Oops! A Rich Venture Capitalist Lets the Cat Out of the Bag...

Blame it on what you like, if you raise the tax rate, you raise the cost of doing business in America, and to a point that some companies can no longer profit, then they will move jobs overseas. So was it taxes or cheap labor? Originally Posted by nwarounder

And if they're moving jobs to countries that have government financed health care????

I wouldn't think it applies to you, don't know all the details but you don't seem motivated enough to have any impact on job creation and are perfectly content with wine, women, and song. . Originally Posted by nwarounder

I believe that is his point....why should he get this huge tax break. You guys on the right believe that the huge tax break many better off Americans recieve will stiminulate jobs. He is saying Hogwash! I agree with TTH . (If that is wtf he meant! LOL)

And if they're moving jobs to countries that have government financed health care???? Originally Posted by Doove

Don't start confushing them with facts.

Germany has a very good model, one we set up but these guys on the right think we are crazy if we bring up that basic fact.

I would not invest in the US Government, it is over 16 trillion dollars in debt, cant produce a budget, cant balance a budget, and spend far in excess of real market value for what they buy. They throw money away like they can print it. Oh wait they can. So they print more money and what you have invested becomes worth less and less.
Government is never the answer.

I would not invest in the US Government, it is over 16 trillion dollars in debt, cant produce a budget, cant balance a budget, and spend far in excess of real market value for what they buy. They throw money away like they can print it. Oh wait they can. So they print more money and what you have invested becomes worth less and less.
Government is never the answer. Originally Posted by The2Dogs

Than give up your SS benifits. Quit driving on the road. Do away with air traffic controllers and any regulation. Government is just a way to power. A weak government and a strong Business will fuc you just as bad as the opposite. They are both human. They both want power. They need to be near equal to cancel each others evil out.

That is not always true, Clinton raised taxes.

Taxes pay down the debt. So do you want to cut taxes a GWBush did and drive up the debt?
There needs to be an equilibrium. Are you willing to get fewer SS benefits? Trim back military spending? Close the loop holes in the system? I wasn't the one stating that taxes drive away business. I was stating a way bigger reason why companies relocate. Are taxes a factor? Yes. As much as labor costs? No. Is Wal-Mart going to move from this country? Starbucks? Exxon? Let Exxon move and see how we protect their oil that is shipped. They should pay for the security they recieve. Originally Posted by WTF

It's always true bro to some extent, Clinton raised taxes and some jobs moved overseas because of it. I personally did under Clinton, but since you have moved passed the complete hogwash statement, I too agree, that not every company will do so simply because taxes are raised. For most if it increases overall cost, they will look for ways to cut costs and if their only option is to cut labor, they will. Pretty simple.
Now the rest, currently and personally speaking, I wish they would cut all SS benefits, cut the military in half and withdraw all troops back to our borders, close all the loop holes and adopt a flat income or consumption tax. I do everything under the sun to legally avoid paying taxes, including moving funds overseas, and will continue to do so until the government quits wasting our tax dollars on stupid shit like NSA vegas trips, solyndra and the other green shit that doesn't work, and programs like fast and furious. Stop all that and I would gladly pay a 50% tax rate and move my money back home.

I believe that is his point....why should he get this huge tax break. You guys on the right believe that the huge tax break many better off Americans recieve will stiminulate jobs. He is saying Hogwash! I agree with TTH . (If that is wtf he meant! LOL) Originally Posted by WTF

I'm not on the right, or at least not a republican, but I'll repeat it again. I would have no problem paying a very high tax rate, even 50% if the government did not waste those tax dollars. Cut the spending and prove you can manage my money, then I will gladly give it to them, but not one second sooner.

And if they're moving jobs to countries that have government financed health care???? Originally Posted by Doove

As long as I didn't have to live there and they were making me money, I wouldn't care. Hell, I would even care if they had government financed moustache grooming, or pube waxing for the women...

OK, I've got a piss pot slew of money sitting and stagnating in various zero sum investments. I agree with you that I'm not really creating many jobs with that, except to the extend that I spend my returns on wine, women, or song. But pray tell answer a question or two for me.

1. How am I a "crony" capitalist?

2. What would change under your ideal view of capitalism that would get my money off the sidelines into whatever magical investment vehicle you want it in for it to create jobs?

3. What magic investment vehicle do you think my money will go into once you reform capitalism where it will suddenly create a bunch of jobs. Assume my money is now 10% real estate; 15% munis; 20% domestic equities; 30% international equities; 20% oil and gas; 5% other. Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Did I read that correctly?

LOL!!!



OMG! You just set the standard for stupidest post EVER! LOL!

