Bits Bucket for March 4, 2011
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
To donate by mail, or to otherwise contact this blogger, please send emails to: thehousingbubble@gmail.com
PayPal is a secure online payment method which accepts ALL major credit cards.
Links
-
November 2024 M T W T F S S « Sep 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Photo Submission: hbbphotos@gmail.com
View the HBB Photo Gallery *updated 4/13/2008
If you are going to post material from another source, please only use a summary and include a link or at least identify the source. If you do not, it will be deleted.
Realtors are racketeers.
The realtors too high!
They may be high, but at least it appears that they share with the FBs.
Realtors are what you let them be. I ignore ‘em and make fun of them like telemarketers.
If you don’t like realtors then love the NAR. The NAR extracts dues from its members, who are realtors.
No thanks. The NAR then takes the “extracted dues” from the Realtors and heads to Washington to get the entire country to pay for the exploits of their members. They are a huge lobbying force which is why so many people are terrified to “mess with RE”.
I’m going to just continue hating on both Realtors and the NAR.
Remember, the NAR brought us David L, perhaps the greatest shill who ever lived.
+eleventygazillion Overtaxed.
A Public Union that we can all agree to hate.
“The NAR then takes the “extracted dues” from the Realtors and heads to Washington to get the entire country to pay for the exploits of their members.”
Sounds exactly like a public employee union!
It use to be the NAR’s Political Committee was a mandatory “contribution”, and then someone (probably a BOR) leaned on NAR (or threatened to sue) and it became optional.
That DOJ lawsuit was well deserved, imho. Although, not quite as transparent as it should be (i.e. games), the disclosure/information online is a start. Not everyone has access to the County Recorder’s Office, if the data is public to begin with, in your state.
Ax hangs over federal foreclosure prevention programs
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 11:43 a.m. Thursday, March 3, 2011
Posted: 11:08 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Obama administration’s multibillion-dollar programs aimed at keeping struggling borrowers in their homes are facing elimination with a congressional committee expected to vote today on whether they should be cut from the budget.
In the bull’s-eye, however, is the $29.9 billion loan modification plan. While a cornerstone of the administration’s foreclosure prevention efforts, even proponents have acknowledged it has not had the reach that was expected.
Pitched as a way to save 3 million to 4 million borrowers from losing their homes, the 2-year-old program, which is scheduled to end next year, had 521,630 homeowners nationwide on permanent modifications as of December.
And as of Feb. 25, just $1.04 billion of the $29.9 billion allocated the program had been spent.
“A program that benefits only a small portion of distressed homeowners, offers others little more than false hope, and in certain cases causes more harm than good,” is how Neil Barofsky, a special inspector general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, described Making Home Affordable during Wednesday’s meeting.
Earlier on Wednesday, Treasury Department officials defended the loan modification program.
“They’re saying because we haven’t helped enough people we shouldn’t help anymore,” said acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Tim Massad. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Rep. Maxine Waters of California acknowledged there are “weaknesses” in the programs but that she’s not willing to eliminate them, especially considering there are no new proposals being made to help homeowners.
“They are simply talking slash and burn,” Waters said about the bills to cut the programs.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/ax-hangs-over-federal-foreclosure-prevention-programs-1294071.html - -
Did people really think that this could help 3-4 million FBs? Because really there was only a thin sliver of people between “don’t need help,” and “are beyond help.” I’m not saying that it isn’t worth the effort of helping, but far more people would be helped by a program to help people deal with their foreclosure than in giving them the false hope that they could avoid it. It isn’t the end of the world. And spending 7 years renting and rebuilding your credit rating is probably better than spending 5-6 years making “throwing money away” on housing payments that are much higher than equivalant rent, and then getting foreclosed on anyway.
I have to wonder whether this was intended on giving the banksters sufficient time to divest themselves of the toxic assets constructed from these toxic loans.
“I have to wonder whether this was intended on giving the banksters sufficient time to divest themselves of the toxic assets constructed from these toxic loans.”
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was the case. It was all about keeping hope alive. Keeping hope alive keeps money flowing into the banks. Destroying hope stops the money flow.
After this program completely runs its course another one will be started up and hope will again spring eternal and the money flow will continue.
I to have no doubts that this program was to give the Banksters time to divest themselves of toxic assets ,or at least a certain percentage of them ,the worse ones probably . Why do you think in a falling market they raised the F&F limits to over 700k.
Wall Street/ Banksters destroyed the secondary market with their
real estate Ponzi-scheme . Will funds ever go to the private market
again without government backing it for home loans.
This damage that was done to the secondary market was beyond measure . Burn a investor once ,don’t know if they come back the the poison well again very easy .
Will funds ever go to the private market
again without government backing it for home loans ??
You Betcha they will….It will just cost you (if you decide to buy) a lot more money…
Right, scdave. It just might take 20-30% down payments and a 7% rate, but that money will JUMP back into the market if the conditions are right.
“giving the banksters sufficient time to divest themselves of the toxic assets constructed ”
Maybe that’s why the inspector guy is attacking it but Timmy Boy is defending it?
Jim A wrote:
I have to wonder whether this was intended on giving the banksters sufficient time to divest themselves of the toxic assets constructed from these toxic loans.
———————-
Yes, indeed it was! Anyone who thought these programs were designed to “keep people in their homes” wasn’t paying attention. It was ALWAYS about saving the banks.
“It was ALWAYS about saving the banks.”
And creating the illusion that Govt was trying to help.
I’m somewhat surprised it managed to help half a million into a permanent modification. I wonder what the mean and median changes in monthly payments were? And what the other changes in terms were?
With a redefault rate growing higher as time passes, it remains to be seen just how “permanant” those mods are.
Good point.
Half a million? The last number I saw was only 150k people were helped.
But that WAS a few months ago.
“I’m not saying that it isn’t worth the effort of helping, but far more people would be helped by a program to help people deal with their foreclosure than in giving them the false hope that they could avoid it.”
You’re ignoring the obvious answer, Jim: such a “forclosure acceptance” program would have been bad for banksters.
Ergo, no such program.
521,630 homeowners nationwide on permanent modifications as of December.
And as of Feb. 25, just $1.04 billion of the $29.9 billion allocated the program had been spent.
$1,040,000,000/521,630=$1993.75 per modification.
That’s actually not such a bad deal. I think previously people were dividing the total budgeted amount by the number of modifications.
“That’s actually not such a bad deal.”
How far does $1993.75 get someone that is $100k-$200k underwater on their loan? Are any administrative costs included in that number? If it sounds too good to be true.
IIUC, the gov money is all administrative. It’s the mortgage holders who are eating the principal reductions. The gov just helps facilitate the whole thing.
That is correct. The money was essentially the government subsidizing the banks to hire enough staff to evaluate the applications, not to actually cover the modification amounts. If they had paid to cover the losses on the loans, a lot more baknks would have participated willingly.
And if that results in people avoiding foreclosure rather than merely postpoing it a year or two, it’s worth it. I’ve never objected to the idea of encouraging the banks to do mods, including principal reduction when those make sense. But the idea that this program or others like it was going to help enough people to have much effect on the market was farcical from the get go.
I have no problem with principal reductions, as long as the lenders are the ones taking the losses — not the taxpayers.
+1
I’d like the FBs to take some punishment too, since they are partially responsible. IMO, they should pay for their cramdowns with a BK.
Agreed.
To get the loan investor pools to agree to the loan mod was another hurdle because the banks in a lot of cases were just
the ones servicing the loan . The CDO or MBS security pools
had different trenches of risk,in other words the trenches were in conflict of interest . Clearly a faulty design in the event of
massive foreclosures ,so this is the other reason they had to be dumped on F&F ,IMHO . Do you think the Banks and Investment firms wanted to buy back all those loans ? But than the issue comes up regarding how they recorded the loans to begin with
and that’s 2 strikes against their faulty system ,and don’t forget the misrepresentation of the ratings of these bundles to start with .
IT WAS A PONZI SCHEME ,and they are making the taxpayers pay .
HW - Of course the ineveitable name for this is “tranche warfare.”
Lol Jim ,your joke was funny . I keep calling it trenches when its really MBS tranches …right .
Oxide: Well of course mods, short sales, and deed-in-lieus are usually result in big hits on ones credit report. As they should since they all reflect an inability or unwillingnes to make the payments that one has (probably foolishly) agreed to. EVERYBODY in this mess is trying to look like an innocent victim, but once you scratch the surface, there isn’t a whole lot of innocence to be found. There’s plenty of willful ignorance and unwarranted optimism, but not much innocence. Home buyers, mortgage brokers, securitizers, bond purchasers, even the electorate all share some degree of culpability for this mess.
“They are simply talking slash and burn”
Did Maxine manage to personally take advantage of the HAMP?
How in god’s name did Maxine get in a position to represent anything other than bad polyurethane-looking hair-care products?
I am stunned that this is a $30 billion program. That’s half that the Republicans wanted to cut! Never mind cutting the discretionary spending (you know, the parts of the government that do something other than hand out checks or shoot people). Cutting the bank bailouts and junking MID will barely affect Main Street, and it will go a long way to fixing this mess.
Posted this late yesterday: Just wanted everyone to see it.
“Yes folks, Wall Street is the “Comeback Kid” story of the 21st century. Like a terrorist in a horror film, Wall Street thrives on threats. Three short years ago, Wall Street was virtually bankrupt, a ward of the state. We could have jailed “just one” of them back then, when they were down for the count. Instead, we bailed them out! Made them richer. Gave them $13.7 trillion, loans, credits, cash, asset buyouts. Gave them keys to the Treasury. They didn’t just recover, they “ran the tables,” to use a blackjack/pool metaphor. Now Wall Street dictators have absolute power, ruling Washington, America, you and me.
Yes, America’s bankrupt, but the rich just do not care
Admit it, we lost the opportunity. Jail a bank CEO and Wall Street will miraculously reform? You’re joking, right? Wall Street got away with a “legal” bank heist. Today the should-be/would-be inmates are running the prison.
Wall Street’s corrupt banks have lost their moral compass … their insatiable greed has become a deadly virus destroying its host nation … their campaign billions buy senate votes, stop regulators’ actions, manipulate presidential decisions. Wall Street money controls voters, runs America, both parties. Yes, Wall Street is bankrupting America.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/four-time-bombs-that-will-blow-up-wall-street-2011-03-01
But no other solution is offered in that article. I think we do have recourse. We just need to b@lls to do something about it.
When you bail-out crimes or even civil liability ,than the crimes don’t have liability any more . That was the part that always bothered me
the most as I was always screaming ,”Obstruction of Justice .”
When the government actually conspires to limit entities liability on this big of a scale ,by massive bail-outs that shift the liability to the taxpayer,than it really becomes they are above the law . Very odd that there could be this much loss and nobody committed any
crimes . We don’t prosecute ,we substitute .
You forget how important it was to protect the banking industry, which is so vital to the future of the nation. Had they failed it would have caused economic collapse that would have sent the first world back to the third.
Sorry, just had to see what it would feel like to type crap like that. Well, off to the showers after a gravol for the nausea.
Looks to me like the first world is going back to the third world anyway. I’d rather take those bank execs with us rather than allow them to hide in the their fortresses.
Amen.
If Goldman execs got busted with the largest meth-lab in the history of drug busts, but sending them to jail meant collapse of the banking system, wouldn’t it be the right thing to do to let them go about their work? God’s work, that is. Systemic risk, you know…
Wall Street liable parties and Bankers just wanted the loss and liability to go where they wanted it to go . The loss is still there
and its just transfered to incorrect parties ,that’s all . Do you think they wanted their casinos closed down and their Ponzi schemes busted and Jail time in the final analysis .
They saved us from the Great Depression is a big laugh .The corrupted casinos are still alive and kicking and we get to see
them get their bonuses and the rest of the Country gets to give up their wages and income .
“But no other solution is offered in that article.”
An unemployed, unhappy, unhinged man with unmatched sniper skills and a “list” could go a long way towards undoing the injustice.
An unemployed, unhappy, unhinged man with unmatched sniper skills and a “list” could go a long way towards undoing the injustice.
We just experienced that sort of thing in Tucson. And his January 8 actions didn’t exactly do anything to remedy injustice.
I’m talking about an entirely different thing.
Where have I seen this this before….
A new report warns Canada’s housing market is reaching the limits of sustainability and could tumble if there is no moderation.
The Bank of Montreal’s followup on its November analysis finds that Canada’s hot housing market is still not in the red zone for prices, but it’s close.
The bank notes that after slowing last summer, Canadian home sales rebounded in the fall and house prices have kept rising. On average, home prices rose five per cent in the past year to January, while in Vancouver they rocketed 20 per cent.
Incomes, however, have not increased nearly as fast.
The bank says the ratio between average resale prices and personal incomes nationally is 14 per cent above the long-run trend, up from last summer, but still below the 21 per cent peak that preceded the 1989 crash.
That makes me feel better.
But that is not the case in all markets. Five provinces are currently in the danger zone, led by Saskatchewan, where the ratio is 39 per cent above historic norms.
Also well-above the long-run levels is Newfoundland, 34 per cent higher; British Columbia and Manitoba, 31 per cent, and Quebec, 23 per cent above.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/03/03/bmo-housing.html?ref=rss
14% sounds awfully low to me. That’s like saying housing went from 2x income to 2.28x income. As opposed to the US, where housing went from 3x income to 7x(?) income depending on the state. That’s 130% percent. What am I missing?
You would think that somewhere in the article they would have told us the actual ratio, as opposed to its percentage change.
Near as I can tell, the overall Canadian house price to income ratio is around 3.5x to 4.8x, depending on the source. That’s about the range of the US avg, which was about 4.8 at the height of the bubble, and is about 3.4 now.
The wording in the article is deceptive. What they’re comparing is actual P/I versus the P/I trend line that has been going up over the last 30 years, starting at around 3x in 1980 and hits around 5x currently. The current P/I is actually around 5.7, or about 14% above what the trendline shows.
Saskatchewan is booming due to oil prices isn’t it?
“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”
Arizona economic “recovery” pushed up, now predicted in 2015- or later. I’m going out on a limb here; it’s going to be later.
“Even before the federal revisions, Marshall Vest, a University of Arizona economist, said he was revising his economic forecast based on the bad housing and commercial-construction markets as well as U.S. census numbers that showed Arizona had not gained as many people as previous studies indicated. “People are frozen in their houses,” Vest said.
“We have very low mobility because over half of homeowners are upside down in their homes. And that’s not just in Arizona but in California, where half our new migrants are from.”
He now forecasts that it will take Arizona another year or two than he previously forecast for full recovery, to at least 2015.”
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/03/04/20110304biz-jobs0304.html
waren buffet has a solutuion for housing:
http://blogs.forbes.com/schifrin/2011/03/03/buffetts-subprime-housing-solution/
“…simply to get a meaningful down-payment and gear fixed monthly payments to a sensible percentage of income.”
Sounds like a solution moving forward to me.
I think if you read between the lines it is possible that his “subprime mobile-home” plan probably relies heavily on government cheese going to the homeowner to keep the payments current. Welfare homeowners.
Not Welfare homeowners so much as blue collar salt of the earth kinds of folks. Welfare homeowners don’t exist but are section 8 renters.
Trust me, Andy. They do exist. At the lower level, almost everyone has some kind of scam on the government going. Be it a medicaid ripoff to selling food stamps or illegal prescription drugs, you would be just amazed. I am certain that some of the scammed funds could go to paying mortgage notes. Not everything is black and white.
“almost everyone has some kind of scam on the government going”
Is this personal observation or do you have a source? If personal, how many folks do you know collecting versus how many are committing fraud?
You call out the “lower level”, but I would venture to guess that the percentage of cheaters at all levels is directly related to the opportunity for cheating and the risk of getting caught, where the opportunity for cheating includes the potential gain and the risk of getting caught includes the potential punishment.
People are good at making these calculations, although at times their data may be flawed causing them to underestimate the risk and overestimate the gains.
The government also makes a calculation based on actual data of the cost/benefit of enforcement. Consequently, IRS targets small businesses for auditing because data shows that it is a segment that has significant potential for cheating and significant additional revenue to be collected. The much maligned $600 reporting requirement for vendor payments in the healthcare bill was designed to catch more of the under the table income that vendors might be tempted to under-report.
I’ve met a few landlords while I was working in the RE biz and they have some serious horror stories about some of their tenants. Not to mention 2nd hand experience from my younger poverty days.
I’m afraid liz is right on this one.
I don’t doubt there are horror stories. I don’t doubt there are fraudsters and scammers. I just don’t believe they are limited to the low end of the income scale. I believe you will find fraud, waste, and abuse at every level of public or private program. Charities and corporations are not immune.
I am convinced that there is a minimum house price which corresponds to a minimum rent which is supported by the monthly dole. The rent on a 10×10 shack (literally) is the same as the rent on a clean efficiency 1BR appartment here, approx. $500/mo. The range of houses for sale in the $50,000 range is amazing, but essentially nothing for less. It is what people on welfare can afford and nothing will go for less.
