The Question Conservatives Can't Answer

[Toddsterpatriot]

I think Sheila Bair has that list:

"She(ila) believes the bailouts were all about protecting bondholders at the expense of taxpayers. As she told Joe Nocera:

"'Why did we do the bailouts?

"'It was all about the bondholders.

"'They did not want to impose losses on bondholders, and we did.

"'We kept saying: "There is no insurance premium on bondholders," you know? For the little guy on Main Street who has bank deposits, we charge the banks a premium for that, and it gets passed on to the customer.

"'We don’t have the same thing for bondholders. They’re supposed to take losses.'"

Sheila Bair’s FDIC Was Hated by Wall Street — and That’s High Praise Indeed | BNET

Thanks for the link which showed absolutely no proof the bailouts cost taxpayers $10-$14 trillion.

Still waiting for your link disproving Bair's and Blodget's claim that taxpayers covered bondholder losses at institutions like AIG.

"Had AIG been allowed to fail in a controlled manner through bankruptcy, bondholders and derivative counterparties (major banks) would have suffered significant losses, limiting the amount of taxpayer funds directly used.

"Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke argued: 'If a federal agency had [appropriate authority] on September 16, [2008], they could have been used to put AIG into conservatorship or receivership, unwind it slowly, protect policyholders, and impose haircuts on creditors and counterparties as appropriate. That outcome would have been far preferable to the situation we find ourselves in now.'[58]

"The 'situation' to which he is referring is that the claims of bondholders and counterparties were paid at 100 cents on the dollar by taxpayers, without giving taxpayers the rights to the future profits of these institutions.

"In other words, the benefits went to the banks while the taxpayers suffered the costs."

American International Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socialize the cost.
Privatize the profit.
How the Rich get rich and stay rich.
Until they don't.

Finally a concrete example. Thank you!

So let's talk about AIG. According to this article.....


AIG Downgraded To Neutral


AIG still owes the Treasury about $53 billion.
The Treasury still owns, IIRC, about 75% of the company.
If the stock goes to zero, the loss from AIG looks a bit smaller than $10-14 trillion, don't you think?

"Socialize the cost.
Privatize the profit"

Yeah, Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines and all the other Dem politicians who worked for the company did a good job of privatizing some profits, while falsifying financial statements.
And now the taxpayers are left holding the bag. Those corporate officers should be in jail.

Let me know if you find the other $10 trillion Blodget was whining about.

 

[SaneVoice]

Just a simple fact to consider...

Every time the government takes about $100K out of the hands of an individual in the form of taxes, you get roughly one less private sector job.

That $15M earner you want to tax at 70% would surrender about $10M of his income to Uncle Sam - that equates to about 100 jobs a year that would be lost. For the privilege of feeling good about soaking the rich, you create substantially more unemployment and slower economic growth.

Of course, this is a static view of things...in truth, our economy is more dynamic. If you tax the $15M earner at 70%, in truth what you'll get is someone who finds other ways to be compensated so that he looks like, say, a $1M earner instead.

In today's global economy, how likely is it that one "private sector" job will be in China, India or Brazil?

Do you think it's possible that technology has replaced the need for human labor in this country to such an extent that Capitalism can no longer provide jobs to every American who needs one?

Yes, there is global competition for corporate investments, and right now, the US is an expensive, risky place to be investing. If you want to lure jobs here from China, India, Brazil, Malaysia, etc then investors would have to be convinced it's a better bet in the USA.

Generally, this can be done with productivity (that is, the American worker outproduces alternatives, even adjusted for their higher cost) or by removing financial obstacles, such as our high corporate taxes, regulatory burdens and uncertainties regarding healthcare, etc.

Technology helps the US with productivity...thanks to robotics and automation, an American factory might have an advantage over foreign ones. However, it occurs to me we are not very good at pressing these advantages for a variety of reasons, from unions to regulations.

Problem is, socialists in the radical left that have been increasingly dictating policy have brought the US very far in the wrong direction. These decisions have consequences, and the American people are paying with their jobs for the fact that they didn't do their homework.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

"Economist Joseph Stiglitz calls out the titans of finance, who continue to make mega bonuses for their companies' mega losses, even after they set the global economy in a tailspin and shifted all risks for their unregulated credit default swaps onto taxpayers.

"He describes a nation of, by and for the 1 percent that enjoys 25 percent of economic benefits, largely purchased by Washington lobbyists."

