Re: Occupy America I think you're confusing something here: The arguments against the above are because of the demographic of these protestors. Sure, some people are in the "it could be way worse" camp, but for the most part people recognize that there are legitimate issues with how things are run. I also recognize that about 1% of the people at these protests are actually doing something, as opposed to sitting in a drum circle, smokin' weed and not showering. For America.
Re: Occupy America It means that if you break the law, and by breaking the law earn a profit of say $1 million, any fine assessed as punishment for that violation should be greater than $1 million.
Re: Occupy America Oh. Well, that seems like an odd demand. I'm not sure taxpayers wouldn't pay a lot more sorting out what profit was earned legitimately vs. that by breaking the law. And, like, you were guilty of breaking into my house and stealing something, so I will punish you by murdering you, since that "punishment" is greater than the "profit" you derived. I guess since I don't like it in principal, I'm not willing to see any logic in that demand.
Re: Occupy America It makes sense to me. How many times have we seen a CEO or some other executive get rich running a scam only to get a slap on the wrist and then retire to comfort? And no offense, but your analogy is pretty stupid. Plus, you really don't think it's worthwhile to find out which profits are garnered illegally? Really dude?
Re: Occupy America It removes the temptation to circumvent the rules. However, determining how much profit was made because of the broken rule or regulation would be difficult, and it would be difficult to even know about the rules being broken unless something bad came about from it (oil spill, mine explosion, etc). Personally, I think that the tax system needs to be revamped. I've heard all sorts of pros and cons about one system or another (my parents are miserly and my brother in law prepares taxes and financial planning type stuff for a living), but I think that it would be better to make a blanket percent based income tax. There are a shitton of loop holes in the system and the paperwork is nearly impossible without hiring someone to do them for you or buying Turbo Tax. I think that simplifying the system would result in less people working on preparing, interpreting, and evaluating how and whether people have paid taxes. Perhaps some of these employees from the IRS and similar organizations could then focus on auditing the previously mentioned corporations to make sure everyone is following the rules. It's an idea, and probably hugely flawed, but there you have it. Honestly, I think there are so many moving parts to this issue that we may never be out of it. Even if you are correct about one thing that needs to be fixed, there are probably 9 other problems that you don't see because they are outside your specialty and knowledge. Setting a string of solutions into place will take a lot of time. The problem is that we don't truly understand what the root of the problems are or have solutions to them.
Re: Occupy America This is a reason I hate getting into serious arguments over the serious business that is the internet. Who says I am even making an argument that I want to do away with social programs?At what point did I say I don't want these programs. Why would I move here if I didn't think that for the most part they work and wish to support them? My point is exactly that people will fall through the cracks, and mistakes will be made. But no matter what, not everyone will be happy. We can do the best we can, but not every person's cancer will be caught. Not everyone will be found the perfect job by the unemployment office if they get laid off. All the soup kitchens in the world can't get every homeless person into the proper care. We can try, but it still won't be enough for some people. There will always be these problems. Shit happens. Sometimes we have to suck and up and deal with it. Also, I have no idea what you are trying to get at with your prisoner thing. I think you should probably try and think again of what you meant to say (if anything at all) and try to provide an example that makes, well... sense. Are you talking about killing 90% of prisoners? Because that would save a lot of money that could go to other social programs. An example of this mentality of "we have something great, but we can't be happy" if you care to read. Spoiler For example, recently here they raised the rate of a 1 month transportation card 100SEK, or roughly 14 dollars. . Converting between currencies isn't the best example because different price ratios, cost of living differences and so on, but it works OK here in this example. Now this is the price if you are an average, middle of the road office person who is considered to be of the "middle class" here. That is also the price of about 3 gallons of gas if you have a car. But this is for unlimited use for over 2300 square miles. Note that this increase is not reflective of the discounted rates that youths, the elderly, the infirm, the crippled, and students already get. Their rates went up a bit as well, but not nearly as much. But for the base price, the increase in rate was 46 cents a day, or if you only made 2 public transportation trips a day (lets say to and from work) that is an additional 23 cents a day. This is for one of the best, most efficient public transportation systems in the world. Upkeep is expensive on it as you can imagine. The system has buses, commuter trains, subways, street cars, boats, something called a tvärbanan (which I don't know what it is to be honest, but they have it). But you know what? There are still people up in arms making demands that all transportation be free, or at least reduced in price. They can't look at the system they have and be happy, and be willing to contribute to it.