“Even before the federal revisions, Marshall Vest, a University of Arizona economist, said he was revising his economic forecast based on the bad housing and commercial-construction markets as well as U.S. census numbers that showed Arizona had not gained as many people as previous studies indicated. “People are frozen in their houses,” Vest said.
True story about Dr. Vest: In March 2002, I attended a talk that he gave to the local chapter of a statewide small business organization.
Being the student of business that I am, I take more than a passing interest in what guys like Vest have to say. Why? Because I want to know what sort of economic weather they’re forecasting for the next six months or so.
As I pedaled over to Dr. Vest’s talk, I wondered if I’d arrive in time to find a seat. After all, when the University of Arizona features him at their semi-annual economic forecast presentations, the house is packed.
Well, the meeting room of the Arizona Small Business Association had more empty chairs than you could shake a stick at. I was only a handful of people who attended Dr. Vest’s ASBA talk.
After telling us about his narrow escape from the World Trade Center on September 11 — he was there for the National Association of Business Economists’ convention — he talked about the state of the Arizona economy. Mind you, this was March 2002, and things weren’t looking good here. “Recession” was the word he used to describe it.
But he noted that he was paid to worry about things, and one of the trends that was really bothering him was in housing. He drew a graph with a line rising upward with a steep slope. That was Arizona house prices. Below that line, he drew another that was rising with a much shallower slope. That was job growth.
Between the two lines, he drew an oval and said, “Here’s the bubble.”
That was my first warning about the housing bubble. March 2002. I’ve since thanked Dr. Vest for sounding the warning. I only wish that more of Tucson’s small business community had been at that ASBA meeting to hear it.
Neat story Az Slim . With time it seems like all contrary opinion to
the housing bubble being anything but a bubble was drowned out .
I just remember wondering how all these peoples income grew
this much ,until I found out their incomes didn’t grow to be able to really qualify for a lot of these loans .
I remember a neighbor saying to me in 2004 that this was the first time they ever had the equity in their property grow this much .I had not been keeping tract of the real estate market ,so I got one of those free books with listings at the store and saw what the prices
had gone to .Talk about shock . It really didn’t make sense to me .
If your just living life and your not paying attention to real estate, or the business world ,price increases can be shocking to go up
that much in such a short period of time . This was unlike anything I had every seen before .
Great story, slim.
IMHO, that’s why many of us are targeting 2001 prices as the top of the “normal” RE cycle, and the beginning of the credit/housing bubble.
It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that by 2001, prices were already well beyond what they should have been. Considering we were in a “recession” at the time, prices should have been going down from there.
Alan Greenspan is on CNBC babbling about the recovery. The hosts of the show are kissing his ass every whichway. The man should be sitting in a cell with his 300 pound tattooed boyfriend with a shaved head instead of being treated like a celebrity folk hero.
That’s cruel and unusual punishment. It’s unconstitutional.
What did the 300 lb shaved-headed tatooed felon do to deserve such a punishment?
What’s cruel and unusual punishment is the mere thought of Greenspit pronouncing on TV.
greenspan a clown.
Ya know, if I had to choose between Greenspan’s wife or the cellmate, I just might choose the later.
That’s the funny thing. For the powers that be, there HAS been a recovery. They just don’t see that the “recovery” is a mirage created by shoveling money into Wall Street faster than they realize losses on the money that they already have. It is a mirage that you get when you believe that the SP500 or DJI is a measure of how the economy as a whole is doing. Of course that stopped being true long ago, and now they are mostly a measure of how much money is heading to the Street to die in a desparate search for returns.
The well off simply don’t see that the inexorably shrinking middle class can no longer afford to make debt payments on all the loans (CC, HELOC, and REFI) that have given them the illusion that their economic lot in life is improving or at least staying static while the wealthy have Bogarted all the money. And the wealthy are now fighting against a demographic tide as those of the Boomer cohort who are well off are starting to try and live on their retirement saving by pulling money OUT of the Wall Street money-go-round instead of putting money in.
All the powers that be have invested everything in “Hope & Change”. They hope that if they can keep this boat afloat for another week, month, year, etc that things will change and turn around. Yes, they are corrupt, but they are also totally inept, incompetent, and bungling. The saddest of all is their willingness to throw more lives into turmoil with their lies about a turnaround and continued urging to spending freely.
The federal reserve is the only thing keeping the us govt afloat with the printing press.We all know we are bankrupt but as long as people have a full belly the game goes on.
“but as long as people have a full belly the game goes on”
A good point. Which is why I think the GOP is nuts about wanting to cut back on foodstamps.
“All the powers that be have invested everything in “Hope & Change”.”
There’s only so much ‘hope and change’ can do against the grand (and inevitable) finale of thirty years of trickle-down theftonomics.
But where did Obama’s “I didn’t run for office to bail out bankers” rhetoric go? Let’s be honest here. I voted for the guy, but he hasn’t done jack except for bail out bankers, and hire insiders and re-treads. Bernanke, Geithner, Summers? C’mon, what a f***ing joke. He tore another page out of the Bush handbook. It’s about accountability and credibility. He has none. He’s nothing but another Wall St. whore, and swing voters like me are the ones who put him in office, wanting him to back up his words with action. He didn’t. I won’t vote for this clown again. He failed.
“hire insiders and re-treads. Bernanke, Geithner, Summers?”
I understand your disappointment with the hiring of insiders. Who would you have hired instead? Please name names. I am truly interested to know who would be better. Who would have the integrity to right the ship and the knowledge of the inside game? Would you look for someone who thinks outside the box like the Freakonomics guy?
Volker might be one. Was he willing to take it on? We don’t know how many people turned down offers.
What qualifications are necessary to succeed in these positions and how many people have them?
I think Obama failed in the attempt, but he really appeared to be trying to bring some unity to the government in the early months. There were several Republicans that publicly turned down opportunities to serve in his cabinet.
He found out who REALLY runs the country, and it ain’t “the people.”
I’m with you, Grizzly. He really laid on the “fat cat banker” rhetoric, but once he was in, they were dining at his table.
No more. If a candidate doesn’t have a proven track record of supporting working people, they won’t get my vote.
It is a mirage that you get when you believe that the SP500 or DJI is a measure of how the economy as a whole is doing.
I don’t consider anyone who uses either of these as a measure of the health of the economy as credible (that’s not a shot at you Jim as you note the problems with those measures). We need different measures. I would key on measures such as the number of full-time employed workers, collective wages of those workers (possibly excluding the top one or two percent) with some adjustments based on changes in the working age population.
One could also look at other types of measures, education, health, housing, etc. Any of these measures would do more to show how ordinary people are being impacted by the economy than stock indices which are useless for that purpose.
SD GREG +1000 ,
Yes, great post, Greg.
The DOW and other financial indices are perfectly credible measures of economic health… as long as you remember there are 2 economies.
One for the rich and one for everybody else.
Wall St. and Main St.
+1000 Jim
Nearly 500,000 people were added to the SNAP/Food Stamp rolls in December of 2010:
http://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/snapdata2010_december.pdf
What amazing prosperity the Fed has engineered.
Meanwhile this morning they were crowing on the news how “unemployment” dropped below 9%.
And it might be true, in a way: people lose their decent paying job and replace it with a crappy P/T minimum wage job, which pushes them below the poverty line and now their family qualifies for food stamps.
However, this is evidence that there ARE jobs to be had, at least at minimum wage, as Bad Andy said yesterday. So instead of a poor class and a rich class, we’ll have a poor class, a rich class, and an upper-poor class to work the menial jobs for the rich and poor. I sure hope that Taco Bell accepts food stamps.
(IMO food stamps should be for unprocessed groceries only, not full meals, but what the hey.)
I said there are plenty of jobs, minimum wage and otherwise. If you keep people comfortable while unemployed, they’ll remain unemployed.
at least at minimum wage, as Bad Andy said yesterday
Are you choosing to ignore my comments about the hiring my company is doing, for experienced and inexperienced alike?
Are you choosing to ignore my comments about the hiring my company is doing, for experienced and inexperienced alike?
Your company?
That really means a lot statistically in a country of 300 million where 20% are unemployed or under-employed.
Math is hard.
Underemployed assumes people are entitled to something. It’s a BS term. People have to give things up in a recession.
Math is hard.
Yeah, so is keeping things in context. Where are there any claims of hard numbers or statistics in this thread? There’s not. The comment was “evidence that there ARE jobs to be had”.
But keep on attacking claims I’ve never made. You’re winning. Really.
People have to give things up in a recession.
It seems you’ve given up common sense.
Underemployed assumes people are entitled to something. It’s a BS term.
while I agree people may have to give things up, I think “underemployed” is a valuable concept.
It’s not that people are entitled, but it’s worth tracking the utilization of human labor/capital. Underemployment (people working jobs below their education/skill level) is a good measure of that.
“Underemployment (people working jobs below their education/skill level) is a good measure of that.”
Unfortunately most who use the term use it as someone who had to take any type of pay cut from their previous role.
But keep on attacking claims I’ve never made. You’re winning. Really.
That’s pretty obvious.
The Recession may be over because Taco Bell and drumminj’s company are hiring.
The Recession may be over because Taco Bell and drumminj’s company are hiring.
You should branch out on your logical fallacies…the straw man is getting old.
No one made any assertion the recession is over. Just that there are jobs to be had.
Gosh, sorry.
There are plenty of jobs to be had because Taco Bell and drumminj’s company are hiring.
lol, better?
If unsubstantiated personal anecdotes don’t count as evidence, how will the right-wingers prove their points?
We need more poor people. And we’re going to create them.
“No one made any assertion the recession is over. Just that there are jobs to be had.”
True; even the Challenger data shows that there are jobs to be had.
But it was way fewer jobs than used to be available, and far more people trying to obtain them.
So the situation is really not all that good for those who are job-hunting.
Me thinks “TrueHaskell™” = “But, but, but…” has changed his name or cloned his thinking…
No, drumminj, I wan’t ignoring. The topic was minimum wage jobs, so I remembered Bad Andy’s minimum wage post rather than your company post. By the way, how many resumes have you received for those jobs?
By the way, how many resumes have you received for those jobs?
Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not in HR, so I don’t see them all. I do know that we’ve been hiring non-stop for the past year. In general, we’ve had a hard time finding qualified applicants - that’s been our limiting factor.
Just curious, drummin:
“In general, we’ve had a hard time finding qualified applicants - that’s been our limiting factor.”
Does qualified mean “knows exactly the technologies that we are using”? Or will you guys hire even smart, solid tech folks who can learn to do anything quickly?
I’m curious, because more and more I see the former in an industry that used to tend toward the latter. Not that I’m looking, mind you—this is really just my impression from anecdotes I’ve heard.
Does qualified mean “knows exactly the technologies that we are using”? Or will you guys hire even smart, solid tech folks who can learn to do anything quickly?
Prime, I have the same concerns you do. And I’d say it’s a little of both.
We’re still using MFC. Hopefully you see the folly in not hiring people who are familiar with that pile of crap
Heck, I didn’t have any MFC experience when I got hired.
In general, we’re looking for smart, solid tech folks. At the same point in time, we are a small company and thus don’t have the resources to babysit someone while they come up to speed. So we want people who can hit the ground running for the most part, and can ramp up themselves without a ton of oversight.
That said, we’re just now starting to look for “junior” engineers, which assumes we’re going to invest the time to train and mentor them.
Does qualified mean “knows exactly the technologies that we are using”? Or will you guys hire even smart, solid tech folks who can learn to do anything quickly?
I’m curious, because more and more I see the former in an industry that used to tend toward the latter. Not that I’m looking, mind you—this is really just my impression from anecdotes I’ve heard.
I’ve heard similar anecdotes.
“In general, we’ve had a hard time finding qualified applicants - that’s been our limiting factor.”
This always makes me laugh. Companies wasting their time and money looking for the “perfect” employee, rather than choosing from the plethora of intelligent, educated people who can get up to speed in a heartbeat. The hiring practices in many companies leave a lot to be desired.
As much as the same issue annoys me, I gotta say nobody gets up to speed “in a heartbeat” in serious tech work. I’m in the process of getting my butt kicked right now trying to come up to speed. My problem is that companies think if they just hire the right set of buzzwords, THAT guy will be productive from day one.
Hopefully you see the folly in not hiring people who are familiar with that pile of crap
That’s not clear. I meant to say I hope you see the folly in limiting ourselves to people who are familiar with that pile.
I gotta say nobody gets up to speed “in a heartbeat” in serious tech work.
Agreed. But you’re not going to want to hire someone with strictly HTML+JavaScript to come on board and write the embedded C code for some device or I/O controller.
I would agree with drumminj and Bad Andy that there are jobs available. There are always jobs available. People die, retire, quit, go on maternity leave, move due to spouse relocation.
However, I believe there are not enough jobs for everyone who wants one, even when you include those entry level, minimum wage jobs. Overall unemployment will not go down when people are no longer able to collect UE.
It appears to me that we have reset at a lower level of available jobs and that we might have another downward reset coming as the government workers and government contractors enter the ranks of the unemployed. I.e. Musical Chairs.
A significant percentage of us are going to be hurting for a while and there will be continued downward pressure on wages as a result.
The trick in a down economy is to keep your head up and realize that it will take luck as well as hard work to find a job. And sometimes settle for a less than ideal situation while continuing to look.
The individuals that some know of that appear to be gaming unemployment may simply be putting a good face on a bad situation for someone they want to impress - maybe themselves.
People have to give things up in a recession.
Unless, of course, you’re the one who helped caused it. Then you get rewarded.
Cake anyone?
The falling unemployment numbers have more to do with piss-poor statistics, and less to do with a strengthening job market. As 99′ers continue to fall off the unemployment rolls, and join the ranks of the millions who have given up looking for a job, the numbers will continue to go down. Anybody who believes the “official” unemployment figures is a j@ck@ss.
My friend is no longer considered unemployed and it isn’t even as sinister as that. She is working. A few hours a week. Maybe a friend needs something reviewed and she goes in for a meeting and looks at it for him. Or her husband’s company keeps getting asked if they can do something and she can go to a 2 hour seminar and figure out quickly if they can because she is very familiar with the business (rather than the company finding and hiring an attorney in that area). Or someone else she knows has a client that needs advice in her area of expertise and calls her in for an hour or two. And this happens for maybe 3 to 7 hours a week. She isn’t earning a living, but she isn’t unemployed according to the household survey. Doing even one hour of paid work or unpaid work which you hope may lead to future paid work means you don’t count, even if you are looking and looking hard.
It also isn’t sustainable for her family forever. Their mortgage was doable on her salary alone, but not on his alone. She needs a lot more work. But she can’t find it.
To continue the discussion…my original comments will be in standard type, drumminj’s in italics, my responses in bold.
Comment by drumminj
2011-03-03 09:39:53
Quoting CA renter:
Wage earners (who earn every paycheck in devalued dollars) have seen their purchasing power decrease, while the wealthy (asset holders) have seen their purchasing power increase.
And what has been the cause of this? If the cause is the devaluation of the dollar (my initial guess), then that doesn’t support a claim that asset holders have seen purchasing power increase, I don’t think.
But let me throw another question out there - without the asset owners, where do these jobs come from? How can factory jobs exist without someone owning the factory?
The asset holders’ purchasing power is increased relative to those who earn wages in devalued US dollars. My argument is that the wealth disparity is behind our financial problems.
——————————-
Then, you have the hollowing out of our factories as large corporations moved plants overseas.
Again, why is this? Cost of compliance? Regulations? You can’t just paint the “capitalists” as evil and say they should be punished without understanding what prompted them to move jobs and production overseas.
The reason for outsourcing jobs is PROFITS. Their cost basis is lower, but they are selling back to us at about the same price as they were when we had good-paying, stable jobs. Unions tried to fight against this outsourcing, but the union membership had been declining, and their power was being deminished *by those who make higer profits when they can exploit wage slaves in coutries that have no employee or environmental protections.* These are the people you are fighting on behalf of when you are fighting against unions. It is all about the BALANCE OF POWER. Without unions, these private entities will buy up all of our publicly owned assets and their revenue streams. We cannot let them take over our country, and as it stands, the only ones who *might* have a chance of standing in their way are the unions.
Corporate profit margins are at record highs, but the majority of that money is NOT coming back to workers in the U.S. It’s being used to buy up assets around the world, and it’s starving people in the process. There is no way to justify this. It is 100% wrong.
————————-
Add to that the “tax cuts for the rich” which accelerates the compounding of wealth, and we get the wealth disparity.
I really don’t see why the liberals continue to bang the drum on this one. EVERYONE who paid taxes got a tax cut. And I know you’ll counter with the cuts from the highest bracket (at what, 90% or whatever it was)…and you’ll suggest that was “fair” and what we have now isn’t. I’d argue the onus is on you to prove that any disparity/unequal treatment is justifiable and fair.
I will address the lie that “low taxes are good” in a following post.
I will address the lie that “low taxes are good” in a following post.
And in doing so you’ll be ignoring the issue. Can you address the topic at hand?
1) it’s not just tax cuts for the rich. EVERYONE got cuts, no?
