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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 11:45 pm 
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stip wrote:
LWing, I agree that the productive capacity of an economy is critical, arguably the most critical thing, but production is meaningless if the benefits of that production are not distributed in a way that, all questions of fairness aside, result in money moving through that system. Americans are so heavily in debt right now not because we buy so much stupid stuff (thank god we do, since that's partly what drives our economy) but because the productivity benefits of the last several decades have been so narrowly concentrated at the top of our economic ladder. Which means we're slowly asphyxiating ourselves. We've tried to cope by having two family wage earners (with the attendant social costs), artificially inflating the value of homes, and working longer and longer hours (with the attendant social costs). But we're tapped out. Ideally I actually agree with a bit of what you're describing, but we're stuck right now. Even if I have something I can do that is of productive value if no one has the money to pay me for it I'm sunk and society has wasted human capital.


In an ideal world I support 'workfare' over welfare, and when jobs don't exist I think public employment should be created to insure that people who want to work have work. We are a poorer nation when people sit at home, and if you are deriving social benefits you have an obligation to give something back. As far wage stuff goes, if people work full time they should be able to count on a certain level of material comfort, ideally one that gives them the opportunity to develop their own talents and enrich society. The safety net, when operating appropriately, is an investment in ourselves, and something likely to pay off bigger dividends for society as a whole in the long term. It is also why you and I should be taxed to pay for infrastructure, R+D, education, etc. All of this feeds into a vibrant and productive citizenry that can in turn grow an economy in a meaningful way (its innovation and productive capacity) rather than the made up paper economy we have right now.

Things like capital flight, etc. can be addressed through the legislative process, if that really is a fear (I wonder how much of this is speculative), and while you can no doubt point to any number of failed European economies, the successful ones also have generous welfare states, and in many cases more generous than the struggling ones. there's something else going on here than the European equivalent of public sector unions.


May I ask - what is your opinion on savings? And what is your opinion on the Fed Reserve? Do you believe in its mission? Do you endorse the way it was been utilized since the late 1970s? I only ask this because "money moving through the system" just sounds exceptionally vague and arbitrary to me. So I'm just seeking some clarity (not trying to set a trap.)

Buying "stupid stuff" seems independent of this discussion. So does going into debt. And I don't understand what either of those things have to do with wealth distribution. I agree that we are certain asphyxiating ourselves, but the root cause isn't any of these issues. The root cause, at least of our wealth maldistribution, is skills imbalance, and a society that is not engaging in prevailing economic signals. I mean, there was an article on Yahoo yesterday about how there are 200,000 trucking jobs that nobody wants! TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND!

Do you understand that apart of the problem is people are in the transportation business have to compete with the costs of government give-aways. They have to compete with unemployment, artificially high minimum wage laws, welfare, housing benefits, medicaid, free school lunches, you name it, they have to compete against it. Government is providing people something for nothing, and not only do potential employers have to MATCH this, but they have to make it worth it just to get off the couch. THIS is what is asphyxiating us. And the more comfortable you make the minimum wage, the less likely people are to better themselves. Particularly if you're simply giving this money away.

Let's go back to imaginary product you want to sell. What does it take to make it happen? Well, it takes you, perhaps a couple executives, some accountants, engineers, skilled machinists, skilled maintainence technicians, some programmers and IT professionals, it takes sales analysts, and salesmen. Then it takes some lower skilled workers. You can't sell your product if society contains a glut of unskilled workers. You can't bring your product to MARKET with a shortage of skilled labor. And that's what we're facing now. We've transitioned from a manufacturing age to a technological age yet our skills and education for the majority of this country has remained flat or even regressed. We NEED BALANCE! And that balance needs to be achieved by people reacting to economic signals, and not attempting to redistribute wealth. The opportunities exist for people to fill those critical in demand rolls. But instead we are left with a gross over-supply of high school dropouts, people with substance abuse problems, and just a generally low skilled workforce. We have two generations of people who want manufacturing jobs that aren't coming back. And instead of embracing the opportunity of technology that lies before us, we're trying to impose protectionist policies and tax the rich. The workers are asphyxiating themselves.

In EXTREME circumstances I would support welfare, workfare, and government stimulus jobs. But we're not there man. You can pull $15 an hour to work a McDonalds in North Dakota. You can go drive a truck. The fracking outfits are paying six figures in North Dakota. They are paying an average of 85K in Pennsylvania, 65k in support industries. We can't enough people! We can't find enough help. My company is paying $30 an hour to skilled machinists. We pull from about a couple hundred suppliers, from Chicago, to Detroit, all over Ohio, Pittsburgh, Houston. We sell our products all over Texas, Oklahoma, the Ozarks, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California - everywhere, and we do not have a supplier, NOR A CUSTOMER, that doesn't face the same labor problem we are facing. Can't get engineers. Can't get IT professionals. Can't get programmers. Can't get skilled machinists. Can't find facilities maintenance technicians. Can't find accountants, or sales reps, or countless other professional positions. We're starving for labor, but the labor pool is largely unskilled.

This is what we have to fix. And artificially making the lowest skilled workers live a material existence to grow their own talents, whatever that means, isn't going to fix it. It's gonna prolong the problem my company has now. Real easy to find low skilled temp help. Extremely difficult to find talented, value adding professionals.

Government spending on the social safety net has been going up and up and up. It encompasses more and more people. Do you think this is helping construct a foundation for a vibrant economy? Or merely encouraging people to buy dumb shit?

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 4:04 am 
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LittleWing wrote:
stip wrote:
LWing, I agree that the productive capacity of an economy is critical, arguably the most critical thing, but production is meaningless if the benefits of that production are not distributed in a way that, all questions of fairness aside, result in money moving through that system. Americans are so heavily in debt right now not because we buy so much stupid stuff (thank god we do, since that's partly what drives our economy) but because the productivity benefits of the last several decades have been so narrowly concentrated at the top of our economic ladder. Which means we're slowly asphyxiating ourselves. We've tried to cope by having two family wage earners (with the attendant social costs), artificially inflating the value of homes, and working longer and longer hours (with the attendant social costs). But we're tapped out. Ideally I actually agree with a bit of what you're describing, but we're stuck right now. Even if I have something I can do that is of productive value if no one has the money to pay me for it I'm sunk and society has wasted human capital.


In an ideal world I support 'workfare' over welfare, and when jobs don't exist I think public employment should be created to insure that people who want to work have work. We are a poorer nation when people sit at home, and if you are deriving social benefits you have an obligation to give something back. As far wage stuff goes, if people work full time they should be able to count on a certain level of material comfort, ideally one that gives them the opportunity to develop their own talents and enrich society. The safety net, when operating appropriately, is an investment in ourselves, and something likely to pay off bigger dividends for society as a whole in the long term. It is also why you and I should be taxed to pay for infrastructure, R+D, education, etc. All of this feeds into a vibrant and productive citizenry that can in turn grow an economy in a meaningful way (its innovation and productive capacity) rather than the made up paper economy we have right now.

Things like capital flight, etc. can be addressed through the legislative process, if that really is a fear (I wonder how much of this is speculative), and while you can no doubt point to any number of failed European economies, the successful ones also have generous welfare states, and in many cases more generous than the struggling ones. there's something else going on here than the European equivalent of public sector unions.


May I ask - what is your opinion on savings? And what is your opinion on the Fed Reserve? Do you believe in its mission? Do you endorse the way it was been utilized since the late 1970s? I only ask this because "money moving through the system" just sounds exceptionally vague and arbitrary to me. So I'm just seeking some clarity (not trying to set a trap.)


It's late and I'm tired so this is a brief answer I want to reserve the right to qualify.

I think savings to pass money down to others is fine, although I'd start taxing it very heavily past a certain point (2 million dollars, maybe?) I have no problem with the fed in theory so I can't say that I reject its mission. but I am strongly in favor of laws that increase sunshine and accountability and have not been a fan of its performance in the last several decades. At this point I think it exists primarily to service our financial elite more than the nation's economy as a whole. This is not an area I claim any expertise in beyond the knowledge I have as an educated person.


LittleWing wrote:
Buying "stupid stuff" seems independent of this discussion. So does going into debt. And I don't understand what either of those things have to do with wealth distribution. I agree that we are certain asphyxiating ourselves, but the root cause isn't any of these issues. The root cause, at least of our wealth maldistribution, is skills imbalance, and a society that is not engaging in prevailing economic signals. I mean, there was an article on Yahoo yesterday about how there are 200,000 trucking jobs that nobody wants! TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND!

some of that was directed at other recent posts and not you specifically.

That is a lot of trucking jobs. I think you are maybe a little too cavalier about people's ability to just qualify for certain jobs,move there, etc. people with families get stuck. But the point is still well taken

I do not necessarily think that the root problem is skill imbalance (although I'm not trying to say that isn't a possible problem) as much as our system funneling (through the tax code and a number of other processes) the benefits of our increased productivity vertically rather than horizontally, distorting our economy in the process. so i disagree with you about the root cause, but I'm not saying what you describe doesn't happen or isn't important.

There is also a failure perhaps to confront the social costs of productivity. If we just need fewer people to keep us productive we need to figure out something to do with the people who are now superfluous and no longer able to find work, or work that can support a reasonable standard of living. We can just euthanize them, and I think justice requires offering people more than a bare subsistence life when they are willing to work. I am skeptical that the skills mismatch can absorb all the unnecessary labor produced by technological advance, outsourcing, etc. But not beyond convincing.