Re: Occupy America Easy. Demands: Point 1: The "Evil Monopolies" have already been split up to no good results. What would be different this time? Point 2: These evil corporations would have easily gone under if they had simply been allowed to fail. And we would have been better for it. Legislating away poor decisions is the same as giving them bailouts to cover their idiocy. Point 3: There already is a lot of oversight. What would more oversight accomplish? Who would gain besides the bureaucrats that would inevitably lord over the financial sector? Point 4: I think they mean illegal violation. I'm stepping out of my field here, but I'm pretty sure that money illegally gained is forfeited anyway. Point 5: Government intervention is not needed for one simple fact. No one forces you to do anything. No one puts a gun to your head and makes you sign a contract. Anyone who doesn't understand the terms of the contract is a fool and deserves to get fleeced. Point 6: Insider Trading, ever heard of it? Point 7: What for? Subpoenas for what crime? Point 8: How would changing how much a CEO / CFO is paid change anything about the solvency of a company? Point is, it doesn't. It's just more government meddling.
Re: Occupy America This I can get on board with. A simplified tax code would lower prices to consumers, allow people to pursue productive jobs, see private industry, rather than skimming off of what we all pay into the system and free up money for the government to do what it was intended to do. Protect us from threats, provide a judicial frame work for upholding the laws, and infastructure (more or less on some of that). As far as this movement goes I don't see a problem with it. Call me what you will (I shouldn't have said that) I don't see anything coming from it and generally disagree with anything that promotes more regulation but I don't see the harm in the movement itself. I think a lot of people who are in financial difficulty think they HAVE to have several flat screen TV's, internet, and cable/dish to survive. So most or at least some of their issues are their own fault and the whinning will never end. Anyone can find reason to blame anyone or any organization for their problems but I think what made this country great was that at one point we didn't let others stop us from being successful or at least surviving. Part of the problem now is that for whatever reason people (corporate taxation at levels that encourage companies to move over seas, greedy coporations who want higher profits through exploiting third world labor [hit both sides yay!]) wish to present we don't have as many entry level jobs that will pay for two cars, a house with a garage, and several children. Let's face it, we as Americans want too much and we spend too much trying to get it. There are many reasons why we are struggling as a country but I admit I'm not smart enough to fix it. Maybe we should start a movement to adopt the two year re-up marriage rule and demand the three date rule be signed into law. My guess is it will be as effective as a bunch of people blaming corporations for all the evil in the world.
Re: Occupy America There's a lot of problems with a flat income tax, but chief among them is that it disproportionately affects the poor. Take a flat 50% tax (ridiculous example). Relevant paragraph from Wikipedia: That said, there are a ton of loopholes that can be ironed out without dramatically altering the structure of the tax system. The problem, of course, is getting Congress to vote against their own economic interest.
Re: Occupy America They have a hard on for punishing upper management for sure. That doesn't mean different financial markets shouldn't structured differently. Had there been a structure to reward long term stability instead of short term profits in the MBS and CDO trading markets they might not have gambled on bad assets. This isn't even an argument for more regulation, just that the system they set up was flawed. Structurally, in the market they were in it would have been better to have been set up with long term goals in mind.
