Southern Uprisin?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
21

Wow, faust, didn’t think I’d see you be that linearly unobjective. Learn something new everyday.

To the point, and this is where I defer to my father’s wisdom on the matter.

My father made an upper middle class family, back in the seventies and eighties, (wtf … did I get old all of a sudden?). He has been, as at all times in my life, a mentor on economics. He is a classic conservative, and I mean that in the old fashioned sense, not the modern bastardised definition. He believes in small government, liberty for people to succeed, protections for the worker that don’t damage corporations ability to profit and grow, nuclear family values, especially education and character; probably more on to a “Reagan conservative”.

While I only started about five or six years ago, really looking into economics, especially as concerns markets, GDP, GNP, etc., I went to him, as I always do, and expected the historically known scenario of “father knows, son is an inexperienced learner”. Didn’t turn out that way, which surprised the shit out of me. He stated concern about the shrinking of the middle class, the large scale destruction of the ability of small businesses to operate, (small business is what drives corporations to change … part of the check/balance of free market), the corporate indictment of the American worker leading to zero strength employment security … and the list goes on.

The influx of uneducated immigrants and aliens is a negative, especially when added to those Americans of the same class already spawned all over the country. They are a dredge. They represent a virtually non-taxable base at the lowest tier. They increase crime, judicial costs, health care costs, education costs, and all these factors add into inflation.

The upper classes, starting at upper middle class, pay less tax, are offered incentives to defer on taxes for their money to go into investments, which aids corporations, not the general middle class structure.

With the current middle class structure, you have your primary tax base selling out its future on credit debt, which contrary to popular belief, creates enormous strain on the entirety of the economic system.

Your myopic assessment doesn’t work faust, and it isn’t my knowledge that derides it, it’s the knowledge of a man who is older than both you and I, more experienced, and quite honestly untouchable, when it comes to understanding the numbers game.

He says without change, the system can’t last another thirty years. Which, from a genial, even minded fellow like my father, is kind of awe-striking. Did I mention he is conservative.

22

Mas, I am unobjective in every way I can think of.

I have heard the doom and gloom my whole life. But I sure don’t wish to argue with your father.

I’ll respond more fully later. Off to see Mom.

23

I don’t look at it as gloom and doom … not my father’s style.

He’s more of a deductive caveat person.

24

So mas, I am to accept your appeal to authority - your father knows this stuff, so I am to accept his word. Did you bet the house on that?

You have not addressed my point about the shrinking of the middle class, so I will skip that one.

Small business is booming, by the way.

Employment security is a two-way street. Employess jump around for fifty dollars a week extra. Employee loyalty is the other side of that coin. I am not advocating employee loyalty, by the way. But job security has given way to upward mobility. Maybe not your cup of tea, but goos for the economy.

It is not uneducated immigrants that cause these problems, it is illegal immigrants. Make them legal, they will pay taxes. The quota system currently in use makes no sense, with or without the current illegal alien problems.

The upper classes do no in fact pay less tax, they pay more. They pay the most, the lion’s share - look it up.

Most credit card debt is for entirely unnecessary stuff. Home theaters, vacations, the purchase of a riding mower instead of fixing the push mower. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

25

Strange the numbers don’t agree on this one. By the time the small business person gets through all the local channels, and shells out for all the ludicrous requirements of the municipality, it’s time to open business at a near loss.

70% of small businesses fail under the five to seven year range: primary cause is inability to pay state tax, along with the natural accruement of operating costs. Also in many cases, not paying it because of all the paperwork hassles regarding reporting that require further cost input from the business owner to maintain for state and federal standards.

Strange that I work for two corporate megaliths, and this isn’t even remotely factual in either instance. LexisNexis/Reed Elsevier is the provider of the largest law compendium libraries and databases in the world … and reaches all points on the globe. Our own Federal government depends on this corporation for 75% of it’s legal database needs, including the Justice Department.

The Bon Ton, who is now slated to pay cash for the Parisian chain of clothing retail establishments, (middle to high retail), is the third largest retail conglomerate in the U.S., likely to move to the #2 position after they finish acquiring the rest of the Saks empire.

There is zero mobility in either instance. Lexis utilizes corporate reorg’s, on a yearly basis, to flush out as many lingering benefits based employees as possible. The rest is outsourced contractors like myself, or outsourced to India or China. If you are there more than seven years with this company, you are likely to find yourself out of job. (btw, the corporate profits go to the home office in Europe, and because it is a “foreign owned” corporation, receives enormous tax breaks and abatements from our government. So this company does nothing for the American economy.)

The Bon Ton is retail. Retail is about individual ego empires. As far as this corporation is concerned, you are nothing more than a transient interference to their bottom line. Any misstep, and you are gone.

Again, the numbers don’t agree. Badly educated immigrants are no better/no worse than illegal aliens. They congregate in low income, delapidated neighborhoods, promote crime, add nothing of value to the economy, and strain the system with the help of their home bred cousins, the American dredges. They just tend to increase in number at a higher rate than their American counter parts.

