Global Private Investment Country by Country
Professor Sidney and all interested students:
As you try to put the spotlight on where that evil socialism is stunting investment, destroying any hope of economic growth, putting handcuffs of individual financial freedom and threatening life as we know it, here is a link to a study that will give you some facts.
These "facts" are a bit better documented, than what has been offered to date by Sid, Jackson and company.
The timely and comprehensive study was prepared by the highly respected Economist Intelligence Unit together with the Columbia University Program on International Investment.
Here's the link:
[url]http://www.vcc.columbia.edu/pubs/documents/WorldInvestmentProspectsto2011.pdf[/url]
I have little doubt you will find it illuminating.
Now start your engines, do your homework, read, absorb and adjust your thinking accordingly.
And if you are so inspired, feel free to issue an apology to Obama!
Ok, my last post on this thread
[QUOTE=Sidney]China is a dictatorship. AR is a wanna be K dictatoship. USA is turning hard left. France? Sweden? No clue? North Korea is a dictatorship.---- Two right, two wrong, and 3 ok. Son, you need more homework, less chica time, and fewer beer nights with the boys! I may recommend that you be expelled from Harvard![/QUOTE]Sidney, all kidding aside, do your REAAAAALY believe Obama is a socialist?
He is a politician and has already shown himself, despite the rhetoric, to be a tool of big business. If by "socialist" you mean proponent of a corporate welfare state, then I agree with you 100%.
When the US budget runs into TRILLION dollar deficits, it generally isn't because the money is going to welfare moms, NEA grants, and god forbid, education and healthcare. It is going to Wall Street, the nebulous Military Industrial Complex, and probably in the next year or so, the healthcare industry. (We can start another thread on California's budget woes and the prison industrial complex if you want.
That's how I see it. I would rather it go to NEA grants, education, and, god forbid, health care. If that is liberal to you, then yes, I am a flaming pinko commie who was brainwashed from living in SF for 11 years. My red state relatives already think that, one more ain't gonna hurt.
My point is, the govt is going to spend the money anyway, why can't it be for something less destructive and more humane?
I wonder who is working at Cocodrilo tonight.
When Sid & quot;demands & quot; - the earth shifts on its' axis
On your economic short-hand profiles, I won't go country-by-country other than to the China conundrum.
When I was in Beijing last year, on a deal that my partners backed out of, I saw a much different country from the one I knew from prior trips in mid-1970s and late 1980s.
You are right, it is not socialist, nor is it communist, nor is it capitalist. In economic terms it a unique, new hybrid. In political terms it is a corrupt dictatorship with a bizarre mix of private and public investment. In regard to business ethics they could be Argentines.
Still, if I were you though, I wouldn't be so quick to bet against them. Right now with their enormous foreign reserves they offer the best hope available to restart global growth. Ironic isn't it, the best hope for capitalism is the land of Mao!
(As an aside, you know dictatorships can be capitalist, as long as the means of production are left in private hands.
On the Obama front, I regret to inform you that one thing we studied, when I worked on the Watergate Committee back in 1973 and 74, was what were legitimate grounds for impeachment. Sorry, but turning hard left is not an impeachable offense, neither is turning hard right (or Cheney would have been done in) and thankfully neither is getting your dick sucked.
Looking back to that time, if I had only known, the country could have saved lots of time and money, if I had sent you the goods on Tricky Dick and convinced you to publically "demand" his resignation or impeachment. He would have slinked back to Yorba Linda pronto.
Now watch your back though, my sources tell me when Rahm Emanuel heard you might get into the "demand" business over his boss, he contacted some ex-Blackwater guys down here - hanging with CFK - to keep an eye on you!
Be cautious but try not to get any more paranoid!
Latest in Obama's drive to socialism.
Extended the embargo on Cuba for another year.
Sidney to provide details of further socialist measures.
Whiskas - Are you paying attention?
Don't you realize several of our pals who post see nothing to joke about when its comes to taxes!