Re: Occupy America There has been unprecedented consolidation of banking over the last twenty odd years, I'm not sure what split up you're referring to. Just for a telling example check out the history of the New Boston Garden, which went from the Shawmut Center (local bank) to the Fleet Center (After being bought by FleetBoston Financial) to nameless (after Bank of America bought FleetBoston and then abandon the naming rights), to TD Banknorth Garden (after naming rights were secured by TD Banknorth) to TD Garden (after TD Banknorth merged with Commerce Bancorp). JP Morgan Chase is made up of what was once WaMu, First Chicago, Banc One, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Bear Stearns and others. Bank of America ate up US Trust, Continental, Fleet Financial Group, BayBanks, Summit, Countrywide, Merril Lynch and others. The list goes on. These "evil corporations," by which you mean large banks, owing to the consolidation from point 1 that you seem unaware of, were far too large to allow to fail without massive dislocation in the system. Smaller firms could have been allowed to fail, but we weren't dealing with small firms. There may be a lot of bureaucrats, but there certainly isn't any oversight, and these bureaucrats aren't in danger of lording over their own desk, much less the entire financial sector. Financial regulation is shockingly toothless. In theory yes. In practice? This is an overestimation of the breadth of one's expertise. If you really think the average consumer can, on their own, go toe to toe with an experienced lawyer who has written the contract specifically to obfuscate, I would suggest you consider any other example of an amateur, no matter how intelligent, going up against a professional. The bullet point doesn't even require changing any of the terms of the contract, just writing it in a language that is clear and concise and designed to be understood, as opposed to the opposite. Yes I have, and I'm very curious as to how Goldman Sachs managed to offload billions of dollars in toxic assets without being convicted of it. Aforementioned insider trading, and any other fraudulent activities that should be crimes but lobbyists have managed to keep unlegislated. It's not about how much they're paid, it's about how. The current scheme puts in place massive incentives for extremely risky behavior that leads to large (unrealistic) short term gains, with virtually no disincentive for losses (especially longer horizon losses). If you let someone walk into a casino with a pile of money that isn't theirs, and told them they got to keep a percentage of whatever they won, but didn't have to cover any losses, the first thing they'd do is bet it all on red. And not only that, they get to bank their share of the profits are regular intervals, so if they go on a rush and then go bust, they don't get a percentage of the ultimate zero profits, they get a percentage of their watermark after one hour, after two hours, etc. Ultimately pocketing large "performance" bonuses for a performance that lost the company money.
Re: Occupy America OK, bill the company for the auditors' time, too. What's the problem? It's their fault the auditors were needed, and it's been established that they were breaking the law. Or, y'know, take all their profits from the duration of the time they were knowingly breaking the law, if "draconian" is more your style.
Re: Occupy America Or getting voters to put in place politicians to take away their nice tax incentives. Even if obtained legitimately, the Earned Income Credit and Child tax credit provide very tidy sums of money for lower income families that I don't think they would want to lose anytime soon. Eliminating those two would, no doubt, eliminate millions of dollars, conservatively, in fraud every year. Good luck trying to do that, though. Worthwhile? Sure. Done in anyway that's conceivably practical? Good fucking luck. Who's going to do the oversight, exactly? The feds? Check to see how much fraud, usually in the billions, slips by the IRS and SEC. Accounting/Audit firms? You don't think large firms shop around for favorable audit opinions from the Big 4 or other large accounting firms? What's to stop them from shopping around for a firm who's willing to say "Oh yeah all that profit is totally legit. No funny business there." Don't get me wrong. It's an admirable notion. Not an ounce of practicality, though.
