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miscellaneous14 posted:The issue is about Tim Cook's own personal tax evasion, though. I never said anything about how Apple handles its' taxes, I'm just highlighting how absurd it is to defend someone for that when many of the employees working for his company don't make a living wage. Maybe a more conservative tack might help. Unless there is something about the work itself that causes the employee to eat more or need a house, why should food, housing, or health care be a marginal cost of production? You're forcing the business to internalize costs that are not a consequence of their actions. If, on the other hand the state provided a basic income as they do in some Scandinavian countries, we'd see how much the employees labor is really worth. There would be no need for a minimum wage. If someone wants to work for $0.10 a day after his/her basic needs are met, there's nothing wrong with that, although I suspect you will find most people value their time higher than that. The problem with the "take econ 101" argument is that the labor market isn't efficient. The existence of unemployment means that the market has failed to clear. The fear of being out on the street with hungry children depresses wages below their market value. If one makes it to econ 102, one would realize this.
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May 30, 2013 17:36
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Trivia posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could swear that just because wages go up, prices (and number) of goods don't necessarily go up (down) proportionally as well. There are just so many loving variables. Consumption goes up -> prices rise relative to the increase in production cost, but economies of scale means this won't necessarily be linear. Stocks of goods go down -> signal to competitors that there's demand for the good -> more competition. Elastic good -> people find alternatives. And lastly, people don't all buy the same things in the same amounts; just because we all get a raise doesn't mean I'm going out to buy a new diamond ring. The replies you've gotten have focused on raising the minimum wage rather than wages generally. I'm not sure which you were asking about, but I think the answer is that in a free market prices are always determined by supply and demand. The people who say rising wages cause a commensurate rise in prices are, I think, right provided the economy is already at full employment/capacity. If that's the case then the economy is already producing as much goods and services in real terms as it can. In that scenario, if wages suddenly rose by say 10% then each worker, feeling richer, would like to consume more than they were before, but since the economy was already at full production it's clear that in aggregate they cannot. There are simply no more goods and services to consume. Trying to maintain their standard of living they'll simply bid prices up until everyone is more or less where they were in real terms before the wage increase. If the economy is not at full capacity, which must be true any time there is non-frictional unemployment, then I would think there can be a very different situation. The now higher paid workers go out and try to buy more stuff. This stuff (by "stuff" I mean goods and services) can be produced by hiring more people, running factories at full capacity, etc. In this situation, prices still need to rise a bit to cover the excess labor costs, but there's no reason why the costs attributable to previously wasted resources need to change. In this sense higher wages could lead to less unemployment, not more. That possibility seems counterintuitive. Am I missing something obvious here?
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May 31, 2013 15:11
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wateroverfire posted:Yes. Companies don't hire because they have an excess of cash and feel the need to spend it on something. They hire because consumers want more of their product than can be produced by their current work force. You're right that the money does have to come from somewhere if wages rise, which is why I would advocate something like eliminating the payroll tax to increase take-home pay without raising costs rather than raising the minimum wage. That way the money doesn't have to come from somewhere else in the private sector. That wasn't the question I was trying to adress, though. Muscle Tracer posted:They're also assuming that the employers are working with a 0% profit margin, or need to maintain the same profit margin. If they're able to pay their chief executives millions of dollars, and are able to pile on multi-million-dollar bonuses as well, then this is obviously not the case. Yeah, I agree with you on the profit margin issue, although I think the CEO pay thing is a bit of a red herring. Although it's a lot more than most people make, it's still not a major expense for most companies. Tim Cook's $4M salary sounds like a lot but it's only 0.009% of Apple's revenue.
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May 31, 2013 15:56
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Gourd of Taste posted:In 2011 he got 378 million after stock options. Yeah, but those are created through dilution and aren't a real cost to the company's operating budget. If anything, it's clawing back value from the stock holders. It only shows up as an expense because of some Sarbanes-Oxley startup punishing provisions.
