Occupy Atlanta (ref: Wall Street protests here) (Avera: lawsuit, activities)

[dgoren]

Originally Posted by jazzcat22

Looks like a sister movement to Occupy wall Street is forming:

Occupy Atlanta

Any thoughts about this? Do you think the movement should just focus on Wall Street?

Nobody in Atlanta cares about this group. They are in a park in downtown Atlanta, away from where just about everyone lives. I would also say that most (certainly not all) people living in this area don't agree with their message.

[DawgPark]

Originally Posted by Cameron H

Agreed, although don't let business off the hook. Large corporations, if they must be taxed at all, tend to prefer a complex code because they have an army of tax lawyers and accounts who grease them up and help them slide through the holes. Okay...that sounded dirty, and anyway, I'm talking as if corporations are people or something! Large corporations can also effectively use the complex tax code to suppress innovation and competition from smaller companies.

Plus, of course, it is often the corporate/industry lobbyists who are corrupting the politicians in the first place. So we shouldn't let the private sector off the hook, here.

All that said, tax reform isn't going to shut down Washington. They'll start larding up the tax code before the ink is even dry. It's not a one-time reform, unfortunately.

I'll agree to that, as long as you agree to distinguish b/t large corporations and small business. Let's not paint "private sector" as just Wall St and big corporations.

It's the small businesses (like me) that have gotten lost in the shuffle, and ironically have always been the economic drivers of job growth. GE paid zero taxes in 2010, but I get hammered every year, and then some.

For every Goldman Sucks or AIG, there are thousands of mom/pop banks around the country. It's just that the large corps get the media attention and politician's interest. But, they do not define the "private sector" . . . at least not to this mom/pop outfit.

[Cameron H]

Originally Posted by DawgPark

I'll agree to that, as long as you agree to distinguish b/t large corporations and small business. Let's not paint "private sector" as just Wall St and big corporations.

It's the small businesses (like me) that have gotten lost in the shuffle, and ironically have always been the economic drivers of job growth. GE paid zero taxes in 2010, but I get hammered every year, and then some.

I'm a former small business owner myself, and as I said, one of the problems with our complex tax code -- and one of the reasons it's complex -- is that large corporations can use it to gain an unfair advantage on smaller competitors.

As far as the "engine of job growth" bit, read this. I think one of the problems with our economy is that the playing field is rigged such that small businesses aren't the (net) job creators they should be.

[tigers84]

Originally Posted by Cameron H

I'm a former small business owner myself, and as I said, one of the problems with our complex tax code -- and one of the reasons it's complex -- is that large corporations can use it to gain an unfair advantage on smaller competitors.

As far as the "engine of job growth" bit, read this. I think one of the problems with our economy is that the playing field is rigged such that small businesses aren't the (net) job creators they should be.

Define Unfair. Large companies have advantages over small companies, almost always. Its why companies strive to grow larger. Duh. Smaller companies can make up for these disadvantages by being nimble or providing better service. This is standard business stuff. OF COURSE big business has advantages over smaller ones. The Left's seeming obsession with the vague, subjective and basically meaningless "fairness (or unfairness)" is just yet one more tactic for taking from some and giving to others - ie., socialism.

Originally Posted by Cameron H

I thought "epistemically closed mind" sounded more polite than "willfully ignorant." Both are accurate, so take your pick.

Awww, how cute, pedantic liberalism at its finest. You folk never disappoint -- Nobody does arrogant preening better!

Originally Posted by Cameron H

1. We have a deficit problem. 2. It's going to increase automatically at the end of 2012 unless the president signs new tax legislation. 3. Taxing all sources of income (work, capital gains, dividends) at the same progressive rates is pretty simple.

This is true of some capital gains on some corporate securities - that piece of the asset's appreciation that derives from the corporation's profits during the period it was held, which were already subject to corporate income tax (assuming corporate income tax was actually paid, of course). However, the price at which a corporate security sells is never based entirely on past profits, so in MOST cases, some part of that capital gains, if not all of it, will not have been taxed.

And, of course, not all assets whose sale is subject to the capital gains tax are exposed to corporate income taxes. If I buy a plot of land in Montana for $100 and later sell it for $150, that $50 capital gains is not income that has been taxed previously.

Tell you what: Let's tax all income the same (capital gains, dividends, work), eliminate corporate tax loopholes, and then dramatically lower the corporate tax rate. Problem solved.

