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Adjutant
 
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Post 25 Jan 2018, 6:24 pm

I think those guys from Appalachian State and North Carolina who think that the economy would be 39 trillion with federal regulations at 1949 levels think that stopping business from poisoning water would impede growth...

Three-eyed fish (Simpsons): "Blinky say regulations are very, very bad."
Montgomery Burns: "Yes...just...look...at..what...I...was...able...to...do...without....regulations! I...created...new...life. Blinky!"

Look. I'm sure there are bad regulations and an intelligent culling of them could improve the economy. I think it's hard to prove, though.
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Post 26 Jan 2018, 6:36 am

Ray Jay wrote:Danivon:
I am pointing out where the tax cuts have helped companies to shed jobs.


Are you suggesting causation? The reality is that closing stores is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

Perhaps. Kimberley Clark shedding jobs while dividends go up, is what?
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Post 26 Jan 2018, 8:05 am

rayjay
The regulatory changes have been huge and have had a big pro-business effect.


Every time banking regulations have been loosened, there has been a surge in the economy, who's benefits accrued primarily to Wall Street. Then, the looser regulations have lead to busts, for which tax payers have picked up the tab.
(See Savings and Loan Crisis of 80s and 90s), See crash of '08.That crisis touched off the worst recession since the Great Depression, wiping out $11 trillion in U.S. household wealth and leaving about 8 million Americans jobless. U.S. taxpayers funded multibillion-dollar bailouts of Wall Street mega-banks, smaller banks across the country and other financial firms

With the partial repeal of Dodd Frank, which he did campaign on , we may well be seeing the commencement of another such cycle . Wall Street has benefited greatly from the regulations that have been repealed s far. The working class and middle class, not so much.

The new president also signed a memorandum instructing the Labor Department to delay an Obama-era rule that requires financial professionals who charge commissions to put their clients’ best interests first when giving advice on retirement investments. When it is no longer illegal to mislead your customers .... how does that looser regulation help ?
For someone who campaigned that Hillary was in the bag to Wall Street, Trump has given them everything they wanted.
Eventually tax payers will bail them out again. And the economy will take another hit.
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Post 27 Jan 2018, 6:23 am

freeman3 wrote:I think those guys from Appalachian State and North Carolina who think that the economy would be 39 trillion with federal regulations at 1949 levels think that stopping business from poisoning water would impede growth...

Three-eyed fish (Simpsons): "Blinky say regulations are very, very bad."
Montgomery Burns: "Yes...just...look...at..what...I...was...able...to...do...without....regulations! I...created...new...life. Blinky!"

Look. I'm sure there are bad regulations and an intelligent culling of them could improve the economy. I think it's hard to prove, though.


One of the things that the Trump administration has done is require that a cost-benefit analysis is done before releasing new regulations. Although that is the law, it has often not been followed by the regulatory state. Are you against cost-benefit analyses for regulations?

BTW, I appreciate humor, and SNL, the Simpsons, the Daily Show is all top notch. Satire is a powerful tool. But it also can have a numbing effect where people don't try to really understand the issues, and instead take a short hand approach by showing the absurdity of the other side's position.

But most regulation isn't about 3-eyed fish. There's an awful lot of regulation involved with forcing the mixing of ethanol into gasoline. It's bad for the environment, it makes no economic sense, and is basically a sop to some political interests over others.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald ... b7586a37e6

Many refineries are owned or are legally connected to gas stations. For example, ExxonMobil XOM +0.71% owns refineries and gas stations. Saudi Aramco, which owns Motiva (the largest U.S. refinery) also owns Shell gasoline stations across the southeastern United States. Such refineries can ship unmixed gasoline to their own gas stations where upon the gasoline is mixed with ethanol when the consumer purchases it.
However, Philadelphia Energy Solutions is an independent refinery and doesn’t own gas stations, nor is it legally connected to a larger operation that owns gas stations. As a result, the Philadelphia refinery says it has faced liabilities in the form of a requirement to either purchase ethanol credits or pay a fine to the U.S. government. According to news reports other similar refiners have managed to succeed and people in the industry say that Philadelphia Energy Solutions has been plagued by poor management decisions. However, the U.S. government played a role in regulating one of the most important U.S. refineries into bankruptcy.


