Chevy Sonic

new standard, hope for the future?

Maybe the children have learned to play together well after all. I welcome any and all manufacturing jobs that employ people in this country. Jobs that actually produce a tangible item, that is. Alternatively, too much of our economy has drifted to the 'paper shuffling' sectors of the industry (small rant, I promise). While it's been said by others before, W. Buffets' #2 man (Munger) had the courage to come out and say it, 'cut the banking and financial sector by 80%' Nice interview on CNN by the way (http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/05/01/n_charlie_munger_banks.cnnmoney/)

He also scored extra points with me with another one of his quotes. Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman says engineers are wasted on financial services that contribute little to society.

Now back to the car. It's nice to see they are beginning to think of our future oil instability problem, by building a smaller vehicle. Hopefully, they'll figure out 'small' does not mean 'cheap', look at the Fiat 500. The little 1.4 turbo they're beginning to push across the product line up isn't bad. I test drove a Cruze with five people in it, as a test. Total weight about 3700 lbs. With the air conditioner on, it still had acceptable acceleration.
 
There is no end...

of good advice coming out of WB and Munger; if only we could get somebody to listen to them. Buffet has called the 'debt ceiling' "game playing, silly and cynical" and called for taxing the bejezus out of the super rich but all for nought. Those guys are the best touchstones we have left of what America was like during the better days.
Agree about keeping whatever manufacturing we can, although I wonder at the overall wisdom of keeping car production given the overcapacity in the world. Still it is heartening to see that the UAW and GM can get on the same page to this extent. The one thing in the article that was a little disturbing was the $14/HR wage for factory work. I don't know how many of the workers that actually applies to, but if you run that out over a normal workyear the result is a wage at almost exactly the Fed poverty level for a family of four. Happy to some American getting a job but it feels odd to consider that our industrial base(which was the pride of the world once) is getting back to paying poverty wages just to be competitive. Maybe it is the best we can do in car production at that end of the market.
 
They think $14 an hour is fine because they expect you, like everyone else, have a dual income household.

The only people who aren't dual income are single moms... right? And those gals better find some dude to pin the kid on and get the state to garnish some coin from his wages!
 
WB is like a lot of super rich people with vast industrial empires that advocate taxing the crap out of the rich so that they will have less competition. They have already made tons of money at lower tax rates now they think it's time to slam the door on others that might follow in their footsteps. They like to point to the 1950's when allegedly the rich were taxed at 90% but either they are lying about how the tax code really worked or they are ignorant. My guess is it's the former.
 
Don't follow your logic....

on this one. How would taxing Bill Gates, for instance, lessen competition for Buffet? Besides I don't think he is advocating confiscatory levels of taxation anyway-the interviews I recalll hearing he was saying mainly that the loopholes should be closed up so the effective rates were closer to the base rates. Which is almost exactly what RR aimed at in the '86 reform. The obviously good answer to all this would be a dramatic decrease in rates and a complete elimination of all deuctions and credits-but we have had this discussion before and it just ain't gonna happen:pigsfly:. Anything in between will just be a fight over which special interest gets the benefits.
 
Buffet my not be doing exactly what I'm talking about but it does kind irritate me when super rich people seem to be arguing for obstacles to prevent others from become rich or super rich. You or I or anyone else should have the same opportunities Buffet had without having our wealth confiscated by the government.

To answer your question, high tax rates don't protect him from people like Gates but they do reduce the chance that there will be new competition from others who aren't currently super rich. Corporations often become successful in the free market then lobby to close down the system that got them were they are so others can't get there. This is often done through the income tax as well as the regulatory system. Of course this is one of the many reasons I don't believe governments should collect income taxes from anyone ever.

I think we are going to continue to see more manufacturing coming back to this country as the state and federal governments reduce regulation as a matter of necessity and organized labor is forced to make significant compromises or face complete destruction.
 
Personally I don't see the need for individual people as rich as Buffett or Gates... 'Wealthy corporations?' Sure, but the personal wealth is nuts... Why, remember in the good old days when the CEO's flew in corporate owned jets, instead of their own personal ones? Remember when they went to the country club for free because the corporation paid for their membership... instead of them buying the freaking country club? They had the same cushy lifestyle, except cubic dollars stayed in the company, instead of in their personal wallets.

The top few guys at microsoft sucked up enough bucks to start lord knows how many companies here in the US... if that money stayed in microsoft, no telling how many smaller companies it could have spun off and sold if they were 'redundant' or not really 'feeling the vibe' inside microsofts corporate structure.

