Ron Paul, does he stand a chance?

[rinthea]

The standard, and vast majority, of hedge fund payments to a managers is a flat fee (i.e. 2%) and an incentive (i.e. 20% of profits). What doesnt get much air publicly, is there is a lot of bad hedge funds out there that dont make money (for their clients at least). So much in fact, that the Hedge fund index gets outperformed by the SP500 . These days hedge funds are all about assets under management. You can safely rule out the clients being the benefactors of hedge funds in the majority of cases.

However, sending them offshore does not help the US. Speculators provide market stability and liquidity and support a lot of jobs. That people are falling over themselves to give their money to anybody and everybody in such a cut throat and high failure rate business is more a problem with these people.

As for havelock, we're not denying there are factors out of control to the US. The point is, take fucking care of the ones that you do have control of.

[Overgauss]

Originally Posted by Mauk'

"On certain scales it is not sufficient to merely learn the first lesson. Rather, success depends on comprehending the second lesson embedded within it."

.

[Soriak]

Originally Posted by Havelock

Or maybe you're not committed to being low income forever. I'm a fan of progressive taxation, but is it so inconceivable that someone who's poor wants to make lots of money, or see his kids make lots of money, and thinks ahead? Or, and perhaps this is less likely, considers what sort of economy would provide him with the best opportunities to stop being poor, and acts accordingly?

The poor have it hard enough without elitists telling them they're not capable of thinking for themselves and demanding that they let others tell them what they should think.

A wealthy individual has assets of about $100 Million. Given proper investment, this will pull in at least $10m per year. (very conservative estimate, probably more like $15-$20m)

Those are the ones really profiting from tax cuts, an end to the estate tax and all those generous gifts, and it's not like there's only a handful of high networth individuals.

I don't give a shit how hard you or your kids work, you'll never get there. Even if you start working with a $300k salary, you'd have to work over 30 years to make those $10m pre-taxes. (except by then those same wealthy individuals will have assets over $1bn, pulling in $100m+ capital gains...)

But if you make living more expensive for the poor and middle class ('fair tax') you also make it much harder for them to get off the ground. Hard to think of affording college (much less an ivy league education) when your family just barely makes enough to get food on the table. Chances are their kids have to start working at a young age and that's time taken away from studying.

There's a google once every 2 years and 50 states have lotteries where each is won every other week or so. This is just how unlikely it is for someone to 'hit it big' so to speak. Although it's worth mentioning that Gates was a Millionaire when he started and I believe the google founders were wealthy before too. (they both attended Yale)

[mek]

Originally Posted by Havelock

Yeah, but if they weren't so pissed off they were looking for boogie men, and if they weren't so prone to violence, and if their governments weren't so fucked up, and if their cultures had been able to deal better with interaction with modern Western culture, and if their governments didn't shit on the Palestinians to distract attention from their own shortcomings, and if their religious fanatics didn't use faith to justify and even compel murder, then no they would not attack us either.

Yeah, I agree, the States is pretty fucked up.

[mek]

Originally Posted by chaos

Yeah I saw that episode and it was great, Ron Paul was great, Moore was also great. Affleck, I find, is usually pretty informed and has interesting opinions.

Affleck is about as smart as a drunken college student, which is to say above average but he was way out of his league between O'Rourke and Maher.

Ron Paul was incredible... Maher has the most liberal audience you can possibly find; when Paul first came on, about 3 people clapped, as he left the entire audience *exploded* with applause.

I wish the 08 elections was Al Gore v Ron Paul, that way we could all take the year off and just get stoned.

[Lejina Bloodbath]

Originally Posted by Millie

Ok, seriously? Wow.

I make a decent amount each year, most of which is through capital gains. But the actual salary (post-401k contributions) itself gets taxed at 40+%, and it's not even close to the top income bracket in California, let alone the U.S.

And yeah, health insurance here is kind of an international joke. I'm sure it'll be even more of a joke once Michael Moore's latest doc drops in a couple months.

Well, that made my day. I thought I was taxed quite a lot, but those figures coming from the commies at the south of the border make me realise I don't have it so bad.

[Fender]

Originally Posted by Havelock

Do you really think Osama bin Laden gave a shit that we propped up the Shah thirty years ago?

He does.

