Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

[Bakunin]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Not you, per se, but most people only want to eliminate programs that buy votes from people in the opposite party.

When the government stimulus funds are used to grant an $800k study on men washing their junk in another country to prevent AIDS, it's abundantly clear that our priorities are seriously *'d up (link: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/75198).

This is where someone like 5mn major will step in and say that the government spending was absolutely necessary and things would have been much worse without it. Yeah, I can't imagine how bad the world would be if the US wasn't spending money to teach people in another country how to wash their dicks.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." -- Alexis de Tocqueville

I quoted this exact quote earlier in this thread. It's sad to see it playing out before our very eyes. And how few people recognize or object to it.

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

You can make that case, and you would be wrong to do so. Pro-business should be taken to mean that policies make it easier and cheaper to produce and sell goods and services for ALL businesses, not just a select few who are politically connected. This is why protectionist policies are not really pro-business; sure, they benefit inefficient domestic companies and allow them to sell at a higher price in American markets. However, they artificially block out foreign competitors by raising their prices via tariffs - and furthermore, they block out American companies in foreign markets for precisely the same reason as foreign governments levy retaliatory tariffs. In the GM case, they got a taxpayer handout to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. I'm sure their competitors would have loved to receive that kind of capital.

But, this is exactly my point - D'Souza never defines what 'anti-business' means. He doesn't do that because he doesn't want to. He'd rather throw out something that sounds good and will appeal to a lot of people without having to nail down the specifics.

You make a rational case for your definition, but that is but one definition of many.

The larger implication is that anybody who is 'anti-business' is bad, which doesn't get at the larger trade-offs we face in our economy. Let's lump the GM bailout in with TARP and the rest. Was that a pro-business decision? Probably not by your criteria. But let's stipulate that TARP did indeed arrest the fall and stopped the economy from a full-on collapse. So, in that light and in that context, is preventing the larger collapse of the economy a pro-business decision, or an anti-business decision?

That's why such broad statements are nice rhetorical tricks, but poor analytical vehicles.

This is where FDR was great at communication (but Obama has fallen short). FDR managed to walk a fine line of attacking individual businesses or elements of business (monopoly, etc) while still supporting the broader capitalist system. Which gets back to my first point - what does anti-business mean? How does that differ from anti-capitalist, or being pro-economy, or pro-jobs or any other number of rhetorical tools?

If D'Souza wants to say it, that's fine - but the onus is on him to define it and then defend that definition. As it is, he throws out that charge as if it were some objective fact, when he hasn't even offered an objective definition of what he's talking about.

I'll disregard the initial assumption as that assumption leads to policy decisions that raise the costs to any business that emits CO2 - which is clearly anti-business.

The point is that you can't disregard the initial assumption if you're actually governing. Governing is about trade-offs.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Blockski,

Get off this silly definition high horse. The guy just wrote a Forbes magazine piece, not a book on the subject, in which case your point would be more salient.

Maybe Obama can toss him a million stimulus bucks and then he can write a tome on it to make you happy.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

You can make that case, and you would be wrong to do so. Pro-business should be taken to mean that policies make it easier and cheaper to produce and sell goods and services for ALL businesses, not just a select few who are politically connected. This is why protectionist policies are not really pro-business; sure, they benefit inefficient domestic companies and allow them to sell at a higher price in American markets. However, they artificially block out foreign competitors by raising their prices via tariffs - and furthermore, they block out American companies in foreign markets for precisely the same reason as foreign governments levy retaliatory tariffs. In the GM case, they got a taxpayer handout to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. I'm sure their competitors would have loved to receive that kind of capital.

This commentary would be swell in a world where all countries were playing by the same rules. Instead this is something out of a time warp - sorta 1970's conservative think tank stuff. Drop all trade barriers, tariffs etc....and China will STILL be eating our lunch. Would any of that stop them from manipulating their currency? No. How about using slave labor? No. Would letting the US auto industry die because GM management made bad union concessions 30 years ago benefit the US? No. That makes no sense.

For 30 years we've been told by a certain ideological viewpoint that the US should do nothing to defend its manufacturing and everything would work out in the end. Now 30 years later tell us what that's gotten US manufacturing? At some point we have to stop letting industry's go overseas. It has nothing to do with overtaxation or tariff policy. Broadly its the other countries are looking out for themselves while the US is playing by rules our competitors long abandoned.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

The point is that you can't disregard the initial assumption if you're actually governing. Governing is about trade-offs.