2) demonstrate that disparity/unequal treatment is justifiable and fair.
You mention “profit”, but conveniently ignore why it’s cheaper to produce elsewhere. You ignore the root of the problem, and simply go on to rant about the evil capitalists.
The socialists will enjoy their bread lines. What most here don’t realize is the socialism they promote leads to 2 classes. The very rich and the very poor. Socialism has never been demonstrated to it’s true intent because human beings are the ones in charge.
What most here don’t realize is the socialism they promote leads to 2 classes. The very rich and the very poor.
Your wrong. The middle-class in “socialist” France, Denmark, Holland, Germany, and Sweden have it way better than the American middle-class has it now.
“Socialist” EU has more global fortune 500 companies and greater exports than does the USA.
It’s the American right-wing corporate fascists that are leading to 2 classes, rich and poor.
You spout inane propaganda falsehoods.
Your wrong.
and
“You’re wrong.”
You’re right. The EU is the perfect example of a solvent socialist system. Wait…I have that wrong…Many countries in the union are in financial crisis because their chickens have also come home to roost.
I have a friend in France. He owns a catering company. His revenue doubled last year while his take home pay dropped. He’s got it terrific!
“I have a friend in France. He owns a catering company. His revenue doubled last year while his take home pay dropped. ”
See? You can’t really make a cogent right-wing argument without a good, unsubstantiated personal anecdote.
It’s really not fair to forbid them.
I should probably publish his e-mail address.
If he’s a caterer he’d probably be into the free advertising.
You’re right. The EU is the perfect example of a solvent socialist system. Wait…I have that wrong…Many countries in the union are in financial crisis because their chickens have also come home to roost.
I posted articles with links and quotes that didn’t show up but you can google them. Europe got punked by the banksters too but many of their “socialist” countries are in better fiscal shape than the U$A. (your “french friend” notwithstanding)
The Nordics – champions in fiscal discipline
ec dot europa dot eu
US Fiscal Health Worse Than Europe’s: China Official
CNBC
“the fiscal health of the United States was in fact worse than Europe’s, and that U.S. bond prices and the dollar would fall when the European economic situation stabilizes.”
Europe’s not the problem
asia times online
As for the European economies themselves, they generally involve about 10% more of gross domestic product (GDP) than in the United States being absorbed by the government, partly in better (and more efficient) healthcare provision, but also in a greater degree of income redistribution and an overgrown welfare state..
…in certain respects the European system works better.
“His revenue doubled last year while his take home pay dropped.”
Could be more taxes, could be poor control over expenses.
So you deny that there are even worse budget problems in the PIIGS countries than here in the USA Rio?
So you deny that there are even worse budget problems in the PIIGS countries than here in the USA Rio?
So you deny beating your wife mathguy?
So you deny beating your wife mathguy?
way to add to the discourse here.
way to add to the discourse here.
It was a stupid question. As are many of yours having no bearing on the subject at hand, making grand illogical leaps and introducing straw men. Like your question you asked me about the constitution.
But that is part of your tactics. You ask questions like that a lot drumminj. It’s in your playbook.
“way to add to the discourse here.”
And your antagonizing comment accomplishes that, how?
I believe you are confusing communism and socialism.
Why the Bush tax cut for the wealthy must go
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/08/02/reich_bush_tax_cut
About 40 percent of its benefits went to the tiny sliver of Americans earning over $500,000. So rather than debate whether to end the Bush tax cuts for the top and restore the top marginal tax rates to where they were under Bill Clinton, we should be debating whether to raise the highest marginal tax rate higher than it was under Bill Clinton and use the proceeds to give the middle class else a permanent tax cut.
….So-called supply-side economists don’t like raising taxes on anyone, of course, and argue that raising them on the well-off will slow economic growth. They say people at the top will have less incentive to work hard, invest, and invent.
Unfortunately for supply-siders, history has proven them wrong again and again. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when America’s top marginal tax rate was between 70 and 92 percent, the nation’s average annual growth was 3.7 percent. But between 1983 and start of the Great Recession, when the top rate was far lower – ranging between 35 and 39 percent – the economy grew an average of just 3 percent per year. Supply-siders are fond of claiming that Ronald Reagan’s 1981 cuts caused the 1980s economic boom. In fact, that boom followed Reagan’s 1982 tax increase. The 1990s boom likewise was not the result of a tax cut; it came in the wake of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase.
No one paid 92%…tax shelters were available to the knowledgeable.
Logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
“Unfortunately for supply-siders, history has proven them wrong again and again. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when America’s top marginal tax rate was between 70 and 92 percent, the nation’s average annual growth was 3.7 percent. But between 1983 and start of the Great Recession, when the top rate was far lower – ranging between 35 and 39 percent – the economy grew an average of just 3 percent per year.”
The fact that two things happen at the same time does not prove a causal relationship.
There were a few other forces afoot in the global economy that make these two timeframe meaningless, or even nonsensical to compare.
For starters, the 50s, 60s, and 70s were not affected by globalization the way that the 90s/2000s were.
Logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Thank you. More people need to try to keep the discussion here intellectually honest, regardless of their political persuasion.
Logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
hoc tictoc doc clock don’t make it all wrong.
“hoc tictoc doc clock don’t make it all wrong.”
But just because the cart and horse arrive together does not always mean that the cart is pushing the horse.
The problem is that those who defend the capitalists (who are NOT productive, and do NOT work for a living) claim that lower taxes make for a thriving economy and “prosperity for all.”
The numbers do not back that up. How can you make that claim without ANY evidence that it’s true?
“You ignore the root of the problem”
And the root of the problem is?
I will happily give up my tax cuts if the wealthy give up theirs.
Comment by JackO
2011-03-03 17:33:19
Taxes are not historically low for the rich, nor for the middle class!
—————————–
Actually, taxes ARE historically low.
Top marginal rates were in the 70-90% range for decades…and those happened to be the very same decades that are considered to be America’s “peak” (1936-1982). Many of us would contend that 1982 marked the beginning of our credit bubble and the accelerated growth of the wealth gap. Coincidence? I think not.
Here:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
Considering that many of the rich were complicit in the crimial destruction of America and they should be sitting in jail, I’m sure they think taxes are quite reasonable.
I want my taxes to be high, especially SS and Medicare. There’s nothing a retailer slobbers over more than leftover income that’s supposed to go to savings.
When retailers find out that people are “keeping more of their money,” as the conservatives like to say, then everybody from apartment managers to Safeway to Toyota to Blue Cross Blue Shield to Private College will raise their prices to what the market will bear. People will pay because they actually have the money. It LOOKS like inflation, but it’s NOT.
Examples: $8K credit for housing just raised the prices of houses exactly $8K. Contractors raised prices when there were tax breaks for energy improvements. My apartment complex loves military and Section 8 because they set the price to match housing allowances and subsidies, while the rest of us have to match that price on our own. They all loves them their government cheese.
The result of having extra money is that we pay a higher % of income on necessities. Even if peope want to save that money for retirement won’t be able to, and no amount of lecturing on “living within our means” will lower those prices.
Higher SS and Medicare taxes means that Safeway can’t ding me an extra dime on bread; Safeway knows I won’t buy it because they know that dime never made it into my paycheck. Taxes allow me to save a dime on bread AND save for retirement.
Actually, the $8k credit probably raised the price of houses MORE than $8k because to some degree it was counted as a “downpayment” and was therefore leveraged 5 to 1 or more, since interest rates were also being kept artificially low.
Yes.
I calculated that the $8,000 tax credit pushed prices up by ~$40K with a 20% down payment ($8,000 is 20% of $40,000), and…get this…it pushed prices up by ~$228,500 ($8,000 is 3.5% of ~$228,500) if the buyer was using a 3.5% FHA loan. The $8,000 tax credit was allowed to be “monetized” and used as a down payment.
That’s why the bottom of the market shot back up, and all inventory under $220K (at least in the areas I watch) disappeared overnight once that tax credit was trotted out.
The funny thing is that so many people I talked to thought it was “a great time to buy” because of the tax credit. They honestly thought they (the buyers) were getting something out of it.
Actually, I tracked housing during this period and found that $8K fed credit leveraged the price up by a minimum of $40K, on homes I was targeting in the range of $350K-425K. (So Ca) Jim A, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been told by a R E Broker, on the pricer stuff, housing prices jumped $80K.
When GWB was sending out those $300 tax rebates in mid 2001 I remember places like Home Depot advertising that shoppers could come in and use that rebate at their stores and get free financing,etc. as long as their purchase was at least that $300. HD even referred to the rebates in their radio spots. Crazily, higher gasoline prices may force retailers and the like to have to lower prices to compete for the dwindling discretionary dollars.
If money is yanked away from me by higher taxes then the choice I have to do with this money as I please is also yanked away. Because a retailer, or anybody else, wants to set up a game of gouging me with higher prices doesn’t mean I have to play.
How do you not buy groceries or pay for medical coverage?
And your money isn’t really ‘yanked away’ if it goes to pay your medical coverage and retirement. It’s deferred, and, as Oxide pointed out, conveniently unavailable to fuel current price gouging.
It’s my money! Don’t you think I should have a say in how it is spent? Am I supposed to believe that the folks who run Medicare and Social Security are going to do a better job handling my money than I will given their track record?
The folks who run Social Security have done fine. It’s just that we as a nation have borrowed a bunch of money from them (us), and now we don’t want to pay it back.
And I’d rather have Medicare coverage than my current expensive, always going up, probably-won’t-be-there-when-I-really-need-it health insurance.
Combo, my point is that you don’t have a say in how your money is spent. Maybe you don’t want to “play” in the SUV market or the housing market, but are you really going to refuse to buy food, or gas, electricity, or car maintenance, or health insurance, or college for the kids?
Please notice that prices are rising on BASIC (for the US) expenses. The rich aren’t trading in useless tulip bulbs. They are USING us and our needs to make their money. I pointed this out yesterday.
Maybe SS and Medicare aren’t going to give you the best return on your principle (ie taxes). But if you keep your money now, you may have ZERO return on your principle 20 years from now. In fact, you’ll have no money at all 20 years from now, because you will have no principle to have a return ON. That money, which should have been your principle, would have been spent 20 years ago on food, or gas, or electricity, or car maintenance, or health insurance, or college for the kids.
And let’s say you DO choose the austerity route and go without food or gas or health insurance. In that case, you are deliberately choosing to live a lower lifestyle than America had in the past. In fact, contrary to what Rush Limbaugh likes to say, you ARE choosing to “participate in the recession.”
Or, the short version:
Yes, the government yanks your money away, but then you get most of it back.
But, if the government doesn’t yank it way, then the grocery companies and the health insurance companies and the car companies will most assuredly yank it away. And they WON’T give it back.
alpha-sloth said:
“And I’d rather have Medicare coverage than my current expensive, always going up, probably-won’t-be-there-when-I-really-need-it health insurance.”
How right you are. After paying BC for years for independent coverage, I had an ER visit (only time I ever used my insurance), and had to have an Attorney coach me on getting the claim paid. I won. What was I paying for all those years?
How right you are. After paying BC for years for independent coverage, I had an ER visit (only time I ever used my insurance), and had to have an Attorney coach me on getting the claim paid. I won. What was I paying for all those years?
You were paying for a protection racket.
“And I’d rather have Medicare coverage than my current expensive, always going up, probably-won’t-be-there-when-I-really-need-it health insurance.”
One of the best ways to provide a “near” public-option would be to open up Medicare to the under-65 crowd and allow them to buy into it. At an actuarially-accurate cost, of course.
One of the best ways to provide a “near” public-option would be to open up Medicare to the under-65 crowd and allow them to buy into it.
Three words to sum up the program: Medicare For All.
The Medicare buy-in would demolish private health insurance companies overnight. What company would provide the health coverage bennies after that? Just increase the salary a bit and tell employees they’re on their own. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but it would never be allowed by AHIP.
The Medicare buy-in would demolish private health insurance companies overnight.
Yesssssss!
“The Medicare buy-in would demolish private health insurance companies overnight.”
I actually disagree with that conclusion.
But I certainly think it would force many to revise their coverage and administrative policies. And that would be a good thing.
The “Medicare For All” option might end up looking “unexpectedly” expensive, in which case there would definitely be demand for private options that covered less and cost less.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I think there would be a substantial market for Medicare add-on policies to add coverage for things that Medicare would not cover.
At both ends of the market, I think the private health insurance industry would find that there is still money to be made. But for the bulk of care, they would have to be more competitive and would no longer be able to hold people or companies hostage.
“Am I supposed to believe that the folks who run Medicare and Social Security are going to do a better job handling my money than I will given their track record?”
Given the track record of private and public pensions and the stock market and the housing market (to which money fled after several stock market slides) and all of the other bubbles to come, I think many of us will be glad that SS and Medicare are there.
The “Medicare For All” option might end up looking “unexpectedly” expensive, in which case there would definitely be demand for private options that covered less and cost less.
—————-
If you consider the fact that taxpayers **already cover the most expensive patients** (seniors, indigent, young children, the poor, etc.), we would more likely find that “Medicare for all” is “unexpectedly” LESS expensive than the capitalists are trying to claim.
The problem is that we socialize the losses (taxpayers cover the most expensive patients), while privatizing the profits (leaving all the healthy, 20-65 year-olds) to the private market.
Food and shelter will always come first, long before medical coverage.
Medical coverage is flat out unaffordable for the majority of people and if businesses’ decided they weren’t going to provide it as a benefit any longer, this country will be in an even worse world of hurt.
And Insurance companies can continue to raise their rates, Blue Cross’s audit today was what — 59%? It will just make medicare for all that much closer.
Agreed, oxide.
It’s not just that retailers will want your “extra money.” People like us have to compete with other buyers who will stretch to the max, and use whatever means necessary to pay top dollar for things. If they were “forced” to save for the future (and were denied access to credit against this future savings), they would not be able to push prices up the way they’ve been doing.
That’s what caused the housing bubble, IMHO. So many people have absolutely no problem maxing out their finances, and it’s the sales to people like that who “make the market” and set prices. In the meantime, we get to be “perma-renters” since we don’t want to play that game.
So, what are you and Oxide saying, that we consumers are better off if we have less money to spend? That Retailers can’t gouge us if we don’t have the money to hand over to them? Is this what I am hearing?
It’s not the number of dollars that matter, but what those dollars can purchase.
If we took more dollars out of the hands of today’s buyers, prices would be lower. We might end up with fewer dollars, but the same purchasing power.
In the end, the only thing that matters is purchasing power.
IOW, with forced savings, it would be more difficult to pull demand forward, which (IMHO) is the cause of bubbles and bursts…and extreme price volatility in most markets, at least in modern times.
We need to stop pulling demand forward. By whatever means necessary, this tendency to buy hamburgers today — and pay for them Tuesday — needs to stop.
While you, combo, might have self-restraint, too many others do not. They are the ones setting the market prices, and they are forcing the rest of us to stretch our finances as a result. They need to be stopped.
“If we took more dollars out of the hands of today’s buyers, prices would be lower.”
Lol. Why not just take ALL the money out of the hands of today’s buyers then, by your logic, prices would go to zero and everything would be free.
Anyway, I have to go to work now. Have fun.
I guess so, didn’t they try something like that in Communist Russia? 100% communism doesn’t work, but then neither does 100% capitalism. The trick is in the balance.
“We need to stop pulling demand forward.”
Easiest way to do so: outlaw debt.
Debt is the fundamental enabling force for pulling demand forward, to be paid for down the road.
PIC,
I agree that debt, especially for consumption, is a bad thing. Not sure I’d outlaw it, but would definitely regulate it and keep it on a tight leash.
——————-
Right, oxide. Neither extreme works. I call myself a “socialist” because I believe in the middle ground. Mostly, I think that the market and distribution channels for the “needs” of society should be owned or controlled by the public. Things that are “wants” are better managed by the private market.
People like us have to compete with other buyers who will stretch to the max,
Yes! It applies to credit cards too. Why should a furniture company be satisfied with my measly $200 in cash when someone comes in with $400 in Visa credit? Never mind cash, $400 is what the market will bear, and let Visa handle the money.* This is why all those whiney lectures about how “My grandfather didn’t need credit cards; when he wanted something he saved up for it blah blah blah and he walked to the store uphill both ways, why can’t you do the same” are no longer valid.
As long as there is credit, the cash-only lifestyle of our grandparents will always be a loser.
———–
*This is why merchants don’t raise much of a stink about the 2-3% fee for accepting Visa. What is a $12 transaction fee on a chair, when you can get $200 extra out of the buyer? And you can get that $200 out of a cash buyer too, with no transaction fee. Bonus!
“Why should a furniture company be satisfied with my measly $200 in cash when someone comes in with $400 in Visa credit? ”
You are absolutely right. When sales are humming along and credit flows freely the cash buyer has no leverage. The furniture store gets its money up front and the debt obligation is now transferred to the CC venue. What would happen if the furniture store had to hold 20% of the liability on its books?