Listen, this will be a blow to your already oversized and undermerited ego, but even with your daddy's money you don't have enough to even pick up the laundry for the nephew of the maid of the guy that drives a crony capitalist's limo. LOL! Maybe if your wealth equaled your arrogance, possibly. But sorry, TTH, you are a member of the peon class like the rest of us.

I know you like to brag about your money and influence, but on a national level, you simply pick up the garbage by the side of the road. No one cares about what you think or what little money you have.

We are talking about the Monsantos, Halliburtons, Defense Contractors, Big Pharma, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, etc.

You think you are one of them, but you're not. Not even close. LOL!

This is too funny! FastGooh, you have met your match. I doubt if it will ever get any funnier than this!

, and programs like fast and furious. Stop all that and I would gladly pay a 50% tax rate and move my money back home. Originally Posted by nwarounder

But Fast and Furious was done to protect you from those evil drug dealers. In another thread you said you were for that. Just not for it enough to actually want to pay for it.

As long as I didn't have to live there and they were making me money, I wouldn't care. Hell, I would even care if they had government financed moustache grooming, or pube waxing for the women... Originally Posted by nwarounder

Of course you totally ignore/miss the point.

wtf, it would be great if our federal government limited themselves to the things that are required such as what you have stated. If that were the case we would not be 16 trillion in debt. Yul have stated many times that SS has a huge surplus so what is the problem.
Why invest in something that has proven to spend wastefully without benefit. Sure they do manage to do a few things right but even the employees cant do their jobs in a reasonable manner. An example it the VA and how even though they have hired more and more people they still cannot process claims in a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe it is time for someone to come in a clean house and see if we cant save us from the path we have been on.

I really can't believe that ANYONE really thinks the millions of people who currently do not have jobs - yet who were employed before 2008-09 - are lazy, suffering from a sense of entitlement and all of the other cliches glibly tossed about. Setting aside the emotionally convenient urges to broad brush them into a handy little niche, the fact of the matter is that there are lots of potential RESOURCES rusting away. Businesspeople can look at the work force as costs instead ofresources all they want but, unless you're in the financial sector, it actually takes "the little people" that the hard right likes to pound on to do the tasks that actually make things happen.

Also, everyone is always running around saying, "Small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy." Well, they're right. What is overlooked is that Bain and any other VC group, including Hanauer's, isn't very interested in going in on a business that might start up with 3 or 4 people such as Billy Joe's Paint and Body or Susie's Home Cookin' and Salon. One of the hidden pieces of the fallout from Big Banking's mess is that smaller banks who historically provide financing for such little businesses have been hamstrung to an extent by the regulatons currently in the process of being enacted to curb the excesses of the Big Boyz. The jury's still out on whether or not the final version of the regulations will ease the clamps on smaller banks and thus ease up the money supply to small businesses.

The real consequences of Big Banking's fu*k up go very deep and occur in places where there is no "sexy" news, just where a lot of important economic action is.

wtf, it would be great if our federal government limited themselves to the things that are required such as what you have stated. If that were the case we would not be 16 trillion in debt. Yul have stated many times that SS has a huge surplus so what is the problem.
Why invest in something that has proven to spend wastefully without benefit. Sure they do manage to do a few things right but even the employees cant do their jobs in a reasonable manner. An example it the VA and how even though they have hired more and more people they still cannot process claims in a reasonable amount of time.
Maybe it is time for someone to come in a clean house and see if we cant save us from the path we have been on. Originally Posted by The2Dogs

Well then, stop making idiotic statements like, "Government is never the answer." You obviously have never been inside of a huge corporation for any length of time or your take on their efficiency would be a wee bit more realistic.

(Almost all of the following is simply what I posted a few days ago in the other thread on this subject and another one on a related topic.)

The guy is right about a number of things, but I think it's necessary to fill in a few blanks.

He says that there's all sorts of overheated demagoguery by politicians claiming that even the slightest tax increase on high income earners will "kill jobs." He's right about that, it's obviously an exaggerated claim. And I don't think people running for office do themselves any favors when they make such statements. Of course, many of them have pledged fealty to Grover Norquist, so they've sort of backed themselves into a corner.

On the other hand, some people on the other side need a reality check concerning how much additional revenue increasing taxes on the wealthy would produce. Returning rates to the Clinton-era levels on the top 1% (anyone earning more than about $380K/year, more or less) would only raise a fraction of one percent of GDP, while our fiscal deficit is over 8% of GDP.

He speaks of increasing "demand", but we need to ask the question, "Demand for what? More crap imported from Asia and sold at Walmart?"

