Hey Ramirez – we are very competitive. Your pals in industry have sent thousands of American jobs to communist china so they would not have to pay Americans a livable income. More pay for the 1%
The market is affected by so many variables that it is hubris for a political party to claim credit. Policy changes can sometimes take years to take effect giving the false perception that the current policy is the cause rather than decisions made long ago.
When the profiteers outsourced manufacturing and made China the world’s manufacturer, much of the expertise went with it. It will take decades to bring the American workforce back up to competence to do our own manufacturing.
The facts are America is number two in competitiveness just behind the Swiss. Our ranking increased over the last few years and other major countries like China, European countries, India and Russia are way down the list.
Here is a link from the Chicago Tribune that talks about it. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-states-competitive-economy-20170926-story.html
US competitiveness is not a question, really. Corporations pay an effective rate of about 19%—same as othe developed nations. Fascinating that someone like “jlocke” would think otherwise. Ideology “trumping” facts is the most popular activity of the republican regressives. Withdraw from the TPP, withdraw from the Paris accords, threaten to withdraw from the Iran deal, withdraw from NAFTA, withdraw from global engagement and then whine about American competitiveness? There are more stupid things going on with the regressive party (unwavering support for a psychopath, for one), but lowering the corporate tax rate is pretty dumb in the context of how this legislation is being crafted. A priori, there’s no reason why the corporate rate couldn’t be decreased. But this way? How irrationally stupid is this country, anyway?
…one of the most troubling mysteries in economics, the falling labor share. Less of the income the economy produces is going to people who work, and more is going to people who own things.
This trend is worrying because it contributes to increased inequality — poor people own much less of the land and capital in the economy than rich people do. The devaluation of workers could also increase unemployment, social unrest and general malaise. No one would like to see capitalism transform into the kind of dystopia envisioned by Karl Marx.
As David Rothkopf puts it in his Superclass, The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making:
The reality is that the combined net worth of the world’s richest thousand or so people- the planet’s billionaires- is almost twice that of the poorest 2.5 billion.
“It’s a Ponzi scheme,” a Wall Street executive told me, dismissing the idea that a multi-trillion dollar tax cut for multinational corporations would trickle down throughout the economy and also pay for itself.
It’s a view that’s widely shared among the bankers, hedge-fund managers, traders, and quants whose job it is to determine, with Vulcan accuracy, how the Republican tax bill that passed the House yesterday will actually affect the markets.
It’s also more than a little ironic, given that the plan was spearheaded by two former senior partners of Goldman Sachs turned Trump shills—Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin—a pedigree that has done little to reassure Wall Street veterans who worry that the White House may accidentally nuke the economy in the name of “tax reform.”
“Will this be the first tax cut in American history that actually results in a recession?” the executive asked.
I get it, the turkey Democrats who aren’t in charge have blocked the Tax reform which will help the rich. What I don’t understand is why that pilgrim is labeled American Competitiveness. You think giving the Rich more money is going to make America more competitive? Don’t you remember 10 years ago when we gave all the money to the rich? Remember how “Competitive” it got? We have tried this, that is a good turkey with a gun stopping a bad pilgrim with a regressive tax law.
Latest (partial) list of rich people who stash American money off-shore. — No Taxes - No Re-investment - and No Regard for America. During WWII these individuals would have been tried for treason :
Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council
Jon Huntsman Jr., Ambassador to Russia
Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Federal Reserve
Sheldon Adelson, founder of the Las Vegas Sands
Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate, 4-star Army General
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft
Thomas J. Barrack Jr., founder of Colony NorthStar
John Augustine Hearst, business and media executive
Carl Icahn, founder of Icahn Enterprises
Peter Karmanos, majority owner of the Carolina Hurricanes
Charles and David Koch, respectively CEO and EVP of Koch Industries
Robert Kraft, founder and CEO of Kraft Group
Robert Mercer, co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital
Geoffrey Palmer, real estate developer
Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of The Blackstone Group
James Harris Simons, co-founder of Renaissance Technologies
Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corporation
Warren Stephens, chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc.
Now Mikey is back on the RNC payroll after a brief stray off the reservation with his Roy Moore drawing. Actually, American companies are already making record profits. Of course the trillion plus dollars that the GOP plan will add to the debt will of course have to be paid for by future tax increase. At which point Republicans will scream “Democrats are trying to raise your taxes!” Rinse. Repeat.
Criminey Locke, Communists? You really are living in the past aren’t you?
