Corporations already pay a bunch of taxes through payroll and property, why would they want to pay income taxes that are just going to get taxed again at the individual level? The tax system has gone from a way to allocate the cost of public services to the distribution of wealth. I can’t fault a person / corporation for doing their best to avoid a decrease in income.
I’m just going to comment real quick on the Peter Schiff video.
This is just my opinion, but a few of the people he tried to talk to came off looking like complete morons. I think that having the 1% sign, the microphone, and the video camera, may have put some of them in an overly confrontational mode when it really wasn’t called for—and maybe that contributed to some of the stupid statements they were making, but damn, some of those people will never be intellectually capable of pinpointing the cause(s) of their issues.
I feel like he should have had some books on hand to give to some of them after they were done talking.
YO IT’S SLAVERY MUFF.
SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T EVER HAPPEN TO ME IS WHY I CAN’T BALANCE MY BUDGET.
BUT DAMN SON, NIKE OUTLET HAVING A SALE, LETS COP DEM SHITS BOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIII.
etc.
On the white side of things, that white lady looked horrible too. “I am a 1% and you are making us all look bad” Shut up white lady.
Exactly. No one is stopping the 1% lady from giving more money to the government. Why wait for them to come tax you rich lady?
DAT SLAVERY SON!
POKEMON BATTLES ARE SLAVERY!
OCCUPY PROFESSOR OAK’s LABRATORY!
These ol’ third grader arguments are hilarious. I feel like some of the Occupy movement is what happens when the C- and D+ students of the world get together once they all have a general sense that something is wrong with the way their society is set up. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them self-entitled monsters though. They at least have an inkling that something unfair has been going on, and they’re right.
I don’t know why I’m watching the extended cut of the Peter Shiff video, but I am, and god is this shit horrible. All he’s doing is saying to some of them that they should be targeting the government and not private corporations, but they can’t get past the fact that he’s wearing a suit. The camera and microphone combo was a really bad idea, but whatever, at least he’s out there.
first off there isn’t any free market, it doesn’t exist.
we can’t have a system that makes everything a commodity, it leads to real ass fucking. For example, you are ranting abotu some nonsense about complete deregulation. Do you know what the magnitude of such a decision? Guess what, we already did it. We allowed wall street to run rampant and do whatever the fuck it wanted. We allowed them to horde and make money that doesn’t exist and give it value. Look at them, they where on the floor like a fucking fat piece of shit on the hospital floor begiing for a heart transplant. We gave it to them, for free, and they turn around and continue doing the same destructive shit they have been doing for the past 30 years. Free markets don’t exist, they can’t exist. That invinsible hand you believe in? It doesn’t exist, the market won’t fix itself, the market will continue to eat and eat, and once there is nothing left, it will eat itself and us and kill us all.
a system based on greed, commodities doesn’t even begin to work without regulations.
Have you heard what happened in Guatemala? (Was it?, whatever its a central American country). They privatized everything, school, services, markets. Essentially its a free market. Guess what? The middle class was almost wiped out, There are a shit ton of kids who don’t go to school, and this trickle down shit that you and Reagen so firmly believe in doesn’t work. Money isn’t being injected into the state, its being horded by the same people who privatized everything and bought everything to increase their capital.
That isn’t to say I don’t like the idea of some capitalistic society, but a raw capitalistic society like the one you believe in. Nah, raw capitalism is as stupid and irresponsible as a communistic/socialistic system.
You keep saying the problem is government. No it isn’t government, you are just faulting that government is the sole perpetrator for the economic melt down. No its not. Its retarded as fuck unions who leech and drain the resources of a company and ask for outragous shit.
why should somebody on an assembly line at GM get paid 60 dollars?
Why is it that Boeing was practically forced into an agreement with union leaders in Seattle and agreed that all of future productions of the 737 Dreamliner be manufactured only in Seattle? What kind of bullshit is that?
Then we have the FED, a private organization that does whatever the fuck it tickles fancy. Instead of helping it shits on everybody more.
So stop blaming government for the destabilization of wall street, and if you insist that its government, then you have to blame the corporations. They are the ones infiltrating politics and then sticking their foot in politics. You should start crying about how corporations have been steadily forcing government into business by becoming government themselves. The things and institution you seem to cherish so much is in fact the problem, not government. Government is just happens to be an easier target.
Why are you guys arguing over if it’s government or corporations when they are both just in each others pockets.
There aren’t any good guys. The leaders of the economy in government are just a rotating roster of people who worked for wall street.
People argue over whether it’s the corporations or the government because they can’t hash out the sequence whereby the actual rewriting of the rules takes place.
