“Um, yeah, but, except corporations predate the founding of this country.”
Um, no. They absolutely do not - I am not just making this crap up. Unless you mean specifically charted corporations. I mentioned those and they are radically different from what we have now in almost every way.
“That’s the perception that I find difficult to understand…and too convenient to use. “Money” may have changed its media and gone from printed paper to elactronic transactions. but it all originates as the fruit of labor. That money ultimately comes from us. The taxpayers. In taxes.” SMB
For you and me, that’s true…But the Government can create it out of thin air…No fruit, no labor…
I don’t get how the government can create money out of thin air…it creates debt out of thin air to be sure as legislatively they can borrow at will with little restriction. But debt Incurred by the govt. spent domestically, even on pork, welfare and entitlements, all have a stimulus multiplier effect on the economy. Military spending, especially the supplemental debt incurred over the previous administration time in office was pretty much non stimulative. Destroying things overseas, then rebuilding them while literally handing money by the billions to forgieners so the wouldn’t wage war against our invading force does nothing for our economy. Whatever we did domestically, including the housing market, pales in significance to the war debt incurred while at the same time cutting taxes.
The average debt over the previous administrations since Would War 2 by conservative administrators has gone up by 9%. The average debt by liberal, even though the total amount spent never decreased, is 3%. Why? Because domestic spending, even by the government helps our economy, and military spending, which only helps acutely when “buying bullets”, doesn’t.
too big to fail = too big to exist
Where have you been, bscar2? It’s nice to see you back.
I’ve been back, just not posting as much as I used to.
Had to pass a kidney stone that needed to be crushed…9 days after I had first felt it start to move. Though I may have posted more during that time than any other recently, as I was off work
Lithotripsy is magnificent! Count backwards from 100, 99, zzzz… Then wake up about an hour later feeling like a champ. At least that’s how it worked for me. Twice. I drink a lot more water now to prevent salts building up in my kidneys.
“Had to pass a kidney stone that needed to be crushed…9 days after I had first felt it start to move”
One of the longest trips I ever made was the 7 miles taking my Dad to the hospital with a kidney stone. Very very very painful. Luckily I haven’t had one yet.
Not that it’s too far off topic, but…as we get older and our old prostate start to enlarge some of us start making choices. Often the wrong one when to get a good night’s sleep or make it to the next rest stop, you start cutting back on your water intake. For some then, kidney stones are the result. Getting old has too many compromizes.
Bing I wouldn’t wish the pain on anyone.
They gave me vicodin, flowmax, and sent me on my way after my blood pressure returned to normal in the ER. I was in a stupor and by the 4th day of unpredictible bouts of pain, I was willing to do drastic things to rid myself of the pain.
When they told me about the choice of lithotripsy or a stint, I didn’t take too long in deciding, especially since the stint would still require me to get the lithotripsy done eventually anyways. A 9am appointment at a hospital 40 miles away(Riverside in Columbus), and I was home by lunch time; seemed like the travel time took longer than anything else. They said I even started to snore on the table while I was out. Was probably the best sleep I had had in 9 days.
I’ve seen threads on this board take some fairly wild an unpredictable twists and turns. This one has to win some kind of an award.
(Not to minimize your ordeal bscar - glad you’re out of the woods).
“They lived in a world where corporations needed specific and limited charters for very specific reasons - fear of concentrated economic power.”
You did indeed mention chartered corporations. The East India Company had its own army.
“I’ve seen threads take a some fairly wild turns…” Cig…that’s cause we illiterates had trouble following the looonnnngggeeerr posts and only read the shorter. ADD you know.
Ditto
"GM should have been allowed to sink and then rise from the ashes on their own if possible. Chrysler also still owes the taxpayers; just not nearly as much as GM does. "
Except, GM and Chrysler were not operating in a free market, they were under regulations that directly lead to their demises. UAW had GM (as well as Ford and Chrysler) by the balls in the 1970s, and GM ended up with contracts that were unsustainable in the long term. GM made a lot of mistakes, but what really doomed them was contractual obligations so high that they lost money on (almost) every vehicle they sold. They knew for at least 30 years they were going to go bankrupt. But regulations made sure they had no leverage whatsoever to renegotiate some sustainable contract, until they went bankrupt and ONLY THEN was UAW forced into negotiating a sustainable contract for those older workers. By then, GM had no cash to operate so they could not have "risen from the ashes".
