War on the Investor Class

[Hugh Conway]

"Corporations without appropriate government oversight are indistinguishable from organized crime"

 

Conclusion from a friend's 1987 accounting / auditing dissertation...

 

Based on my experience's every corporation I've ever worked for was out to fuck everyone except management. Vendors, Employees, the state and most importantly their investors*

 

*small caveat, the last one they loved one investor. He's facing numerous investment fraud lawsuits.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

What "got us here" is unregulated capitalism -

 

Really? So, what is Obamalama doing to fix *that* since it is clearly the underlying problem.

 

Answer: absolutely nothing.

 

[jmo]

Despite all the big press that those evil greedy corporations get, the majority of jobs in the US are created by small businesses. Obama's tax increases on the those evil rich over achievers will also hit small business owners, and in a much harder way than it will hit the corporations.

[j_b]

Great idea, Obama. Once all those stinkin' rich 401k people have been properly dealt with you can move on to another group? Your "plan" is either utter economic incompetence or a deliberate attempt to destroy capitalism.

 

There is little left to destroy, free market fundamentalists took care of that, and certainly not through "over-achieving", in spite of the kool-aid some around here seem to be drinking.

[kevbone]

Great idea, Obama. Once all those stinkin' rich 401k people have been properly dealt with you can move on to another group? Your "plan" is either utter economic incompetence or a deliberate attempt to destroy capitalism.

 

 

Its not Obama plan. That plan was put in place years before him.

[j_b]

Obama's tax increases on the those evil rich over achievers will also hit small business owners, and in a much harder way than it will hit the corporations.

 

Typical rightwing fear-mongering.

 

"Despite claims to the contrary, the President’s proposals concerning the top two income tax rates, limitations on itemized deductions and personal exemptions, and the carried interest tax break would affect only a very small fraction of small business owners. In fact, most small businesses would benefit substantially — from proposals to provide tax cuts to lower- and middle-income tax payers in the form of the Making Work Pay tax credit and to reform the health care system."

http://www.cbpp.org/2-28-09tax.htm

[j_b]

“There’s class warfare, all right,but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Warren Buffett

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

 

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

No need for fear-mongering with the market continuing daily to slide in the shit-hole.

 

 

[jmo]

Obama's tax increases on the those evil rich over achievers will also hit small business owners, and in a much harder way than it will hit the corporations.

 

Typical rightwing fear-mongering.

 

"Despite claims to the contrary, the President’s proposals concerning the top two income tax rates, limitations on itemized deductions and personal exemptions, and the carried interest tax break would affect only a very small fraction of small business owners. In fact, most small businesses would benefit substantially — from proposals to provide tax cuts to lower- and middle-income tax payers in the form of the Making Work Pay tax credit and to reform the health care system."

http://www.cbpp.org/2-28-09tax.htm

 

How about the taxes on energy that will hit everyone? Go back and read the WSJ article I posted on page 1.

[j_b]

Free-market fundamentalists have seen their ideology thoroughly discredited and they now fear the backlash, which explains their need for fear-mongering.

Edited March 7, 2009 by j_b

[j_b]

Obama's tax increases on the those evil rich over achievers will also hit small business owners, and in a much harder way than it will hit the corporations.

 

Typical rightwing fear-mongering.

 

"Despite claims to the contrary, the President’s proposals concerning the top two income tax rates, limitations on itemized deductions and personal exemptions, and the carried interest tax break would affect only a very small fraction of small business owners. In fact, most small businesses would benefit substantially — from proposals to provide tax cuts to lower- and middle-income tax payers in the form of the Making Work Pay tax credit and to reform the health care system."

http://www.cbpp.org/2-28-09tax.htm

 

How about the taxes on energy that will hit everyone? Go back and read the WSJ article I posted on page 1.

 

Please, as if the free market extremists who regularly write for the WSJ editorial page had any concern for taxes that hit the average joe the hardest. This is the kind of tax they have been arguing forever because it transfers the burden of taxation onto the middle class.

[tvashtarkatena]

Any time a conservative mentions 'class warfare' their credibility immediately drops to zero. 100% propoganda, pure and simple.

[j_b]

Class warfare?

 

 

note that this figure understates the problem since it is based on official inflation figures, which aren't reliable (CPI basket is fixed to minimize inflation figures), and the numbers are prior taxation which has increased as fraction of income for lower income earners notably via sales taxes, and other fees. Also, many more families have 2 wage earners than even 30 years ago, which generates additional expenses (child care, prepared food, etc ..) and a lower quality of life. So real income has decreased even more for the bottom half and increased less than shown for the upper quintiles. Finally, the upper quintile number is greatly skewed by the increased income of the upper 0.1% which has seen orders of magnitude increase in income over that period.

Edited March 7, 2009 by j_b

[el jefe]

the investor class has been waging war on the rest of us. time to fight back, i say.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

the investor class has been waging war on the rest of us. time to fight back, i say.