Even the highly educated immigrants, say like the ones I work with from India and China are a drain on the system. Both ethnicities, because of cultural proclivities, send appreciable amounts of their income out of our economic system, to their homeland to support their families there. Don’t bother to argue the point, they openly admit it, and couldn’t care less if it damages our country’s economic standing, which it does with greater and greater numbers, as they take higher end employment away from Americans.

Don’t have to, my grandfather was in this class, and he was honest about the fact that in having more money, more avenues were open to routing money past taxes, legally. Not to mention, the percentage of population that comprises this caste is a minority of the population, so there is no possible way they could pay “the lions share”.

Completely incorrect. One of the major problems facing this country economically is the fact that large numbers of the middle class are leveraged in debt past what they can pay in their lifetime. This creates a rolling over syndrome for the next generation, where the debt has to be absorbed, not to mention the interest. Debt has as much to do with the economic state of the country as the wage base. Either that, or our governments trillion dollar deficit, (i.e. debt), is all a fallacy.

26

Mas - all businesses open at a loss. How could they not?

The failure rate is not due to the inability to pay taxes. Taxes are simply the last to be paid. The government waits longer than other creditors, or vendors. The total expense is the total expense. Your point is a good rhetorical one, but no first-year accounting student would buy it. The main reason that businesses fail is undercapitalisation.

In any event, I am familiar with the numbers you are using. No economist attributes these numbers to taxes - and that “failure rate” is reflective of “discontinuance of ownership”, which includes such things as simply selling the bisiness for a profit. They’re just bad stats, misused. The real failure rate is under 5%. Again, look it up.

You have evidently mistaken my point about job security and employee loyalty - in any event, you haven’t addressed it. Such statements as “Retail is about individual ego empires” is irrelevant. That’s just moralising, which I would like to reserve for other topics.

You are just making unsupported claims about immigrants - that they don’t contribute to the economy. No accredited economist would say anything like that. I won’t dispute that they send money abroad - I suppose you haven’t spent any in Sicily, huh?

Your grandfather, by himself, doesn’t do much to dispute the overall numbers. Again, this is easily researched. And, in the economic community, not a controversial claim.

Our government’s debt has nothing to do with my neighbor’s Sears card balance. The interest rate has been at the state usery law’s limt since he has had it.

27

faust,

I’ve looked the numbers up, and as I said, they don’t agree. Difference may be region, or going to partisan think tanks, but in the four state area surrounding where I live … the number failure is uniformly the same: inability to pay what is owed to the state, which is a primary cause of business sellout, and undercapitalisation is a side effect.

Again, you are lacking objective discernment in this area. Numbers are generally poor indicators for anything other than other numbers. What I was stating was about the corporate culture, which apparently you haven’t had to understand, effects the manner with which a large scope of “irrelevancies” play into the totality of the economic picture.

Here is your error: “Retail is about individual ego empires” is irrelevant. That’s just moralising, which I would like to reserve for other topics.

Utterly wrong, because the corporate culture has a great deal to do with employment shifts, mobility, (i.e. ability to generate more income, better benefits), corporate abilities. Again, numbers only tell you about other numbers, and have no relevance without the enumeration of the human factor, upon which the necessity of the numbers is predicated.

Real simple. Crime statistics from non-governmental agencies. It tells the story beyond the numbers.

The few hundred I spend in Sicily every couple of years you are trying to equate to several hundred immigrant employees who send hundreds out of country’s economy every week? Now you are just being ludicrous and bordering on shameless ad hominem.

Statistically you are correct. Socioeconomically, he was the consumate model for his demographic, so that argument fails there. Have money, know the system, have your accountant find the loop hole, pay less taxes.
How it is, how it has been, how it will continue to be. Apparently you aren’t aware of how “tax abatement” works on this level.

?
I never said “credit card debt” and this broken record is just fallacious. Debt. Period. Debt leveraged with unpayable interest rolled over to the next generation. Economists everywhere talk about this, consistently.

The point on the deficit was comparative as you tried to weakly dismiss debt as irrelevant, and somehow the effect of our governments debt plays into market value of the dollar across the world. Debt effects every area of economics, so I have no idea where you are coming from with this statement.

28

Mas, why is a single relative of yours the criterion I am expected to use uncritically, while my use of you as an example of my own point an ad hominem?

I’ll reserve my debating for a different sort of atmosphere.

29

LOL, don’t get perturbed faust, we have different sources that don’t agree.

I never said you have to agree.

But you did hedge towards the numbers without taking into account the activities of the humans who make the numbers have meaning.

Doesn’t mean you have to quit on me … LOL. I’m just here for the competition.

Plus, it seems to me, that objectively one would have to account for the culture as it does have an effect on the output of the numbers.

Doesn’t it? Corporations do not operate in the same manner as they did in the fifties and sixties, do they? Am I old yet?

30

When has enough ever been enough. People are not in business to stay at a certain level, You start a business to climb that financial mountain. some folks call it greed. Other folks that get started and keep trying to reach that pinnacle call it an adventure, a test ,a challenge.

If they can cut overhead then cutting overhead is the thing to do, if they can hire a group of people to do something cheaper than another group would , hire em. I sure would.

Heck they are not a non profit orginization, they are out to make as much money as possible. That is what businessess do and if they do it harshly,wrong or illegal , stop em, call em on it by all means. Otherwise let em go.