Labor is in it for themselves just like management is. Why does it cost 2 to 3 thousand extra to build an American car?
Labor is in it for themselves just like management is. Why does it cost 2 to 3 thousand extra to build an American car?
I quit after getting my first black belt because the school I was a part of was in the process of lowering their standards A painfully honest KC Elbows
The crap that many schools do is not the crap I was taught or train in or teach.
Dam nit... it made sense when it was running through my head.
DM
People love Iron Crotch. They can't get enough Iron Crotch. We all ride the Iron Crotch for the exposure. Gene
Find the safety flaw in the training. Rory Miller.
People in Mexico make less than I pay in taxes.
They do drive the economy...and that is the problem. It is systematic, it is not a matter of fixing it, it is a matter of getting rid of it.
I'm sure that you are a glorified 21st century peasant like the rest of us...unless you're pulling in over several million a year.
The rich man makes the rules that he knows many cannot follow...the rich man makes the decisions for the way poor people conduct their lives, while he does not have to see how really hard it is...the rich man gives you all the opportunities in the world but if you get out of line, whammo!
It makes sense for many to side with the rich, they have the weapons and the means...but Robin Hood will always be a hero to me...even if he'd be called a terrorist by today's double standards.
A unique snowflake
I may be uneducated about the US in some regards, but I'm sure you know all about the world outside your country!
For the record I am on the Dean's honour list and am currently completing an honours program. I think long and hard about what I say. IN fact, I have attended extensive seminars and done extensive research on most of these subjects, I wonder if you finished grade school? Or did you inherit daddy's business?
As to getting onto the streets, seriously dude, you must be up in some gated community too afraid of the beggars to try and figure out how other people live. I have compassion and I try to understand the way people are treated.
People come to America to get "The very best in the world" if they are rich. Sorry buddy, most of the world is not a fat overpaid American or Canadian for that matter. I know you're so concerned about your little scrap and don't want the baddies coming to get it, but you should pick up a book. Or maybe some spirituality, or even some compassion.
A unique snowflake
Rogue,
Everybody is in it for themselves, except of course for me.
I do take your point.
And of course, massive salaries and bonuses for management have nothing to do with the price of an automobile, as BJ has already established, its the lazy workers, bludging their way through an 8 hour shift sticking widgets into doohickeys, so they can go off and drop a few tinnies of beer before they head over and crash the yogurt truck into one of those unemployed crack mammas after work, breeding up more of the scum of society to pick your pocket for the next generation....
Economic policy and political viewpoint are inseparable. Economic testing and political viewpoint are inseparable. MP was asking what tests it would be valid to use: of course, people's answers will show their colour, but the question could quite easily be neutral.
For example, CBA is a testing procedure often espoused by the left and renowned for subjectivity.
Merry was asking if the rich should pay more and if so, how should that be determined. He wasn't saying they should be and it should be determined by XYZ. Of course he has his opinions, but that's as objective as you're gonna get, matey.
For once your talent for understatement, pithy one-liners and put-downs isn't enough to contribute to the argument (though, in many threads they're quite spot on! )
its safe to say that I train some martial arts. Im not that good really, but most people really suck, so I feel ok about that - Sunfist
Sometime blog on training esp in Japan
The problem with losing our manufacturing edge is that it's caused by everyone involved, including the consumer who just wants some cheap crap. Sadly what management takes out of a company is a drop in the bucket compared to what some retired workers do.
washingtonpost.com
General Motors Getting Eaten Alive by a Free Lunch
By Allan Sloan
Tuesday, April 19, 2005; Page E03
A free lunch can be the most expensive meal in the world. For living proof, look at General Motors. A big reason that GM has gotten into such trouble is that the pension and health care commitments it made to employees decades ago seemed to be a free lunch.
The United Autoworkers placed a high value on these benefits, but the accounting rules of the time placed no cost on GM's risk of providing them. So the UAW and GM made deals that were heavy on benefits, relatively light on wages.
Lower salaries meant that GM reported higher profits, which translated into higher stock prices -- and higher bonuses for executives. Commitments for pensions and "other post-employment benefits" -- known as OPEB in the accounting biz -- had little initial impact on GM's profit statement and didn't count as obligations on its balance sheet. So why not keep employees happy with generous benefits? It was a free lunch. Besides, GM's only major competitors at the time, Ford and Chrysler, were making similar deals.
Now, as we all can see, pension and health care obligations are eating GM alive. The bill for the "free" lunch has come in -- and GM is having trouble paying the tab. In the past two years, GM has put almost $30 billion into its pension funds and a trust to cover its OPEB obligations. Yet these accounts are still a combined $54 billion underwater.
"Any market economist would tell you that things that are 'free' are overconsumed," says Greg Taxin, chief executive of Glass, Lewis & Co. "That's true of pensions, it's true of OPEB, and it's true of stock options in the '90s." That's a lesson the SEC seems to have ignored, given last week's decision to let companies delay counting the value of options as an expense. But that's a topic for another day.
