Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
It's probably worthwhile to look at what else has changed during the last 35 years. Manufacturing was 18% of GDP, and now it's 11%.What if that age of "pander-conservatism" received a new lease on life last January with the Citizens United case? Based on corporate and union donations in this month's Minnesota primary players like Target and Best Buy aren't too concerned with alienating customers by blatantly taking sides in elections.
Corporate donations often go overwhelmingly to candidates who've never doubted Reaganomics or the virtue of "starving the beast."
Since Big Labor pulls many of the same strings in the Democratic party as the US Chamber of Commerce pulls among Republican puppets, maybe it's time to recognize any meaningful change won't happen by "choosing" between the two major parties.
the big labor/big biz cliche is 35 years old. i contend that the battlefield has changed. democrats have realized that unions dont have the control that they used to have over the voting habits of their members. union workers fit the demography of republican voters, and have merged closer to neutral. campaign reforms have made politics decidedly more populist.
big businesses aren't sure if the prefer a svelte tax suite or a fat corporate welfare suite. big retailers graze off demand-side economics and already have ways of not paying taxes.
brave new world.
"The decline of 39% is due to jobs offshoring."
"Think about that. Wall Street and shareholders and executives of transnational corporations have made billions by moving 39% of US manufacturing offshore to boost the GDP and employment of foreign countries, such as China, while impoverishing their former American work force."
More from Paul Craig Roberts:
"We now have an all-time high of Americans on food stamps, 40.8 million people, about 14% of the population. By next year the government estimates that food stamp dependency will rise to 43 million Americans.
"So last week Congress cut food stamp benefits.
Let them eat cake"
Brave Dead World?
If I was among the real wealthy as opposed to the "broke dick sector", I'd ship mind offshore too, what right does government have in taking more from one group than another group, I thought we were supposed to be "equal under the law".
ant:It's probably worthwhile to look at what else has changed during the last 35 years. Manufacturing was 18% of GDP, and now it's 11%.the big labor/big biz cliche is 35 years old. i contend that the battlefield has changed. democrats have realized that unions dont have the control that they used to have over the voting habits of their members. union workers fit the demography of republican voters, and have merged closer to neutral. campaign reforms have made politics decidedly more populist.
big businesses aren't sure if the prefer a svelte tax suite or a fat corporate welfare suite. big retailers graze off demand-side economics and already have ways of not paying taxes.
brave new world.
"The decline of 39% is due to jobs offshoring."
"Think about that. Wall Street and shareholders and executives of transnational corporations have made billions by moving 39% of US manufacturing offshore to boost the GDP and employment of foreign countries, such as China, while impoverishing their former American work force."
More from Paul Craig Roberts:
"We now have an all-time high of Americans on food stamps, 40.8 million people, about 14% of the population. By next year the government estimates that food stamp dependency will rise to 43 million Americans.
"So last week Congress cut food stamp benefits.
Let them eat cake"
Brave Dead World?
the shrinkage in manufacture is proportional. manufacturing has grown quantitatively, while other sectors have grown faster. is this guy's hypothesis really BASED on this flawed presumption that manufacturing in the US has shrunken by 40%?
Wealthy Americans have been cheating on their taxes for ages even as they lie about what they pay.
Funny, the average American is stuck with payroll taxes that they cannot really cheat on.
Fair?
Fair?
Yeah, all we ever hear about is how unfair it is to tax the wealthy who cheat.
Have you ever been wealthy? Then shut the fuck up! You have no clue what you are talking about.
Instead of being envious of the wealthy, why don't you thank them for paying huge taxes, buying lots of stuff, and creating jobs.
i just point out that there has been no decline in manufacturing output. it has increased in the US year on year for the last 35 years. the decline which he has measured is the portion of our economy comprised by manufacturing. the biggest impact on this proportion has been growth in other sectors of the economy.ant:It's probably worthwhile to look at what else has changed during the last 35 years. Manufacturing was 18% of GDP, and now it's 11%.
"The decline of 39% is due to jobs offshoring."
"Think about that. Wall Street and shareholders and executives of transnational corporations have made billions by moving 39% of US manufacturing offshore to boost the GDP and employment of foreign countries, such as China, while impoverishing their former American work force."
More from Paul Craig Roberts:
"We now have an all-time high of Americans on food stamps, 40.8 million people, about 14% of the population. By next year the government estimates that food stamp dependency will rise to 43 million Americans.
