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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's an interesting table from statistics taken by Bureau of Labor Statistics for the year:

government employees, all 21, 973,000 down 11%
Federal Government employees 2, 829,000 down 6%
State Government employees 5,037,000 down 6%
Local government employees 14,090,000 down 13%

Of interest is that most of the State government employees are in education. Most of local government are police and fire. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Between the start of the recession and 2011, local government shed 500,000 jobs, with the 2011 losses another nearly 200,000 jobs. Total employment is 132 million jobs. (http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2011/07/08/public-sector-job-cuts-threaten-recovery)

Scalpels, and the ability to distinguish between muscle and fat. Norquist's pledge, and the Tea Party's approach of looking for people who know nothing about government, are a recipe for disaster. The anti-tax fascists have nearly destroyed California's education, once the best in the nation and the ultimate source of our wealth.

Of course the other huge issue, which CB has opined wisely about, is the escalating cost of health care for both public and private sector employees. The Obama solution? A series of cost control efforts and experiments in a new National health care bill. The Republican solutions? Do nothing and trust in god and the invisible hand.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mac, this is the most corrupt government we've ever had. Buffet and GE pay no taxes, over a billion is missing from MF Global and democratic governor Corzine, Fast and Furious guns that end up killing Americans not prosecuted, and they want to tax mom and pop businesses as part of their "eat the rich" propoganda, while the real rich eat us. Obama and/or another Democrat will end up being the dictator, not a true conservative who will respect the words and meaning of our constitution.

And for the record. Limbaugh is a meat head who is of little interest to me.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You do know that fast and furious is a Bush program,Buffet and GE pay little tax in any government.Nothing to do with Obama or corruption.
When NPR asked congressional GOP to show some million income earners who are small business job creators,the GOP could not provide one.
They asked business groups who make the same claim. They couldn't find anyone either.so they put an ad on Facebook. The three who responded did not create jobs based on the tax rate.They created jobs based on their business orders. Same as me and helps explain why they hate NPR.
Less than 13percent of million earners derive even 25 percent of their income from small business sources.
All this from Fact Check.They have followed the numbers since debunking this myth in 2004.
Not supporting Obama here just a bit of research. I prefer to be pissed at Obama for things that he actually does.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 12:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is the reality. Mom and Pop own a bowling alley for 40 years. They make a couple of hundred thousand per year and pay taxes. At the end they sell the bowling alley for $3 million. This is their life savings. After state and federal taxes, business commissions, and other fees they are left with perhaps 1.2 million +-. This sounds like alot of money, but they don't have a government pension, or much in savings. At todays interest rates a couple at 70 years old might be able to live on this for about 10 years. What happens when they turn 80?

Obama wants to tax them at a higher rate? Tax Buffet please. These people who usually made $200000 are now the "millionaires" that obama speaks about.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 1:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Someday we might regret wasteful regulations on small businesses instead of training youth to produce something of value."


Bard, maybe you can pencil out what you're talking about. I guess I'm missing how the reduction of regulations on small businesses relates to the training of youth, and ultimately in a growth of value. To prove your point, I'd like to see some credible metrics we can focus on.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The example couple pays capital gains and would not be affected.
The millionaire tax of 3percent is on annual income and would amount to $50K even if they owed it so your couple will be alright.
Now do you see why the GOP couldn't come up with a single real person with a million in annual income who was a small business job creator?
According to Factcheck this group is hedge fund managers,stock coupon clippers,CEO of large companies,and Buffet.
I agree with Bard about protecting Mom and Pop but they have to be real, not another Dem/GOP propaganda lie. In fact they are a GOP myth according to Factcheck and others.
Their ice cream parlor has to NET a million after deductions every year for these folks to pay an extra 3 percent, or 30K a year.
With that kind of income most folks I know would happily trade in their present situation and drive a Ferrari down to sell ice cream even if they owed the 30K tax.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 11:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Going back to the original post:
Quote:
From the recent article "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior":
Quote:

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.


I agree, this is probably true, and the assumption is that if it is non-partisan, then half the rich (and poor) are liberals and half are conservatives so there are just as many democrats as republicans that are unethical. I guess a logical deduction here would be that if the poor want to do better in life economically, than they need to be more greedy.

