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Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

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Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

5mn_Major said:
Depends on whether there's price elasticity and the market can bear a price increase.
Click to expand...

not really, someone pays somehow and it is never the corporation itself. employees get fired, shareholders see losses instead of profits, suppliers don't get paid on time, it is not only customers who pay the tax. someone else always pays the tax, it is never the corporation that pays it. that's just how accounting works.
 
FreshFish said:
As typical, in your dyspeptic zeal to be disagreeable, you totally distort the actual situation to knock down another phantom. The plan you do offer basically is to finance existing credit card debt by applying for a new credit card, so that you can take cash advances from the new credit card to make minimum monthly payments on existing credit card debt. I thought you would be smart enough to realize that just does not work.

The issue is whether to switch from defined benefit plan to defined contribution plan, not to stop offering all retirement benefits entirely. so drop your poutrage on that score. and please, let us know of any private-sector employer that still offers a defined benefit pension plan to new hires. What's that you say? nothing? uh huh....

You also are woefully deficient as an actuary.

It is a very common practice in state governments to have multiple pension tiers: the level of pension benefits have routinely been adjusted for decades by walling off one class of people as "Tier 1" and having everyone after them be "Tier 2." etc. Connecticut currently has four different pension tiers depending upon hire date and years of service, for example. The proposal is nothing new, it is just another shift from overly-generous benefits to benefits that can be financed in an affordable manner. Who wins if the state cannot pay any pensions to anyone? ask the municipal retirees of Central Falls, RI about how well that has worked out for them!

The longer a person works, the higher their pension reserves need to be on three different measures, and so the effect is to multiply the deficit exponentially, it does not increase in additive fashion.
-- a typical defined benefit pension is final salary times a factor related to years of service
-- each additional year a person works, the higher their salary gets
-- each additional year a person works, the higher the years of service multiple becomes
-- each additional year a person works, the longer their remaining life expectancy becomes
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I love how pension benefits, in the span of two posts, have gone from generous to overly generous.

And let's not kid ourselves, going to 403b's and 401k's screws the vast majority of workers in favor of the employer. Because now the employee bears the risk of return instead of the employer, even though the employer has more assets and can exist indefinitely and shouldn't need to worry about a market turning sour at the precisely wrong time.

Private companies don't offer pensions because the institutional shareholders who own the vast majority of shares are greedy as fark and would sell their own mothers if it meant earning an extra ten points on their returns. And because tools like you buy into the drivel that pensions are bad for the worker even though something like 70% of people say they want one. Because somehow your ilk has convinced the powers that be that it's fair to expect everyone to be the exceptional investment guru who will beat the market, even though they're a kindergarten teacher, or a cop, or a machine operator. If they don't properly invest their retirement savings on their own, then they're just lazy people who deserve to be destitute in their retirement, right?

And you still haven't addressed the elephant in the room. If the pension benefits are overly generous, why should your family members get to keep them while new hires get screwed? Bonus points if they also believe that they deserve their social security benefits while the next generation should have privatized social security because reasons.
 
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Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

unofan said:
... the institutional shareholders who own the vast majority of shares are greedy ...
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So, institutional shareholders like Fidelity, Vanguard, Blackrock, or any of the plethora of other mutual fund houses that you can buy into via a 401k?

But yes, Fidelity, Vanguard, et al are greedy.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

unofan said:
I love how pension benefits, in the span of two posts, have gone from generous to overly generous.

And let's not kid ourselves, going to 403b's and 401k's screws the vast majority of workers in favor of the employer. Because now the employee bears the risk of return instead of the employer, even though the employer has more assets and can exist indefinitely and shouldn't need to worry about a market turning sour at the precisely wrong time.

Private companies don't offer pensions because the institutional shareholders who own the vast majority of shares are greedy as fark and would sell their own mothers if it meant earning an extra ten points on their returns. And because tools like you buy into the drivel that pensions are bad for the worker even though something like 70% of people say they want one. Because somehow your ilk has convinced the powers that be that it's fair to expect everyone to be the exceptional investment guru who will beat the market, even though they're a kindergarten teacher, or a cop, or a machine operator. If they don't properly invest their retirement savings on their own, then they're just lazy people who deserve to be destitute in their retirement, right?

And you still haven't addressed the elephant in the room. If the pension benefits are overly generous, why should your family members get to keep them while new hires get screwed? Bonus points if they also believe that they deserve their social security benefits while the next generation should have privatized social security because reasons.
Click to expand...

See, I'm ok with 401(k)s. Maybe because I'm not an idiot. But the only fraction of a point I agree with Fish on, maybe, is that the pensions we have now are just not workable. The defined benefit pensions can't promise 10-plus-point returns. They need to be far more reasonable. Or rather, they should stop handing out dividends, buybacks, and massive payouts to executives. Though I understand executive pay would be only a small fraction of a pension's necessary funding.

They should, but they won't without a law.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

The Sicatoka said:
So, institutional shareholders like Fidelity, Vanguard, Blackrock, or any of the plethora of other mutual fund houses that you can buy into via a 401k?

But yes, Fidelity, Vanguard, et al are greedy.
Click to expand...


I dunno. Blackrock's annual executive compensation has gone from $38 million in 2011 to $66 million in 2015 while overall compensation and benefits have gone from $3.2 billion to $4.0 billion in the same time. Yeah, that's greed.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

5mn_Major said:
Depends on whether there's price elasticity and the market can bear a price increase.
Click to expand...

