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Why exactly would someone build a bridge that would collapse?
For the money. And who says it was deliberate?
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lols. How are they making money off a collapsed bridge?
I don't really think I have to tell you that construction companies take on contracts for the money.
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How do they get an insurance company to insure a crappily built structure?
Why would they do that? They don't need to. No regulations, no restrictions, remember?
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Why do they want to build something that will kill people?
For the money. Why to tobacco companies want to sell something as poisonous as tobacco?
Instead of explaining how such an issue would be dealt with in libertopia you seem to be denying such an issue could arise. It's very strange that you think corporations wouldn't do everything in their power to save money. You remind me very much of the right-wing science denialists (not coincidentally). If you pretend problems don't exist you don't have to explain how your libertopian society will deal with them.
Just to note......the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota didn't collapse from neglect or lack of regulations but rather a design flaw. A flaw that despite many regulations in place did not get caught.
For the money. Why to tobacco companies want to sell something as poisonous as tobacco?
For the money is exactly why the government regulates it also. Taxes and lawsuits are a pretty large money maker for the government.
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Instead of explaining how such an issue would be dealt with in libertopia you seem to be denying such an issue could arise. It's very strange that you think corporations wouldn't do everything in their power to save money. You remind me very much of the right-wing science denialists (not coincidentally). If you pretend problems don't exist you don't have to explain how your libertopian society will deal with them.
So a lack of regulations are a problem and excess regulations are a problem. I do agree with the part that notes both parties are a part of the problem.
Just to note......the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota didn't collapse from neglect or lack of regulations but rather a design flaw. A flaw that despite many regulations in place did not get caught.
If this is supposed to be an argument in favour of removing regulations, it's not a good one.
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For the money is exactly why the government regulates it also. Taxes and lawsuits are a pretty large money maker for the government.
Does this have anything to do with the question or my answer? I think not. Why would a company do harmful things? For the money.
Does this have anything to do with the question or my answer? I think not. Why would a company do harmful things? For the money.
Yes it does......What difference is there in a company doing harmful things for money or the government allowing harmful things for the money?
There is a rational medium but we never stay there because people have to justify their existence. A lobbyist must get results and a bureaucrat must get people to believe they are doing something for them.
Those jobs are NOT the USA's.......we must compete with the rest of the globe to attract and maintain those jobs in this country.
Guess what, for many companies, this country is no longer attractive to set up shop in.
Be very, very thankful for Kmartadelphia, Walmartville and similar....for the most part, that is the best we can do.
Just a question - why these global companies find America no longer attractive, except for top management and board of directors who still insist on living in NY and CA?
And why CEOs are still mostly American? Why companies like Ford, GM, HP and IBM who constantly expand into China and India do not hire Indian CEOs and other top executives? After all we live in a global economy and need to be where our markets are...
It's time to own up to the fact that sitting idly by and watching as millions of good-paying middle class jobs drifted overseas to China, India, and others over the course of the 1990s to present was a massive mistake. In other words, we didn't regulate and protect our economy appropriately, and we are now paying dearly for it. And neither Republicans nor Democrats know how to fix it.
What happens when you hollow out the bedrock structure of middle class jobs and replace them with meager service-based McJobs? Escalating private debt, impaired private consumption ability, increasing reliance on public assistance - and hence, increasing public debt. Oh, but you do get lots of cheap crap from China, and the corporations do really well.
Let's call out both Republicans and Democrats for their part in this.
Republicans: This is what happens when you aggressively de-regulate the economy in an age of globalization and mechanization. The free market thing was aligned with America's interests when the labor pool was largely self-contained; not so much when you open the floodgates and drastically change the mix of the labor pool. Great for corporations, great for foreigners, not so great for the rest of us. By helping the rich get richer and saying "*********" to the middle class, you have ironically become the greatest cheerleaders of the welfare state. Where do you think the person whose job got outsourced is likely to go, even with their new Wal-mart job that doesn't give them enough to live on? To the line for public assistance. And you don't realize that this problem will not take care of itself with further deregulation - those jobs are never coming back, and American wages cannot compete with the low-cost foreigners.
Democrats: You consider expanded entitlements to be "helping", but it's not real, sustainable help. Real help for America comes in the form of a strong middle class job structure. And you did nothing to stop any of this, because you're just as much purchased by corporate interests as are the Republicans. And the regulation you offer is not geared toward actually protecting or fostering American jobs; it's geared toward rote wealth redistribution. This does not work for long, because it just grows the debt. There is a big difference between being given a buck and earning a buck.