You can ignore it if you realize that its a load of chit. Are you going to start taxing me based on how much I exhale today?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Not to mention that there aren't always trade-offs in governing. Some things are just so bad that there is little or nothing to trade off.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

This commentary would be swell in a world where all countries were playing by the same rules. Instead this is something out of a time warp - sorta 1970's conservative think tank stuff. Drop all trade barriers, tariffs etc....and China will STILL be eating our lunch. Would any of that stop them from manipulating their currency? No. How about using slave labor? No. Would letting the US auto industry die because GM management made bad union concessions 30 years ago benefit the US? No. That makes no sense.

For 30 years we've been told by a certain ideological viewpoint that the US should do nothing to defend its manufacturing and everything would work out in the end. Now 30 years later tell us what that's gotten US manufacturing? At some point we have to stop letting industry's go overseas. It has nothing to do with overtaxation or tariff policy. Broadly its the other countries are looking out for themselves while the US is playing by rules our competitors long abandoned.

And who the hell do you think made those rules? How can you say burdensome taxes on business is anything but the US not looking out for itself? If we had a better business climate and such, we would be looking out for ourselves. If we weren't trying to prevent companies from extracting our own resources, leading to trade deficits, we might be able to look out for ourselves. If we didn't have over the the top government regulation via the epa and state governments we might be able to keep businesses here but why even try when things are easier and less oppressive elsewhere?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Are you going to start taxing me based on how much I exhale today?

That would be like charging somebody to use the dump based on how much they put into it.

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

You can ignore it if you realize that its a load of chit. Are you going to start taxing me based on how much I exhale today?

This should probably go in the Climate Change thread, but...

Let's say that I were to tax you based on your CO2 emissions. You do realize that the portion of the tax from your breathing would be miniscule compared to, say, the portion from your electricity usage or your driving?

The average person emits 1 kg of CO2 a day from breathing. The annual per capita carbon emission in the US is 19.1 metric tons of CO2 per person. One metric ton = 1000 kg.

So, on an annual basis:

Breathing: 365 kg of CO2
Everything else: 19,100 kg of CO2.

Furthermore, the planet is able to process the CO2 we exhale - it's all part of the natural, closed loop system. The CO2 from fossil fuels is on such a different scale, it's not even worth comparing.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Furthermore, the planet is able to process the CO2 we exhale - it's all part of the natural, closed loop system. The CO2 from fossil fuels is on such a different scale, it's not even worth comparing.

And yet its still a trace element in the atmosphere.

 

[Rover]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

And who the hell do you think made those rules? How can you say burdensome taxes on business is anything but the US not looking out for itself? If we had a better business climate and such, we would be looking out for ourselves. If we weren't trying to prevent companies from extracting our own resources, leading to trade deficits, we might be able to look out for ourselves. If we didn't have over the the top government regulation via the epa and state governments we might be able to keep businesses here but why even try when things are easier and less oppressive elsewhere?

And so I'll say again. How is any of what you're advocating going to stop China from 1) using slave labor, 2) manipulating their currency, 3) keeping their markets closed, or 4) maintaining little to no standards for their products (witness food poisoning, dry wall issue, etc)? Business is less oppressive in China alright, but I'm not sure that's what we want to emulate. Furthermore, Germany has more regulation than the US, particularly in the arena of labor laws, yet seems to be going along at a decent pace. The difference is those countries defend their turf where its called for, and the US due to decades of brainless laissez faire economics does not. End result = other countries eating our lunch. Were it not for the Obama administration, we'd now be adding the domestic auto industry to the list alongside the steel, textile, and electronics industries of formerly strong working class jobs that the country let go overseas without so much as a whimper. But hey, despite those millions of job losses, at least we can say we stuck to our ideological principles, right?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

I didn't realize CO2 from a power plant is different than CO2 from a human. I always assumed that if CO2 from humans could be processed by the planet, then so could CO2 from a power plant. I guess that chemistry minor from UMD isn't doing me much good.

