[peterv]

The problem isn't the increasing difference of opinion, it's the increasing similarity of the options.

Why are you doing this? ( )
I'm going out for a drink. ( )

[blackhole]

Trickle down economics works as thus:

Businessman A creates a successful business, selling used gumballs or something, he's so successful that he makes a million dollars his first year.  Now Businessman A is a greedy bastard, all them CEO's is a bunch of greedy bastards, donchaknow, and he wants to make more money.  He researches the issue and determines that the best course of action would be to open another store.  So, Mr. Businessman A sinks half his income from the first year into building a new store, hiring a staff, and buying more used gumballs for inventory.  So at the end of the second year, he's down 500k.  But here's where it get's interesting.  That 500k he spent didn't disappear, it went into the coffers and wallets of the construction crew who built the building, and as payroll for the staff and to the people he bought the gumballs from.  It trickled down through his business contacts and made other people wealthier in the process.

hahahahaha
NO

You know where all that money goes? To the CEO of the company that's constructing the damn building. You know what all the workers get? Minimum wage. You just described what is supposed to happen. I'm telling you that in reality, all that happens is that money gets thrown around from one CEO to another and everyone else gets to fight over the leftovers. That's why it doesn't work.

As Kosh has pointed out, your description of Socialism is veerly wildly towards blatent communism, which as we have established over and over and over and OVER AGAIN, doesn't work, and no one is trying to say that it works. What I'm saying is that you may love your capitalism, but its f-cking you over. Hard. When people start saying we should distribute the wealth, everyone goes crazy because those rich bastards don't want to lose their money. We're not asking them to give up enormous sums of money, we're just asking them to please not have a salary that is more then the total liquid assets of their company, and then when they get fired, give themselves a severence package (I didn't make that up, it actually happened). When things like this are going on, the system needs more regulation because it is broken. The way it is supposed to work is not even close to reality.

[Scotty]

The whole point that you are missing is that you are asking them to give up their money for you.  Why the hell should they?  What did you ever do for them, that warrants them just giving you or someone like you money?

When you penalize the rich for making too much money, you take away the incentive to make money in the first place.  Why be rich when society is going to take from you what they haven't earned?

[Herra Tohtori]

The whole point that you are missing is that you are asking them to give up their money for you.  Why the hell should they?  What did you ever do for them, that warrants them just giving you or someone like you money?

Why, I pay taxes from my own paycheck, even if it's smaller than their. Taxes that grant my country the ability to pay for services that they also benefit from, should they ever suffer from unlucky situations like economy taking a dip in the sewers and their business collapses and they lose their work, leasing car and house and their family ends up in a situation where they can't provide health care or edumacation for their kids and they die young and unhappy and desperate in the lower levels of homeless hell on earth.

Why should I give my money to them? Because I ruddy well wouldn't like to be in that situation and I want my country to be able to prevent that.

Considering the social structures of western civilization, it is also a necessity for any state to stay in operation. Same logic could obviously be applied to corporations - why should they pay taxes to the country? Well, because not everything is managed by corporations, and countries don't function strictly by same rules as business does - thankfully.

When you penalize the rich for making too much money, you take away the incentive to make money in the first place.  Why be rich when society is going to take from you what they haven't earned?

That's a flawed argument. If you are rich, you can have more money to use for your self, even if you pay more taxes as well. Which means that having a high pay is desireable even if it has higher tax percentage.

Obviously in a case of stair-shaped progressive curve of the taxing it's possible that people just above a limit can get less money in their hands than the people immediately below a limit (example would be is there's a law that people who get less than 10000 dollars a month pay 20% taxes and those who get more than 10000 dollars a month pay 25%; that results in those who get 10001 dollars paying about 2500 dollars in taxes, while those who get 9999 dollars a month only pay about 2000 dollars a month, but a slightly more cleverly set progressive taxing would avoid that problem.

In a properly set up taxation system, bigger gross income leads to bigger net income.


