Economists: Congress needs to quickly move to slash SS, Medicare, & Medicaid

[4est_4est_Gump]

That will be coming to you by covered wagon.

Put the buggy-whip makers back to work!


Labor runs an economy, so let's give them spoons with which to dig holes!

 

[JohnnySavage]

Put the buggy-whip makers back to work!


Labor runs an economy, so let's give them spoons with which to dig holes!

Can't. They are making internal combustion engines now.

...man, those guys just can't catch a break!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Can't. They are making internal combustion engines now.

...man, those guys just can't catch a break!

We'll smash the factories to save the planet!

Don't you know, technology, like ATMs and Kiosks, put people out of work!

Horses require an extensive support system, and it's ORGANIC!

 

[JohnnySavage]

Luddite

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Right-Wing Neo-Left-Wing Libertarian Luddite!

 

[Frizzle_Fry]

'Because that professor does not know enough...' Well, I know quite a lot of people who are not that motivated by money.

Bull fucking shit. Everyone is motivated by money if they were not they wouldn't have a job. Those people may have become content or even happy with their careers and that's awesome but to say they are not motivated by money is really naive.

If you or any one was offered a million GBP a year to move to shit hole Alabama and scrape up road kill for 40 hrs a week 9 to 5 you would turn it down? Not even for a little bit?

' Many people I know are not very motivated by money, if they have enough to get by. I've lived quite a long time now, and there really are people who would rather earn modest amounts of money at university, contributing to human knowledge that may last for a long time, than large amounts of money at Goldman Sachs, contributing to human greed. Amazing, but there you go.

Human greed built the modern world that we live in......they wouldn't have a university to do research at or pass on their knowledge to students if it were not for greed at some (usually every) level from the students all the way to the dean, all there to either make money or gain knowledge in order to make money. Schools just like everything else are a business, student's pay they get a service no diff than paying a waiter to bring you your food.

To me there's a very clear difference between short term and long term benefits. Sometimes they're in direct competition. The winner in a futures gamble in coffee may impoverish 1000 people in Nicaragua for good. That would be ok, would it?

Patrick

Name one Nicaraquan coffee worker that you personally know and care about.....seriously do you really care if some dude on the other side of the planet can pay his bills? Do you personally support impoverished 3rd world citizens at the expense of your own life style? I doubt it....makes you just as greedy as the rest of us 1st worlders with our interwebz and central heating/AC.

If the coffee bean farm shit's the bed find another line of work just like everyone else who has ever been laid off. If you can't find a job working for someone else start your own biz and be your own boss. Even dumb ass cows move to greener pastures when they run out of food.

 

[patrick1]

Bull fucking shit. Everyone is motivated by money if they were not they wouldn't have a job. Those people may have become content or even happy with their careers and that's awesome but to say they are not motivated by money is really naive.

If you or any one was offered a million GBP a year to move to shit hole Alabama and scrape up road kill for 40 hrs a week 9 to 5 you would turn it down? Not even for a little bit?

Human greed built the modern world that we live in......they wouldn't have a university to do research at or pass on their knowledge to students if it were not for greed at some (usually every) level from the students all the way to the dean, all there to either make money or gain knowledge in order to make money. Schools just like everything else are a business, student's pay they get a service no diff than paying a waiter to bring you your food.

Name one Nicaraquan coffee worker that you personally know and care about.....seriously do you really care if some dude on the other side of the planet can pay his bills? Do you personally support impoverished 3rd world citizens at the expense of your own life style? I doubt it....makes you just as greedy as the rest of us 1st worlders with our interwebz and central heating/AC.

If the coffee bean farm shit's the bed find another line of work just like everyone else who has ever been laid off. If you can't find a job working for someone else start your own biz and be your own boss. Even dumb ass cows move to greener pastures when they run out of food.

You seem amazingly angry about nothing much.

No I would not move to Alabama in the circumstances you mention. I inisist that I and many people I know are not primarily motivated by money, but of course they want to have enough to get by and be comfortable: that's not at all the same thing.

I feel you should respect that there are other people who see the world differently from you.

Yes, I do care if someone on the other side of the world makes a decent living or not. No I don't know a single Nicaraguan coffee grower in particular. That's the point of the market. We relate without knowing each other, so, for instance, fair trade could work thorugh the market without my ever having to go to Nicaragua.

