Thread: Election over...

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

Well, so far the arguments against minimum wage increases are not complete. I personally am not in favor of minmimum wage hikes, except at specific intervals in accordance with inflation and cost of living projections. Outright increases of minimum wage will "mess up" the balance in afew ways.

And while we are discussing people making minimum wage, I would point out again, that I tend to include people who make a little more than minimum wage in the poverty category (as does the census). 8 or 9 dollars an hour is a far cry from 20 or 30, and hell of a lot different than 200 or 300, but is still "above minimum wage."

The solution, as MaBell said, lies not in increasing minimum wage, but in making certain utilities less expensive and balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum. Food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, etc. are necessities, the latter two often being left out completely and the former three faltering in many cases. Sure McDonalds or BK makes a piece of sh!t infarction burger for a buck, and poor people tend to gobble that crap up (hence their increased rate of cardiovascular disease), but we need to make quality utilities affordable for those people, and the rest of Americans.

No one needs a frikkin Hummer, but they do need to get that lump looked at before they go to the emergency room and end up costing me more tax dollars.

Interesting note according to my research from the who.org. Canada has an overall healthier population that lives healthier, longer. They also spend LESS as a percentage of their national budget on healthcare than the US does. That is an example of the "crappy and expensive" socialized healthcare mechanisms. More for less? Sounds bad to me, I love to fork out tax dollars for people to go to the ER for something could have been prevented for a fragment of the cost.

Canadians probably smoke fewer ciggarettes and eat less fast food than we do - that's half the problem right there.

And if you don't count Molson Canadian as beer, then they probably drink less too!


What do you mean by "Quality utilities"? Like, electricity and water?

And what do you mean when you say "balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum."? Wealth redistribution, like socialism? That shit does not work! Until ALL money goes away and EVERYTHING is free, there will be people who are smarter and better who earn more. What they choose to do with the money they earn is their business.

The government's job is not to regulate whether or not somebody buys a Hummer they don't need. I didn't need the LCD TV I bought last week - what business is it of anybody?

We need to reward exceptionalism and excellence MORE - not punish it by taking it's proceeds.

Thank God for for-profit companies who were motivated to create something we all needed by the promise of financial gain. Drug companies are motivated by profit - and they make medicine that helps millions of people. Do they not have a right to earn a profit doing so? Did you ever start a lemonade stand as a kid? Why? Were you motivated by the growing thirst needs of your neighbors and passers-by or were you saving money for a new nintendo game and wanted to make a quick buck?

On one hand people say that oil companies shouldnt get tax breaks - but what if one of those companies is BP or Exxon Mobil - who is investing part of it's profits in alternative energy like wind and solar? The tax breaks and profits they earn are the source of that investment capital. Right? Or do they generate the money out of thin air?

All the money being spent on these alternatives is coming from some profitable venture, somewhere. Including tax dollars! Every nickle of the federal budget came from citizens (I can't back that up, but it seems logical - not counting admission fees to parks or stuff like that - even those come from citizens - I don't know)

So then I come off as greedy to some, an evil capitalist!

I give between 15 and 30 percent of my income away every year, because I can afford to and because I think it's the right thing to do. It gets used to feed poor people, cloth homeless people, and provide healthcare to indigent people. I know, because I spend it where, when, and how I choose. That's the control I have over my own charitable giving that I think we all should have.

If the Government is saying that they think they can spend that 15-30 percent better and smarter than I can, I have to laugh. You should too.

I want YOU to keep more of YOUR paycheck so you can help the people YOU want to help. It's your money, folks! Never forget that!

Originally Posted by rv2pc3d

Ha!

I grew up in a rough neighborhood, and kids who started lemonade stands got their ass' kicked..... to bad I didn't grow up in suburbia like all the commercials say I should have.

Lemonade stand was a metaphor.

To earn money in middle school I shop-lifted candy and sold it to the kids in my class.