But saying that progressive taxation "punishes the rich" and "removes the incentive to make money" is a fallacy. Say, if you have two people who earn 10000 dollars a month and 30000 dollars a month respectively. The first pays, let's say 20% taxes, the other pays 30%. The first person pays 2000 dollars taxes and ends up with 8000 dollars net worth of money. The other character pays 9000 dollars of taxes and ends up with 21000 dollars worth of money.

I would say that in this example there is plenty of benefit in earning more. Of course real life examples are likely different (with smaller wages and larger tax percentages) but this example does still prove the point. Progressive taxation does not remove incentive to make more money.

[SpardaSon21]

So you are telling me higher taxes aren't capable of dissuading people from doing things that are taxed?  If sales taxes go up, people buy less.  If property taxes go up, people buy less land.  If income taxes go up, it reduces the incentive to make money.  I really don't like "progressive" taxes.  They punish the most productive people in the economy unfairly.  A flat tax is fairer to everyone.

My big beef with socialism is that my money will be used to benefit someone who hasn't earned it.  I don't want Joe Neighbor's health care getting paid for by me, and I don't want Joe Neighbor paying for my health care.  I want to pay for stuff that I have earned.  Things are always better if they are earned.

[Scotty]

 

High Max and I agree on something!  It's the end of the world!

[The E]

  But he didn't post in this Thread, did he?

[Liberator]

I'll give you a more "real" example of socialism.

New York City

There's something like 9 million people living in NYC.  How many of that 9 million pay 90% of the tax burden?  Something like 42,500.  That means that the other 8,957,500 only have to cover 10% of the tax burden.  Add to that, the city government wants to raise they taxes again.  There are several prominent business people talking opening of leaving the city and taking they're business with them.

You can't demonize and demogogue "TEH FOOKING GREEDY BASTARD CEO'S" and expect them to put up with it.  Why do CEO make so much money?  They manage the entire company and try to make it profitable.  Businesses exist to make money, even Banks, not to fund social experiments and programs mandated by whatever whacko happens to be in charge of the government.  Once again, nice and loud where you can understand...

Businesses exist to make a profit.

For they're CEOs, Owners, Partners, ect.  Take a course is General Business and you'll understand.

[Blue Lion]

Businesses exist to make a profit.

For they're CEOs, Owners, Partners, ect.  Take a course is General Business and you'll understand.

Shockingly enough, people don't really enjoy watching CEOs and owners walk away with all the money while the economy tanks.

"I'm only in it to make money, screw you" isn't really helping win hearts and minds of the people who get to decide the rules in times like this.

[Kosh]

They manage the entire company and try to make it profitable.

The CEO of Bear Stearns ran the compnay into the ground, got millions of dollars in salaries and walked away with a $25 million golden parachute for failing. Why they are being rewarded for this is a total mystery.

not to fund social experiments and programs mandated by whatever whacko happens to be in charge of the government.

Take for example our healthcare system, at this point it is easily the most expensive in the world, and yet it is one of the least effective in the developed world.

Here's a question, should basic scientific research continue to be a socialized endeavor?

[Scotty]

The CEO of Bear Stearns ran the compnay into the ground, got millions of dollars in salaries and walked away with a $25 million golden parachute for failing. Why they are being rewarded for this is a total mystery.

The bolded part is completely idiotic (not you, the principle).

Here's a question, should basic scientific research continue to be a socialized endeavor?

I'm gonna venture no.  Competition is one of the driving factors of innovation.  If two or more scientific firms compete with each other, the end result is usually quicker and more favorable than a socialized "oh, what's the rush" system.

[Liberator]

Let's not forget that the CEO of Bear Stearns did something unethical, not illegal.  You can, and should, dislike him for what he did, but you can't put him in prison for it unless you can prove to a jury that he did something illegal.