The first part of your comment also passes for stupid. You want to use phones as the context for wealth? Really? Not say, real estate? Not say, the fraction of one’s income going to pay off debt?
How can a man so clearly blessed with craft and intelligence be so politically ignorant? Ramirez, I applaud your steadfast Republicanism. Too bad you don’t spend it demanding that your party do better. No, Democrats did not kill American competitiveness. That happened when Republicans made the prize ‘having the most money’ rather than ‘producing the best product’.
You all should read a couple of books. One is called Ficticious Capital, How Finance is appropriating Our Future by Cédric Durand. It’s a bit dense with economics-speak, but it details a bit of the history of Ficticious Capital (back to the early 19th Century) and the various ways that money from financial instruments (of all sorts) has become so dominant. It explains my comment to Locke (who will no doubt froth over the quotes from Marx about Capital) about how it is interest payments (on mortgages and credit cards for example) that has grown to be so much of capital. The fraction of income devoted to debt has increased more than 2.5 times since 1970. Has income of the middle class increased like that? Absolutely not. And is even worse when you make allowance for increased unemployment, which economists tend to leave out.
The second book will show you how things are only going to get worse (up to the point I am now reading). It is The Rise of the Robots: technology and the threat of a jobless future by Martin Ford. The second chapter has a lot of explanation about the decline of the middle class in America, laid out in informative graphs and prose. That alone is worth reading. But Ford discusses how improvements in software and hardware are going to further reduce the need for human workers, in an accelerating trend.
None of this is really the fault of one political party over the other. Both, in my view, are tools of the folks with money. The republicans are simply more obvious and shameless in their pandering. Just as Ramirez shamelessly panders his art.
Baslim is right. If you look at what companies will do with a tax cut, the answer is simple. Increase dividends and increase capex to buy technology that increases productivity and earnings while decreasing employment.
It is unclear what happens socially and politically when the replacement of employment with technology accelerates, as it seems poised to do rapidly in a wide variety of sectors and sub-sectors.
On the slightly positive side, agriculture used to employ 98% of the population. Now, ag has only 2% of the workforce. And all those who would have farmed in the past are doing other things to make a living.
So these sorts of transitions have happened before, just not as quickly as they are going to happen this time. Here’s an ironic example. In oil and gas, in less than 20 months, employment has gone down by 600,000 workers, while the rig count has skyrocketed. The more efficient oil and gas extractors are using technology that make it possible for them to profit at below $25/bbl. ah, yes, we are a clever species! Increase oil and gas extraction with technology and you get a two-fer. A more rapidly deteriorating climate AND worsening unemployment!! All in unprecedented time scales…
This is happening globally. A Chinese manufacturing company I am familiar with had 160,000 workers, shut down for six weeks, and re-opened with 65,000 workers. Most every sector will be impacted over the next couple of decades.
How’s this for a political prediction? Million are going to be out of work, essentially untrainable, feeling desperate, and mighty pissed off.
I think competitive has more to do with creativity, intelligence on coming up with better ways to progress than paying less taxes the corporations seem to use their brains to take their money off shore rather than shore up OUR economy. What, they aren’t rich enough anyway? Just wait until they go robotic and provide no jobs above minimum wage. Maybe then corporations can’t be defined as people.
Reposting of relevant links concerning tax reform (which is definitely needed, just not happening in the GOP bills from either branch of Congress):
“Earlier this year, the chairman and several members of the Roundtable [The Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of the largest American companies], at considerable political risk, resigned from a pair of White House advisory boards in the wake of President Trump’s comments about racial violence in Charlottesville. By doing so, they reinforced social and political norms that are essential to democratic capitalism and were rightly praised for it. (bold added)
This tax legislation represents a similar threat and a similar opportunity. By withdrawing their support until significant changes are made to provisions unrelated to the corporate tax, corporate leaders are in a unique position to help the economy, help the country and help themselves."
“The original Trump campaign tax plan is the right one…by putting a global cap of $150,000 on all deductions and credits. The money raised could be used to cut the highest income-tax rate to 36 percent — without giving the top 1 percent a net tax cut — and help fund the tax cut for everyone else.”
Ramirez, the EFFECTIVE corporate tax rate in the US is on par with other countries because of deductions. Many corporations make billions and pay little or no taxes.
.Companies that get these tax cuts are expected to automate more and buy back stock.
Can the richest billionaire get a fundamentally better smart phone/TV/car/internet/etc. than anyone else? You lefties are such reliable class warriors. Check Wikipedia on Communist Party USA to see what other kinds of reliable warriors you are.