LittleWing wrote:
Do you understand that apart of the problem is people are in the transportation business have to compete with the costs of government give-aways. They have to compete with unemployment, artificially high minimum wage laws, welfare, housing benefits, medicaid, free school lunches, you name it, they have to compete against it. Government is providing people something for nothing, and not only do potential employers have to MATCH this, but they have to make it worth it just to get off the couch. THIS is what is asphyxiating us. And the more comfortable you make the minimum wage, the less likely people are to better themselves. Particularly if you're simply giving this money away.


This line of argument works when there are enough jobs for them. I like what the New Deal did with the WPA, where the wages and benefits were slightly below prevailing market wages to encourage people to find private employment. Striking that balance is tricky, but the assumption here is that the work exists.

Robert Reich (my favorite economist--supercapitalism is a brilliant book)argued that we shouldn't have a min. wage but should instead establish a min. national income and use mechanisms like the EITC to cover the difference. that way you avoid the potential for wage distortion. I could get behind that.

LittleWing wrote:
Let's go back to imaginary product you want to sell. What does it take to make it happen? Well, it takes you, perhaps a couple executives, some accountants, engineers, skilled machinists, skilled maintainence technicians, some programmers and IT professionals, it takes sales analysts, and salesmen. Then it takes some lower skilled workers. You can't sell your product if society contains a glut of unskilled workers. You can't bring your product to MARKET with a shortage of skilled labor. And that's what we're facing now. We've transitioned from a manufacturing age to a technological age yet our skills and education for the majority of this country has remained flat or even regressed. We NEED BALANCE! And that balance needs to be achieved by people reacting to economic signals, and not attempting to redistribute wealth. The opportunities exist for people to fill those critical in demand rolls. But instead we are left with a gross over-supply of high school dropouts, people with substance abuse problems, and just a generally low skilled workforce. We have two generations of people who want manufacturing jobs that aren't coming back. And instead of embracing the opportunity of technology that lies before us, we're trying to impose protectionist policies and tax the rich. The workers are asphyxiating themselves.


Again I am skeptical that enough jobs exist for the scenario you are describing to work perfectly. Right now educated college grads are having trouble finding work, and they're not looking for assembly line jobs either. But I'm not going to argue with you that more needs to be done to educate our workforce for modern jobs, etc. People will still need to eat, however, while we go through this retraining process.


LittleWing wrote:
In EXTREME circumstances I would support welfare, workfare, and government stimulus jobs. But we're not there man. You can pull $15 an hour to work a McDonalds in North Dakota. You can go drive a truck. The fracking outfits are paying six figures in North Dakota.


shit, I went to school for 11 years between college and grad school and I don't make six figures. I should head out to ND.


LittleWing wrote:
Government spending on the social safety net has been going up and up and up. It encompasses more and more people. Do you think this is helping construct a foundation for a vibrant economy? Or merely encouraging people to buy dumb shit?


I think the fact that welfare expenditures go up are symptomatic of the larger structural problems we are both describing. But people still need to eat in the meantime. You shrink the welfare state by growing the economy, but shrinking the welfare state first does not grow the economy. It makes things worse.

My understanding is that empirically, economic growth is greater when taxes go up. Even if there is not a direct casual mechanism in place there is certainly reason to believe raising taxes does not hurt growth. The concern about capital flight and market distortion makes sense in theory, and I am sure there is a point where taxes might actually drive people out of the economy, but probably not at the numbers we're talking about. Paying taxes is not fun, but it is not the only factor that will keep a business and its money in one place.

I goggled 'correlation between taxes and economic growth' and every article on the first page (most had graphs too!) were arguing that there was no negative correlation between raising taxes and growth until taxes hit a certain point that we aren't close to reaching.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 10:58 am 
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How familiar are you with MV = PQ? Do you think it's salient theory?
Why do you think the Fed serves the financial elite? What alternatives are there?
What makes you think EITC's and a national income would be better than a minimum wage? I would argue it would actually be worse.
You seem to carry a very static viewpoint on economics. I think it's clear that economies are dynamic, change with time, and have a tendency to accelerate with technology. With that said, there is no real finite bound to this. So I think your premise that there "aren't enough jobs to go around" is exceptionally flawed, as it presumes that what is unseen must always be unseen.
There are certain TYPES of educated people struggling to find work. The problem is that the education they have acquired renders them as just as unemployable as the people who didn't even go to college. We both know that this is almost exclusively a problem with humanities and arts majors. About the only STEM folks suffering from this are architects.
Perhaps you should move out to North Dakota. I recently talked with a 24 year old kid that was at our facility for a school, with no college education, that is on pace to pull down 124k this year. I have talked with some young guys from the northeast fracking that are making damn good money too with no formal education. The point is that the economic signal is there! People just have to embrace the signal.
Explain to me why you think that as taxes go up, economic growth will go up. How familiar are you with Mr. Laffer?

I think Europe is proving to us right now that all leftward thinking economics carries inherent flaws to it. Their high tax, high worker benefit continent is imploding before our eyes. I think there are instructional lessons to be learned across the continent, as they all share in some problems, but also have a uniqueness to their problems as well. And I also think that examining nations like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are also very worth while. Then there's outliers like Luxembourg and Switzerland. In short, I don't necessarily think there is any theoretical or empirical evidence to suggest that increased taxes will have any implicit impact on taxes. The more important factor is how people REACT to the taxes, and perhaps more importantly, how those taxes are spent.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 12:46 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:

I think Europe is proving to us right now that all leftward thinking economics carries inherent flaws to it. Their high tax, high worker benefit continent is imploding before our eyes. I think there are instructional lessons to be learned across the continent, as they all share in some problems, but also have a uniqueness to their problems as well. And I also think that examining nations like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are also very worth while. Then there's outliers like Luxembourg and Switzerland. In short, I don't necessarily think there is any theoretical or empirical evidence to suggest that increased taxes will have any implicit impact on taxes. The more important factor is how people REACT to the taxes, and perhaps more importantly, how those taxes are spent.


I may be wrong, but I thought I recently read an article that Ireland's economy is tanking...Aren't they the pillar of right wing economic policies?


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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 1:39 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
EllisEamos wrote:
i appreciate your responses, and i'd ask that you don't take my next post to be a full endorsement of our current tax system or how the federal reserve currently operates.

LittleWing wrote:
It's a free rider problem.

If you can use loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying taxes, while other companies and citizens pay to support the things that support your company, why not?
why not? b/c at a certain point you lose business b/c the other companies and citizens can no longer support themselves and buy your luxury item (planned obsolescence be damned). i think we're seeing this type of thing now, where our economy is very dependent on people going to the mall and buying stuff. only, they don't have the funds to get the items our businesses create. so our businesses aren't contributing to the FED what they normally would, so more things that used to be more commonplace become luxuries for citizens and businesses and they now have less and less to spend on the products our companies are making.

LittleWing wrote:
The second part of your argument isn't so salient. You want to take money from them, so that they can produce stuff for people to buy. I think I've done the lemonade stand analogy here. I have a lemonade stand and I want to sell lemonade. But you have no money. You're po'. So Stip comes in and says, "LW, Ellis is po', and he needs money, so I'm gonna take a dollar away from you and give it to Ellis." So Stip takes my dollar, and then he gives it to you, and you buy some lemonade from me. Great arrangement right? No - not really. I've just lost the value of the materials to make the lemonade, and I'm back to square one on the currency I have. You've lost the will to work because Stip has given you something for nothing, and I've lost my will to work because I'm laboring and actually LOSING wealth. Our little economy moves forward when you wash my car, or mow my lawn for your cup of lemonade. Not through redistribution of wealth so people can buy stuff.
'
you've used this story before, but it seems to suit your intention of returning to serfdom more than it serves to find a sustainable balance for business and a growing tax base. afterall, wouldn't you want 3 customers (you, me, & stip) instead of 2 (you & stip)? i never said that taxes should cover the whole cost of your product for me. also, you'd be benefiting from the taxes on others going towards supporting you & your business. i never said people shouldn't demonstrate some initiative in order to maintain their status, but i wonder how i ever get to a point where i don't have to "wash your car" for your lemonade. lastly, could we use milkshake from now on, the idea of saying "i drink your milkshake" w/o reference to There Will Be Blood appeals to me.


Big government or nihilism. Minimum wages, or nihilism. Redistribution, or nihilism. This false dichotomy does not impart gravitas into your argument. Your first mistake is thinking that you can have a central planner adequately manage the economy to achieve a sustainable balance for business and a growing tax base. Balance and a growing tax base isn't a function of these things. It's a function of what we can do, and what we're willing to do. And redistribution harms both ends of the economic ladder - resulting a net harm both for business and the tax base. Most of all you impart economic dislocations and completely disrupt the economic balance.

Of course I want both Stip and you to be my customers. But I don't want to be taxed for you to be my customers. I want you to be productive members of society so you can rightfully buy my lemonade if you'd like it. All you're doing is creating a free rider - a zombie consumer. And by creating a zombie consumer you are devaluing the currency held by those that earned it.

how/what in my post is a false dichotomy? your argument that "redistribution harms both ends of the economy" seems much more either-or to me. what is this based on? and please don't say principles :wink: ... is it possible you could explain it using what i've posted (rather than another analogy)? Is there something you could link to for me that could explain it better?

you "don't want to be taxed for me to be your customer," but what are you willing to be taxed for? what are you willing to contribute to impart a common/mutual/shared benefit? you're talking to stip about people being uneducated/untrained for the jobs that are out there, would you or the company you work for, be willing to fast track students in specific programs to fill the positions you need? STEM is getting a huge push K-12 here in Maine (nationwide actually) in our public schools, it's funded by NSF & NASA. are you oppose to your tax dollars being spent in this way?