As far as the "Gilded Parachute" goes, it's in his contract.  And you can't break a contract except under very specific circumstances, laid out ahead of time in the contract itself.  If you want to make contracts worthless by making them breakable by the government or a judge or whatever, they lose they're power to bind two parties legally.  If that happens, society just got a whole lot uglier.

[High Max]

.

[Kosh]

I'm gonna venture no.  Competition is one of the driving factors of innovation.  If two or more scientific firms compete with each other, the end result is usually quicker and more favorable than a socialized "oh, what's the rush" system.

In reality, if it wasn't for our current "socialized" system of government there wouldn't have been any major breakthroughs at all. Take for example Bell Labs. During most of its existance, it was attached to AT&T, a state supported total monopoly. It never had to deal with any market pressures, and yet a whole host of things were invented and many important theories were drawn up (6 nobel prizes came out of it). Then AT&T was broken apart, and Bell Labs spun off. It struggled until finally ceasing to exist all together because market forces didn't allow it to exist.

Some libertarians and republicans say basic research shouldn't be government funded, but if it wasn't we'd fall behind since our companies sure as hell aren't doing it.

As far as the "Gilded Parachute" goes, it's in his contract.  And you can't break a contract except under very specific circumstances, laid out ahead of time in the contract itself.

IIRC, exceptionally poor performance (in this case the failure of the company because of the person) is adequate justification for nullifying contracts. US employment laws are rather loose in that regard.

[blackhole]

As far as the "Gilded Parachute" goes, it's in his contract.  And you can't break a contract except under very specific circumstances, laid out ahead of time in the contract itself.

So your saying that its totally ok for a CEO to take advantage of a loophole in the law so he gets rewarded for failing?

Look, I don't have a problem with CEO's getting massive amounts of money if they EARN the right to that money. I'm totally fine with that. But we have CEOs running left and right and earning huge amounts of money that THEY DID NOT EARN. For that matter, these CEOs are getting paid disproportionate amounts of money in comparison to how much work they are doing. Are you telling me that in order to be motivated to do well, people need to make over 5000 times as much money as their workers? Is that kind of a chasm really necessary? You keep telling me that raising taxes or putting a few restraints on CEO pay is going to take away all the motivation anyone will have and throw our country into an apocalyptic meltdown, and I'm really just not seeing the logic behind this. Simply reducing the chasm doesn't mean it's going to vanish, and therefore we'll still have plenty of people with the motivation to make their own company, because you simply don't need 2 million dollars a year. To someone living off a $60000 college salary, a $600000 salary, 10 times as much as they make, is going to seem like a whole hell of a lot of money.

You are correct, businesses exist to make profit. That's why WE'RE IN A F-CKING DEPRESSION (Banks get greedy, find ways to give people bad credit more loans, get even greedier, give more people more bad loans, and oh oops we're in a depression!) Surely this is a wonderful thing!

Personally, I've got plans for my own little game company, and "money" isn't a primary motivating factor. Now at this point everyone likes to say "YOU FAIL AT EVERYTHING FOREVER >C" and call me an idiot, but there are several things wrong with that position. I said money wasn't my primary motivating factor, not that I wouldn't try to make the company profitable. A company requires a large profit margin, but that profit doesn't need to all get sucked into the CEO's paycheck. A CEO who wasn't a greedy bastard would realize that by reducing his salary by a significant amount, the company would have more assets and be able to pay its employees more generous salaries without affecting the apparent profit margin as much and thus attract more highly skilled workers which would allow for better products which would in turn increase profit etc. etc. etc. Greed may drive the creation of a company, but you can't exactly say that it helps.

But hey, you know what, if you like rewarding people for being GREEDY instead of rewarding people for running good companies, fine. Apparently that's capitalism.

F*CK
THAT
SH!T.

[castor]

I don't want Joe Neighbor's health care getting paid for by me, and I don't want Joe Neighbor paying for my health care.  I want to pay for stuff that I have earned.  Things are always better if they are earned.

