A simple economics analogy

[Craig234]

Lithium, I did a little checking on the 'EPA puddle' issue you raised, and it's interesting.

First and foremost it's a nice example of how governing is hard, when you have well-meaning legislators trying to promote the public interest (which we have less and less it seems) running up against monied interests who want to evade those regulations. It's not eay to regulate effectively, avoiding over-regulation but not allowing evading them.

As I googled on it, I found plenty of right-wing sites hyping the issue, dominating the search results. I wasn't really seeing any 'other side' links. One article in particular came from a law foundation that advocates for right-wing causes, and they had an effective article of propaganda lambasting the EPA and regulation - it'd be hard to read their piece and not walk away screaming about the insanity of a tyrannical regulatory monster.

Then I finally found a NY Times piece touching on the issue and it put things back in perspective a bit - the real issue how all these muddies waters have left the EPA struggling to provide good regulation on the issue, and a widespread problem of polluters taking advantage of the situation and pollution rising dramatically nationally as a result. One comment was that the EPA has effectively shut down enforcement of the Clean Water Act in some states because of this.

All the while these monied interests are at war with the EPA trying to prevent it from doing its justified role in protecting the environment, fooling citizens.

From the article:

In the last two years, some members of Congress have tried to limit the impact of the court decisions by introducing legislation known as the Clean Water Restoration Act. It has been approved by a Senate committee but not yet introduced this session in the House. The legislation tries to resolve these problems by, in part, removing the word “navigable” from the law and restoring regulators’ authority over all waters that were regulated before the Supreme Court decisions.

But a broad coalition of industries has often successfully lobbied to prevent the full Congress from voting on such proposals by telling farmers and small-business owners that the new legislation would permit the government to regulate rain puddles and small ponds and layer new regulations on how they dispose of waste.

“The game plan is to emphasize the scary possibilities,” said one member of the Waters Advocacy Coalition, which has fought the legislation and is supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders and other groups representing industries affected by the Clean Water Act.

“If you can get Glenn Beck to say that government storm troopers are going to invade your property, farmers in the Midwest will light up their congressmen’s switchboards,” said the coalition member, who asked not to be identified because he thought his descriptions would anger other coalition participants. Mr. Beck, a conservative commentator on Fox News, spoke at length against the Clean Water Restoration Act in December.

The American Land Rights Association, another organization opposed to legislation, wrote last June that people should “Deluge your senators with calls, faxes and e-mails.” A news release the same month from the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that “even rainwater would be regulated.”

Here's a link to the NY Times article to at least provide some info for you on the other side defending against the 'regulated puddles!' fearmongering.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

[dank69]

It would help people realize there ARE options out there to find people who really want to help the country and that serving in the senate is a SERVICE to the country, not a career. There are people who are convinced we have only two choices, D or R and they always vote one or the other and most of the time vote for "the lesser of two evils".

Some people vote the same person in year after year without knowing their accomplishments(or not!) A lot of people vote party line R/D without looking at the candidates. It's primarily a problem of laziness on the part of our voters, and partly because they're low-information voters(as Rush would say).

I get much more meaningful debate here on these forums because it's dedicated to politics and most of the people here have purposfully exposed themselves to it and have knowledge of the issues and the people involved. Talk to a lot of people on the street and they might not know who ran for president last fall, nor who our VP is. . etc.. maybe it's laziness or maybe they just don't want to deal with it and would rather isolate themselves and hide from it all.

To bring it back to Craigs original point. . . if we're supposed to grow our way out of this, we need to put people back to work. Legislation and regulations prevent jobs. . .This can be a topic for another thread, but just look at how all the gun companies are being treated in MD, CT, and IL...... very hostile environment to have a business. They're talking about moving out. What about the employees of those companies who can't make the move to another business friendly state? They're SOL and now on the government teat until they can find another job.... sounds counterproductive to me..

I just don't see how having a third option as opposed to just 2 will somehow make people not lazy. It's already completely lazy to just call the two parties we have "two sides of the same coin" or other similar generalization because it shows that the person making the claim hasn't researched the candidates at all. In these polarized times if you ask an R or D their positions on just about any issue, they are going to give you opposite solutions to just about any problem. Sure, neither candidate may give you every answer you are looking for, but I bet one would be closer to your desired positions than the other.

Throw a third option into the mix and now you have to research 3 candidates and all their positions on all the different issues. More effort is going to somehow convince people that don't want to spend time as it is to suddenly do so? I'm not buying it.

 

[dank69]

Exactly, they can't show they've been right long term. These same class of experts over say the past 50 years (from super smart economic guys to super smart business guys to super smart political guys to super smart legal guys) are the exact same class of experts we have now, from the exact same class of institutions, who are saying precisely the same things: Trust us, we know what we're talking about.

