And you conveniently ignore the fact that many of the wealthy agree that they are being coddled with low taxes and too many loopholes not available to the middle class. But hey.......you keep on pretending that if we just give the wealthiest people more breaks that will trickle down to the middle class.....of course it will, and elephants will fly too.
If this is true they are free to send their money into the government- why wait till they are forced to do so?
Warren Buffet is free to pay more in taxes- so why doen't he just shut his big fat trap and write the check? He's a hypocrite.
I am just saying I prefer the movers and shakers making the decisions on the most productive industries to invest with their money over giving it to the goverment so they can pay off their buddies with the bridge to nowhere and a solar energy plant that China completely undercut on price.
And that is the other talking point balloon I want to bust. American companies taking jobs overseas. A lot of those manufacturing jobs will move overseas whether is it American companies doing it or simply Chinese and Indian industrialists taking a bigeer chunk of the market from the US suppliers.
And adding the price of Obamacare to labor costs, will just make it harder for American based manufacturing to remain competitive.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Based on reading this thread, I'd say Obama's class warfare strategy is so far a stunning success! It's going to be a long 14 months.
Instead of being a leader and supporting complete tax reform with lower rates and deductions (like his deficit commission advised, and Repubs support), he has initiated a full-blown class warfare debate for the 2012 campaign! Good job.
Carry on.
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
Joe wrote:
Instead of being a leader and supporting complete tax reform with lower rates and deductions (like his deficit commission advised, and Repubs support), he has initiated a full-blown class warfare debate for the 2012 campaign! Good job.
Carry on.
I think we are all well aware of the fact that whatever Obama does, if it isn't what Republicans support, is bad. That doesn't leave a lot of room for actually discussing the merits of his approach.
Joe wrote:
Instead of being a leader and supporting complete tax reform with lower rates and deductions (like his deficit commission advised, and Repubs support), he has initiated a full-blown class warfare debate for the 2012 campaign! Good job.
Carry on.
I think we are all well aware of the fact that whatever Obama does, if it isn't what Republicans support, is bad. That doesn't leave a lot of room for actually discussing the merits of his approach.
Actually, even if the Republicans have supported it in the past, if President Obama suggests the same thing, they will oppose it.
SS109 wrote: PS,
So you wouldn't penalize a country or company that was selling steel for 50% less than they could produce it for? Taking losses for a couple years so that their US competition would go out of business?
I had an economic Prof. who agreed with you, if other companies are willing to lose money selling products to you below cost, buy them, buy as much as you can until you bankrupt them, or their country if the industry is state subsidized like Airbus.
My question becomes how do you penalize them in a manner that punishes them and also benefits the industrious segments of your own nation that seek to export their goods and services to that country? We all know, or at least we should know, that a domestic market alone does not a healthy company make. The potential size of the US market is 310 million people, China has a population that is 1 billion people larger than this figure, India's population is 850 million more than this figure. South America all told has about 70 million more people. I'm quite certain we have the capability of producing for our own domestic needs, but how healthy can our industries be if the only market for their goods is domestic?
Is Levi Strauss financially stronger if they sew the jeans in the Dominican Republic such that they can produce jeans at a price the middle class in South and Central America can afford to pay and then import those jeans to sell to the US market at a price the middle class there can also pay? Of course they are. That is why they sew jeans in the Dominican Republic and not in the US. If they were still sewn here, the price to the US consumer would be about the same, but the price to everyone else would not be affordable except to the upper class, which means Levi Strauss would sell fewer pairs of jeans every year than they currently do. I don't care if you levied a 200% tariff on Chinese jeans, they would still be less expensive than the ones Levi Strauss could manufacture domestically. Levying a tariff on Levi Strauss for every pair of jeans sewn in the Dominican Republic and imported would only make them less competitive than they already are domestically. Force them to sew them here to avoid the tariff and all you will get is a small plant to serve the rather small domestic market that exists. They won't close down their Dominican operation, they will simply stop shipping jeans sewn there into the US. You can't bring back the manufacturing base we used to have until the other economies mature as ours has done and their labor rates and other costs associated with manufacturing rise to something approaching parity with the cost of domestic manufacturing.
The US has about 4% of the total world population at the moment. How big of a manufacturing base do you need to supply such a small percentage of the population? Not only that, but Levi Strauss can't compete with a Dominican manufacturer in the Dominican market unless they also manufacture there. Look at the number of people who proudly point out the fact that they drive an "American built" Toyota. Are Dominican citizens any less proud than we are in this regard? Won't Levi Strauss sell more jeans in the Dominican Republic if Dominican citizens are also able to point out that their legendary Levi's 501 Blues are sewn by their fellow citizens even though it is a US company?
You want to levy a tariff of Chinese steel? Fine, but don't be surprised when the $10 Billion in agriculture we ship to China goes away when they levy a retaliatory tariff on our agricultural products. You know what the #1 export of this nation to China is at the moment? Believe it or not it is computers and electronics - which will also face a retaliatory tariff if we start adding tariffs to their goods. Who is going to pick up the slack for that $14 Billion in annual sales of computers and electronics, the $10 Billion in agricultural exports, the $9 Billion in chemicals and all the other goods we export to China every year when the retaliatory tariffs on our goods are levied by the Chinese government to answer the tariffs our government imposes on Chinese goods? How many jobs will the loss of those sales cost the nation? How much will GM lose in profits when the Chinese government simply seizes the Buick plant and starts manufacturing the same exact car under a different name? What are we going to do at that point, stop trading with them entirely? Impose economic sanctions on the largest holder of our debt outside of the Federal Reserve? What happens if they decide to dump the Treasury Notes our out of control federal spending on individual charity programs created an opportunity for them to purchase?
That's why the federal spending has to be cut in half, and quickly. The federal government, under the pretense of providing for the "general welfare" has exposed this nation to an unfathomable level of economic risk with the $16 Trillion in debt it will have rung up by the time the 2012 elections roll around trying to make itself the central clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of the national charity spending. That is subverting the general welfare of the union, not providing for it.
Joe wrote:
Instead of being a leader and supporting complete tax reform with lower rates and deductions (like his deficit commission advised, and Repubs support), he has initiated a full-blown class warfare debate for the 2012 campaign! Good job.
Carry on.
I think we are all well aware of the fact that whatever Obama does, if it isn't what Republicans support, is bad. That doesn't leave a lot of room for actually discussing the merits of his approach.
The Republicans actually are looking at the Obama plan like a buffet, we like this, pass on this, modify this. So that goes against the Dem talking point that anything Obama wants the Republicans shoot down.
Just last week, the Republicans and Dems got a new highway transportation bill passed. But you keep believing that Obama can't get anything past these Tea Party obstructionists.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