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:41 pm 
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Quote:
you've used this story before, but it seems to suit your intention of returning to serfdom more than it serves to find a sustainable balance for business and a growing tax base. - Ellis


Serfdom or harmony. Serfdom or redistribution. Serfdom or big government.

Quote:
your argument that "redistribution harms both ends of the economy" seems much more either-or to me. what is this based on? - Ellis


Because you incentivize people on the bottom to not do things to advance their economic well-being, while taking away incentives for those who do.

Quote:
but what are you willing to be taxed for? - Ellis


Infrastructure, K-12 education, police, perhaps firefighters depending on the community I'm in, a courthouse and a judicial system...

Quote:
would you or the company you work for, be willing to fast track students in specific programs to fill the positions you need? - Ellis


Find me a business that doesn't offer education benefits. Even my bank teller fiance has access to 100% tuition reimbursement.

Quote:
STEM is getting a huge push K-12 here in Maine (nationwide actually) in our public schools, it's funded by NSF & NASA. are you oppose to your tax dollars being spent in this way? - Ellis


If you can show me a return on investment - then yes. It seems to me that national programs to push STEM have been completely ineffective. Our K-12 achievement has actually fallen, as has the percentage of people pursuing, and completing, STEM careers. Liberal Arts is so much more fun!

Quote:
I may be wrong, but I thought I recently read an article that Ireland's economy is tanking...Aren't they the pillar of right wing economic policies? - darthvedder


Lulz no. Universal healthcare, universal education, your higher education is determined when you're 16, high minimum wage, high debt to GDP ratio, pretty high taxes.

What they do have is low corporate taxes. Ireland did this to attract foreign investment because their domestic economy had stagnated. It worked out nice until a global financial crisis happened...

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 3:59 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
How familiar are you with MV = PQ? Do you think it's salient theory?


my not satisfying answer is that I'm a bit suspicious of anything that tries to reduce an economy into 4 variables and a simple equation. I can say more if this is really a tangent you want to go down, time willing. i'm about to leave for 10 days and have limited e-mail time today.

LittleWing wrote:
Why do you think the Fed serves the financial elite? What alternatives are there?

The decisions made tend to be geared towards benefiting creditors and propping up the power and status of dominant actors in financial markets. Alternatives to what? The Fed? i'm not sure. I am more in favor of increasing transparency and countability within in it.

LittleWing wrote:
What makes you think EITC's and a national income would be better than a minimum wage? I would argue it would actually be worse.

you should go ahead and make that argument. I'm not personally convinced that it would be better or worse. Reich's argument is that since a min. wage can perhaps distort the value of certain operations funding a minimal standard of living through taxation rather than wages lets markets set the wage and avoids potentially distorting value. I think Milton Friedman also says he's fine with this in Capitalism and Freedom.

With all this stuff I care about the outcome of policy. If the EITC does a better job improving quality of life than a min wage great. If neither does it effectively and there is another option that we have a good reason to believe (on the basis of empirical research, not theory--I hold economic theory in particularly low esteem) will work better than I can get behind that.


LittleWing wrote:
You seem to carry a very static viewpoint on economics. I think it's clear that economies are dynamic, change with time, and have a tendency to accelerate with technology. With that said, there is no real finite bound to this. So I think your premise that there "aren't enough jobs to go around" is exceptionally flawed, as it presumes that what is unseen must always be unseen.

That's a pretty mystical answer. Can you be more concrete? Was I arguing economies are static or that job markets are static? Do you really think we have 10% unemployment right now because the 10% of our economy that consists of engineering jobs is currently vacant. do you have evidence to support that claim if true?

My understanding is that our economy is rapidly segregating itself into high end jobs like you're largely describing, and low end service jobs for everyone else. The country probably won't find a use for 300 million computer programs (maybe i'm wrong) and people cannot live decent middle or even working class lifestyles without assistance on service jobs.

And honestly even if the problem is a massive misaligning of skills there is still the need to oversee a healthy, peaceful, stable transition into that new economy while we reorganize our education system. That's not going to be cheap. I can live with that though, since it is an investment in human capital.

LittleWing wrote:
There are certain TYPES of educated people struggling to find work. The problem is that the education they have acquired renders them as just as unemployable as the people who didn't even go to college. We both know that this is almost exclusively a problem with humanities and arts majors. About the only STEM folks suffering from this are architects.
It is? I didn't know that?

Actually I think one of the biggest problems we have is that increasingly employers are discovering that undergraduate business degrees are worthless. STEM jobs teach a very useful skill set. Liberal arts majors teach a different one. Less difficult to quantify perhaps, but no less important.

http://upstart.bizjournals.com/news/wir ... -arts.html

I haven't read this yet (I will be this week) but I believe the study documented in the book academically adrift confirms this.

LittleWing wrote:
Explain to me why you think that as taxes go up, economic growth will go up. How familiar are you with Mr. Laffer?


Familiar enough. How familiar are you? That theory does not say that taxes going up means economic growth goes down--just that there is a threshold where increases become unproductive. I don't think we're at that point. I had just read something this morning that argued that the tax rate that will likely start to really depress growth is in the 50-70% range.

LittleWing wrote:
I think Europe is proving to us right now that all leftward thinking economics carries inherent flaws to it. Their high tax, high worker benefit continent is imploding before our eyes.
where are the successful right leaning models right now? Aren't the countries that have adopted austerity in no less trouble, or possibly more?

It is entirely possible that benefit levels in some under performing economy are unsustainable. But you've got a lot of ground to cover to get from that to the root cause of paralyzed economies, and I suspect that somewhere along the way a lot of ownership will be laid at the feet of financial manipulation and the general sucking up of the benefits of productivity into a closed loop.

LittleWing wrote:
The more important factor is how people REACT to the taxes, and perhaps more importantly, how those taxes are spent.

Sure, especially regarding how those taxes are spent. I wish we could have that debate in this country. Not whether or not taxes are good or bad, but whether THIS particular tax is likely to produce benefits justifying its cost. I feel this way about governmental debates to begin with. With obamacare for instance, the hysterical arguements about how the government is taking over healthcare is (besides being misleading in a world with medicare/medicaid/tax subidies to provide healthcare, etc) unhelpful and distracting. Instead, if we identify the status of our health care system as underperforming, we then ask ourselves whether or not THIS PARTICULAR set of measures will address that problem or if another particular set of measures is more likely to help (or if this is beyond help and will just make things worse) we will be a better country for it.


And that is also a consequence of education, and too much emphasis on STEM stuff means we won't be educating our citizens in such a way as to make intelligent conversations like the ones that happen here possible.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 4:02 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
If you can show me a return on investment - then yes. It seems to me that national programs to push STEM have been completely ineffective. Our K-12 achievement has actually fallen, as has the percentage of people pursuing, and completing, STEM careers. Liberal Arts is so much more fun!


you're chasing the wrong ghosts here. I believe (someone correct me if this is wrong) liberal arts enrollments are suffering a noticeable decline. People reject the difficult science majors and the interesting liberal arts majors for the vacuous 'but I think I'll find a job' business degree.

that's a separate conversation I am prepared to rail about for days but should probably hold off on until I have tenure.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 5:38 pm 
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LittleWing wrote:
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you've used this story before, but it seems to suit your intention of returning to serfdom more than it serves to find a sustainable balance for business and a growing tax base. - Ellis


Serfdom or harmony. Serfdom or redistribution. Serfdom or big government.
what you described would be serfdom. you said i could wash your car for lemonade. so you're telling me to do this low-level job so that i can afford this product of yours. where is the mobility in this? how do i ever get the opportunity to save and invest in myself if all my labor goes toward paying you for something? on top of that, if you're avoiding paying the actual taxes on the income you reap from the product i worked for and paid for, then that money is no longer fluid (as stip was saying). so your advantage doubles as you're not only getting my services for less and less cost to you (b/c at any point you can raise the price and i have to just "work harder"), but you're in a much better position to save and invest in yourself and your family, maintaining the plutocracy.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
your argument that "redistribution harms both ends of the economy" seems much more either-or to me. what is this based on? - Ellis


Because you incentivize people on the bottom to not do things to advance their economic well-being, while taking away incentives for those who do.
where did i say people on the bottom should get everything 100% free? working for benefits is what a lot of people do, no? do i think the current welfare system is perfect, absolutely not, but pointing to it and saying that's what got us here is self-fulling. also, demonstrate to me where busenessmen in america are at a disincentive to advance their economic well-being? i think our system works pretty good for making folks, who are in a position to do so, a lot of money. And (like this recent gun incident) it seems that a catastrophe was deemed the perfect time to be seized upon by those w/ money and power to try to make things better for themselves. rather than admitting that some of the chances they're taking have consequences.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
but what are you willing to be taxed for? - Ellis


Infrastructure, K-12 education, police, perhaps firefighters depending on the community I'm in, a courthouse and a judicial system...
that's great, we agree on all of this and therefore it's not "serfdom vs. big government" as you said earlier. there are things that we both feel are worth paying a % of our income and/or property and/or investments for... now if you can demonstrate how business is disincetivized in this country as i've asked about earlier in this post, maybe we can hash out the remaining differences we have.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
would you or the company you work for, be willing to fast track students in specific programs to fill the positions you need? - Ellis


Find me a business that doesn't offer education benefits. Even my bank teller fiance has access to 100% tuition reimbursement.
right, that's my point. where are your cries of incentives when it comes to this practice? what about police academies? how do they offer tuition reimbursement? so the bank you use is making money off of your investments w/ them, to the point where it benefits their employees? doesn't that alter the cost of doing business w/ your bank? wouldn't you rather see them not redistribute their income to their employees and instead make you personally more money?