===
Seriously?
This is your argument for tax cuts for the rich?
.
Can the richest billionaire get fundamentally better health care than anyone else?
Why, yes. Yes he can.
Also housing, transportation, and pretty much everything, including smart phones.
.
He can also buy legislators at the federal and state levels, which is the entire reason for the tax cuts for the rich in the first place.
===
I notice you don’t even claim that any trickle down will take place. Points for honesty (by omission), at least.
The Death to the American Dream by a Thousand Cuts Deform Bill shows not one Spark of instigating any kind of commercial competitiveness to improve the financial condition of the American Country in any way. Did the government take out a contract with the corporations to ensure that they would invest in their company’s stateside? Did the government take out of contract to ensure that the companies would employ more people? Did the government take out a contract with the companies to ensure that the money would stay in the United States? Do you want to know what’s going to happen to that money? It will buy Machinery to improve efficiency of their product and lower their production costs. Does the government truly think that those lowered costs and profits will be passed on to the consumer? It will be used to buy back shares. It will be sent to Offshore accounts where it cannot be taxed. I wonder why the government didn’t think of this when they decided to give the elite 1% leeches in that obviously poverty-stricken receiving tax bracket such an undeserved charitable donation to their coffers?
Given the rise in housing prices, and therefore of mortgages, the middle class has been squeezed.
From Rise of the Robots a couple of interesting graphs.
The first showed that productivity and compensation rose at an equal rate from 1950 until 1973. But after that, compensation flattened out while productivity continued to rise. The cumulative increase in productivity in 2010 was 254%, while the cumulative increase in compensation was 113%.
Note to super (and others): Really long links can often be made shorter, which helps folks who like to scan the url before pasting it in for a link. Just look for a question mark (?) in the URL. Everything after that is just stuff that tells the web site the source of the link and other not really important (to you) information. So give us all a break and only post the URL text to the left of the question mark.
Mr. Ramirez is a cheerleader for the Reich Wing. The most egregiously callous and greedy and lust for power of the extreme hard Right. The ones that make old stalwarts like Orrin Hatch & Mitch McConnell look Liberal by comparison. But make no mistake they are bad and would eat Liberals for lunch if they could.
I don’t know how to tell Mr. Ramirez that the Democrats are in the minority and cannot kill any budget. If the budget does not pass, it will be because some Republicans defect.
@BRC131 I think that the point you are missing is that the wages of the so-called slave labor of China and similar nations will be increased by the trade agreements, and that we will not be significantly harmed. In spite of all the propaganda, I can find little evidence that NAFTA hurt the USA, rather the opposite. The TPP as it now stands will certainly help China as well as the other members in it, but we will be out in the cold. In case you missed it, the nations of the TPP, as it now is looking to be comprised of, are a diverse group, and all are expecting a positive result from the agreement. I think you are also missing the importance of the interconnecting supply routes globally.
You want to raise the living conditions of the poorer nations? Then you have to include them in the global economy. And maybe, just maybe, the US has to stop consuming world resources in great excess of its proportion of the world population.
lopaka over 6 years ago
Hey Ramirez – we are very competitive. Your pals in industry have sent thousands of American jobs to communist china so they would not have to pay Americans a livable income. More pay for the 1%
Ontman over 6 years ago
Great art. Too bad it’s wasted on bull.
running down a dream over 6 years ago
the globalists prefer things to stay the same. in other words on a hellbound train.
Odon Premium Member over 6 years ago
Now I understand why the markets have done so poorly for the last several years.
superposition over 6 years ago
The market is affected by so many variables that it is hubris for a political party to claim credit. Policy changes can sometimes take years to take effect giving the false perception that the current policy is the cause rather than decisions made long ago.
When the profiteers outsourced manufacturing and made China the world’s manufacturer, much of the expertise went with it. It will take decades to bring the American workforce back up to competence to do our own manufacturing.
https://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/these_5_charts_prove_that_the_economy_does_better_under_democratic_presidents/
Theodore E. Lind Premium Member over 6 years ago
The facts are America is number two in competitiveness just behind the Swiss. Our ranking increased over the last few years and other major countries like China, European countries, India and Russia are way down the list.