To me its only money where I pay and get fucked - same as any monger!
I get mixed up about our Presidents too, but remembered Taft was so fat a would be assassin would have been worried if he tried anything up-close-and -personal, the chief exec's body might fall and crush him!
But the chemo isn't working and its been a week!
[QUOTE=Sidney]C's September sales esimated to decline 30%! Clunkers is over, they mfg no replacement inventory, and basically Fiat is ''in over their head''
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Sid told you so! Fiat--what a joke![/QUOTE]A few years ago, a friend on mine's father went to his doctor for a routine check up. When his tests came back, his doctor called him to return to the hospital the next day. When they met, the doctor gave him the bad news that cancer had been found. It is a story told thousands of time a week across America.
As you can imagine, he and his family were both worried and scared. My friend's mother was beside herself to the point she needed to be put on medication for anxiety for a while. Fortunately, as a former construction worker in a union company, he had excellent insurance and was able to be scheduled for emergency surgery two days later.
After the surgery was completed the doctors gave the family a mixed report again a common outcome. They were hopeful they had caught and removed all of the cancerous cells, but they set up an aggressive regimen of radiation and chemotherapy to try to assure elimination of the cancer threat and at a minimum have it go into remission. They could provide no definitive timeline or any prognosis of a defined outcome.
Cancer, its causes and treatments, can be looked on as a metaphor for the current global economic crisis. As can the manner in which my friend's mother dealt with a horrible time in her life.
At various times, the sad and angry woman attacked the doctors as quacks who were using medical voodoo to treat her husband and claimed that they wanted him to stay sick so they could make more money treating him. He wanted to sue them for malpractice. All of this because the surgery, radiation and chemotherapy didn't cure him fast enough in her eyes. Her emotions were understandable, if not her rationality.
My friend's mother's thoughts and behavior are exactly akin to the critics - like Sidney - of President Obama's treatment of the economic crisis. It hasn't worked fast enough, therefore he is a quack and it will never work. At least my friend's mother had good reason for her purely emotional mind-set.
For many years, a threatening condition went undetected in the global economy. Finally, last fall, that condition reached a critical mass and metastasized to where it began to attack critical financial and economic organs with potentially catastrophic implications for the economic corpus as a whole.
As the hidden bubble began to burst, the deterioration in the global housing market, became clear for all to see. Immediately, and in some haste, radical surgery was performed when the US Treasury and the Fed let Lehman Brothers fail. Soon a number of important, but not essential organs (AIG, et al. Were put under the knife.
As the radical surgery was being performed, a future regimen of economic radiation treatments (in the form of renewed regulation of the markets) was begun. It was accompanied by aggressive economic chemotherapy (in the form of various forms of capital infusions into the financial system and into the base economy) Because of the quick, unorthodox and aggressive intervention, the economy was saved from the possibility of flat-lining.
Treatment has been underway for very brief period. Measured both by the length of time the hidden disease had been building and the severity and breadth of the damage that had been done to essential organs and the integral health of the global economy, treatment is obviously in its early stages and should be judged accordingly and additional treatment may be required.
Just like in a case of advanced cancer, at such an early stage, despite some encouraging signs, whether and when full economic health is restored cannot be answered with confidence as yet.
Unfortunately, critics of the President are attacking him with a venom that is borderline unhinged.
Without the excuse my friend's mother had of fear for the survival of her life partner, from marginally serious critics like John McCain to the psychotics like Rush, Sean and Glenn, relying solely on ideology, politics, ignorance, guilt stemming from silent awareness of who really spread the cancer and / or mean-spirited resentment, they are driving a dangerous public debate.
Too bad Sid has bought into it!
My friend's father died after nine months of a valiant fight. His mother finally resigned herself to the reality that his doctors did their best in a losing war. Let's hope our economy has a better fate, but I doubt reality will ever be accepted and acknowledged by the whack jobs.