I think it is even worse than that for savers. In the 30’s 40’s 50’s 60’s and early 70’s people could get a good return on their money just by leaving it in a passbook savings account. Government by artificially keeping interest rates low forces people into the stock market casino or steals their money by inflation if they refuse to pay that game. I do play the stock market just because of that. BTW, I think that 1973 was the peak for the American dream, the last time the middle class could live on one pay. The growth of two wage earner families masked the decline of real wages for a while but it is obvious now.
When I bought my car in mid-2007, I told them I was putting down half cash, thinking it would help me get a better deal. Ha, they pretty much laughed in my face and tried to stuff a 60 month loan down my throat. I had to force them into a 3-year loan. Then they tried to sneak in $700 “gap” insurance in case I totaled the car while I was underwater on the car. Underwater? I would never be underwater because I was putting down HALF CASH.
Such is the power of credit. Cash is for suckers.
Well unlike raw land, the supply of which is very inelastic, most stuff retailed has to be made. If the price falls below the cost of production, it isn’t made.
Oxide,
“Cash is for suckers”
Actual “CASH” is for suckers. However, the last car I purchased I forced the dealer (after much whining) to allow me to pay my “downpayment” on a CC. He asked me how much I wanted to put on the card (because he thought I was financing it with him too) and I said “All of it”. You should have seen his face. Lost the financing deal, and also getting stuck by Amex for 2% at the same time. It was a really great moment for me.
Anyway, that one transaction netted me enough “points” to spend much of my next 10 day vacation in hotels for free.
So, moral of this story. Never pay for ANYTHING with cash. I have a way that I’m exploring to actually pay my mortgage with a CC (without any fees); always leverage your credit card reward programs; if you pay off the balance (which you can certainly do if you planned to pay cash) they you’re just “freeriding” on the vendors and CC companies. All the morons paying 12-28% interest are paying for the rewards that your reaping; it’s “survival of the smartest”.
If you can figure a way to get a few 100K a year on your credit card (granted, not easy for most) you honestly can do all of your travel (hotels/flights/etc) for free. Or get cash back (if that’s your thing). Or lots of other things that you may personally find attractive. And, they are indeed FREE. No taxes, no cost to you, pretty much a straight win.
Yes, merchants take it in the shorts. And, in many cases, the CC company takes in in the shorts too (the transaction fees don’t cover the rewards). You’ll just have to learn to live with yourself; I certainly have!
And, BTW, when I deal with small/local vendors, I typically will pay them in cash (unless it’s >1K or so). But that’s so rare (and becoming rarer) that I almost never actually do it.
if you pay off the balance (which you can certainly do if you planned to pay cash) they you’re just “freeriding” on the vendors and CC companies.
Not true. It raises the cost of business for merchants and as such they raise their profits.
All you’re doing is introducing a middleman to the transaction who takes his cut. I assure you that you (and I and everyone else) are paying more because the banks are getting their cut with all the CC transactions.
Drumminj is completely right.
The low transaction fees for VISA are one thing. Discover card processing rates are higher because I as a vendor, pays for those rewards programs.
Higher the reward or cash back on the card, the higher the special fees are for that card.
You’re screwing your vendors, and in return they’re going to raise their prices.
Ain’t no free meals man….somebody’s paying, and they’ll just compensate by raising their price to you.
I would never be able to keep track of all the credit card rewards. I found myself in thrall to the CC to just get a freebie vacuum from the rewards catalog. After that I said, never again. If I want it and can buy cash, I’ll do that and save the hassle, even if it costs me more.
Also, I don’t want to slip up in a credit card payment, because that would really screw things up.
Perfectly stated. This is why the cost of many things has gone up dramatically. Think about how much a “normal” car would cost if you had to pay for it, at the dealership, in cold/hard cash. Or, even more so, think about what a “higher end” car would cost (something like a BMW 5 series of MB E). I’m going to wager a bet that most of the people driving those cars have NEVER in any point in their lives had enough actual cash to spend 50-60K on a car.
Credit is the “great inflator”. Take a kid right out of college with 100K in debt and a 30K/yr job and put them into a 30-40K luxury car. That just pushes the price of all those cars (because that sale should NEVER have happened) up for everyone because there is artificial demand created by the crazy credit instruments that are in use today.
A Mercedes S class costs about 100K. That means that, to buy one new, you should have an income >300K. That’s top 1% of the country that should even be able to consider a car like that (and, I’d argue, of that top 1% only a small number could even pay 100K cash for a car).
So credit is false dollars or future dollars so it pushes prices higher because it creates false competition and demand . it defies real competition and real supply and demand .
Normally in capitalism systems competition keeps prices down and supply and demand regulates prices from going off the charts . When you introduce credit creating false competition and you introduce monopolies price fixing ,prices rise higher artificially .
I always thought that things were priced higher based on
having less of it . The Hope diamond cost a lot because there is only one of them for instance .
Why did Health Care rise so high ,to me that was the price fixing and gouging of the monopoly ,and it had nothing to do with free market capitalism and competition . The second they raise Social Security they would immediately raise the
health care costs to the senior to take those dollars back .
Its as if Industry knows exactly how many dollars the sheep have and the objective is to just get those dollars by any means ,by gouging ,by price fixing ,by using credit to create false demand ,
When we shifted to the two income family ,somehow industry raised prices just because the dollars were there ,so the two income family ends up paying for what the one income buying power use to get .
So ,faulty lending ,or giving to many dollars in credit to the sheep or easy money in any way benefits the industrial complex in that they can raise prices in a artificial manner .
I always thought that things were priced higher based on
having less of it .
There are two factors at play, as you mention. Both supply, and demand. Credit increases demand (potential buyers with the means). Assuming supply stays constant, prices will rise as a result.
“Why did Health Care rise so high ,to me that was the price fixing and gouging of the monopoly ,and it had nothing to do with free market capitalism and competition .”
Demand for health-care is elastic only for care that you don’t need that badly.
Demand is highly inelastic when you are dying.
Health care providers have a huge bargaining advantage when your life is at stake, so we should not expect free-market forces to provide for anything like reasonable pricing.
The invisible hand of the market does not work when it is holding an invisible gun to your head.
Prime ,,,So ,than a single payer government system would be the best for health care because it would take the invisible gun
to your head out of the equation . Plus , overall health care would cost less .
The invisible hand of the market does not work when it is holding an invisible gun to your head.
———————
Which is why all of our basic necessities should be regulated, owned, or controlled by the public (a govt that is fully accountable to the people).
“That’s what caused the housing bubble, IMHO.
I think there was a significant contribution due to a flight to safety after the dot com bust.
Following oxide’s argument to its natural conclusion would see us sending all of our money to the government and depending on government for everything- food, housing, transportation, medical care.
“We pretend to work and the government pretends to pay us.”
So which is better, the logical conclusion of unfettered communism (Russia?) or the logical conclusion of unfettered capitalism (Dickens?)? Just a discussion point, because I honestly don’t know.
But I do know that we are STILL paying for Reagan’s victory over Russia. The Cold War was won with the credit card.
If the balance on the card is still going up, then I submit that we haven’t even started paying for it yet.
My apartment complex loves military and Section 8 because they set the price to match housing allowances and subsidies, while the rest of us have to match that price on our own. They all loves them their government cheese.”
we all compete against each other for goods and services as you note above
see why the private sector is alarmed at the public sector benefits and pay.
“I want my taxes to be high, especially SS and Medicare”
This is an amazingly bizarre statement. I think you are saying you want higher taxes so products will be cheaper. You don’t care how the taxes are used?
You think products are produced based on ability to pay? What about the cost of producing those goods? What about undercutting the competition?
Yes, I do care how my taxes are used — but I have some say in that when I vote. The point is to get the OUT of my paycheck and into SS escrow of a sort, where companies can’t get their meathooks into it via gouge pricing.
And competition? What competition? Competition only works if the buyer can walk away. But these are products people can’t walk away from, like food. So companies go into a sort of semi-collusion. Whole Foods looks to see if people buy the $2.50 bread at Safeway. If they do, WF tries to sell $2.75 bread. For products with guaranteed demand, prices go UP, not down.
There are many grocery stores and many bread producers. Their goal is to maximize profit. One way to do this is to pull market share from their competition via better pricing. But they will not sell it at a loss (for long). Instead they would stop producing.
Plus, there are plenty of substitute products for most things. If bread costs too much, you eat less of it and instead eat rice, potatoes, etc. If asparagus is too expensive, you eat more broccolli.
For things without a good substitute I would agree with you. But there are not too many goods that fall into this category. Even gasoline has a substitute in the long run.
SS is not an escrow account. Unfortunately it is not even fully funded presently.
But if you have price fixing monopolies than substitution doesn’t work . With health care they raise the price whenever they want .
With the employer you given a couple of choices on Employer supplemented health care ,and the choices are price fixed to be the same .
Health care should be de-coupled from employers (Employers can’t afford the price fixing of that monopoly anyway ) . Than just go to a single pay Medicare type system for everyone and
ditch the health care insurance Companies ,or just go back to
free market capitalism with heath care and the prices would crash as a result .
No argument here. Health care is a scam.
“Many of us would contend that 1982 marked the beginning of our credit bubble and the accelerated growth of the wealth gap.”
The trickle-down that didn’t.
But at least the rich are richer than ever, and paying less taxes. So the important part of the theory worked.
As man in future walks along the beach and there is the Statue of Liberty torn apart laying on the sand and he ponders what great
society could of created such a statue and what happened .
Charlie Heston says it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk0s6RWRke0&feature=related
and I think he’s cursing the banksters…
You maniacs!!! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
That was one of the greatest movie lines in movie history and Charleston Heston did it perfect .
They got invaded by Hitler for one. But at least they gave us baguettes, french bread, and other things to go along with that statue.
and those happened to be the very same decades that are considered to be America’s “peak”
Prove causation vs correlation. There were many other factors at play.
By that goalpost it’s pretty hard to prove anything. Like, lowering taxes creates jobs. Prove it. Or at least sort out the many other factors. We’ve been at it for months and made little headway.
By that goalpost it’s pretty hard to prove anything.
I would agree. As PB remarks below, we simply can’t perform a scientific experiment.
However, we can be more thorough and scientific in our analysis. That’s all I’m suggesting here. Yes, I was harsh in my reply, but CA Renter’s comments suggest there is no doubt, to which I greatly disagree.
marginal rates are irrelevant.
effective rates are relevant.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456
for your reading enjoyment…very little change in the effective income tax rate on the top 5% over the last 30 years.
the rich do not and have not ever paid what you think they are or have ever paid.
I think that, in absolute dollar terms, the “rich” (I think there are many different definitions of that term here) pay far more than the rest of us.
Everyone seems to argue in terms of percentages as if that were the correct unit of measure, though I’ve yet to see a strong argument for that which is sound in principle (ie respects private property rights and the US Constitution).
Everyone seems to argue in terms of percentages as if that were the correct unit of measure, though I’ve yet to see a strong argument for that which is sound in principle
Wrong. You’ve seen many. You’re just too biased to acknowledge them.
You’d make an acceptable blogger for the Heritage Foundation or the Koch Brothers. Not quite effective enough to change people’s minds but good enough to keep the base.
Wrong. You’ve seen many. You’re just too biased to acknowledge them.
If you’re so certain, then perhaps you’d be kind enough to summarize one here? I’ve not seen a single person first acknowledge an individual’s right to their labor and the fruits thereof (the basis of personal property rights), which is encoded in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution, and then argue that a progressive tax structure is consistent with that principle and does not violate it.
Instead, all I see are arguments as to why it’s “fair” and how a wealth gap is bad - both of which may be true - but in no way argues that such a tax structure is consistent with private property rights.
Oh, and I’m glad to see you ARE branching out. Associating me with different groups (with negative connotations) to try to discredit my ideas rather than addressing the ideas themselves. If people like you would put that effort into actually discussing the facts, maybe we could actually have valuable discourse in this country.
Associating me with different groups (with negative connotations) to try to discredit my ideas rather than addressing the ideas themselves.
(negative connotations drumminj?)
Don’t run from it. Wear it proudly.
If you’re so certain, then perhaps you’d be kind enough to summarize one here?
I don’t need to. I’ve already posted 10, polls, arguments and studies that say most Americans believe progressive taxation is fair and just. That battle has been won. What you think does not concern me much.
I’ve already posted 10, polls, arguments and studies that say most Americans believe progressive taxation is fair and just
And how is that an argument that acknowledges private property rights?
By your admission, it isn’t. It’s simply the collection of the opinion of a bunch of individuals. It’s sad that you can’t see the difference.
It’s sad that you can’t see the difference.
Naww it’s not sad. Cheer up drumminj. It’s the first day of Carnaval.
“an individual’s right to their labor and the fruits thereof (the basis of personal property rights), which is encoded in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution,”
How does a progressive income tax violate the bill of rights?
How does a progressive income tax violate the bill of rights?
I did not directly claim that it did. I said two things:
1) I’ve not seen an argument that acknowledges private property rights
2) Private property rights are encoded in the constitution/bill of rights
Would you argue against either of those? If #1, I’d appreciate it if you could summarize.
Assuming I did make the claim you’re asserting, I think one in fact could argue that a progressive income tax does violate the bill of rights. Arguably any taxation of income does. It’s very open to interpretation, and thus not a simple argument to make/type out here, but let’s look at this text of the 5th amendment:
nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation
I think one could argue that taxpayers are not getting
just compensation,” especially those paying considerably larger sums than the average.
most Americans believe progressive taxation is fair and just
Most americans also believed in Iraq war. Most American also voted for Bush. Most people also voted for Obama. Let’s be honest, most americans don’t know can’t tell the difference betn gold and the tungsten. A poll of any kind is meaningless, it’s the last refuge for a loosing argument.
most = more people voted for bush and obama.
Most people prolly don’t know that even with a flat tax the people who make more money, pay more taxes.
A poll of any kind is meaningless, it’s the last refuge for a loosing argument.
That’s BS. If done correctly polls can be valuable. You just don’t like most the results so that’s your line.
drumminj wrote:
I’ve not seen a single person first acknowledge an individual’s right to their labor and the fruits thereof (the basis of personal property rights), which is encoded in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution, and then argue that a progressive tax structure is consistent with that principle and does not violate it.
——————–
Again, you’re making the FALSE assumption that the rich have “earned” their money via their own labor. Nothing could be further from the truth.
………………
(But it’s important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from “working”: in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Why do you keep trying to talk around this fact?
for your reading enjoyment…very little change in the effective income tax rate on the top 5% over the last 30 years
The rich pay way less taxes now than they did 35, 40, 50, 60 years ago.
Is there a source for amount of taxes paid by the wealthy back then (actually paid, not rates)?
I remember reading about the fantastic tax shelters available back in the day.
i cannot find any data that discusses effective tax rates beyond 1979. I do see a history of marginal rates that date back to 1913 along with the upper tax bracket during those times…which doesn’t tell me much.
The most important tax rate for the rich is the capital gains rate, which is at or near its lowest point in post-WW2 history.
‘Income’ is for the little people.
Exactly alpha -sloth .
drumminj:
That part of the Fifth Amendment was designed to cover situation where a government takes a private owner’s land to build a road or something like that. In cases like that, the amount of compensation is supposed to equal the value of the land.
You can’t apply the same principle to taxation. When a person’s income is taxed, they may receive government services, but they are not directly compensated for the taxes that are taken.
I suppose you that you could make a weak argument that the Fifth Amendment is a ban against all taxes, but then that would have been overriden by the amendment that established the federal income tax.
So you can go ahead and make an argument why you think taxes are too high, or why you think that flat taxes or the only fair taxes, but there isn’t a reasonable constitutional argument to be made.
No perp walks. Just wrist slaps. Beazer CEO pays fine for blatant fraud:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/03/04/2108880/beazer-ceo-to-pay-back-millions.html
another slap on the wrist.
“Realtors are racketeers.”
Realtors and builder groups gave MORE DIRECT money to enthrone King Walker, The Decider II, than huggable Emperor David Koch did.
Thanks to them, Koch and others, we humble peasants and said slobs, in the GOP Kingdom of Wisconistan now have the following conditions:
The Wisconsin humble peasants and said slobs revolting and protesting at the very gates of King Walker’s Capitol Castle..
Around 400 intimidating armed men surrounding it under the command of the King, his High Sheriff and the rest of the GOP Fitzgerald Clan.
The new and improved GOP Arrest and Detention Warrants just issued by the High Sheriff of the Fitzgerald Clan for the capture the Peoples runaway Senators thoughout the lands by Force.
The Threat of Contempt of Court against King Walker of Court by a humble Madison Judge if the King doesn’t allow the peasants and said slobs into his Capitol Castle by 8:00.a.m. this morning.
Petitions of Recall being started against the People’s Outlaw runaway senators.
Petitions of Recall being started against 8 of the King’s GOP Robber Baron senators.
Plans and Preperations for Petitions to Recall the very King Himself, his Royal Highness, Scott Walker, The Decider II, within the year.
