Looters' proposal for "recovery"

[j_b]

The US Chamber of Commerce came up with a bunch of new ideas that haven't been tried before: deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.

 

and don't forget cuts in social security to help pay for wars

 

[rob]

haters gonna hate. Looters gonna loot.

[JayB]

Does the argument go something like this?

 

"Employers offer a salary as a means of attracting and retaining a sufficient number of workers to complete a given set of tasks. Employers don't base their compensation on whatever subjective notion of fairness that they happen to abide by. They base it on their determinations of what will be necessary to fill the position.

 

The only question that matters here is the level of compensation necessary to attract and retain a sufficient number of policemen in Oakland. If they can't staff their positions, then the compensation that they are offering is too low. If the number of qualified applicants for each opening is many times the number required to fill each vacancy, then the compensation that they are offering is excessive.

 

Similarly - the point of having a police force is to maximize the safety and security of the citizenry. The best way to do that is to provide the greatest amount of policing by qualified officers at the lowest possible cost. You do that by paying the minimum necessary to attract and retain a sufficient number qualified officers.

 

If your primary concern is optimizing the private welfare of policemen and their unions, rather than the public welfare, then you pay each officer the maximum that you believe that you can extract from the private sector at any given time. This is what the policeman, firemen, and every other cadre of unionized public sector employees has done since it became legal for them to organize. Minimum delivery of services to the public at the maximum cost.

 

Their compensation demands have now exceeded the private economy's capacity to fund them. The only choices are layoffs, a reduction in compensation to a level that the private economy can fund, or some combination of the two. The solution you prefer depends on whether you think the purpose of government is to maximize the well-being of unionized public employees, or the public that they ostensibly serve.

 

Given tenor of your post, your preference is clear. Unfortunately this preference is at odds with reality. Compensation demands that can't be funded - won't. Public employee compensation will be cut by reducing numbers, compensation, or both."

[rob]

tl;dnr

[summitchaserCJB]

The US Chamber of Commerce came up with a bunch of new ideas that haven't been tried before: deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.

 

and don't forget cuts in social security to help pay for wars

 

I assume you are referencing Rand. I pretty much took away from her book (Atlas Shrugged) that she is essentially anti-liberal. These de-regulations and tax cuts are essentially libertarian- quite Rand. She is against people who refuse to carry their own weight-hence the phrase "looters". For instance- if you deregulate business- we will have a more robust free market economy. Letting the rich keep their money is simply a way of rewarding hard work. So, maybe change the reference.

[rob]

[j_b]

Rand was an intellectual midget that passed for a giant among nincompoops, including those that are responsible for the present economic collapse (Greenspan among them).

[j_b]

Unfortunately this preference is at odds with reality. Compensation demands that can't be funded - won't. Public employee compensation will be cut by reducing numbers, compensation, or both."

 

Spare us the drivel. Nobody needs to be reminded of the justification behind the voodoo economics that led to the present economic fiasco. Every single measure proposed by the Chamber of Commerce has been fully implemented for the last 30+ years. You guys are the true DEAD-ENDERS. I hope you built those walls high enough.

[Choada_Boy]

The US Chamber of Commerce came up with a bunch of new ideas that haven't been tried before: deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.

 

and don't forget cuts in social security to help pay for wars

 

I assume you are referencing Rand. I pretty much took away from her book (Atlas Shrugged) that she is essentially anti-liberal. These de-regulations and tax cuts are essentially libertarian- quite Rand. She is against people who refuse to carry their own weight-hence the phrase "looters". For instance- if you deregulate business- we will have a more robust free market economy. Letting the rich keep their money is simply a way of rewarding hard work. So, maybe change the reference.

 

Thank you for summarizing the report you had to write on a "grown up" book.

 

Ayn Rand was a cunt. Nothing she wrote has any value as anything other that fiction. If you read it for more than that you're a dipshit. The last 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged was drivel I didn't even read. Interesting tale to that point, though. Kind of like having a job interview with a businessman, until you find out his business is Amway. Then you want to punch him in the face.

[JayB]

Unfortunately this preference is at odds with reality. Compensation demands that can't be funded - won't. Public employee compensation will be cut by reducing numbers, compensation, or both."