America Held Hostage to Two-Party Failure: Government of, by and for the Corporations | Truthout

Twenty-four million Americans lack work and nearly $9 trillion in household wealth has vanished since the "titans of finance" brought the US economy to its knees in 2008.

Bondholders of poorly run financial companies should lose all the time.
It seems today's bondholders prefer running to the nanny state for bailouts.

Where is Stiglitz's proof that anyone shifted all risks for their unregulated credit default swaps onto taxpayers? I didn't see any in your link. Did you?

Which bonds are being bailed out by the government?

AIG?

"AIG was required to post additional collateral with many creditors and counter-parties, touching off controversy when over $100 billion was paid out to major global financial institutions that had previously received TARP money.

"While this money was legally owed to the banks by AIG (under agreements made via credit default swaps purchased from AIG by the institutions), a number of Congressmen and media members expressed outrage that taxpayer money was going to these banks through AIG.[55]

"In January, 2010, a document known as 'Schedule A – List of Derivative Transactions' was released to the public, against the wishes of the New York Fed. It listed many of the insurance deals that AIG had with various other parties, such as Goldman Sachs, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.[56][57]

"Had AIG been allowed to fail in a controlled manner through bankruptcy, bondholders and derivative counterparties (major banks) would have suffered significant losses, limiting the amount of taxpayer funds directly used."

American International Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Economist Joseph Stiglitz calls out the titans of finance, who continue to make mega bonuses for their companies' mega losses, even after they set the global economy in a tailspin and shifted all risks for their unregulated credit default swaps onto taxpayers"

Stiglitz is talking about AIG? LOL!
Why didn't he just say so?
As it is it sounds like all those nasty "titans of finance" are shifting their risk, instead of a single company that's already paid back the majority of their loans.
How much have Fannie and Freddie repaid?

Fannie bailout nears $100 billion - Street Sweep: Fortune's Wall Street Blog Term Sheet

Oh, right, they keep asking for more money.

 

[rhodescholar]

"The following fact was sent to numerous conservative pundits, politicians, and profit-seekers:

"Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED its share of America's income over the past 30 years. Much of the gain came from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments.

"If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS LESS out of our economy.

"And a question was posed:

"In what way do the richest 1% deserve these extraordinary gains?

"This question was not posed in sarcasm.

"A factual answer is genuinely sought.

"It seems unlikely that 1% of the population worked three times harder than the rest of us, or contributed three times as much to American productivity.

"Money earned from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments is not productive income."

Any takers, Cons?

The Question Conservatives Can't Answer | Common Dreams

Sure idiot. It would have been just more money pissed away by the democraptic leadership, likely on more ESL classes for their illegal alien/la raza friends, more benefits for their public union allies like higher pensions giveaways, etc.

At least this way, the money stays in the hands of the wealth creator themselves, rather than be ripped away from them and obama-like "re-distributed" to the 50% of the country paying no taxes or leeches like public union workers.

 

[SaneVoice]

AIG?

"AIG was required to post additional collateral with many creditors and counter-parties, touching off controversy when over $100 billion was paid out to major global financial institutions that had previously received TARP money.

"While this money was legally owed to the banks by AIG (under agreements made via credit default swaps purchased from AIG by the institutions), a number of Congressmen and media members expressed outrage that taxpayer money was going to these banks through AIG.[55]

"In January, 2010, a document known as 'Schedule A – List of Derivative Transactions' was released to the public, against the wishes of the New York Fed. It listed many of the insurance deals that AIG had with various other parties, such as Goldman Sachs, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.[56][57]

"Had AIG been allowed to fail in a controlled manner through bankruptcy, bondholders and derivative counterparties (major banks) would have suffered significant losses, limiting the amount of taxpayer funds directly used."

Although we know that government action distorts the economy in ways that are usually bad for all involved, we just can't seem to help ourselves.

I am of the belief that AIG should have been allowed to collapse on its own, with no intervention by the government or anyone else. In bankruptcy, the profitable parts of the company would have been sold off and integrated into other firms, while the money losing parts would have been shut down, isolating losses to the direct investors in AIG rather than spread across the full US economy.

Same holds for GM and most of the bank bailouts. When you convert economic decisions into political ones, nothing good happens as a result.

 

[georgephillip]

What progressives like you can't seem to understand is that taking capital out of the hands of private investors and giving it to the government does nothing to help economic growth. For some unknown reason you all have this unwavering belief that taking money away from the wealthy will somehow improve the lot of the middle class and quite frankly, it never has.