Government is the tool which is seized upon by people looking to configure the rules in their favor. The reconfiguration of the rules is accomplished by virtue of what the government is authorized to do. People “becoming government themselves” or “infiltrating politics” wouldn’t be an issue if the government wasn’t authorized to reconfigure said rules. If financial regulations are nails in a piece of wood, government is the tool that is picked up by the hand that then subsequently has the option to remove them. Take away the hammer’s ability to remove nails and the hand that picks it up becomes inconsequential.
Except the law of the land pretty well had that covered.
Goverment had limits on what they could in fact do.
Up until the government decided they just wouldn’t follow the law, anymore, and wrote new ones.
New ones that contradict the fundamental ones.
But hey - they’re laws too, right?
Laws, and the Constitution from whence they draw authority don’t matter if the government says they don’t.
The Constitution is just a piece of paper, after all.
Now then, if the POTUS can say that shit about the Constitution, what level of regard do you think his owners have for it?
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If they simply re-wrote the rules then government is still the problem, no?
No.
That they can get away with it is the problem.
As Jefferson said, revolution is basically a requirement, every generation.
You have to keep the bastards in check.
It isn’t treason.
What they and their owners have done, IS.
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I’m confused about what you’re saying. Who is they? Owners that own who or what?
The corporations operate under the government’s rules.
Are you saying that government is or isn’t the tool which allows for the reconfiguration of the rules?
I’m saying that the basis of the rules is inviolate, and that the laws that are so reconfigured, are not true law, but a facade used to excuse the perpetrations of their owners.
I guess what I am saying is that the government doesn’t really exist anymore.
It ceased to exist when it stepped away from the Constitution, and interests of the Republic and her people.
They are no longer our government, but rather are part of big business’ mafia - their enforcers.
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The biggest problem is, and has always been, too much government. it has ballooned from the constraints imposed on it in 1789, and is spending us into oblivion.It has forgiven far too much debt other nations have had to us, while simultaneously keeping track of ours to them. I mean, you wouldn’t keep loaning your friends $5 here and $10 there and saying ‘forget about it’ later, while they make sure to recover every last cent they loaned to you, right? But that’s exactly what Washington’s doing, and now we’re $14,000,000,000,000+ in the hole. It doesn’t help that our dollar has been effectively worthless since 1970, when the last of its precious metal backing was stripped (we came off the gold standard in 1913, and silver was in only 40% of the half dollar between 1965 and 1970), in direct violation of the Constitution (Article I, Section 10).
Getting out of this mess will take a long time, but it could be done if we had the stomach for it:
First, we can put a very quick brake on the inflation by returning to a commodity-based currency. It would be easy enough to implement. Pick a date some time after passage, and the price of an ounce of silver on that date is what the value of the dollar would be. If silver was $25/ounce, then each dollar would be worth .04 oz of silver when redeemed. And yes, all coins minted from then on would contain their face value in metal content. This would force the government to essentially quit printing money outside of replacement notes, unless it increased its silver supply.
Second, we’d need the next several (think at least 20 years) legislatures to go through every meaningful law passed and ‘put it on trial’ to prove substantive Constitutional authority. Straw clauses such as commerce and general welfare should require further authority from other, more necessary clauses. If the authority can’t be found, repeal it.
Then, we can impose tariffs on US companies outsourcing their jobs and re-importing any finished products. At the same time, we need to scale back the stifling regulations that drive these jobs overseas in the first place. When it costs as much to have Haji and Ming making stuff in Asia and bringing it in as it does to pay Jim and Rick to make it in the next state over, they’ll go with whichever makes more sense.
Finally, we need to severely cut down on the number of bases our military has all over the world, keeping only a few in key spots to protect our legitimate interests abroad, then finishing up our current operations and getting out. This is not isolationism, though. It is non-interventionism. In other words, we’ll still knock you the fuck out if you hit us, but we won’t go deck someone because they said something mean to someone else.
Now, keep in mind that that’s not a magic pill and will fix everything, and it will not be painless. Quite the opposite, it will be painful, and there’s probably more that I didn’t touch upon there left to do, but those are the changes that would have the most impact and keep us from going completely bankrupt in our lifetime.
lmao. Corporations swear no allegiance to any nation, they go where they make the most profit. They go where they can find the cheapest labor, and the most relaxed laws.
The reason economic growth happens in “3rd world” (developing countries) is that they don’t have to pay them a living wage, or there aren’t as many laws that protect against bad labor practices. I know you don’t care about whether they are treated humanely because they’re far away, or they look different from you. The only thing that matters is that you get your stuff at the lowest possible price right?
You’re example of the barber shop, maybe there are rules that are put in place for a reason. Do you ever think that it really is hazardous to people’s health to share razors with complete strangers? Imagine if the barber has a customer with a blood transmittable disease such AIDS or something, and he nicks him, and in an effort to service as many customers as possible he uses the same razor on another customer and they become infected.