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
STEM is getting a huge push K-12 here in Maine (nationwide actually) in our public schools, it's funded by NSF & NASA. are you oppose to your tax dollars being spent in this way? - Ellis


If you can show me a return on investment - then yes. It seems to me that national programs to push STEM have been completely ineffective. Our K-12 achievement has actually fallen, as has the percentage of people pursuing, and completing, STEM careers. Liberal Arts is so much more fun!
this is a much more recent program, and as far as i can tell, the intention w/ the younger students is to get them more interested in STEM fields, and get them thinking about it sooner, as oppose to the "everybody can go to college" ideology that i remember as a kid. it's a shift, and i, personally, think it's great that our country recognized the ineffective practices of prior initiatives and, based on pragmatic research and analysis (the boogeyman of big government, to be sure) has determined that the change was needed and would benefit the country (the return on investment).

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:21 pm 
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stip wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
If you can show me a return on investment - then yes. It seems to me that national programs to push STEM have been completely ineffective. Our K-12 achievement has actually fallen, as has the percentage of people pursuing, and completing, STEM careers. Liberal Arts is so much more fun!


you're chasing the wrong ghosts here. I believe (someone correct me if this is wrong) liberal arts enrollments are suffering a noticeable decline. People reject the difficult science majors and the interesting liberal arts majors for the vacuous 'but I think I'll find a job' business degree.
Vacuous business degree. You are funny Stip. Accounting and finance majors as vacuous, interesting. Are you going to have an art history major do your taxes next year or an accountant?
No degree is better or worse than any other. All knowledge is good. The differentiation is in what you hope to achieve with the degree. A decent paying job out of university with a liberal arts degree, as interesting as it may have been to garner is maybe a long shot.


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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 6:50 pm 
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tyler wrote:
stip wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
If you can show me a return on investment - then yes. It seems to me that national programs to push STEM have been completely ineffective. Our K-12 achievement has actually fallen, as has the percentage of people pursuing, and completing, STEM careers. Liberal Arts is so much more fun!


you're chasing the wrong ghosts here. I believe (someone correct me if this is wrong) liberal arts enrollments are suffering a noticeable decline. People reject the difficult science majors and the interesting liberal arts majors for the vacuous 'but I think I'll find a job' business degree.
Vacuous business degree. You are funny Stip. Accounting and finance majors as vacuous, interesting. Are you going to have an art history major do your taxes next year or an accountant?
No degree is better or worse than any other. All knowledge is good. The differentiation is in what you hope to achieve with the degree. A decent paying job out of university with a liberal arts degree, as interesting as it may have been to garner is maybe a long shot.


if you need someone to accomplish a very specific task like keeping the books then you presumably want someone with accounting or finance training (or do you? My best friend got a job with a prestigious accounting firm in Boston after college. He was a philosophy/psych major. Then he moved to NY and got another accounting job at a NYC firm, although at that point he had one year of experience. They taught him on the job what he needed to know.) I would say that if I was going to hire someone to be an accountant I think I'd rather higher a math or an econ major than an accounting major more for the type of mind I'd be hiring.

There's space for that. Even one of the more technically demanding STEM fields teach a certain type of thinking, but not the only one.

But it is slowly but surely becoming increasingly apparent in both research and apparently hiring practices that if you need someone to do something that requires responsive, creative, or critical thinking that this degree doesn't train you to do any of that, doesn't train you to write or communicate, etc. nearly as effectively as most liberal arts programs might.

There's also marketing, management, and other programs like that which are essentially teaching skills that can be learned quickly on a job if you are trained to have a limber mind.


It's not that the concrete art history background is going to help you, but the type of thinking those degrees require is very useful, and like any muscle, if you don't develop it you can't do much with it, and if you let it atrophy you can't do much with it.


From that article I linked above
Quote:
More interesting, at least for those of us who got some parental grief over our college choice, was the apparent love being shown for liberal arts majors. Thirty percent of surveyed employers said they were recruiting liberal arts types, second only to the 34 percent who said they were going after engineering and computer information systems majors. Trailing were finance and accounting majors, as only 18 percent of employers said they were recruiting targets.

"The No. 1 skill that employers are looking for are communication skills and liberal arts students who take classes in writing and speaking," said Dan Schawbel, founder of Millennial Branding and an expert on Generation Y. "They need to become good communicators in order to graduate with a liberal arts degree. Companies are looking for soft skills over hard skills now because hard skills can be learned, while soft skills need to be developed."




perhaps I'm being unfair though. If business majors want to talk about all the ways their degree trained them for critical and abstract thinking, and gave them lots of practice writing, learning to make and defend arguments, etc. please do.

That request sounded more assholish than I intended it to

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:32 pm 
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my not satisfying answer is that I'm a bit suspicious of anything that tries to reduce an economy into 4 variables and a simple equation. I can say more if this is really a tangent you want to go down, time willing. i'm about to leave for 10 days and have limited e-mail time today. - Stip


It doesn't boil an economy down into four variables. The economy part is encapsulated by Q. The others are simply functions of "fiat factors."

Quote:
The decisions made tend to be geared towards benefiting creditors and propping up the power and status of dominant actors in financial markets. Alternatives to what? The Fed? i'm not sure. I am more in favor of increasing transparency and countability within in it. - Stip


So do you not think it isn't accomplishing its mission when it does this? How is it possible for this entity to simply prop up creditors? Creditors don't make money from the Fed Reserve, they make money on successful loans. If a loan IS successful, why shouldn't the capital be injected into the economy? Banking is highly competitive when it comes to loans and inter-bank loans. I think you're fishing on this one. Although I'd like accountability or at least more transparency in the Fed.

Quote:
you should go ahead and make that argument. I'm not personally convinced that it would be better or worse. Reich's argument is that since a min. wage can perhaps distort the value of certain operations funding a minimal standard of living through taxation rather than wages lets markets set the wage and avoids potentially distorting value. I think Milton Friedman also says he's fine with this in Capitalism and Freedom. - Stip


I would argue on a functional basis that they are exactly the same. They are a form of artificial redistribution that comes from producers down to recipients. The same effect of devaluing labor takes place. Whether that comes through artificial wages, or redistributed taxes, you're still creating an economic dislocation. The market isn't setting wages nor avoiding distortion of values. The second you give someone something for nothing, and they go spend that money, it's going to distort the value of everything in the economy that poor people may buy.

Quote:
That's a pretty mystical answer. Can you be more concrete? Was I arguing economies are static or that job markets are static? Do you really think we have 10% unemployment right now because the 10% of our economy that consists of engineering jobs is currently vacant. do you have evidence to support that claim if true? - quote


It's not mystical, just broad for "I gotta get this post done before I head out to works sake." When you say there's "not enough jobs" it seems to me as though you are presuming those people are destined to be out of work. All I'm saying is that if we had more STEM and business competent people in our society that the technical developments we are seeing come to market and the world TODAY may have happened five years or ten years ago instead. And that we could be significantly farther ahead technically, and economically, if the holes in our economy were filled. There COULD be jobs for everyone right now. There COULD be jobs for everyone sometime down the road. But we have to have shift in attitudes about education, and we need more people to CREATE new jobs, as opposed to everyone hoping that someone else will hire them.

Quote:
My understanding is that our economy is rapidly segregating itself into high end jobs like you're largely describing, and low end service jobs for everyone else. The country probably won't find a use for 300 million computer programs (maybe i'm wrong) and people cannot live decent middle or even working class lifestyles without assistance on service jobs. - Stip


It doesn't have to be 300,000,000. It doesn't have to be 10 million. Remember, our labor force is only about 60% of our population. We still need any manner of jobs. We only need SMALL shifts into technical and professional fields to create substantial gains for everyone. We need 200,000 more truck drivers. Here's an article about huge demand for skilled factory workers, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/100-000-f ... kApPXQtDMD . 600,000 OF THEM! And those aren't engineers, those are just skilled technicians and factory workers with apprenticeships and machining schools. So that right there alone encapsulates 800,000 people. Imagine if we put 800,000 into those jobs from the unemployment ranks. That's 800,000 people no longer on social assistance. That's 800,000 contributing to productivity. That's 800,000 paying taxes. That's a significant help to our economy all the way around. When it comes to software, man, I wish you could live in my world. In the natural gas compression world, our IT departments are backed up FOR YEARS! I was hired to develop the functional specs for a program revolving around my company's return's policy last February, programming on it isn't starting until October, and won't be beta tested until next year. That's how STARVED we are for automation. Automation is awesome, and software adds SO MUCH productivity! When you start looking at AS400 systems, Oracle systems, custom software, it's just limitless. Then you look at the engineering world. ANSYS, MATLAB, finite element analysis software. It's just boundless. There's a software package called MAGMA that simulates foundry stuff - pouring liquid metal into sand molds. The stuff sells for $85,000 per license per year. In the engineering world there is just boundless limits for software like this stuff. It's in enormous global demand. And we need more of them. We should be the developers of this software and selling it to the rest of the world, so they can make our shit, and we can be wealthy. So, forget about truck drivers, factory workers, and programmers. Then you have mechanical, computer, electrical, and chemical engineers. Then you have doctors, pharmaceuticals, medical technology. Healthcare IS BOUNDLESS! We could support an enormous number of people working on medical technology and new drugs that we could export to the rest of the world and ourselves. We need nurses, people in hospitals, the whole energy sector is well paying and starved for workers. It just goes on and on.