Here's a radical concept! Instead of trying to bring the wealthiest Americans "down" how about we stop choking our economy off with regulations that do little to solve the problems they were designed to address but have caused jobs to be taken over seas by the hundreds of thousands? You want to explore why the rich in America are now making more than the rest of us? Did it ever occur to you that's easily explainable by the fact that we've lost jobs overseas because union greed and government intervention have made the US a less desirable place to run a business? Why would any rational business person open a factory here...when the business would be instantly hamstrung by out of control labor costs and penal government regulations?

We used to make things in America. We don't anymore. It isn't that the rich make more...it's that our industrial base that used to support the middle class with high paying jobs doesn't exist anymore. If you REALLY want to solve the problem, it doesn't lie in taxing the wealthy...it lies in creating a business climate that encourages job creation for blue collar workers.

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

 

[kaz]

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment

Since the top 1% of voters earn 20% of the income and pay 40% of the taxes and the top 5% pay 60% of the taxes, if this is true the rich aren't doing a very good job of it, are they?

But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a sweeping, baseless, inane accusation so carry on...

 

[thereisnospoon]

Hey Georgie boy

You still haven't answered my earlier question.

Do you truly believe a guy who makes 200K a year should have an additional 90K confiscated from him via taxes?

Sorry, Skull.
Cyberspace can be confusing.

I don't think someone earning $250,000 a year should be taxed at 90%.
I do believe someone earning $250,000,000 a year should be.

Robert Reich has proposed some additional tax brackets starting at $500,000 a year and progressing through $15,000,000 per.

"Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate."

Reich proposes to tax incomes of $15,000,000 per year or more at 70%.

Robert Reich (The Growing Desperation of the Don't-Raise-Taxes-on-the-Rich Crowd)

Genius. Guess what happens then? People at those income levels will throttle back productivity, choose to not to work the entire year, refuse to expand their businesses, cash out of investments to limit income to levels just below the confiscatory levels.
At the end of the day this encourages a slow economy.
The result is lower revenue stream to government.
We know the reason behind confiscatory taxation. It is not to increase revenue. It is to punish.
You Georgie have a big problem with anyone who has more than you. You are a greedy person.

 

[thereisnospoon]

How so..You must explain yourself. GO!
I think you are small minded jealous underachieving person who fucked up somewhere and are looking for someone to blame for your own self created misfortunes. You feel the rich have fucked you over and you come on here to start threads looking for people who feel equally aggrieved by those who have succeeded or achieved. You hate them. You feel they have taken what you believe to be yours. You feel this due to some fantasy you have conjured up to make yourself feel better about your own inadequacies.

Between 1980 and 2008 the richest 1% of Americans nearly tripled their share of total US income.

The Tax Foundation - Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data

"If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS LESS out of our economy."

The Question Conservatives Can't Answer | Common Dreams

Are you capable of understanding how the richest 1% acquired their 20% share of every dollar that all US workers earned in 2008?

They did it by bribing elected Republicans AND Democrats for tax policy that shifted the burden of taxation off unearned income and onto wages and salaries.

And that is precisely the reason that Repubs shout Socialism when anyone begins to question the rise of the wealthy. All the while, the retarded FOX viewers and dogmatic baggers carry the banner of the rich.

That's very amusing. And woefully inaccurate.
You take the opposite stand. You WANT central planning and equality of outcome.
Your side wants freedom from risk. You want to live in a the plastic bubble of 100% womb to tomb security under the watchful eye of the federal government.

 

[georgephillip]

Just a simple fact to consider...

Every time the government takes about $100K out of the hands of an individual in the form of taxes, you get roughly one less private sector job.

That $15M earner you want to tax at 70% would surrender about $10M of his income to Uncle Sam - that equates to about 100 jobs a year that would be lost. For the privilege of feeling good about soaking the rich, you create substantially more unemployment and slower economic growth.

Of course, this is a static view of things...in truth, our economy is more dynamic. If you tax the $15M earner at 70%, in truth what you'll get is someone who finds other ways to be compensated so that he looks like, say, a $1M earner instead.

In today's global economy, how likely is it that one "private sector" job will be in China, India or Brazil?

Do you think it's possible that technology has replaced the need for human labor in this country to such an extent that Capitalism can no longer provide jobs to every American who needs one?

Yes, there is global competition for corporate investments, and right now, the US is an expensive, risky place to be investing. If you want to lure jobs here from China, India, Brazil, Malaysia, etc then investors would have to be convinced it's a better bet in the USA.

