Infrastructure stripmining is a good term. A company comes in and pretends to run things, meanwhile it sells off everything but the cockroaches, that the taxpayers spent billions on to keep up to snuff, pocketing all of the cash, and then they say "Oops! we're bankrupt, see ya!"
I know I was one of those sources of frustration for you. I suppose in the end it was a good thing. Glad to see you.
If a company gets soul rights to a government function, then yes, everything you said will happen. However, if companies have to compete for it, then it will reduce costs and increase efficiency.
I have been thinking about this for a long time. A FREE market is doesn't necessarily reliably produce high quality goods and services at the the lowest price. The cost of a FREE market is often reflected in the price paid or in availability. I'm not so sure I can explain that in this text box.
Especially with only 500 characters. However, the markets are a reflection of a lot of things. You get high quality goods to low quality goods, with prices variable for each category. However, on thing the markets cannot stand is waste(if companies are allowed to fail). No rational person will allow waste if they have to pay for it.
It is interesting how many people think that big, corporate businesses are less wasteful than government run enterprizes. I can't put my finger on the studies now, but I have seen them and it turns out that privately run, for profit, corporate businesses are just as prone to waste and mismanagement as public, government run, corporations. Private corps can be especially short sighted when it comes to postponing needed investment for the sake of bringing forward profits.
Big companies may have harder times with waste management than smaller ones, but there is no way in hell they can as wasteful as government. Only the government has gotten the record $14 trillion in debt. I like to see a company come close to that and remain solvent. Government doesn't have a bottom line and business has more means and motivations to respond to waste.
Isn't that funny that so many people think that the government has to borrow a bunch of money because of waste and mismangement. The government borrows money because it is to the advantage of the wealthiest few percentage points to loan money to the government instead of paying taxes.
You will also note that the largest corporations are highly leveraged. Not because they are unprofitable, but because it is to the advantage of the owners to pay themselves by borrowing.
The government couldn't increase taxes enough to balance the budget and pay off the debt And to say that isn't in part the fault of waste and mismanagement? Nearly a 1/3 of Medicare is lost to fraud and rarely is those defrauding are found. We are in this mess because politicians bribe the voting base with their own "money". They make promises for services but don't propose taxes that would pay for it. Then there are the local pork barrel projects and the hand outs for the cronies.
Because Medicare is a public program, you are made aware of the fraud. Because private insurance is ... private, you are not aware of the fraud. This is not to say that there is no fraud in the private sector or event to say there there is not a lot of fraud in the private sector, it is just that it is ... private.
I am noticing a pattern in your argumentation. Just because I mention things like fraud, waste, and debt, does not imply that I think that such things don't happen in the business world. But by comparison business is better at it than government. Now with that said, I don't think everything the government can or should be privatized, however, some areas can benefit.
Yes, companies are highly leveraged but that is also because they can pay it back. But they cannot be as leveraged as the government. The monopoly on force kinda give them that advantage. No other institution could ever possibly have a 40% budget shortfall for a decade and not declare bankruptcy.
I am at a total loss here. It is obvious to me that many very large companies that were in business with smaller debts a decade ago are still in business today with much larger debts. These companies continue to pay their executives well and pay dividends. They do not pay them from profits, they pay them from debts. By definition, if a company has increased its debt year-by-year, even if it manages to service its debt, if is doing so not from profitability but from debt.
Here is a thought, if a company is profitable for a decade, why does it have any debt? Why does a company choose to finance its operations instead of reinvesting its profits in the company? Oh, that's right, it wants to pay out big executive paychecks and dividends and it can't do both so it borrows. It can be argued that the money was borrowed to expand or some other argument can be made, but the reality is that it borrowed to pay bonuses and dividends.
If you take a public entity and make it private, then the entire entity becomes a taxpayer instead of a tax consumer? Take the post office, instead of it costing us $10 billion a year, it would now pay us corporate tax. So if the wage drops from $30 per hour to $15 per hour, compared to working at McDonalds it is still a good deal - a relative wage in division of labor.
