i have been comfortably straddling the centrist line, voting D in national elections and R for certain state (calif) lawmakers because calif has been in certain (not all) ways overregulated. i’m a firm believer in no regulations or laws unless there’s a damned good and necessary reason for them, and maybe the discipline of striking and old and useless law from the books for every new one.
but since my 20s, for over 40 years now, i’ve been of the view that earnings-without-consideration are a problem for any society and a big one in the U.S. what that meant in the 1980s was the corporate raider. since the turn of the century i guess in retrospect it’s meant private equity because altho PE seems like a kinder, gentler way to make money as i’ve watched it in practice it’s really not played out that differently than greenmail, and buy-and-dismember, with this exception: instead of the company’s owner getting screwed it’s the company’s customers getting screwed. the end result is the same: these investors provide no value in consideration for the money they “earn.”
likewise profiteers from windfall opportunities during war or disasters. likewise corporate boards who pay obscene amounts to CEOs. likewise policies that allow companies to legally avoid consequences. (disney’s now infamous waiver of liability.) the bought and paid for tax avoidance. most of which is legal, but in my view maybe shouldn’t be.
i would be sympathetic to an argument from a politician that had smart, surgical remedies for the above that does not strangle innovation and risk.
i have been comfortably straddling the centrist line, voting D in national elections and R for certain state (calif) lawmakers because calif has been in certain (not all) ways overregulated. i’m a firm believer in no regulations or laws unless there’s a damned good and necessary reason for them, and maybe the discipline of striking and old and useless law from the books for every new one.
but since my 20s, for over 40 years now, i’ve been of the view that earnings-without-consideration are a problem for any society and a big one in the U.S. what that meant in the 1980s was the corporate raider. since the turn of the century i guess in retrospect it’s meant private equity because altho PE seems like a kinder, gentler way to make money as i’ve watched it in practice it’s really not played out that differently than greenmail, and buy-and-dismember, with this exception: instead of the company’s owner getting screwed it’s the company’s customers getting screwed. the end result is the same: these investors provide no value in consideration for the money they “earn.”
likewise profiteers from windfall opportunities during war or disasters. likewise corporate boards who pay obscene amounts to CEOs. likewise policies that allow companies to legally avoid consequences. (disney’s now infamous waiver of liability.) the bought and paid for tax avoidance. most of which is legal, but in my view maybe shouldn’t be.
i would be sympathetic to an argument from a politician that had smart, surgical remedies for the above that does not strangle innovation and risk.
I thought this thread title meant that you were quitting ST. 😂
On the local level, there are places (CA and Boulder, for example) where land use is over-regulated, which produces regressive consequences.
But, as a broad national proposition, we are nowhere close to being over-regulated in the aggregate. (Though surely there are examples of regulations that should be loosened). We are an amazingly innovative country, which has produced immense wealth. We also have extraordinary wealth inequality, rapacious corporate behavior, and serious environmental and health problems. We could and should selectively tighten regulations and can do so without undue harm to the national economy.
i have been comfortably straddling the centrist line, voting D in national elections and R for certain state (calif) lawmakers because calif has been in certain (not all) ways overregulated. i’m a firm believer in no regulations or laws unless there’s a damned good and necessary reason for them, and maybe the discipline of striking and old and useless law from the books for every new one.
but since my 20s, for over 40 years now, i’ve been of the view that earnings-without-consideration are a problem for any society and a big one in the U.S. what that meant in the 1980s was the corporate raider. since the turn of the century i guess in retrospect it’s meant private equity because altho PE seems like a kinder, gentler way to make money as i’ve watched it in practice it’s really not played out that differently than greenmail, and buy-and-dismember, with this exception: instead of the company’s owner getting screwed it’s the company’s customers getting screwed. the end result is the same: these investors provide no value in consideration for the money they “earn.”
likewise profiteers from windfall opportunities during war or disasters. likewise corporate boards who pay obscene amounts to CEOs. likewise policies that allow companies to legally avoid consequences. (disney’s now infamous waiver of liability.) the bought and paid for tax avoidance. most of which is legal, but in my view maybe shouldn’t be.
i would be sympathetic to an argument from a politician that had smart, surgical remedies for the above that does not strangle innovation and risk.