Generally, this can be done with productivity (that is, the American worker outproduces alternatives, even adjusted for their higher cost) or by removing financial obstacles, such as our high corporate taxes, regulatory burdens and uncertainties regarding healthcare, etc.

Technology helps the US with productivity...thanks to robotics and automation, an American factory might have an advantage over foreign ones. However, it occurs to me we are not very good at pressing these advantages for a variety of reasons, from unions to regulations.

Problem is, socialists in the radical left that have been increasingly dictating policy have brought the US very far in the wrong direction. These decisions have consequences, and the American people are paying with their jobs for the fact that they didn't do their homework.

Can you provide any examples of "socialists in the radical left" who've been dictating US fiscal or monetary policy lately?

Hank Paulson?
Alan Greenspan??
Robert Rubin?

btw, is GE a victim of "our high corporate taxes"?

 

[thereisnospoon]

Conservatives can answer it. The federal government doesn't generate income.

And the free market is incapable of using it in ways that dont rape cancer patients of their life savings or force the price of american labor down by demanding cheap foreign made goods.

We can get into semantics all day long. Why dont you answer the question in the first place.

Theres no reason that the top 1% should benefit three times more than the rest of the population. If they do, so be it. But then we shouldnt be arguing about giving them more tax cuts. The fact is the government is necessary to some extent. Someone has to pay for the police, and there is no reason an insurance company should be making money on someones medicine. So if the rich are already doing better than the rest of us, you'd be crazy to vote to give them more tax cuts now.

Ok, one who does not see the entire picture.
Look, businesses operate to turn a profit.
There is no doubt that the more a business produces, the more it needs labor to assist in that production.
Your argument is steeped in the progressive notion that "it just isn't fair that so few people have so much"...That notion is based on the false premise of a zero sum game. That is the perception that if one has more therefore another must have less. Or that because one is wealthy they must have "taken" from someone else. Georgephillip bleats out this in every thread in which he participates. He is blatant about it. He simply states that the wealthy have "stolen" from the rest of us. Nonsense.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What progressives like you can't seem to understand is that taking capital out of the hands of private investors and giving it to the government does nothing to help economic growth. For some unknown reason you all have this unwavering belief that taking money away from the wealthy will somehow improve the lot of the middle class and quite frankly, it never has.

Here's a radical concept! Instead of trying to bring the wealthiest Americans "down" how about we stop choking our economy off with regulations that do little to solve the problems they were designed to address but have caused jobs to be taken over seas by the hundreds of thousands? You want to explore why the rich in America are now making more than the rest of us? Did it ever occur to you that's easily explainable by the fact that we've lost jobs overseas because union greed and government intervention have made the US a less desirable place to run a business? Why would any rational business person open a factory here...when the business would be instantly hamstrung by out of control labor costs and penal government regulations?

We used to make things in America. We don't anymore. It isn't that the rich make more...it's that our industrial base that used to support the middle class with high paying jobs doesn't exist anymore. If you REALLY want to solve the problem, it doesn't lie in taxing the wealthy...it lies in creating a business climate that encourages job creation for blue collar workers.

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

The rich have to make more first, before they can benefit from lowered taxes.

American workers were well off in the 50s because Eurpoe and Asia were recovering from the nearly complete destruction of their infrastructure and manufacturing base.

We'd have done even better if the government weren't stifling productivity with a 90% tax rate.

 

[georgephillip]

"The following fact was sent to numerous conservative pundits, politicians, and profit-seekers:

"Based on Tax Foundation figures, the richest 1% has TRIPLED its share of America's income over the past 30 years. Much of the gain came from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments.

"If their income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%), they would be taking about a TRILLION DOLLARS LESS out of our economy.

"And a question was posed:

"In what way do the richest 1% deserve these extraordinary gains?

"This question was not posed in sarcasm.

"A factual answer is genuinely sought.

"It seems unlikely that 1% of the population worked three times harder than the rest of us, or contributed three times as much to American productivity.

"Money earned from tax cuts and minimally taxed financial instruments is not productive income."

Any takers, Cons?

The Question Conservatives Can't Answer | Common Dreams

Sure idiot. It would have been just more money pissed away by the democraptic leadership, likely on more ESL classes for their illegal alien/la raza friends, more benefits for their public union allies like higher pensions giveaways, etc.