What you are describing is a plutocrat-own, crony-capitalist solution of sorts where the 1% chooses the government and the government in turn chooses the 1% to be the winners in the marketplace and by some miracle, the taxpayers end up indirectly subsidizing the profits of the corporation instead of directly doing so. Let's use FedEx as the example of privately owned delivery service because they don't actually pay more than a pitance in taxes on their massive profits.
@zthustra If you add all the sales, payroll, income, business, capital gains tax, fees , permits, property, taxes that come off Fed Ex and end them you could probably cut the cost of shipping a package by 85%. The government will receive far more taxes from FedEx, than will be paid to shareholders and CEO combined probably about 3X. We should force the U.S. post office to turn a $50 billion profit, to pay for all the lost revenues it causes on society.
You might be exagerating for effect. For example, in FY 2011, Federal Express had total revenue of $39,304.0 Million on which it paid $813.0 Million in income tax. Income tax accounts for 2 cents on every dollar paid by customers; sales tax is 2.9 to 7.25 cents. Regarding the permits and property tax, don't you think the cost of public infrastructure used by Federal Express should be reflected in the price paid by customers?
@zthustra In millions, sales tax (5%) 1965, employee payroll tax (15.3%) 2337, employee tax (15%) 2291, fuel tax (10%) 415, landing fees 1232, purchased materials/equipt. 2300, cost to implement SEC/Tax laws and mandates 300, capital gains/dividend (15%) 184, inflation 232. Total $11,256 which is probably grossly underestimated. Of the 1452 in net income,subtracting the capital gains/dividends you get 1286. Thus the government gets about the same as employees and 10X more than shareholders.
@pirucreek which leads to the question was the GM bailout a bailout or a tax cut on an individual company? Why can't we go back to the tax rates earlier 1929 when total tax burden was less than 5% of gdp instead of 40%.
My mind is boggled. I don't understand why you'd spend so much time recalling a certain group of politicians, when its clear that the whole system to utterly broken. You might be able to avoid these emergency managers for a while longer, but guess what, these people don't care about the law and will find a way to get it done nonetheless. If you want to change things I'd suggest the issue of a state bank, secession or plain old civil disobedience. Sorry, but you really lost points with me here.
There are real-world consequences to the legislation being pushed through by the Republican trifecta of power that I cannot possibly hope to explain in a 15-minute video or a 500 charachter text box. Elected officials need to know that if yout do some things they can be recalled and won't get to finish their term of office. Hang in there, recalls and emergency managers are just two issues and I really did make the video about 15 times to get it down to a bit over 12 minutes.
Missed you. You've been doing more than I have, I've gone out to (un)Occupy Albuquerque a few times before the cops chased us out of Yale Park and arrested like 40 people (not me, I can't afford to stop working even for one day right now)... Best of luck, keep up the good fight.
Way to go on the recall, I'm glad to see someone doing the footwork... I personally gave up on everyone...got tired of debating the issues as most people seem to put more weight on gunrights or abortion then something like work rights that would directly benefit them.
I saw a little on the governor's appointees on the Rachel Maddow show when he first won, i figured that would get a faster response then what i saw..lol
Rachell and others have had Virg Bernaro, the Lansing mayor and former Democrat candidate for governor. They did a great job of calling attention to the problem of appointing emergency managers, especially in Benton Harbor. But none eve them have ever mentioned, to my knowledge, the recall efforts or the repeal effort. I emailed them all, so they know, but they are not reporting. Maybe there will be a renewed effort next spring/summer?
Comment removed
pgm98387 3 months ago
Infrastructure stripmining is a good term. A company comes in and pretends to run things, meanwhile it sells off everything but the cockroaches, that the taxpayers spent billions on to keep up to snuff, pocketing all of the cash, and then they say "Oops! we're bankrupt, see ya!"
I know I was one of those sources of frustration for you. I suppose in the end it was a good thing. Glad to see you.
