The Democrat Thread

[kapkomet]

Its much more than a small part, its usually the biggest part. Labor costs moved overseas are almost always far lower than here.

I guess I'm coming at it from a less manual intensive type of company. For manufacturing, that's true. But that's about the only industry that's true. It's ended up costing companies more in service industry to outsource.

[lostfan]

I guess I'm coming at it from a less manual intensive type of company. For manufacturing, that's true. But that's about the only industry that's true. It's ended up costing companies more in service industry to outsource.

Well, give an Indian engineer 85k a year and see how he lives in India... he probably would live like a prince off of that.

[kapkomet]

I oversimplified it in that post yes, but I think for all the screaming that's done about US corporate tax rates, my point was that there are other factors that are just as big if not bigger.

You can't sit there and say that "2nd biggest tax rate" doesn't mean anything... you cannot diminish that fact. If they cut corporate tax rates, it would stimulate the s*** out of this economy. It's a fact. Tax cuts on individuals doesn't have the stimuls effect that corporate taxes do.

 

But there is no way they will adjust that. They need to money too bad and companies will continue "tax avoidance". Hello, Company XYZ SA. (SA being Switzerland).

 

[kapkomet]

Well, give an Indian engineer 85k a year and see how he lives in India... he probably would live like a prince off of that.

Of course. Why do you think, by the way, that they are starting the reversal of the visa programs now? They are sending our people over there. Why is that? (slightly off topic but in the same general point I'm making).

 

[StrangeSox]

We can debate exactly why corporations go overseas, but it glosses over my main point that the solution of "we'll just tax the evil rich to pay for everything!" won't work because the rich will leave or stop producing/ growing. I'm not speaking of large multinational corporations here, but small businesses and entrepreneurs. Where's the incentive to risk your ass on a new company if the government is going to take 91% of what you make?

Edited February 24, 2009 by StrangeSox

[lostfan]

You can't sit there and say that "2nd biggest tax rate" doesn't mean anything... you cannot diminish that fact. If they cut corporate tax rates, it would stimulate the s*** out of this economy. It's a fact. Tax cuts on individuals doesn't have the stimuls effect that corporate taxes do.

 

But there is no way they will adjust that. They need to money too bad and companies will continue "tax avoidance". Hello, Company XYZ SA. (SA being Switzerland).

I'm not diminishing that fact, only making a point.

[NorthSideSox72]

I guess I'm coming at it from a less manual intensive type of company. For manufacturing, that's true. But that's about the only industry that's true. It's ended up costing companies more in service industry to outsource.

Also Technology, and other areas as well. Lots of industries. Lots of business.

 

The only area of business I know of, where the prime motivation for going overseas is for tax sheltering, is finance/banking.

 

[kapkomet]

Also Technology, and other areas as well. Lots of industries. Lots of business.

 

The only area of business I know of, where the prime motivation for going overseas is for tax sheltering, is finance/banking.

Pharmacueticals is a huge one. Huge.

[lostfan]

Of course. Why do you think, by the way, that they are starting the reversal of the visa programs now? They are sending our people over there. Why is that? (slightly off topic but in the same general point I'm making).

I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you saying the salaries there are competitive enough now that American workers would want to go there the way they come over here?

[NorthSideSox72]

Pharmacueticals is a huge one. Huge.

And in their case, again, its other things: labor costs, regulation avoidance, cheaper access to raw materials.

 

[kapkomet]

And in their case, again, its other things: labor costs, regulation avoidance, cheaper access to raw materials.

Um. No.

 

I'll give you an example... (GENERAL, NOT TAX ADVICE, pharmaceutical lawyers, don't sue me, you f***tards!)

 

US company sells Drug A for $200.00 per Rx.

 

Cost of Goods = 2% (30.00)

 

Gross Margin = 98% 170.00

 

SG & A (includes marketing, selling, general and administrative (inc healthcare, salary, etc) 25% (that's typical - might even be overshooting) (50.00)

 

Operating Profit 120.00

 

=====

 

Now what happens? XYZ SA owns the product, bears the risk, and gets paid a "dividend" back to Switzerland. It's all cash. (110.00)

 

Profit shown in USA $10.00 (and that's the normal return according to IRS).