What liberals dont get is the fundamental problem. Its not revenue, or tax receipts. Its spending, primarily on ENTITLEMENTS. The country was founded on the basis of the primacy of the individual to pursue their own best interests. The founders did not intend that each person would be charged with taking care of everyone else. The current entitlement system has created a culture of depedency and parasites who believe they DESERVE, that a good life is their RIGHT. These views are antithetical to what made this country great and, if left to fester, will ultimately destroy us (probably taking most of the rest of the world down as well).

The Left has one answer to govt cash shortfalls: Raise taxes on "the rich". If done incrementally, over time, its an insidious force whose destructiveness is often missed among the panolopy of other problems it creates. Its like those who claim taking on more debt is the solution to our debt problems. Nothing is more stupid, yet in the short run it seems less painful, especially for those who adherents and constituents are dependent on handouts, freebies and gimmies.

Europe is the canary. This is the coal mine. We ignore their lesson at our peril. Govt sponsored large scale social programs are, ALWAYS, doomed to failure, and inevitably cause many more and worse problems than they temporarily relieve.

Fantasy is a popular genre these days. Our govts current fiscal policiies are evidence of that. "Thar be dragons" ahead has perhaps never been truer.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by tigers84

This thread has gone way off track.

But let me get this straight: you are holding out the financially bankrupt, over indebted, over regulated, over taxed, corrupted (see Greece), crony capitalism, slow growth, inefficient, pseudo-socialist, demographically challenged, decaying Eurozone as the model that the US should follow? WOW

Is that really what you got from my comment?

A country (or any other entity, IMO) that operates in a vacuum, and that is not observing, learning from, and sometimes adopting good ideas from others, is a country which is destined to failure.

Europe has done a lot of things wrong, certainly. They have also done a lot of things correctly, or at least in a manner which the US can't seem to match at this point in time.

Treating the entire EU as a monolithic entity, and treating their processes as an entire monolithic entity, is a tragic mistake, at least in my view.

Let's not try to overgeneralize, ok? I was talking specifically in the context of monopoly determination, not making some general assertion regarding EU-worship.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by muxBuppie

I don't care about some arbitrary line drawn in the sand. If there is competition then they have to compete, period.

I agree, but they still have to follow the law in the jurisdictions in which they choose to operate.

There is usually nothing at all wrong with being a monopoly, normally, or even in being a dominant presence within a given market.

However, in some jurisdictions, the rules pertaining to a given company may change once that business reaches a certain level of influence

Many countries also have laws against the use of a lawfully gained monopoly in one area as a lever to gain market share in another different market.

I'm not saying such things are right or wrong, but those laws do exist, both here in the US, and also in the EU. They cannot be ignored, at least if a company wants to operate above the law. I'm not sure it's a requirement to be legal in the US, though, given the behavior we've been seeing by various companies in the past 20-25 years. Being found guilty but then not being punished sort of equates to being not guilty, and a company can treat such things as a simple cost of doing business in this country. Not sure that was the intent of antitrust law...

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by neil0311

You make some technically correct points, but my higher level point is that computers in general were not mainstream until Windows 95. Even application servers that IT used for business were not as easy to deploy and had much higher operating costs before Windows NT.

I started out in IT as a Novell Master CNE and did lots of work with Unix and Novell in the late 80s and early 90s. MS DOS and IBM PC DOS were available, as were Macs, but the user base was limited to business users and geeks. Applications on Unix or mainframe platforms are/were costly and hard to manage. Macs never caught on beyond schools, and were close to extinction when Microsoft kicked in some capital to Apple in the mid-90s to keep them afloat.

Windows 95 and Windows NT really took the x86 32 bit OS mainstream. Migrations from Novell and Unix to NT took took off exponentially, and the PC as a business tool also took off, but more importantly, in the mid-90s is when the consumerization of IT began. Windows 95 led that effort, despite Mac being available 10 years prior and OS2 also being available since the last 1980s. The number of jobs in IT started to spike as Internet integration was now becoming not just a business but also a consumer requirement and ISPs began to grow. Windows NT and the Windows based development platforms began to change the business app dev landscape as well.

What is "mainstream"...? And in which market are you talking about?