DonQuixotedeKaw 3 months ago
If a company gets soul rights to a government function, then yes, everything you said will happen. However, if companies have to compete for it, then it will reduce costs and increase efficiency.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
I have been thinking about this for a long time. A FREE market is doesn't necessarily reliably produce high quality goods and services at the the lowest price. The cost of a FREE market is often reflected in the price paid or in availability. I'm not so sure I can explain that in this text box.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra
Especially with only 500 characters. However, the markets are a reflection of a lot of things. You get high quality goods to low quality goods, with prices variable for each category. However, on thing the markets cannot stand is waste(if companies are allowed to fail). No rational person will allow waste if they have to pay for it.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
It is interesting how many people think that big, corporate businesses are less wasteful than government run enterprizes. I can't put my finger on the studies now, but I have seen them and it turns out that privately run, for profit, corporate businesses are just as prone to waste and mismanagement as public, government run, corporations. Private corps can be especially short sighted when it comes to postponing needed investment for the sake of bringing forward profits.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra
Big companies may have harder times with waste management than smaller ones, but there is no way in hell they can as wasteful as government. Only the government has gotten the record $14 trillion in debt. I like to see a company come close to that and remain solvent. Government doesn't have a bottom line and business has more means and motivations to respond to waste.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
Isn't that funny that so many people think that the government has to borrow a bunch of money because of waste and mismangement. The government borrows money because it is to the advantage of the wealthiest few percentage points to loan money to the government instead of paying taxes.
You will also note that the largest corporations are highly leveraged. Not because they are unprofitable, but because it is to the advantage of the owners to pay themselves by borrowing.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra
The government couldn't increase taxes enough to balance the budget and pay off the debt And to say that isn't in part the fault of waste and mismanagement? Nearly a 1/3 of Medicare is lost to fraud and rarely is those defrauding are found. We are in this mess because politicians bribe the voting base with their own "money". They make promises for services but don't propose taxes that would pay for it. Then there are the local pork barrel projects and the hand outs for the cronies.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
Because Medicare is a public program, you are made aware of the fraud. Because private insurance is ... private, you are not aware of the fraud. This is not to say that there is no fraud in the private sector or event to say there there is not a lot of fraud in the private sector, it is just that it is ... private.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra
I am noticing a pattern in your argumentation. Just because I mention things like fraud, waste, and debt, does not imply that I think that such things don't happen in the business world. But by comparison business is better at it than government. Now with that said, I don't think everything the government can or should be privatized, however, some areas can benefit.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@zthustra
Yes, companies are highly leveraged but that is also because they can pay it back. But they cannot be as leveraged as the government. The monopoly on force kinda give them that advantage. No other institution could ever possibly have a 40% budget shortfall for a decade and not declare bankruptcy.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
I am at a total loss here. It is obvious to me that many very large companies that were in business with smaller debts a decade ago are still in business today with much larger debts. These companies continue to pay their executives well and pay dividends. They do not pay them from profits, they pay them from debts. By definition, if a company has increased its debt year-by-year, even if it manages to service its debt, if is doing so not from profitability but from debt.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra
I would loved to see you do a video on it. Only problem is that any business that would follow that model would eventually collapse.
TheAtheistPaladin 3 months ago
@TheAtheistPaladin
Here is a thought, if a company is profitable for a decade, why does it have any debt? Why does a company choose to finance its operations instead of reinvesting its profits in the company? Oh, that's right, it wants to pay out big executive paychecks and dividends and it can't do both so it borrows. It can be argued that the money was borrowed to expand or some other argument can be made, but the reality is that it borrowed to pay bonuses and dividends.
zthustra 3 months ago
soooooooooo why am I subscribed to this guy?