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May 31, 2013 16:21
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Muscle Tracer posted:Nonetheless, it stands next to the idea that a corporation can't afford to raise the wages of its lowest-paid employees. How can a corporation afford to pay its CEOs so lavishly, or give them such phenomenal bonuses, when they are, apparently, in such dire financial straits that they can't even afford to pay all of their workers a living wage? Who said they can't afford to pay more? I certainly didn't. A firm is a consumer of labor and, just like any other consumer, they are going to try to get what the want at the lowest price someone is willing to sell it at. Maybe you feel that just because someone in China will make an iphone for less than you consider a living wage Apple should feel obligated to pay more. If so, that's fine but you're making a moral argument not an economic argument. Maybe I could make a moral argument that all coffee must cost $6 per cup. Either way, it's just someone deciding what something should be worth. Now, I'll certainly agree that we don't have an efficient market for labor. I made that point a page or two ago, but I don't think you've made a compelling argument for price controls.
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May 31, 2013 17:57
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quote:I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: how is it justifiable that hundreds of thousands of Americans are an inch away from destitution, while a privileged few make over a thousand times what any of these people make? The class warfare speak just alienates people. Why not just say, "How is it justifiable that hundreds of thousands of Americans are an inch away from destitution," full stop? I mean, isn't that the problem? I agree we need a war on poverty. I disagree that we need a war on wealth. You only confuse the issue by making it sound as if those have to be the same thing.
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Jun 3, 2013 02:37
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Amused to Death posted:It's only a "war on wealth" if you call it that, others call it making the wealthy pay their dues to society. It's ridiculous the idea of making the wealthy pay more can even be constructed as class warfare when it's the wealthy are are waging a war constantly on everyone else, leaving millions in this country alone ruined. Right, but it comes down to what is the means and what is the end. Is making the wealthy pay an end unto itself? I think it's a lot harder to get support for something like that -- or something that sounds like that. I completely agree that one could make an argument for a fairer tax code, particularly with respect to things like carry interest and the qualified dividend rate, or even capital gains more generally. However, when you start saying that it's ridiculous that people can be so wealthy, it sounds like what you're objecting to is the existence of rich people. Maybe we do need to dial up taxes slightly on higher earners to fund a proper social safety net (I don't think that's true actually, but I tend to think about the deficit differently than most people, so that's an economics point and slightly off topic), in which case, that's fine. If the goal is to eliminate poverty then focus on that. Sounding like you want to eliminate wealth just alienates people. Also, there are plenty of market economies with lots of rich people that have functioning social safety nets.
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Jun 3, 2013 15:20
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OwlBot 2000 posted:But what do you think makes that great wealth for one person possible, if not the poverty of millions of other people? Kings were rich because they were able to tax a large population. Each member of that population was poor because technology at the time was bad and agriculture was inefficient. The peasants in medieval Europe would not suddenly have become rich, or even marginally more comfortable if they could keep all of what they grew -- there just wasn't a lot of wealth to divide up. Gap runs a 7% margin, so I'm not sure what your point is there. In modern economies, it's certainly possible to have billionaires like Olav Thon or Stein Erik Hagen in a country with a strong social welfare system and a very high standard of living for the poorest citizens. 2banks1swap.avi posted:One thing I've long wondered and never found an answer for is why exactly anyone else should tolerate the intense concentration of wealth required for anyone to be rich at all. I presume you would grant that the rich person is better off being rich than not rich, but that asside, the question becomes are other people better off, worse off, or unchanged by the fact that someone is rich. To answer this (and to a certain extent how the rich today are different than medieval nobility) we need to look at how wealth is held by the ultra rich. In the middle ages, supporting a king's standard of living required an army of servants all of whom had to be fed, housed, and clothed by an even larger army of servants. The common person was quite poor, lived on dirt floors, etc. although there is some evidence that their standard of living was higher than in some of the poorest countries today (source). Today, in a modern economy, while there is clearly a greater nominal inequality than at any point in history, in terms of material inequality I think it's hard to argue the same thing. Rich people just don't have armies of servants anymore. They may live in houses ten times bigger or own their own private jet, but most Americans have a roof over their head (87% have air conditioning) and 90% have been one a plane. Instead, the ultra rich's nominal wealth is concentrated mostly in ownership of businesses, especially large ones. The Pritzkers own a bunch of cruise ships that common people can enjoy. David Neeleman owns (owned?) an airline that common people can fly on (and many do). Michael Dell owns a computer factory, etc. Are most people's lives better off because the assets exist? I think the answer is yes. Could we nationalize some of them? Maybe, but I think it would be very hard to make the case that we would be much better off for it. I think the question of do we eliminate poverty or continue to allow a few people to be rich is a false choice. If someone has a moral philosophy that inequality of wealth is wrong, I'm probably not going to change their mind, but from an economics standpoint, I don't agree that wealth creates poverty. If anything it's the oposite.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:49