Originally Posted by MaBell37

Originally Posted by Consultant

Canadians probably smoke fewer ciggarettes and eat less fast food than we do - that's half the problem right there.

And if you don't count Molson Canadian as beer, then they probably drink less too!


What do you mean by "Quality utilities"? Like, electricity and water?

And what do you mean when you say "balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum."? Wealth redistribution, like socialism? That shit does not work! Until ALL money goes away and EVERYTHING is free, there will be people who are smarter and better who earn more. What they choose to do with the money they earn is their business.

The government's job is not to regulate whether or not somebody buys a Hummer they don't need. I didn't need the LCD TV I bought last week - what business is it of anybody?

We need to reward exceptionalism and excellence MORE - not punish it by taking it's proceeds.

Thank God for for-profit companies who were motivated to create something we all needed by the promise of financial gain. Drug companies are motivated by profit - and they make medicine that helps millions of people. Do they not have a right to earn a profit doing so? Did you ever start a lemonade stand as a kid? Why? Were you motivated by the growing thirst needs of your neighbors and passers-by or were you saving money for a new nintendo game and wanted to make a quick buck?

On one hand people say that oil companies shouldnt get tax breaks - but what if one of those companies is BP or Exxon Mobil - who is investing part of it's profits in alternative energy like wind and solar? The tax breaks and profits they earn are the source of that investment capital. Right? Or do they generate the money out of thin air?

All the money being spent on these alternatives is coming from some profitable venture, somewhere. Including tax dollars! Every nickle of the federal budget came from citizens (I can't back that up, but it seems logical - not counting admission fees to parks or stuff like that - even those come from citizens - I don't know)

So then I come off as greedy to some, an evil capitalist!

I give between 15 and 30 percent of my income away every year, because I can afford to and because I think it's the right thing to do. It gets used to feed poor people, cloth homeless people, and provide healthcare to indigent people. I know, because I spend it where, when, and how I choose. That's the control I have over my own charitable giving that I think we all should have.

If the Government is saying that they think they can spend that 15-30 percent better and smarter than I can, I have to laugh. You should too.

I want YOU to keep more of YOUR paycheck so you can help the people YOU want to help. It's your money, folks! Never forget that!

Wow. Dude. Where to start

Thank God for for-profit companies who were motivated to create something we all needed by the promise of financial gain. Drug companies are motivated by profit - and they make medicine that helps millions of people. Do they not have a right to earn a profit doing so? Did you ever start a lemonade stand as a kid? Why? Were you motivated by the growing thirst needs of your neighbors and passers-by or were you saving money for a new nintendo game and wanted to make a quick buck?

You don't HONESTLY believe that these types of companies are so holy that they want to do better for Americans simply by the promise of more money...do you There is a LOT more going on behind the scenes, as evidenced by all the scandals that continuously come out in the media about these very same companies, for a wide variety of improprieties and outright law breaking. Yeah, greed is a big factor, but, once they have that money, how are they gonna protect it? Why, very simple of course. Make HUGE contributions to the political figureheads they think are gonna protect their profits. Of course, it's not just a simple matter of writing out a check. They have to hire lawyers to research what and how they can do that. That costs money. Where does THAT money come from? Simple. Increased profit margins from overpricing their product(s). At this level, it's all about the power. The power to make the money, and the power to KEEP that money. Which means you have to spend money to make/keep money.

All the money being spent on these alternatives is coming from some profitable venture, somewhere. Including tax dollars! Every nickle of the federal budget came from citizens (I can't back that up, but it seems logical - not counting admission fees to parks or stuff like that - even those come from citizens - I don't know)

Wow, another one. Where did you learn this stuff Not all the money comes from the citizens. The US government has its hands in all kinds of deals, all over the country. But, I'll keep it simple for you, for now. Taxes raise a lot of money, yes. They do NOT raise the amount of money that is spent yearly in the budget. So, where does it come from?

Well, the first tier is, big business. Though open and/or under-the-table transactions.