At least this way, the money stays in the hands of the wealth creator themselves, rather than be ripped away from them and obama-like "re-distributed" to the 50% of the country paying no taxes or leeches like public union workers.

"If their (the richest 1%) income had increased only at the pace of American productivity (80%) they would be taking a trillion dollars less out of our economy."

That trillion dollars would not be going to the government.
It would be going to the other 99% of US taxpayers.

Now... crawl back into Hillary's nose.
And die.

 

[thereisnospoon]

What progressives like you can't seem to understand is that taking capital out of the hands of private investors and giving it to the government does nothing to help economic growth. For some unknown reason you all have this unwavering belief that taking money away from the wealthy will somehow improve the lot of the middle class and quite frankly, it never has.

Here's a radical concept! Instead of trying to bring the wealthiest Americans "down" how about we stop choking our economy off with regulations that do little to solve the problems they were designed to address but have caused jobs to be taken over seas by the hundreds of thousands? You want to explore why the rich in America are now making more than the rest of us? Did it ever occur to you that's easily explainable by the fact that we've lost jobs overseas because union greed and government intervention have made the US a less desirable place to run a business? Why would any rational business person open a factory here...when the business would be instantly hamstrung by out of control labor costs and penal government regulations?

We used to make things in America. We don't anymore. It isn't that the rich make more...it's that our industrial base that used to support the middle class with high paying jobs doesn't exist anymore. If you REALLY want to solve the problem, it doesn't lie in taxing the wealthy...it lies in creating a business climate that encourages job creation for blue collar workers.

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

That's false. The middle class is at it's best place now. Just because there are fewer factory jobs and less unionism, does not translate to a poorer middle class.
If anything lets compare the middle class of the 50's and 60's to now.
We lived in cities and close suburbs. We lived small homes averaging 1200 to 1500 square feet. Most households had one car( if any) one television. Air conditioning was a luxury. Households had far more second hand merchandise. Children did not get new clothing. They got hand me downs. Few of us had clothes dryers. Most people had little in the way of savings. And only the wealthy could afford a 4 year college education for their kids. In fact a much lower percentage of high school graduates went to college.
The few things I miss about my early childhood was that we were a more peaceful nation. People had respect for their neighbors. Family was the most important part of a community. When I was in school, I knew very few kids that did not live with both parents.
The middle class is quite large and for the most part successful.
The perception of middle class depends on which ideology is talking.
Those on the Left exclude non blue collar workers and non government white collar workers from middle class. To them, white collar workers represent wealth and non union work. That angers them.
THose on the political right see middle class as those who can afford to send their kids to college, can live in a nice neighborhood whether that is urban suburban or rural, have a few luxuries, be able to put away savings for retirement and a rainy day. This is without consideration to the type of work people perform to make a living.

 

[georgephillip]

What progressives like you can't seem to understand is that taking capital out of the hands of private investors and giving it to the government does nothing to help economic growth. For some unknown reason you all have this unwavering belief that taking money away from the wealthy will somehow improve the lot of the middle class and quite frankly, it never has.

Here's a radical concept! Instead of trying to bring the wealthiest Americans "down" how about we stop choking our economy off with regulations that do little to solve the problems they were designed to address but have caused jobs to be taken over seas by the hundreds of thousands? You want to explore why the rich in America are now making more than the rest of us? Did it ever occur to you that's easily explainable by the fact that we've lost jobs overseas because union greed and government intervention have made the US a less desirable place to run a business? Why would any rational business person open a factory here...when the business would be instantly hamstrung by out of control labor costs and penal government regulations?

We used to make things in America. We don't anymore. It isn't that the rich make more...it's that our industrial base that used to support the middle class with high paying jobs doesn't exist anymore. If you REALLY want to solve the problem, it doesn't lie in taxing the wealthy...it lies in creating a business climate that encourages job creation for blue collar workers.

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

The rich have to make more first, before they can benefit from lowered taxes.

American workers were well off in the 50s because Eurpoe and Asia were recovering from the nearly complete destruction of their infrastructure and manufacturing base.

We'd have done even better if the government weren't stifling productivity with a 90% tax rate.

How much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total US income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of WWII; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in Germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the US with a UE level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent New York Times article the top 1 percent of Germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the US where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because German labor unions are still powerful enough to demand German workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and US unions are not.

 

[georgephillip]

AIG?

"AIG was required to post additional collateral with many creditors and counter-parties, touching off controversy when over $100 billion was paid out to major global financial institutions that had previously received TARP money.