It's a very old region in terms of culture and civilization and the people have long memories. They're still hung up on Ataturk and the secularization of Turkey in the 1920s, for example.

[Millie]

Originally Posted by Soriak

But if you make living more expensive for the poor and middle class ('fair tax') you also make it much harder for them to get off the ground. Hard to think of affording college (much less an ivy league education) when your family just barely makes enough to get food on the table. Chances are their kids have to start working at a young age and that's time taken away from studying.

Not to mention there won't be a true middle class in this country if things continue on the same track they're on now. People like to talk about the growing gap between rich and poor, but they don't realize who's being defined as "poor" in that argument. Pretty much everyone is "poor" relative to our current upper class, and that's only going to get more dramatic when interest rates go up over the next year or two, and the superrich become the only ones capable of buying large consumer goods, real estate etc. When the supperrich are allowed to define markets, their spending drives up prices (and hence, cost of living), and drives out anyone who can't keep up. This, among other things, is what fuels the "gap." Take a look at New York City for a startling example of how superrich gentrification can fuck up a city, despite the appearance of "improvement."

The gap between the rich and middle class is expanding rapidly, while the gap between the middle class and the poor is closing. This, more than anything else, is a real sign of problems to come, given that an upwardly-mobile middle class has always been key to American economic success.

[Eomer]

That gap is affecting most other Western countries, as well. But there's no doubt that the US is leading the way. But there's issues with it in Canada as well.

Ok, seriously? Wow.

I make a decent amount each year, most of which is through capital gains. But the actual salary (post-401k contributions) itself gets taxed at 40+%, and it's not even close to the top income bracket in California, let alone the U.S.

And yeah, health insurance here is kind of an international joke. I'm sure it'll be even more of a joke once Michael Moore's latest doc drops in a couple months.

It's largely a myth that Canadians pay significantly more tax than the US, when all is said and done. Our tax tends to be more "concentrated", I guess, in that you really only have the one tax bill or refund in April each year. From my understanding, the US has a lot more additional taxes from state, municipalities, payroll deductions and so on. So if you're just comparing federal income tax, it's not exactly a fair comparison. We pay more if you take everyone on average overall, but I'd be willing to bet that if you compared only the middle class and below they'd be damn near the same, or even less. Factor in health insurance and it starts to look pretty damn attractive.

For info: What are the income tax rates in Canada?

Because for last year I just barely got into the top bracket, most of my income was paid at the lower bracket rates. It's amazing how many people don't understand that: "I got a raise and now I'm in a higher bracket and take home less money!" No, you dont, idiot. And as you can see, living in Alberta has it's benefits, since we have a flat income tax provincially and no sales tax, whereas most provinces have progressive tax brackets and a 5-7% sales tax. Thank fucking god I don't live in the Maritimes, they get absolutely raped.

[Burf]

Originally Posted by chaos

if we didn't push our culture and capitalist ideals on them, then no they would not attack us. I don't see how that can be disputed.

Can you explain how you "push" a culture and capitalist ideals on someone?
If McDonalds and Gap build a store and it doesn't make money, the store is going to be closed. If it makes money, it's going to stay open. By that token, if it's making money, that means people must be spending money there. If they're spending money, that means they like it.
Maybe some of the people living there WANT more freedoms and choices? Maybe they're not all willing to murder someone because they don't agree with that person?

Or maybe I'm taking your statement in the wrong way?

[chaos]

Originally Posted by Havelock

Yeah, but if they weren't so pissed off they were looking for boogie men, and if they weren't so prone to violence, and if their governments weren't so fucked up, and if their cultures had been able to deal better with interaction with modern Western culture, and if their governments didn't shit on the Palestinians to distract attention from their own shortcomings, and if their religious fanatics didn't use faith to justify and even compel murder, then no they would not attack us either. And that's just the start of things. If England and France hadn't pursued the Middle East policies they did, if women had equal rights in the Middle East, if the countries adopted a more meritocratic system of leadership, etc. There are all sorts of reasons involved. Focusing on America's role to the exclusion of the others is at least as simple-minded as ignoring it completely.

