Feel the Bern!

That's fine and I can certainly move on to the movie threads, I know how. It is just interesting that you seem to have certain ideas that line up with certain groups, but then decry that mentality. Bernie is the flavor of the month but you don't seem to know how his policies will change things to how you want them to be. I don't think anyone wants anyone to be homeless. I think reforming our healthcare and education systems is a great idea. I need to be shown how though. Like you are find of saying it is not enough for Bernie to just keep saying he is going to do it, with no real feasible way to make it happen.

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Letterboxd

If Hillary is President, the Republicans aren't going to give her 2-years of free college.. Every Republican says good things about him. McCain said many great things about him, and that no one has done more for veterans than him when Bernie was chairman, talked about how they worked together (this was a response to the gridlock on C-Span thing). And Republicans haven't worked with Obama. So let's settle and say nothing gets done. Keep in mind Bernie Sanders was bold and voted against the Iraq War (Ron Paul too, and a very few Democrats), voted against the Patriot Act (which my libertarian-republican friends loved), and as Commander-In-Chief he will only go to war as a last option. I think he's less likely to do something in haste that puts our men and women in harm's way out of pressure, and we know most candidates go where the wind blows; he hasn't. He wants the countries in the region to solve the problem, which I also agree with...

Earlier this election cycle, I supported Rand Paul if he was to face Hillary Clinton for the same reason.

Fair enough. The money talk frustrates me, but I have said my piece.

Actually I read everything everyones said and this is one of the better talks ive seen on the forum in awhile. Im getting an education.

Just as a little fact, nothing major, but Milwaukee elected 3 Socialist mayors - all voted for by the people - and it flourished over those 50 years when we had them. Just saying......

And that is really all that I had to say here.

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I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe

I wonder if Trump, Clinton, or Cruz would have the know-how or cajones to confront Alan Greenspan? No.
10 year old film.

https://www.facebook.com/brandon.web...3965887999247/

You floated this about a year ago, and I replied here. The idea that they must be skilled because their labor brings in profits simply doesn't make sense. Making profits simply indicates that something in the business is valuable and/or hard to reproduce. And since there's no barrier to hiring lots of people for entry-level positions, it's pretty clear that it's not the workers that drive the company's success, but the system they operate within.

This is without even getting into the fact that employment, taken as total salaries, is largely going to be static, so that raising wages will simply reduce hiring accordingly and spread those wages among fewer people. Which I'm pretty sure is the kind of thing you usually hate.

Also, they don't make "BILLIONS in profits each day." Your point doesn't hinge on the exact amount, but that's wildly overstated. And I don't think it's a coincidence that these kinds of economic fallacies usually come from people who have no interest in the actual numbers, and seem to shy away from specifics.

Lots of inaccuracies here, but I'll restrict myself to the broader idea: the idea that you can finance a socialist welfare state by taxing the rich is demonstrably, inarguably false. It's not even close to true. Sanders' supporters need to actually look at the countries he touts as examples: they are nothing like his proposals. They have higher middle class taxes, or very little business regulation, or both. You can't get there just by taking a little more from billionaires. And that's without even getting into the economic illiteracy required to think that taxing super rich people more has no second-order effects.

This language is downright Orwellian. It's "distributing" money to people to...not take as much of their money in the first place? When they're still paying far more (dramatically so in nominal terms, and significantly more in percentage terms)?

Notice how self-justifying the rhetoric on progressive taxation is: it advocates higher tax rates on the rich, but also criticizes any policy that reduces taxes evenly because it reduces theirs more...because they have higher rates in the first place!

That is not Rule #1 of Economics, and I've been trying to talk to you seriously about basic economic principles for awhile now. You don't seem too interested.

I don't understand why I can never get someone from the left to address this squarely. I know squat about economics but this is math my third grader can understand. It makes no sense how the left just continuously talks around this point, and those who buy in never seem to care.

The Walton siblings made nowhere near $16 billion each. Sounds like you're combining all of them, and you're also confusing their personal profit with the company's profit.

Leaving aside the polemic of randomly picking a government program to line up against this, as if it were cut specifically because of the Waltons, the benefits of Head Start are very short term benefits.

Does it? Without Googling anything, what do you actually know about this? Because between this and the Walton stuff, and the "BILLIONS of profits each day" thing, and a dozen other things...I'm getting the idea a lot of this stuff is just stuff that sounds true to you, or based on things you half-remember.

Not even close to true.

Oy, this talking point again. This is wrong on multiple levels, some of which are detailed here. One high level problem with it is that it has things completely backwards: they'd need more government subsidies if not for their Wal-Mart job, not fewer.

Yeah this is so wrong. Not even sure they would have made this much right away when Sam died even.