One point on the flat tax
It probably won't come as a surprise but, I like the idea of a flat tax (not the Mexican two-tax flat tax) in theory.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that it will ever happen. Further, discussions of 'replacing' the income tax with a consumption tax is folly, too. In fact, if the USA were to adopt a VAT tax, knowing how things work in Washington, it would be in addition to income tax not instead of income taxes.
Jackson is playing Scrooge again and Christmas is still months away
[QUOTE=Jackson] Everyone should have to pay, including the 40% of American Citizens who at this time are exempt from Federal income taxes.
Jackson[/QUOTE]I used to work for the billionaire be*tch, Leona Helmsley, who famously told her housekeeper: "We don't pay taxes. Only little people pay taxes."
Maybe Jackson thinks thats OK. As an equal opportunity kinda guy, his position is clear, so what if someone can't put food on the family table. Cough some pesos over to Uncle Sam, you slackers!
Now, if you happen to be shrewd with good accountants like Madame Helmsley, you can be among the lucky fucks who pay little or no taxes.
In 2002, before the Bush tax cuts for the rich made things even better for them, 5,650 individuals and couples with annual incomes over $200k paid no federal income tax. Among that high-income group, almost 83,000, or one in 33, paid less than a dime in taxes for every dollar of income. An additional 79,000 paid less than 15 cents.
Warren Buffet points out that that he was taxed at 17.7% on the $46 million he made in 2006, while his secretary, who made $60,000, was taxed at 30%. Buffet is not unique. In 2005, according to Daily Finance, the top 400 US taxpayers earned $250 million on average in 2005. They paid 17.2% in income taxes or roughly half the 37% paid by a family making $75k. Since 2005, that imbalance has only gotten worse. Buffet doesn't think that's fair. (Neither do I!
We keep hearing the US corporate tax rates are among the highest. Really? Well like individuals, if you are a corporation with good accountants who know how to play the hide the profits overseas, you can pay no corporate income taxes.
A study released last year, showed between 1998 and 2005 while US corporate sales totaled $2.5 trillion, 57% of US firms paid no federal corporate income taxes for at least one year and 42% paid none for two or more years during those years.
Many years, some of the most profitable US companies such as Microsoft, Cisco and oil giants pay no taxes - kinda like the 40% average stiffs who have Jackson so jacked off!
If wealthy individuals, families and corporations paid the same tax rates they did under Reagan, we would have enough to make the deficit almost disappear, as well as pay for universal health insurance. Now weren't the Reagan years the "Golden Age"?
(Footnote One: Madame Helmsley eventually went to jail for cheating on her taxes. Rudy Guiliani put her in the slammer, because she was stupid enough to keep cheating while the IRS was auditing her!
(Footnote Two: In an earlier post I did point out that most attempts at figuring out who pays their fair share in taxes is pretty meaningless given the make up of the tax system with deductions, exemptions and complex rate structures for income, payroll, capital gains, estate taxes, etc. But above is my story and I'm stickin'to it!
Doppelganger. Governments, taxes and supper
[QUOTE=Doppelganger] I consider any tax system unfair as the government is always the worst caretaker of my money.
While you sup at the table prepared for you by someone else's labor don't complain about that which you do not know. [/QUOTE]You say I "sup at the table prepared. By someone else's labor." How the f*ck do you know who set the table I sup at? Your comment is pretty presumptuous I'd say.
Having always made my living the old-fashioned way I worked. Over recent years, like every computer literate salaried or self-employed stiff in the US, I used on-line software to prepare tax returns. Love that audit red alert feature! Free is the right price too.
Now this our first exchange, so I think I should let you know that I don't mind being criticized for what I say. But I do get a bit testy when I get criticized for what I didn't say. Where do I call the Sage of Omaha Mr. Buffet - evil? I don't.
To me Buffet is a model corporate citizen and one of the most honorable men out there. His stance on tax fairness is only one reason. His record as a philanthropist is another. The third is his working with President Obama on trying to rescue the economy from the disaster that Bush left behind.