So we have Republicans, who watched American jobs go overseas and think that further deregulation would help things (it won't); and we have Democrats, who watched American jobs go overseas and think that further entitlement expansion would help things (it won't). It doesn't matter who wins, the nation is still more or less equally screwed.
To fix this problem would require some SMART economic regulation at this point. Those jobs are not coming back on their own. You need to let market mechanisms work, but you also need to have some protective safeguards for American workers. And you can't just let corporations displace the entire middle body of American jobs for the sake of profit of a few hundred people at the top. Smart regulation works in successful, high quality of life nations like Germany, Austria, and the Nordics, which are also all more solvent than we are. Everyone, go look at unemployment rates in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Norway.
Of course, this kind of a fix will never happen - too much like "socialism" - and so America will continue to limp along its present course with lots of arguments between Democrats and Republicans that accomplish nothing in the form of growing the middle class. The top few percents will do fabulously well, everyone else will watch their quality of life degrade for decades to come.
Report: US Corporate Tax Rate 2nd Lowest In The World
Many corporate leaders have noted that other OECD countries have lowered their corporate tax rates in recent years, but fail to mention that these countries have also closed corporate tax loopholes while the U.S. has expanded them. As a result, the U.S. collects less corporate taxes as a share of GDP than all but one of the 26 OECD countries for which data are available.
You seem to have it backwards... the U.S. has one of the highest corporate taxes in the world.
Everyone knows the basic economic reason why the US lost all the jobs.
You don't.
That would be sad, except it isn't sad at all...because you get to vote....and it is terrifying for others to see the damage that you cause supporting policies that are beyond your comprehension.
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Originally Posted by ambient
The point is that other first-world nations did not just sit by and let them all vanish, and we should not have, either.
Other 1st World nations? Like what? You mean like Denmark with a teeny tiny population of 5 Million?
UE Rates August 2013
Iowa 4.9%
Nebraska 4.2%
North Dakota 3.0%
Oklahoma 5.3%
South Dakota 3.8%
Utah 4.7%
Vermont 4.6%
Wyoming 4.6%
So, uh, what --exactly -- are those States doing wrong?
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Originally Posted by ambient
And it's perfectly legitimate to mention the wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests in this context.
Uh-huh.....then impress all of us and explain how the "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" caused the destruction of Zenith.
You haven't presented a single shred of evidence in support of your old-lady-emotional claims.
Admit or Deny:
Zenith Corporation was competing against Life's Good Corporation (hereinafter LG) a [South] Korean corporation in the global personal electronics market.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" coerced Zenith to accept union bargaining representation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" coerced the union to demand that Zenith pay employees wages or salaries, benefits or fringe benefits in excess of the Free Markets rates for each of the independent Labor Markets in which a Zenith manufacturing or support facility operated.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" coerced the Korean LG Corporation to pay its workers wages or salaries, and benefits or fringe benefits, in accordance with the Laws of Economics in each of the independent Labor Markets in which LG Corporation operated a manufacturing or support facility.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced Zenith Corporation to sell its personal electronics products globally at an higher price than LG Corporation marketed their products globally, in order to pay the wages and benefits demanded by the union which --- according to you --- were originally coerced by the "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests."
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused the 6 Billion people who do not live in the United States to purchase products manufactured by LG Corporation, which cost significantly less than Zenith Corporation, yet were of equal or superior quality to the products manufactured by the Zenith Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused the 6.6 Billion people on Earth to purchase stock shares in the Korean LG Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused the 6.6 Billion people on Earth to stop purchasing stock shares sold by the Zenith Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused the 6.6 Billion people on Earth to sell the stock shares the were holding in the Zenith Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused Korean LG Corporation to start purchasing stocks in the Zenith Corporation, until such time as the LG Corporation became the majority share-holder of the Zenith Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused Korean LG Corporation to continue purchasing stocks in the Zenith Corporation, until such time as the LG Corporation owned 100% of all out-standing shares and became the sole owner of the Zenith Corporation.
Admit or Deny:
The "wealthy, the politicians, and the corporate interests" forced, coerced, threatened, intimidated or otherwise caused Korean LG Corporation to shut down former Zenith facilities and fire former Zenith employees.......since it had already been proven irrefutably that Zenith cannot compete in the Global Market.
Hopefully, you and the others who hold the false erroneous baseless beliefs that you do will see how silly your claims really are.
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Originally Posted by bUU
I have challenged you many times to respond to the moral arguments I've presented, and you've failed to do so.
You are not the arbiter of Morality.
But that does not matter, since the Laws of Economics operate independently of Morality.