We had literally dozens of Apple II machines used in public school classes when I was in high school 1978-1981 (Hopkins MN Public Schools), not just in the math department, and most of my friends had a machine of some sort at home. Apple II's, Commodore PET's, Trash 80's, etc. This was a common situation throughout the Twin Cities in the late 70's and early 80's.

That seems pretty mainstream to me. Not connected, certainly, but I'm not sure that "personal computers" require an internet connection to be useful to either businesses or families. Besides, I had AOL, Delphi, CI$, and BBS access well before I could get on an IP network at home. :-) No Prodigy. Oh, and GEnie. Remember Aladdin for DOS? Anyway...

DOS, Novell netware, and Windows were also used heavily in the office when I started in the late 80's, and by 1993 the airline I worked for had completely converted their operations center to Mac IIci machines with Solaris on the backend, but that's because Macs were far better at networking than DOS or Windows PCs in the early 90's. Windows caught up eventually, and had much larger mindshare (as well as the common hardware platform to run on), so it became the default for business, sometimes in spite of user preference. I know NWA's SSOC spun off its own IT department in response to NWA IT stating that Windows NT was the only supported platform. They hired their own sysadmins, and told IT to go fish.

That was a rare occurrence, though, and I think I largely agree with what you say above. The companies I've worked for have largely been technology companies or airlines, and both tend to be early tech adopters. Most other companies are not.

Windows and MS Office has had an influence on home and business desktop policies and has made things easier in terms of small-scale servers and widespread use of smaller computers. I could argue that such was an inevitable development regardless of the vendor involved, and that Microsoft was very slow to the party, but in the end Microsoft was the recipient of those dollars because of the position they were in and the various actions that they took to gain their position.

I just wanted to differentiate the development of the PC industry in the early 1980's with the development of the current Windows hegemony in the early and middle 1990's. Microsoft didn't give us the PC, they rode in on IBM's coat tails via IBM's invitation.

We've gone off topic long enough. Sorry.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by tigers84

Perhaps one of you can inform us all why the original subject matter, OA, should include an in-depth discussion of Microsoft anti-trust law? You want to go down that rabbit hole in detail, start your own thread. {Oh yea, capitalism is evil, I almost forgot! }

OWS is largely anti-corporatism, not anti-capitalism.*

Those are usually very different positions.

* - I should say that SEEMS to be an overwhelmingly common thread.

[rcsteiner]

Found an interesting graphic on a web site for folks to chew on:

"Get a What? A Job? 70% of Occupy Wall Streeters are Employed, Compared to 56% of Tea Partiers"

We Party Patriots » Blog Archive » Get a What? A Job? 70% of Occupy Wall Streeters are Employed, Compared to 56% of Tea Partiers

Lots of comparative bits ... dunno about its accuracy, but it's interesting if the data sources are accurate.

[tigers84]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

Is that really what you got from my comment?

A country (or any other entity, IMO) that operates in a vacuum, and that is not observing, learning from, and sometimes adopting good ideas from others, is a country which is destined to failure.

Europe has done a lot of things wrong, certainly. They have also done a lot of things correctly, or at least in a manner which the US can't seem to match at this point in time.

Treating the entire EU as a monolithic entity, and treating their processes as an entire monolithic entity, is a tragic mistake, at least in my view.

Let's not try to overgeneralize, ok? I was talking specifically in the context of monopoly determination, not making some general assertion regarding EU-worship.

You are missing the key issue. The Microsoft assault was symptomatic of the philosophy that has engendered the Eurozone's impending financial collapse: the govt as caretaker, aka, "chief fairness officer". The European Nanny state is failing as I type. While who knows what comes, we can be quite sure it will not survive in it's current form. Whatever "problems" the Nanny state sought to fix with it's overbearing regulations and tight control of private business activity, its "solutions" have had terrible (unintended?) consequences. Economic dynamism and growth is moribund. At this point Europe is incapable of expanding out of it's financial morass. State sponsored welfare and broad social programs have suffocated creativity and entrepreneurial activity. The weaker countries are now dragging down the entire continent into a stinking mass of economic armageddon. Even the bigger economies like France and Germany are showing signs of distress. Europe has done almost nothing correct. It is only the anarchists whom are pleased at the opportunities that lie ahead. Everyone else is terrified of what is likely, best case, many years of economic regression. Worst case is another devastating war across the continent. All in the name of "greater fairness". What a crock.