None of us have really earned what we have now. Look at the society around you, the complexity of its infrastructure and economy. Is that what you created? No, its what you are using. All that was built by countless generations before us - and many of them didn't get payed **** for it. Point being, the idea "I only pay for what I get" is dead to start with, because it won't sustain the society you get your income from.

[Liberator]

As far as the "Gilded Parachute" goes, it's in his contract.  And you can't break a contract except under very specific circumstances, laid out ahead of time in the contract itself.

So your saying that its totally ok for a CEO to take advantage of a loophole in the law so he gets rewarded for failing?
I didn't say it was OK or that I liked it, I said it was legal.  Not right, not ethical, but legal.
Look, I don't have a problem with CEO's getting massive amounts of money if they EARN the right to that money. I'm totally fine with that. But we have CEOs running left and right and earning huge amounts of money that THEY DID NOT EARN. For that matter, these CEOs are getting paid disproportionate amounts of money in comparison to how much work they are doing.
Hmm, 16 hour days, 10 hour conference calls, never seeing your wife and kids.  Sounds like work to me.
Are you telling me that in order to be motivated to do well, people need to make over 5000 times as much money as their workers? Is that kind of a chasm really necessary? You keep telling me that raising taxes or putting a few restraints on CEO pay is going to take away all the motivation anyone will have and throw our country into an apocalyptic meltdown, and I'm really just not seeing the logic behind thisIn order, yes, if someone at that level can't make appropriate compensation in the USA, they'll go else where.  Would you work somewhere where the government comes in and says, "Oh you are a senior manager with 35 years experience, but we don't think you are important, so you are going to make less than the guy that comes and fixes your computer.". Simply reducing the chasm doesn't mean it's going to vanish, and therefore we'll still have plenty of people with the motivation to make their own company, because you simply don't need 2 million dollars a year. Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't.  That's not for you, me or the government to say.  It's between the employer and the employee.To someone living off a $60000 college salary, a $600000 salary, 10 times as much as they make, is going to seem like a whole hell of a lot of money.Indeed, yes.  Both are a lot of money.  The difference is what do the people making that money do?  Do they teach?  salesperson?  People aren't guaranteed the right to happiness, merely the right to pursue it.  And it is the pursuit that makes the happiness at the end worth it.

You are correct, businesses exist to make profit. That's why WE'RE IN A F-CKING DEPRESSION (Banks get greedy, find ways to give people bad credit more loans, get even greedier, give more people more bad loans, and oh oops we're in a depression!) Surely this is a wonderful thing!
To be honest, it's not a depression yet.  Where are the bread lines?  The 25% unemployment?  Oh, we're getting there, but not yet we're not there yet.  As far as the banks getting greedy, yea there was some of that.  But on a societal level, we've become addicted to credit.  That little plastic thing in your wallet is a time bomb waited to blow up your life.  Add to that certain parties within the government who are in charge of the regulatory atmosphere that banks/mortgage companies/ect. exist in, relaxed said regulation to fuel the economic boom of the last half dozen years to ensure that they're grasp on power wouldnt' be interupted.

Personally, I've got plans for my own little game company, and "money" isn't a primary motivating factor.Excellent, I expect The Next Big Thing from you one day.  just bear in mind that the people you get your start up cash from will be looking for a return. Now at this point everyone likes to say "YOU FAIL AT EVERYTHING FOREVER >C" and call me an idiot, but there are several things wrong with that position. I said money wasn't my primary motivating factor, not that I wouldn't try to make the company profitable. A company requires a large profit margin, but that profit doesn't need to all get sucked into the CEO's paycheck. A CEO who wasn't a greedy bastard would realize that by reducing his salary by a significant amount, the company would have more assets and be able to pay its employees more generous salaries without affecting the apparent profit margin as much and thus attract more highly skilled workers which would allow for better products which would in turn increase profit etc. etc. etc. Greed may drive the creation of a company, but you can't exactly say that it helps.  What I can say is that you are pissing on a wildfire if you think knocking a CEOs salary in half would solve the monetary problems of a company worth 30 billion dollars.  I don't think you quite grasp the scale of the companies involved in this mess.