There are many examples of regulatory overreach. There are books written about this stuff. Not .as funny or easy as the Simpsons, but certainly worth keeping an open mind about.
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Post 27 Jan 2018, 6:24 am

danivon wrote:
Ray Jay wrote:Danivon:
I am pointing out where the tax cuts have helped companies to shed jobs.


Are you suggesting causation? The reality is that closing stores is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

Perhaps. Kimberley Clark shedding jobs while dividends go up, is what?


Capitalism. The management of KC determined that this was in the best interest of their shareholders.
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Post 27 Jan 2018, 6:29 am

Ray Jay wrote:
danivon wrote:
Ray Jay wrote:Danivon:
I am pointing out where the tax cuts have helped companies to shed jobs.


Are you suggesting causation? The reality is that closing stores is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

Perhaps. Kimberley Clark shedding jobs while dividends go up, is what?


Capitalism. The management of KC determined that this was in the best interest of their shareholders.

Agreed. Which is not the same thing as the best interests of the country, or of working people.
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Post 27 Jan 2018, 12:03 pm

danivon wrote:Agreed. Which is not the same thing as the best interests of the country, or of working people.


True. The State and the proletariat are not the concerns of corporations.

On the other hand, the overall economy seems headed in the right direction, more so than anytime in a decade.

Generally speaking, corporations are taking care of their workers right now. As someone who has worked in middle management, I understand why: good workers are hard to come by. Bonuses, stock, and raises help with retention. In a growing economy, employee retention is important in a skills and service-based environment.
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Post 27 Jan 2018, 2:55 pm

n 1988, the typical American adult was 40 years old, white and married, with a high school diploma. If he was a man, he probably worked full time. If she was a woman, she probably didn’t.

Twenty-five years later, Americans are older, more diverse and more educated. We are less likely to be married and more likely to live alone. Work is divided more evenly between the sexes. One thing that hasn’t changed? The income of the median U.S. household is still just under $52,000
.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... -15-years/

Fate
Generally speaking, corporations are taking care of their workers right now. As someone who has worked in middle management, I understand why: good workers are hard to come by.


Bully. It doesn't make up for two decades of spinning wheels.
Meanwhile the very wealthy...
5% Of Income Gains Since 2009 Went To The Top 1% — Here's What That Really Means

http://www.businessinsider.com/95-of-in ... ans-2013-9

If the system isn't working for the vast majority of people... And really hasn't worked since the 80s, one shouldn't get so excited about the brief upswing..
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Post 28 Jan 2018, 11:16 am

danivon wrote:
Ray Jay wrote:
danivon wrote:
Ray Jay wrote:Danivon:
I am pointing out where the tax cuts have helped companies to shed jobs.


Are you suggesting causation? The reality is that closing stores is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

Perhaps. Kimberley Clark shedding jobs while dividends go up, is what?


Capitalism. The management of KC determined that this was in the best interest of their shareholders.

Agreed. Which is not the same thing as the best interests of the country, or of working people.


Reasonable people can disagree.

BTW, the concept of "best interests of the country" is problematic. We don't have philosopher kings with perfect knowledge and perfect power who do that on this planet of ours. Hitler, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, etc. were dead ends, literally. We have to settle for good imperfect systems to make decisions (capitalism) tempered by other good imperfect systems to modulate the bad decisions that capitalism makes (liberal democracy).
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Post 28 Jan 2018, 11:34 am

rickyp wrote:rayjay
The regulatory changes have been huge and have had a big pro-business effect.


Every time banking regulations have been loosened, there has been a surge in the economy, who's benefits accrued primarily to Wall Street. Then, the looser regulations have lead to busts, for which tax payers have picked up the tab.
(See Savings and Loan Crisis of 80s and 90s), See crash of '08.That crisis touched off the worst recession since the Great Depression, wiping out $11 trillion in U.S. household wealth and leaving about 8 million Americans jobless. U.S. taxpayers funded multibillion-dollar bailouts of Wall Street mega-banks, smaller banks across the country and other financial firms

With the partial repeal of Dodd Frank, which he did campaign on , we may well be seeing the commencement of another such cycle . Wall Street has benefited greatly from the regulations that have been repealed s far. The working class and middle class, not so much.

