but I do admire your optimism...Originally Posted by Bill Moore
Knowing is half the battle...
A world without bankers and soldiers and hurt feelings would be a utopian ideal wouldn't it?
I'll work on a future post about financial algorithms, derivatives, and the approximately 600 trillion USD derivatives market. By the way, for comparison, the World's combined GDP is estimated to be in excess of 41 trillion USD.
GI Joe
Sapere Aude
I don't think it's as bad as all that...
but I do admire your optimism...
Well, speaking of excessively idealistic...
What worries me is that thinking humans who act accordingly are finding that it's better to act outside the system.I do not agree. I very much agree the field has been tilted. That's true everywhere to some extent but the sort of neat thing is that here in the US, we are into swing cycles -- the pendulum swings too far toward raw capitalism and then it is perceived as excessive so a swing back toward tight restrictions; Cycle repeats. I believe we are about to swing toward more restriction but the concern one should have is that the 'restrictions' contain hidden loopholes to be exploited while giving the appearance of improvement. Lulling buyers is as old as Babylon.....
However, I also believe that most thinking humans can see and understand this. They should be thus able to act accordingly.
The problem is that it is not to the advantage of the political and / or governing class to mention that fact. That would limit their ability to pass more inane laws and get larger campaign contributions.
Once again I suggest the culprit is not unfettered capitalistic greed -- it is in the design and construction of fetters and 'blame' therefor accrues to those designers, the true culprits...
All of which goes to explain why "Caveat Emptor" is older than you, me, the US and even the long defunct Roman Empire...
Well, yeah....
Which is why I added right after that "Good luck with any of that...Well, speaking of excessively idealistic..."
They always have, that also varies and swings like the ol' pendulum. It waxes and wanes with the economic tides but a shadow economy has always been present and almost certainly will always be...What worries me is that thinking humans who act accordingly are finding that it's better to act outside the system.
No worries, Mate
It's a matter of degrees.They always have, that also varies and swings like the ol' pendulum. It waxes and wanes with the economic tides but a shadow economy has always been present and almost certainly will always be...
No worries, Mate
You can string together any random words together. Litter enough crap about "senior bankers," and you'll usually get the "amen" you're looking for.
Really? What "risks" do "we" have foisted upon us by the capitalists? What was the common man's exposure to toxic assets? What was his share of the tab--say compared to the 1 percent--for floating key banks some cash for a few months?In summary, he makes a good case that we no longer practice capitalism anymore, because the capitalists don't assume the risks, we do.
What's this "we" stuff? The top 1 percent pay upwards 40 percent of the taxes. The top 10 percent three-quarters. Last I checked, the federal government was running a profit on TARP, and you don't see "we"--the ones actually paying for the float--complaining about the lack of a dividend. Do you?The bankers are rewarded for failure with bailouts and large bonuses, which we pay for and we assume the risk, not the bankers.
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
True and everyone has their own amplitude comfort level.
That said, comfort level and ability to affect that amplitude are two very different things. That socio-political amplitude is dependent on too many factors to be easily manipulated by anyone, any group or pretty much anything -- it is what it is...
Note the existence, try to discern the amplitude and direction to plan a bit but above all emulate Bobby McFerrin.
Ran into this chart and had to put it in here. One reason why American incomes are dropping, and why today's college grads have such poor prospects:
To me it makes perfect sense to stop subsidizing loans, or to stop providing any publicly funded loans, to students studying subjects with little or no relevance to the economy: you want to study performing arts, great... just pay for it yourself, because your chances of paying back a loan are slim to none.
Next step would be actually subsidizing students willing to take on the rigors of economically relevant courses of study... gotta wonder what the political will factor there would be!
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
No need for a political factor. Student loan default rates will take care of that in short order.
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
Presley,
The Risk is at least 11 Trillion dollars! The "we" is the US Taxpayer that is on the hook for the loan guarantees. Link to what to do about the economy interview of William K. Black....the 11 trillion dollar information is towrds the end.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealN.../4/vP3aCfkFuoo
You can only arrive at such a large figure by using accounting methods that are unsuitable for the purpose.
The 11 trillion figure is obviously founded on the same poor accounting math as the recent 55 billion € HRE gaffe.
Incorrect. The top 1% pays 40% of all Federal income tax, which as we all know does not equal all taxation in this country, as those of us who pay the remarkably regressive payroll tax know, as well as state and and local taxes which are also quite regressive.What's this "we" stuff? The top 1 percent pay upwards 40 percent of the taxes. The top 10 percent three-quarters. Last I checked, the federal government was running a profit on TARP, and you don't see "we"--the ones actually paying for the float--complaining about the lack of a dividend. Do you?
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2009.pdf
Also one must reckon with the fact that the top 1% also take in a remarkably large chunk of national income and hold an even larger chunk of national wealth.
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/124xx/doc1248...holdIncome.pdf
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_502.pdf
TARP was by far the smallest proportion of Federal aid to the financial community. The Federal Reserve's lending to the major banks was quite extensive, to put it mildly.
Fair taxation has also to look at the ability to pay taxes, i.e. income.
for comparison:
source (not someone who makes up data)
There are other statistics analysis out there that say that it's not even the top 1%, but the top 0.1% that grabbed a ridiculously disproportionate share of the national income growth.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...sus-oligarchs/
8% income share for 1/1000th of the population; this means they accumulate almost all wealth within a couple years, for the share of consumption is very low for them (low income groups can't save much if anything).
income distribution; higher Gini coefficient = more unequal
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2172rank.html
The U.S. ranks 39th among totally ####ed-up Third World countries.