Perhaps you can argue that Indians, Serbs, Romanians, Italians, Israelis and et al are immoral for refusing to purchase higher priced Zenith products, instead, exercising common sense and their rights to purchase lower priced LG Corporation products
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Originally Posted by bUU
No matter how much you frivolously try to dodge the issues I raise, I will not grant you a modicum of respect for your evasions.
Seriously, no one cares whether you respect anyone or not, not to mention that the issues you raise are totally and completely irrelevant.
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Originally Posted by sickofnyc
Report: US Corporate Tax Rate 2nd Lowest In The World
As a result, the U.S. collects less corporate taxes as a share of GDP than all but one of the 26 OECD countries for which data are available.
In order for us to determine the truthfulness of your claim, we would need to know how much money corporations in other countries receive in subsidies from their governments.
Can you elaborate on Statoil?
Statoil is an oil company owned by the Norwegian government....just thought I'd point you in the right direction.
Never ceasing to be amazed...
Not at all. I've been quite direct with you. You simply are refusing to admit it. You and I disagree about morality. Please have at least enough honor to admit that.
Oh, we do disagree about morality. That's obvious. What you NEVER do is explain the basis for your morality. You just issue policy demands and declare that moral.
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Every single comment I have posted to you with regard to ACA, at least, has been a moral argument. You simply refuse to acknowledge the generally-accepted parameters of morality, and so you continually deny the reality that your perspective is immoral.
No, it has been self serving greed wrapped in moralistic sounding dogma.
I asked you to EXPLAIN how it is moral to take from one person by force and give it to another. I did not ask for liberal ideology to be repeated. I want to know the BASIS for your claim that you have a right to what I work for. Answer that, or admit you're just greedy and making up mumbo-jumbo or quote someone else's as justification for your greed.
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No, not the jobs that were exported. In reality, no jobs were exported. Rather, jobs were eliminated, and other jobs were created elsewhere in the world, where the standard of living is an order of magnitude lower than here, and therefore wages could be that much lower. What you're proposing, therefore, is the reduction of the American standard of living by an order of magnitude, to placate those who wish to regress society back to a Medieval lord-and-serf-like situation. It's a legitimate perspective to hold, even if I don't like it, but trying to present your proposal as anything other than that is either ridiculously naive or indefensibly deceptive.
Since your understanding of business and economics is non-existent, perhaps you should try learning something before you try to lecture other people.
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Why would someone build a website that cannot handle the reasonable expected load? Answer: Avarice. While the jury is still out, and we may never get the full story, I suspect that these companies put in deliberately low bids for the work, exploiting the process crafted by penny-wise/pound-foolish bargain-hunting favored by the American taxpayer, and then created their project resourcing plans based on how much they bid, minus the profit they wanted, instead of based on how much the product they committed to provide actually would require, figuring that they'll simply get add-on contracts afterward to make up for the difference, since the failures could readily be attributed to others in a cute finger-pointing circle of mutual butt-covering.
No, it's the inherent incompetence of government. It isn't THEIR money and THEY have no stake in the outcome, so nobody is accountable and nobody is responsible. This is true of EVERYTHING government does, which is why EVERYTHING government does is the LEAST effective way of doing it.
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Business is in business to make money. They aren't going to hold themselves to standards higher than society is willing to vigorously hold them to. As a matter of fact, what we've seen is that American business has developed a new way of optimizing profit, in the form of vigorously defending against being held to reasonable standards that aren't fastidiously enshrined in regulations prior to engagement. Naively claiming that business would do the right thing no matter what is belied by the fact that they don't even do the right thing when there's anything less than a 50/50 chance that they'll be held to account for their transgressions in that regard.
Government is NEVER accountable. Business is held accountable for what they do by the marketplace. It might not please your selfish demands for being given what you don't deserve, but truth wins... which is why you lose.
Are you being deliberately dense? Do you have ANY idea of the liability involved in building stuff like that? NOBODY can afford to build defective bridges. They could even face jail for doing so.
However, if it's a government-built bridge, there's no liability for anyone. Failure to do it right would just mean more money to do it again.
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I don't really think I have to tell you that construction companies take on contracts for the money.
Naw. Government employees volunteer their time for no pay because of the generosity of their hearts, right?
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For the money. Why to tobacco companies want to sell something as poisonous as tobacco?
Because people want it.
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Instead of explaining how such an issue would be dealt with in libertopia you seem to be denying such an issue could arise. It's very strange that you think corporations wouldn't do everything in their power to save money. You remind me very much of the right-wing science denialists (not coincidentally). If you pretend problems don't exist you don't have to explain how your libertopian society will deal with them.
Perhaps you fail to understand the nature of liberal governments. They ARE NEVER accountable, responsible, or trustworthy.
But you do have faith they are infallible.
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