Well, we trusted them. We trusted them so much we've got ourselves $16T in immediate debt (at just the Fed level), and massively growing. Coincidentally, the States have the same class of folks and surprise surprise, many States are largely in Billions of debt as well. Forgive me, but, you can choose to trust them so you can get ideology validation, but I'll just trust none of them thanks. I live by a simple live within ones means philosophy, along with a don't ask me for sh1t and I'll do the same to you likewise. I don't wish to support systems/others who want to live outside of their means and have to consistently keep coming to me asking me for more more more more more while they keep partying like money is meaningless. If that's the case, don't ask me for anything, borrow/print whatever you need, and leave me the F alone. Doh! Then money means something, what a surprise...



What support would I need for the bolded statements? Does one need to support that water is wet? Fire is hot? What support needs to be given that the Fed could not live within say a $1.5 Trillion yearly budget? That already is an astronomical amount of money, and if someone at the Fed Gov proposed that, stunned silence would be heard from both sides of the aisle at even the mention of that absurdity. That is how F'd we are: That either side of the aisle would view that insanely high Fed budget as non-starter absurd.

Look, don't get me wrong: I bitch in these threads, but, I freely admit...your side has "won"! (I put won in "" because long term, we are so F'd by the spender ideology on multiple levels that its sickening, anyways...) Rejoice! For decades, the Fed has been allowed to grow in spend each year under the auspice of "look it's all relative to GDP" logic, and with each growing spender logic year, more and more people are woo'd and reinforced that more and more Fed is needed. It's a self-fullfilling cycle. We're past the greed point at what it would have taken to break the US of this mentality, so now, we get to go down this spender rabbit hole, whether we want to or not! I for one am enjoying these good days on behalf of the future generations who won't be able to. I have little doubt though, the same class of super smart <x> guys will still be around then, warping Reality to get the masses to subvert to whatever path they need to take the country down so the populace can enjoy whatever will be the American Idol equiv.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Chuck

You completely ignored my point. If super smart <x> guys say to do something, and then we don't do exactly what they said to do, you don't get to say super smart <x> guys were wrong.

 

[Lithium381]

I just don't see how having a third option as opposed to just 2 will somehow make people not lazy. It's already completely lazy to just call the two parties we have "two sides of the same coin" or other similar generalization because it shows that the person making the claim hasn't researched the candidates at all. In these polarized times if you ask an R or D their positions on just about any issue, they are going to give you opposite solutions to just about any problem. Sure, neither candidate may give you every answer you are looking for, but I bet one would be closer to your desired positions than the other.

Throw a third option into the mix and now you have to research 3 candidates and all their positions on all the different issues. More effort is going to somehow convince people that don't want to spend time as it is to suddenly do so? I'm not buying it.

lets bring this discussion into another thread that I'll start in a bit and keep this one on Craigs original topic. .

 

[Craig234]

lets bring this discussion into another thread that I'll start in a bit and keep this one on Craigs original topic. .

Scholar and a gentleman.

I was hoping for a few more of the right-wing persuasion to be helped by the post, but...

 

[Craig234]

Related point on high top income tax rates:

What's better for society on how a company spends its money:

1. Let's put this billion dollard into excutive bonuses! With this low income tax rate, they'll get to keep most of it!

2. These darn high income tax rates, bonuses will mostly go to income taxes. Let's put the money into R&D and develop new technologies and infrastructure!

3. These darn high income tax rates, bonuses will mostly go to income taxes. Let's hire more people to grow the business!

I'd say (2) and (3) are better for society - and are what largely happened because of tax incentives pre-Reagan. Businesses invested in the business.

That's when the CEO to average worker ratio was more like 20 to 1 - instead of hundreds to 1.

Unfortunately, there's almost no political pressure from the public who would benefit from restoring some high top rates.

If we did, options include:

- Cut taxes for everyone else
- Cut corporate taxes
- Cut the deficit
- Add stimulus spending, helping the economy, building infrastructure etc.

But no, what we need is to shift even a larger share of all our wealth to the few with the most, as they become less loyal to the US, owning and hoarding and taking more.

 

[Lithium381]

Lithium, I did a little checking on the 'EPA puddle' issue you raised, and it's interesting.

First and foremost it's a nice example of how governing is hard, when you have well-meaning legislators trying to promote the public interest (which we have less and less it seems) running up against monied interests who want to evade those regulations. It's not eay to regulate effectively, avoiding over-regulation but not allowing evading them.

As I googled on it, I found plenty of right-wing sites hyping the issue, dominating the search results. I wasn't really seeing any 'other side' links. One article in particular came from a law foundation that advocates for right-wing causes, and they had an effective article of propaganda lambasting the EPA and regulation - it'd be hard to read their piece and not walk away screaming about the insanity of a tyrannical regulatory monster.

