“Seriously, people fail to see the point of international banking regulations .... its to weaken competitive financial markets. Its funny that the country with the fewest banking regulation, Honk Kong, has almost never been mentioned during the Great Recession ...its the banking hub for Asia, didn't hear about bad mortgages on their books. Global Financial Regulation is all about keeping capital from low tax and low regulation environments, the western powers know that the growth is going to come from Asia and they need away to be able to keep high taxes on the producers to fund their social plans .... Socialisms biggest enemy is competition, its all about the status quo, not falling for it.
For all of you pessimist about America, name one great idea, innovation, or invention in the last 200 years that did not come from the US or Europe? I rest my case.”
“So how do you think a person's wage should be determined? Negotiated between the worker and the employer or by the government. Please don't use super ambiguous terms like a"fair wage" ... should people be paid the market value of their labor, or what they think they should make?”
“A question that never comes up when speaking about CEO pay, has the size of they companies they manage grown exponentially? In 1955 the largest company in the world was GM with $9.9 billion in sales ....in 2010 it was Exxon with $440 billion in sales. Funny how the increase in CEO pay is oddly correlated with exponential size of the companies they manage. When companies get smaller and less global, I will complain about CEO pay.”
“Let me be frank here, I am not anti-union in anyway ... I am against a persons rights being taken away by government in favor of another, that simple. I am a firm believer in equal rights .. that is all. That extends to property rights, I have the right to my labor and the fruits of it, and I believe that extend to everyone else. In the worker/employer relationships both sides are equal, legal slavery ended years ago, the worker has a choice to sell his/her labor and a employer has a choice whether or not to purchase that labor. The Writers Guild vs the Studios was a prime example of this, they negotiated pricing and standard for the industry, without force or coercion. Now when the government gets involved, things get messy because they upset that balance and creates a cycle of more chaos. Contract are suppose to be voluntary, but when the government make a contract mandatory for one side and voluntary for the other, you are taking away someone's right in favor of another. If a worker is unhappy with their wage, they are free to quit and find a better paying job, the value and marketability of a persons skill set is a personal not a societal issues. I am fully aware of the natural and situational inequalities that exist in this nation, but government imposed inequality of property rights isn't the answer ... forced unionization does just that.”
“I find is super hypocritical that the head of a union like that AFL-CIO is calling out Republicans. Simple business question: if you want to increase your sales, what is the simplest way to do it? .. Lower the price. Increasing taxes and healthcare mandates increase the cost of employing people, so you get less of it. This tax increase debt completely ignore the reality of what will happen if you raise taxes to the rich, especially since this increase is focused on capital gains and dividends. You are decreasing the return on capital for the very people that hold the most capital, thus raising the cost of capital. So how is raising the cost of capital and labor during a recession going to lead to more jobs? The union angle makes it worst because union have to destroy jobs to stay competitive. Case in point Fedex/UPS fight, Teamsters cannot compete with non-union Fedex drivers, so they want to changes the law to force Fedex to unionize, if that happens Fedex will hire less drivers to maintain profit margins. Steel tariffs to keep the United Steel workers competitive mean manufacturers of steel products have to pay above market price for steel which means less money to hire workers. This is the pot calling the kettle black.”
“Ah yes, call into question any atavistic idea of a common good. The legacy of our Judeo-Christian traditions and foundational to this country. It's a little too common, isn't it? It's an appropriate time of year to acknowledge what's really #1. By all means, let's worship the Almighty... dollar.
Arguments made by the sycophant Praetorian guard of the economic emperors have been refuted time and time again. Corporations and the very wealthy are currently sitting on a trillion or so. Without investing it in anything resulting in jobs creation. So much for that theory.
Nor does it account for the role we working people have in stimulating the generation of more jobs. We're also consumers-- still 70% of the economy. The fact we help create wealth needs to be acknowledged. And that we have a stake in what we make possible-- the economic system as a whole.
The real reason for anachronistic anti-union tirades is elsewhere. We don't even have to go as far back as the Roman empire of Marc Anthony. Although the parallels are obvious. A sociopathic ruling class. An overextended empire and a de facto economic draft. A monstrous gap between the few very rich and the suffering lower classes.
The contemporary reason? People in unions are covered by contract law. All other US employees fall under a provision inherited from English common law. Called a Master-Servant relationship. Which the heirs of the robber barons want for all working people.”