The second tier is, monies or "favors" that are collected from foreign governments in lieu of past debts. The favors, obviously, can't be cashed in as such, so, the government "awards" a contract to a certain company to go in there and "discover oil" or, "rebuild the infrastructure", or even, "teach the locals about irrigation techniques." Subtlety is the governments strong point. They're REAL good at it. These companies then go into these foreign countries and CHARGE that country to do this country one of these type of favors. In turn, the US government gets a cut of the profits that that company makes. The employees get about the same as they would get here in the US for the same type of work, but, their incentive is, they did the work OUTSIDE of the United States, so now, they don't have to claim the monies for tax purposes because they were most decidedly living and working outside of the United States. In turn, the companies don't have to report profits for the same reasons. Additionally, neither of them have to pay taxes in the host country because they are not citizens of that country.

Tier three comes from the UN. The US purchases military vehicles/equipment or sends troops to some hotspot in the world under the guise of UN Peacekeeping forces. How does this make the US government money, you ask? Simple. Each member country in the UN is required to pay a dues to remain a member in good standing, which affects their ability to sit in sessions and vote. The US doesn't pay dues. This saves them money because buying that equipment in mass quantities is cheaper than paying the dues. They keep some, and they give some away. Makes no nevermind to them, it's not their money in the first place. Additionally, when they send troops somewhere under the guise of UN Peacekeeping, those units are REMOVED FROM THE BUDGET, because why? Because the UN becomes responsible for all of their administrative actions, TO INCLUDE PAY AND ALLOWANCES, but not excluding, resupply, training and billeting.

Tier four comes from seizures. Everytime the US government, at whatever level (to include city, county and state governments), makes a bust, and there is money seized, whether that be from offshore accounts, monies on hand at the time of the bust, whatever. What do you think happens to that money? Do you honestly think it just sits in limbo forever? It is absorbed by the governmental entity that seized it. That means that they KEEP it. Now, this gets a little complicated, because, it has to be split between the appropriate jurisdictions where it was seized from. This can get a little sticky because, sometimes, the money is seized outside of US borders. But, suffice to say, it's found money. Which then gets funneled, usually, back into the agencies who found it. This creates a stash that usually is banked to collect interest (we're talking about VERY large amounts of money here, not just a few hundred thousand, upwards of millions at a clip) until near the end of the federal fiscal year (October), at which point the money is then entered into the ledgers of each agency as non-appropriated monies, that they are NOT penalized for in the fiscal budget for the follow on year. (Normally, when a surplus is found to be in the coffers of an agency, that amount is deducted from their budget for the follow on year, unless they can show them to be non-appropriated.) The same goes for military spending. This also explains why the military waits until September each year to blow all their extra money held in reserve, in case of a war or deployment. If they spend all their money before the end of the fiscal year, they get more money the next year. If they have money left over, they recieve a decrease in the amount allotted to them in the budget, minus the amount left over from the previous year.

I think this should suffice for an explanation. Or, do I really need to go further?

In another thread you said you spent an hour explaining where gov't gets it's money - I surely hope you didn't take an hour to type this post here.

I should have thought of seizures, you got me on that one.

The UN bit confuses me though, I must admit.

We don't pay dues to the UN because we give them our soldiers and materials and when we ship troops to peace keeping missions, they pay those soldiers salaries and associated costs. I guess I understand the theory, but how much money are we talking about here on an annual basis?

The Budget is a few thousand pages long each year, so I obviously over-simplified when i said "All the money..." but my point still stands - Capitalism is a good thing and capitalism helps fund our government.

I also still think I can spend my money better than Uncle Sam can.

If you disagree, go vote Obama.

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

Well, so far the arguments against minimum wage increases are not complete. I personally am not in favor of minmimum wage hikes, except at specific intervals in accordance with inflation and cost of living projections. Outright increases of minimum wage will "mess up" the balance in afew ways.