Then I finally found a NY Times piece touching on the issue and it put things back in perspective a bit - the real issue how all these muddies waters have left the EPA struggling to provide good regulation on the issue, and a widespread problem of polluters taking advantage of the situation and pollution rising dramatically nationally as a result. One comment was that the EPA has effectively shut down enforcement of the Clean Water Act in some states because of this.

All the while these monied interests are at war with the EPA trying to prevent it from doing its justified role in protecting the environment, fooling citizens.

From the article:



Here's a link to the NY Times article to at least provide some info for you on the other side defending against the 'regulated puddles!' fearmongering.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Admittedly I did hear about it from a right-wing source with a strong Bias against the EPA. Maybe part of the reason I tend to have some sort of bias myself against the EPA and similar agencies is that they have no congressional oversight. They're put into place by the executive branch and are able to pass what are essencially laws that our represented officials didn't get to vote on. I'm sure the "law-makers" in the EPA are lobbied and in the pockets of people just like our congressmen/women, too! Not that I trust either bunch of 'em!!! Then again, this ANOTHER side topic to split into another thread! :whiste:

As your previous example about the fishermen . . more regulation creates a burden of employers, be it "good" or "bad". More forms to fill out, less productivity, etc.

Getting people back to work. . . . a lot of people are out of work because their industry up and left and they weren't able to go. They need to learn new skills. Possible to get them back into community college or trade education? I think we already offer several programs on that front, but It'd be worthwhile to invest there, right? Education is always a good investment?

 

[Lithium381]

Related point on high top income tax rates:

What's better for society on how a company spends its money:

1. Let's put this billion dollard into excutive bonuses! With this low income tax rate, they'll get to keep most of it!

2. These darn high income tax rates, bonuses will mostly go to income taxes. Let's put the money into R&D and develop new technologies and infrastructure!

3. These darn high income tax rates, bonuses will mostly go to income taxes. Let's hire more people to grow the business!

I'd say (2) and (3) are better for society - and are what largely happened because of tax incentives pre-Reagan. Businesses invested in the business.

That's when the CEO to average worker ratio was more like 20 to 1 - instead of hundreds to 1.

Unfortunately, there's almost no political pressure from the public who would benefit from restoring some high top rates.

If we did, options include:

- Cut taxes for everyone else
- Cut corporate taxes
- Cut the deficit
- Add stimulus spending, helping the economy, building infrastructure etc.

But no, what we need is to shift even a larger share of all our wealth to the few with the most, as they become less loyal to the US, owning and hoarding and taking more.

Is it the rates themselves, or the ability to "dodge" taxes? If we took away all deductions for people's income over 600k or more. . .

are we still offering tax incentives to businesses who are hiring right now? I know i've been hearing reports of small businesses cutting hours and staff to avoid ACA provisions . . that's not helping

 

[Craig234]

Admittedly I did hear about it from a right-wing source with a strong Bias against the EPA. Maybe part of the reason I tend to have some sort of bias myself against the EPA and similar agencies is that they have no congressional oversight. They're put into place by the executive branch and are able to pass what are essencially laws that our represented officials didn't get to vote on. I'm sure the "law-makers" in the EPA are lobbied and in the pockets of people just like our congressmen/women, too! Not that I trust either bunch of 'em!!! Then again, this ANOTHER side topic to split into another thread! :whiste:

Well, a partial correction, Congress does the write the laws at issue - Congress had to create the EPA, and Congress passed the laws it enforces. They laws are as good as they're written. As the NY Times article points out, the laws had worked pretty well for a long time - but there there's this 'navigable waters' issue and all kinds of complications and interests lobbying to make it favor the polluters.


The assertion that the EPA bureacrats are directly lobbied by wealthy interests and 'in the pockets' of them seem quite baseless to me. The problems that do come from regulators seem to usually be something else - from the selfish interests of the regulators to simply bureacratic overhead, but not the same kind of outside corruption.

That's the EPA and many regulatory agencies - the Pentagon is another matter, where there's a big revolving door wit cushy positions waiting for military officials who have been found to be deserving of rewards. Same thing - as Jack Abramoff recently said, he had Congressional staff working for him simply by hinting at cushy positions for them later after they had been so helpful to him.

Getting people back to work. . . . a lot of people are out of work because their industry up and left and they weren't able to go. They need to learn new skills. Possible to get them back into community college or trade education? I think we already offer several programs on that front, but It'd be worthwhile to invest there, right? Education is always a good investment?

Tough issue, but short answer, ya, having that investment is better than not having it, though I think it's not easy to really help all that much.

We're probably in agreement, find what is a good use of money and invest in it. Again - raise taxes on the rich and give tax incentives to companies to train people.