Terror rules the Land as the Great Emperor Koch, from a land faraway, watches, chuckles and commands:
“Scotty, Release the Hounds”
“TrueMyWayortheHighway™”…meets… Mikey,The Wisconsin Yankee in King Walkers Court.
Love your updates, Mikey!
Keeping our fingers crossed for you guys. This is our (all U.S. workers’) last stand.
Last stand to stiff the taxpayers?
No thank you very much!
You really aren’t getting it.
We can post fact after fact showing how the rich have raped this country and its workers, and you still think that the divide is between public vs. private sector workers.
Nobody is asking for Joe Sixpack to pay higher taxes. In EVERY case I’m aware of, we want the rich to pay higher taxes. “Trickle-down” economics does NOT work. Time to reverse all the damage it has wrought.
Video of police tackling Democratic state Rep. Nick Milroy (South Range) after he has shown his ID and attempts to go to his office for some clothes.
Welcome to Walker’s Wisconistan
http://tinyurl.com/4cbhyzl
They should have tased the bastard.
For what?
One certainly hopes so.
The joke of it is, Wisconsin is one of only four states with a fully funded pension system (95%). New York, Florida and Washington being the other three.
Mikey, what grounds do they have for a recall? Does the politician have to do something illegal (high crime and misdemeanor) or can the voters simply vote him out the way they did in California?
This might explain..
“Yet Walker, who cannot be recalled from office until next January, is not the only official who could be the subject of a recall election. Under Wisconsin election law, any elected official may be recalled from office:
(a) The qualified electors of the state, of any county, city, village, or town, of any congressional, legislative, judicial, town sanitary, or school district, or of any prosecutorial unit may petition for the recall of any incumbent elective official by filing a petition with the same official or agency with whom nomination papers or declarations of candidacy for the office are filed demanding the recall of the officeholder.
(b) Except as provided in par. (c), a petition for recall of an officer shall be signed by electors equal to at least 25% of the vote cast for the office of governor at the last election within the same district or territory as that of the officeholder being recalled. . . .
(s) No petition for recall of an officer may be offered for filing prior to the expiration of one year after commencement of the term of office for which the officer is elected.
Because the recall statute allows elected officials to serve for a full year before they are subject to recall, Walker himself is immune until January of 2012. Eight of Walker’s Republican allies in the state senate have served at least one year of their current term, however, and thus are eligible for a recall petition right now. If just three of these Republicans were to be replaced with Democrats, the state senate would flip to a Democratic-majority body.
The eight Republicans who can be recalled right now are:
•Robert Cowles
•Alberta Darling
•Sheila Harsdorf
•Luther Olsen
•Randy Hopper
•Glenn Grothman
•Mary Lazich
•Dan Kapanke
When next January rolls around, a little over 500,000 petition signatures will be necessary to trigger a recall election for Gov. Walker.”
They essentially have to re-run for the Office that they currently hold if a Recall is sucessful.
It’s a do-over if you hate them after 1 year!
http://tinyurl.com/5ut7jl9
My understanding is they have to get a certain # of signatures by Nov. Then there is an election in Jan 2012. Something like that.
Arab autocracy sux…
American bankster-cracy sux.
The American collusion of banksters-ceo-govmint-publicunions sucks the worst!
Comment by CharlieTango
2011-03-03 08:56:16
the philosophy of limited govt and limited taxation leads to prosperity and opportunity for all, including labor.
there is a difference between labor and unions.
—————————–
Now, let’s see if the facts back this assertion.
The top marginal tax rate was in the 70-94% range from 1936-1982, a period that many would consider to be America’s “peak” years. (1982 marked the beginning of our credit bubble, the growing divide between the rich and poor, the growing movement toward the outsourcing of jobs, and the dismantling of the middle class, IMHO).
The only other time we saw such low top marginal rates was the period right before…the Great Depression. (Coincidence? I think not.)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html
——————————–
Corporate tax rates (~1988-present) are at low levels not seen since 1941.
And, from the information I can see, cap gains taxes are at the lowest rate since the 1930s.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/189189-u-s-dividend-cap-gains-tax-rate-history-possible-relevance-to-future-taxation
——————————–
How have tax rates impacted our economy, and how has it impacted Amercan families, particularly the “middle class”?
A huge share of the nation’s economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph#
The bad news is that the vibrant growth has fizzled, for the time being at least, and fewer Americans seem to be benefiting from what growth there is. Plus, much of the added wealth over the last couple of decades came from women working more, which raised household incomes but also masked problems like fewer jobs and falling pay for manufacturing workers. There’s also a much bigger gap between middle and high earners today than there was in the ’60s and ’70s, which means the wealthy are capturing a larger and perhaps unfair share of the nation’s wealth. “The middle class is a lot farther away from the very top than they were 40 years ago,” says Shierholz. “So even if typical households were gaining ground in absolute terms, they’d be losing out relative to households at the top.”
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/10/15/how-the-middle-class-is-shrinking
—————————
Again, I will ask the question:
If low/no taxes, no unions, and a small/weak government is the answer to our problems, can somebody PLEASE show us a single example of a country with these qualities that has a thriving economy and middle class, with a standard of living that is equal to (or better than) those found in more “socialist” countries.
Statistics can be found here:
http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/eco-economy
———————-
Please, let’s have a dialogue based on FACTS and LOGIC, rather than the regurgitation of propaganda put out by the corporatists and financial elite who seek to benefit at our (ALL WORKERS) expense.
“If low/no taxes, no unions, and a small/weak government is the answer to our problems, can somebody PLEASE show us a single example of a country with these qualities that has a thriving economy and middle class, with a standard of living that is equal to (or better than) those found in more “socialist” countries.”
Wouldn’t the answer be, the Original Thirteen Colonies And The United States of America for the first one hundred years?
Or Hong Kong?
One isn’t an example of a modern nation, the other is barely. Hong Kong has been a colony of one nation or another all its life. It’s designed for their economic convenience.
What’s “modern” got to do with anything? Or, “colony” for that matter?
They are all three examples of success relative to other countries.
Well, if there were no unions at all in the world, you can’t really say a nation thrived more than other nations because it didn’t have unions. No one did. So the colonies and early America show us nothing.
Hong Kong is a tiny nation of convenience for the Brits, and now the Chinese. It would not exist in its current form without a ’sponsor’ state. It is so different than almost all other nation-states (Singapore comes to mind as a similar state) that it’s hard to compare its economic system with the rest of the world.
Suffice to say you have a paucity of good examples. If any at all.
Well, if there were no unions at all in the world, you can’t really say a nation thrived more than other nations because it didn’t have unions. No one did. So the colonies and early America show us nothing.
Way to move the goal posts.
Clark’s response was in answer to the following question:
If low/no taxes, no unions, and a small/weak government is the answer to our problems, can somebody PLEASE show us a single example of a country with these qualities that has a thriving economy and middle class
Way to move the goal posts.
You know all about that drumminj. I think there’s a memo about it.
OK. The colonies had taxes that caused them some anger, IIRC. So that example fails.
And they were ruled by King George- is that big or small government? I guess big, for its day, but that again counts against the colonies.
Early America had all sorts of taxes- but more often in the form of tariffs and excise taxes. So you can’t necessarily say they were low tax compared to anyone else- most countries were like that in those days. Again, a failed comparison.
Hong Kong has been ruled by two huge governments, the Brits and the Chinese. So, another failed comparison.
I could go on…
Like I said, if that’s the best you got, you got nuthin’.
A quick look through history tells us that no system can withstand corruption. My point, not going to solve this debate with historical precedents.
My view, no governments stay truly small because they can’t. There are too many functions that can’t be accomplished by the private sector to our satisfaction.
1) Justice system.
2) Roads.
3) Education and health care for the poor.
4) Defense.
5) Some types of research.
6) Regulation of industry.
Government screws all these things up to some degree. Right now they’re screwing up all of them badly at the same time. They’re also getting into a lot of stuff that makes no sense except to small interest groups. But private industry would either not do these things, or it would be frightening for society if they did.
The Thirteen Colonies had low taxes compared to Britain and to the U.S. today.
Hong Kong had “small” government:
“The Hong Kong Government has traditionally played a mostly passive role in the economy, with little by way of industrial policy and almost no import or export controls. Market forces and the private sector were allowed to determine practical development.
The union was established in 1948… The region espoused minimum government intervention under the ethos of positive non-interventionism during the colonial era…”
“Recent historical research… puts forward the view that trade unions are part of a broader movement of benefit societies, which includes medieval guilds, Freemasons, Oddfellows, friendly societies, and other fraternal organisations.” - Wiki
So you could say that yes indeed there were unions during the time of The Thirteen Colonies and the power of the Crown or the union of the day the Trading Company was not as far reaching in The Colonies compared to Britain, which means The Colonies had small government.
The Thirteen Colonies had low taxes compared to Britain and to the U.S. today.
That’s the best you guys got? What a joke argument.
It wasn’t an argument, it was an example. Exactly what was asked for.
Oh, & f u 2, cause that’s what you implied.
It wasn’t a joke of an example either, it was quite revolutionary.
I haven’t looked at every country, but I suspect there are many more.
“I haven’t looked at every country, but I suspect there are many more.”
I look forward to hearing them. Laughter lowers blood pressure.
Yes clark, I can. The USA circa 1800’s.
Labor had the alternative of going out west and homesteading for the cost of transportation and a few tools for an awful lot of the 1800’s. Oh, and we also had almost unlimited foreign immigration at the time. And child labor. And uncontionable working conditions. What was the literacy rate?
How many of those do we need to get back along with the no unions to make for your worker’s paradise?
How many of those do we need to get back along with the no unions to make for your worker’s paradise?
You’re assuming these are dependent variables rather than independent. The basis of a fallacious argument, IMO.
It is possible to shrink the size of government, move more of it locally, reduce taxes, and yet keep worker protection laws, literacy rates high, and the rule of law.
You can add slavery to that list, Polly.
Yes, Mike, and shame on me for not listing it. I had a particular vision of the Northeast in my head, and I just didn’t think that far south. New England education showing, I guess. But still, shame on me.
Hong Kong has socialized medicine with a private market as well. They have welfare
About 50% of the populuation lives in subsidized housing
Hong Kong may be cited often enough as the free marketeer’s dream, but it never made the mistake (in my view) that Mrs Thatcher’s government made in the 80s of monetising housing subsidies by removing rent controls and subsidies on council housing and using housing benefit as the prime way of keeping the poor housed. How many people know that around half of Hong Kong’s population live in subsidised cheap council housing? Studies have shown that this has been a major factor in Hong Kong’s growth and social mobility. Labour is attracted to Hong Kong from the mainland by jobs and cheap housing, which itself keeps wage rises down in the private sector, boosting profitability.
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardspencer/100050874/welfare-reform-what-george-osborne-and-ids-can-learn-from-socialist-paradises/#
It also appears Hong Kong has unions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Confederation_of_Trade_Unions
Man ain’t the internet a btch!
Wouldn’t the answer be, the Original Thirteen Colonies And The United States of America for the first one hundred years?
Or Hong Kong?
————————
Life in the Thirteen Colonies:
The first year was devastating for the colonists, with only 32 colonists surviving the winter and only then because Native Americans living in the area came to their aid with food. After a supply ship arrived the next year they had additional provisions but many more colonists to feed as well. Once again, over the winter, most of the colonists died of starvation and from hostile encounters with their neighbors. As winter came to a close, ships arrived, and most of them were ready to leave. But as they were leaving, Lord Thomas de la Warr (Delaware is named after him) arrived from England with new supplies and more settlers. He refused to let the survivors return to England. Slowly, as they reached agreements with the local Native American tribes and they learned how to grow some of their own crops, the colony began to prosper.
AND:
All 102 of the passengers were referred to as the “Pilgrims” after they arrived. The group had obtained a Patent from the London Virginia Company which indentured them into service for the Company for seven years after they arrived and settled.
http://www.timepage.org/spl/13colony.html
……………….
The Navigation Acts, first enacted by Parliament in 1660, regulated trade by requiring that goods be shipped on English ships with predominantly English crews and that certain commodities, called enumerated articles, be shipped to only England or its colonies. The laws reflected the economic policy known as mercantilism, which held that colonies exist for the benefit of the mother country as a source of raw materials and a market for its manufactured goods.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Colonial-Society-and-Economy.topicArticleId-25073,articleId-25014.html
[Is this what you refer to as "free-market capitalism"? -CAR]
……………………………
The expansion of slavery. At midcentury, just under a quarter million blacks lived in the colonies, almost twenty times the number in 1700. The slave numbers increased, as had the white population, through a combination of immigration, albeit forced, and natural increase. As the supply of indentured servants diminished, in part because work opportunities had improved in England, the supply of slaves either imported directly from Africa or transshipped from the West Indies was increased.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Colonial-Society-and-Economy.topicArticleId-25073,articleId-25014.html
……………………….
Mercantile theory encouraged the colonies to provide raw materials for England’s industrializing economy; pig iron and coal became important exports. Concurrently, restrictions were placed on finished goods. For example, Parliament, concerned about possible competition from colonial hatters, prohibited the export of hats from one colony to another and limited the number of apprentices in each hatmaker’s shop.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Colonial-Society-and-Economy.topicArticleId-25073,articleId-25014.html
———————
I don’t want to take up any more space, but suffice it to say, the Colonial Times were NOT better than what we had in this past century. Also, realize that America was an “emerging market” at the time…full of natural resources, and very few people living locally to share in those resources (which is why the colonialists wanted to stake a claim to our resources).
There is NOTHING at all that would make me think those exploitative days of colonial rule were better than modern-day America (or the modern-day “socialist” European countries). Perhaps I’m missing something…why do you think those times and conditions were better?
The question wasn’t if they were better than today, but if it was better than other countries at the time where unions had greater influence.
Talk about moving the goal posts.
Slavery is not in the scope of the discussion.
Why focus on the beginnings of The Thirteen Colonies? There were many years between the beginning and 1776 that are left out.
You make note of restrictions that were placed on finished goods in the Colonies but fail to mention the conditions in Britain and elsewhere. What about that?
Clark,
I used the present tense in my question. We cannot compare things longitudinally because so many things have changed since then. I still went along with your example, though, to show you that there was no thriving middle class, and things were NOT better than they are today with a more “socialist” economy. As a matter of fact, the reason we have a more “socialism” today is BECAUSE things were so bad then.
Sorry, but you’ve still not come up with a coutry with a low/no taxes and a weak govt, with a thriving economy and middle class, and a standard of living that compares favorably to more “socialist” countries. That’s because IT DOESN’T EXIST. You’ve been had. “Trickle-down economics” DOES NOT WORK!
BTW, I would most certainly think that slavery should be a part of the discussion when we’re specifically talking about the well-being of workers and the existence (or lack thereof) of a middle class. No?
Ca renter…. nice lesson .
“The top marginal tax rate was in the 70-94% range from 1936-1982… The only other time we saw such low top marginal rates was the period right before…the Great Depression. ”
the unitied states lasted 137 years before it even enacted a permanent income tax.
The withholding tax on wages was introduced in 1943.
Yes, 137 years of the poor dying in the streets from starvation, the rich dying from the excesses of gout, and the rest of the population dying from dysentary. Not to mention the Civil War.
LOL! Our Civil War was due to there being no Federal income tax at the time!
Perhaps if there had been a progressive income tax, the relatively few-in-number slaveholders wouldn’t have had the immense wealth and accompanying political power that they had.
It was a classic example of too much wealth concentration.
If low/no taxes, no unions, and a small/weak government is the answer to our problems, can somebody PLEASE show us a single example of a country with these qualities that has a thriving economy and middle class, with a standard of living that is equal to (or better than) those found in more “socialist” countries.
Good post. The often repeated lie of: the philosophy of limited govt and limited taxation leads to prosperity and opportunity for all, is easy to disprove with facts as you’ve just done.
The fact that the lie is so often repeated leads me to believe the repeaters may be ignorant of history, a bit brainwashed, tools or even paid fakes.
There is evidence that there are many right-wing “paid fakes” taking over blog conversations.
Are Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb Down Online Conversations?
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101217024314741
There are daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.
…I’m talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.
…The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilizations, but which has in reality been organized.
…two patterns jump out at me. The first is that discussions of issues in which there’s little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilized than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions: such as climate change, public health and corporate tax avoidance. These are often characterized by amazing levels of abuse and disruption.
…instead of contesting the issues…
many of those who disagree bombard me with infantile abuse, or just keep repeating a fiction, however often you discredit it. This ensures that an intelligent discussion is almost impossible - which appears to be the point….
…The second pattern is the strong association between this tactic and a certain set of views: pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Both traditional conservatives and traditional progressives tend be more willing to discuss an issue than these right-wing libertarians, many of whom seek instead to shut down debate….some of the efforts to prevent intelligence from blooming seem to be organized, and that neither website hosts nor other commenters know how to respond.
….For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organized by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”. This is what he told them:
“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. …
….The internet is a remarkable gift, which has granted us one of the greatest democratic opportunities since universal suffrage. We’re in danger of losing this global commons as it comes under assault from an army of trolls and flacks, many of them covertly organised or trained….