But we cannot do these things with the quality of people we have in this country.

Quote:
And honestly even if the problem is a massive misaligning of skills there is still the need to oversee a healthy, peaceful, stable transition into that new economy while we reorganize our education system. That's not going to be cheap. I can live with that though, since it is an investment in human capital. - Stip


Investments in human capital that don't have an economic payoff will inevitably result in declines in human capital. This is the lesson of southern Europe. How do you think the universal healthcare system in Greece is doing these days?

Quote:
Liberal arts majors teach a different one. Less difficult to quantify perhaps, but no less important. - Stip


Important how? The bottom line is that people have to want the skills you have to offer in some capacity. If this doesn't happen, then you've made a bad investment. The bottom line right now is that there is a glut of people with arts degrees. There simply isn't enough demand for their skillset. And as a result, when they graduate and can't find jobs, their education doesn't offer much for the rest of society.

Quote:
I had just read something this morning that argued that the tax rate that will likely start to really depress growth is in the 50-70% range. - Stip


Guess what rates rich people will be paying with Obamacare taxes and if the Bush cuts expire? Rich people in a number of states are already pushing this threshold when you consider their state and local tax burden. I believe that this rate is lower in America. I think it's about 35% here. I think that societies such as the Scandinavians are much more tolerant to higher rates of taxation. Even when you look at millionaire flight from states like New York, Maryland, and New Jersey, I think your 50-70% rate proves a little low.

Quote:
where are the successful right leaning models right now? Aren't the countries that have adopted austerity in no less trouble, or possibly more? - Stip


First, austerity is being driven by the failures of leftward thinking economics and Keynesianism. Austerity isn't meant to make economies grow now, they are meant to prevent economies from completely imploding.

As to austerity's success, Estonia implemented swift and substantial austerity measures at the beginning of the recession. They now have the highest economic growth in Europe and investment is flooding in there. Canada is another example of the success of austerity. In lieu of giant Keyenesian projects, Canada cut social benefits, balanced their budgets, and began expanding natural resource exploitation. As a result their currency power has increased, their unemployment is dropping and low, their economy is growing, their budgets are balanced, and for the first time ever, they are wealthier than Americans are.

Quote:
But you've got a lot of ground to cover to get from that to the root cause of paralyzed economies, and I suspect that somewhere along the way a lot of ownership will be laid at the feet of financial manipulation and the general sucking up of the benefits of productivity into a closed loop. - Stip


I have been thinking a lot about this the last few months. I too read Reich - everything he writes. One of the things that I find compelling is his insight that trickle-down economics has led to an outflow of capital into foreign nations. Not necessarily into foreign savings banks, but investment in foreign bonds, foreign companies, and outsourcing. I think it's a quasi-valid point. And I think it ties to our own housing crisis and what you speak of here with financial manipulation and general sucking up of the benefits of the productivity into a closed loop.

When people look to invest they look for a return on investment. They want the lowest risk, with the highest gains. When you really stop and think about it, you're ultimately investing in people. So people with money to invest are looking for people who return the most investment. Rich people like Romney and Bain Capital are involved in foreign investments because they believe it provides a better return than investing in our own people. Should we fault them for this? Will they ultimately not spend that capital back here in America? Coincidentally I think this fuels bubbles and speculation. In European nations, and here, it became more profitable to invest in oil and housing speculation than it did in our people in other areas. There were no real viable alternatives present within these economies. All many Americans and Europeans were were zombie consumers. People buying that "dumb shit" you mentioned, with little to offer regarding inputs into the economy. The more I think about it, the more I think these speculators and hedge fund managers were sniping the economy. The recognized how fragile everything was and attempted to squeeze as much as possible out of it before the house of cards collapsed. But can you BLAME them?

Quote:
Sure, especially regarding how those taxes are spent. I wish we could have that debate in this country. Not whether or not taxes are good or bad, but whether THIS particular tax is likely to produce benefits justifying its cost. I feel this way about governmental debates to begin with. With obamacare for instance, the hysterical arguements about how the government is taking over healthcare is (besides being misleading in a world with medicare/medicaid/tax subidies to provide healthcare, etc) unhelpful and distracting. Instead, if we identify the status of our health care system as underperforming, we then ask ourselves whether or not THIS PARTICULAR set of measures will address that problem or if another particular set of measures is more likely to help (or if this is beyond help and will just make things worse) we will be a better country for it.


And that is also a consequence of education, and too much emphasis on STEM stuff means we won't be educating our citizens in such a way as to make intelligent conversations like the ones that happen here possible. - Stip


I actually agree. I agree with the second comment too. I believe that STEM people have to have a foundation in liberal arts. Have you ever caught Dok's and I debating this point?

Quote:
you're chasing the wrong ghosts here. I believe (someone correct me if this is wrong) liberal arts enrollments are suffering a noticeable decline. People reject the difficult science majors and the interesting liberal arts majors for the vacuous 'but I think I'll find a job' business degree.


Green Habit posted an article not too long ago showing that liberal arts majors have increased by 50% since the 1980s, while STEM has stagnated.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:48 pm 
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what you described would be serfdom. you said i could wash your car for lemonade. so you're telling me to do this low-level job so that i can afford this product of yours. where is the mobility in this? how do i ever get the opportunity to save and invest in myself if all my labor goes toward paying you for something? on top of that, if you're avoiding paying the actual taxes on the income you reap from the product i worked for and paid for, then that money is no longer fluid (as stip was saying). so your advantage doubles as you're not only getting my services for less and less cost to you (b/c at any point you can raise the price and i have to just "work harder"), but you're in a much better position to save and invest in yourself and your family, maintaining the plutocracy. - Ellis


Come on dude, obviously it's a derivative example to illustrate a broader and direct point. You want to step out of serfdom? Fine. I engineer natural gas compressors for you, and you conduct medical research for me.

The mobility is in education and work ethic. If you wish to pursue skills that provide a RIO, then someone will invest in you.

Taxes in that example are not relevant to describing the devaluation of labor.

My advantage only doubles if you are a willing participant in the free transaction.

Quote:
where did i say people on the bottom should get everything 100% free? working for benefits is what a lot of people do, no? do i think the current welfare system is perfect, absolutely not, but pointing to it and saying that's what got us here is self-fulling. also, demonstrate to me where busenessmen in america are at a disincentive to advance their economic well-being? i think our system works pretty good for making folks, who are in a position to do so, a lot of money. And (like this recent gun incident) it seems that a catastrophe was deemed the perfect time to be seized upon by those w/ money and power to try to make things better for themselves. rather than admitting that some of the chances they're taking have consequences. - Ellis


Anytime people get financial compensation from government they are getting something for free. The idea that welfare, social security, unemployment benefits, food stamps, minimum wages, are earned benefits is absurd. These programs constitute small contributions from us plebes, and disproportionately higher burdens on the rich. They're just wound up into the cost of doing business.

Do you want to know what is keeping me from going into business right now? I think I could make a pitch and get a loan if I had to pay minimum wage, but the other required before profit expenses, such as matching unemployment, matching social security, these things make opening a business FAR too risky for me. It would be hundreds of extra dollars per week for me that I simply couldn't risk, and in my opinion it pushes my product above a threshold that people in my area will buy. There's a hell of a lot small businesses that are in the same boat. Now, when you start looking at how our tax dollars are spent: 43 billion now lost on General Motors, billions more lost on green firms, costs for K-12 education have gone up 200% with no improvement in results, these are things that make people like me pissed off about my contributions to the tax base. If your taxes are simply going down a pit, or being paid to some constituency, or being sent to people who aren't being productive, devaluing your labor, you are have incentives removed from you.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:05 am 
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LittleWing wrote:
Come on dude, obviously it's a derivative example to illustrate a broader and direct point. You want to step out of serfdom? Fine. I engineer natural gas compressors for you, and you conduct medical research for me.
i'm not getting the point then. you believe in taxes for some things, and see no correlation to someone avoiding paying their true share of taxes on the business they've generated from you and me? and how it creates a greater strain on the rest of the population to make up the difference?

LittleWing wrote:
The mobility is in education and work ethic. If you wish to pursue skills that provide a RIO, then someone will invest in you.
but that's just it, individuals are asked to do more w/ less (work more hours for less money), while the money is still coming in and mostly flowing up (CEO pay is increasing faster than anybody else's salary)... making it harder to find time for further education that will, as you say, allow people, or their kids, to get out of their current SES.