The new president also signed a memorandum instructing the Labor Department to delay an Obama-era rule that requires financial professionals who charge commissions to put their clients’ best interests first when giving advice on retirement investments. When it is no longer illegal to mislead your customers .... how does that looser regulation help ?
For someone who campaigned that Hillary was in the bag to Wall Street, Trump has given them everything they wanted.
Eventually tax payers will bail them out again. And the economy will take another hit.


Ricky, this is cogent but way too broad a brush. One can argue that the S&L crisis and the Great Recession were the result of a lax regulatory environment, but one can also argue that they were the result of poor laws and regulatory missteps. For the S&L's they had outgrown their purpose, and instead of allowing them to die the federal government backstopped their questionable loans so they engaged in risky behavior. In the case of the Great Recession the housing requirements created by the feds are certainly part of the problem. We can agree that bad actors got off too easily. We can also agree that the US Gov't should have received a lot more of future profits from GS, etc. for bailing them out. On the flip side, enabling commercial and investment banks to be under the same roof was part of the solution, not the problem.

Anyone who has been involved in a SOX audit knows what a waste of time it can be. I've seen no evidence that the fiduciary rules helps investors. It creates huge compliance headaches for the industry for very little benefit to the consumer. They just had to institute mandatory fees to cover themselves.

Regarding regulatory overreach and Trump efforts to dismantle it, there are many examples. Here's a good summary. http://dailysignal.com/2018/01/02/10-wa ... n-in-2017/

Some I agree with; some I don't. But to take a view 100% one way or the other is to not understand the complexity of the intersection of business and government, and especially the large benefits and the large costs.
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Post 28 Jan 2018, 11:39 am

Ricky:
Meanwhile the very wealthy...
5% Of Income Gains Since 2009 Went To The Top 1% — Here's What That Really Means

http://www.businessinsider.com/95-of-in ... ans-2013-9

If the system isn't working for the vast majority of people... And really hasn't worked since the 80s, one shouldn't get so excited about the brief upswing..


It appears that the ACA and raising taxes on the wealthy during the Obama years was a disaster for the poor.

On the other hand, relatively speaking the poor did great during the Depression and the Great Recession, as their income decline was a low percentage of the total income decline. The black plague was also a great equalizer.
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Post 29 Jan 2018, 6:50 am

An interesting list on corporate decisions in the wake of the tax reform legislation. 273 anecdotes of companies investing and/or distributing to their employees.

https://atr.org/list
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Post 29 Jan 2018, 8:27 am

While nice...what will matter is how working-class employees are doing as a whole. Are they getting a reasonable share of the wealth being created in this economy. Anectdoctal stories are meaningless if income workers in the 20-80% percentile stay flat. We'll see. But I am not going to be swayed by anectdotal stories.

By the way, there are 1.7 million corporations in the US...so 273 out of 1.7 million?
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Post 29 Jan 2018, 8:43 am

Ray Jay wrote:Ricky:
Meanwhile the very wealthy...
5% Of Income Gains Since 2009 Went To The Top 1% — Here's What That Really Means

http://www.businessinsider.com/95-of-in ... ans-2013-9

If the system isn't working for the vast majority of people... And really hasn't worked since the 80s, one shouldn't get so excited about the brief upswing..


It appears that the ACA and raising taxes on the wealthy during the Obama years was a disaster for the poor.

On the other hand, relatively speaking the poor did great during the Depression and the Great Recession, as their income decline was a low percentage of the total income decline. The black plague was also a great equalizer.


Rickyp has no solutions. He just wants us to know that nothing Trump does is working. Don't believe the numbers. And, if you do, just know they can't make up for the Obama years.
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Post 29 Jan 2018, 8:45 am

freeman3 wrote:While nice...what will matter is how working-class employees are doing as a whole. Are they getting a reasonable share of the wealth being created in this economy. Anectdoctal stories are meaningless if income workers in the 20-80% percentile stay flat. We'll see. But I am not going to be swayed by anectdotal stories.

By the way, there are 1.7 million corporations in the US...so 273 out of 1.7 million?


Are all of those corporations big and profitable? Kind of cheesy.

The only way, from a liberal/statist mindset to get "a reasonable share" is central planning.

No thanks.