Of course my statement suggests that rich/poor and republican/democrat are evenly distributed, but that may not be true since many of the responses seem to imply that the republicans are rich and the democrats are poor so the bad guys are just the republicans.

As far as studies go, I also wonder what:
Quote:
experimental and naturalistic methods
means?

The phrase
Quote:
more likely
is used to suggest what will happen regarding the rich and their behavior, which doesn't mean that they actually behave unethically, just that they are "more likely" to. So this study just says what is "more likely" to happen, not what actually happens.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 2:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--the study methodology was hardly rigorous enough to qualify as great science--they were looking at what kinds of cars run stop signs. There is actually a fierce debate going on in science as to whether selfishness or altruism or both are the driving forces in evolution. This week's New Yorker discusses the debate; here is an abstract:

Quote:
ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF SCIENCE about altruism and evolution. Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life were such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why would natural selection favor a behavior that made us less likely to survive? And yet, as Darwin knew, altruism is everywhere, a stubborn anomaly of nature. For a century after Darwin, altruism remained a paradox. The first glimmers of a solution arrived in the nineteen-fifties. According to legend, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane was asked how far he would go to save the life of another person. Haldane thought for a moment, and then started scribbling numbers on the back of a napkin. “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one,” Haldane said. “Or to save eight cousins but not seven.” His answer summarized a powerful scientific idea. Because individuals share much of their genome with close relatives, a trait will also persist if it leads to the survival of their kin. Haldane never expanded his napkin calculations into a formal mathematical theory. That task fell to William Hamilton. In 1964, he submitted a pair of papers to the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The papers hinged on one simple equation: rB > C. Genes for altruism could evolve if the benefit (B) of an action exceeded the cost (C) to the individual once relatedness (r) was taken into account. Hamilton referred to his model as “inclusive fitness theory.” At first, Hamilton’s concept of inclusive fitness was entirely ignored. Many biologists were turned off by the math, and few mathematicians were interested in the problems of biology. The following year, however, an ambitious entomologist named E. O. Wilson read the paper. Wilson wanted to understand the altruism at work in ant colonies, and he became convinced that Hamilton had solved the problem. By the late nineteen-seventies, Hamilton’s work was featured prominently in textbooks; his original papers have become some of the most cited in evolutionary biology. As Wilson realized, the equation allowed naturalists to make sense of animal behavior using genetic models, giving the field a new sense of rigor. In an obituary published after Hamilton’s death, in 2000, the Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins referred to Hamilton as “the most distinguished Darwinian since Darwin.” But now, in an abrupt intellectual shift, Wilson says that his embrace of Hamilton’s equation was a serious scientific mistake. Wilson’s apostasy, which he lays out in a forthcoming book, “The Social Conquest of the Earth,” has set off a scientific furor. The vast majority of his academic colleagues are convinced that he was right the first time, and that his recantation has damaged the field. The controversy is fuelled by a larger debate about the evolution of altruism. Can true altruism even exist? Is generosity a sustainable trait? Or are living things inherently selfish, our kindness nothing but a mask? This is science with existential stakes. Tells about Wilson’s recent collaboration with Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita on the paper “The Evolution of Eusociality” and the criticism it received from the scientific community.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/05/120305fa_fact_lehrer#ixzz1oSaL1AvB


I think you need to subscribe to get the whole article. The bottom line is that both seem to work in evolution, but people tend to filter out one or the other in looking at the evidence. Just like conservatives and liberals. Plenty of people in expensive and cheap cars run the stop sign in front of my house--despite the fact that it is right in front of a grade school. But far fewer do when the stop sign laws are rigorously enforced. We can't do that many places because we cut the police force to meet the budget shortfall. Sigh.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
China's military budget has gone up 30% while ours is falling dramatically. Military is the only big-government program that is essential to world peace.
I've heard it reported that the interest on our debt to China funds almost their entire military.
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feuser



Joined: 29 Oct 2002
Posts: 1508

PostPosted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

isobars wrote:
stevenbard wrote:
China's military budget has gone up 30% while ours is falling dramatically. Military is the only big-government program that is essential to world peace.
I've heard it reported that the interest on our debt to China funds almost their entire military.


Outside the bubble we say: our military spending is one of the primary causes for that debt.

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