Re: Occupy America Blah, I wasn't expect this to ever make it past the no politics rule or I would have dropped in more context at the beginning. It's not that I actually favor specifically taxing the rich. Or that I favor punitive measures against the rich (well, with exceptions, finance industry execs who got bonus payouts after govt bailouts can go eat a dick). It's just that I think the war efforts have constrained US govt finances to the point where taxes need to rise to support some much needed social changes - and I think aiming taxes to take 3% of the personal wealth of the richest 3% of America will provide more money than going after 30% of the personal wealth of the bottom 30%. Also, in a period of financial hardship - I'm more ok with inflicting minor hardship on those who can absorb it and not give a fuck, than a major hardship on people who are already tapped out and liable to be broken by raised taxes. For specific goals for these people - I don't know if they've actually thought it through, but they're all arguing for essentially the same thing. Increased taxation to support social reforms. Notably, tertiary education debt. The way you have it structured now, borrowers can never escape. Bankruptcy gets rich people out of their business venture debts - but over educated single parents who's single largest debt is a college loan can't even go bankrupt to get away from that shit? What the fuck. And those inescapable loans are being sold to private financial sector and making the people who can largely take credit for fucking the financial industry and consequently the US job market, that much wealthier. Fuck that noise. Centralized health care seems to be the other big wishlist - years without seeing a dentist or a doctor and living in fear of the medical bills if they have a treatable health issue will piss anyone off. And when you're one slip on a flight of stairs away from complete life meltdown - a riot starts to seem like a much better idea. I think the other thing those protesters want is a show trial crucifixion of some banking execs - bailed out banks who gave out exec bonuses? Golden handshake recipients thanked for their long service with 8 figure severances after running America's credit market into the ground, and paid out of bail out money? Those people have fucked up more lives than terrorists with planes ever did. Find fucking something to charge them with and cut their fucking nuts off on court TV. Or at least take back any bailout money that was paid to them as performance bonuses to the people who performed their way into the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and funnel it into supporting people who are being fucked by this second great depression. And I think based on what they're saying, they want the government to stop proposing shit like cutting education funding to support the fucking war. Stop ignoring cancer research funding to fund the war, when cancer kills so many more Americans than terrorism ever has. Stop arguing over piss in bathwater reforms and start dealing with the shit that's actually wrong with America's fiscal system. And if at all possible, do it without blaming illegal migrants - because really, anyone who thinks they're 'the problem' has no fucking business in a grown up conversation about politics or economics. Maybe they are 'bad' but they're utterly insignificant compared to credit practices, health care and war spending. And if we're throwing shit in, why the fuck are we still arguing about gay marriage? Why is it easier for first cousins to marry than a couple who just happen to be the same gender. Quit dicking around, make it legal and get the fuck on with it. Possibly that last one is just my biases leaking through. But the first cousins vs homosexual marriage infographic has been around a bunch of the same news sources, so I think it's a fair tack on.
Re: Occupy America The problem is that you would have to have auditors come by regularly to catch these problems. And if they don't find a problem, do you still charge them for their services? That's pretty ridiculous. Also, who do you audit? Only companies who make over a certain amount per year? Or would it be everyone? Random checks? The cost of having such an agency do this service would be extremely expensive and could be detrimental to small businesses. An audit is no small service. It can take weeks with a team and a large company. As much as I would like for companies to be held accountable for their actions, setting up an agency to perform this role would mean either devoting a lot of new funds (not happening) or diverting from other program, which is why I suggested changing the role of the IRS. The magnitude of these services would probably rival that of the fucking USDA.
Re: Occupy America Yeah, pretty much. I've spent every lunch break for the last two weeks in Zuccotti Park, walking around. The cops form a ring around the media, which forms a ring around the protestors. Russell Simmons was here today. With Kanye. I heard Susan Sarandon was here last week. Al Sharpton was Monday's guest. They're decent people, and they're polite, and they seem very earnest, and those three characteristics will destroy them. The news is having a field day, celebrities are making it about themselves, and politicians are licking their chops. Short of a major incident of police brutality that sparks serious civil unrest, it's a matter of time before it's all hijacked. And the brutality won't happen. Not again. There's a reason Bloomberg turned on his heel about allowing them to stay in Zuccotti, and why you don't see nearly as many white-shirt NYPD in plain view as you did last month. In 21st century America, you don't kill protest with force. You let it talk itself to death.
Re: Occupy America This is simultaneously the most exhilarating and depressing thread in the history of this board, minus that one time Nom posted his boobs.