Someone mentioned Keynesian economics. I maintain that what we have been trying to practice today is not really Keynesian economics, but rather pseudo-Keynesian economics. Keynes was not some wild-eyed radical who preached that it's a great idea to create endless budget deficits in order to stimulate the economy. On the contrary, he had a number of rather conservative instincts. He strongly believed that budgets should be balanced in good times, and that deficits should be very temporary measures that should only be used to get you through the critical period during a severe downturn, and only within the framework of understanding that there would be a clear path toward restoration of fiscal balance.

But I think there's another important point. Not only did Keynes dislike structural deficits, he abhorred trade deficits, repeatedly counseling that the British should never, under any circumstances, run sustained negative balance-of-payments deficits with anyone else.

But just look at us now. It's pretty pathetic. Fifty years ago, we made almost everything we consumed. If you bought a TV, a pair of shoes, a suit, or almost anything else, it was probably made in the USA. In the 1970s, a number of professors and opinion writers started saying that we needed to "export capitalism" to the rest of the world, and that thereby everybody could become richer. Free trade is wonderful in theory, at least in the event that all your trading partners aspire to similar levels of wages, health care, retirement benefits, environmental protections, etc. -- you know, comparative advantage and all that.

But what if workers elsewhere are willing to (or are forced to) work for wages amounting to a tiny fraction of what it takes an American to support a family? The answer is obvious.

So I think one of our highest priorities should be to fix trade practices that are slowly bleeding our nation to death. I realize that means a lot of consumer goods (which many people buy too much of, anyway) might cost more, but wouldn't that be more than offset by the fact that we wouldn't have to finance all the unemployent benefits for people who aren't working because millions of jobs have been offshored?

Also, everyone is always running around saying, "Small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy." Well, they're right. What is overlooked is that Bain and any other VC group, including Hanauer's, isn't very interested in going in on a business that might start up with 3 or 4 people such as Billy Joe's Paint and Body or Susie's Home Cookin' and Salon. One of the hidden pieces of the fallout from Big Banking's mess is that smaller banks who historically provide financing for such little businesses have been hamstrung to an extent by the regulatons currently in the process of being enacted to curb the excesses of the Big Boyz. The jury's still out on whether or not the final version of the regulations will ease the clamps on smaller banks and thus ease up the money supply to small businesses. Originally Posted by Randy4Candy

Exactly right, but I'm afraid that it doesn't look likely that the regulatory burden on what we refer to as the "community banks", hisorically the lifeblood of small business in many parts of the country, is likely to be implemented in such a way that it doesn't hamper prospects for return of full health in the small business sector. A few in the media have said that really doesn't make much difference, since there's not that much demand for small business credit anyway. I think that's ridiculous, since loan demand will eventually normalize, as it must if we are ever to have a well-functioning economy, and credit needs to be made available for small firms. Rarely can they be served by the JPMs of the world.

Recent financial "reform" imposes, as a percentage of assets, far more costs on the smaller community banks than on the large TBTF and near-TBTF banks.

I think one of the first orders of business in 2009 should have been to resurrect Glass-Steagall (or something similar), but I don't believe that goes quite far enough.

It's arguably necessary to separate the big depository institutions from the risks associated with I-Banks. But I don't think that alone would eliminate systemic risk in our global, deeply-interconnected financial system.

The too-big-to-fail banks today are about 50-60% bigger than they were in 2007. The five that everyone considers TBTF are, of course, B of A, JPM, Citi, Wells, and Goldman. I think eight or ten more are at least "borderline TBTF", and would send shock waves through a fragile system if any of them blew up.

In my opinion, Dodd-Frank should be scrapped and replaced with more effective reform. It certainly contains a number of good provisions, but it's 2,300 pages long and no one really understands what the hell large sections of it actually say. A whole lot of things are vaguely left to regulators from different agencies to fill in the blanks later. It still will be some time, for example, before anyone promulgates rules regarding what is or is not OK under the Volcker rule.

As a percentage of assets and earnings, Dodd-Frank imposes far higher costs on smaller community banks than on their large competitors. The megabanks love that, since they'll be able to snap up -- at bargain prices -- a lot of assets from smaller banks that can't make it. In fact, a lot of that has already happened.

That 2,300 page monstrosity has been called "The Lawyers and Lobbyists Full Employment Act of 2010", and not without good reason. By contrast, Glass-Steagall was only 37 pages, yet it served well enough for many decades.

Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer proposed what I think would be an effective measure. He suggests that managers and big traders making bets on behalf of institutions backstopped by the Treasury or the Fed should be subject to full clawback if a trade goes bad. His idea is that the responsible party should be on the hook for an amount equal to all salary and bonus income in excess of a certain multiple (Grant suggests 10X) of the average current income of a U.S. full-time worker.

In days gone by, I-Banks that engaged in the riskiest investments were typically structured as partnerships in which the principals were exposed to personal liability. Facing the potential prospect of not being able to hang on to one's luxury homes and yachts tends to focus the mind!