacking Romney for this. That was his duty. What I can say is that this experience is exactly the opposite of what we need in a President. A President needs to think long term, not about the next budget. A President has to think about all the people, not the bottom line. Companies send jobs overseas without worrying about the social cost, unlike polluting where we at least now don’t let them dump sludge into the rivers because it is cheaper.
In many cases sending jobs to China would still make sense, but they should pay for the cost to the community of the people they fired. That would let them make a more accurate decision.
I know all about lay offs - I’ve done some, and been through many (even if I never got dinged.) If the revenue doesn’t support the headcount, they are absolutely necessary. When companies combine and there are redundancies they are also. If processes are changed and you need fewer people, they are necessary also. But I don’t recall ever seeing any really for efficiency. Sure, the CEO gives that as a reason, but, like the HP one, it is really about making the bottom line look better and jacking up the stock price.
So let’s return Romney to what he is really good at - making money for his Bain investors. He’d suck as president. Who was the last truly successful business man president? Herbert Hoover. (If you want to claim Jimmy Carter you can have him.) Bush junior was a flop in business, so I don’t count him, but you can have him also. So enough of this naive Adam Smith stuff - we are well beyond the 18th century, and some of us know how business really works.
Agribusiness is a poor example. Mitt has said he wouldn’t have done the auto bailouts for example, which I think were very clearly about supporting union workers and were not about doing what was best for America or Americans at large.
Agribusiness is a poor example because, and very unfortunately, it is politically untouchable. They have powerful Senators in both parties and they have interests in enough red and blue and swing states that it’s very difficult for any politician to stand against agricultural subsidies in their entirety. The concept of maintaining a consistent food supply is a valid government interference in the market, but of course agricultural subsidies go beyond that and that is where they are inappropriate. But the reason I think agribusiness is a poor example is because every President has approved of the agribusiness subsidies, I don’t expect any President to actually be able to significantly change much of anything in four years. They might be able to change a little bit in a full 8 years but then just barely. But what I would hope from Romney is we don’t get more disastrous policies like bailouts of unproductive manufacturing concerns and overinvestment in poorly operated green energy companies (in total dollars those weren’t really all that important, but just signal the sort of naivete and foolishness that was representative of the Obama administration when it came to the economy.)
Capitalists are interested in maximizing return on capital.
Venture capital sometimes implodes otherwise good businesses, from my readings about Bain I feel more often than most VC firms Bain actually left struggling firms in better shape than they found them when they sold them off. A VC isn’t responsible for what happens once they no longer own the company. However, one of the great things about capitalism is it more efficiently distributes capital, and to that ends even when VCs essentially implode a company, that’s not necessarily bad. A poorly performing company represents a large amount of capital improperly deployed, imploding it at a profit can be thought of as the equivalent of blowing up a beaver dam to restore water flow.
I’m not entirely defending all VC activity, Bain certainly was engaged in some of what I’d call LBO shop behavior which often is indicative of pure corporate raiderism.
Companies should not keep jobs here if it does not make economic sense, expecting them to or trying to force them to is foolish and destructive.
Why? It’s not the job of private industry to pay for vaguely defined “costs to the community” as a consequence of their business decisions. When a company commits a tort or despoils common goods like the environment or the road system they owe the community compensation. But there is no common right to be employed or have a certain number of employed persons in a community. This foolish line of thinking would justify a competitive company that comes into a region and puts an uncompetitive company out of business being forced to pay for the people whose jobs they have destroyed. That’s against the interests of society as it would lead to a grossly inefficient economic system.
Due to certain performance metrics used to determine CEO pay you do have companies that make short-term decisions to maximize executive compensation. This is a real problem, but I think people overestimate how much of that is at the root of layoffs. Companies that live on short term decisions like that are rarely successful in the long term, and lots of layoffs are done by companies that have been in business for decades who have no other choice due to the business climate. Employees are an important resource, and while all CEOs put it optimistically, it is rarely the case that the long term value of the company is increased by mass layoffs. Instead, it is most often done because the company’s business is shrinking and the company will die if it doesn’t scale back operations.
Who was the last Senator to make a good President? Is that a reason people shouldn’t have voted for Obama in 2008? I’ve never claimed that Romney’s experience at Bain means he should be elected President, I’ve only said that based on that experience I know that at the very least he understands capitalism and unlike Obama won’t make the same mistakes.
That does not mean he’d be a good President, I don’t know that Mitt Romney would be a good President.
Nothing worse for America than saving union jobs. There are plenty of McDonalds those people could have worked at. They just expect to have these cushy jobs that let them own a house. Back in the good old days we didn’t have all these union jobs, but union membership has been climbing steadily until it has reached… Oh wait, maybe I got that backwards. It can’t possibly be that we used to have more union workers back in the good ole days, could it? Maybe it’s that CEOs don’t make enough these days compared to what they used to when all was good with the world. Nope, just looked that up, apparently CEOs make more now then they used to.
I’m not sure what to do, my whole world is crushed. Auto workers make less than they used to and CEOs make more. Clearly we need to go back to the way things used to be. Can we bring back 8 track tape too?
I doubt that, because I’m a human being. I probably have a wider range of feelings in one day than he’s had in the past 20 years.
Having gone from struggling to get by, to comfortably well off, I’m more than aware that I’d rather be rich than poor, all other things being equal. But in this instance, all other things aren’t.
I’m me, he’s Mitt, and I can’t imagine living inside such a limited personality. All the toys and servants money can buy can only do so much to make up for that.
Have you ever read a history book?
Bashing unions is buying into a fundamentally unsound dichotomy, “business” versus “labor”. The economy is labor; they make the goods and services, and then buy the goods and services.
Business can keep pushing to separate the labor pool from the consumer base, but that is fundamentally unstable, and only results in excessive accumulations of wealth in a small group.
The “problem with America” is not that business is over regulated, it is that there are increasingly fewer consumer dollars. The one percent can buy only so many goods and services.
We need strong consumers, and therefore we need strong workers rights to ensure they get the money to buy goods and services.
I’ve never been in a union, but I’ve never thought I got two weeks vacation and a two day week-end because “business” likes me.
Friggin socialist. I bet you expect to get paid time and a half for working over 40 hours too.
In my dreams. I’m a “professional”, doncha know.
And when he dies, he becomes a God and gets a whole entire planet. Talk about entitled.
These matters are by now too divisive to admit of discussion. That divisive climate is the work of an industry of dedicated and well-paid professionals, and they have earned their coin well. “Discussion” is probably the best we can do at the moment.
You’re catching on. That’s the goal: keep the debate generating heat and not light. Meanwhile, money and power can do as they wish.