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WampaLord posted:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/wealthy-stashing-offshore_n_3179139.html Money has no utility value except perhaps as a medium for facilitating trade. It's not like if that money weren't in a vault people could eat it or live in it. Mans posted:If you don't understand that the massive amounts of capital that are acumulated by said private individuals and corporations cause massive and crushing poverty in the third world and destroy the social fabric of the first world then i don't know in which world you're living. That some billionaires want to dismantle social programs shouldn't be surprising -- plenty of non-billionaires do as well. Some billionaires, such as George Soros, would like to see them strengthened. If you can make an argument that concentration of wealth causes poverty in the developing world I'd be interested to hear it. I do find iterations on, "If you don't believe me, you're an idiot," fairly unconvincing though. I'm not sure that, for example, sub-Saharan Africa was much wealthier five hundred years ago than it was today.
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Jun 4, 2013 21:59
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Zeitgueist posted:Tons of people take risks, and don't get wealthy. Tons of people get wealthy without risk. Tons of people get wealthy despite the failure of their projects(because they enrich themselves at the cost of the business. Tons of people get rich without enriching lives. Even with the risk issue to the side, generally people are allowed to keep (or sell) the products of their labor. If someone creates a productive asset, or purchases one with with the proceeds of early productivity, why should she not be allowed to keep it?
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Jun 5, 2013 19:25
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Zeitgueist posted:People specifically are not allowed to keep or sell the products of their labor. The owner gets to do that. The people who create the product get a wage that has little to do with the value of what they create. When you start out, you are allowed to keep what you create. It does happen in the real world. Notch and Minecraft is a good example of this. There's another option available to you also, and that's that you can sell your creative effort directly. When you do this (through your employment agreement) the party that has already paid you for this creative effort keeps the product. If you want to go build a chair, it's your chair and you can sell it to me. If I hire you to build a chair, then I've bought the labor that produces the chair and it's my chair. It's the same way with a factory. If I build a factory (assume it's run by robots) I can keep (or sell) the things that are produced. Alternatively I can sell the factory itself and the purchaser can keep (or sell) the thing produced. You don't get to have it both ways though, being paid for your work and also owning the things produced. You're essentially asking to be double payed.
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Jun 5, 2013 20:06
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I think the discussion about who "aught" to control the means of production has turned largely into the old argument about the validity of Marx/Engles to which I think neither I nor those disagreeing with me are really adding much new. I'm going to go back to the topic that proceeded it. Must concentration of wealth cause poverty?Parallel Paraplegic posted:There's a somewhat popular idea in sociology called Dependency Theory that sort of says that. Basically a bunch of states matured first using the old demographic transition model, and modern smaller or poorer countries can't do the same thing because when the richer countries did it there weren't any already-transitioned large economic powers in existence. Now that there are numerous huge economic 800 pound gorillas all with advanced military forces and significant world political sway, it's much harder for poor countries (even ones with abundant natural resources, like the oil-rich middle east) to increase the quality of life for their citizens because that would not be in the best interest of the larger powers (no more cheap labor and inexpensive natural resources, for example). I think this is really interesting, and probably has some validity to it, but I'm not sure it directly adresses the question. For example, is there any evidence to suggest that if there were more economic equality within those 800 pound gorilla countries things would be better for people in developing countries? You note this somewhat though by pointing out that it more prevents countries from developing rather than causing the poverty itself. I think the natural resources issue is interesting as well. In practice, I would certainly prefer to see better sharing of the revenues from exploitation of natural resources since this would probably stimulate local demand while also supplying capital to build up domestic industries to meet it and result in some actual real growth. On a more philosophical note though, if we can make the argument that the people of Saudi Arabia have a better claim to the oil there than say just the royal family, why could we not say that it belongs to the whole world and not just the people of Saudi Arabia? Once we go down that road, what's so special about the nation-state that make it the natural boundary for ownership of natural resources?