I know this has already been addressed, but the point of the system Mc D's uses is that you could, effectively, sack everyone on day 1, close the store on day 2, and then re-open on day 3 with the whole new staff who were trained on day 2 to sufficiently operate the store effectively. Obviously it wouldn't be seamless, but it could be done. It's designed to be done. That's my problem with it. You'd have to have a really low standard of skilled work for regular fast food workers to qualify. I'm on your side here, but this is a poor argument that needs to be left alone.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Aye, there's always a cost. But I can't see any good reason why people shouldn't be able to clearly see what they get, and what it costs them. My hunch is that government is generally inefficient enough that very few people would look favorably on the trade off (especially at first) if it were not for these layers of abstraction. And is a policy a good policy if it can only survive by obfuscating its costs?

I don't see how this is possible. It isn't binary, where people either stop investing in business and innovating, or not. We'll have more or less of it. People will start more new business, or fewer. They'll take more chances with products, or fewer. They'll invest more or less.

No matter what your level of taxation or regulation, there will be risks that are right on the border of economic acceptably to individuals and/or investors. So any time you change that, you change the risk/reward ratio and, inevitably, anything that was previously just worth the risk no longer is. And things that still are are worth less upfront investment. And so on. All of this effects employment, growth, etc. It is not, as is so often insisted, something which concerns only the wealthy.

A socialist can make the argument that this is worth it. Maybe it is! I think there are some pretty good arguments showing why it isn't, but to some people it's a moral question more than an empirical one. But the main thing is that the trade off is real, and unavoidable.

Im confident Bernie Sanders wouldnt try do anything this country couldnt. Hes not a idiot that thinks things should be given to people, just because. Hes not gonna get healthcare for everyone unless its possible, and hes not going to turn the United States into a socialist country. Hes easily the most respectable candidate among this bunch, and doesnt get consideration because hes not one to scratch backs and take payoffs. He has some socialist ideals. Ok, I completely understand some people believe this to be an unforgivable stance. Anything else?

The one thing that is certain is taxes will be raised sooner or later. At least in 4-8 years time we'd have something to show for it. His strategies arent perfect, but hes not a pompous out of touch billionaire and hes not Clinton/Cruz who are bought and paid for like all republicans and democrats have been all our lives. If hes not considered it would be out of fear and ignorance. Ideals of Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans dont become President - Sanders, Trump, Clinton, or Cruz become president. The PERSON becomes President, and his character and experience dwarfs theirs. Thats why I support him. Not Socialism. Not Republicans or Democrats. If they brought someone forward that resemble Harry Truman, Id back them. In regards to raging against the tide, Sanders is more like Truman than any of them.

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I have opinions on the other stuff in this back and forth, but my background in accounting and welfare programs compels me to point out that the article you linked to is very misleading.

Before I start, my ranting is directed at the author (Tim Worstall) of that piece was linked to, not Yoda. But I think it bears reconsidering when linked to in the future.

1) It conveniently ignores some pretty basic accounting principles, and yes Tim, it was evil, evil big government that allowed MACRS in that infamous anti-business legislation...the Reagan Tax Cuts.

Sorry for the sarcasm there, because it's honestly important that people know that there are tradeoffs (something you talk about often) to accounting methods, it's almost never all good or all bad (unless you are actually lying about something on your books). There is something of an exception, which I’ll talk about later (that accelerated depreciation is almost strictly better, if you assume time value of money exists).

2) The author also makes it seem like the tax burden would be HIGHER under accelerated depreciation, but that is, again, misleading. I’ll try to keep this part specific, because I’m actually angry at this piece and that usually leads to rants.

1. The ATF report talks about the lost tax revenue to accelerated depreciation.
   
2. Tim starts talking about accelerated depreciation, but pivots to essentially saying the existence of depreciation AT ALL is a burden on business. Equivocating from the initial argument made by the ATF, which compares accelerated depreciation to normal depreciation.
   
3. This position would mean not taxing assets (instead treating them as only a cost, presumably he'd at least allow it to count towards revenue when salvaged, but with this writer, who knows), which is a very out of the mainstream proposal, but he disguises it.
   
4. He then says that therefore, the depreciation rules cause higher taxes in the first year.
   
5. It leaves the impression that accelerated depreciation is bad for businesses.
   
6. Except, of course, it’s great for businesses. But not as good as not taxing them at all for assets, which is the real position one would need to take in order to possibly argue it’s bad. But the author, of course, doesn’t explain that.
   
7. Why? Because accelerated depreciation essentially is a tax deferral. Under straight line depreciation you claim a flat amount of depreciation each year for some period of time. Under double declining, you take the biggest chunk off of the first year, and smaller chunks each year after. Depreciation is a debit against your revenue, so under actual accelerated depreciation it means you are taxed less the first year than any other (for the value of that asset).
   
