U.S. Politics: Alabama Jones and the Template of Doom

[GAROVORKIN]

Just now, denstorebog said:

That's good to know, I'll be sure to make preparations to be assaulted with a large porcelain penis in my own home.

The world portrayed was one where hardly anyone reads or thinks anymore and where is there is extreme violence .

[GAROVORKIN]

22 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

I think re-regulating the finance industry and instituting more capital controls would be a better way forward. Progressive taxation schemes are not effective against large corporations or the ultra rich in today's environment, since they can just shop around for countries with lower tax rates and move their assets there instead, leaving their original countries with nothing. To avoid progressive taxation systems mostly hitting the upper middle classes and small businesses, you'd need to go back to more restrictive laws for investing or moving cash between different countries, which most of the West did have a number of decades ago.

Of course, in the American case there can be a lot more done to strengthen the bargaining power of employees against employers, which is very weak there compared to other developed countries (if you want to do that via unions or legislation is another question). 

Anyway, I think one shouldn't focus too much on just taxation. 

It's a very sensible idea, but it won't happen as long as the stockmarket keeps breaking  record after record .  In boom and good  times regulation is a very unpopular word . It only regains its popularity when things go sour such happened after 2008.

Perhaps Some type of  revised  version the Glass Steagal act might be helpful too.?

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

20 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

PerhapssSome type revised  version the Glass Steagal act might be helpful?

That would be good for laying the hammer down on the finance industry, and remake it into the relatively slow and boring sector that it was until the eighties. 

It has probably not been that good for either the economy or most normal workers that so much power has been shifted from the corporate executives to the institutional shareholders that own the companies since then, given that the former have little real attachment to the companies they invest in, and also often only do so for relatively brief periods. Meaning that they are mainly interested in short term, quarterly profits and don't really give a shit about what happens to either the companies or their employees afterwards. 

A CEO of a publicly noted corporation that cares too much about his employees' wellbeing or the long term success of the company runs a high risk of being booted out nowadays, and that is pretty sad. 

[Hereward]

25 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

I think re-regulating the finance industry and instituting more capital controls would be a better way forward. Progressive taxation schemes are not effective against large corporations or the ultra rich in today's environment, since they can just shop around for countries with lower tax rates and move their assets there instead, leaving their original countries with nothing. To avoid progressive taxation systems mostly hitting the upper middle classes and small businesses, you'd need to go back to more restrictive laws for investing or moving cash between different countries, which most of the West did have a number of decades ago. 

In the American case there can also be a lot more done to strengthen the bargaining power of employees against employers, which is very weak there compared to other developed countries (if you want to do that via unionization or legislation is another question). 

Anyway, I think one shouldn't focus too much on just taxation. 

The moment the legislative process begins to introduce such controls, which probably aren't even possible in the age of instantaneous electronic transfers, that money will vanish. I would think that taxation of immovable assets is probably the only solution.

[GAROVORKIN]

4 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

That would be good for laying the hammer down on the finance industry, and remake it into the relatively slow and boring sector that it was until the eighties. 

It has probably not been that good for either the economy or most normal workers that so much power has been shifted from the corporate executives to the financial institutions that are their shareholders since then, given that the former have little real attachment to the companies they invest in, and also often only do so for relatively brief periods. Meaning that they are mainly interested in short term, quarterly profits and don't really give a shit about what happens to either the companies or their employees afterwards. 

A CEO of a publicly noted corporation that cares too much about his employees' wellbeing or the long term success of the company runs a high risk of being booted out nowadays, and much of the blame for that can be put on how the finance industry works. 

I just think that having investment banking  and consumer banking  under one roof is a very bad idea .  As to the notion of the  industry policing themselves ,  that's like having the fox guarding  the chick coop. Ultimately, you can't really trust them to do the correct thing.  

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Perhaps Some type of  revised  version the Glass Steagal act might be helpful too.?

The problem with Glass Steagal is that it wouldn't have prevented the last crises as many of the banks that where at the heart of the crises, the so called Shadow banks, weren't even covered by Glass Steagal.

Dodd Frank isn't perfect, but it something that can be built open. The core issue here is you need to stop banks from building up too much leverage, particularly short term debt, which can be very destabilizing. And then if a bank fails, and it systematically important, you need to have some credible mechanism to wind it down. And bankruptcy only isn't a credible mechanism. That was one flaw with Jeb Hensarling's Financial Bomb Act.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Hereward said:

The moment the legislative process begins to introduce such controls, which probably aren't even possible in the age of instantaneous electronic transfers, that money will vanish. I would think that taxation of immovable assets is probably the only solution.

With regard to the US, this isn't much of an issue or nearly as an important issue because the US is hardly "a small open economy". It's a very large open economy. And if the rate of return changes in the US, then it's likely to change the world rate of return. Plus we know that capital markets are hardly perfect.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

In the American case there can also be a lot more done to strengthen the bargaining power of employees against employers, which is very weak there compared to other developed countries (if you want to do that via unionization or legislation is another question). 