Theodore E. Lind Premium Member over 6 years ago
Here is a link from the Chicago Tribune that talks about it. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-states-competitive-economy-20170926-story.html
Theodore E. Lind Premium Member over 6 years ago
Here is the World Economic Forum Report https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-competitiveness-report-2016-2017-1
twclix over 6 years ago
US competitiveness is not a question, really. Corporations pay an effective rate of about 19%—same as othe developed nations. Fascinating that someone like “jlocke” would think otherwise. Ideology “trumping” facts is the most popular activity of the republican regressives. Withdraw from the TPP, withdraw from the Paris accords, threaten to withdraw from the Iran deal, withdraw from NAFTA, withdraw from global engagement and then whine about American competitiveness? There are more stupid things going on with the regressive party (unwavering support for a psychopath, for one), but lowering the corporate tax rate is pretty dumb in the context of how this legislation is being crafted. A priori, there’s no reason why the corporate rate couldn’t be decreased. But this way? How irrationally stupid is this country, anyway?
Radish the wordsmith over 6 years ago
…one of the most troubling mysteries in economics, the falling labor share. Less of the income the economy produces is going to people who work, and more is going to people who own things.
This trend is worrying because it contributes to increased inequality — poor people own much less of the land and capital in the economy than rich people do. The devaluation of workers could also increase unemployment, social unrest and general malaise. No one would like to see capitalism transform into the kind of dystopia envisioned by Karl Marx.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-20/why-workers-are-losing-to-capitalists
Radish the wordsmith over 6 years ago
As David Rothkopf puts it in his Superclass, The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making:
The reality is that the combined net worth of the world’s richest thousand or so people- the planet’s billionaires- is almost twice that of the poorest 2.5 billion.
Silly Season over 6 years ago
(Repost)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/wall-street-fears-trumps-deranged-tax-plan-could-kick-off-economic-euthanasia
“It’s a Ponzi scheme,” a Wall Street executive told me, dismissing the idea that a multi-trillion dollar tax cut for multinational corporations would trickle down throughout the economy and also pay for itself.
It’s a view that’s widely shared among the bankers, hedge-fund managers, traders, and quants whose job it is to determine, with Vulcan accuracy, how the Republican tax bill that passed the House yesterday will actually affect the markets.
It’s also more than a little ironic, given that the plan was spearheaded by two former senior partners of Goldman Sachs turned Trump shills—Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin—a pedigree that has done little to reassure Wall Street veterans who worry that the White House may accidentally nuke the economy in the name of “tax reform.”
“Will this be the first tax cut in American history that actually results in a recession?” the executive asked.
Radish the wordsmith over 6 years ago
Under Republicans we are headed for a feudal state with the rich on top and everyone else is a slave.
Mr. Blawt over 6 years ago
I get it, the turkey Democrats who aren’t in charge have blocked the Tax reform which will help the rich. What I don’t understand is why that pilgrim is labeled American Competitiveness. You think giving the Rich more money is going to make America more competitive? Don’t you remember 10 years ago when we gave all the money to the rich? Remember how “Competitive” it got? We have tried this, that is a good turkey with a gun stopping a bad pilgrim with a regressive tax law.
Guy Fawkes over 6 years ago
Latest (partial) list of rich people who stash American money off-shore. — No Taxes - No Re-investment - and No Regard for America. During WWII these individuals would have been tried for treason :
Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council
Jon Huntsman Jr., Ambassador to Russia
Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Federal Reserve
Sheldon Adelson, founder of the Las Vegas Sands
Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate, 4-star Army General
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft
Thomas J. Barrack Jr., founder of Colony NorthStar
John Augustine Hearst, business and media executive
Carl Icahn, founder of Icahn Enterprises
Peter Karmanos, majority owner of the Carolina Hurricanes
Charles and David Koch, respectively CEO and EVP of Koch Industries
Robert Kraft, founder and CEO of Kraft Group
Robert Mercer, co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital
Geoffrey Palmer, real estate developer
Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of The Blackstone Group
James Harris Simons, co-founder of Renaissance Technologies
Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corporation
Warren Stephens, chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc.
Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts…
DonnyTwoScoops over 6 years ago
Now Mikey is back on the RNC payroll after a brief stray off the reservation with his Roy Moore drawing. Actually, American companies are already making record profits. Of course the trillion plus dollars that the GOP plan will add to the debt will of course have to be paid for by future tax increase. At which point Republicans will scream “Democrats are trying to raise your taxes!” Rinse. Repeat.
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member over 6 years ago
Criminey Locke, Communists? You really are living in the past aren’t you?