But hey, you know what, if you like rewarding people for being GREEDY instead of rewarding people for running good companies, fine. Apparently that's capitalism.
Capitalism isn't the best economic system, it's simply the most applicable to the human condition.  I'm certain something will come along one day that will be better.  I hope it does.  I would love to see an economic system that allows all mankind to live as opulent or as spare a lifestyle as they desire, not some heartless inhuman entity, of which there are several I won't name,  that wishes to see itself continue.

****
THAT
****.
Profanity has it's place, just not in a well reasoned discussion.

[Herra Tohtori]

So you are telling me higher taxes aren't capable of dissuading people from doing things that are taxed?

You misunderstand me. I was saying that people still mostly want as much money as they can get. And increasing the income increases the amount of money they can use, even if they pay a larger percentage in taxes as well.

If sales taxes go up, people buy less.  If property taxes go up, people buy less land.  If income taxes go up, it reduces the incentive to make money.  I really don't like "progressive" taxes.  They punish the most productive people in the economy unfairly.  A flat tax is fairer to everyone.

I disagree. Everyone needs income, and the more the better in most cases.

Saying that increasing income taxes reduce the inventive to make money is like saying increasing food prices reduce hunger.

My big beef with socialism is that my money will be used to benefit someone who hasn't earned it.  I don't want Joe Neighbor's health care getting paid for by me, and I don't want Joe Neighbor paying for my health care.  I want to pay for stuff that I have earned.  Things are always better if they are earned.

I do not particularly have sympathies for leeches either, but you're missing the point here.

Joe Neighbour might be in a situation where he can't earn enough to pay for his health care.

Some day you might be in a position where you can't earn enough to pay for your health care.

Or your kids' education. Or your rent, or electricity, or internets or food for that matter.

And in your ideal society, all the kids whose parents can't earn enough to pay for health care and education, end up... what? Productive members of the society? Gimme a break.


No matter how good it might feel to know you've earned what you have, it doesn't remove that fact that sometimes people end up in situations where they can't earn enough, and most of the time it is without their own fault. Leeches are a minority. And if leeches end up profiting from necessary social programs, so be it.

I'll give you a more "real" example of socialism.

New York City

There's something like 9 million people living in NYC.  How many of that 9 million pay 90% of the tax burden?  Something like 42,500.  That means that the other 8,957,500 only have to cover 10% of the tax burden.  Add to that, the city government wants to raise they taxes again.  There are several prominent business people talking opening of leaving the city and taking they're business with them.

Try and find out how many of that 9 million get the 90% of the income in the city.

Then try to figure out if the tax burden relying on so few is a reason or a consequence...

You can't demonize and demogogue "TEH FOOKING GREEDY BASTARD CEO'S" and expect them to put up with it.  Why do CEO make so much money?  They manage the entire company and try to make it profitable.  Businesses exist to make money, even Banks, not to fund social experiments and programs mandated by whatever whacko happens to be in charge of the government.  Once again, nice and loud where you can understand...

Businesses exist to make a profit.

For they're CEOs, Owners, Partners, ect.  Take a course is General Business and you'll understand.

Good point bolded in red.

Of course, "making money" is pretty hard in a sustainable economy because it either

a. involves creating more stuff with value that can be converted into money aka. sold (building new buildings, producing raw materials, building a nuclear power plant and maintaining it as it spins the turbines and convert energy into electricity)

b. involves manufacturing more money, which is problematic as it leads to increase of net amount of money in circulation and consequently leads to inflation

c. involves increasing the amount of money you control (which of course decreases the amount of money in control by others)


Normal businesses do the option a. in many and various ways; they produce something - raw materials, products or services, and sell them.