8. But they still pay the taxes eventually, right, so maybe it’s neither pro or anti business? Sure, if you ignore time value of money. Think of it as a loan, if there was no interest, you’d pay back the loan on the last day possible (even if you’re only accounting for inflation, and not the opportunity cost of having that money now).
   
9. To top it all off, at the end of the article he says this “Accelerated depreciation rules increase early tax bills, not decrease them”, where he strays into lying rather than deception. Here we can pin him down, because whether or not depreciation should exist, accelerated depreciation is specifically designed to decrease early tax bills.

3) Also it's really misleading to say that government leaves companies no choice but to use accelerated depreciation because you can still use straight line under MACRS, you don't have to use double declining. The author is preying on people seeing the "accelerated" in MACRS and thinking that means there is ONLY accelerated depreciation.

4) The author is again deceptive in his discussion around whether or not the reserve wage would fall (fancy term for the lowest wage a worker would accept). He makes a simple model, here are the programs that affect you if you’re unemployed, if you’re unemployed and you’d still get these benefits, this raises the opportunity cost of working. Let’s say you get 2000 dollars a month in welfare benefits, and a job offers you 2500, you might say no thanks to the job. That concept is true and indeed important to keep in mind; if this case were anywhere close to that example.

Instead, he intentionally omits SNAP when he lists out the unemployment benefits. Why? Because there are work requirements on SNAP benefits and that goes against his thesis. It drives me crazy when people think there aren’t any work requirements for SNAP. And by the way, because of the negative stigma and the sometimes intentional obstruction of SNAP, millions of people go without SNAP benefits when they qualify for it. And yet people complain about SNAP trafficking fraud, which is about 1% (by the way, normal corporate fraud is around 5%). It’s especially frustrating because that fraud rate is less than a tenth of what the rate of non-participation is, which often is the result of state and local government obstruction to SNAP benefits (which I feel pretty strongly is fraud on the part of those governments).

Sorry, tangent, but here’s where it comes back to the reserve wage. You must work (or be unable to work) to receive SNAP benefits for periods beyond 3 months. This means that SNAP benefits are tied to meeting these work requirements, which detracts NOT adds to the reserve wage because it’s a benefit of being employed. Walmart is very aware of this, and does indeed use it to subsidize their low wages because without that low paying job they are offering, the worker will not be able to get those benefits. Tim knows this and leaves it out of his list (worse still, he slightly implies it’s INCLUDED!) here:
That’s an interesting use of so on, because it derives from a list he quoted above in the article:

So he leaves out the EITC for reasons he discusses later (he begrudgingly admits this is a boon to Walmart) but he names 4 of the 5 programs that would actually help his case. And I believe he hopes people assume the so on includes SNAP (when indeed to complete that list you’d just need to say energy vouchers instead of “so on”).

And there’s a very good reason that he leaves out SNAP, because it is commonly cited as the number one way in which Walmart manipulates welfare programs, and Worstall would rather not have to argue against that.

I think what made me so angry is that the final line of the article is this:

“But, of course, this report will be all over the newspapers tomorrow simply because so few people understand that simple economics outlined above.”

After all the dishonesty over the course of the argument, he has the gall to be condescending, when his article relies on one to not know all the economics at play. If it were lack of understanding on his part, that'd be a different issue, but he knows when and where he's lying, otherwise he wouldn't be able to dance around the issue so carefully.

But here’s something I didn’t know. Tim Worstall is also UKIP establishment member, his deceitful and arrogant tone make a lot more sense now.

I’ll end with this: I strongly believe it’s a bad article to base any position on.

Also that I’m sorry for the how long this ended up being, every paragraph turned up something new (and I didn’t even touch on dividend taxation!).

Edit: I tried to format this to be easier to read, but honestly it's a mess to parse, sorry it's so ugly.

No apology necessary; it's a fair critique. I think the "taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart" thing is still horrendously wrong, for the reason I gave (and a few others I haven't), but I was rushing through my reply and didn't look over the link closely enough. My bad.

Here's a better one, from an author I trust/read regularly:

It's no big deal, I link articles and I'm sure there are poison pills in a lot of them. I just despise economic pieces like that (which exist on both political sides).

To be honest, I think the major reason I ever got into economics was because of think pieces like that, where technical language was used to obscure some pretty basic logical flaws or just used to deceive people. I had no idea I'd end up loving econ, I just wanted to prove I could do it.

Now I'm both critical and defensive of econ, because it's more like philosophy than people think. So I'm critical when econ pretends to be this pure source of information akin to math, and I'm defensive when it seems like people think all economists are people like Tim Worstall. It's an awesome branch, all the more wonderful for its shortcomings.

Totally agree. If you don't already listen to Russ Roberts' EconTalk (though based on how you're talking, you probably do), you should. He's been banging this particular drum for a decade.

I haven't, I will check him out.