LittleWing wrote:
Taxes in that example are not relevant to describing the devaluation of labor.
so your example didn't make sense after all, i'm glad i'm not crazy. this thread is about companies avoiding paying their required taxes... or wanting to avoid it to allow themselves to make more profit. i'm trying to understand how this company, like many others as well as individuals' personal wealth, think that they benefit by depriving the apparatus that helps maintains the economy. And we all clearly know now that what is good for our economy is good for the world's economy. right?

LittleWing wrote:
My advantage only doubles if you are a willing participant in the free transaction.
isn't that what your example laid out, this might be one of those instances where you're "moving the goalpost."

LittleWing wrote:
Anytime people get financial compensation from government they are getting something for free. The idea that welfare, social security, unemployment benefits, food stamps, minimum wages, are earned benefits is absurd. These programs constitute small contributions from us plebes, and disproportionately higher burdens on the rich. They're just wound up into the cost of doing business.
except when "the rich" avoid contributing what they're suppose to, then it's falling on people that have even less and becomes the absurdity that you're describing. not to mention the self-fulling prophecy that i've been shouting about the past few days.

w/o the contributions of "the rich" (i'm quoting it b/c the majority of us pay taxes, too) there is less money for education, which means more unprepared/unskilled workers, which means more people in need of assistance, which means "the rich" are going to point to the rise in the # of people getting food stamps the last 3 years and say it's our socialist president, all the while overlooking the fact that when the economy crashed a lot of people that barely got by w/o assistance are now S.O.L.

you've always posted (or maybe it was dokker) that nothing is free. i agree. i understand (much better now since i initially started posting in N&D) that costs get shifted. my only question in this thread has been about the avoidance of contributing and how it impacts the functioning of the system. it strikes me as completely disingenuous for a CEO to, on the one hand, complain about government demanding too much from them and saying that it will be spent poorly -- while they're still reaping HUGE profits -- and then the same CEO's bleed the system, create the crash (w/ help of course, "they didn't build that :wink: ) and complain about the mismanagement of their hard earned funds. it reminds me a lot of what the GOP in this current congress are doing by doing the least amount of work possible to avoid giving Obama (& the Dems) any good news to report on, while at the same time complaining and getting their base fired up about "the other guys" that won't do anything to get us out of this recession.

LittleWing wrote:
Do you want to know what is keeping me from going into business right now? I think I could make a pitch and get a loan if I had to pay minimum wage, but the other required before profit expenses, such as matching unemployment, matching social security, these things make opening a business FAR too risky for me. It would be hundreds of extra dollars per week for me that I simply couldn't risk, and in my opinion it pushes my product above a threshold that people in my area will buy. There's a hell of a lot small businesses that are in the same boat. Now, when you start looking at how our tax dollars are spent: 43 billion now lost on General Motors, billions more lost on green firms, costs for K-12 education have gone up 200% with no improvement in results, these are things that make people like me pissed off about my contributions to the tax base. If your taxes are simply going down a pit, or being paid to some constituency, or being sent to people who aren't being productive, devaluing your labor, you are have incentives removed from you.
i hear you on all counts. first off, my dad owns his own business, and i get an ear-full, every time we talk, about how hard it is to stay afloat these days. but i still see this as a case of missing the forest for the trees. these are some of the worst economic times most people have ever seen. i think it's going to create some really good sustainable things for all of us by forcing change (i know, hopey/changey isn't you're thing)... and i feel (and i can't imagine you'd agree w/ me) that most of what we have in place can operate in everybody's best interest (this is where principles come in, best interest = life, liberty, and the pursuit) if 3 things happen:

1) everyone is held accountable - disclosure and transparency in government/military, medicine, business, education, energy, foreign policy (you name it)
2) clean up the tax code - less deductions/loopholes/subsidies
3) regulators regulate regularly - self explanatory i'd think
4) BONUS - a colony on the moon - b/c that'd be sweet

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:51 am 
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This will be quick since I need to pack, and I'll be away for 10 days or so, and unable to hold up my end of the bargain here. So I guess the field is yours :)

LittleWing wrote:

Quote:
The decisions made tend to be geared towards benefiting creditors and propping up the power and status of dominant actors in financial markets. Alternatives to what? The Fed? i'm not sure. I am more in favor of increasing transparency and countability within in it. - Stip


So do you not think it isn't accomplishing its mission when it does this? How is it possible for this entity to simply prop up creditors? Creditors don't make money from the Fed Reserve, they make money on successful loans. If a loan IS successful, why shouldn't the capital be injected into the economy? Banking is highly competitive when it comes to loans and inter-bank loans. I think you're fishing on this one. Although I'd like accountability or at least more transparency in the Fed.


It's interesting watching Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul work together.

Lending out money at near zero interest rates that banks can then profit on (if they choose to lend it out at all), and then use that money to influence our political system in a way that reinforces their power. I also think there is in general a bit too much emphasis on maintaining low inflation and not enough focus on lowering unemployment. Again I could say more on this but I don't have time. I suspect we'll have the chance to go at this again :)



LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
you should go ahead and make that argument. I'm not personally convinced that it would be better or worse. Reich's argument is that since a min. wage can perhaps distort the value of certain operations funding a minimal standard of living through taxation rather than wages lets markets set the wage and avoids potentially distorting value. I think Milton Friedman also says he's fine with this in Capitalism and Freedom. - Stip


I would argue on a functional basis that they are exactly the same. They are a form of artificial redistribution that comes from producers down to recipients. The same effect of devaluing labor takes place. Whether that comes through artificial wages, or redistributed taxes, you're still creating an economic dislocation. The market isn't setting wages nor avoiding distortion of values. The second you give someone something for nothing, and they go spend that money, it's going to distort the value of everything in the economy that poor people may buy.


I disagree that this is a distortion of the market (I'd also argue that non distorted markets exist only as a theoretical construct so it doesn't matter, but that's a different story), at least in the same way. Taxes are universal, and don't directly affect wage rates, etc. the same way. For instance, if you had to up your min. wage by 2 dollars to meet a new standard does this mean you now need to pay everyone else who works for you 2 dollars more to account for the fact that their services are more valuable to you, etc. with a tax you're still stuck with the bill (a separate issue) but you don't have the issue where you are legally required to raise some people's wages but not others, who may well see the wage and want it anyway.


LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
That's a pretty mystical answer. Can you be more concrete? Was I arguing economies are static or that job markets are static? Do you really think we have 10% unemployment right now because the 10% of our economy that consists of engineering jobs is currently vacant. do you have evidence to support that claim if true? - quote


It's not mystical, just broad for "I gotta get this post done before I head out to works sake."
fair enough.

LittleWing wrote:

When you say there's "not enough jobs" it seems to me as though you are presuming those people are destined to be out of work. All I'm saying is that if we had more STEM and business competent people in our society that the technical developments we are seeing come to market and the world TODAY may have happened five years or ten years ago instead. And that we could be significantly farther ahead technically, and economically, if the holes in our economy were filled. There COULD be jobs for everyone right now. There COULD be jobs for everyone sometime down the road. But we have to have shift in attitudes about education, and we need more people to CREATE new jobs, as opposed to everyone hoping that someone else will hire them.

Fine, but you are talking real jobs that will be filled by an abstract people who will be trained to fill them at some point in the future, not jobs for the people who lack that training now and still require work. Should we have gotten ahead of this curve a long time ago? sure. We are woefully deficient when it comes to investing in ourselves because of the stupid 'if the government spends money it is necessarily inefficient, if not downright immoral, no matter what it is, unless it is the military' nonsense that has dominated both conservative and by extension American political discourse for 30 years.


Quote:
My understanding is that our economy is rapidly segregating itself into high end jobs like you're largely describing, and low end service jobs for everyone else. The country probably won't find a use for 300 million computer programs (maybe i'm wrong) and people cannot live decent middle or even working class lifestyles without assistance on service jobs. - Stip



LittleWing wrote:
It doesn't have to be 300,000,000. It doesn't have to be 10 million. Remember, our labor force is only about 60% of our population. We still need any manner of jobs. We only need SMALL shifts into technical and professional fields to create substantial gains for everyone. We need 200,000 more truck drivers. Here's an article about huge demand for skilled factory workers, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/100-000-f ... kApPXQtDMD . 600,000 OF THEM! And those aren't engineers, those are just skilled technicians and factory workers with apprenticeships and machining schools. So that right there alone encapsulates 800,000 people. Imagine if we put 800,000 into those jobs from the unemployment ranks. That's 800,000 people no longer on social assistance. That's 800,000 contributing to productivity. That's 800,000 paying taxes. That's a significant help to our economy all the way around. When it comes to software, man, I wish you could live in my world. In the natural gas compression world, our IT departments are backed up FOR YEARS! I was hired to develop the functional specs for a program revolving around my company's return's policy last February, programming on it isn't starting until October, and won't be beta tested until next year. That's how STARVED we are for automation. Automation is awesome, and software adds SO MUCH productivity! When you start looking at AS400 systems, Oracle systems, custom software, it's just limitless. Then you look at the engineering world. ANSYS, MATLAB, finite element analysis software. It's just boundless. There's a software package called MAGMA that simulates foundry stuff - pouring liquid metal into sand molds. The stuff sells for $85,000 per license per year. In the engineering world there is just boundless limits for software like this stuff. It's in enormous global demand. And we need more of them. We should be the developers of this software and selling it to the rest of the world, so they can make our shit, and we can be wealthy. So, forget about truck drivers, factory workers, and programmers. Then you have mechanical, computer, electrical, and chemical engineers. Then you have doctors, pharmaceuticals, medical technology. Healthcare IS BOUNDLESS! We could support an enormous number of people working on medical technology and new drugs that we could export to the rest of the world and ourselves. We need nurses, people in hospitals, the whole energy sector is well paying and starved for workers. It just goes on and on.

