Regulation

[otto105]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Did you take an Economics class before you posted this tripe?

 

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

If you take away their power then who will have the power to write laws that are good and proper?

I am not saying take away ALL power. I am saying the federal government has far exceeded its intended limits and needs to be considerably reeled in so our economy may function more efficiently, and provide a level playing field for everyone.

 

[otto105]

What is the point of this thread?

The point of this thread is to provide the conservative point of view on regulations, and why we need smaller government.

Can you provide an example of a successful country which has low government and regulations which you are advocating for?

Then maybe this thread has a point.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

You start making good points, but then you deviate into the same trap you sprang. I don't want ANY government regulating ANYTHING unless i is ABSOLUTELY UNAVOIDABLE. I don't care who is in the white house.

 

[OldLady]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

See post 6.

I thought this was going to be enlightening, but no. This is what I get for trying to learn anything about economic or financial anything. Put on your dunce cap and go sit in the back, Old Lady, we haven't got time for you.

Well, specifically, what regulations are putting power into the hands of the giant corporations and (I'm guessing) banks? Will Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one that is proposed do that trick, or will that just willy nilly get rid of some that no one cares about anyway?

 

[OldLady]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

 

[g5000]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

See post 6.

I thought this was going to be enlightening, but no. This is what I get for trying to learn anything about economic or financial anything. Put on your dunce cap and go sit in the back, Old Lady, we haven't got time for you.

Well, specifically, what regulations are putting power into the hands of the giant corporations and (I'm guessing) banks? Will Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one that is proposed do that trick, or will that just willy nilly get rid of some that no one cares about anyway?

Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one is amateurish and stupid. It's a simpleton's solution to a problem he clearly has no clue about.

It reminds me of when I was in the military and a directive came down to cut all training courses at our command by ten percent.

The order was not to determine which courses had fat in them or could be trimmed. The order was to arbitrarily trim EVERY course by ten percent.

Training is critical to readiness. To assume EVERY course could be cut by ten percent was one of the most boneheaded assumptions I ever saw.

Trump ASSUMES every agency can cut two regulations for every new one they create. It's idiotic thinking.

More than idiotic, it is sheer laziness. It's the sign of a person who does not want to do the hard work of actually taking the time to identify unnecessary regulations. It shows a total lack of talent for the job.

As for the banks and Dodd-Frank, the financial industry screwed the proverbial pooch. They asked to have derivatives completely unregulated, and they asked the federal government to pre-empt state laws regulating casinos and bucket shops. Why would a bank need to be exempt from laws against bucket shops and laws regulating casinos? That should have been a HUGE signal something evil was afoot.

Not one conservative mouthpiece, not Fox News or Rush or Hannity or any other right wing propagandist, opened their mouth in outrage at the federal pre-emption of state laws.

And they still don't, even though it happens nearly every day in bills before Congress.

Republicans enact federal pre-emptions of state laws on a regular basis. They usurp the tenth amendment for breakfast. They are hypocrites of the first water.

When the deregulation of the financial industry ended up bringing the world to financial armageddon, the backlash was Dodd-Frank.

Instead of letting companies with bad business models go under, and allowing more efficient and better run businesses to supplant them, the federal government rescues the toxic companies under the guise of "too big to fail". As a result, each subsequent failure is larger than the last.

Now those same corrupt and sclerotic companies are too big to save when the next downturn comes. We are all fucked.

 

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

Congress should only be setting the tax margins and their rates. They should not be handing out gifts in the form of exemptions, credits, and deductions.

This is the most corrupt practice in our history. What's more, it is government social engineering, and it is failing horribly. At huge expense to our children and our children's children.

 

[westwall]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

If you take away their power then who will have the power to write laws that are good and proper?

The PEOPLE of this country. The political class has been at war with we the PEOPLE for decades now. Why do you think that no matter how many times the Democrat party says we are here to help you but the only thing we ever see is their cronies being helped....with OUR tax money.

 

[westwall]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

See post 6.

I thought this was going to be enlightening, but no. This is what I get for trying to learn anything about economic or financial anything. Put on your dunce cap and go sit in the back, Old Lady, we haven't got time for you.

Well, specifically, what regulations are putting power into the hands of the giant corporations and (I'm guessing) banks? Will Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one that is proposed do that trick, or will that just willy nilly get rid of some that no one cares about anyway?

Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one is amateurish and stupid. It's a simpleton's solution to a problem he clearly has no clue about.

It reminds me of when I was in the military and a directive came down to cut all training courses at our command by ten percent.

