I would appreciate your thoughts regarding the video, and I would like your thoughts regarding this discussion below that James and I were having. I think it is interesting on many different levels.
"Though she did compare behavior conditioning methods, I did not sense she thought of the actual people as "animals". In fact she then went on to start discussing how to help some people. (ie not animals) It was in bad taste though." G2A
"Well the fact still is her district has some of the lowest unemployment rates in the state and yet her district also has some of the highest food stamp use in the state. Hm..what's the only conclusion there. Ah yes..that people in her district are busting their asses working.....and not getting paid enough." James
"What would you do about that? Should we pay fast food workers more? Therefore raising everyone's food price... Or should they get more education and get better paying jobs?" G2A
"If they have such piss poor paying jobs, G2A, how do you propose they increase their education? Oh there's not an easy answer to the situation. But I do know that Mrs. Franson should have the brains and the morality enough to not blatantly insult the people that need help. But really..if a company can afford to pay its ceo several million dollars then it can afford to pay its workers more. Maybe we should stop giving all the wealth to the 1%?" James
"Correction: you don't to stop giving the wealth to the top 1%. Your answer is to take more wealth from the top 1% and then somehow redistribute it via some socialistic method... " G2A
How does providing free food impact people, their beliefs, their behaviors, their motivation, their self esteem, etc? How does forcefully taking the money to pay for this impact people, their beliefs, their behaviors, their motivation, their self esteem, etc? How long should society provide that free food? What should we do after that period of time? Other thoughts?
The problem is that people don't make enough in income. As even Fox News points out, 47% of working Americans don't make enough in wages to pay federal income taxes. The poor in this country are a working poor. And I think a lot of those folks live in Mary Franson's district, and quite possibly are Mary Franson voters, strangely enough.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
maybe we should randomly choose one child from each district to battle in a death match to win food rations for their region.
ReplyDeleteHiram,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think can be done to improve this situation? Should we?
Laurie,
That seems more like a response to the value of human life... Maybe these topics are tied together.
In your case the lucky best fighter wins, instead of the lucky richest...
I don't have any easy fix solutions. We have been down the wrong road for a long time now. The problems are there for all to see. I am pretty sure the solution isn't turning more money over to Wall Street bankers in the form of bonuses.
ReplyDelete==Hiram
I could easily support raising the tax rate on those wealthy folks in order to chip away at the national debt, however I do not see how that is going to help the working poor.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, they are not paying taxes anyway. And I sure don't want the Gov't writing them more checks for doing nothing. That definitely sends the wrong signal and leads to a worsening in the situation.
Maybe we have a test we can apply to sort this out. In fact, we've already done the experiment. When nearby Wisconsin implemented welfare reform in terms of a job search requirement, 20% of recipients immediately left the program. Conclusion: they didn't want to look for a job and didn't need the welfare check. Later, after Bill Clinton finally signed national welfare reform, almost 80% of former recipients took a job or went back to school. Since then the reform has been largely eviscerated by liberals in Congress and in the states, so numbers are climbing again, but the fact remains that 80% of welfare is and should be "short term assistance" at best, and that a fair percentage of even that is fostering dependence rather than independence. There remain that rather intractable 20%, however, and I attribute that to two things: a lack of "tough love" in government welfare programs that will require some positive effort in exchange for "temporary" assistance, and the fact that we have some cases of generational dependence, to where the work ethic, self-esteem and honesty have been almost bred out of a few folks. I've met a few; it's too sad, and how anyone can be criticized for wanting something better for them is beyond my simple understanding.
ReplyDeleteJ. Ewing
It's a complicated problem. Somehow we have stumbled into an economic system that rewards the Mitt Romney's of the world beyond the dreams of avarice, for producing literally nothing of value. It's a politically and economically unstable situation.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
J,
ReplyDeleteThank heavens you are not a Legislator or that "bred out" comment would have people picketing your office...
Hiram,
I am not sure why you dislike Bain/Romney so much? Wiki Bain Capital It looks like they prefer to buy struggling companies cheap, fix them, and sell them for more. Would it be better for the employees if the companies stayed bloated and failed?
Yes, I have no desire (or ability) to run for the legislature. It's much easier to stand outside and throw rocks. I can't get elected because I think we have to regain the ability to "call 'em like we see 'em" or we're going to pussyfoot our way into a third-rate country. If you don't like what I said about you, then don't do things that will get those things said about you. Don't picket my office and prove me right, go out and prove me wrong! I would be delighted.
ReplyDeleteJ. Ewing
I am not sure why you dislike Bain/Romney so much?