And while we are discussing people making minimum wage, I would point out again, that I tend to include people who make a little more than minimum wage in the poverty category (as does the census). 8 or 9 dollars an hour is a far cry from 20 or 30, and hell of a lot different than 200 or 300, but is still "above minimum wage."

The solution, as MaBell said, lies not in increasing minimum wage, but in making certain utilities less expensive and balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum. Food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, etc. are necessities, the latter two often being left out completely and the former three faltering in many cases. Sure McDonalds or BK makes a piece of sh!t infarction burger for a buck, and poor people tend to gobble that crap up (hence their increased rate of cardiovascular disease), but we need to make quality utilities affordable for those people, and the rest of Americans.

No one needs a frikkin Hummer, but they do need to get that lump looked at before they go to the emergency room and end up costing me more tax dollars.

Interesting note according to my research from the who.org. Canada has an overall healthier population that lives healthier, longer. They also spend LESS as a percentage of their national budget on healthcare than the US does. That is an example of the "crappy and expensive" socialized healthcare mechanisms. More for less? Sounds bad to me, I love to fork out tax dollars for people to go to the ER for something could have been prevented for a fragment of the cost.

Originally Posted by Consultant

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

Well, so far the arguments against minimum wage increases are not complete. I personally am not in favor of minmimum wage hikes, except at specific intervals in accordance with inflation and cost of living projections. Outright increases of minimum wage will "mess up" the balance in afew ways.

And while we are discussing people making minimum wage, I would point out again, that I tend to include people who make a little more than minimum wage in the poverty category (as does the census). 8 or 9 dollars an hour is a far cry from 20 or 30, and hell of a lot different than 200 or 300, but is still "above minimum wage."

The solution, as MaBell said, lies not in increasing minimum wage, but in making certain utilities less expensive and balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum. Food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, etc. are necessities, the latter two often being left out completely and the former three faltering in many cases. Sure McDonalds or BK makes a piece of sh!t infarction burger for a buck, and poor people tend to gobble that crap up (hence their increased rate of cardiovascular disease), but we need to make quality utilities affordable for those people, and the rest of Americans.

No one needs a frikkin Hummer, but they do need to get that lump looked at before they go to the emergency room and end up costing me more tax dollars.

Interesting note according to my research from the who.org. Canada has an overall healthier population that lives healthier, longer. They also spend LESS as a percentage of their national budget on healthcare than the US does. That is an example of the "crappy and expensive" socialized healthcare mechanisms. More for less? Sounds bad to me, I love to fork out tax dollars for people to go to the ER for something could have been prevented for a fragment of the cost.

Canadians probably smoke fewer ciggarettes and eat less fast food than we do - that's half the problem right there.

And if you don't count Molson Canadian as beer, then they probably drink less too!


What do you mean by "Quality utilities"? Like, electricity and water?

And what do you mean when you say "balancing top paying jobs with the rest of the spectrum."? Wealth redistribution, like socialism? That shit does not work! Until ALL money goes away and EVERYTHING is free, there will be people who are smarter and better who earn more. What they choose to do with the money they earn is their business.

The government's job is not to regulate whether or not somebody buys a Hummer they don't need. I didn't need the LCD TV I bought last week - what business is it of anybody?

We need to reward exceptionalism and excellence MORE - not punish it by taking it's proceeds.

Thank God for for-profit companies who were motivated to create something we all needed by the promise of financial gain. Drug companies are motivated by profit - and they make medicine that helps millions of people. Do they not have a right to earn a profit doing so? Did you ever start a lemonade stand as a kid? Why? Were you motivated by the growing thirst needs of your neighbors and passers-by or were you saving money for a new nintendo game and wanted to make a quick buck?

On one hand people say that oil companies shouldnt get tax breaks - but what if one of those companies is BP or Exxon Mobil - who is investing part of it's profits in alternative energy like wind and solar? The tax breaks and profits they earn are the source of that investment capital. Right? Or do they generate the money out of thin air?