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Jun 5, 2013 21:46
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Zeitgueist posted:It's fundamentally the same argument. Private companies/individuals shouldn't profit from resources owned by the public at large. This is a good argument for the nationalization of resources. While I agree with the concept of the world at large should benefit from resources rather than just a country....within the current geopolitical concept that will simply mean the US will get control. Let's say our country has some natural resources deep underground, and let's assume that the law/constitution of our country places it in some form of common ownership. There are three ways I can see (there may be more) to put those resources to use. We could create a nationalized extraction industry that's owned collectively by the country and distribute proceeds after paying the expenses of the industry or put them in some form of public trust. We could hire a company to extract them in a fee for service arrangement and have the public keep the proceeds of the sale after paying the contractor. We could sell them in situ and let some company extract and resell them. You seem to be making a moral argument that one of those arrangements is better than the others. I would think whatever arrangement had the greatest utility would be best. Moreover, assuming a reasonably efficient market in extraction services, I would argue that all three of those arrangements are equivalent.
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Jun 5, 2013 23:02
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Zeitgueist posted:Ah yes, "assuming a reasonably efficient market in extraction services". You completely avoided the substance of what I said. There can be corruption of the political system in any of the three ways of organizing the extraction effort. I am not pro-corruption in any economic system.
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Jun 5, 2013 23:47
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Zeitgueist posted:I'm not avoiding the substance. A nationalized system of extraction is the least likely to have issues because there's far less chance of corruption and skimming. There's not zero chance, especially in a capitalist society like the US, but it's much less. Paying a private company to do the extraction is a fairly standard privatization scheme that inserts an unnecessary profit margin into the mix, and going flat rate sale means you will always be selling your resources for less than their value, usually much less. In all three situations the real resources got out of the ground, some additional real resources were consumed, and the treasury was filled with the proceeds of the sale minus the cost of extraction. Now if those real resources were consumed domestically one could ask why the national government needs a currency it can create at will, but that's kind of another issue. As for the nationalized system being the least corruptible, do you have any evidence for that? I can think of a few examples off the top of my head of corruption in nationalized industries such as the Argentine banking system and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. All I see for the proposition that nationalized industries are less corruptible is your assertion that it's true. Note that I'm not saying nationalized industries are always the wrong way to go either.
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Jun 6, 2013 16:00
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Tactical Grace posted:Anyone know of any compelling research on the effect (or lack thereof) of computer games on behaviour/aggression?
There's a great deal of literature on the topic, almost all of it fairly uncompelling. The body of work has a political element similar to the rock music causes violence thing of the late 80s early 90s. In general, the burden of proof falls on the person claiming an association, not the person claiming that one is unlikely.
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Jun 13, 2013 19:45
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Kafka Esq. posted:Yeah, chartalism and MMT are the same thing. Now I'm trying to figure out how the different schools compare to one another, but I can't really find a textbook definition of anything. MMT people seem to think they're just describing an accounting reality. Austrians seem to think its Keynesianism run amok. http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
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Jul 11, 2013 04:08
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Totally TWISTED posted:I'm suffering link and bookmark withdrawal with my computer down. Can someone link me a good article that explains why the US federal government budget is not the same as a household budget? If you really want a thorough MMT primer http://neweconomicperspectives.org/p/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html is pretty extensive. A briefer and more direct answer to your question is available here: http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/federal-budget-not-household-budget-here-s-why. The TLDR is that the US federal government can print dollars whereas the household cannot. If the household created its own currency, say offering homebucks to the children in exchange for chores and letting them turn them back in for TV hours then the household would be in the same situation with homebucks as the US federal government is with dollars. The household's ability to spend in homebucks is limited only by the ability of the economy (its children) to produce real goods and services (do chores).