Mr. Buffet knows a thing or two about business, making money and paying taxes. He made his own points on his tax burden versus his secretary, which you are free to refute.
Now Leona Helmsley who you may not be familiar with qualified as the "evil rich" in spades. She was a nasty piece of work. She used to like to walk through her husband's buildings firing people at random. As she aged she went a bit whacko and when she died she left $12 million to her dog. Now would you go along with a 90% marginal income tax on a dog with income over $10k per annum? I would.
If you are a tax accountant I presume you are pretty good at math. Let's use Madame Helmsley to analyze your point that "the top 10% of earners pay the vast majority of the taxes."
Her weekly income from various sources at one time was $2 million. Let's assume for this example that she paid taxes at the 18% rate (like Mr. Buffet did) She would send Uncle Sam $360,000 a week. It would take a total of 1040 secretaries making $1,150 a week and paying $346 in taxes each week to equal the Queen of Mean's contribution.
With 1 the equal of 1040, of course, the top earners put the most into the tax kitty. The relevance of that math to the fairness question escapes me.
I should mention Mrs. Helmsley earned her money the other old-fashioned way she fucked an old billionaire silly, who before he met her thought a blow-job was when someone left a window open.
As for the bottom 20% or earners who pay nothing, that is fine with me. Fortunately, after high school I was permanently out of that bracket. Having been taught the virtues of charity and compassion by my mother, I had (and still have) no problem paying more in taxes, so that someone struggling to put food on his or her family table might have a little bit easier time.
I would agree that "fairness" in regard to the distribution of tax burdens is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to favor a progressive system.
You state that it "may come as a shock" to me that "different types of income are treated differently under our tax laws." I guess you didn't read my post very carefully. My last paragraph said exactly that to wit: "most attempts at figuring out who pays their fair share in taxes is pretty meaningless given the make up of the tax system with deductions, exemptions and complex rate structures for income, payroll, capital gains, estate taxes, etc."
You mention the "a rising tide lifts all boats" thesis as an "inconvenient truth" that I fail to mention. The "inconvenient truth" about that thesis is that although it's a great sound bite, unfortunately it does not hold true in the real world economy.
Numerous academic studies of changes in US tax policy over the past 60 years, suggest there is no evidence of their impact on job creation or destruction.
Since 1950, significant tax increases and decreases have both been followed by job losses and job gains.
In 2003, Bush promised his tax cuts would create 5+ more million jobs by the end of 2004. Only 2.6 million jobs were created, which was actually less than what had been projected without the cuts.
Tax reduction does, however, lead to economic disparity between the rich and poor. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have increased the gap between the rich and poor beyond what it was in the 1920s. Also after the cuts, Americans living in poverty rose from 11.3% of the population in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004. The poor people's boats kept leaking I guess!
Of course, the number of billionaires rose to 374.
You have lots of company in the anti-government segment of the population. Now my guess is you also would find the idea of anarchy unattractive. So we are stuck with government aren't we?
I am not defender of where the US is today and I fear where it is headed. As dedicated and talented as he is, I doubt Obama will be able to get the US back to its position as the unchallenged global leader.
I have worked with a number of entrepreneurs on start up ventures a few failed and some succeeded one in particular went supersonic. I have worked long into the night along side them.
I applaud and respect "folks who take the risks" and I applaud and respect the people, who do the grind work and who put in the long hours that help make the risk takers successful.
The engines of commerce require capital and labor. I see little reason to put one element on a higher moral plane.
There are many things "about that which YOU - Senor Doppelganger - do not know." For example, my career, professional achievements, financial circumstances, work ethic, work history, etc.
I do appreciate you taking the time to comment on my post, but I would suggest you stick to the tax issue and avoid groundless insinuations.
Wow. "assumptions" "fixations" and the conquered indians!