Imagine if there was no regulations and this happened? The man’s life was harmed and who is responsible? If there was no regulation, or rule that prohibited that practice then they would claim that they are not accountable. Now just picture if they would just sterilize the blades before reusing them, how all of the mess would be avoided.
That’s what is going on nowadays. The corporations enjoy their freedom and growth, and in order to experience the most they don’t realize the adverse affects it has on the people, and on the planet. They’re just trying to maximize profits and they don’t care who they screw. The incentive is money, not to improve society as a whole. That is the discrepancy between the belief that a free-market will improve society. It will have a very disproportional affect on who it benefits (i.e. the cut throat business man vs. the worker earning less than a living wage).
Example of business screwing things over: Halliburton uses sub-standard cement on their BP oil rig to save money > oil spill in the Gulf. (not to mention the spill in Michigan, or the recent spill in near Brazil).
Or in an effort to control Iraqi oil fields, and to stimulate the economy by starting wars, we completely screw over the entire nation of Iraq. (see “No End In Sight” 2008). Thanks to the effort of defense and oil corporations, and their influence on US foreign policy.
Regulations are important. Are corporations going to regulate themselves in a free-market? Are they going to stop themselves from forming trusts and monopolies, or stop themselves from exploiting their employees and union busting? Are they going to follow environmental regulations, or are they going to try and cut costs and dispose of their waste cheaply and illegally? Would they still be equal opportunity employers, or would they reject people without knowing that they cannot press charges seeing as there is no rule against discrimination?
Fixed.
TL;DR - The common enemy of everyone is BIG GOVERNMENT! :rolleyes:
btw. I actually read your entire post. I can agree on the cutting back of military, in an effort to stop US imperialism. But I just can’t agree with the idea of free-market capitalism being the only answer.
Hell, I might vote for Ron Paul because he stands the best chance of ending all of our government problems, and weeding out the corruption (if he himself isn’t already/doesn’t become corrupted…)
Some things work better socialized though. i.e. education, healthcare and medicine, retirement pensions. And by work better, I mean they are better accessible and benefit the greatest number of people, without leaving people out in the cold.
Basically if you wanted to give everybody a “fair chance or a fair shake” then people shouldn’t be punished because they were born into poverty or born sick. In our judicial system, children aren’t punished for the crimes of their parents. So why should they be punished for being poor?
And if we have well educated and healthy citizens, you will have a better society 
It benefits everybody.
And to do this we need a major reform and re-imagining of our methods of education and major fixing of the healthcare system too.
Well, to be fair, the puppet strings have been pulled in such a way that it IS overinflated government. Case in point with the nuclear regulations LoyalSol was talking about. It’s done so they (corporations, in this case Big Oil) have excuses for doing what is otherwise unnecessary (keep their prices high), because if it was unnecessary, it wouldn’t be as profitable. You really have to take a step back and see WHY it is like that, rather than what is to blame.
Btw, in the case of the barber, there wasn’t a need to say “fuck it” on the service, just an increase in price to counter the added regulation. Let the consumer decide from there.
So is it safe to say that the real problem with our government/economy is the symbiotic relationship that has formed of political corruption and corporate greed?
I was wondering where the fuck Tiberious’ dumb fucking furry loving ass went.
Actually the regulations didn’t come from the oil companies at all. In fact it was Clinton who signed those regulations and it was supported by anti-war movements. They came as a result of a treaty with North Korea which basically said "We will restrict weapons grade material if you will"It was Clinton believing if he gave up a little then North Korea would as well and stop trying to build nuclear weapons. Unfortunately North Korea has already violated the treaty…several times.
Nuclear in the absence of regulations is actually very profitable for energy companies anyways. It is efficient, cheap, and produces a massive amount of energy for such a small amount of fuel. We have Uranium stock piled anyways so it gives it some practical use. The technology is well explored and upkeep is rather small. And most of all it is capable of the US’s energy needs. It is everything an energy company loves.
I’ll also warn against blaming the oil company for high prices because there are many other things to blame including the overall world consumption massively increasing, environmental groups limiting exploration, and the inability to build new refineries due to more regulations. You’ll find in the next several years that the world is going to have a massive shortage of oil.
Yo, did you guys see this story? I hear a lot of Occupy people talking about we should be pissed that no one went to jail for their role in the recession shenanigans and that we need more regulations. This blew my mind:
Props to this judge, but I have to re-quote that sentence, because that is really crazy and I’d like to hear what other people think the solution to this is:
What the fuck. The S.E.C, which is in charge of regulating this stuff, routinely settles these cases and assesses a fine through a process that allows the shady firms to roll cancel through any admission of wrongdoing. And when they actually go to trial to put the bastards on blast, they apparently can’t even afford to fight it out.
What do y’all think about that?