DragonYearJoji 3 months ago
If you take a public entity and make it private, then the entire entity becomes a taxpayer instead of a tax consumer? Take the post office, instead of it costing us $10 billion a year, it would now pay us corporate tax. So if the wage drops from $30 per hour to $15 per hour, compared to working at McDonalds it is still a good deal - a relative wage in division of labor.
pirucreek 3 months ago
@pirucreek
What you are describing is a plutocrat-own, crony-capitalist solution of sorts where the 1% chooses the government and the government in turn chooses the 1% to be the winners in the marketplace and by some miracle, the taxpayers end up indirectly subsidizing the profits of the corporation instead of directly doing so. Let's use FedEx as the example of privately owned delivery service because they don't actually pay more than a pitance in taxes on their massive profits.
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra If you add all the sales, payroll, income, business, capital gains tax, fees , permits, property, taxes that come off Fed Ex and end them you could probably cut the cost of shipping a package by 85%. The government will receive far more taxes from FedEx, than will be paid to shareholders and CEO combined probably about 3X. We should force the U.S. post office to turn a $50 billion profit, to pay for all the lost revenues it causes on society.
pirucreek 3 months ago
@pirucreek
You might be exagerating for effect. For example, in FY 2011, Federal Express had total revenue of $39,304.0 Million on which it paid $813.0 Million in income tax. Income tax accounts for 2 cents on every dollar paid by customers; sales tax is 2.9 to 7.25 cents. Regarding the permits and property tax, don't you think the cost of public infrastructure used by Federal Express should be reflected in the price paid by customers?
zthustra 3 months ago
@zthustra In millions, sales tax (5%) 1965, employee payroll tax (15.3%) 2337, employee tax (15%) 2291, fuel tax (10%) 415, landing fees 1232, purchased materials/equipt. 2300, cost to implement SEC/Tax laws and mandates 300, capital gains/dividend (15%) 184, inflation 232. Total $11,256 which is probably grossly underestimated. Of the 1452 in net income,subtracting the capital gains/dividends you get 1286. Thus the government gets about the same as employees and 10X more than shareholders.
pirucreek 3 months ago
@pirucreek which leads to the question was the GM bailout a bailout or a tax cut on an individual company? Why can't we go back to the tax rates earlier 1929 when total tax burden was less than 5% of gdp instead of 40%.
pirucreek 3 months ago
My mind is boggled. I don't understand why you'd spend so much time recalling a certain group of politicians, when its clear that the whole system to utterly broken. You might be able to avoid these emergency managers for a while longer, but guess what, these people don't care about the law and will find a way to get it done nonetheless. If you want to change things I'd suggest the issue of a state bank, secession or plain old civil disobedience. Sorry, but you really lost points with me here.
Cookiefox 3 months ago
@Cookiefox
There are real-world consequences to the legislation being pushed through by the Republican trifecta of power that I cannot possibly hope to explain in a 15-minute video or a 500 charachter text box. Elected officials need to know that if yout do some things they can be recalled and won't get to finish their term of office. Hang in there, recalls and emergency managers are just two issues and I really did make the video about 15 times to get it down to a bit over 12 minutes.
zthustra 3 months ago
Missed you. You've been doing more than I have, I've gone out to (un)Occupy Albuquerque a few times before the cops chased us out of Yale Park and arrested like 40 people (not me, I can't afford to stop working even for one day right now)... Best of luck, keep up the good fight.
renegade4dio 3 months ago
I was kind of wondering where you'd been!
roentgen571 3 months ago
Way to go on the recall, I'm glad to see someone doing the footwork... I personally gave up on everyone...got tired of debating the issues as most people seem to put more weight on gunrights or abortion then something like work rights that would directly benefit them.
I saw a little on the governor's appointees on the Rachel Maddow show when he first won, i figured that would get a faster response then what i saw..lol
funeralsong34 3 months ago
@funeralsong34
Rachell and others have had Virg Bernaro, the Lansing mayor and former Democrat candidate for governor. They did a great job of calling attention to the problem of appointing emergency managers, especially in Benton Harbor. But none eve them have ever mentioned, to my knowledge, the recall efforts or the repeal effort. I emailed them all, so they know, but they are not reporting. Maybe there will be a renewed effort next spring/summer?
zthustra 3 months ago
Welcome back!
LiamE69 3 months ago