"So last week Congress cut food stamp benefits.
Let them eat cake"
Brave Dead World?
the shrinkage in manufacture is proportional. manufacturing has grown quantitatively, while other sectors have grown faster. is this guy's hypothesis really BASED on this flawed presumption that manufacturing in the US has shrunken by 40%?
I'm not really clear on the significance of "proportional" and "quantitatively" to your rebuttal to Robert's premise that "manufacturing" has declined 39%.
As I understand his argument US jobs were outsourced, primarily to China, where lower-paid workers manufactured goods that were then sold to US consumers. Corporate executives and shareholders fared well from this practice while millions of blue-collar workers and their communities did not.
Roberts has a Ph.D in Economics and many years of practical experience inside and outside of government to draw from. I don't think it's likely he's confused about marketplace fundamentals, but he may be shading the truth to embellish his arguments.
Perhaps his closing observation on unemployment might help us gauge his intent:
"I will end this column on unemployment. 'Our government' tells us that the unemployment rate is just under 10 percent, a figure that would have wrecked any post-Great Depression administration.
"But, again, 'our government' is lying.
"Compare this fact with the number you read from the financial press. Right now, if measured according to the methodology of 1980, the US unemployment rate is about 22%
"Thus, the reported rate of unemployment hides more than half of the unemployed."
Does this hypothesis sound credible to you?
Deceptive Economic Statistics
envy? leftists? you wouldn't know a leftist if you were sucking one's a-holeWealthy Americans have been cheating on their taxes for ages even as they lie about what they pay.
Funny, the average American is stuck with payroll taxes that they cannot really cheat on.
Fair?
Fair?
Yeah, all we ever hear about is how unfair it is to tax the wealthy who cheat.
Have you ever been wealthy? Then shut the fuck up! You have no clue what you are talking about.
Instead of being envious of the wealthy, why don't you thank them for paying huge taxes, buying lots of stuff, and creating jobs.
Because wealth envy is the mantra if the left. They play that card to get votes and the dumbmasses buy it. How many jobs are provided by the poor?
Wealthy Americans have been cheating on their taxes for ages even as they lie about what they pay.
Funny, the average American is stuck with payroll taxes that they cannot really cheat on.
Fair?
Fair?
Yeah, all we ever hear about is how unfair it is to tax the wealthy who cheat.
For the whole of my life I have had very little interest in acquiring it, even when opportunities for the road to significant wealth was before me.
......
I truly march to the tune of my own drum.
i just point out that there has been no decline in manufacturing output. it has increased in the US year on year for the last 35 years. the decline which he has measured is the portion of our economy comprised by manufacturing. the biggest impact on this proportion has been growth in other sectors of the economy.ant:the shrinkage in manufacture is proportional. manufacturing has grown quantitatively, while other sectors have grown faster. is this guy's hypothesis really BASED on this flawed presumption that manufacturing in the US has shrunken by 40%?
I'm not really clear on the significance of "proportional" and "quantitatively" to your rebuttal to Robert's premise that "manufacturing" has declined 39%.
As I understand his argument US jobs were outsourced, primarily to China, where lower-paid workers manufactured goods that were then sold to US consumers. Corporate executives and shareholders fared well from this practice while millions of blue-collar workers and their communities did not.
Roberts has a Ph.D in Economics and many years of practical experience inside and outside of government to draw from. I don't think it's likely he's confused about marketplace fundamentals, but he may be shading the truth to embellish his arguments.
Perhaps his closing observation on unemployment might help us gauge his intent:
"I will end this column on unemployment. 'Our government' tells us that the unemployment rate is just under 10 percent, a figure that would have wrecked any post-Great Depression administration.
"But, again, 'our government' is lying.
"Compare this fact with the number you read from the financial press. Right now, if measured according to the methodology of 1980, the US unemployment rate is about 22%
"Thus, the reported rate of unemployment hides more than half of the unemployed."
Does this hypothesis sound credible to you?