RioAmericanInBrasil’s comment reminds me of this observation from The Daily Bell:
“central banking blows up economies, leading to more regulation which further concentrates power in the hands of a few, allowing government and society to be even more efficiently run by the elite via mercantilism. It’s kind of a closed feedback loop. The more chaos, the more regulation, the more leverage the elite has to reignite the process. Power is continually being centralized and the middle classes themselves (the elite’s ultimate target) will actually clamor for the regulation that facilitates the process.”
I don’t get the stupidity of the people who ask for more regulation ie more government. It was the government, you idiots that handed money to the wallstreet. It has been proven time and time again that the government exists solely to further the goals of the riches and connected, why would you still want more govmint? I Just don’t get it. It’a religion that will never go away.
I don’t get the stupidity of the people who ask for more regulation ie more government.
Because you are obviously ignorant to historical facts and causes and your posts show it. You spout dangerous, mindless AM radio drivil butters.
De-regulation- the dismantling of Glass–Steagall and Phil Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (de-regulation) let to the financial crisis and “socialism for the rich”. Look it up.
It’a religion that will never go away.
It would go away if you did some research and thought for yourself for a change butters.
Regulations are the rules of the game. If you have no rules, it becomes a free-for-all and the bottom line will win every time to the detriment of everything else.
I don’t understand why you can’t see this.
Some regulations are poorly written and not thought out, but that doesn’t negate the need for rules. As conditions change, new rules need to be written. Some rules can be retired. We don’t need regulation of buggy whip manufacturers now.
Clark & butters,
It was not the government that handed Wall Street the money (until the bailout). It was Wall Street that was handing the govt money *in order to bribe the govt into letting the elite write the regulations.*
These regulations — written by those who are supposed to be regulated! — are a result of a government that has had too much money thrown at them from the elite. This is why we need to back the unions. They are the ONLY ones who have the incentive and the ability to stand up to the elite. It is not a coincidence that we are seeing this attack on unions during a time when the elite are writing their own tickets.
Regulations that are written in favor of “We the People” are good. It’s when the process gets hijacked that problems arise, and it can only be hijacked because there is a unilateral power grab…due to the fact that there is no BALANCE OF POWER. We need to restore this balance, and the unions are the only game in town. Either we back them, or we back the financial elite who are responsible for the decimation of the middle class in America. The unions didn’t cause J6 to lose his job or his benefits or his purchasing power; the financial elite did. They are pushing their propaganda full-bore, and you are falling for it.
Rio,
I wouldn’t doubt that for a second. The fact that we keep hearing about how “tax cuts for the rich” are good for our economy — without ANY facts or data to back up that claim — makes me suspicious.
As you know, those of us who are fighting on behalf of working people can bring fact after fact, and the only retort we hear is “OMG, you leftist, commie, socialist whacko!!!” Nothing else. No facts, no data. That’s telling, IMHO.
That’s what the Kochtopus is all about.
Faux News has given the Right a huge MSM propaganda tool, a channel constantly repeating the party line and framing issues with a right-wing slant.
The Kochtopus is about funding a similar thing on the internet, and in supposedly grass-roots political event. But this is done in a covert way, to give the appearance that the Kochs’ views are actually those of mainstream, clear-thinking America, and they’re starting to really catch on!
The fact that Koch-funded Teapartiers still want their medicare and social security show the shallowness of these organizations and their followers’ political beliefs. They’re mostly a bunch of well-meaning twits who’ve been bamboozled by the usual suspects.
But that’s all it takes to loot a country.
Please, get a grip.
The left has ABC/NBC/CGS/CNN/NPR etc. The right has one station.
Line up the Kochs against the huge left-leaning foundations like Soros’ OSI, Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, Tides, Gates, Pew, etc. and they look miniscule.
Are conservatives not allowed to be undertake political action? Why not just legislate a one-party state. Like Detroit, for instance.
Please, get a grip.
The left has ABC/NBC/CGS/CNN/NPR etc. The right has one station.
Not anymore. If the “left” had those stations as they might have 30 years ago they do not have them now.
The abysmal corporatist coverage of the Wisconsin protests by the MSM is proof.
To compare the quality of the news on Fox with that of ABC,CBS, NBC, or CNN is laughable. None are perfect- far from it. But Fox stands head and shoulders above the others in slant and one-sided debate. They alone will have two people on to debate an issue, and they’re both on the same (right-wing) side! One’s just a bit more extreme than the other.
If you can’t recognize the difference, then you’re a hopeless case. Continue watching your Faux news.
And the Kochs can spend their money however they want, but we have the right to publicize it, even if they won’t.
Rio, you probably don’t get MSNBC down there. Their new mission is to be the “anti Fox News.”
Rachel Maddow will be leading the charge.
Keith Olberman was too right-wing for them?
The markets are rigged !
To be honest ,I never thought the markets and systems and all that was so rigged . It’s rigged by tax policy ,its rigged by inflation games/bubble games ,price fixing ,monopolies ,bail outs,laws and you name it ,all designed to put more bucks upward .
The middle-class should of gained more power ,not less . Free market capitalism is just a illusion these days ,it’s rigged and stacked decks . The gap between the rich and poor grew
wider .The corruption as well as the Industrial Complex /Wall Street gain of power by getting what they wanted from our
elected officials is evident .
The thing is that these Market Makers are mad-hatters ,they are truly nuts . They kill their own hosts in the final analysis .
If this unbridled greed is big enough it has the power to just
control everything .
Even the wording Hank Paulson was using when he wanted money from Congress was insulting like “I need a big gun .”
All the check and balances we had before kept getting weaker and weaker .
Look at a extreme example by Egypt . All power in one dictator hands ,control of the money ,the people living in abject poverty .
“The only other time we saw such low top marginal rates was the period right before…the Great Depression. (Coincidence? I think not.)”
Points like that one make me worry the next ten years may be worse for the U.S. economy and society as a whole than the last ten years were…
I think the trajectory will continue heading downward unless people wake up.
It’s amazing to me how regular working people can fight so much against their own interests — and for the interests of those who have stripped them of their purchasing power and quality of life. It makes no sense.
The regurgitation of propaganda is synonymous with conservative buffoonery.
The regurgitation of WAR good / FOOD STAMPS bad propaganda is synonymous with conservative
buffoonery.“TrueBeliever’s™ / “TrueDeceiver’s™” “TrueHypocrite™” / “TruePurity™” YellScreamHoller methodologyPlease stop inferring causation from correlation. Just because two things existed at the same time doesn’t mean one caused the other.
“Just because two things existed at the same time doesn’t mean one caused the other.”
But it can strongly imply it.
But it can strongly imply it.
Sure, but to do so, you should at least identify the other possible factors, and argue why the one you choose to imply causation from is a better candidate than any of the others, and that there isn’t some third, yet unidentified cause, or that it’s not a result of many, interrelated factors.
I’ve seen none of that here.
I’ve seen none of that here.
Oh you’ve seen it drumminj. Lots of it. You just don’t believe your lying eyes.
“You just don’t believe your lying eyes.”
Reality doesn’t exist for an idealist- religious or political.
I believe in progressive taxation, but I find drumminj’s points to be very solid. The argument that “most American’s think/feel” something else isn’t a strong rebuttal to me.
The argument that “most American’s think/feel” something else isn’t a strong rebuttal to me.
You’re missing the practical point.
It is a strong rebuttal because the fact that most Americans think progressive taxation is fair and just, means that it doesn’t even need to be the strong rebuttal that it is.
It is a strong rebuttal because the fact that most Americans think progressive taxation is fair and just, means that it doesn’t even need to be the strong rebuttal that it is.
Except that we are a nation of laws, with a foundation of individual rights.
The opinion of the majority is irrelevant if it violates either those laws or those rights.
Or are you suggesting the Constitution is irrelevant?
“The argument that “most American’s think/feel” something else isn’t a strong rebuttal to me.”
Well, there’s this thing called ‘democracy’…
The argument that “most American’s think/feel” something else isn’t a strong rebuttal to me.
“You’re missing the practical point.”
And besides Polly, HousingWizard myself and others “strongly rebutted” druminnj’s Koch brother’s talking point on progressive taxation yesterday or the day before.
It’s there and it’s clear and it’s near.
“most Americans think progressive taxation is fair and just”
This is probably true, though to the degree of majority I am skeptical. Most Americans believe that what benefits them disportionately is the basis for “fair”.
There is a class of workers who earn just enough to pay taxes and not get tranfer payments. They see others who are on some sort of twilight zone perpetual vacation from labor and have the same lifestyle (less the commute and the suit). They question the justice of such fairness.
They aren’t able to sit around here sharing in this insult fest and celebration of self worth like us, so I thought I would speak up for them.
drumminj is looking for a Constitutional basis for a progressive tax. I don’t think there is one. In fact, there’s a provision against, such as the “right to property” clauses. I don’t have a basis, execept vague statements in the Preamble; ie “promote the general welfare.” And it’s kinda tough to have a “more perfect union” when the two sides won’t get near each other.
It is a strong rebuttal because the fact that most Americans think progressive taxation is fair and just, means that it doesn’t even need to be the strong rebuttal that it is.
We are not a simple majority rule democracy. That was intentional. Therefore what most Americans think isn’t the final word on anything.
drumminj is looking for a Constitutional basis for a progressive tax. I don’t think there is one. In fact, there’s a provision against, such as the “right to property” clauses.
And as such, when considering “solutions” to the numerous problems before us, we should probably keep this in mind. This country is not set up to be run by “mob rules”. There is a framework in place, and we must either:
1) work within the framerwork, or
2) change the framework.
If such a large percentage believes we should tar and feather the “rich” and take all their money, then amend the constitution to allow for it. But as soon as you do that, you have no standing to stop someone else from taking your labor, money, or property.
That’s the thing with rights and principles - they mean nothing if they only apply when convenient.
Or are you suggesting the Constitution is irrelevant?
Are you suggesting Obama is a Muslim?
Therefore what most Americans think isn’t the final word on anything.
It’s the final word on me thinking the point needs to be argued much.
That’s the thing with rights and principles - they mean nothing if they only apply when convenient.
Put that on T-shirts and hand them out at Tea Party nutfests.
They need to hear it.
This country is not set up to be run by “mob rules”. There is a framework in place, and we must either:
1) work within the framerwork, or
2) change the framework.
We did obviously because obviously we were required to. Or do you think progressive taxation was decreed overnight or something?
Obviously there is nothing in the Constitution that would prohibit progressive taxation and its implementation almost a century ago was both “working within” and changing the framework with the 16 amendment.
Now, if it were unconstitutional don’t you think it would have been found unconstitutional by now drumminj, almost a century later, or do you think you’re the first person that woke up one morning and had a problem with it?
drumminj This Country wasn’t set up to be run by FAT CATS rule either or the “mod rule” you mentioned in your above post .
RioAmericanInBrasil said,
“Or are you suggesting the Constitution is irrelevant?
Are you suggesting Obama is a Muslim?”
I think that’s the stupidest comment I’ve read on the HBB in all the years I’ve been reading it.
Would this make it Constitutional?
Sixteenth Amendment. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
RioAmericanInBrasil said,
“Or are you suggesting the Constitution is irrelevant?
Are you suggesting Obama is a Muslim?”
I think that’s the stupidest comment I’ve read on the HBB in all the years I’ve been reading it.
That you can’t see its intended stupidity was to illustrated the stupidity of the question it was responding to is the best example of stupid of them all.
You can never know for sure whether causality or coincidentality explains an observed sequence of events without experimental controls, can you? That’s why all time series analysis of convenience samples is suspect.
You can never know for sure whether causality or coincidentality explains an observed sequence of events without experimental controls, can you
Very true. But you can evaluate all the factors at play and draw a hypothesis based on them, using the information available.
But that requires identifying the variables to the best of your ability and evaluating each independently, rather than just cherry-picking the two factors you’d like to have the implied relationship between.
“rather than just cherry-picking the two factors you’d like to have the implied relationship between.”
Has anyone ever come up with a real, modern world libertarian success story? Hong Kong and the American Colonies the best we got?
Sounds like cherry-picking to me!
At some point correlation proves causation.
Has anyone ever come up with a real, modern world libertarian success story?
What does this have to do with high marginal tax rates and apparent prosperity in our country?
At some point correlation proves causation.
While that would make “proving” things easier, I don’t believe it’s true. Like the irrationality of markets, non-causal(?) correlation can probably go on for a long time…
non-causal(?) correlation can probably go on for a long time
especially when it’s a third, unidentified factor that causes both the initially perceived cause and effect.
drumminj,
I brought facts. There is NO evidence that lower tax rates benefit socieity or working people, in general. All the numbers show this lack of evidence.
There is also no evidence to show that high tax rates reduce growth.
The information I’ve provided covers decades. What facts and data do you bring, and how does it show that higher taxes slow growth, or that lower taxes spur growth. I really want to see some evidence.
The fake jobs numbers are out and we are now under 9%. Let the good times roll!!!
lmao Are they any reporters with any b@lls out there that challenge these numbers?
I like dylan ratigan. CNBC canned him because he talked too much.
rick santelli knows the game that is going on too. wouldnt be surprised if he gets canned too.
I agree that Dylan Ratigan starting becoming a exposing journalist
rather than a cheerleader for Wall Street . I watched the transformation that took place with him . What is great about him is he can’t be snowed like so much of the MSM ,you know the ones that don’t even ask the right questions . I hope he continues with what he has been doing .
On the other hand Glenn Beck has become a tool for big business .I don’t know if he even knows hes a tool because he seems really
sincere in what hes saying and actually acts like he believes it .
The problem is people are sincere often times about their beliefs ,
but what are the premises of their beliefs.
“Glenn Beck has become a tool for big business .”
He’s a tool in desperate need of in-patient treatment. What a nutball.
exeter …I tune into that Glenn Beck show rarely but I have noticed hes getting really weird ,oh well .
Do you know more about Santelli? He let out a selfish we-are-producers-we-deserve-millions rant on the floor of the NYSE, flanked by cheering traders. The rant is credited as one of the preciptators of the teaparty movement. How did he change away from that?
Yeah, Santelli strikes me as a tool of the overlords.
I saw that rant live, and was so exicted. It didn’t strike me at all as Santelli suggesting “producers” deserved millions. As a matter of fact, he was opposing bailouts to bankers and FBs, which is exactly what most of us were advocating for as well.
IMHO, the original Tea Party movement was on target. They were opposing the bailouts. But they were then co-opted by the Republicans and began shifting their position from being “anti-bailout” to anti-healthcare, anti-tax, etc. That was not what the original Tea Party was about.
It amazes me that the chosen elite at a time when a reasoned thief would be laying low they are looting at an ever increasing rate. Do you think it’s simply hubris or do they truly believe they can’t be stopped?
Case in point, the first article is from 2008.
State Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) presented a bill to cap nonprofit CEO salaries at $500,000 for nonprofits with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion
“The bill comes as residents are battling health-care premium spikes and slashed benefits while CEOs at Boston hospitals received 13 to 46 percent pay increases. Hospital officials said the pay hikes help retain executive talent who could make more at for-profit jobs. The packages include retirement payments, performance bonuses and expense accounts and are determined by hospital boards.
Some of the high-paid executives include Boston Medical Center CEO Elain Ullian, who makes $1.3 million, a 46-percent increase from 2004 to 2006, and Partners for Healthcare CEO James Mongan, who pulled in $1.96 million during 2006.
Yesterday:
Massachusetts State Senator Mark Montigny is fighting for legislation that would cap executives pay in the non-profit sector.
A package worth about 11 million dollars was given to Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Cleve Killingsworth who resigned in March after five years.
Killingsworth collected nearly 1.5 million dollars in severance and almost 7.5 million in additional compensation last year.
He is set to get three million more over the next two years.
Update on Elaine and James:
“Boston Medical Center – a financially troubled hospital – gave its outgoing CEO a one-time, nearly $3.5 million payment, in addition to her $1.3 million annual salary”
Mongan, also a Harvard Medical School professor, was paid $3.4 million by Partners HealthCare, including nearly $1 million in deferred pay that was reported as a lump sum this year in accordance with IRS rules.
How is the government saying what someone can or cannot make consistent with the ideas of “freedom” that this country was founded on?
The tax exemption of those organizations exists because it was given to them by the state and federal governments. If they want to pay their CEOs more than the the state thinks is reasonable for an org exempt from tax, they can become taxable. Be sure to give all your assets (or their monetary equivalent) to an approved tax exempt entity as you finish the process. You aren’t allowed to take charitable assets with you as you leave charitable status.
Tax exemption requires that no individual of the organization “benefits”. Yet many of these non profits seem to exist soley as a means to gather monies to their officers. It is one of the great scams in the US.
Is India good for Wall Street? You decide.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-04/galleon-trial-scorecard-rajaratnam-friends-colleagues-and-cooperators.html
Y’know, I’m not exactly enamored of these folks, no question they deserve what they get, but it does sort of beg the question, are Indians going to be the scapegoats for Wall Street excess?