 

Woot! Tax avoidance! Perfectly legal. And I get to live high off that hog by sending all that cash over to 12.5% tax rate in Switzerland. Now I have more to pay my employees over here and cover that 25% SG & A. Happens all the time.

 

Note: That cost of goods being 2% is the real cost of production passed back from the Swiss Co.! It's true and it works. The part of the $110 of dividends sent back from US covers R&D and those types of things, but it's a lot more money taxed at 12.5% then 35%.

[Texsox]

We could make the US look more like Mexico or (insert cheap manufacturing place here), but do we really want to drive on those roads? We could save on our military. We could encourage our seniors to lose weight by only eating rice once a day. We could cut waaaaay back on our education system. There are all sorts of things we could do to make this as attractive as (insert 3rd world country here).

[kapkomet]

We could make the US look more like Mexico or (insert cheap manufacturing place here), but do we really want to drive on those roads? We could save on our military. We could encourage our seniors to lose weight by only eating rice once a day. We could cut waaaaay back on our education system. There are all sorts of things we could do to make this as attractive as (insert 3rd world country here).

Once again, the only thing big enough to save us from anything and everything, is the government. They have to control all the money and redistribute it to roads, education, health care, senior citizens (read: old people retirement). They are also incentivized to do everything the right way! They are all-knowing, elected officials elected to take care of us!

 

Thanks, government! You do it all for us so that no one has to do anything for themselves! Utopia, baby!

 

/counter argument awaits that "free market" destroys everything by greed, yea anarchy!

 

The middle, more toward self correcting market with some oversight is the right way.

[Texsox]

Once again, the only thing big enough to save us from anything and everything, is the government. They have to control all the money and redistribute it to roads, education, health care, senior citizens (read: old people retirement). They are also incentivized to do everything the right way! They are all-knowing, elected officials elected to take care of us!

 

Thanks, government! You do it all for us so that no one has to do anything for themselves! Utopia, baby!

 

/counter argument awaits that "free market" destroys everything by greed, yea anarchy!

 

The middle, more toward self correcting market with some oversight is the right way.

I am truly missing your point(s)

Roads are not a valid project for government to be involved in? All education should be privatized and parents pay?

 

Damn, I wish I was in a mood for fighting with you I just can't dance today, too busy.

[StrangeSox]

His point was that you're presenting a false dichotomy between having some of the highest tax rates in the world or being a developing country.

[kapkomet]

I am truly missing your point(s)

Roads are not a valid project for government to be involved in? All education should be privatized and parents pay?

 

Damn, I wish I was in a mood for fighting with you I just can't dance today, too busy.

The FEDERAL government has a place in this stuff, but not all. We are shifting more and more responsibility to the federal government, and at what cost? No one care, because they will "just take care of (insert X) for us".

 

At best, it's better served for state governments to do a lot of this. But you have to let the markets work, and our current elected officials think that they are more capable of doing things at the federal government level then the market is. That's what socialism is.

 

Not to mention, taxes are high here for a reason - and some of them I agree with. This ain't Mexico.

[lostfan]

Cutting from the budget is really tricky. Where are you going to do it exactly?

 

 

And here is the revenue chart to match:

[Balta1701]

You can't sit there and say that "2nd biggest tax rate" doesn't mean anything... you cannot diminish that fact. If they cut corporate tax rates, it would stimulate the s*** out of this economy. It's a fact. Tax cuts on individuals doesn't have the stimuls effect that corporate taxes do.

 

But there is no way they will adjust that. They need to money too bad and companies will continue "tax avoidance". Hello, Company XYZ SA. (SA being Switzerland).

Couple of points. First and foremost, according to both the CBO and Moody's, you are simply wrong on individual tax cuts having a greater stimulus effect than corporate tax rates. But we went back and forth on that for several pages last month, rather than drag that back up I'm just going to repeat that you're wrong. You're wrong.

 

On the corporate tax issue itself though, the U.S. is an interesting case. The actual U.S. corporate tax rate as written is something between 35 and 40%. Everyone knows this, it's the number that we're told is one of the highest in the world.