The order was not to determine which courses had fat in them or could be trimmed. The order was to arbitrarily trim EVERY course by ten percent.

Training is critical to readiness. To assume EVERY course could be cut by ten percent was one of the most boneheaded assumptions I ever saw.

Trump ASSUMES every agency can cut two regulations for every new one they create. It's idiotic thinking.

More than idiotic, it is sheer laziness. It's the sign of a person who does not want to do the hard work of actually taking the time to identify unnecessary regulations. It shows a total lack of talent for the job.

As for the banks and Dodd-Frank, the financial industry screwed the proverbial pooch. They asked to have derivatives completely unregulated, and they asked the federal government to pre-empt state laws regulating casinos and bucket shops. Why would a bank need to be exempt from laws against bucket shops and laws regulating casinos? That should have been a HUGE signal something evil was afoot.

Not one conservative mouthpiece, not Fox News or Rush or Hannity or any other right wing propagandist, opened their mouth in outrage at the federal pre-emption of state laws.

And they still don't, even though it happens nearly every day in bills before Congress.

Republicans enact federal pre-emptions of state laws on a regular basis. They usurp the tenth amendment for breakfast. They are hypocrites of the first water.

When the deregulation of the financial industry ended up bringing the world to financial armageddon, the backlash was Dodd-Frank.

Instead of letting companies with bad business models go under, and allowing more efficient and better run businesses to supplant them, the federal government rescues the toxic companies under the guise of "too big to fail". As a result, each subsequent failure is larger than the last.

Now those same corrupt and sclerotic companies are too big to save when the next downturn comes. We are all fucked.

His idea has been tried elsewhere and it has worked pretty well. Just sayin... It ain't his idea.

 

[OldLady]

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

Congress should only be setting the tax margins and their rates. They should not be handing out gifts in the form of exemptions, credits, and deductions.

This is the most corrupt practice in our history. What's more, it is government social engineering, and it is failing horribly. At huge expense to our children and our children's children.

Who SHOULD be setting exemptions, credits and deductions? Or are you saying there shouldn't be any? Are you proposing a flat tax?

I agree with you that cuts in regs and the budget need to be done by the folks who really know the programs.

I also appreciate you taking the time to explain this stuff.

 

[OldLady]

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

Congress should only be setting the tax margins and their rates. They should not be handing out gifts in the form of exemptions, credits, and deductions.

This is the most corrupt practice in our history. What's more, it is government social engineering, and it is failing horribly. At huge expense to our children and our children's children.

As long as we have really poor folks, we HAVE to invest in a healthy start for the kids or it will just perpetuate itself. That's not saying we don't take a long look at entitlements and generations of families dependent on welfare. I have a feeling it is more the difficulty moving out of poverty than the welfare benefits, to be honest, though.

 

[g5000]

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

Congress should only be setting the tax margins and their rates. They should not be handing out gifts in the form of exemptions, credits, and deductions.

This is the most corrupt practice in our history. What's more, it is government social engineering, and it is failing horribly. At huge expense to our children and our children's children.

Who SHOULD be setting exemptions, credits and deductions? Or are you saying there shouldn't be any? Are you proposing a flat tax?

I agree with you that cuts in regs and the budget need to be done by the folks who really know the programs.

I also appreciate you taking the time to explain this stuff.

I am saying we should not have any exemptions, credits, or deductions.

A flat tax has nothing to do with exemptions, credits, or deductions. Since a flat tax is an income tax, it can still be thoroughly corrupted by exemptions, credits, and deductions, too.

I actually favor the Fair Tax. However, no matter what tax scheme you have, it can be corrupted by exemptions, etc. That is why we MUST address the disease first.

And that particular disease when it comes to taxes is exemptions, credits, and deductions.

Kill tax exemptions, deductions, and credits, and we can have much lower tax rates. And the playing field would be level. People earning identical incomes would pay identical taxes.

Our current system is insane. Entities making the same incomes are paying radically different taxes. Both corporate and individual.

That's government social engineering and it is an outrage.

 

[g5000]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

See post 6.

I thought this was going to be enlightening, but no. This is what I get for trying to learn anything about economic or financial anything. Put on your dunce cap and go sit in the back, Old Lady, we haven't got time for you.

Well, specifically, what regulations are putting power into the hands of the giant corporations and (I'm guessing) banks? Will Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one that is proposed do that trick, or will that just willy nilly get rid of some that no one cares about anyway?

Trump's idea of getting rid of two regulations for every one is amateurish and stupid. It's a simpleton's solution to a problem he clearly has no clue about.