 

Spare us the drivel. Nobody needs to be reminded of the justification behind the voodoo economics that led to the present economic fiasco. Every single measure proposed by the Chamber of Commerce has been fully implemented for the last 30+ years. You guys are the true DEAD-ENDERS. I hope you built those walls high enough.

 

Their compensation demands have now exceeded the private economy's capacity to fund them. The only choices are layoffs, a reduction in compensation to a level that the private economy can fund, or some combination of the two. The solution you prefer depends on whether you think the purpose of government is to maximize the well-being of unionized public employees, or the public that they ostensibly serve.

 

 

See below:

 

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=public%20employee%20layoffs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=nws:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wn&fp=2192b3580183e448

 

 

 

 

 

[j_b]

Dude, you and your boys have driven the economy into such a hole with your trickle down bullshit, tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of industry (especially finance) and privatization of the commons that the tax base has shrunk to such a point that it doesn't have the capacity to fund anything, littler less the wars you have pushed on us, or tax cuts for people who don't reinvest in our economy.

[summitchaserCJB]

The US Chamber of Commerce came up with a bunch of new ideas that haven't been tried before: deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.

 

and don't forget cuts in social security to help pay for wars

 

I assume you are referencing Rand. I pretty much took away from her book (Atlas Shrugged) that she is essentially anti-liberal. These de-regulations and tax cuts are essentially libertarian- quite Rand. She is against people who refuse to carry their own weight-hence the phrase "looters". For instance- if you deregulate business- we will have a more robust free market economy. Letting the rich keep their money is simply a way of rewarding hard work. So, maybe change the reference.

 

Thank you for summarizing the report you had to write on a "grown up" book.

 

Ayn Rand was a cunt. Nothing she wrote has any value as anything other that fiction. If you read it for more than that you're a dipshit. The last 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged was drivel I didn't even read. Interesting tale to that point, though. Kind of like having a job interview with a businessman, until you find out his business is Amway. Then you want to punch him in the face.

Rand was most certainty an intellectual and philosopher. Try reading "For the New Intellectual". Just sayin...

[rob]

Rand was most certainty an intellectual and philosopher. Try reading "For the New Intellectual". Just sayin...

 

She was as much an "intellectual and philosopher" as L. Ron Hubbard. And maybe even crazier. Plus she had nasty crabs living in her snizz.

[j_b]

Drill, Gamble, Loot, Starve: The Chamber of Commerce, the GOP, and the Politics of Plunder

by Richard (RJ) Eskow

Posted: July 15, 2010 09:24 AM

 

The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an "open letter" to the President, Congress, and the American people which contains its blueprint for our political future. It lays out the current Republican playbook in stark terms, and it reads like the battle plan for those alien spaceships from Independence Day: Drain the resources, take everything from the population, strip the land to a husk... and then presumably sail away in mile-long spaceships toward the next targeted planet.

 

What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness. There will be another example of this corporate-driven mindset this week, possibly even today, when all but a handful of Republican Senators vote against a moderate set of curbs on Wall Street excesses. The Democratic Party may disappoint its supporters from time to time, but it seems that Republicans never do -- once you accept the fact that its real "supporters" are the mega-businesses represented by the Chamber of Commerce. Some of the delegates who chanted "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP Convention are staring out their windows at oil-soaked beaches, while others have gone broke in an economy ruined by Wall Street gambling. That won't stop the Politics of Plunder. (Come to think of it, "drill, baby, drill" would have been a perfect motto for those spaceships.)

 

To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises. Any CEO of a smaller company who's pressured by one of the Chamber's sales representatives to join, as I was in my business life, is being asked to subsidize policies that will benefit the Chamber's mega-donors -- often at her or his own expense. The Chamber's letter serves those mega-interests well, and we can expect most Republicans to follow it in lockstep, no doubt with cheering crowds pumped up for the same old chants and a few new ones.

 

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/drill-gamble-loot-starve_b_647271.html

[rob]

Maybe we can upload a virus to the GOP mothership using Porter's Apple laptop, like they did in Independence Day. That would be awesome.