Bin Laden told the Saudi government our bases had to go, and the Saudi government told bin Laden to fuck off and revoked his citizenship. There are a whole lot of Iraqis who do not want the U.S. troops to pull out immediately. As far as propping up dictators, we have done some of that, as have others, but while we support the Saudi government I don't believe we're propping them up, and that's the relevant government when you're talking about what caused the September 11 attacks. Do you really think Osama bin Laden gave a shit that we propped up the Shah thirty years ago?

You also talk as though we treat it like our personal sandbox, but there are a whole lot of countries with huge interests in the Middle East. It has the bad luck of sitting on an extremely valuable resource without populations capable of taking advantage of the oil without serious outside help, and lots of people are interested there. France, Russia, and China, for instance, have all done various shady things in the Middle East in recent memory (hell, they were even trying to prop up a dictator just a few years ago). It's not our personal sandbox, but it's an important nexus in geopolitics and all the major powers work to protect their interests there as best they can.

Finally, if you think we blindly follow Israel, kindly explain why we used our diplomacy to emasculate them during the last big spat with Hezbollah? Why have we spent so much time trying to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and pressured Israel to make concessions? Sure, we back them quite a bit, but there's a difference between supporting your ally and blindly following them. Our behavior is closer to the former than the latter. You're either engaging in hyperbole or your worldview is excessively simple.

Edit: As far as culture goes, I don't think we're pushing particularly hard. Would that we could persuade the region to wholeheartedly buy into religious pluralism, women's equality, and restraint with respect to things like hanging gays and stoning rape victims. And with respect to capitalism, it's the natural state of things when various people want to exchange goods and services. They have stuff we want, we have stuff they want - what alternative do you propose?

Dude you start off your post here with like 30 "Ifs" which basically get to the root of what I'm saying. The Western attitude towards the Middle East is "If they change to be more like us then we won't have any problems". For some reason, they have issues with this. Religious fanatics, well we have those over here that are just as murderous, so that isn't exclusive to Islam. As far as the government and culture of the Middle East we have NO BUSINESS interfering. We have no right to say what is or is not appropriate, I realize that's a somewhat juvenile argument but it's true and probably exactly what a lot of people over there think.

I don't know, I had a big long and thoughtful reply typed up, but that's the root isn't it? None of the rest matters beyond that statement. If they change everything about their culture then we can have reasonable diplomacy with them. I swear, hubris will be the end of us.

[MrGraham]

If everyone who's thinking "Man I'd vote for him, but he has no shot of winning so what's the point?" went out and registered and voted for him in the primaries, it would make a world of a difference.

But they won't. Everyone likes to complain, but the primaries will be another record low turnout because people actually believe the bullshit propaganda that your vote doesn't matter.

If Ron Paul pulled even 10% of the votes, you'd better believe he'd get more heard. And if he gets more heard, maybe he won't get elected, but people will start listening to his way of thinking and realize how fucked up our current system is.

[voodoochile78]

Originally Posted by Havelock

Or maybe you're not committed to being low income forever. I'm a fan of progressive taxation, but is it so inconceivable that someone who's poor wants to make lots of money, or see his kids make lots of money, and thinks ahead?

All I can say to that I LOfucking. Social mobility is rather limited (not just in this country either, it's pretty much true everywhere). So have fun voting for tax cuts for Paris Hilton while you greet people at the door of Walmart because you think one day you just might make it to that level of income.

Or, and perhaps this is less likely, considers what sort of economy would provide him with the best opportunities to stop being poor, and acts accordingly?

Oh shit, are trickle-down economics back again? Reagan introduced them to America, to disasterous effects, and Bush Jr. brought them back from the dead to the most anemic post-recession job growth America has seen in a very long time. Compare that to the Clinton years, where he raised the top marginal tax rate and introduced The Estate Tax, and we had fucking amazing job growth at the same time.

If you don't want to credit Clinton with any part of the economy of the late 90s, and aren't willing to fault Reagan/Bush Jr. for their economies, then you still have to conceed that taxing the rich and job growth for the poor and middle class don't even appear to be correlated.

The poor have it hard enough without elitists telling them they're not capable of thinking for themselves and demanding that they let others tell them what they should think.

Shut the fuck up, you're talking like some Republican politician trying to trick some rednecks. Wrong audience, take it elsewhere.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by MrGraham

If everyone who's thinking "Man I'd vote for him, but he has no shot of winning so what's the point?" went out and registered and voted for him in the primaries, it would make a world of a difference.