 

yeah, dig a pit for those buourgeois capitalist pigs, eh comrade?

[el jefe]

better than your plan, kkk, which is to kiss their asses and hope they'll leave you a tip.

[Fairweather]

I've never gotten a job from a poor man.

[jmo]

Is it possible that any of these greedy capitalist pigs making more than 200k a year got their through their own hard work and initiative? Why should we punish that by making them pay for others?

 

I can't even see how making the rich poor will benefit the poor. Make them pay for what? For your envy and greed?

[el jefe]

I've never gotten a job from a poor man.

 

spoken like a born toady, fairweather.

 

 

[j_b]

"Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

 

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?_r=1

[el jefe]

no one is talking about making the rich into poor people, jmo. what we're talking about is "responsibility". why is it that warren buffett's secretary has to pay a higher percentage of his income than mr buffett does? if warren buffett paid the same percentage as his secretary that would hardly make him into poor man. he'll have plenty of money left over, far more than his secretary to be sure.

[jmo]

no one is talking about making the rich into poor people, jmo. what we're talking about is "responsibility". why is it that warren buffett's secretary has to pay a higher percentage of his income than mr buffett does? if warren buffett paid the same percentage as his secretary that would hardly make him into poor man. he'll have plenty of money left over, far more than his secretary to be sure.

 

"the investor class has been waging war on the rest of us. time to fight back, i say."

 

What exactly did you mean by that?

 

To answer your question about why, Mr Buffet get most of his income from capital gains and dividends. Those are taxed at only 10-15%. If his secretary is single and makes more than 32k a year, they will move into the 25% tax bracket. With deductions, it's really more like 40k.

 

I agree with this post. It does not seem fair that he should pay a smaller percentage, despite making more. We have a different idea of responsibility though.

 

[glassgowkiss]

3. reduce government regulation of the economy,

4. control the money supply to reduce inflation.

now aren't you a brilliant one? isn't it the deregulation that led to this mess in the first place? and what inflation, we are dealing with deflation now.

[STP]

 

Typical rightwing fear-mongering.

 

 

Yep.

 

[video:youtube]reCpV1YHuYs

[JayB]

What "got us here" is unregulated capitalism - that's the way it works. Do you really think the Wall St. types making money hand over fist really had any thought of personal responsibility - ever did - or ever will? No way. They were selling those mystical CDSs and such with only one goal - to make tons of money. That's what capitalism cares about - nothing more or less.

 

The idea that government has no role in getting us out of this mess that Bush and the repubs put us in lacks any memory. A hands off policy and the idea of market self-regulation is what got us here. Credit ratings of AAA for things worse than junk bonds; no job, no income, no problem loans - WTF. Yea, there has been some folks hoping for the American dream and over-reaching. But the bulk of the problem was, as usual - unregulated greed.

 

Unless someone comes up with a way to eliminate greed from human nature, I'd be much happier if legislation enacted in response to this crisis contented itself with devising and strengthening mechanisms to constrain its worst effects in a way that preserves essential rights and liberties instead of attempting to remodel the human psyche. Since most transactions involve a buyer and a seller, one of the most effective ways to combat greed it to put rules in place that use one guy's desire to avoid getting cheated as a check on the other guy's desire to cheat him.

 

Little things like placing the onus for making the buyers of bonds responsible for having a bond issue rated instead of the sellers, and a million other little tweaks to the rules that govern transactions are a very effective way to do so, and constitute a legitimate and essential role for government. This and many other minor tweaks would make it much tougher for the douche with NINJA status to use an uber-douche in NYC as an intermediary to sell a stake in the debt that he used to shoehorn himself into a McMansion to a dupe representing a German pension fund who took one look at the plot of fertility versus pension obligations in Deutschland, slugged down a pentuple dose of prozac with a stein full of Jager, and went on a desperate hunt for yield all over the globe.

 

I'd agree that the ultimate blame for this cluster, while complex, ultimately lies with the people writing the rules and the people lending the money. However - there's plenty of blame to go around, and you'd be remiss if you didn't spare a large helping for everyone you know who borrowed beyond their means to buy a home/car/boat/etc - which I imagine includes quite a few people that you know and like, and no small numbers of your neighbors. At the end of the day - no one forced our personal-debt-to-GDP ratio to $100% (hovered at 30-50% for most of the century, last hit its present level of 100% in 1929) except us.

 

I'd also suggest that this phenomenon is hardly constrained to Americans. Run the metrics on residential properties in Vancouver, BC for example, and I suspect that you'll see home-price-to-gross-household-income metrics that are every bit as bad as most of the worst bubble markets in the US, if not worse. Ditto for large swaths of Europe, NZ, Australia, vacation hotspots around the world, and quite a bit of Asia outside of Japan. I can tell you that the above ratio is currently 3.2 for the US, but sits at 5.7 and 6.2 for NZ and Australia, respectively. Look out below.