I feel you are writing as if humans are less than human. We care for each other, that's one reason we get along, and to my mind it helps us progress. Human knowledge for instance is usually progressed as an activity of a group. I don't feel the weak must go to the wall.

Patrick

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Good lord...

Nice try, but next time understand the question and the answer you offer; neither has a thing to do with the other.

If the widget gets too expensive to manufacture due to taxation it gets made elsewhere or not at all. You seem to be saying, if we tax them so much, they can no longer effectively make widgets, then the cost won't get passed on forcing the consumer to an inferior replacement replacement commodity. Therefore, as I posited earlier, soaking the rich hurts the consumer who pays the price of the tax. You saying, well he can also be deprived of goods and services does not ameliorate this outcome, in short, you have actually helped make the point you thought you had just explained away.

But we'll give you a point for trying in the spirit of fairness and equal outcome for all students...

So I read your challenge "show us the means or the mechanism by which you can simply tax the rich more and force them to absorb it and not recoup their losses when they turn around and provide the goods and services the "middle class" is going to demand".

According to the theory of the PED, it means that if the rich who got soaked cannot try to just turn around and "recoup their losses" and bake the new taxes into the prices of the good and services the middle class is going to demand.

Think about it just on its face: If it were that simple why would the rich give a shit about taxes at all? They would just recoup it all in prices. They can not because prices are relatively elastic.

 

[RobDownSouth]

What conjecture is that?

Go ahead and "soak the rich" all the fuck you want.

Be my guest. The middle class will absorb their cost of doing business.

Again, that's your conjecture. You have nothing more than your personal opinion.

Unless of course you can now answer my years old challenge; show us the means or the mechanism by which you can simply tax the rich more and force them to absorb it and not recoup their losses when they turn around and provide the goods and services the "middle class" is going to demand with the benefit of the looted largess...

Challenge made, challenge accepted.

It's really very simple: Increase the tax on capital gains and dividends.

I, in turn, challenge you to show me how the rich can possibly offload a capital gains tax increase onto the middle class and/or lower class.

I look forward to your answer.

 

[patrick1]

Again, that's your conjecture. You have nothing more than your personal opinion.



Challenge made, challenge accepted.

It's really very simple: Increase the tax on capital gains and dividends.

I, in turn, challenge you to show me how the rich can possibly offload a capital gains tax increase onto the middle class and/or lower class.

I look forward to your answer.

I like your tax proposal.

But I fear I could work out all sorts of devious ways the rich could 'possbly' do this

Patrick

 

[Frizzle_Fry]

You seem amazingly angry about nothing much.

No I would not move to Alabama in the circumstances you mention. I inisist that I and many people I know are not primarily motivated by money, but of course they want to have enough to get by and be comfortable: that's not at all the same thing.

I feel you should respect that there are other people who see the world differently from you.

Yes, I do care if someone on the other side of the world makes a decent living or not. No I don't know a single Nicaraguan coffee grower in particular. That's the point of the market. We relate without knowing each other, so, for instance, fair trade could work thorugh the market without my ever having to go to Nicaragua.

I feel you are writing as if humans are less than human. We care for each other, that's one reason we get along, and to my mind it helps us progress. Human knowledge for instance is usually progressed as an activity of a group. I don't feel the weak must go to the wall.

Patrick

Christ you sound like my sociology prof. "money doesn't mean anything, lets all hold hands and sing for the starving children who we all care deeply about but have never done a god damn thing to help."

Look I get what you are saying, and kum-by-ya everyone is happy would be nice and all but the reality is that the 1st world only exist because of good ol' human greed.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I like your tax proposal.

But I fear I could work out all sorts of devious ways the rich could 'possbly' do this

Patrick

Well, you could certainly try! I seem to recall the major thrust of the 1986 Tax Reform legislation (in retrospect, one of the very few positive things to come out of the famously corrupt Reagan administration) was an almost complete removal of tax preferences and loopholes related to capital gains.

If I missed something, I'm sure 4est will educate us. He likes to do that sort of thing. I'm awaiting his response my challenge, this should be fun (assuming he doesn't change the subject).

 

[RobDownSouth]

Paging Mr. Gump to post 34!