 

[MinnFan]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

The world has changed since the Tax Cuts of 2001

Not only is raising taxes right now on anyone economically a bad idea, it also puts us at a competitive disadvantage when compared to other countries since they have dropped their tax rates since 2001.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

I didn't realize CO2 from a power plant is different than CO2 from a human. I always assumed that if CO2 from humans could be processed by the planet, then so could CO2 from a power plant. I guess that chemistry minor from UMD isn't doing me much good.

Apparently, all CO2 is not the same, but not in the way we are talking about.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

The world has changed since the Tax Cuts of 2001

Not only is raising taxes right now on anyone economically a bad idea, it also puts us at a competitive disadvantage when compared to other countries since they have dropped their tax rates since 2001.

Well, according to CATO, the best way to be competitive is to have tax rates at zero.

I don't know if this is really a good argument. Tax structure is about the overall health of the economy. Revenue has to come from somewhere. The choice is, do you disproportionately burden the middle class or the upper class? Since the upper class has been on holiday since the 80's, I'd vote for burdening them, but you are perfectly free to put your priorities in front of the voters.

I would be willing to make The Great Compromise: restore the tax margins to where they were in the 50's, ranging from a negligible marginal rate for the poorest all the way up to 90% for every dollar of income over, say $1M. In exchange, pass a Balance Budget Amendment that freezes spending at last year's revenue.

One of two things happen. If the tax structure really does impede the economy*, spending will drop like a stone. If OTOH the economy continues to move in its divinely-Brownian ascension, spending will rise more gently and budget deficits will be a thing of the past.

The country wins, but it defuses the false dichotomy that some (I wager, nobody posting here) have feasted off these many years.

* That is if, as in Coriolanus, the 99th percentile are the economy's indispensable stomach, and the rest of us owe all we have to it.

MENENIUS

Note me this, good friend;
Your most grave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd:
'True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he,
'That I receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon; and fit it is,
Because I am the store-house and the shop
Of the whole body: but, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live: and though that all at once,
You, my good friends,'--this says the belly, mark me,--

First Citizen

Ay, sir; well, well.

MENENIUS

'Though all at once cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up, that all
From me do back receive the flour of all,
And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't?

First Citizen

It was an answer: how apply you this?

MENENIUS

The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members; for examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you
And no way from yourselves.

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

I didn't realize CO2 from a power plant is different than CO2 from a human. I always assumed that if CO2 from humans could be processed by the planet, then so could CO2 from a power plant. I guess that chemistry minor from UMD isn't doing me much good.

Your chemistry degree apparently didn't involve math.

A human's average emissions from breathing - 365 kg of CO2 a year.

US per capita CO2 emissions - 19,100 kg of CO2 per year.

You're shocked that the Earth could handle human breathing but might struggle to deal with emissions more than 50x as concentrated?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Your chemistry degree apparently didn't involve math.

A human's average emissions from breathing - 365 kg of CO2 a year.

US per capita CO2 emissions - 19,100 kg of CO2 per year.

You're shocked that the Earth could handle human breathing but might struggle to deal with emissions more than 50x as concentrated?

The volume of CO2 coming from a source doesn't change its chemical composition. Unlike you, Kepler actually addresses issues when someone raises them, instead of just repeating again and again what was already said.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

Apparently, all CO2 is not the same, but not in the way we are talking about.

Sounds like a possible situation, but hardly settled science (whatever settled science means anymore). I don't think that's a major factor regarding the power plant emissions blockski is having a fit over, as most power plants, particularly the big coal ones, aren't right in the middle of metro areas. But interesting nonetheless. I'm sure the local geography makes this very site specific to the extent it occurs, as such a dome probably forms more easily over a city in a valley or basin with a lower level of air movement/wind.

 

[blockski]

Re: Obama XV: Now, with 20% more rage

The volume of CO2 coming from a source doesn't change its chemical composition. Unlike you, Kepler actually addresses issues when someone raises them, instead of just repeating again and again what was already said.

Woooooosh.

Yes, CO2 is CO2. Right. Got it.

Let's say a natural system, like your body, is a proxy for the earth. So, if I came into your house and increased the concentration 50 fold of something that would be relatively benign otherwise, you don't think that might have an impact on your health?

The earth's ability to capture carbon as part of the carbon cycle is limited. So long as we're breathing and emitting nothing else, this isn't a problem. However, our emissions that are 50x greater than breathing are well beyond the Earth's natural carbon capacity. Is that so hard to understand?