StrangeSox

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:44 AM) After Pinochet was removed, the former socialist party took over and have been a very good government. They have kept the best part of Friedman via Pinochet reforms, while creating a better floor for their population. They are a very-well run country with good government. But they still have pretty high inequality and there's widespread discontent with the government IIRC. And their privatized social security system has been a bit of a failure, too. What's wrong with saying Chavez was s***ty politically but that the way he used the oil wealth to help the poor was genuinely good when many other leaders have not? I'm not required to endorse everything he did or said in order to point out that he wasn't the universal evil he's typically portrayed as.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:44 AM) Yes, in theory you lower costs, your revenues go up and your labor should get a share of that. But given the costs of doing business in this country, that's not some easy feat. Most companies don't charge exorbitant prices with tons of excess revenue. Their prices are set by the market - competition from other businesses and the price they can demand for their product/service. Labor's just another line item. The business will be more successful if you minimize labor costs as much as possible, regardless of business size. "As much as possible" is doing a lot of work for me there, but our economic system still incentivizes reducing your labor costs. Uh, yeah? No disagreement there. The lower and middle classes have been stagnant or losing ground for decades to an increasingly small percentage who hoards all the wealth. edit: did you see that video I posted earlier? go take a look, it shows how pretty much across the board, until you get to the very tail, the wealth distribution is far below what Americans think it is and think it should be.

US-backed puppet dictators tend to have far, far worse human rights records.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:19 AM) And helped himself to two billion dollars. Chavez did a good thing by actually helping the poor of his country with the oil wealth. He also did plenty of s***ty things and I don't like seeing him idolized by some on the left.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:13 AM) South American governance has certainly turned a corner, but I prefer to hold up Chile and Brazil as the progress rather than their bad apple. Chile's tech scene is because of their government and people's initiative. The two go can go hand and hand and countries should always look for those opportunities and be accepting of failure in those cases. How much of Chile's progress in the last couple of decades are an offshoot of Pinochet's reign? They've done well after those neoliberal policies were implemented, but how egalitarian is their society? How does it compare to Chavez's use of natural resource wealth for the poor? Chavez did some good things while also having a toxic political culture. I don't know if that comes out to a net positive or if that even means anything anyway. But I think it's important to note what he did with the natural resource wealth when he could have easily done what's much more common. There's no question that he's harmed Venezuelan democracy, and for that he should be criticized.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 09:00 AM) Small business owners don't pocket enough to worry about whether they should be giving their employees a little bit more. Most barely make a living of their own. So? The calculus doesn't change: lower production costs, be it labor, materials, equipment, whatever, means you can either enjoy a larger profit margin or reduce prices and hopefully expand your market revenues. I'm trying to make this statement as amorally as possible--this is simply how our economy currently functions. Business owners need to reduce costs in all areas, and labor is typically one of the biggest costs. No, we don't. We have a mindset that an incredibly small slice of the population controls an enormous amount of the wealth and income, that this is bad for society in the long-term and that it's devastating for millions that get the short-end of the stick in the short-term.

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 08:59 AM) Many resource rich neighboring countries did the same thing much more effectively, without terrorizing the opposition. Yup. The fact that the governing party is now in chaos with no leadership is a sign of the type of government he ran. For as much as he restricted free speech, though, I'd throw out there that he did depart from the typical SA "assassinate or disappear the opposition" moves, at least as far as I've ever heard, while some of the opposition still advocates for those tactics.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 08:55 AM) Republicans want less government/taxes for everyone, not just the rich. If the middle class has lower taxes and less need to worry about paying for the poor then they rise too. I'm not at all saying that what we have right now is an acceptable system. But in talking about principles/economic beliefs that's the difference. "The middle class" didn't really exist until the robust post-war expansion of both the economy and the government. Why should we believe that we'd have an expanding middle class if taxes (and, by necessity, services) are cut and not an even quicker return to Gilded Age economic disparity?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 6, 2013 -> 08:48 AM) If you're talking Fortune 500 companies sure. If you're talking about the majority of the workforce that works for small to medium businesses that don't get crazy golden parachutes for their executives and have to worry about the cost of hiring/paying for their workers, then no. The small business owner doesn't pocket more at the end of the day if they can pay their employees less? But the focus would be more on the tiny sliver of the population who controls a huge percentage of the wealth and only stands to gain more the more wages can be depressed.