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Jul 29, 2013 21:53
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karthun posted:The austrian follow up question will be "What will happen when the government's spending exceeds the economies ability to produce real goods and services?" I agree with everything Vulich the Subtle said, and want to add a few points. One way to spend beyond the economy's ability to produce is to destroy the real output of the economy. This is what happened in Zimbabwe in the 2000s. A set of terrible government policies including land reforms that de-mechanized farming caused a 50% reduction in agricultural output and pretty severe reduction in mining output. Gold production fell by 75% from 1998 to 2007. Real GDP per capita fell by around 50% in only a few years. It doesn't take an economist to know that if there isn't enough food for everyone, what food there is is going to be really expensive. Or, if you prefer, the demand curve for food is highly inelastic at the starvation bound. At this point, the government had to spend constantly increasing amounts of its currency to provision itself and we all know the result. Note though, that the real-economic collapse caused the hyperinflation, not the other way around. The other point I'd like to add is that generally an economy isn't going to go crashing over the full-output bound, but will approach it gradually. Most followers of MMT are proponents of a job guarantee. If one is in place, then as the private sector approaches full employment, government payroll will be dropping. This deficit reduction is automatically stabilizing as is the increase in tax receipts from a more productive economy. If once the economy is approaching full capacity (the goal right?) we start to see the inflation rate tick up, then we can always raise taxes.
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Jul 30, 2013 16:43
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Accretionist posted:Are there any effective (to a Libertarian) lines-of-attack on the notion that government is wrong because you don't have a choice of participating? A (hopefully) democratic government is the power structure we create to prevent one from being imposed on us by whomever happens to be strongest. When you push them on how to punish violence or misappropriation of "property" then they usually end up describing a set of relationships that are also not voluntary (at least from the perspective of the person from whom the property is "reclaimed") and look a lot like a government but called something else. As a side note, I used the quotes around property above because I think property is a legal construct and without governments you only have possession. So I think the whole Libertarian idea of property rights is inherently contradictory.
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Aug 6, 2013 17:38
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They are very will respected in Austrian economics circles and not so much by anyone else.
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Aug 7, 2013 16:53
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Someone else probably knows way more than me but from what I know, the basic idea is that statistically, some people are going to die or suffer serious side effects from vaccination, so a small part of the cost of every vaccination is set aside to help those unlucky people. That's pretty much it. I would just add that part of the reason for this was to standardize payouts so that there wouldn't be multi-million dollar jury awards in wrongful death cases when the vaccine maker "knew its product would kill someone" thereby destroying the otherwise fairly low margin vaccine industry. It reflects a public policy decision that first, vaccines are good on the whole despite the risk, and second, people who do suffer adverse side effects should be entitled to some compensation -- preferably without spending years in court. Personally, I think they should do the same with all medical complications and save malpractice suits for truly egregious behavior.
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Aug 9, 2013 15:34
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Aeolius posted:No Mises Institute roundup can be complete without their defense of Ebenezer Scrooge. That was an amazing read, but it makes me want to dust off Christopher Hitchens' thoughts on Ayn Rand. The same argument I think applies here.
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Aug 12, 2013 20:51
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Accretionist posted:Canada's small-scale 5-year run of Mincome during the 70s is probably where that come from. Benefit tapered off as earnings increased such that working always made you more, and disemployment was only observed in new mothers and students. HS graduation rates improved. There was no adverse affect on marriage/divorce rates. Crime decreased. Hospitalization rates and contact with physicians decreased, particularly for accidents and injuries and mental health diagnoses, respectively. From a public policy standpoint it was a tremendous success. There have also been some attempts at using this direct-funding technique for development aid with some success.
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Aug 19, 2013 16:11
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Pierat posted:Nope, it's actually the pro-cyclicality of financial markets. You could just google Minsky or read his wiki, it's a pretty simple theory. And you'd like it, it's about unstable financial markets. The second graph you linked shows housing prices double what they were twenty years ago and climbing again.