FreshFish said:
not really, someone pays somehow and it is never the corporation itself. employees get fired, shareholders see losses instead of profits, suppliers don't get paid on time, it is not only customers who pay the tax. someone else always pays the tax, it is never the corporation that pays it. that's just how accounting works.
Click to expand...

By that logic, there is never any corporate gains or losses for anything. In reality, its either customers or the company because the other groups you mentioned are the company.

Customers take the hit 1) if companies know to pass on the costs and 2) due to elasticity can do so. Otherwise, pretty much the company takes the hit. If employees get fired due to tax, then the company's capability weakens...and that could continue and continue until there is no company left. You don't pay suppliers and they stop selling you product. Other suppliers take notice (they are competitors but they will not risk shipping you product and not being paid). If you have no suppliers, you won't have any customers. Lastly, share price is the health of the company by definition. So if share price goes down, the company was just damaged. Shareholders care because they are owner. If you Mr. CEO don't really care about share price, you also best not care about your job.

The question is whether the cost can be passed on to consumers or not. The other outcomes you mention are all recipes for how companies fail.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

It's rare that there's a complete pass through in taxes levied. Try as a business may, they ultimately absorb some of the costs. Even the sales tax gets put back onto the business to some degree or another. In this specific case, it forces a business to lower its prices by some portion of the expected sales tax value.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

St. Clown said:
It's rare that there's a complete pass through in taxes levied. Try as a business may, they ultimately absorb some of the costs. Even the sales tax gets put back onto the business to some degree or another. In this specific case, it forces a business to lower its prices by some portion of the expected sales tax value.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is congruent to what I had tried to say, phrased differently: eventually there is a person somewhere who pays the ultimate cost. The "business" eventually allocates those costs you describe to the owner or to the employee.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

I had to do some research about technical details of charitable deductions, and so needed to read through Internal Revenue Code Section 170.

I came upon this gem in IRC Section 170(m)(10)(n):

"Expenses paid by certain whaling captains in support of Native Alaskan subsistence whaling" which is further broken down into 1-4, and 2 is broken down into A and B, and B is broken down into i, ii, and iii.

So 170(m)(10)(n)(2)(b)(ii) says that "the supplying of food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out such activities" is included in this particular charitable deduction.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

FreshFish said:
I had to do some research about technical details of charitable deductions, and so needed to read through Internal Revenue Code Section 170.

I came upon this gem in IRC Section 170(m)(10)(n):

"Expenses paid by certain whaling captains in support of Native Alaskan subsistence whaling" which is further broken down into 1-4, and 2 is broken down into A and B, and B is broken down into i, ii, and iii.

So 170(m)(10)(n)(2)(b)(ii) says that "the supplying of food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out such activities" is included in this particular charitable deduction.
Click to expand...


Trump's your guy!

Let's start ****ing over the Alaskan natives now!
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

St. Clown said:
That has to make people wonder about the stability of the EU in general. Three years ago it was almost 1Euro:1.40USD.
Click to expand...

If that were the case, USD/GBP would still have a large ratio (was close to 2:1 around the time). Presently, it's about 5:4. I'd say the dollar is getting stronger.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
If that were the case, USD/GBP would still have a large ratio (was close to 2:1 around the time). Presently, it's about 5:4. I'd say the dollar is getting stronger.
Click to expand...

What's going on in GB right now that could possibly affect the GBP?


Here's a hint: It begins with a BR, and rhymes with "exit."
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

St. Clown said:
What's going on in GB right now that could possibly affect the GBP?


Here's a hint: It begins with a BR, and rhymes with "exit."
Click to expand...

Funny thing is, Mark Cuban thought electing Trump would cause US markets to tank, just like 2008. Dead wrong.

Rejection of global centralization seems to actually be making things stronger. The Yuan's about where it always is, but China's been manipulating their currency to screw us over for as long as I can remember. Canuck bucks are around 4:3. Not quite like the 3:2 we saw in the mid-90's, mind you...
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
Funny thing is, Mark Cuban thought electing Trump would cause US markets to tank, just like 2008. Dead wrong.

Rejection of global centralization seems to actually be making things stronger. The Yuan's about where it always is, but China's been manipulating their currency to screw us over for as long as I can remember. Canuck bucks are around 4:3. Not quite like the 3:2 we saw in the mid-90's, mind you...
Click to expand...

The difference being that when the Brexit vote came through, most everything in GB did tank with regards to the global markets. Their stock market took a dive as did their currency against both the EUR and USD.

We've increased interest rates domestically, which should inherently increase the USD in the FX markets during the short-term, but long-term values will depend upon a great many other factors, including the strength of foreign nations' economies. It's possible for the USD to increase in value even though the US economy were to go into a recession so long as we're the best loser compared to other global economies.
 
Re: Completely Unwoven: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 4.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
Remember when y'all told us that you had survived Bush, and that we'd survive Obama? Well, we survived Obama. You will survive Trump. ;)
Click to expand...

Short of a nuclear war caused by Trump getting mad at the quality of his ties, of course I'll survive. I'm an educated, upper-middle class white male smart enough to stick a cross on my mailbox and mumble Kyrie eleison when the Christian Sharia Patrol rolls by. I'm not worried about me.
 
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