TGIF: Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off [View article]
I have only been at SA for a few weeks, so I am not real familiar with Phil's politics or the history of spatation.
At least Phil only enrages half of the readers. If I was writing my views regularly I would probably tick off 90% of them because I think that the majority of partisans on both sides are complete idiots.
On the left, pacifists, PETA folks, socialists (real socialists--not free $peach branding of any government spending), anarchists, and any a raft of other "idealists" are in my fruit cake bracket. If you thinks that any sort of price controls, or a pay czar is going to work, you haven't been paying attention. Unions are probably not needed any more and distort labor prices ( I was forced to join one kicking and screaming) but I at least relate to union folks--why give you up your golden goose.
The right is more monolithic than the left--they all believe the same retarded things instead of each person making-up their own retarded thing. Some of this is due to billions of $s of free $peach but it is also due to the nature of conservatism itself. Real conservatives make up their own reality--as in Conservapedia. Many have spent so many hours listening to infomercials that even people that started out intelligent have been educated into dolts.
It is so easy to pick on the idiots on the other side. But, just because the person that believes the exact opposite of you is an idiot, doesn't mean that you aren't one also. If someone does believe the exact opposite of you it might be a clue that you are as smart as they are.
TGIF: Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off [View article]
What is the contradiction with wanting the bottom 99% to do well and also wanting to make a whole lot of money. An individual is not going to change the price of a security, the market is. He is just trying to beat the market like everyone else.
Have You Seen U.S. CDS Risk Lately? [View article]
Just another symptom of the rich getting too rich. The whole problem is easily fixed with much higher tax rates on very high incomes and estate taxes. Not only will the gov have more money--the speculators will have less. I know I'll get a lot of thumbs down from the free $peach educated crowd for this.
Both parties have always spent too much. If you look at total $s spent over time and try to find any evidence of restraint by one party or another good luck (I know someone can rattle off a list of spenting cuts but just look at $s spent vs time--the cuts are to add). The diddo head partisons don't notice spending when their party is in power but blow an aorta over spending when the other side is doing the spending. It is cool to be Santa Claus and sucks when people that you demonize get to be Santa.
I personally like Social Security and Medicare. It is mostly me getting my own money back (plus or minus who knows--I think of it as diversification). I've made my living in the defense industry--my entire net worth comes from taxes. I have paid less than my fair share of taxes over my life thanks to the Bush tax cuts during my peak earning years. I have no children, so someone else's kids will be paying what should have been my share had we payed our bills as we spent. I have saved 10s of thousands in taxes thanks to Bush but lost ten times that much in the Bush meltown. I got it back but lost a couple of years. Thanks for the nice tax cuts. Thanks for the adult supervision.
It tells you if you want to maximize tax revenues, don't make the tax rate 0 or 100%. A value in between is better. It is irrelevant for two reasons. 1) it doesn't give any clue as to the "best" rate and 2) do you really want the gov to optimize tax revenue--in other words take as much as they can. Any real tax rate strategy is to maximize GDP growth subject to a tax revenue constraint.
The US economy has grown just fine in the past with marginal tax rates over 90% (in the 50s) and 70% (in the 60s and 70s) before the ultra-rich (who were getting ridden hard) learned how to manipulate 50% of the non-ultra-rich into thinking that tax changes would help them. (I would have done the same.)
So, in my mind, history doesn't really give and hard clue as to "too high tax rates". Is there something the Laffer curve tells us that I missed? Does Laffer tell us how to pay for all of the bills that came due after the irresponsible Reagan and W didn't pay their share or why every adminstration after WWII up until Reagan, and Clinton after him, could pay the bills.
Same ideology, and many of the same people. Regan had Shultz and listened to him, W had Powell and didn't (but Powell was no Shultz). That made Ronnie look a lot better geo-politically. Economically they were identical . Free the glorious American worker from taxes and the economy will take care of itself. W just freed us up a little too much and now we have spent a boatload of our kids money on crack, have nothing to show for it, and we are just starting rehab.
You guys already got your next Reagan, that's how we got into this mess in the first place. W modelled everything he did after Reagan--hired most of his administration, cut taxes, projected US military power.... The right still believed that tax cuts would pay for themselves, since Bush I and Clinton came along and cleaned-up Reagan's mess. W ran up a much larger debt--for no good reason--and in spite of trillions of dollars of deficit spending managed to cruch the economy (with a lot of help from his highly-leveraged unsupervised Wall St buddies).