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Aug 20, 2013 14:25
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Quetzadilla posted:Student loans, which have replaced mortgages as the hot new thing to bundle and sell to investors (which aren't backed by any asset and are going to become massively delinquent). Don't forget the added perk that they aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.
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Aug 20, 2013 17:00
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quote:Let’s boil it down quickly: Scientists say the only safe level of radiation is zero. I can't speak to the rest of the article, but I cannot imagine a responsible scientist would say that. XKCD had a radiation comparison chart a while back.
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Aug 28, 2013 21:55
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Just adding a bit here.Uranium Phoenix posted:Basically, there is measurable radiation in these fish that can be traced back to Fukushima, but those radiation levels are actually so low that they're less than the amount of radiation you get from eating a banana. Moreover, the normal radiation in pacific blue fin tuna was 100 to 1000 times what was a result of Fukushima. They expected subsistence fisherman to have a total radiation exposure from eating those fish equivalent to what one normally receives from natural sources on earth over 12 hours.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:33
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E-Tank posted:My father has told me in the past that one reason the American Car industry is failing so hard is because the unions demand too much money and the car manufacturers just cannot keep up the pay and build decent cars at the same time. He's not a stupid man, he's just been told this all his life, that unions hurt businesses to the point that joining one is a bit like trying to destroy the business. Well like many falsehoods that are hard to refute this one has an element of truth to it. Yes, in the heyday of the American auto industry the unions, which were much more powerful than today, fought successfully for good pay, benefits, and most importantly pensions. Many industries (especially cars and airlines) during the post war boom years of the '50s and '60s offered generous defined benefit pensions to their employees. This seemed like a great idea at the time, you could sell cars today and pay your employees decades from now. Since profits were soaring, it seemed like it would get even cheaper in the future since there were lots of new markets and no competition for most American heavy industries. Unfortunately, many companies never got around to setting aside enough money, and those employees ended up living a lot longer than everyone had thought. This was a double edge sword since the medical care that enabled those retired workers to live so long was also constantly increasing in price. So, yes, the unions convinced the auto industry to offer benefits it couldn't afford decades ago, but that doesn't mean that current employees are paid all that well -- just that they're still paying for workers who stopped working 20 years ago. Also, the rest of the world got around to making cars too, and most of the competition doesn't have to pay their employees' health care costs, nor their pensions because their governments do. Did the unions have a role in the downfall of the american automobile industry? Yes, but so did the companies themselves, the government, and foreign competition. That doesn't make the unions evil corporation destroyers any more than it does the government for forcing companies to buy health insurance for their employees rather than having a socialized healthcare system that Toyota's employees benefit from.
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Sep 1, 2013 06:31
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:One thing I'm dying to try is to compare a Union defending a lovely employee to an accused criminal being able to remain silent and get a lawyer. I think that line of thinking is unlikely to work with the anarcho-capitalist types. For them, all employment is "at will" and the state forcing an employer to pay someone it doesn't want to is "aggression." Contrast this idea with criminal protections being a check on the aggression of the state against the individual.
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Sep 8, 2013 16:44
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:If a company doesn't want to enter into a contract with a Union because they feel like it'll violate their ability to freely associate, they really should not agree to that contract. I'm sorry that you're such a statist that you want the government to come rescue a business every time it gets into a contract that is inconvenient. Indeed. i think many of the libertarian intelligentsia will admit that, for example, right-to-work laws are a government imposition and shouldn't exist in a libertarian society. However, I think many see right-to-work laws as a lesser of two evils given that Taft-Hartley isn't getting repealed anytime soon. KernelSlanders fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Sep 9, 2013 |
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Sep 9, 2013 03:26
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The state requires by law that my landlord provide a refrigerator and stove. I do not have a dishwasher, washer, or dryer in my apartment, yet I'm well above the median household income for the US. I can get to a laundromat, but I have to hand-wash my dishes. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
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Sep 14, 2013 03:31
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Chantilly Say posted:The best part of this post is that because police officers have to be trained to do a million other things, their weapon skills are often horrible. But the rate of street crimes in the US means that we probably can't follow the British model and not arm beat cops at all. I was talking to a cop about the ESB shooting where the NYPD hit nine bystanders. Without batting an eye he said, "taxpayers don't like paying for range time." Also, on the CGGWAG theme, but perhaps more seriously, is there a good reason why we don't add EMT-B to the high school curriculum?