 

The reality of course is that U.S. corporations actually pay a tax rate far, far below this number, through various deductions, tax shelters, etc. According to the GAO, 2/3 of the incorporated public companies within the U.S. did not pay a single cent of income taxes to the U.S. government between 1998 and 2005. If you're going to claim that's an artifact of small business deductions, you're still wrong, because when you include only the 1000 or so largest companies, the %age of companies not paying taxes actually goes up. When the deductions are taken in to account, a dramatically different picture emerges. Including this fact, a potentially better way to evaluate the corporate tax rate is corporate taxes actually paid as a percentage of GDP. In that metric, the U.S. is unremarkable, and the complaint about the U.S.'s high corporate tax rate breaks down. (link)

 

 

The U.S.'s corporate tax rate is only high if you don't have a good enough lobbyist to keep you from paying it.

 

[kapkomet]

The measurement of taxes as a percentage of GDP is the biggest pile of s*** that I've ever seen. Let's talk real money.

 

Re: individual versus corporate tax rates being a stimulus. I understand your point, but I'm not looking at it for a "multiplier" effect like you are, per se. Because consumer spending is a s***ton of the GDP, then of course more money in the pockets of the consumer is going to have a bigger effect. However, when looking at the job market as a whole, if you want to put people back to work, lower the corporate tax rate and you will see dramatic hiring, and then you will see that money traverse over to individual spending, and now you have a two fold expansion on the consumer AND the capital front - which then (yes, I know you think it's crap, but I don't) all that money will translate into higher government spending capability. Where else can you get three sectors of GDP growing besides the corporate tax rates?

[Balta1701]

On a different subject, this makes me proud to be an American. Greedy workers, always thinking they deserve more than they get.

Sullenberger testified that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.

 

He said the problems began with deregulation of the industry in the 1970s. Then "the bankruptcies were used by some as a fishing expedition to get what they could not get in normal times," Sullenberger said of the airlines.

 

The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps."

 

Sullenberger himself has started a consulting business to help make ends meet. Skiles added, "For the last six years, I have worked seven days a week between my two jobs just to maintain a middle class standard of living."

America; where unless you're already rich, you can land a plane in the Hudson and still have to work 2 jobs to get by.

[kapkomet]

On a different subject, this makes me proud to be an American. Greedy workers, always thinking they deserve more than they get.

America; where unless you're already rich, you can land a plane in the Hudson and still have to work 2 jobs to get by.

Do you know what pilots make? They're still "rich" according to Barack Obama.

 

[Balta1701]

Link to IU Press release

A visual analysis of television presidential campaign coverage from 1992 to 2004 suggests that the three television broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- favored Republicans in each election, according to two Indiana University professors in a new book.

...

Grabe and Bucy's book is the culmination of the first major research project analyzing the relatively unexplored territory of visual coverage in presidential elections and how that influences public opinion. Between 1992 and 2004, they found, candidates were steadily shown more visually, in what they call image bites, while their verbal statements, or sound bites, decreased in average length.

 

They examined 62 hours of broadcast network news coverage -- a total of 178 newscasts -- between Labor Day and Election Day over four U.S. presidential elections between 1992 and 2004. Cable news outlets, including CNN and Fox News, were not included in their research. The professors are now looking at 2008 election coverage.

Read the rest before challenging, all the details are in a long press release.

[mr_genius]

Link to IU Press release

Read the rest before challenging, all the details are in a long press release.

 

it's amazing how people could actually think that is legit. it's astounding that people think those networks had pro-GOP coverage.

 

from the article

 

In their research, Democrats were more likely to be subjects of the "lip-flap" effect, while Republicans more often got the last word."

 

honestly, this isn't even remotely professional. The 'research' is based on camera angles and such form a selected meager 62 hours of coverage. the conclusions are actually fairly laughable when put into the correct context. a counter project, with clips put together of these 'favorable' camera anlges in which the Democrats are in a good light, would be extremely easy to put together.

Edited February 25, 2009 by mr_genius

[StrangeSox]

Do you know what pilots make? They're still "rich" according to Barack Obama.

 

Yeah, experienced airline captains on major carriers are in the six figures.

[NorthSideSox72]

Yeah, experienced airline captains on major carriers are in the six figures.

Well, they were. I get the impression from a pilot I know, that many of the senior captains retired or took cuts, and other pilots the same. I think at this point, six figures for a pilot is probably rare.