Federal Reserve does option b. in conjunction with the government; government asks for a loan, they give them the money that they print with the value of the money being the value of government's promise to pay the amount back to Fed.

Normal banks do option c. They manage loans and debts in a manner that increases the amount of property (value) in their direct control. Of course, when the value controlled by banking sector increases as they make profit, it means the value in control of other businesses and consumers is going to be reduced. Amount of money increasing without amount of value leads to inflation and isn't generally a good idea; So, a general growth of economy is required for the system to work. And that's the crux of the problem.


You see, my biggest bone to pick with capitalism is not really related to my personal preference to regulated capitalism with wide social services. It's more related on mathematics and physics.

Capitalism relies on perpetual growth. (Socialism can too, if it's done stupidly like in the case of communism in Soviet union. But I wouldn't even call that socialism, more like a twisted perversion of valid ideas...)

This is impossible. Earth has a finite volume of resources. Simple application of basic mathematics is enough to see that finite resources can't support growth infinitely.

At some point, the growth will end. Period. It can't go on any more, and at that point if the economy and society still relies on growth to function, it will collapse catastrophically. At that point, for any growth you would need to have equal decreases in the economy; currently a recession is bad for economy and depression is a disaster.

Sustainable developement will eventually require an economical status quo that does not rely on growth, because growing will eventually be impossible.

And just like the population growth, it would be far better to get the situation in control before external factors force their limits on us. In the case of population increase, if it's not controlled it will lead to untold suffering as the critical limit is exceeded and people start to simply die at the same rate they are born, which will of course stabilize the population but... I'm sure you can see why it would be preferable to limit the growth before that point.

[blackhole]

I don't use a credit card. And liberator, never do that again, its a pain in the ass to read through that.

I didn't say it was OK or that I liked it, I said it was legal.  Not right, not ethical, but legal.

So make it ILLEGAL. That's what our legislative branch is for.

Hmm, 16 hour days, 10 hour conference calls, never seeing your wife and kids.  Sounds like work to me.

If all CEO's really did that, and they were running successful companies that were making a profit, I wouldn't be complaining. The problem is, simply, that they don't. AIG being the prime example here. I mean, seriously, I gotta wonder what the guys over at Blizzard are making, but I don't really care how much those guys get paid, because they obviously deserve it. The oil executives? Not so much.

Would you work somewhere where the government comes in and says, "Oh you are a senior manager with 35 years experience, but we don't think you are important, so you are going to make less than the guy that comes and fixes your computer."

What the hell is it with people and taking everything I say to the utmost extremes? Of course that's not going to work, but you know, I'm pretty sure the guy who comes and fixes your computer doesn't earn, say, $600000 a year. That's what I'm proposing. $600000 instead of a couple million.

To be honest, it's not a depression yet.

Yes, it is. There are bread lines. There are homeless people. There are scandals. There are lots of things. This is a depression - not one that is as obvious as the earlier ones, thanks to a stronger economy and technology, but it is there none-the-less.

What I can say is that you are pissing on a wildfire if you think knocking a CEOs salary in half would solve the monetary problems of a company worth 30 billion dollars.  I don't think you quite grasp the scale of the companies involved in this mess.

It wouldn't. However, that's not where the entire problem lies, either. Take that one drug company where the CEO's severance package was more then the total liquid assets of the company. What about things like that?

I'm certain something will come along one day that will be better.

We're TRYING to make capitalism work better. You seem determined to prevent that.

Profanity has it's place, just not in a well reasoned discussion.

Good for you

[WeatherOp]

If all CEO's really did that, and they were running successful companies that were making a profit, I wouldn't be complaining. The problem is, simply, that they don't. AIG being the prime example here. I mean, seriously, I gotta wonder what the guys over at Blizzard are making, but I don't really care how much those guys get paid, because they obviously deserve it. The oil executives? Not so much.

Ok, now that one gave me a laugh. People making computer games can make all the money they want because they deserve it, but you don't care, but big business CEO's don't deserve it.