But we cannot do these things with the quality of people we have in this country.


we're not actually arguing here. My point is just that people still need to live while we find people to fill those jobs. I also agree with what I think Ellis was arguing--economic dislocation is a trap. No one wants to throw money at a permanent underclass, but once you are struggling getting yourself in a position where you CAN dig yourself out and start doing productive things requires financial security that can be provided through public programs. it's not a money sink. It's an investment (when the programs function properly--but a poorly functioning program is an argument to fix the program, not abandon the effort)

We can think about the phrase paternalism (which you didn't use here) in two ways. There's the 'oh, we're infantalizing people by helping them---we turn them into dependents' argument, but that's not really why parents do things for their children. They provide for them to make them independent, but growing to the point where you can become independent requires stability, and stability requires resources.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
And honestly even if the problem is a massive misaligning of skills there is still the need to oversee a healthy, peaceful, stable transition into that new economy while we reorganize our education system. That's not going to be cheap. I can live with that though, since it is an investment in human capital. - Stip


Investments in human capital that don't have an economic payoff will inevitably result in declines in human capital. This is the lesson of southern Europe. How do you think the universal healthcare system in Greece is doing these days?


I think this is a bit, well not specious, since you can possibly make a connection, but a dramatic oversimplification of what is happening in those countries. The fact that Greece had universal healthcare (as does canda, who you praise elsewhere) and an economic crisis does not mean that healthcare caused the economic crisis.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
Liberal arts majors teach a different one. Less difficult to quantify perhaps, but no less important. - Stip


Important how? The bottom line is that people have to want the skills you have to offer in some capacity. If this doesn't happen, then you've made a bad investment. The bottom line right now is that there is a glut of people with arts degrees. There simply isn't enough demand for their skillset. And as a result, when they graduate and can't find jobs, their education doesn't offer much for the rest of society.


If you like, think of this as a market distortion. We decided a few decades ago that business degrees were valuable and started funneling people into those degrees, despite the fact that they are less effective in teaching analytic skills, critical thinking, creativity, writing and communication, etc. The need for those skills hasn't dried up. We just thought we were getting them elsewhere, and we weren't. That's changing. There's a difference between the artificial overvaluing and undervaluing of a skill set and the value of that skill set.

beyond that I am of course also of the mindset that the purpose of an education is not just to get you a job, but to make you a better citizen, and that people who don't know how to think (or engage in what formally passes for thinking) enable the worst aspects of our democracy, which in turn allows for the kind of harmful factional behavior that distorts so many aspects of our public and private lives. That is hopelessly abstract, and I apologize for that, but I suspect you can fill in your own examples here.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
I had just read something this morning that argued that the tax rate that will likely start to really depress growth is in the 50-70% range. - Stip


Guess what rates rich people will be paying with Obamacare taxes and if the Bush cuts expire? Rich people in a number of states are already pushing this threshold when you consider their state and local tax burden. I believe that this rate is lower in America. I think it's about 35% here. I think that societies such as the Scandinavians are much more tolerant to higher rates of taxation. Even when you look at millionaire flight from states like New York, Maryland, and New Jersey, I think your 50-70% rate proves a little low.
It wasn't my number, just something I read earlier today. I don't know how economists go about calculating that number, but America's economy has thrived under much higher levels of taxation.

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
where are the successful right leaning models right now? Aren't the countries that have adopted austerity in no less trouble, or possibly more? - Stip


First, austerity is being driven by the failures of leftward thinking economics and Keynesianism. Austerity isn't meant to make economies grow now, they are meant to prevent economies from completely imploding.

And I can quote you a million other people who want to argue that Keyensianism isn't working because it's been shackled by austerity politics for a generation. Our economy, and most (all?) of the economies of our peer nations bounce back and forth between these ideas.



LittleWing wrote:
As to austerity's success, Estonia implemented swift and substantial austerity measures at the beginning of the recession. They now have the highest economic growth in Europe and investment is flooding in there. Canada is another example of the success of austerity. In lieu of giant Keyenesian projects, Canada cut social benefits, balanced their budgets, and began expanding natural resource exploitation. As a result their currency power has increased, their unemployment is dropping and low, their economy is growing, their budgets are balanced, and for the first time ever, they are wealthier than Americans are.


I suspect, correct me if I am wrong, that Canadian social benefits are still more generous than American benefits. I also suspect that the natural resource exploitation played a pretty huge role in whatever prosperity they are enjoying, which has nothing to do with austerity/Keynesian economics.

Honestly the problem with this whole debate (the comparative examples) is that there are so many factors at play that unless we really create case studies that try and unpack the specific context behind each recovery we can cherry pick examples that prove our points, and even end up citing the same case for both sides.



LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
But you've got a lot of ground to cover to get from that to the root cause of paralyzed economies, and I suspect that somewhere along the way a lot of ownership will be laid at the feet of financial manipulation and the general sucking up of the benefits of productivity into a closed loop. - Stip


I have been thinking a lot about this the last few months. I too read Reich - everything he writes. One of the things that I find compelling is his insight that trickle-down economics has led to an outflow of capital into foreign nations. Not necessarily into foreign savings banks, but investment in foreign bonds, foreign companies, and outsourcing. I think it's a quasi-valid point. And I think it ties to our own housing crisis and what you speak of here with financial manipulation and general sucking up of the benefits of the productivity into a closed loop.

When people look to invest they look for a return on investment. They want the lowest risk, with the highest gains. When you really stop and think about it, you're ultimately investing in people. So people with money to invest are looking for people who return the most investment. Rich people like Romney and Bain Capital are involved in foreign investments because they believe it provides a better return than investing in our own people. Should we fault them for this?


I'm not arguing that what they are doing is irrational. We're going to disagree on this in two places

1--whether or not there is a social dimension to their wealth that creates moral or even legal obligations to invest in ways that have positive economic outcomes for American citizens and

2--whether or not the return on their investment also reflects the way our laws and financial policies incentivize certain types of investments in certain places, etc. I know we disagree on this but I emphatically would deny that there is anything approaching a free market that actually exists in the world. There are just rules that privilege some types of behavior over others, and the rules are the product of politics. So romney and bain do well because our rules reward those sorts of choices, and then the people who benefit from those rules now have the resources (legal, economic, even cultural) to preserve those rules, or continue to expand them in increasingly favorable ways.

When there are dramatic changes in the way wealth is distributed (not generated, but distributed) those changes exist because the rules changed

LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
Sure, especially regarding how those taxes are spent. I wish we could have that debate in this country. Not whether or not taxes are good or bad, but whether THIS particular tax is likely to produce benefits justifying its cost. I feel this way about governmental debates to begin with. With obamacare for instance, the hysterical arguements about how the government is taking over healthcare is (besides being misleading in a world with medicare/medicaid/tax subidies to provide healthcare, etc) unhelpful and distracting. Instead, if we identify the status of our health care system as underperforming, we then ask ourselves whether or not THIS PARTICULAR set of measures will address that problem or if another particular set of measures is more likely to help (or if this is beyond help and will just make things worse) we will be a better country for it.


And that is also a consequence of education, and too much emphasis on STEM stuff means we won't be educating our citizens in such a way as to make intelligent conversations like the ones that happen here possible. - Stip


I actually agree. I agree with the second comment too. I believe that STEM people have to have a foundation in liberal arts. Have you ever caught Dok's and I debating this point?


Unfortunately I have not. My time in this forum is usually pretty streaky depending on how much free time work is affording me (lots right now).




LittleWing wrote:
Quote:
you're chasing the wrong ghosts here. I believe (someone correct me if this is wrong) liberal arts enrollments are suffering a noticeable decline. People reject the difficult science majors and the interesting liberal arts majors for the vacuous 'but I think I'll find a job' business degree.


Green Habit posted an article not too long ago showing that liberal arts majors have increased by 50% since the 1980s, while STEM has stagnated.