ReplyDeleteBecause they produce nothing. They buy undervalued companies, skim the value, repackage them, and send the on their merry way, very often weakened by enormous debt loads. It's a business model that works in the early stages of economic cycles, but one which inevitably comes to grief. They are in the business of bubble inflating. And the result we have seen is that paper shufflers like Mitt Romney have allocated for themselves a larger portion of a shrinking pie.
--Hiram
If they skimmed the company's value... How do they send them on their way? Who would buy them?
ReplyDeleteMost of the companies I saw on the list were dying until folks like these propped them up and got them moving in the right direction. That is why they could buy them cheap.
How do they send them on their way?
ReplyDeleteIn a bubble dominated era, people always think valuations will go up, and that rainy days never come. So you buy a cyclical company, which tend to have low valuations, you dress it up a little bit, and then sell it to a greater fool. And when the economy turns down, and we find out why cyclical companies carry low valuations, the weight of debt Romney style business strategies, crushes the company.
--Hiram
Seems like your argument would make sense, except that the companies that are listed seem to be doing better than ever.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is that cyclical businesses tend to be priced accordingly, with the knowledge that the low never lasts for long. The businesses Bain and other venture capitalists acquire are on a steady downward slope and are priced low because they are headed for oblivion. Where Bain, etc. bring value is in the capital and know-how to fundamentally transform that business and put it on an upward trend. If they do it well they are rewarded with appreciation on their investment and the workers of the company get to keep their jobs.
ReplyDeleteMy big concern with Romney is that his wealth makes him an easy target for class warfare demagogues, of which Obama is king.
J. Ewing
We are getting off track, too. The answer to the the question is found in understanding that government cannot and should not do "charity," period. Anybody that steals from the rich and gives to the poor isn't Robin Hood, they're a Robbin' Hood. Just because the money goes to "the needy" doesn't mean it isn't stolen in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that interposing the government in what should be a personal and voluntary reaction deprives the giver of the opportunity for compassion and deprives the receiver of the opportunity for gratitude. It is theft on BOTH ends. It becomes an "entitlement" to the fruits of another person's labor, and that is morally and ethically wrong. When it becomes deeply engrained it is like a cancer to the society.
Private charity creates an expectation that is absent from an "entitlement" and is truly brilliant in discerning between the diligent and the deadbeat, on an individual basis. Most welfare has no discernment at all, and barely so even after reform.
J. Ewing
Have you ever noticed that when anyone talks about the causes, and effects of market bubbles, how quickly the question becomes who is to blame for them? And how the answer is that most popular of all criminal law defense, known as the SODDI, an acronym for Some Other Dude Did It? I was thinking this morning that this isn't by chance, that this need to blame others and exonerate oneself for market bubbles is an important indeed indispensable stage in the development of the next bubble. Since someone else is to blame, not me, it's logical that I should continue in the same course of action, which this time, as opposed to all previous times in human history, won't cause a market bubble. I think this thinking is central to the problem of Mitt Romney. It never occurred to him that he was a bubble inflator because after all, he came away rich. When the music stopped playing, he was nimble enough to find a seat, in fact had been sitting in one for a while.
ReplyDelete--Hiram
Hiram,
ReplyDeleteYou are usually the one pointing at the other dude/business. Whereas, I believe that all of us work together to create these bubbles by chasing our own perosonal dreams. What is your point?
J,
ReplyDeleteSo how does your belief help us get more people making enough money so that they have to pay income taxes? (ie reduce the number of poor and working poor)
Whereas, I believe that all of us work together to create these bubbles by chasing our own perosonal dreams.
ReplyDeleteI expect a lot of us did, I suppose. I remember well all those commercials on the Soucheray radio show about refinancing our mortgages. And a lot of us thought the key to financial retirement were those tax subsidized 401k's. Remember how we all said Social Security was a lousy investment, and that we could do better investing the money ourselves? Mitt Romney is out there, utterly clueless about the role his cream skimming played in the financial collapse. And as a good early stage bubble inflater he is eager to resume the policies that will inflate the next bubble. There is such a depressing inevitability about it all. It's as if we can't help repeating the same mistakes over and over again. I do despair sometimes.
--Hiram
I agree, we all will chase that better life and create another bubble. Hopefully sometime more of us will learn that if it looks too good, it probably is... Right now I am still cheering on the stock market !!!