Who is "The Market" that is making this decision? Is it those who stand to gain more profit personally by depressing your wages as low as possible?

Also fidel castro will outlive us all

Chavez died yesterday. Mixed bag of anti-democratic measures, ego-maniacal leadership but also using his country's natural resources wealth to actually help the poorer citizens of his country.

Coworker just had that happen with chase past week. Wonder if something was compromised?

Heading back out to Cali (for work, this time). That'll be the six time I've flown there in about 10 months.

"The market" and 2013 wage rates are not some immutable force of nature, a part of reality as unchangeable as gravitational constants.

Must be because you're lazy and management works hard.

A physical impossibility, the phrase originally was used to describe impossible actions.

Somebody paid a Dominican woman to claim Sen. Menendez paid her for sex. This story was first "reported" on the "news" website Daily Caller, bounced around the conservative media world and then eventually picked up by traditional media. http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/politics/men...rss_igoogle_cnn

Sometimes they are? But those economists you linked to universally said that the impact would be a negative drag on the economy. Great, five years after the collapse and we're still above 7% unemployment and pursuing policies that make it worse.

I was present for U of I's first snow day since the late-1800's.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Mar 5, 2013 -> 12:36 PM) At this point the system is so broken that fixing it is going to put us through some nasty times. We could've just gotten it over with in 2008 and the structural fixes would finally be helping out, but we've elected to just live permanently in mediocrity as opposed to a few years of legit suffering for what would be a better overall lifetime. We cannot just hide behind the copout that something might cause a recession. Agreed. It is time for the proletariat revolution!

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Mar 5, 2013 -> 12:30 PM) I just went to IL Snap page and tried to sign my son up for food stamps. If he wanted to do it, he would be eligible for $200 a month in assistance. I am sure every state has some differences, I am telling you what I just found out here in IL. The minimum an individual can receive is far below $200.

Kentucky's giving state nullification another run! http://www.kentucky.com/2013/02/25/2531800...lification.html

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 5, 2013 -> 12:32 PM) Fun site. As a credit conscious, fiscally conservative American, this is the the most alarming part of that data to me http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_brief.php And again, this is not an indictment of the Obama administration but of the leadership in this country over the last 15 years or so in general (regarding total debt and percentage of debt vs GDP, not the deficit or interest payments). It's great that the US government sells bonds and borrows debt from other countries to pay for necessities now while paying out more in the future, but generally speaking, it needs to be a body of regulation with ultimate power and they need to take care of the amount of debt within the country itself. You see that public debt in 2011-12 dipped, but that was more to do with a lack of faith in the US' credit than it did in the US' ability to withdraw credit (though this is mere speculation on my part due to the degradation of the US bond score). Bond rates remain at basically zero. There's no lack of faith in the US bonds. Nobody paid attention to the ratings agency's downgrade, nor should they (AAA Sub-prime derivatives!) No sovereign, currency-issuing government ever needs to or should completely pay off a debt. Debt finances growth.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 5, 2013 -> 12:29 PM) Projections by who? The White House? Please. Here's a bunch of economists who, at most, say growth will be slowed. But even that isn't a for-sure projection. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112544/...erican-economy# No projections are "for-sure," but that's a good starting point. It will unquestionably have a negative impact on the economy and, based on everything we've seen from Europe, will actually make the deficits worse. Of course politicians are trying to dramatize it, but it's foolish to minimize the impact in the way your chart did. This is going to have a real effect on real people and is the dumbest thing we can be doing right now in such a weak economy. Here's the CBO, which projects a 1.4% knock on GDP growth. That's huge. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43961