 

[The_Trouvere]

Most of the countries that retain AAA ratings with both Standard & Poor's and Moody's have Social Democratic economies.

http://www.huliq.com/3257/us-leaves-whos-left-among-countries-both-moodys-s-p-aaa-ratings

Many of them have less public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product than the United States.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publica...ates&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=38#us

They have inexpensive military forces because they have learned to leave other countries alone.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

They generally have less unemployment than the United States.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publica...tes&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=107#us

And they impose a very heavy tax burden on the well to do.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

In other words, they benefit from not having taken the wrong turn the United States took in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Second day in a row....

Paging Mr. Gump to post 34!

 

[patrick1]

Thanks for that

Patrick

Most of the countries that retain AAA ratings with both Standard & Poor's and Moody's have Social Democratic economies.

http://www.huliq.com/3257/us-leaves-whos-left-among-countries-both-moodys-s-p-aaa-ratings

Many of them have less public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product than the United States.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publica...ates&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=38#us

They have inexpensive military forces because they have learned to leave other countries alone.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

They generally have less unemployment than the United States.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publica...tes&countryCode=us&regionCode=noa&rank=107#us

And they impose a very heavy tax burden on the well to do.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

In other words, they benefit from not having taken the wrong turn the United States took in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

Day three....still no AJ....I has a sad....

Paging Mr. Gump to post 34!

 

[NeverEndingMe]

simple solution, no ID and not an American you don't get any aide

Deniers are invited to visit:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/...redit-rating-at-aaa-cuts-outlook-to-negative/
.
.
.
.

 

[Ishmael]

For some reason people have begun to panic about the size of the national debt in various countries. Just to quote big figures makes no sense. Modern governments have a sizeable national debt. It's not intrinsically a bad thing. It's how the world works. Get a grip folks

Patrick

Yes, yes, I've often heard that rationalized in terms of household budgets where a family earning $50,000/yr goes out and buys a house for $150,000. And on a superficial level that can almost make sense. The huge difference is that that household debt has a finite time period (15 yrs.....30 yrs.) and is diminishing with each monthly payment. The government debt is open ended and increasing. The governments are merely stretching the payoff into succeeding generations, essentially indenturing those not yet born. This is fiscally unsustainable and morally reprehensible.

Ishmael

 

[patrick1]

Yes, yes, I've often heard that rationalized in terms of household budgets where a family earning $50,000/yr goes out and buys a house for $150,000. And on a superficial level that can almost make sense. The huge difference is that that household debt has a finite time period (15 yrs.....30 yrs.) and is diminishing with each monthly payment. The government debt is open ended and increasing. The governments are merely stretching the payoff into succeeding generations, essentially indenturing those not yet born. This is fiscally unsustainable and morally reprehensible.

Ishmael

Well, your government for instance has had a national debt since it was born. It grew in war years, diminished after them. Rather remarkably, it grew in the Reagan and Bush years, and fell in the Cllinton years.

This is a panic, that's my point, and if enough people panic, it becomes a crisis, and that has very little to do with the state of a particular economy.

For some reason the credit agencies who gave aaa ratings to credit derivatives and thereby helped to get us into our present difficulties are constantly quoted as if they were authorities on national debts.

Patrick

 

[richard_daily]

Yeah well.

The problem with the housing bubble was not the housing bubble itself. That's minor. Bubbles happen. The problem was that some asshats decided to build a derivatives market ten times the size of the inflated house values on top of it.

How many of those asshats were registered republicans, I wonder?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

PATRICK misses the point and uses the wrong metaphor.

The national debt IS NOT the acquisition of real estate, capital, or durable goods; the stuff average people borrow money for. National debt is value removed from the American economy to finance the military, welfare, bureaucrats, and bailouts.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Well, your government for instance has had a national debt since it was born. It grew in war years, diminished after them. Rather remarkably, it grew in the Reagan and Bush years, and fell in the Cllinton years.

This is a panic, that's my point, and if enough people panic, it becomes a crisis, and that has very little to do with the state of a particular economy.

For some reason the credit agencies who gave aaa ratings to credit derivatives and thereby helped to get us into our present difficulties are constantly quoted as if they were authorities on national debts.

Patrick

The national debt has not decreased since the early 50s.

 

[patrick1]

I wonder how the government pays for the roads and street lighting? They seem pretty durable to me. Or the schools.

Just as a for instance.

Patrick