 

[Craig234]

Is it the rates themselves, or the ability to "dodge" taxes? If we took away all deductions for people's income over 600k or more. . .

It's a combination. I'm not in favor of 'taking all the deductions' from the rich in theory - but if in practice we just can't avoid the corruption we may have to settle on that.

But basically we need to tell people a lot of money is fine, but extreme wealth, most needs to go back to society for all kinds of benefits.

I like the phrase 'extracting wealth' to describe what some of the most rich do to take from society - and taxes can help counter that.

are we still offering tax incentives to businesses who are hiring right now? I know i've been hearing reports of small businesses cutting hours and staff to avoid ACA provisions . . that's not helping

I don't have the numbers - I'm skeptical of the reports because there's a big political motive to exaggerate any ACA issues.

But I'm open to the ACA needing some tuning if it's poorly written on that issue.

 

[chucky2]

You completely ignored my point. If super smart <x> guys say to do something, and then we don't do exactly what they said to do, you don't get to say super smart <x> guys were wrong.

We're doing what the current Leaderships pick of super smart <x> guys want. We're at QEmuchmorethan2 (got to count any spend past revenue as a QE, given Fed spending proping up the econ). How can you say that we're not doing what they want?

Chuck

 

[Craig234]

Republicans have obstructed nearly the entire Democratic agenda abusing the filibuster and controlling the House. Republicans don't like to admit that.

 

[Lithium381]

Republicans have obstructed nearly the entire Democratic agenda abusing the filibuster and controlling the House. Republicans don't like to admit that.

Democrats have obstructed nearly the entire Republican agenda with Reid not bringing (R) bills up for a vote and controlling the Presidency. Democrats don't like to admit that.


Don't act as if the Dems have been honest through any part of this gridlock...

If not education, then where would you invest, Craig? Where would our 'stimulus' package be put to best help the economy? Obviously not creating jobs working on the keystone pipeline...

 

[Craig234]

Democrats have obstructed nearly the entire Republican agenda with Reid not bringing (R) bills up for a vote and controlling the Presidency. Democrats don't like to admit that.


Don't act as if the Dems have been honest through any part of this gridlock...

If not education, then where would you invest, Craig? Where would our 'stimulus' package be put to best help the economy? Obviously not creating jobs working on the keystone pipeline...

Lithium, if you think violating the purpose of the filibuster to require 60 votes instead of 50 to pass anything is the same 'obstructionism' as winning the presidency...

Then you really need to have the basics of democracy explained. Winning an election is not 'obstructing' the other side. It's the people choosing who they want in charge.

You do prove my statement 'Republicans don't like to admit this', though.

There are normal advantages to winning the election - and there are abuses.

Now, there are two topics here - one is answering the assertion that 'the entire Democratic agenda has been put in place' - no, it hasn't, very little of it has, one reason being Republican control of the House. That's not obstructionism per se - though refusing to compromise and pass almost anything starts to get to obstructionism, the second topic - while filibuster abuse is.

If a party wins over 50 of 100 seats in the Senate, they're SUPPOSED to get an advantage. Winning votes because they won elections isn't 'obstructing'.

Another example: if a bill in the House is voted on, and Republicans have a majority and vote one way and win, that's not 'obstructing' the Democrats. They won elections - well, they didn't exactly, they cheated by gerrymandering so they got a million fewer votes than Democrats but took 33 more seats, but let's put that aside and pretend they won.

But how they actually do it is usually following the 'Haster rule', which prevents bills ever getting votes that WOULD PASS WITH A MAJORITY VOTE, unless a majority of REPUBLICANS are for it. That's obstructing to the majority in Congress who would otherwise pass a bill.

For example, the renewal of the Violence against Women Act, as passed by the Senate recently, went to the House. Republicans objected to changes adding protections for a few groups, such as gay and immigrant women. Who cares if they are beaten, am I right? So here's what happened.

Pretty much all Democrats supported the bill, and about a third of Republicans. Together, they had a majority to pass the bill.

Under the Hastert rule, the bill would be blocked from getting voted on.

Now, this was a rare exception, in that Boehner eventually did allow it to get voted on, and it passed with 2/3 of Republicans voting against it.

But that's the rule they usually follow. That's not just 'having a majority', it's more obstructionism blocking bills with majority support.

 

[fskimospy]

Democrats have obstructed nearly the entire Republican agenda with Reid not bringing (R) bills up for a vote and controlling the Presidency. Democrats don't like to admit that.


Don't act as if the Dems have been honest through any part of this gridlock...

If not education, then where would you invest, Craig? Where would our 'stimulus' package be put to best help the economy? Obviously not creating jobs working on the keystone pipeline...

I would agree with you that the Republicans using the chamber they control is not obstructionism, but their behavior in the Senate definitely is. I don't think there is any defense for the rampant abuse of the filibuster that we have seen.