The first part of your comment also passes for stupid. You want to use phones as the context for wealth? Really? Not say, real estate? Not say, the fraction of one’s income going to pay off debt?
Durak Premium Member over 6 years ago
How can a man so clearly blessed with craft and intelligence be so politically ignorant? Ramirez, I applaud your steadfast Republicanism. Too bad you don’t spend it demanding that your party do better. No, Democrats did not kill American competitiveness. That happened when Republicans made the prize ‘having the most money’ rather than ‘producing the best product’.
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member over 6 years ago
You all should read a couple of books. One is called Ficticious Capital, How Finance is appropriating Our Future by Cédric Durand. It’s a bit dense with economics-speak, but it details a bit of the history of Ficticious Capital (back to the early 19th Century) and the various ways that money from financial instruments (of all sorts) has become so dominant. It explains my comment to Locke (who will no doubt froth over the quotes from Marx about Capital) about how it is interest payments (on mortgages and credit cards for example) that has grown to be so much of capital. The fraction of income devoted to debt has increased more than 2.5 times since 1970. Has income of the middle class increased like that? Absolutely not. And is even worse when you make allowance for increased unemployment, which economists tend to leave out.
The second book will show you how things are only going to get worse (up to the point I am now reading). It is The Rise of the Robots: technology and the threat of a jobless future by Martin Ford. The second chapter has a lot of explanation about the decline of the middle class in America, laid out in informative graphs and prose. That alone is worth reading. But Ford discusses how improvements in software and hardware are going to further reduce the need for human workers, in an accelerating trend.
None of this is really the fault of one political party over the other. Both, in my view, are tools of the folks with money. The republicans are simply more obvious and shameless in their pandering. Just as Ramirez shamelessly panders his art.
hooglah over 6 years ago
I love when all the little D/A liberals get their panties in a bunch when the truth is exposed.
twclix over 6 years ago
Baslim is right. If you look at what companies will do with a tax cut, the answer is simple. Increase dividends and increase capex to buy technology that increases productivity and earnings while decreasing employment.
It is unclear what happens socially and politically when the replacement of employment with technology accelerates, as it seems poised to do rapidly in a wide variety of sectors and sub-sectors.
On the slightly positive side, agriculture used to employ 98% of the population. Now, ag has only 2% of the workforce. And all those who would have farmed in the past are doing other things to make a living.
So these sorts of transitions have happened before, just not as quickly as they are going to happen this time. Here’s an ironic example. In oil and gas, in less than 20 months, employment has gone down by 600,000 workers, while the rig count has skyrocketed. The more efficient oil and gas extractors are using technology that make it possible for them to profit at below $25/bbl. ah, yes, we are a clever species! Increase oil and gas extraction with technology and you get a two-fer. A more rapidly deteriorating climate AND worsening unemployment!! All in unprecedented time scales…
This is happening globally. A Chinese manufacturing company I am familiar with had 160,000 workers, shut down for six weeks, and re-opened with 65,000 workers. Most every sector will be impacted over the next couple of decades.
How’s this for a political prediction? Million are going to be out of work, essentially untrainable, feeling desperate, and mighty pissed off.
drawmelaughing over 6 years ago
I think competitive has more to do with creativity, intelligence on coming up with better ways to progress than paying less taxes the corporations seem to use their brains to take their money off shore rather than shore up OUR economy. What, they aren’t rich enough anyway? Just wait until they go robotic and provide no jobs above minimum wage. Maybe then corporations can’t be defined as people.
martens over 6 years ago
Reposting of relevant links concerning tax reform (which is definitely needed, just not happening in the GOP bills from either branch of Congress):
“Earlier this year, the chairman and several members of the Roundtable [The Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of the largest American companies], at considerable political risk, resigned from a pair of White House advisory boards in the wake of President Trump’s comments about racial violence in Charlottesville. By doing so, they reinforced social and political norms that are essential to democratic capitalism and were rightly praised for it. (bold added)
This tax legislation represents a similar threat and a similar opportunity. By withdrawing their support until significant changes are made to provisions unrelated to the corporate tax, corporate leaders are in a unique position to help the economy, help the country and help themselves."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/17/the-business-lobbys-chance-to-do-whats-right-for-the-country/
And
“The original Trump campaign tax plan is the right one…by putting a global cap of $150,000 on all deductions and credits. The money raised could be used to cut the highest income-tax rate to 36 percent — without giving the top 1 percent a net tax cut — and help fund the tax cut for everyone else.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-original-trump-campaign-tax-plan-is-the-right-one/2017/11/15/a612a302-c97b-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html
Nantucket Premium Member over 6 years ago
Ramirez, the EFFECTIVE corporate tax rate in the US is on par with other countries because of deductions. Many corporations make billions and pay little or no taxes.