Despite some posts, I agree a good bit with that from a regulation standpoint (less is fine). Where I have grown more at issue with it is that in the past it was a seeking the limit in regards to profit, or wealth. Nowadays my issue with it is how with the lobbying/pac laws and such, folks have stretched it to limit with regards to POWER. That I have a severe problem with. It allows fringes to thrive. It’s also pushed more and more people to believe we’re at war with each other because every political stance you should hold is “because someone else took yours or is stealing yours or keeping you from getting yours”.
When low regulation was only about making the benjis, fine. But now that it’s morphed into this. I’m not down.
A year after the layoffs at the Hostess plant in Illinois, Apollo and Metropoulos arranged for the company to borrow about $1.3 billion. Apollo and Metropoulos used most of that sum to pay themselves, and their investors, an early dividend on their investment. The firms also found a way to make money even after the company was sold. The firms, The Times investigation found, struck a deal to collect as much as $400 million over the next 15 years, based on what Hostess’s future tax savings might be.
Let’s pull a company out of bankruptcy and then saddle it with a $1B “loan” to pay ourselves back.
A year after the layoffs at the Hostess plant in Illinois, Apollo and Metropoulos arranged for the company to borrow about $1.3 billion. Apollo and Metropoulos used most of that sum to pay themselves, and their investors, an early dividend on their investment. The firms also found a way to make money even after the company was sold. The firms, The Times investigation found, struck a deal to collect as much as $400 million over the next 15 years, based on what Hostess’s future tax savings might be.
Let’s pull a company out of bankruptcy and then saddle it with a $1B “loan” to pay ourselves back.
just taking IRONMAN as an example, providence equity partners took out a loan that paid investors back 100 percent, with the idea that they’d eventually sell the company and the sale price - from the first dollar - would be 100% profit (because the loan cashed the investors out). in the meantime, IM had to repay the loan to the bank out of operations, severely straining operations.
anyway, the sale of the company to the chinese ended up netting the investors 4x what they paid in to buy IM, and we all have seen what that’s meant to the racing landscape. and i think PEP is probably one of the nicer PE companies.
but you’re right. one of the real pissers in all of this is the abuse of the bankruptcy process, and the ability of the principals to rake in huge fortunes while robbing the company of actual money made in operations and the pension fund and the real estate and so on.
I think there are ways for organisations to be commercially successful and socially responsible.
It is also possible to facilitate a system that permits the upside but punishes the downside and some deserve punishment. English water treatment firms were privatised. Bought by overseas organisations who borrowed massively. Payed enormous dividends to themselves whilst failing to maintain the minimum required infrastructure and polluting on a scale not seen since the discovery of cholera.
So, wipe the share holders out. Nationalise it and then prosecute the owners for the costs of cleaning up and meeting their responsibilities which they failed to do because the penalties and fines were less than the costs of investing
I do not think Scandinavian success or even many euro social democrats that are successful is a result or politicians being threatened with punishment. There are other factors at work
I thought this was going to be another thread about having to moderate and ban people. Instead, a topic only slightly more complex than forum moderation.
I know this isn’t the point of this thread but is it really a good video? There’s a small number of people who have become insanely wealthy and that makes the chart look crazy. That’s how charts work. If you have to make room for a billion then $50k or $100k or maybe even $1 million disappears in the comparison. But they didn’t take my money to do it. So where’s the real problem? What I have looks like less because they have so much. But I don’t actually have less. Why should it bother me? I’m not saying there aren’t financial challenges that need to be solved (and the rest of this thread highlights some of them) but for me I don’t see how pursuing income equality is the right path.
Because the money at the top does, in fact, come from those below. Contrary to the right-wing myth of “trickle down,” in actuality money “trickles up” from the workers and spenders that form the bottom base of the economy, up toward those who own and control things. Yes, the people at the top take risks with their capital and should be rewarded, and they create jobs in the process. But they have been keeping a larger share every year, and it’s gotten out of hand. The average CEO used to earn 30 to 40 times the salary of the average worker. Today, the average is 272 times the salary of the average worker. Do you really think that difference is reflected in what a CEO brings to the table?