(Probably in an attempt to be the "Number One"? )
In other words; you can't take away much more from the lower income half of the U.S.; they've already been ripped off thoroughly in the private sector.
The economic policies of the U.S. have been totally ####ed up for three decades, fed by a full set of mythology. Academic economists are laughing at what goes as conventional wisdom on economic or fiscal policy in the U.S.. Even 17th century mercantilism was smarter than that BS.
Relevance to the economy at what time scale? The expected year of graduation? A decade from now? Five decades from now? How good are we at predicting where the economy is headed, anyway?
Reframing the requirement so that employability rather than relevance to the economy might help a bit, but what of the student studying philosophy as an undergraduate (not a very employable undergraduate degree) so s/he can get into law school (a J.D. is employable, and a J.D. + passing the bar is damn employable, but don’t we already perhaps have too many lawyers)?
I personally think that universities should generally put more energy towards teaching a foundation of basic skills for a number of reasons, and future employability is one of them. I am of the opinion that in many cases—more than lots of us might want to admit—if you take someone with good basic skills they can be taught the specifics of the job. But to really make that matter our society would need to figure out a way to do retraining more efficiently when economic winds shift, and that would involve governments, schools, and the private sector being on board. Not holding my breath…
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
That's the job description of public schools.
Would that it were so.I think I can understand why a European would have that impression. I remember as a 19-year-old when a college friend of mine who was a graduate of an international school in Asia mentioned that one of her high school classmates was on track to finish her undergraduate degree at an Oxbridge school in three years. I remarked that her classmate must be something of a genius and my friend remarked, “Well, the Brits expect that you already know something when you arrive at university.” The unfortunate fact is that the first couple of years of most American “tertiary” education is really the secondary education which should have been done in high school.
Last edited by ganulv; 11-04-2011 at 12:37 AM. Reason: typo fix
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Doesn't that rather assume that "national income growth" is simply there, and if some hadn't "grabbed it", the same income would have gone to others? What is that small number didn't seize someone else's income, but rather found some rather creative ways to enhance their own? Granted, some of those creative ways are destructive and others are or should be illegal, but that's another question.
How exactly have they been "ripped off"? Did someone take something that they had? Were they paid an unreasonably low sum for their labor? Seems to me that people with valuable skills are paid quite well for their labor. The problem is that too many people have no skills or skills that have no value.
That is both unfortunate and fact, and it is a large part of the reason for the current American economic trouble. If we weren't so focused on blaming Wall Street for everything we might see that more clearly.
All very well to demand high-paying jobs for all, but how do you pay upper middle class wages to people with few or no employable skills and still maintain a competitive economy?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
How do you figure? I'm not going to sit through one of Black's rants and try to see how this connects to what we're talking about.
Specifically, the 53 percent of us that pay federal taxes. Of which almost three quarters is paid by those of us earning six-figures and higher. But wait, we're not even <i>really</i> on the hook as taxpayers, since the risk is drawn against the Fed's balance sheet. And that is secured by the bond markets; of which only the interest payment seems to hold the taxpayer's attention.The "we" is the US Taxpayer...
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
Good thing no one's taking away income from the lower half of the US.
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
2 mites
One of the things people find unfair is the disparity between income tax and capital gains tax. They don't understand why a professional investor (let's say Warren Buffett) enjoys a 10% capital gains tax for one year's work while his secretary is taxed something like 28-35% for her sweat? While the uber-rich are supposed to be taxed at a higher rate, their money buys them access to politicians who in turn tip the scale in their favor with tax breaks and loop holes. When that's not enough, there's always creative accounting. Or even hiding your money in an offshore account (as in the UBS case). For most in the middle class, it's not about who contributes the most into federal taxes but what percentage of ones money goes to taxes. Kind of like Jesus' story about the old widow who donated her 2mites
The middle class got ripped off by the banks in at least three different ways.
1) The banks sold sub-prime mortgages like hot cakes (borrowers share the blame here). Then they created and sold the mortgage backed securities causing the financial collapse. But those at the top who orchestrated the whole mess took the money and ran. People like Ken Lewis participated in one of the gnarliest transfers of wealth from the middle class to their own pockets and walked away scott free. There were no negative consequences for the banks or the bankers... in the end it's the tax payer who assumed all the risk (btw it's immaterial in this regard whether TARP is going to turn a profit). I'm all for capitalism but it can't be all reward without any downside. Banks that were too big to fail are now even bigger. And sadly the same system of compensation which encouraged all that risk taking is still in place.
2) A massive amount of middle class wealth was wiped out in the stock market. People can see it in their 401K... those who still have one. Even when the banks do make a profit, the stock holders don't see any of it because the bankers pay themselves first in disproportionate amounts to the work they put in.
3) Now, in order to match the profits of the pre-recession days, the banks are gouging (they're beyond nickel and diming) their clients with unreasonable fees.
The masses in the streets are trying to make their voices heard and wrest control away from the few, albeit very inefficiently.
Based on previous posts, it seems the 1% are taking in 25% of the income and paying 35% of the federal taxes. So if we can get the actual dollar amounts for those two figures, can we approximate the federal tax rate for said group? It's been a long day and this sounds too simple.
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