[Bronco]

I assume you are referencing Rand. I pretty much took away from her book (Atlas Shrugged) that she is essentially anti-liberal.

 

Helloooo captain obvious!!!

[j_b]

She was as much an "intellectual and philosopher" as L. Ron Hubbard. And maybe even crazier. Plus she had nasty crabs living in her snizz.

 

"She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live [...] a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion."

[rob]

"She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live [...] a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion."

 

Dude, she was a philosopher and intellectual, ok?? Stop trying to kill summitchaser's boner.

[wfinley]

She was as much an "intellectual and philosopher" as L. Ron Hubbard. And maybe even crazier. Plus she had nasty crabs living in her snizz.

 

"She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live [...] a horribly damaged woman who deserves the one thing she spent her life raging against: compassion."

 

Ayn Rand might have developed the highly objectionably theory of Objectivism --- but she was an excellent writer. Comparing her to Dan Brown is ridiculous. Brown's books sell in the millions - but his books aren't an allegory for a movement. The beauty of Rand was that she wrote wonderful books that can be read and enjoyed by anyone -- but at the same time analyzed, critiqued and praised by multimillionaire execs who need to come up with a reason as for why they pay their workers minimum wage.

 

Don't deride her writing -- Atas and the Fountainhead were excellent books that should be read by everyone. Deriding Rand's fiction becuase of its conservative undertones is akin to conservative's refusing to read Heller or Vonegut becuase of their view on war.

[j_b]

Dude, she was a philosopher and intellectual, ok?? Stop trying to kill summitchaser's boner.

 

Even Greenspan who spent 20 years in Rand's closet (he was a close member of her inner circle), eventually admitted he got it wrong so there is hope. Although, Greenspan probably said the exact opposite in the next sentence like dead-enders usually do so scratch that idea.

 

Isn't it scary though that people in charge of policy for as long as Greenspan was, idealize frauds with nasty ideology like Rand.

[j_b]

Deriding Rand's fiction becuase of its conservative undertones is akin to conservative's refusing to read Heller or Vonegut becuase of their view on war.

 

Do you really think it's because of "conservative undertones" that Rand's drivel is pushed almost every day on the airwaves by neanderthals like Beck and Limbaugh?

[wfinley]

Deriding Rand's fiction becuase of its conservative undertones is akin to conservative's refusing to read Heller or Vonegut becuase of their view on war.

 

Do you really think it's because of "conservative undertones" that Rand's drivel is pushed almost every day on the airwaves by neanderthals like Beck and Limbaugh?

 

I agree with you that her philosophy is abhorrent, I was just pointing out that Atlas and Fountainhead were two of the most influential fiction novels of the 20th century. They're well written and in my opinion should be read by everyone -- especially given how relevant they are in today's political climate.

[rob]

agreed, Atlas should be read by everyone, because then people are qualified to deride it (and her).

 

She's a decent writer, but Atlas Shrugged was no literary work of genius. It wasn't THAT good.

[j_b]

I agree with you that her philosophy is abhorrent, I was just pointing out that Atlas and Fountainhead were two of the most influential fiction novels of the 20th century. They're well written and in my opinion should be read by everyone -- especially given how relevant they are in today's political climate.

 

People don't need to read her books to understand that the classic right wing playbook is to blame "welfare queens" to deflect attention from their plundering public coffers and the middle class.

 

IMO, her influence is a myth perpetuated by right wing media so as to push the easily conned into believing that her nasty philosophy is the work of a superior intellect. The right wing needs to create myths about the would-be philosophical underpinning of untenable positions like "why should the Supermen of Wall Street be regulated to protect the lice of Main Street?"

[Nitrox]

Unfortunately this preference is at odds with reality. Compensation demands that can't be funded - won't. Public employee compensation will be cut by reducing numbers, compensation, or both."

 

Spare us the drivel. Nobody needs to be reminded of the justification behind the voodoo economics that led to the present economic fiasco. Every single measure proposed by the Chamber of Commerce has been fully implemented for the last 30+ years. You guys are the true DEAD-ENDERS. I hope you built those walls high enough.