[QUOTE=Doppelganger]
"You had little understanding of our nation's tax structure. And have always been an "employee" never an "employer"
I SEE MR. PRESUMPTUOUS IS BACK ON THE SOAP BOX. SO ONLY EMPLOYERS UNDERSTAND THE TAX SYSTEM? DOES THAT MEAN WE NEED TO CLOSE DOWN THE BIG ACCOUNTING FIRMS AND REPLACE THEM WITH ONE MAN (OR WOMAN? OWNER / OPERATED SHOPS!
Your position the rich need to pay more, the same old diatribe of the left.
A CALL FOR FAIRNESS IS A DIATRIBE ONLY IN THE EYE OF THE OFFENDED RIGHT. A MORE BALANCED DESCRIPTION WOULD BE A "POINT OF VIEW."
You. Have a fixation on Helmsley.
I USED A CASE ABOUT WHICH I HAD FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE. USUALLY A SMART IDEA AS ONE KNOWS THE FACTS.
Where is your righteous indignation for Mr. Rangel, Mr. Bolski, et al?
RIGHT HERE - I AM OUTRAGED BY THE CONGRESSMAN - AMONG MANY OTHERS. BUT WHO THE HELL IS BOLSKI?
I don't believe any CEO deservers the multiple millions they are paid to run their company in the ground.
HEY, WE AGREE. TOO BAD MANY BOARDS OF DIRECTORS AT MAJOR FIRMS OFTEN HAVEN'T AGREED WITH US!
AMONG TODAY'S MANY EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION PROBLEMS IS THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN ACTUAL RESULTS AND THE HUGE BONUSES GIVEN TO EXECUTIVES, EVEN WHEN THE COMPANY EARNINGS PLUMMET.
THE DIRECTORS FIRE THE SCHMUCKS AND GIVE THEM TENS OF MILLIONS AS A GOING-AWAY PRESENT!
MIND-F*CKING BOGGLING AS WE SAY IN BOSTON.
This wonderful notion of tying income to performance at the upper management level, which could be argued helped lead to the financial debacle we recently experienced, came directly from liberals in the late 1960's and 1970's insisting American business management was too conservative and needed to be more aggressive and would become so if there was a direct link between risk and reward for management, hang the share holders.
WHERE THE HELL DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS FANTASY? SEE ABOVE! WHAT PRAY TELL WOULD YOU USE AS THE GAUGE FOR SETTING APPROPRIATE COMPENSATION LEVELS?
Please do your homework on Mr. Buffett.
I DID.
Now nearing the end of his life it is easy to "get religion" while standing atop a huge pile of cash.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.
, remember Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"? The noble goal of. Eliminating poverty in the United States within a single generation?
I DO REMEMBER. THE WAR IN VIETNAM REPLACED THE WAR ON POVERTY BEFORE IT WAS STARTED. LIKE BUSH LEFT AFGHANISTAN UNFINISHED FOR HIS GRAND IRAQ ADVENTURE. WE KNOW HOW THOSE HAVE WORKED OUT.
Liberals never understand the value of earning what you receive.
SAYS YOU.
We did not learn this lesson with the Native Americans we conquered.
WOW! REVEALING COMMENT! I SEE YOU ARE OK WITH A LITTLE GENOCIDE.
If you really want change, put term limits on Congress.
THE GINGRICH REPUBLICANS ELECTED IN 1994 PROMISED TO ABIDE BY TERM LIMITS AND THEN KEPT RUNNING FOR RE-ELECTION. SO MUCH FOR THAT IDEA!
Obama does not have a clue, no more so than did Jimmy Carter.
SO CARTER AND OBAMA ARE KIND OF LIKE BUSH II!
BUT WAIT, REMEMBER WHAT NIXON DID WHEN HE HAD A CLUE! MAYBE EXPERIENCE IN PRESIDENTS IS OVER-RATED!
I have no illusions regarding influencing your positions.
ME NEITHER!
Best regards.
AND TO YOU![/QUOTE]I think we may inhabit different planets as much as have opposite views!
Hope the weather is as nice on yours as it is here!