"While this money was legally owed to the banks by AIG (under agreements made via credit default swaps purchased from AIG by the institutions), a number of Congressmen and media members expressed outrage that taxpayer money was going to these banks through AIG.[55]

"In January, 2010, a document known as 'Schedule A – List of Derivative Transactions' was released to the public, against the wishes of the New York Fed. It listed many of the insurance deals that AIG had with various other parties, such as Goldman Sachs, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.[56][57]

"Had AIG been allowed to fail in a controlled manner through bankruptcy, bondholders and derivative counterparties (major banks) would have suffered significant losses, limiting the amount of taxpayer funds directly used."

Although we know that government action distorts the economy in ways that are usually bad for all involved, we just can't seem to help ourselves.

I am of the belief that AIG should have been allowed to collapse on its own, with no intervention by the government or anyone else. In bankruptcy, the profitable parts of the company would have been sold off and integrated into other firms, while the money losing parts would have been shut down, isolating losses to the direct investors in AIG rather than spread across the full US economy.

Same holds for GM and most of the bank bailouts. When you convert economic decisions into political ones, nothing good happens as a result.

I think you're correct about AIG, but I'm wondering how any economy avoids dependence on government when it's government that controls the monopoly of violence.

Would we be better off if Goldman Sachs ran the Pentagon?

Or maybe it already does...

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Do you think the Works Progress Administration did anything "to help economic growth" during the Great Depression?

"Liquidated on June 30, 1943 as a result of low unemployment due to the economic boom of World War Two, the WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years."

Works Progress Administration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The rich in America are making more than the rest of us today primarily because they bribe elected Republicans AND Democrat for favorable tax treatment. Has it occurred to you the rich in this country are shipping US jobs overseas because of the slave wages paid in China?

Why do you suppose the middle class in America was so much better off economically in the 1950s and 1960s when one in three US workers belonged to a union, corporations paid more federal income tax than US workers and the richest US workers paid 90% on all their individual income over $100,000?

The rich have to make more first, before they can benefit from lowered taxes.

American workers were well off in the 50s because Eurpoe and Asia were recovering from the nearly complete destruction of their infrastructure and manufacturing base.

We'd have done even better if the government weren't stifling productivity with a 90% tax rate.

How much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total US income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of WWII; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in Germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the US with a UE level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent New York Times article the top 1 percent of Germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the US where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because German labor unions are still powerful enough to demand German workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and US unions are not.

How much more of US income does government have to take?
30% of total US income?
40%?

I wonder if German education concentrates more on reading, math and science and less on ethnic and gay studies?

 

[Chris]

The questions conservatives don't like to answer are....

Why should the Forbes 400 pay taxes at a lower rate then the rest of us?

And the majority of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, and defense....

Which one of those would you cut?

 

[Chris]

the rich have to make more first, before they can benefit from lowered taxes.

American workers were well off in the 50s because eurpoe and asia were recovering from the nearly complete destruction of their infrastructure and manufacturing base.

We'd have done even better if the government weren't stifling productivity with a 90% tax rate.

how much more do the rich have to make?
30% of total us income?
40%?

American workers were well off in the 50s because over a third of private sector workers were unionized while fewer than 7% are today. Sure the world was our oyster in the immediate aftermath of wwii; however, you can see the same basic bargain we had in the 50s on display in germany today.

Germany's growing much faster than the us with a ue level of 6.1%.

Instead of middle class wage stagnation over the last four decades, real hourly pay has risen almost 30% since 1985, and the country's been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

According to recent new york times article the top 1 percent of germans earn about 11 percent of all income, a percentage that hasn't changed in four decades. Compare that (if you care) to the us where the richest 1% earned 9% of total income in the late 70s to more than 20% today.

The difference between the two economies is primarily because german labor unions are still powerful enough to demand german workers get their fair share of their economic gains, and us unions are not.

how much more of us income does government have to take?
30% of total us income?
40%?

I wonder if german education concentrates more on reading, math and science and less on ethnic and gay studies?

15% of GDP...which is the lowest tax rate of all the industrialized nations except for Japan and Spain, who do not have a huge military like we do.

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/blog/2010/08/tax-revenue-as-a-fraction-of-gdp/

 

[NoNukes]

It was their money to begin with. They earned it.

When are you on the left going to realize that taxes burden the American people with labor they have to pay the government before they can take care of themselves? The money is theirs.

At what point have they paid their fair share?

When they pay their share without tax loopholes.