But they won't. Everyone likes to complain, but the primaries will be another record low turnout because people actually believe the bullshit propaganda that your vote doesn't matter.

If Ron Paul pulled even 10% of the votes, you'd better believe he'd get more heard. And if he gets more heard, maybe he won't get elected, but people will start listening to his way of thinking and realize how fucked up our current system is.

After Florida and Ohio and whatever else, it's only normal for people to be skeptical about the voting system. The propaganda seems to be rather the other way, that your vote does matter, while all manner of shady shit goes down every single election to disqualify voters and basically rig the elections.

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by voodoochile78

All I can say to that I LOfucking. Social mobility is rather limited (not just in this country either, it's pretty much true everywhere). So have fun voting for tax cuts for Paris Hilton while you greet people at the door of Walmart because you think one day you just might make it to that level of income.



Oh shit, are trickle-down economics back again? Reagan introduced them to America, to disasterous effects, and Bush Jr. brought them back from the dead to the most anemic post-recession job growth America has seen in a very long time. Compare that to the Clinton years, where he raised the top marginal tax rate and introduced The Estate Tax, and we had fucking amazing job growth at the same time.

If you don't want to credit Clinton with any part of the economy of the late 90s, and aren't willing to fault Reagan/Bush Jr. for their economies, then you still have to conceed that taxing the rich and job growth for the poor and middle class don't even appear to be correlated.
Shut the fuck up, you're talking like some Republican politician trying to trick some rednecks. Wrong audience, take it elsewhere.

Were you even alive back when Regan took office? I was. I remeber as a kid my parents struggling in the chugging economy of another great Democratic leader, Carter. I remeber my parents paying 12-13% mortgage rates back then. I guess you are just a dumb redneck, but you dodnt even know it...

Here is the real truth...

It was Reagan's supply side economic ideas -- the policy of marginal rate tax cuts, a strong dollar, trade globalization (the Gipper started NAFTA with a U.S.-Canadian free trade agreement), deregulation of key industries like energy, financial services and transportation, and a re-armed military -- all of which unleashed a great wave of entrepreneurial-technological innovation that transformed and restructured the economy, resulting in a long boom prosperity that continues to throw off economic benefits to this day.

The trend of the stock market, shown in the accompanying chart, provides compelling evidence that the real turning point of the U.S. economy was the early 1980s, not the early 1990s. From 1967-82, the 15 years before Reaganomics, the Dow-Jones industrial average suffered one of its blackest bear markets in history, falling 23 percent in nominal terms and nearly 70 percent per year in inflation adjusted real terms. Stagflationary anti-market Keynesian fine-tuning policies caused the wealth of American families to vanish right before their very eyes.

In 1982, the Dow Jones Industrial Average swooned to its nadir of 800. Over the rest of the Reagan years the market more than tripled. In the 1990s it would nearly quadruple (to 11,000 today). During the 1982-2000 Reagan bull market stocks soared by 12 percent per year, raising the net worth of U.S. households by some $30 trillion. To match this performance over the next 20 years, the Dow-Jones would have to soar to about 120,000 by 2020. If Washington politicians do no harm, and stay on Reagan's road, even this outsized dream remains possible.......

Yes, Bill Clinton deserves some credit for keeping the expansion moving. Along with Robert Rubin, his strong dollar and hands-off-the-Fed policies extended disinflation, creating an economy wide tax cut effect that offset his mistaken 1993 tax increase. Free trade measures during the mid-1990s also constituted a tax-cut stimulus effect. Importantly, the Republican Congress forced Clinton into swallowing his opposition and signing into law key measures such as welfare reform, the balanced budget bill, capital gains tax cuts and expanded savings accounts. The Gingrich and Co. heirs to Reagan's legacy helped restore business confidence, setting off a phenomenal investment boom over the past five years. Bill Clinton's greatest economic achievement has been that most of his liberal policy ideas were never enacted into law. Remember the BTU tax? Remember Robert Reich's $50 billion fiscal stimulus package? Remember, most of all, Hillary's health care plan? Thankfully, we dodged all of these economic wrecking balls.

It's the Reagan Economy, Stupid