GM began its slide down the slippery slope in 1950, when it began picking up costs for medical insurance, pensions and retiree benefits. There was huge risk to GM in taking on these obligations -- but that didn't show up as a cost or balance-sheet liability. By 1973, the UAW says, GM was paying the entire health insurance bill for its employees, survivors and retirees, and had agreed to "30 and out" early retirement that granted workers full pensions after 30 years on the job, regardless of age.
These problems began to surface about 15 years ago because regulators changed the accounting rules. In 1992, GM says, it took a $20 billion non-cash charge to recognize pension obligations. Evolving rules then put OPEB on the balance sheet. Now, these obligations -- call it a combined $170 billion for U.S. operations -- are fully visible. And out-of-pocket costs for health care are eating GM alive.
GM spokesman Jerry Dubrowski says the company expects to pay $5.6 billion in health care costs this year for 1.1 million people covered by its plans. That's up from the $3.9 billion it shelled out in 2001 to cover 1.2 million people.
"At the time GM began offering these benefits, no one had any idea that the costs for prescription drugs and medical services would explode the way they have," Dubrowski said. True. But the UAW was astute (or lucky) enough to push the risk of covering these costs onto GM.
GM's pension funds are in pretty good shape, thanks to an $18.5 billion infusion two years ago. GM got this cash by selling bonds at relatively low rates, hoping to resolve its pension problems once and for all. This maneuver has been successful so far, but funding the pension plans has consumed much of GM's borrowing power and strained its balance sheet.
At the end of last year, GM says, its U.S. pension funds showed a $3 billion surplus. GM's pension accounting, which assumes that the funds will earn an average of 9 percent a year on their assets, is highly optimistic. But things are under control -- as long as GM stays solvent.
By contrast, OPEB is out of control. At year-end, OPEB was $57 billion in the hole, even though GM threw $9 billion into an OPEB trust in 2004. The company has no legal obligation to pre-fund these costs, but it's trying to show the financial markets and its workers that it's dealing with them. The OPEB trust has a hefty $20 billion of assets -- but GM calculates its obligations at a staggering $77 billion.
What's more, GM says they're rising at 10.5 percent a year. Thus, even though President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit whacked $4 billion off GM's OPEB obligation last year -- thanks, George -- it covered barely half the year's increase in the liability.
If GM were making lots of money selling vehicles, this would all be manageable, sort of. GM could buy enough time for demographics to bail it out, as more retirees begin getting Social Security and Medicare, reducing GM's costs, and other retirees die off. Its ratio of retirees to workers, currently 2.5 to 1, would shrink. Alas, GM's vehicle business is in the tank. Unless GM starts making money on vehicles or gets a break from the UAW or the federal government, things are going to get really ugly. I hope that doesn't happen, but it easily could.
The bottom line: Whenever you offer someone a free lunch, make sure that you'll be able to pay the bill when it comes in.
Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail address is sloan@panix.com.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Last edited by rogue; 05-22-2007 at 09:22 PM.
I quit after getting my first black belt because the school I was a part of was in the process of lowering their standards A painfully honest KC Elbows
The crap that many schools do is not the crap I was taught or train in or teach.
Dam nit... it made sense when it was running through my head.
DM
People love Iron Crotch. They can't get enough Iron Crotch. We all ride the Iron Crotch for the exposure. Gene
Find the safety flaw in the training. Rory Miller.
I never said they weren't.Economic policy and political viewpoint are inseparable. Economic testing and political viewpoint are inseparable.
However, there is a big difference between taking a political stance because a particular analysis seems to stand on its merits, and adopting a particular economic policy because of your political viewpoint.
I think, as much as is practicable (since I recognize that we all walk around with particular assumptions) the analysis should drive your political viewpoint; ideology per se should not drive policy.
I think that is the mistake being made by many people. They allow their ideology to override sober analysis of a problem. You run into this all the time with 9/11 conspiracy theorists and people who think AQ attacked us because of U.S. foreign policy. Actual reading of actual AQ documents and transcripts would make it quite clear that WHOEVER the top dog in the free world was, AQ would attack them, sooner or later.
I'm suggesting only that on many issues we be as objective and thorough as possible. It occurs to me that this may be one of them.
As I should have expected, this thread has largely degenerated into a tiff over social justice vs. personal responsibility, instead of coming anywhere near the original question. Oh well.
"In the world of martial arts, respect is often a given. In the real world, it must be earned."
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. "--Bertrand Russell
"Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. "--Benjamin Disraeli
"A conservative government is an organised hypocrisy."--Benjamin Disraeli
I see Rogue, another example of mis-management: bad short-term gain negotiation, non-existant forward planning and irresponsible financial management by overpaid "management" being blamed on the workers and paid for by the stockholders?
Glad to see I'm winning you over mate.
We here in Oz have the same problem, for example, with QANTAS, where employees have negotiated great benefits, but which are now becoming a burden, and making problems for the financial viability of the organisation in a new competitive environment. So, tragically, they wind up the company, or threaten to, and re-negotiate or re-structure. In the bad old days, they didn't even have to carry the long term liabilities on the current account, kind of like the US Social Security pension. Nowdays, its harder to get away with that kind of 'see no evil' accounting.