It reminds me of when I was in the military and a directive came down to cut all training courses at our command by ten percent.

The order was not to determine which courses had fat in them or could be trimmed. The order was to arbitrarily trim EVERY course by ten percent.

Training is critical to readiness. To assume EVERY course could be cut by ten percent was one of the most boneheaded assumptions I ever saw.

Trump ASSUMES every agency can cut two regulations for every new one they create. It's idiotic thinking.

More than idiotic, it is sheer laziness. It's the sign of a person who does not want to do the hard work of actually taking the time to identify unnecessary regulations. It shows a total lack of talent for the job.

As for the banks and Dodd-Frank, the financial industry screwed the proverbial pooch. They asked to have derivatives completely unregulated, and they asked the federal government to pre-empt state laws regulating casinos and bucket shops. Why would a bank need to be exempt from laws against bucket shops and laws regulating casinos? That should have been a HUGE signal something evil was afoot.

Not one conservative mouthpiece, not Fox News or Rush or Hannity or any other right wing propagandist, opened their mouth in outrage at the federal pre-emption of state laws.

And they still don't, even though it happens nearly every day in bills before Congress.

Republicans enact federal pre-emptions of state laws on a regular basis. They usurp the tenth amendment for breakfast. They are hypocrites of the first water.

When the deregulation of the financial industry ended up bringing the world to financial armageddon, the backlash was Dodd-Frank.

Instead of letting companies with bad business models go under, and allowing more efficient and better run businesses to supplant them, the federal government rescues the toxic companies under the guise of "too big to fail". As a result, each subsequent failure is larger than the last.

Now those same corrupt and sclerotic companies are too big to save when the next downturn comes. We are all fucked.

His idea has been tried elsewhere and it has worked pretty well. Just sayin... It ain't his idea.

Where has it worked, ever?

 

[g5000]

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

How does Congress enact a budget each year and when necessary change the tax structure if they can't change it?

Congress should only be setting the tax margins and their rates. They should not be handing out gifts in the form of exemptions, credits, and deductions.

This is the most corrupt practice in our history. What's more, it is government social engineering, and it is failing horribly. At huge expense to our children and our children's children.

As long as we have really poor folks, we HAVE to invest in a healthy start for the kids or it will just perpetuate itself. That's not saying we don't take a long look at entitlements and generations of families dependent on welfare. I have a feeling it is more the difficulty moving out of poverty than the welfare benefits, to be honest, though.

How to deal with poverty is an entirely different topic.

And the government has completely screwed that up, too.

 

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

If you take away their power then who will have the power to write laws that are good and proper?

The PEOPLE of this country. The political class has been at war with we the PEOPLE for decades now. Why do you think that no matter how many times the Democrat party says we are here to help you but the only thing we ever see is their cronies being helped....with OUR tax money.

Yes, most regulations should be handled at the state level. The federal government attempts to instill a one-size-fits-all scheme on a huge geographical area.

It's crazy.

 

[bendog]

What is the point of this thread?

The point of this thread is to provide the conservative point of view on regulations, and why we need smaller government.

The conservative response to Dodd Frank is to essentially increase the amount of capital that must be held against risk (or loans). Two problems with this. 1) what kind of capital? We had banks insuring CDO with more loans which were themselves overvalued. 2) Banking institutions took people's money that was deposited into bank or investment accounts, and then used that money to invest in the Bank Institution's own name ... all legal because the depositor accounts were supposedly protected by other investments the Banking Institution held ... which turned out to be more CDO or swaps that were also overvalued.

SO, any solution that is based upon any self-regulation of a market will not work. In theory, we could legally mandate a banking institution hold cold hard cash (or Treasuries) of some amount sufficient to capitalize the risk of the banking institutions' investments. The problem is .. who sets the amount.

And I'm not sure I buy a concept of regulatory transaction costs being a driver in concentration of wealth. But thanks for the thread, and I'm outta here.

 

[g5000]

What is the point of this thread?

The point of this thread is to provide the conservative point of view on regulations, and why we need smaller government.

The conservative response to Dodd Frank is to essentially increase the amount of capital that must be held against risk (or loans). Two problems with this. 1) what kind of capital?

Bingo.

What kind of capital. And how much.

That's the financial industry's regulatory battleground right there.

 

[g5000]

Here's a funny thing.

Credit default swaps do not require an insurable interest to this day.

 

[g5000]

2) Banking institutions took people's money that was deposited into bank or investment accounts, and then used that money to invest in the Bank Institution's own name

Precisely the sort of thing the Glass-Steagall Act was intended to stop.