MarketWatch First Take
March 4, 2011, 9:35 a.m. EST
Good news for economy, but not for markets
Commentary: Fed may take away the punch bowl if this keeps up
By MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Finally, some unambiguously good news on the economy. This is the jobs report everyone’s been waiting for.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hiring accelerated in almost every sector in February, leading to 192,000 additional nonfarm payrolls. The unemployment rate fell to 8.9% because people were finding work, not because they were dropping out of the work force in discouragement.
…
The good news: Job prospects are brightening.
The bad news: The new job doesn’t pay what the old one paid, and fuel and food costs are higher now than before.
Commodities Corner
March 4, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EST
$100 oil: Here to stay or soon to go?
Market weighs Libya turmoil, Saudi Arabia cues on output, OPEC
By Myra P. Saefong, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Market veterans were expecting oil prices to reach $100 a barrel even before the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa hit the fan this year, and now that oil’s reached triple digits, predicting prices is more daunting than ever.
…
There was a story on NPR this morning claiming that it’s happy times again for Computer Science grads, who are commanding starting salaries in the 80-90K range.
This does not jive with what I’m seeing in the Denver job market, where jobs are advertised requiring 5+ years of experience for 70-80K.
Sounds like cherry picking to me. I’m sure some new grad somewhere…maybe somebody on the inside track or with a ton of applicable prior experience was in the right place at the right time and pulled that off. But a standard-issue early-mid 20-something looking for his first real job that doesn’t know anybody at the company? No way.
I know of a local and struggling non-profit in my area whose “IT Guy” grosses $72,000/year, but he has been working there for more than ten years.
My guess would be it’s for Silicon Valley.
And if so I bet they are not hiring the median graduate. I bet we’re talking about the top 1% of graduates in the nation…that probably still know somebody there.
NPR news is the voice of the empire status quo. The sparkly lilt the news readers get in their voices when announcing the DOW is up vs the carefully neutral or even funereal tone when it is down reminds me of the fictional media coverage in the film adaptation of Starship Troopers. The spin they put on the housing bubble issues over the years has been well chronicled in this blog. They make me sick.
This is not surprising as NPR and public broadcasting are now at the mercy of their corporate grant givers.
Yup, they’ve got it all sewed up pretty tight in all the broadcast mediums. All corporate propaganda all the time. At least the rooskis *knew* that Pravda was all bullshit.
Justice for sale
Thus it’s difficult to feel sympathy for Clarence Thomas, as he finds himself embroiled in a controversy over his failure to reveal the sources of his wife’s non-investment income (or indeed that she even had any such income). The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires all federal judges to fill out annual financial-disclosure forms. The relevant question on the disclosure form isn’t complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn’t a lawyer, he shouldn’t have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase “Spouse’s Non-Investment Income” should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income.
In fact Ginni Thomas was paid nearly $700,000 by the Heritage Foundation, a “conservative think tank,” a.k.a. a right-wing propaganda mill, between 2003 and 2007, as well as an undisclosed amount by another lobbying group in 2009. Justice Thomas’ false statements regarding his wife’s income certainly constitute a misdemeanor, and quite probably a felony, under federal law. (They would be felonies if he were prosecuted under 18. U.S.C. 1001, which criminalizes knowingly making false statements of material fact to a federal agency. This is the law Martha Stewart was convicted of breaking by lying to investigators.)
Thomas’ defense is that he didn’t knowingly violate the law, because he “misunderstood” the filing requirements. This is preposterous on its face. Bill Clinton was impeached—and subsequently disbarred—for defending his false statements about his affair with Monica Lewinsky with an excuse that wasn’t as incredible as the one Thomas is now employing.
Appropriately, a complaint has been filed with the Missouri Bar Association, of which Thomas is a member, demanding that Thomas be disbarred for lying to the federal government about his wife’s financial dealings.
It’s unlikely that Thomas will be disbarred, and even less likely that he’ll be prosecuted, even though his conduct has been outrageous. That Thomas failed to disclose his wife’s sources of income is not a trivial technicality: His wife’s employment created excellent grounds for requiring him to excuse himself from hearing the Citizens United case, which overturned federal campaign-finance laws—much to the delight of Ginni Thomas’ right-wing paymasters, who are now freer than ever before to purchase the best laws money can buy. (Federal judges are required to recuse themselves from hearing any case in which they or their spouses have any financial interest.)
Yep the elite have won in this country the laws are written for them. Their stooges act as judges. It’s a complete takeover.
news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110304/ts_dailybeast/12731_clarencethomascriminalbehavioronfinancialdisclosure
He probably deserved that pubic hair on his coke. What a piece of work.
Clarence Thomas meet Turbo Tax Timmay. Timmay, meet Clarence Thomas.
Yep
Two systems of justice
one pitifull one for the elite
one with teeth for the rest.
I remember watching the Anita Hill hearings and thinking Thomas was a total perv, but the powers that be had already decided. Just like me and millions of Americans who protested the invasion of Iraq knew that WMD was a trumped up lie. But whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.
Oh, I remember those hearings well.
I was in my last fulltime job, and it was in one of those places where the mostly female staff worked in an open area while the mostly male supervisors/administrators had offices with doors.
Well, someone from the staff brought a TV in. And we peons took quite an interest in those hearings. And we got angrier and angrier, because, in our working careers, the same things happened to us.
An interesting thing happened. The male super/admin types started treading very carefully around us. Because we were *that* angry.
In my younger days, I remember watching some movie that got my dander up and mentioning I would like to castrate the villain. The guy that was with me got a tad green around the gills.
Corporate controlled government and corporate controlled media…
From the Capitol Dome: Media Malpractice in Madison
http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/from-the-capitol-dome-media-malpractice-in-madison?ref=obawl
If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news’ partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point. Cable news reporting on Wisconsin is like going to a whorehouse and then bragging to your buddies about this girl you seduced.
I’m still dismayed at how the powerplant deal in the bill has gone virtually unreported. Almost no one I encounter is even aware if it.
MSM doint there job.
NOT
The politicians, the MSM, and the Judges as noted below are all now under corporate ownership.
I’m still dismayed at how the powerplant deal in the bill has gone virtually unreported. Almost no one I encounter is even aware if it.
And none of our right-wing, “freedom” and constitution loving Koch Brother supporting posters saying anything about it either.
“And none of our right-wing, “freedom” and constitution loving Koch Brother supporting posters saying anything about it either.”
You gotta suck up to the boss at those non-union jobs.
You guys just seemed to have it covered…I’ve got nothing to add. I don’t like it either, though, and appreciate hearing about it here.
I did hear Lawrence O’Donnell (sp) on MSNBC ask a Republican state representative/senator (WI — forgot which one) about the no-bid deal.
The representative said that the oil wells/fields were so out-of-date and dilapidated that nobody would want them. No sense in going to auction if nobody wants them. They’d be “lucky” to find someone who would be willing to pay anything.
It bummed me out that he sort of left it at that.
Media Malpractice in Madison
Colbert Mocks Fox News, O’Reilly For Misleading Wisconsin Protest Video
http://m.neontommy.com/news/2011/03/stephen-colbert-mocks-fox-news-misleading-wisconsin-union-protest-video
Stephen Colbert mocked Fox News on his program Thursday night for airing misleading footage that purported to show violent union protests in Wisconsin.
As Colbert noted, however, the video that shows union protests getting heated also shows something that one normally wouldn’t find in Wisconsin: palm trees.
“Shocking footage from Madison Wisconsin,” he said. “They’re not only bussing in people from out of state, they’re also bussing in palm trees.”
The footage was used during a broadcast of the O’Reilly Factor on Monday. Talking Points Memo reported that the footage does not come from Madison, but comes: “from a solidarity protest in Sacramento, CA. It’s an altercation that sparked a brief cri de coeur online this Saturday, when conservatives thought they’d found the clip that could undermine the entire pro-union movement. It didn’t. And in fact, as the O’Reilly segment suggests, it was just about the only thing they could find.”
My guess is that even that footage was staged.
As we Know Gov Walker was thinking of putting trouble makers in with crowd to discredit them.
You can bet FOX news would do the same thing.
I posted something the other day from a Modesto (?) radio host who was asking Tea Partiers to go to the rallys and “look thugish” and basically cause problems and try to discredit the protestors.
None of these “thug” posts can be trusted, IMHO.
O’Reilly Factor
(Hwy50 looks for “TrueDeceiver’s™” lifetime membership sign-up list…)
Without Loan Giants, 30-Year Mortgage May Fade Away
The New York Times
How might home buying change if the federal government shuts down the housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan, the steady favorite of American borrowers since the 1950s, could become a luxury product, housing experts on both sides of the political aisle say.
Interest rates would rise for most borrowers, but urban and rural residents could see sharper increases than the coveted customers in the suburbs.
Lenders could charge fees for popular features now taken for granted, like the ability to “lock in” an interest rate weeks or months before taking out a loan.
Life without Fannie and Freddie is the rare goal shared by the Obama administration and House Republicans, although it will not happen soon. Congress must agree on a plan, which could take years, and then the market must be weaned slowly from dependence on the companies and the financial backing they provide.
The reasons by now are well understood. Fannie and Freddie, created to increase the availability of mortgage loans, misused the government’s support to enrich shareholders and executives by backing millions of shoddy loans. Taxpayers so far have spent more than $135 billion on the cleanup.
The much more divisive question is whether the government should preserve the benefits that the companies provide to middle-class borrowers, including lower interest rates, lenient terms and the ability to get a mortgage even when banks are not making other kinds of loans.
Douglas J. Elliott, a financial policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Congress was being forced for the first time in decades to grapple with the cost of subsidizing middle-class mortgages. The collapse of Fannie and Freddie took with it the pretense that the government could do so at no risk to taxpayers, he said.
Without Loan Giants, 30-Year Mortgage May Fade Away
Okay, can we have 10-year and 15-year mortgages in their place? And how about a massive re-thinking of this whole idea that one must own a house in the first place?
Our local rag had a front page story earlier this week stating that Americans perceive owning a home is a “bad investment”
Our local rag had a front page story earlier this week stating that Americans perceive owning a home is a “bad investment”
And has the local REIC shown up at their door, pitchforks and flaming torches in hand? Or is said local rag just echoing the local buzz?
“Without Loan Giants, 30-Year Mortgage May Fade Away”
Well boo faaawkin hoo for the Housing Crime Syndicate. Without 30 year voluntary enslavement for the masses of morons willing to walk the financial precipice of doom, housing prices will fall to levels that are palatable to us non-morons.
It really isn’t that complicated now is it? My fathers mortgage payment was 5 years. My grandfathers was 5 years. Are people that detached from the past to think that a 5 year or 7 year note cannot finance a damn house?
Good riddance Phoney…. Nice knowing you Fraudie. A high bar and tight entry terms for borrowers by a closely supervised FHA is enough govt involvement in housing.
The “my father and grandfather” arguments are no longer valid, as I posted above.
I agree it should stop at FHA and VA.
That said, there were plenty of 30-year loans before the big banks got big, usually from local banks. They scrutinized the borrower, but they also held the loan. We’ll see those again.
Banks really cannot hold mortgages for 30 years, the interest rate risk is just too great. If Fan and Fred go away, residential loans will look much more like CRE loans, 20 year ams with 5 or 7 year balloons so the mortgages can be reset in the event of changing interest rates or decreasing collateral value.
There always will be a private market for securitization of well underwritten home loans, but probably not for 30 year paper.
It will be a seismic shift in the residential mortgage industry.
It is called an interest rate swap and they can protect themselves. It just costs which would get passed on to the borrower. I have no issue with 30 year fixed rate mortgages being more expensive than 10 years or 15 years or 20 years.
However, when rates aren’t this low, the banks might LOVE 30 year fixed rate notes.
Cocoa Advances to 32-Year High on Concern About Curbed Ivory Coast Supply. ~ Bloomberg
Cocoa rose to the highest price since 1979 in New York on speculation escalating violence will limit supplies from Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer.
The country’s ambassador to the United Nations appealed yesterday for stronger action by the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast to prevent violence. The nation is in the midst of a standoff as incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down in favor of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of a November election.
“With Ivory Coast on the brink of a civil war, cocoa nearby values have rallied,” Rabobank International said in a report late yesterday as it raised price forecasts for every quarter of this year. “Supply risk is high.”
Cocoa for May delivery climbed $14, or 0.4 percent, to $3,747 a metric ton at 7:31 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. Prices reached $3,775, the highest level for a most-active contract since January 1979.
Funny. They are desperately trying to find legitimate reasons for the rise in commodity prices. Since all prices are going up at the same time, it’s a bit difficult to do though, no?
Speculation, anyone?
Not that I want to pick a fight with Colorado but it is quite clear that electric cars are not going to make a dent in gasoline demand anytime soon and whether it is lack of demand or production problems does not matter: http://green.autoblog.com/2011/03/01/gm-sells-281-chevy-volts-february-nissan-67-leafs/
The policies of Obama tend to be either naive i.e. in energy or foreign policy or down right pro-ultra rich, i.e. immigration and easy money. He is destroying the middle class even faster than Bush. No middle class= no democracy. True in Rome and soon true in this country, I am afraid.
The policies of Obama tend to be either naive i.e. in energy or foreign policy
Blah, blah, blah,…lil Opie Destroyer of America, blah,blah,blah…
This is German for: …stick it in your ear & cut with the negative waves Kelly!
Bulli
http://www.kickmycar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Volkswagen-Bulli-1-550×339.jpg
Well, the man is right on the electric cars point. The battery/charging technology still isn’t there to address longstanding concerns about range, price, recharge stations, grid capacity, etc.
Do nothing, stay in the recent past…
Look familiar?
http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/collection/articlepics/macplus/image4.jpg
Drill Baby! Drill!
“Not that I want to pick a fight with Colorado but it is quite clear that electric cars are not going to make a dent in gasoline demand anytime soon”
I agree. Americans don’t like small cars. We collectively like big huge trucks and SUVs.
And even if we did like small cars, especially small electric cars like the Nissan Leaf, there’s no way they could make enough batteries to sell millions of electric cars.
So I make do with my 35 mpg 4 banger, which is quite satisfying, especially at fill up time. It’s fun to watch the pickup boyz hit triple digits as they fill their alligators up, and its only going to get worse.
That said, I fail to see how Obama’s policies have any relevance on what the Japanese decide to do. And they are very committed to electric and hybrid cars (while The Euros arr committed to diesel.)
Also, I fail to see how driving a 12 mpg pickup truck as a commuter vehicle is “good for the economy” (except perhaps for OPEC’s economy).
I think the SUV phenom goes hand in hand with obesity. supersizing & excessive consumption. Buying a SUV I think there’s about a 10K markup, that’s why auto companies love to push him. They’re McTrucks.
I think the SUV phenom goes hand in hand with obesity.”
I think it goes with agression/ safety ” If you crash into me and my truck is bigger I win”
At least in CA that seems to be the justification. Too bad about the high cost of gas your big SUV loses even if you can play hog of the road on the cell phone.
Obama’s policies are the consistent with the Global Warming policies promoted by people such as George Soros, his puppet master. GW is a great scam to tax people that do not realize there is a 30 to 35 year warming and cooling cycles and up to the last few years we were in a warming cycle. Google POD and global warming.
Here is accurate weather data notice how the warm and cold years were impacted by el nino etc. Next post will be POD:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Can’t seem to get it to post with the link so research PDO and Easterbrooks to see 30-35 year cycles of warming and cooling
Ah, for every action there’s a reaction. Mr. Spencer appears to be one of those scientists who believes the world is only 6,000 years old so it’s hard to defer to his “research.”
Forget the global warming debate, it is time for us to conserve gas in a major way. The risk to the economy of fluctuating gas prices should be enough incentive to get us to change.
Of course the selfish lowlife turds that did the damage don’t give a damn.
WITI-TV, MADISON —
It could cost as much as $7.5 million to repair damage protesters have done to the Capitol Building marble say officials in Madison. Fixing posters to the marble with tape and glue appears to have done the bulk of the damage.
During testimony Thursday, a representative from the Attorney General’s office said a contractor estimated it would cost $500,000 to remove all of the posters and garbage. He says it would cost $6 million to restore the marble inside of the Capitol building and another $1 million to touch up the marble outside of the building.
Officials with the Department of Administration say the marble must be restored immediately. They say normally, tape isn’t used on the walls of the Capitol by rule because of the historic nature of the building. Easels are normally used for signs.
You can bet said contractor was a big donor to Gov Walkers Campaign.
The real cost of the job is about 10k.
In fact I’ll volunteer to clean the tape marks for 10k.
Democracy is so messy.
” He says it would cost $6 million to restore the marble inside of the Capitol building and another $1 million to touch up the marble outside of the building.”
Any building costing that much to maintain needs to be sold off for its parts. Why spend so much for a building to house legislators when they can do it from local district offices through teleconferencing? Legislators should be kept on a short leash in their district where their constituents can keep a close eye on their day to day activities.
Gee, I bought a 16 oz. bottle of “Goo Gone” this week at Wal-Mart, and I don’t recall it costing more than $5 or so. I also bought a roll of paper towels this morning for 99 cents.