Anyway, I think one shouldn't focus too much on just taxation. 

I think is a fairly important point. When deciding what the corporate tax rates ought to be, I think it depends on the set of institutional arrangements. If labor power were stronger in the US, I'd be willing to go for a lower corporate tax  rate. But, as it stands right now, conservatives have been successful in bashing labor and unions in the US.

[Paladin of Ice]

For those better educated on the matter, do you think that there's any kind of law that could help prevent American companies from using overseas tax havens? Something like a rule that the majority of an American company's capital must stay within the borders unless X% of its business, employees, or permanent assets are overseas? I can't think of too many other ways to prevent overseas tax dodging without such rules and vigorous investigation of companies that are keeping a large percentage of their cash stashed in other countries, but it's hardly my area of expertise.

(About the only other thing coming to mind is the majority of developed countries coming to some sort of agreement regarding limiting the business that companies could do within their borders if these companies don't agree to not use tax havens to avoid taxation, but that's a little bit undermined by the fact that the U.S. itself is a pretty big tax haven right now. )

[GAROVORKIN]

3 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

For those better educated on the matter, do you think that there's any kind of law that could help prevent American companies from using overseas tax havens? Something like a rule that the majority of an American company's capital must stay within the borders unless X% of its business, employees, or permanent assets are overseas? I can't think of too many other ways to prevent overseas tax dodging without such rules and vigorous investigation of companies that are keeping a large percentage of their cash stashed in other countries, but it's hardly my area of expertise.

(About the only other thing coming to mind is the majority of developed countries coming to some sort of agreement regarding limiting the business that companies could do within their borders if these companies don't agree to not use tax havens to avoid taxation, but that's a little bit undermined by the fact that the U.S. itself is a pretty big tax haven right now. )

 

No , because companies will still avail themselves of tax havens regardless .

[DanteGabriel]

4 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

That's the world of tomorrow .  Things might just get that bad.

This does not seem to square with your assertions in the past that Nazis would never be a threat.

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Paladin of Ice said:

For those better educated on the matter, do you think that there's any kind of law that could help prevent American companies from using overseas tax havens? Something like a rule that the majority of an American company's capital must stay within the borders unless X% of its business, employees, or permanent assets are overseas? I can't think of too many other ways to prevent overseas tax dodging without such rules and vigorous investigation of companies that are keeping a large percentage of their cash stashed in other countries, but it's hardly my area of expertise.

(About the only other thing coming to mind is the majority of developed countries coming to some sort of agreement regarding limiting the business that companies could do within their borders if these companies don't agree to not use tax havens to avoid taxation, but that's a little bit undermined by the fact that the U.S. itself is a pretty big tax haven right now. )

Totally OT,  but is your sig a paraphrase of that great passage from Bros. Karamazov, or from something else?

[Fragile Bird]

Well, my impression of 45 while he spoke was that I was hearing a fascist, not an American president.

[Morpheus]

I turned it on when he was going on about how bad his predecessors were, I cannot listen to him talk anymore. Anything patricularly noteworthy?

[Paladin of Ice]

35 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Totally OT,  but is your sig a paraphrase of that great passage from Bros. Karamazov, or from something else?

I assume you mean the first line? No, sadly I only barely dipped my toes in Russian lit, that's just me waxing philosophical. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

54 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, my impression of 45 while he spoke was that I was hearing a fascist, not an American president.

I believe it was the Daily Show that did a bit about how Trump would be the first African president. They compared his comments and the pattern in which he speaks and it was close to identical to a bunch of different African dictators.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

McCain will return to Arizona for health reasons, so he won’t be voting on the tax legislation if it hits the floor this week. There’s also a good chance that he won’t be there to vote on keeping the government open.

[lokisnow]

59 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I believe it was the Daily Show that did a bit about how Trump would be the first African president. They compared his comments and the pattern in which he speaks and it was close to identical to a bunch of different African dictators.

I watched the old documentary on Idi Amin last  week (just came out on Blu-ray, streaming on FilmStruck), and was blown away at how similar (both rhetorically and personality-wise) Trump is to him. 

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

I watched the old documentary on Idi Amin last  week (just came out on Blu-ray, streaming on FilmStruck), and was blown away at how similar (both rhetorically and personality-wise) Trump is to him. 

I've always heard Amin when orangehorrorshow talks or tweets.  Particularly -- "I win!" when he lost the swim race.

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

This does not seem to square with your assertions in the past that Nazis would never be a threat.

Have you read  A Clock Work Orange  Dante ?  If not,  I recommend it .  The book is dystopian in nature and Im think.  that Burgess intended  it to be allegory what was going on in the United Kingdom at that time, and where  things were heading in the country .   I think it has in some ways, become relevant in the here and now.