This does of course leave the open question of how Ford avoided this... I mean, in modern times, they mortgaged everything on the gamble that their new car designs would sell enough to pay the mortgages (and they did.) But how did they avoid the unsustainable obligations? Did they get "better" contracts in the 1970s, or persuade their employees they were going bankrupts more recently?
"What REALLY irked me was how people pointed to those costs to claim that the current workers were massively overpaid. "
Me too. The current line workers are certainly making a living, but the pay is not extravagant by any stretch. As a younger person, it is a bit discouraging; if I entered my dad's line of work, at current pay and raise schedules I could work there 100 years and still not be making what he made 20 years ago. I'm not into having huge wads of cash, but only a Fox News fanatic (like my dad) could deny that in general pay scales are on the decline.
"At the risk of being in the minority with a couple of you, listening to the rest of you guys rail over the bailout given by the government and how GM should have been allowed to fail, completely neglects the ripple effect of one of the largest manufacturers we have"
Sorry but so-called “too big to fail” is a lame excuse. If GM had failed on it’s own, it should have been allowed to fail. Those incompetent investment firms and banks should have been allowed to fail – the FDIC would have covered depositors, gov’t could have even “bailed out” pension funds and such so they weren’t wiped out… and competent banks (which most are) would have taken over the functions of these incompetent ones. Anybody can win at investing if they are bailed out every time they lose. I did come to the same conclusion as you (not objecting to GM bailout) but for entirely different reasons.
Sounds nice but if you remember back to the dark days of '07, pensions, 401Ks, and the market had taken a 50% dive. There was not enough government cash to cover those. Government pension guarantees only covered maybe 10% of what pensioners were getting, so the public would have taken a 90% loss in income. The FDIC collects money from member banks. That’s how they get their money. It was highly questionable at that time whether the FDIC would be able to meet the depositor commitments with massive bank failures. We still have not recovered from the housing issue, and people still think we should have allowed hundreds of thousands jobs to be lost for some stupid principle of how government should be run? Things were very very very serious back then and were and still are world wide.
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Board provides a decent pension for those that work for a company that goes out of business. I worked for a company that went under and never came out. Fortunately for me, I left long before their demise. But I did earn a retirement. Many others that lost their jobs had no other retirement, though. The only ones that didn’t get full retirement benefits were highly paid executives. Almost everyone gets the amount the company originally promised. BTW, it was a steel company, and there were a lot of highly paid people.
“hwertz
Except, GM and Chrysler were not operating in a free market, they were under regulations that directly lead to their demises. UAW had GM (as well as Ford and Chrysler) by the balls in the 1970s, and GM ended up with contracts that were unsustainable in the long term. GM made a lot of mistakes, but what really doomed them was contractual obligations so high that they lost money on (almost) every vehicle they sold. They knew for at least 30 years they were going to go bankrupt. But regulations made sure they had no leverage whatsoever to renegotiate some sustainable contract, until they went bankrupt and ONLY THEN was UAW forced into negotiating a sustainable contract for those older workers. By then, GM had no cash to operate so they could not have “risen from the ashes”.”
Contracts and regulations are two very different things and you seem to be conflating them here.
GM’s was no ordinary bankruptcy, and the bondholders, who by law should have been paid first (I think I got that right), got screwed.
“jtsanders February 20 Report
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Board provides a decent pension for those that work for a company that goes out of business. I worked for a company that went under and never came out. Fortunately for me, I left long before their demise. But I did earn a retirement. Many others that lost their jobs had no other retirement, though. The only ones that didn’t get full retirement benefits were highly paid executives. Almost everyone gets the amount the company originally promised. BTW, it was a steel company, and there were a lot of highly paid people.”
jt, I used to be in the pension game and I can tell you for sure that “Almost everyone gets the amount the company originally promised” is exactly how the PBGC does NOT function.
Cig, I’d love that cigar and brandy. My guess is that we’d leave the room in an impasse, but the discussion would be one that I rarely get to have. Most people have a low threshold for differences in perspective.
You are correct that I’m approaching this from the perspective of the principles upon which this country was founded and you’re I believe approaching this from the perspective of the “laws of the land”, too many that were created by activist supreme courts (starting with the Warren court) rather than legislators. And too many others that have been made by legislators and/or regulatory agencies that have never been through the “vetting” of the supreme court. Both of the perspectives have validity, but they often reach contradictory conclusions.
Hwertz, you’ve made some interesting points. I agree with most of them, although I disagree that the GM bailout was not objectionable.
littlemouse, does the PBGC provide the approximate 10% that Bing mentioned, or is it closer to the full amount? BTW, I am only talking about a monetary benefit and not healthcare.