Deceptive Economic Statistics
if you have 3 spoons of sugar in a half-full pitcher of lemonade, and you add another two spoons, then fill the pitcher to the top with water and lemon juice, the amount of sugar has increased, but the amount of non-sugar content has increased to a greater extent.
basing an argument about the impact of outsourcing on the % of reduction in the share of manufacturing in the wider economy is either inept or deceptive. automation and outsourcing has shrunken the manufacturing workforce by more than 20% in the last decade, but the output from manufacture in the US continues to increase every year.
one way to look at unemployment is the OECD population to employment ratio. that indicates very moderate 30-year decline in the amount of us who are employed in proportion to those of us in prison, on welfare, too young, too old, unemployed, etc. about 2-3%. i think that automation and a shrinking workforce will have a showdown over the next 20 years as to which will pull unemployment higher or lower.
the bls contends that the revision in 1994 did not change the dynamics of the official rate of unemployment, the U3, formally the U5. just the alt rates rates were changed. because no evidence of massive unemployment is indicated in raw data from the OECD, which shows about 40ish% consistently from the late 70s, i contend that there is no unemployment rate juggling conspiracy.
the biggest extent that bls's figures blur the unemployment picture is that all of the rates have always excluded institutional, young and elderly. in this way, when long term unemployment pushes up prison and welfare rolls as it did notoriously in the 1980s, unemployment on all the indexes improves. the retirement or disqualification of the baby boomers might be the trick that adjusts our current disasterous rates.
Wealthy Americans have been cheating on their taxes for ages even as they lie about what they pay.
Funny, the average American is stuck with payroll taxes that they cannot really cheat on.
Fair?
Fair?
Yeah, all we ever hear about is how unfair it is to tax the wealthy who cheat.
Have you ever been wealthy? Then shut the fuck up! You have no clue what you are talking about.
Instead of being envious of the wealthy, why don't you thank them for paying huge taxes, buying lots of stuff, and creating jobs.
Quantum WindbagI.R.S.: 14,700 U.S. Taxpayers Disclosed Offshore Accounts
You do know that US law requires people to disclose offshore accounts, and pay taxes on them, right? Or do you think they disclosed these accounts to the IRS so that the IRS would know they couldn't touch the money?
14,700 Disclosed Offshore Accounts
By LYNNLEY BROWNING
Published: November 17, 2009
Fear, apparently, can be a powerful inducement.
The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that more that 14,700 Americans had been attracted to an amnesty program in recent months and disclosed their secret foreign bank accounts — many more than had been attracted to a previous I.R.S. program.
And the reason...UBS agreed to turn over the names of about 4,450 American clients suspected by the I.R.S. of using the bank’s offshore services to evade taxes.
UBS clients who did not come forward and whose names are on the bank’s list of accounts face back taxes and fines that can exceed what they own, as well as potential prosecution and jail time.
...
...
According to the I.R.S. documents, UBS will generally disclose American clients who had unreported accounts of at least a million Swiss francs (about $988,000). UBS will also disclose Americans who were the owners of secret offshore sham company accounts with that total. The accounts in question cover 2001 through 2008.
For accounts that UBS deems to have involved “tax fraud or the like” — a new term that covers concealment of funds, the submission of incorrect or false documents to UBS or the I.R.S., and what the I.R.S. terms “a scheme of lies” — the balance may be less than a million Swiss francs but more than 250,000 Swiss francs (about $247,000).
...
...
Mr. Shulman said that the number of voluntary disclosures would not affect the obligation of UBS to disclose 4,450 names. UBS had selected 500 names so far, I.R.S. officials said.
“If 10,000 accounts come in through voluntary disclosure that are UBS, it triggers the withdrawal of the John Doe summons” — the legal case, Mr. Shulman said. But if 10,000 UBS clients come forward, “it has nothing to do with the obligation that the Swiss have taken to the U.S. government to produce 4,450 names” to the I.R.S., he said.
The 4,450 accounts at one point held $18 billion, according the I.R.S.
...
...
...
Have you ever been wealthy? Then shut the fuck up! You have no clue what you are talking about.
Instead of being envious of the wealthy, why don't you thank them for paying huge taxes, buying lots of stuff, and creating jobs.
Again, the fact that those people reported those offshore accounts proves they paid taxes on them? Do you have any connection with reality when you post?
They send their money offshore because they're getting soaked, dickweed.
You're just jealous that you're a loser and didn't make something of yourself like other people have. Deal with it.
Depends on which country.
Depends on which country.
The only ones that are required to report are the ones that owe taxes, oh he who thinks he is rich but is so stupid that the only way he could have gotten rich is if his imagination left him lots of money that he pissed down the drain in the form of drugs.