Obama inherits a huge deficit, tax rates that brought in $500 billion less than was being spent, and that become more like $800 billion a year after W crushed the economy, a population with negative savings, negative housing equity, decmated 401Ks, and a bunch of corporations that held unknown liablilities on CDOs and CDSs; so no one wanted to lend anyone any money.
And the seven headed beast with ten horns shall descend upon the great land rending the enemies of commerce from the high places. The followers of the Lamb shall live in a thousand prosperity in the kingdom Qualye and Palin.
Huge Battle Looms Over Public Pensions - Who Will (Who Should) Foot the Bill? [View article]
In my mind a contract is a contract. If you can't trust the gov to make a contract, then there is no such thing as a contract (if you dispute a contract, who do you get to resolve the dispute--the gov). The fact that a contract is legally binding is what make commerce work.
Huge Battle Looms Over Public Pensions - Who Will (Who Should) Foot the Bill? [View article]
Exactly. Can someone that agrees with the author state why gov should default on paying a pension before defaulting on a bond or some other contract that it has entered into.
TGIF: Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off [View article]
At least Phil only enrages half of the readers. If I was writing my views regularly I would probably tick off 90% of them because I think that the majority of partisans on both sides are complete idiots.
On the left, pacifists, PETA folks, socialists (real socialists--not free $peach branding of any government spending), anarchists, and any a raft of other "idealists" are in my fruit cake bracket. If you thinks that any sort of price controls, or a pay czar is going to work, you haven't been paying attention. Unions are probably not needed any more and distort labor prices ( I was forced to join one kicking and screaming) but I at least relate to union folks--why give you up your golden goose.
The right is more monolithic than the left--they all believe the same retarded things instead of each person making-up their own retarded thing. Some of this is due to billions of $s of free $peach but it is also due to the nature of conservatism itself. Real conservatives make up their own reality--as in Conservapedia. Many have spent so many hours listening to infomercials that even people that started out intelligent have been educated into dolts.
It is so easy to pick on the idiots on the other side. But, just because the person that believes the exact opposite of you is an idiot, doesn't mean that you aren't one also. If someone does believe the exact opposite of you it might be a clue that you are as smart as they are.
There, that ought to make me popular.
TGIF: Stop the Week, We Want to Get Off [View article]
Why be so combative?
Have You Seen U.S. CDS Risk Lately? [View article]
Oh, and I think Tricky has a pretty valid concern for anyone thinking of buying those US CDSs.
Have You Seen U.S. CDS Risk Lately? [View article]
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
I personally like Social Security and Medicare. It is mostly me getting my own money back (plus or minus who knows--I think of it as diversification). I've made my living in the defense industry--my entire net worth comes from taxes. I have paid less than my fair share of taxes over my life thanks to the Bush tax cuts during my peak earning years. I have no children, so someone else's kids will be paying what should have been my share had we payed our bills as we spent. I have saved 10s of thousands in taxes thanks to Bush but lost ten times that much in the Bush meltown. I got it back but lost a couple of years. Thanks for the nice tax cuts. Thanks for the adult supervision.
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
The US economy has grown just fine in the past with marginal tax rates over 90% (in the 50s) and 70% (in the 60s and 70s) before the ultra-rich (who were getting ridden hard) learned how to manipulate 50% of the non-ultra-rich into thinking that tax changes would help them. (I would have done the same.)
So, in my mind, history doesn't really give and hard clue as to "too high tax rates". Is there something the Laffer curve tells us that I missed? Does Laffer tell us how to pay for all of the bills that came due after the irresponsible Reagan and W didn't pay their share or why every adminstration after WWII up until Reagan, and Clinton after him, could pay the bills.
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
Obama inherits a huge deficit, tax rates that brought in $500 billion less than was being spent, and that become more like $800 billion a year after W crushed the economy, a population with negative savings, negative housing equity, decmated 401Ks, and a bunch of corporations that held unknown liablilities on CDOs and CDSs; so no one wanted to lend anyone any money.
And you long for a return to the good old days.
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
Don't Call It a Double Dip [View article]
Huge Battle Looms Over Public Pensions - Who Will (Who Should) Foot the Bill? [View article]
Huge Battle Looms Over Public Pensions - Who Will (Who Should) Foot the Bill? [View article]
The Return of the Monday Bull Market [View article]
Huge Battle Looms Over Public Pensions - Who Will (Who Should) Foot the Bill? [View article]
China's Reserve Accumulation as a Lab Experiment [View article]