I thought this was going to be another thread about having to moderate and ban people. Instead, a topic only slightly more complex than forum moderation.
I do not think Scandinavian success or even many euro social democrats that are successful is a result or politicians being threatened with punishment. There are other factors at work
By punishment I meant vote out of office. I think there is a strong residual flinty Lutheran value system in Scandinavia. Better people. Less emphasis on freedom more on community. Starting to fray though. Younger generation felt to be out of touch with the outlook that got the countries to where they are. At least that is what I sensed from parents of our exchange student.
Think it might be a simple size thing. Small countries tend to feel more cohesive, greater sense of being in it together, fewer degrees of separation between the top and the bottom. Plus the Scandinavian countries until recently had pretty low immigration levels which meant they were much more homogeneous. All of that leads to a stronger sense of community. Also means there is greater acceptance of high taxes to fund a strong public sector when people feel closely connected with those who are net beneficiaries of that system. Observations from having worked quite a bit in all the Nordic countries over the years (though never permanently lived in any of them unfortunately).
I know this isn’t the point of this thread but is it really a good video? There’s a small number of people who have become insanely wealthy and that makes the chart look crazy. That’s how charts work. If you have to make room for a billion then $50k or $100k or maybe even $1 million disappears in the comparison. But they didn’t take my money to do it. So where’s the real problem? What I have looks like less because they have so much. But I don’t actually have less. Why should it bother me? I’m not saying there aren’t financial challenges that need to be solved (and the rest of this thread highlights some of them) but for me I don’t see how pursuing income equality is the right path.
How much do we pay for social support for Walmart employees while the Waltons print money? How much are we paying to deal with the impacts of the opioid epidemic. Yes- the government and thus taxpayers are holding up many companies that are extracting tons of profits. Why do we pay for stadiums for billionaire sports team owners while ticket prices have gotten out of reach for many?
There are plenty of examples of how your average tax payer is supporting the environment that allows these corporations to extract more than their fair share from the economy.
Why am I paying for new schools instead of the developers who are getting rich while saddling me with traffic and more kids to school in the community?
ETA I definitely think there should be some income inequality- but the current system is crazy. Some are extracting all of the benefits and paying almost none of the costs.
I know this isn’t the point of this thread but is it really a good video? There’s a small number of people who have become insanely wealthy and that makes the chart look crazy. That’s how charts work. If you have to make room for a billion then $50k or $100k or maybe even $1 million disappears in the comparison. But they didn’t take my money to do it. So where’s the real problem? What I have looks like less because they have so much. But I don’t actually have less. Why should it bother me? I’m not saying there aren’t financial challenges that need to be solved (and the rest of this thread highlights some of them) but for me I don’t see how pursuing income equality is the right path.
How much do we pay for social support for Walmart employees while the Waltons print money? How much are we paying to deal with the impacts of the opioid epidemic. Yes- the government and thus taxpayers are holding up many companies that are extracting tons of profits. Why do we pay for stadiums for billionaire sports team owners while ticket prices have gotten out of reach for many?
There are plenty of examples of how your average tax payer is supporting the environment that allows these corporations to extract more than their fair share from the economy.
Why am I paying for new schools instead of the developers who are getting rich while saddling me with traffic and more kids to school in the community?
ETA I definitely think there should be some income inequality- but the current system is crazy. Some are extracting all of the benefits and paying almost none of the costs.
Sports arenas present a free rider-type problem. A lot of the revenue from sporting events and concerts goes to bars, restaurants, hotels, etc. The owner of the sports team does not capture (much of) that revenue. The city benefits from those expenditures, both from the jobs created and from the taxes on those items. It is not crazy for a city to subsidize a sports facility, since it is extremely hard to get all those restaurants, bars, and hotels to contribute. That does not exclude the possibility that a city is way over-paying, especially if there is no real threat that the team(s) will relocate to another city.