Interesting. If someone can find that article I would like to read it. Based on what I've seen at my own school the really explosive growth has been in the education and business majors, and what i've seen at many schools is that liberal arts funding is tight and many programs are closing, but I would rather trust someone else's research than my own more narrow experience.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:00 am 
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LittleWing wrote:
Now, when you start looking at how our tax dollars are spent: 43 billion now lost on General Motors, billions more lost on green firms, costs for K-12 education have gone up 200% with no improvement in results, these are things that make people like me pissed off about my contributions to the tax base. If your taxes are simply going down a pit, or being paid to some constituency, or being sent to people who aren't being productive, devaluing your labor, you are have incentives removed from you.


being angry about the way that we waste our money is certainly legitimate, but I think that's a byproduct of our current politics--the financial burden to support public life has been shifted away from large companies to small ones, from wealthier people to working people, and a lot of money we spend is wasted, but instead of talking about how to spend that money more effectivley, in ways that will enrich everyone, we end up debating whether or not government has a purpose, and fight the same tired ideological battle rather than trying to create better public policy.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:08 am 
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as a going away present, LWing, I e-mailed one of my colleagues in the economics department to ask him what he thought of
MV = PQ? Team Austria gets a lot of credence in these parts, possibly because they're right, but a few of their supporters can talk about economics with a fair degree of technical vocabulary that others here can't match (myself included--I am no economist). And so there's (to my knowledge) no one with an actual background here to argue with them or effectively challenge claims amde. Anyway, this guy is a Keynsian (because he thinks the Austrians are wrong) Here's his response:


Quote:
I know why your Austrian/libertarian friends are so keen on that equation. It's called the "equation of exchange." As an identity, the equation is a truism, for it logically follows from the definition of the velocity of money (V). The velocity of money equals nominal GDP divided by the money supply (M). You can think of the velocity of money as how many times a unit of money is used to buy goods and services over the course of one year. That's essentially what you are looking at if you consider the economy's current annual output of goods and services valued at current year's prices, divided by the money supply. Now, nominal GDP equals the overall price level, labeled P, times real GDP, labeled in this context as Q. (Real GDP is the current year's output of goods and services valued in the prices of an arbitrarily chosen base year, which are constant.) Therefore, by definition, V=PQ/M. Just multiply both sides by M, an you MV=PQ. Nobody can argue against the logic and assumptions so far. All this follows from the definition of the velocity of money.

Now, here are two assumptions that your Austrian friends are making: (1) For institutional reasons, V is fairly stable over time. (2) The level of real GDP is completely determined by: the resources available for producing goods and services; the size of the labor force; people's preferences with regard to leisure and consumption (which impacts their willingness to work); and the set of technologies available for transforming resources and labor into final products and services. (As you can see, the Austrians have much in common with the supply side crew.) Notice that, based on the equation of exchange and assumptions 1 and 2, Q is determined independently of the money supply M. Now, if V and Q are not influenced by M, then if the central bank increases the money supply, then the only outcome will be an increase in P, i.e. loose monetary policy does nothing but ruin the currency. Remember that, MV=PQ, so if the left hand side increases as a result of an expansionary monetary policy, the only way the right hand side can adjust to maintain the equality is through an increase in P.

The Austrian crew are close cousins of the mainstream neoclassical crew. The neoclassicals provide and argument supporting assumption #2 above. Keynes devastated the neoclassicals on this way back in 1936, but it seems everyone has forgotten this, and we're paying for it now.

I don't agree with the Austrians, but I have a great deal more respect for them than I do the neoclassicals. The Austrians are actually quite erudite and are familiar with the philosophy of science and intellectual history, including the history of economic thought. The neoclassicals, virtually without exception, are Philistines with Ph.D.'s, which is certainly sad testimony to the state of higher education these days.


I sent him a follow up question asking him where he thinks this equation goes wrong, if it does (he implies that above but doesn't really specify)

Quote:
One counterargument I would make to the Austrian/neoclassical position on this issue is that the central bank of a country does not directly control the money supply (cash circulating outside the banking system plus checking account balances) in the first place. Instead, the central bank controls the amount of currency in existence and commercial banks' deposits at the central bank. One of the main avenues through which an expansionary monetary policy is instigated is the central bank's boosting the amount of currency in existence and/or commercial banks' deposits at the central bank. E.g. an expansionary monetary policy may come in the form of the central bank purchasing government bonds from commercial banks, with the central bank printing currency and giving it to the commercial banks or just raising their account balances at the central bank in exchange for the bonds. E.g. if the Fed bought a $1000 government bond from Citibank, the Fed would credit Citibank's account at the Fed for $1000; this is what Citibank would get in exchange for the bond it sold to the Fed. (Alternatively, the Fed could, in principle, print out ten $100 bills and send them in an armored car over to Citibank, but the electronic crediting of Citibank's account there entails a far lower transactions cost.) So, when the central bank embarks on an expansionary monetary policy, it boosts what's known as the "monetary base," or currency in existence plus commercial banks' deposits at the central bank. (By the way, I'm ignoring another avenue for embarking on an expansionary monetary policy, which is lowering the required reserve ratio, but I don't want to go into that much detail, and it makes no difference to the argument I'm making.) The central bank does not raise the money supply, i.e., cash circulating within the non-bank public plus the sum total of checking account balances in the economy. In order for an expansionary monetary policy to lead to an expansion of the money supply, commercial banks must lend out the newly created monetary base. This decision is up to the commercial banks, not the central bank. Since there's no necessary reason why the newly created monetary base has to be converted into a boost in the money supply, the central bank does not actually control the money supply. If you get a chance, you might want to Google "chart of monetary base", "chart of M1 money supply," etc. to see that while the monetary base more than doubled during the financial crisis, the money supply rose by a much smaller percentage. Better yet, Google a chart of the monetary base since 1997, then Google a chart of the inflation rate since 1997, and you'll see that the Fed's doubling of the monetary base had no impact on inflation, contrary to what the Austrians and neoclassicals say. Ron Paul's been howling for decades about how the Fed's expansionary monetary policies were going to bring us to a Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation, and he keeps getting proved wrong.

My position is that the central bank, through monetary policy, can have an effect on real GDP. Consider, for example, how the severe recession of 1979-80 was engineered by Paul Volker. However, fiscal policy has an even stronger impact on GDP because it operates much more directly. Your Austrian friends would argue, by contrast that an expansion (contraction) of the government sector would only take away resources from (free-up resources for) the private, productive sector, having no impact on GDP in the short-term.

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 5:44 am 
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stip wrote:
perhaps I'm being unfair though. If business majors want to talk about all the ways their degree trained them for critical and abstract thinking, and gave them lots of practice writing, learning to make and defend arguments, etc. please do.

That request sounded more assholish than I intended it to
I think you lose any and all moral superiority regarding liberal art communication skills when you have to add as an after thought that something you wrote sounds more assholish than intended.

I will admit that a business degree does not excel in teaching you to "tell it then sell it". It however is good at teaching you to "recognize the right decision, do it then tell it". If I have to spend my time defending/selling a correct decision, it's because the other person is stupid and can't correctly process what's going on. Truthfully, I have better things to do at work. I don't care to win people over with the strength of my defence of argument, if the facts don't do it for them that's their issue not mine.

Someone has to make decisions, quite often when you have incomplete information and the decision is time sensitive. This is what I started learning in my business degree and sports. This is what the law courses I took as part of the business degree helped build. This was not skill set built by the humanities, sociology, anthropology and philosophy classes I took.

I think not appreciating each discipline for what it teaches and acting as if one is better than the other is pure arrogance and folly. Education should be about what the user wants it to be. Mine was to escape reality, party, chase girls and get a degree that would get my foot in the door to a career that met my monetary and enjoyment goals. My business degree was very successful in this regard. Can the average liberal arts student say the same? It would seem to me that for all the ones bitching about the cost of the degree that the answer is a resounding no.

The most important things in life I learned from family and friends. Love, caring and sharing. What discipline does that fall under?


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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:44 am 
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tyler wrote:
Someone has to make decisions, quite often when you have incomplete information and the decision is time sensitive. This is what I started learning in my business degree and sports. This is what the law courses I took as part of the business degree helped build. This was not skill set built by the humanities, sociology, anthropology and philosophy classes I took.
Actually law classes pretty firmly fall into the social sciences (or maybe philosophy), even if that particular course happened to be housed in a different department.


tyler wrote:
I think not appreciating each discipline for what it teaches and acting as if one is better than the other is pure arrogance and folly.

Perhaps. I'll report back on the results of Academically Adrift, which ran studies trying to measure what people are actually learning.

happened to be housed in a different department.


tyler wrote:
Education should be about what the user wants it to be. Mine was to escape reality, party, chase girls and get a degree that would get my foot in the door to a career that met my monetary and enjoyment goals. My business degree was very successful in this regard. Can the average liberal arts student say the same? It would seem to me that for all the ones bitching about the cost of the degree that the answer is a resounding no.

I think people complaining about student debt is pretty universal.

tyler wrote:
The most important things in life I learned from family and friends. Love, caring and sharing. What discipline does that fall under?


Kind of irrelevant to the discussion at hand though, isn't it?

Although we do have a class on the philosophy of love. Should I see if these things are on the syllabus?

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 Post subject: Re: On Apple, and Corporate Taxes.
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:50 pm 
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stip wrote:
it's not a money sink. It's an investment (when the programs function properly--but a poorly functioning program is an argument to fix the program, not abandon the effort)
man i wish i could have conceptualized this as well you did. we've been talking about ROI, and i really think this frames my position on it (thnx, stip).

one thing i've been thinking about whenever the "failures of european welfare states" gets mentioned is the median ages and population pyramids of these failing countries. which is a phenomena we shouldn't see in this country (at least to the extent that most of europe is experiencing) given our continued birth rates.

stip wrote:
I suspect, correct me if I am wrong, that Canadian social benefits are still more generous than American benefits. I also suspect that the natural resource exploitation played a pretty huge role in whatever prosperity they are enjoying, which has nothing to do with austerity/Keynesian economics.

Honestly the problem with this whole debate (the comparative examples) is that there are so many factors at play that unless we really create case studies that try and unpack the specific context behind each recovery we can cherry pick examples that prove our points, and even end up citing the same case for both sides.
another huge factor for America's Hat, is how their home loan system operated leading up to the crash 4 years ago. individuals didn't experience the huge loss of wealth (talk about ROI) that has been so prevalent in the USA.

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