DeleteSomething to understand about bubbles too, is that they are powerful, and often irresistible. People have to have a place to live, and that means they have little alternative to participating in a real estate bubble. In business employees come under competitive pressure to engage in bubble practices Risk managers who balk at a risk everyone assures them is tolerable soon find themselves out the door. And the problem too very often with bubbles is that the people people who allocate the risk aren't the people who bear it's burden. So many of the banking practices that came to grief were the result of people entering into contracts where they didn't bother to try to understand the risk because they knew they were going to dump the trade onto someone else.
ReplyDeleteA lot of finance works like TV. No one on tv ever gets fired because they are wrong. There are wealthy and successful TV pundits who have hardly ever been right about anything. They are fired when they step away from the herd.
--Hiram
I am not a big fan of "the Devil made do it" defense.
ReplyDeleteIf one thinks houses are over priced... Rent for awhile.
If your company is too unethical for your tastes... Find a new job.
Invest only after doing due diligence.
People... Accept personal responsibilty...
I am not a big fan of "the Devil made do it" defense.
ReplyDeleteHow about the "I needed a place to live" defense? Or "the boss made me do it or else I would get fired" defense? Or what is not a defense at all, the one heard from a lot of Enron risk managers, "I didn't do it, and I got forced into early retirement."
The reason we focus so easily in blame is because we have a psychological need to avoid understanding the causes of bubbles. We somehow have convinced ourselves that once we have blamed someone, the problem is solved. But allocation of blame isn't a strategy for avoiding bubbles, it's a necessary step in the early stages of their formation.
--Hiram
Hiram,
ReplyDeleteI tnink you are the only one assigning blame to a group of people. (Ie "the man...")
I still believe we all had an equal role.... Continually pointing elsewhere instead.of looking in the mirror is typically not a good thing.
"So how does your belief help us get more people making enough money so that they have to pay income taxes? (ie reduce the number of poor and working poor)"
ReplyDeletePretty simple, really. You remove the government constraints-- psychological and financial-- that prevent people from succeeding in business (and getting rich). This creates more jobs at better wages (because of competition for labor), and enables those who get rich to be more charitable without grumbling. Those private charities, in turn, actually improve the lives of those they serve, making them more productive citizens and lifting (or to use Ben Franklin's word, "driving") them individually out of poverty, rather than creating a whole dependent class as welfare does and has.
This is the way the world works, and the evidence is everywhere, but the politicians enjoy solving everybody's problems with everybody else's money, so around we go.
Andrew Carnegie said that once people amass great wealth they start looking for great charities to spend the money. Bill Gates is a prime example. While his father calls for the rich to pay more taxes, son Bill puts 2/3 of his wealth into a charitable foundation free of taxes, and Warren Buffet of "Buffett Rule" fame, added half of HIS wealth to it (and took the tax deduction, you can bet).
J. Ewing
Pretty simple, really. You remove the government constraints-- psychological and financial-- that prevent people from succeeding in business (and getting rich).
ReplyDeleteBut it also creates bubbles. And it doesn't solve the institutional problem of maintaining the link between risk and reward. What happens in business at a very early stage is that management shifts the risk away from themselves onto others, employees, shareholder, and way too often, the general public.
In the aftermath of the bubble, the responses are always the same. The bubble was caused by certain people, or certain policies, that we can punish, or which we can never allow to happen again. Financial institutions will act differently, more responsibly if they know they won't be bailed out, the new batch of bubble inflaters tell us. But what managers of those institutions know, is that they won't be hurt if their institution does collapse, because they get their money upfront, and they also now that whether their institutions are bailed out or not, isn't determined by the mood prevailing when the last bubble failed, but in the crisis stage of the next bubble, when they know they, not the reformers will be holding all the cards.
--Hiram
J,
ReplyDeleteRemember that we used to have that situation, it led to support for the New Deal. Because it apparently did not work out as well as it would in your nostalgic thoughts and beliefs.
Also, unfortunately it seems that Buffett and Gates are in the minority at this time...
"Remember that we used to have that situation, it led to support for the New Deal. Because it apparently did not work out as well as it would in your nostalgic thoughts and beliefs."
ReplyDeleteI don't remember "that situation" at all, and frankly don't know what you are imagining "led to support for the New Deal." The great fortunes that led to the Roaring Twenties produced endowments for many of the great philanthropic and educational institutions we still enjoy today, such as Carnegie Mellon University, and all the Carnegie libraries, and Carnegie Hall, to name just a few. The lack of a few Security trading and banking regulations caused the crash of '29, and the New Deal plus Smoot-Hawley extended that "correction" by several more years than necessary. The parallels to today's situation are a bit frightening, frankly. We would have been OUT of this Obama recession if Franklin D Obama hadn't given us the Raw Deal.
J. Ewing