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Sep 20, 2013 14:21
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:Another fun effect that I've personally noticed is that insurance companies are jacking up their rates several times since after this year they aren't allowed to do that willy-nilly since the ACA applies new regulations. So while under the ACA rates will be more stable, the fact that it doesn't apply yet but looms in the distance this year means my insurance would have gone from $60 per paycheck to $400 per paycheck if my company hadn't switched providers and if I hadn't gone down a few tiers in terms of plan services. It still went up a loving ton, just not nearly that much. And my company is actually incredibly generous and absorbs a massive amount of the cost of health insurance compared to other companies I've seen. I'm sure if you fudge the facts a bit you can make this look like the ACA is directly responsible for it and I'm sure its affected a few companies, since it wasn't just my side of the bill that went up. How does that work exactly? The 85% rule is already in place, so they can't just quadruple their premium unless they quadruple their expenses also.
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Oct 1, 2013 15:03
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Caros posted:Pay raise for the CEO is qualified as an expense? No.
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Oct 2, 2013 01:57
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They might also just be trying to revamp their entire set of policies. If for whatever reason they can't just cancel a particular plan they can jack the price up on it to make people drop and go to one of the new plans. Yes, the insurance company would still have to refund much of that money at the end of next year, but in the mean time they've chased people off the plans they want to close.
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Oct 2, 2013 19:40
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Does someone have the nice effort post writeup on why the government budget cannot be compared to a household budget? I should really save these things. I'm partial to my post from a few pages back, which also has links to articles by smarter people than I. Also the Washington post recently had an article on how the U.S. budget is just like the budget of the average family that owns tanks and aircraft carriers, is immortal, and can legally print its own money.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:36
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Quantum Mechanic posted:Assuming you're analysing this from a neoliberal perspective, GDP is what matters. The tax revenues don't matter ultimately, because the higher the GDP, the more money there is available to borrow and hence the lower their rates. Also, the FOMC sets the interest rate on short term government debt. Post Nixon-shock, without any gold reserves to protect there isn't any need to maintain long-term debt at all.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:55
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Pierat posted:Uh, no it doesn't. It sets the federal funds rate, which is the overnight interest rate between banks. It sets the fed funds target, which it attempts to hit by setting the discount rate and by buying and selling short term bonds to control their yield.
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Oct 8, 2013 21:28
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:I guess we would first have to compile the common MRA talking points. I think this is a worthwhile thing to have a concise list of rebuttals for, and I've trudged around the lovely side of the internet searching for funny things to post on PYF long enough to read more than a few MRA rants. Here's a few that come up a lot: I think the biggest fallacy MRAs engage in is the assumption that all women, much less all people who call themselves "feminist" have identical thought processes. Doing the same with MRAs is probably not going to be terribly productive. I've seen many arguments devolve into some form of: "Feminists don't want gender equality because X." "No, that's not the feminist position." "No, you're not a feminist." There are plenty of nerdy teenagers on Reddit who are looking to justify misogyny by calling themselves MRAs, but there are also plenty of people who would just like more equality in child custody or to point out that the gains in higher education by black women masks the fact that black men have been largely passed over by the reforms since the civil rights movement (source Fig. 2) when you slice the data by race or sex but not both. I think there are also many people who would be considered MRAs have the same goals as many feminists: dismantling societally imposed constraints based on sex. While the revolting ideas you list are undoubtably held by some subset of people, a list of "these are the disgusting things all MRAs believe," is not likely to be terribly helpful in winning arguments, much less convincing people of anything. KernelSlanders fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 15:46
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means women are worse/more unstable/whatever