Re: Occupy America There has been unprecedented consolidation of banking over the last twenty odd years, I'm not sure what split up you're referring to. Just for a telling example check out the history of the New Boston Garden, which went from the Shawmut Center (local bank) to the Fleet Center (After being bought by FleetBoston Financial) to nameless (after Bank of America bought FleetBoston and then abandon the naming rights), to TD Banknorth Garden (after naming rights were secured by TD Banknorth) to TD Garden (after TD Banknorth merged with Commerce Bancorp). JP Morgan Chase is made up of what was once WaMu, First Chicago, Banc One, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Bear Stearns and others. Bank of America ate up US Trust, Continental, Fleet Financial Group, BayBanks, Summit, Countrywide, Merril Lynch and others. The list goes on. Sorry, I assumed that everyone else would assume that I was talking about the large Telecom monopolies that got split up. These "evil corporations," by which you mean large banks, owing to the consolidation from point 1 that you seem unaware of, were far too large to allow to fail without massive dislocation in the system. Smaller firms could have been allowed to fail, but we weren't dealing with small firms. Capitalism is about profit and loss. If you bail out the losers there is no end to the cost. There may be a lot of bureaucrats, but there certainly isn't any oversight, and these bureaucrats aren't in danger of lording over their own desk, much less the entire financial sector. Financial regulation is shockingly toothless. No Oversight? The government just stopped the purchase of TMobile for no good reason. You can't possibly think that there is no oversight. But what you really mean is that the government has no oversight of the people's own stupidity. The government's not there to be your nanny and pick you up when you decide to jump off the jungle gym. You may flap your arms and get some lift, but chances are that you're taking a mulch swan dive. In theory yes. In practice? So if it doesn't work in practice, what makes you think it'll work with more practice? This is an overestimation of the breadth of one's expertise. If you really think the average consumer can, on their own, go toe to toe with an experienced lawyer who has written the contract specifically to obfuscate, I would suggest you consider any other example of an amateur, no matter how intelligent, going up against a professional. The bullet point doesn't even require changing any of the terms of the contract, just writing it in a language that is clear and concise and designed to be understood, as opposed to the opposite. I wasn't talking about fighting a lawyer in a court room over the fine print. I was talking about using a pen to put your name on that magic line. No one forces you to do this. If a contract is obscure and filled with legal double speak the signer has full rights to walk away. Taking away personal responsibility doesn't help anyone. If someone gets burned by the fine print once, you'll be damned sure that that magic ink will come no where near that magic line til they are certain of what is happening. Much like putting a hand on a hot pot. Yes I have, and I'm very curious as to how Goldman Sachs managed to offload billions of dollars in toxic assets without being convicted of it. I'm not that concerned about Insider Trading in the private industry past what is already prosecuted. What does concern me is that Government officials are practically immune from Insider Trading charges, and make bundles off of it. Aforementioned insider trading, and any other fraudulent activities that should be crimes but lobbyists have managed to keep unlegislated. See Above. It's not about how much they're paid, it's about how. The current scheme puts in place massive incentives for extremely risky behavior that leads to large (unrealistic) short term gains, with virtually no disincentive for losses (especially longer horizon losses). If you let someone walk into a casino with a pile of money that isn't theirs, and told them they got to keep a percentage of whatever they won, but didn't have to cover any losses, the first thing they'd do is bet it all on red. And not only that, they get to bank their share of the profits are regular intervals, so if they go on a rush and then go bust, they don't get a percentage of the ultimate zero profits, they get a percentage of their watermark after one hour, after two hours, etc. Ultimately pocketing large "performance" bonuses for a performance that lost the company money. Again, back to that free will thing: If you don't like it take your money and your business elsewhere. Other people who don't like it will do the same. If your money isn't tied up in it, then why do you care?
Re: Occupy America Just to put things in perspective, the government could take every single cent (100% tax rate) of the rich, and still not put a dent in our debt and deficit. The problem isn't tax rate, the problem is spending. And entitlement spending dwarfs war spending.