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x10000y'know, if we stopped subsidizing fossil fuels so heavily, it wouldn't be so easy to move manufacturing overseas. We (the us) have really done this to ourselves. It doesn't help that overly centralizing education and allowing it to stagnate through seniority oriented raises and incentives have destroyed the efficacy of that system. People have made bad choices, but the educratic system locked in place by the unions haven't allowed them to get the education they need in order to make better ones.
At the same time, i gave up on doing my own taxes because i realized that the tax code wasn't just gratuitously complex, it was maliciously complex (yes, assuming stupidity over malice - and yes, i do realize how stunningly stupid most of the people sent to w.d.c. Are) and that it was that complex so that the old rich white guys could hide all their money. Warren buffet has a huge point here - nobody earning over $250k/yr should be paying less than the overall average effective tax rate. That's just stupid and greedy, and results in economy destroying backlashes. And the fat cats who claim they are capitalists most certainly are not, because they would scream bloody murder if their corporate welfare was ended (hello, big oil and coal!) - but it won't be, because we have the government they've bought and paid for, in 30 second little blipverts and soundbites. And every candidate will go to iowa and say ethanol and farm subsidies are good, because nobody has been armed with the education so necessary for freedom from such platitudes.
I consider myself a stauch free-market-ist, but probably not in a way most would recognize. I think the free market system would actually work if all costs were exposed. and where we have an inkling that there might be long-term costs, that's where government should make itself useful and start the process of estimating and iterative refinement. And through that process, extremely long term consequences - which an unrestricted traditional-sense 'free market' would completely ignore beyond the 'tragedy of the commons' event horizon - could be successfully priced in and the market would self correct before something as dire as central california losing it's ability to be a wine-growing region happened.
I also don't think a democracy can self-correct into any sort of reasonable shape once it's left the box. Ours has run off the rails into a weird schizophrenic duality of corporate and individual welfare, in a media accelerated positive feedback idiocracy, and is doomed.
Gah, i've depressed myself...
I guess I'll post the closing remarks that speak loud and clear:
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
· Get in Front of Wealth.
· Represent the Firm in Areas Where You Have Conviction.
· Ask for the Business.
· Know Your Customer.
· Use the Firm’s Resources Wisely.
· Don’t Procrastinate!
· If You Don’t Know the Answer, Say So, Then Get It.
· When in a Gray Area, See Your Manager.
· Help Your Colleagues.
· Contribute to the Firm & the Department.
· Treat Your Assistant as a Partner.
· Be Honest … With Yourself and With Your Customers.
· Be Humble.
· Be a Good Listener, Not Just a Good Talker.
· Take a Long-term Perspective but Have Short-term Goals.
· Don’t Be Afraid to Take a Loss.
· Communicate with Your Customers … Through Thick and Thin.
· Have a Well Thought-out Business Plan.
· Always Prospect.
· Don’t Fear Rejection; Be Prepared for It.
· Don’t Open Small Accounts; Think Big!
· Do It All …
with Discipline, Enthusiasm and Persistence!
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
I was happier when I was doing a mechanic's job.
Just make sure they cover schools of economics that actually work in the real world. Greenspan, Bernanke, and the rest of their neoclassical ilk have destroyed every economy on earth. The last thing we need are more people to be taught a debunked religion.Courses in economics should be mandatory. If you raise taxes on people who make more than a million per year, guess how many are going to find ways of shuffling the funds around so they're not "making" a million the next year?
Just want to cite a study result:
Study: Money Buys Happiness When Income Is $75,000 - TIME
drive by really fast, big tire squeal, on the way to no where special, using spare resources that others are in dire need: demonizedI wonder if I drove by a protest would I be demonized, celebrated, or ignored given the paradox I represent...
I drove my Roadster in a Halloween parade this weekend and a person in the crowd yelled "your part of the 1%." Of course I also had one person yell that I was supporting workers in Finland.
I drove my Roadster in a Halloween parade this weekend and a person in the crowd yelled "your part of the 1%." Of course I also had one person yell that I was supporting workers in Finland.
Rich = more than me.
Oh lovely.
I'm sure that it never occurred to them that THEY are also part of the 1% (by their measure) to someone living hand-to-mouth in Somalia. What are THEY doing about that besides yelling at you? Bleh. I GET that things are wrong.
But people, get some real FOCUS, ffs.