.Companies that get these tax cuts are expected to automate more and buy back stock.
mr_sherman Premium Member over 6 years ago
Hey, JLocke, it’s not the phone. It’s what’s inside it. There is some software YOU can’t afford.
braindead Premium Member over 6 years ago
JLOCKE:
Can the richest billionaire get a fundamentally better smart phone/TV/car/internet/etc. than anyone else? You lefties are such reliable class warriors. Check Wikipedia on Communist Party USA to see what other kinds of reliable warriors you are.
===
Seriously?
This is your argument for tax cuts for the rich?
.
Can the richest billionaire get fundamentally better health care than anyone else?
Why, yes. Yes he can.
Also housing, transportation, and pretty much everything, including smart phones.
.
He can also buy legislators at the federal and state levels, which is the entire reason for the tax cuts for the rich in the first place.
===
I notice you don’t even claim that any trickle down will take place. Points for honesty (by omission), at least.
Sadandconfused9 over 6 years ago
The Death to the American Dream by a Thousand Cuts Deform Bill shows not one Spark of instigating any kind of commercial competitiveness to improve the financial condition of the American Country in any way. Did the government take out a contract with the corporations to ensure that they would invest in their company’s stateside? Did the government take out of contract to ensure that the companies would employ more people? Did the government take out a contract with the companies to ensure that the money would stay in the United States? Do you want to know what’s going to happen to that money? It will buy Machinery to improve efficiency of their product and lower their production costs. Does the government truly think that those lowered costs and profits will be passed on to the consumer? It will be used to buy back shares. It will be sent to Offshore accounts where it cannot be taxed. I wonder why the government didn’t think of this when they decided to give the elite 1% leeches in that obviously poverty-stricken receiving tax bracket such an undeserved charitable donation to their coffers?
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member over 6 years ago
To follow up on my comment above in regard to the decline in earnings in the middle class, I came across this link in one of Superposition’s posts.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html
Given the rise in housing prices, and therefore of mortgages, the middle class has been squeezed.
From Rise of the Robots a couple of interesting graphs.
The first showed that productivity and compensation rose at an equal rate from 1950 until 1973. But after that, compensation flattened out while productivity continued to rise. The cumulative increase in productivity in 2010 was 254%, while the cumulative increase in compensation was 113%.
Note to super (and others): Really long links can often be made shorter, which helps folks who like to scan the url before pasting it in for a link. Just look for a question mark (?) in the URL. Everything after that is just stuff that tells the web site the source of the link and other not really important (to you) information. So give us all a break and only post the URL text to the left of the question mark.
tauyen over 6 years ago
pulling out of TPP really helped us – now the 11 others have united and, guess what?, they don’t want us. This will cost us ‘bigly’
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] over 6 years ago
Mr. Ramirez is a cheerleader for the Reich Wing. The most egregiously callous and greedy and lust for power of the extreme hard Right. The ones that make old stalwarts like Orrin Hatch & Mitch McConnell look Liberal by comparison. But make no mistake they are bad and would eat Liberals for lunch if they could.
Orthocuban over 6 years ago
I don’t know how to tell Mr. Ramirez that the Democrats are in the minority and cannot kill any budget. If the budget does not pass, it will be because some Republicans defect.
martens over 6 years ago
@BRC131 I think that the point you are missing is that the wages of the so-called slave labor of China and similar nations will be increased by the trade agreements, and that we will not be significantly harmed. In spite of all the propaganda, I can find little evidence that NAFTA hurt the USA, rather the opposite. The TPP as it now stands will certainly help China as well as the other members in it, but we will be out in the cold. In case you missed it, the nations of the TPP, as it now is looking to be comprised of, are a diverse group, and all are expecting a positive result from the agreement. I think you are also missing the importance of the interconnecting supply routes globally.
You want to raise the living conditions of the poorer nations? Then you have to include them in the global economy. And maybe, just maybe, the US has to stop consuming world resources in great excess of its proportion of the world population.
Fuzzy Thinker Premium Member over 6 years ago
We know what it is like to do it the Democrat way for 8 years. Trying something else sounds like a good idea.
PainterArt Premium Member over 6 years ago
Poor America, so uncompetitive, bunch of losers