All the money being spent on these alternatives is coming from some profitable venture, somewhere. Including tax dollars! Every nickle of the federal budget came from citizens (I can't back that up, but it seems logical - not counting admission fees to parks or stuff like that - even those come from citizens - I don't know)

So then I come off as greedy to some, an evil capitalist!

I give between 15 and 30 percent of my income away every year, because I can afford to and because I think it's the right thing to do. It gets used to feed poor people, cloth homeless people, and provide healthcare to indigent people. I know, because I spend it where, when, and how I choose. That's the control I have over my own charitable giving that I think we all should have.

If the Government is saying that they think they can spend that 15-30 percent better and smarter than I can, I have to laugh. You should too.

I want YOU to keep more of YOUR paycheck so you can help the people YOU want to help. It's your money, folks! Never forget that!

A) Utility: my "benefit" from my dollar. Not specfically water & electricity, but anything I need (or want).

B) There is not, and has never been a true socialism. Further, the more government controlled economies and systems in the world are now doing quite well; the euro is worth more than the dollar, the EU and other countries are outinnovating the US in terms of sustainable technology. We were the economic and scientific dynamo, but that is changing. So to say that "socialism does not work" has little basis; most of the worlds industrialized countries that have more government intervention are doing just fine, have lower crime rates, increasing currency values, longer life spans, etc. We are declining in positive quality on all those fronts.

C) I do not think the government should regulate whether or not someone should own a Hummer, but I do think they should pay a big damn luxury tax. They are ruining my air and destroying my roads faster than my feet or bicycle do. Since we all chip in on infrastructure, why am I paying for them to ruin it much faster with their excessive weight and knobby tires? Make 'em pay more I say. If you get a cheap charlie econobox and prepare most of your own food and thus save resources and ultimately those pesky externalities our less controlled system generates, you pay less luxury tax. Now if you have enough freakin' money to get a hummer, you can probably afford a luxury tax; if you can just barely afford a hummer, why the hell are you even considering getting one?

I am in support of high luxury taxes because our market system does not account for externalities. We rely on the government, if they were not trying to deal with all our externalities perhaps they could spend money more wisely. I have said I agree people should be rewarded, but the people at the bottom are way too far from the top right now. We need government intervention and regulation to have a healthy and productive society.

We used to be on top of the world, but that is now changing. And we are now relying on how things have always been and how our capitalism used to put us on top. We have gotten too comfortable and now the world has developed a more regulated system that actually works; and we are sidelining ourselves.

I think what it boils down to is people do not realize just how many externalities their actions generate, and how easy it should be for us to keep everyone as healthy, happy, and productive as possible. We have a lot of poor, and they are becoming more numerous and more poor, meanwhile the very wealthy are making it unduly hard on the guys at the bottom. We all have our place, and hard work should be rewarded, but the overwhlemingly vast majority of our society do not deserve to live in poverty, but our system is not helping them.

http://www.who.int/whosis/data/Search.jsp?indicators=[Indicator].Members <--- awesome DB tool at who.org.

And as far as their smoking and drinking habits: it looks like canada and the US have very similar rates of alcahol and tobbaco use. 7.8 vs 8.61 liters per capita year for pure alcahol and 21.6% vs 23.9% of adults using tobacco. Perhaps since they have a stake in the citizens health the government is better about educating people there, they do have a higher literacy rate after all.

The reason we are not 'on top' has less to do with who is gaining and more to do with how the lower end is adapting. India and China have low wage workers by the millions, which means that industry that is curtailed by regulation here moved over there. Folks over there will work for pennies whereas folks in the US and Europe demand certain standards for their workers.

We used to be a manufacturing dynamo, but now it is too expensive to set up shop here compared to the countries where there are no unions and no mandatory standards.

On the top end though, other countries have caught up. Some restructuring of our government is in order, but a complete restructure might cause more problems than we could even imagine.

Take a look at the tax rates in those European countries.

Taxes by GDP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...centage_of_GDP

Tax percentages around the world - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world