All the laid off teachers and firefighters could come clean it up for eight dollars an hour.
Sounds like a job for the work release guys from Racine.
During testimony Thursday, a representative from the Attorney General’s office said a contractor estimated it would cost $500,000 to remove all of the posters and garbage.
Oh, for pete’s sake, AG’s rep, don’t you know that the first estimate is always high? Ya gotta shop around!
Those numbers are totally bogus. More raping of the taxpayers by private “for-profit” contractors.
WTH ? I thought all the savvy tree huggers would be snapping these things up.
GM sells just 281 Chevy Volts in February, Nissan only moves 67 Leafs
AOL
Peruse Chevrolet’s February sales release, and you’ll notice one number that’s blatantly missing: the number of Chevy Volts sold. The number – a very modest 281 – is available in the company’s detailed data (PDF), but it certainly isn’t something that GM wants to highlight, apparently. Keeping the number quiet is a bit understandable, since it’s lower than the 321 that Chevy sold in January.
Back in December, Nissan rolled into town with a Leaf demo. They set up at the 4th Avenue Street Fair.
From what I heard, quite few people drove the demo cars. But I only know one person — a very well-heeled local physician — who’s going to buy one.
How many did they make? From what I heard there are waiting lists for the Volt.
I don’t know about the VOLT but the Leaf has been a very slow roll out. On blogs there are many mad that they’ve had to wait.
“selfish lowlife turds”
Calling non-violent protesters that won’t make it so. (I am not making a statement on the legitimacy/illegitimacy of their claims, just their right to make them w/o being called “selfish lowlife turds”)
“all the savvy tree huggers would be snapping these things up”
We’re already riding bikes, taking public transportation, walking and living closer to work. I do it mainly so that I can tell my kid that I didn’t actively take a dump in the punch bowl.
Well, and to keep the pounds off.
I can’t believe they sold 600 total of those POS cars. Car of the year, my a$$.
I bet they made all their dealers buy one for the showroom and those are the majority of the sales. Anyone see one of those pieces of crap on the road yet?
For anyone interested - Google map of countries experiencing protests.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=206845628878227231839.00049c9414fdcdc29d66c&ll=17.644022,-39.902344&spn=127.694932,270.527344&z=3
USA - We’re #1!
Kenai, AK?
Too bad the map doesn’t have any indication of what the protest is about.
Oil wealth ‘must be shared’ with citizens says Soros ~ BBC
George Soros: Middle East turmoil caused by ‘revulsion against the corruption’
Citizens of oil producing nations must see more benefit from their country’s national resources, billionaire investor George Soros has told the BBC.
Revolts in Libya were partly the result of “revulsion against a corruption” fed by the misuse of oil money, he added.
More “transparency and accountability” was needed from other producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia he said.
Mr Soros also predicted the Iranian regime would be overthrown in the “bloodiest of the revolutions”.
Not enough insider information coming out of those countries, Mr. Soros? Too bad, Buffet has a lock in that department in US.
“Citizens of oil producing nations must see more benefit from their country’s national resources, billionaire investor George Soros has told the BBC.”
Oh, dear god, he’s a madman.
Justice For Sale
The 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires all federal judges to fill out annual financial-disclosure forms. The relevant question on the disclosure form isn’t complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn’t a lawyer, he shouldn’t have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase “Spouse’s Non-Investment Income” should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income.
In fact Ginni Thomas was paid nearly $700,000 by the Heritage Foundation, a “conservative think tank,” a.k.a. a right-wing propaganda mill, between 2003 and 2007, as well as an undisclosed amount by another lobbying group in 2009. Justice Thomas’ false statements regarding his wife’s income certainly constitute a misdemeanor, and quite probably a felony, under federal law. (They would be felonies if he were prosecuted under 18. U.S.C. 1001, which criminalizes knowingly making false statements of material fact to a federal agency. This is the law Martha Stewart was convicted of breaking by lying to investigators.)
Appropriately, a complaint has been filed with the Missouri Bar Association, of which Thomas is a member, demanding that Thomas be disbarred for lying to the federal government about his wife’s financial dealings.
It’s unlikely that Thomas will be disbarred, and even less likely that he’ll be prosecuted, even though his conduct has been outrageous. That Thomas failed to disclose his wife’s sources of income is not a trivial technicality: His wife’s employment created excellent grounds for requiring him to excuse himself from hearing the Citizens United case, which overturned federal campaign-finance laws—much to the delight of Ginni Thomas’ right-wing paymasters, who are now freer than ever before to purchase the best laws money can buy. (Federal judges are required to recuse themselves from hearing any case in which they or their spouses have any financial interest.)
I wonder what Gini’s qualifacations are for making 700+k + an undisclosed amount. I wonder what exactly she did for the Heritage foundation.
news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110304/ts_dailybeast/12731_clarencethomascriminalbehavioronfinancialdisclosure
the facts of that article are interesting, but man is that copy just LOADED with bias.
Yes so let’s focus on the facts and remove the bias
Fact 1 - Justice Thomas’s wife has taken 700k from the Heritage foundation and an undisclosed amount from another right wing think tank.
Fact 2 - Justice Thomas lied on his disclosure form about the money.
Fact 3 - Justice Thomas has not recused himself from cases where receiving that money for undisclosed activities might be seen as a bribe to influence votes.
Interpretation - Justice is for sale at the Supreme Court.
As I stated, the facts are interesting, and I personally think he should be disbarred and prosecuted, and removed from the SC.
I was simply pointing out that article does itself no favors with all the biased commentary. Many people will dismiss apparent facts when the recognize the bias, as the author loses credibility at that point.
” that article does itself no favors with all the biased commentary”
Agreed. I’d like to see less bias and more facts in commentary on all sides of every issue.
Didn’t Al Gore violate campaign finance regulations? Funny how I never saw any outrage here over his hypocrisy, demands for him to be prosecuted, etc.
LVG
Plenty on the left willing to slam Dodd and FRank and Obama. I’m sure you can find some posts.
but your response to what is a gross abuse of the justice system is to say well what about those other guys.
Also, Al Gore last ran for office in 2000. This blog stared, I believe, in 2005. That’s probably why the topic never came up.
Did he lie or he also used TT?
Hey, look over there! No need to pay attention to what is going on here, move along.:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SPIN-METER-Competing-apf-4268876966.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=
San Diego is so expensive if you don’t make 100k a year and most people make half that, its almost a necessity to live on credit:
Top 10 Cities in US with Credit Card Debt:
money.cnn.com/2011/03/04/pf/cities_credit_card_debt/index.htm?section=money_pf&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_pf+%28Personal+Finance%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
My sister lives in San Diego. She makes less than $100K a year, and she doesn’t have any credit card debt (she did a couple of years ago, but learned her lesson and has since paid it all off).
Her secret? She rents.
Gimme a no-limit, zero-interest, flexible-payment credit card and I could live anywhere. What? they already gave that card to the US government?
They (the Federal Reserve) gave it to the banksters.
“Yes folks, Wall Street is the “Comeback Kid” story of the 21st century. Like a terrorist in a horror film, Wall Street thrives on threats. Three short years ago, Wall Street was virtually bankrupt, a ward of the state.”
So it is just under three years since the fall of Bear Stearns, and the economy is clearly in “recovery” to what it will be in the future, with the relative standing of different people and groups of people adjusted.
Three years ago, at the cost of another Great Depression, with the possiblity that for a time for millions of people getting food would be an issue and the wiping out of most paper wealth, the government could have let “the market” work. Instead it acted to preserve that paper wealth and the economic based on it.
Are people grateful? Of would those here have preferred another Great Depression — and the more equal if somewhat poorer in total economy that would have followed it its wake?
Let’s create a scenario: states and localities bankrupt, unemployment peaked at 33 percent, many public services shut down, many people without food or energy, some actually starve or die of exposure. Eighty percent of the value of stocks and bonds permanently wiped out through bankruptcy, so the rich weren’t as rich anymore.
But now unemployment is falling rapidly as the debt purge runs its course. A better future? It’s one that could have been allowed to happen.
But now unemployment is falling rapidly as the debt purge runs its course.
But are we really purging the debt? Or are we just temporarily feeling more normal due to the adrenaline needle still sticking out of our chest ala Pulp Fiction?
No, we are not purging the debt- we are shifting it on to younger generations via the federal government.
The debt purge (also asset collapse) was my hypothetical Great Depression II” scenario.
Federal budget deficit at 11% of GDP, QE and QE2, various guarantees for our criminal banker caste vis FANNIE, FREDDIE & FHA. ZIRP that steals interest income from savers and diverts it to the banksters.
In all we (=gubermint) have pumped the equivalent of 16% p.a. of GDP into the economy for 2 years and counting to get a GDP growth of around 3%. That’s not short of pathetic. It’s simply a matter of when, not if, until the federal budget will hit a wall. There will be no IMF or Germany or FED that will bail us out. Then it’s game over.
42% of the federal budget is borrowed/printed money. If the USA would be a private corporation we’d be already bankrupt and in chapter 7.
“… would those here have preferred another Great Depression — and the more equal if somewhat poorer in total economy that would have followed it its wake?”
I would have preferred a small depression. The Great Depression is in our not too distant future thanks to the can kicking policies implemented over the last 3 years.
Take a good look at Iceland. They did exactly what we should have done. Sure things we rough for a while but they are recovering nicely now without some ridiculous debt hangover.
Three years ago, at the cost of another Great Depression, with the possiblity that for a time for millions of people getting food would be an issue and the wiping out of most paper wealth, the government could have let “the market” work. Instead it acted to preserve that paper wealth and the economic based on it.
Are people grateful? Of would those here have preferred another Great Depression — and the more equal if somewhat poorer in total economy that would have followed it its wake?
—————————–
I sincerely doubt that most of us “anti-bailout” types thought the govt should do *nothing.* I have always favored the govt backstopping the FDIC, PBGC, SIPC, and possibly some insurance companies that were unable to pay out on life, property, and casualty insurance claims (normal insurance, not credit swaps).
I wanted to see a WPA-style program that would keep people employed and improve our infrastructure. Also, I had advocated for govt fundng for energy and healthcare technologies, etc.
There has yet to be a legitimate, detailed explanation that would describe how everything was supposed to implode if we had let the financial firms fail. If nothing else were available, the govt could become a direct lender or nationalize existing banks and make loans.
The bailouts of bankers was 100% unnecessary and has only succeeded in making the wealth divide even greater. These large financial institutions now control even more of our economy. There is something very wrong about that.
Eventually the slaves get angry
BHUBANESHWAR, India – Indian police detained two people after an angry mob of fired workers burned to death a senior executive of a steel factory, an official said Friday.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110304/ap_on_re_as/as_india_executive_killed
Take note corporatists.
American Corporatists have body guards.
I remember when Carly Fiorina visited our HP site. She looked like she had a secret service detail with her.
Contrast that with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who used to serve food at the company summer picnics.
I remember when Carly Fiorina visited our HP site. She looked like she had a secret service detail with her.
Contrast that with Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, who used to serve food at the company summer picnics.
And let me guess: Bill and Dave are still remembered fondly by HP-ers.
OTOH, when HP-ers get really mad and need to use an expletive, they say, “Oh, Carly!” Or maybe it’s something like, “You really Carly-ed that one up, didn’t you?”
I’d say that the HP survivors are too numb to care anymore.
I’d say that the HP survivors are too numb to care anymore.
Now, that is *really* Carly-ed up. My heart goes out to the survivors.
Lol…
“Charlie Sheen snorts lines of Chuck Norris”
Those pesky bad loans just won’t go away. Dammit, how am I supposed to enjoy my huge bonus?:
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/112264/banks-face-more-loan-write-downs?mod=bb-budgeting&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=
UPDATE 1-Republicans dismiss White House budget offer
Fri Mar 4, 2011 12:06pm EST
* Republican leaders call Democrats plan ‘indefensible’
* Democrat Durbin says Republicans would hurt economy (Updates with McConnell, Boehner, Durbin quotes)
By Thomas Ferraro and Susan Cornwell
…
House Speaker John Boehner called Biden’s offer “indefensible and unacceptable.”
…
Failure to reach an agreement before March 18, when a temporary government funding bill expires, could force the government to shut down non-essential services and lay off hundreds of thousands of workers.
…
I agree that the Dem’s plan is indefensible
But then again so is the GOP’s plan.
So how is it the two party system has managed to keep the game going for so many years?
But you’ll take the GOP hucksters and corruption if given the choice between the two.
This is pretty humorous:
The biggest bust in NFL history could be getting the boot in Oakland again.
JaMarcus Russell is facing foreclosure on his $2.4 million Bay Area mansion after failing to pay the mortgage.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/JaMarcus-Russell-is-on-the-verge-of-losing-his-m?urn=nfl-329411
Geez, it’s not even a $50 million dollar, MC Hammer-style compound replete with his and her tigers.
No sympathy in the comments section either.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/146453/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-Hitting-February.aspx
Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Hitting 10.3% in February
Underemployment surged to 19.9% in February from 18.9% at the end of January
PRINCETON, NJ — Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, hit 10.3% in February — up from 9.8% at the end of January. The U.S. unemployment rate is now essentially the same as the 10.4% at the end of February 2010.
“Underemployment surged to 19.9% in February from 18.9% at the end of January…”
That is the kind of detail macroeconomists tend to prefer to gloss over…
This belongs up above but it just want post there. PDO is much more responsible for the period of global warming than PDO.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
You should rely on better climate change deniers, this one is accused of doctoring his data: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/06/don_easterbrook_caught_in_a_li.php
This sounds like no reason for Californians to get too exuberant, especially with the gauntlet of state and federal government cuts in wait.
State’s jobless rate falls to 12.4% in January
As the nation’s February unemployment report shows a stronger recovery, California releases figures that say it added just 12,500 jobs in January. The state’s jobless rate declined from 12.5% in December.
By Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times
March 4, 2011, 3:08 p.m.
California’s fragile economy is beginning to recover, but hiring continues to lag behind the nation, particularly because of cutbacks in state and local governments, according to new state data.
“As far as California, I do think we’re running behind,” said Nancy Sidhu, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “In California’s case, moving up off the bottom is going to be a little slow.”
…
Near the bottom of this piece: “Charles Chacon, 45, has been looking for a full-time job since the economy turned sour in 2008. The West L.A. construction worker, who attended cinematography school, says he owes $85,000 in school loans and that creditors keep calling to collect.”
Excuse me…$85,000 in school loans?
“…construction worker, who attended cinematography school…he owes $85,000 in school loans…”
Only in California.
For those who go on and on about hybrid vehicles, have you seen the video of the car in Osaka that runs on water? Now That’s impressive.
Also, state and federal government cuts in wait? So far, I haven’t met nor read of anyone who expects such to happen. Is that crazy, or wHAt?
Seriously, everyone around me expects no change, in fact they All expect growth in goberment spending and growth.
Clark,
There have been a lot of cuts in wages and benefits all across California. This just isn’t as “newsworthy” as the corrupt politicians in Bell who got $800K salaries.
” The car as it is described by Genepax is a Perpetual Motion device. Such a device or system would be in violation of the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can never be created or destroyed, and is therefore impossible. If Genepax would succeed in proving that their claims are true, then the theory of relativity as well as other aspects of modern science will be disproven.
The only alternative would be that Genepax is currently misleading the media as well as the public, and that a different source of energy is used for the car.”
The perils of property
Home truths
Financial crises and property busts go together. The link can be weakened
Mar 3rd 2011 | from the print edition
PROPERTY’S grip on people is unrelenting. After the worst housing crash in memory, almost two-thirds of Americans still think that property is a safe investment. In Britain ministers hold summits to work out how to get first-time buyers into a market where prices are falling. In China anxious buyers queue to snaffle yet-to-be-built apartments.
…
The global housing bubble is still quite full of explosive hydrogen gas…
Global house prices
Hong Kong phew-whee
Our quarterly index reveals the world’s most overvalued homes
Mar 3rd 2011 | HONG KONG | from the print edition
…
Home prices should therefore reflect the rents that tenants pay. Our index calculates the ratio of prices to rents in 20 economies. In Hong Kong, that ratio is now almost 54% above its long-run average—and it is still rising.
People in Hong Kong often blame buyers from mainland China for pushing up prices. Ironically, mainlanders often blame buyers from Hong Kong for their own property frenzy. At a recent conference at Tsinghua University in Beijing, students complained that their parents had scrimped and saved to send them to university in the city, but now upon graduation they could barely afford to live there.
…
Thanks a lot, Al and Ben.
Why the Dollar’s Reign Is Near an End
For decades the dollar has served as the world’s main reserve currency, but, argues Barry Eichengreen, it will soon have to share that role. Here’s why—and what it will mean for international markets and companies.
By BARRY EICHENGREEN
The single most astonishing fact about foreign exchange is not the high volume of transactions, as incredible as that growth has been. Nor is it the volatility of currency rates, as wild as the markets are these days.
Instead, it’s the extent to which the market remains dollar-centric.
…