I have another suggestion, perhaps the reason GM is going broke is because they make sh1t cars?
Oh, and I agree with you on the "Cheap cr@p" issue. People whine about it all, but still love to dance in the middle of a pile of cheap cr2p, like monkeys like to smear sh1t on their fur and pretend to be all dressed up.
Back to one of my original points, consumers drive the economy, not entrepreneurs. Dollar votes.
Cheers
Looks like I didn't put that very well.
I was disagreeing with you Unkokusai... as I think you know... but since MP doesn't seem to realize I was agreeing with him either, let me try again.Since he is not making economic policy, and he not putting forward any particular type of testing/study (he is asking what others think about what type would be feasible, or whether we think the rich even do benefit more), he has separated his political viewpoint from his economic opinion. His question is asking us our colour. You've shown yours in that you obviously don't agree that rich people benefit more heavily than the middle class or the poor... but wait, no you haven't, you've gotten all judgmental about why he was asking and about your opinion that a higher taxation grade can only be seen as some kind of punishment. It ain't necessarily so.
its safe to say that I train some martial arts. Im not that good really, but most people really suck, so I feel ok about that - Sunfist
Sometime blog on training esp in Japan
why not get rid of welfare all together
tax the rich as is appropriate and give money to poorer(note not food stamps just plain hard cash) families and take it away aftert a period if they dont get jobs
this will force ppl to beocme independant as opposed to dependant while still providing support
as for big CEO's driving the economy
to some extent they do but they are dependant on consumers just as they are dependant on the big compnies to provide what they want to consume
so if people habe more incentives to get jobs and make money then they can consume more thus driving the economy
u might wonder as to what kind of society this might create tho
but hey if u want to be a shallow consumer or change your life and go beyonf that then a prosperous economy and society will provide the stable nase from which that can occur
One thing that I believe is wrong with your argument is including corporations in with rich people. You can have a company of poor folks or rich folks who do not own a company. To me including the two together cloudies the water.
If a company uses the interstate highway system then they should be taxed for it's use. These days it would be quite easy to tax say trucks hauling goods, and a company's trucks could be taxed for using federal and local infrastructure. Of course they will pass that tax down to the consumer.
When it comes to rich people, regardless of whether they are the salt of the earth, or whale turds on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, should be taxed just like anybody else. I'm for a simplified tax. That means no loop holes, easy to figure out how much you owe whether by flat rate or a simple bracketed rate.
I quit after getting my first black belt because the school I was a part of was in the process of lowering their standards A painfully honest KC Elbows
The crap that many schools do is not the crap I was taught or train in or teach.
Dam nit... it made sense when it was running through my head.
DM
People love Iron Crotch. They can't get enough Iron Crotch. We all ride the Iron Crotch for the exposure. Gene
Find the safety flaw in the training. Rory Miller.
Rogue, that's an interesting division, and one I hadn't considered. I was thinking that corporations are "legal people," in many senses, so just lumped them in.
Is there a way for us to figure out what the indirect benefits of public infrastructure/services are, relative to income as a whole, and incorporate that into our taxation scheme? I think that's what I was actually asking. And the reason I was asking it is because I would find analysis of something like that, provided it was done in a reasonably thorough, straightforward way, rather compelling. By way of example, presumably the Walton family has a greater vested interest in our transportation infrastructure, our civil security, our national security and our diplomatic relationships with other countries. This would extend to education as well, etc.
While it's clear they "owe more" in the absolute sense, which a flat tax would accomplish, I'm asking do they owe more in the RELATIVE sense? That is - do they derive a greater relative benefit than a middle class individual? Also, do they derive a greater or less relative benefit than what they are currently paying out?
The question I am asking is basically "given their tax burden now, are they paying too much or too little, and do we have any analytical mechanisms/tools that could give us a reasonable conclusion?"
This is in contrast to social justice arguments and personal responsibility arguments, which I find ludicrous unless there is a good cost-benefit analysis attached.
Question - is there enough room in our economy for a VAT tax (which would make every echelon in the chain pay, not just the consumer) and an elimination of the income tax altogether? Some economic growth would be lost to be sure, but I don't know how much.
One thing I am definitely not in favor of is a wealth tax, as some people have proposed (albeit not on this thread). You can be asset rich and cash poor. That would be a killer!
Last edited by Merryprankster; 05-23-2007 at 06:37 AM.
"In the world of martial arts, respect is often a given. In the real world, it must be earned."
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. "--Bertrand Russell
"Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. "--Benjamin Disraeli
"A conservative government is an organised hypocrisy."--Benjamin Disraeli
The rich man makes the rules that he knows many cannot follow...the rich man makes the decisions for the way poor people conduct their lives, while he does not have to see how really hard it is...the rich man gives you all the opportunities in the world but if you get out of line, whammo!
Reply]
This is a warped statement...NO ONE makes the rules for me, and no one but ME makes the decisions for the way i conduct my life...regardless of my level of income.
Royal Dragon's secret Alias profile for trolling.
http://www.teslamotors.com/
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