Best example I can think of off the top of my head... Sprint... started by a railroad, and later sold off. And what do you know, it's probably worth a bunch more than the RR that started it. In todays atmosphere the money that RR started Sprint with (they didn't call it that) would probably end up in multimillion dollar bonuses at the end of the year in the top 5-8 guys at that RR!!! It's probably real easy for a CEO and CFO to give a fat thumbs down to a huge new 'fiber optic project' (or whatever) when the millions it's gonna cost will cut into the companies cash surplus. Cash that the board could turn around and dole out to him at the end of the year.
 
As it sits the USA is tending in your direction....

and the results for the minstream is not very good at present. Federal Revenue as %GDP is at an all time post war low and not just by a small amount either. Tax rates, and more importantly, effetive collection rates on the wealthy are also historically low and and below middling as against the rest of the world. Total revenue to all levels of government is below the world's weighted median, also by a meaningful amount. 46% of households pay no Federal income tax at all. Corporate profits are higher now than at the peak before the recession. The distribution of income has not been this skewed since 1928. The effective rate of wage and salary increases is in neegative numbers. The private sector has created 940,000 jobs since the middle of 2009, the official end of the recession, and all government levels have lost 450,000 jobs. Obama has backed himself into a corner where at minimum $200B a year will be taken out of the budget every year for the next decade and maybe more.

All of this may look like good news as viewed from Vienna but to most of us it doesn't.
 
It's none of your business how rich someone is. Do you really think that confiscating that money because they don't need it is going to help anyone? The more you tax rich people the more it hurts the economy. They have plenty to live on so it's no big deal but they will likely save, invest and spend less now and in the future. The higher the tax the more money ends up in tax shelters (legal and illegal) rather than investing in companies that create wealth and jobs for the rest of us. Even if they just hoard the money they can't do it forever. Eventually they will die and the money will go to their children, a charity or somewhere else that will likely do society good. Government has a habit of using it to create dependence and encourage massive malinvestment in unsustainable economic activity neither of which are good for society or the economy.

Bill Gates is going to give away that vast majority of his wealth. I have no doubt he will allocate that money far better than the government could ever hope to.
 
Well, the great debate....

in politics is precisely whether it is our business how rich individuals get. In a democracy, that has any real claim to the name, there will be this debate because there is only so much concentration of wealth that will be tolerated if that concentration doesn't provide decent income across a broad part of the population. We have been there before; it wasn't for nothing that they were called 'Robber Barons' and it wasn't for nothing that a deep swell of Populism and Progressivism came out of the situation. I think Santayana was right on this one.
 
Exactly... corporations, including the one I work for are flush with cash... stat after stat shows us the rich are richer than ever. We pretty much know where the money went...

The government doesn't have it, nor does the bottom 80% or so.
 
In my perfect world....

and in order of importance.

1) Energy independence of whatever form that can take within the decade.

2) Deficit elimination and debt reduction to no more than 50% of GDP in the same decade.

3) Massive infrastructure maintenance and development.

Also I would personally like to see this done on the basis of the Republican Congressional report on Deficit Reduction which called for an 85% / 15 % spending reduction / revenue increase formula.
By the way that is almost exactly what Obama has proposed in his $4T dollar deficit reduction plan (actually 83% / 17% but close enough) And it should just be a haircut right across the whole budget so that we are not in an endless rehash of social policy. Cut everyone and tax everyone(no more sanctifying the middle class-everybody has to have skin in this game) then use the money as specified above
 
And if there is going to be an income tax everyone should pay it. Even if you are dirt poor you should have to chip in a couple dollars a year.

As far as energy independence why not 30-50% tariff on all imported energy?

Infrastructure should mostly be left to the state and local governments.

I agree with cutting across the board but there are entire departments of the federal government that aren't needed and are counterproductive. Also defense could be cut in half easily.
 
State and local....

are to beholden to 'state and local' if you know what I mean. The infrastructure really ought to be the national contribution to 'soft industrial policy' by making sure the whole country is competitve in the world market. The biggest issues with entrepeneurs in China and India are energy reliabilty, transport and transport and transport!!!

Tariff away as far as I am concerned:p

Yeah, defence could take a 50% hit but the across the board would give them no cover and would look fair. The whole point of across the board is to avoid making judgements about what matters and doesn't-it says you are all important and you are all going to take a haircut, no exceptions. It's the adult hour.

Yep, a little from everyone makes us all citizens in the same sense. If we all pay in, we all get the hand stamp.
 
usta in Portland said:
and in order of importance.

1) Energy independence of whatever form that can take within the decade.

2) Deficit elimination and debt reduction to no more than 50% of GDP in the same decade.

3) Massive infrastructure maintenance and development.

Also I would personally like to see this done on the basis of the Republican Congressional report on Deficit Reduction which called for an 85% / 15 % spending reduction / revenue increase formula.
By the way that is almost exactly what Obama has proposed in his $4T dollar deficit reduction plan (actually 83% / 17% but close enough) And it should just be a haircut right across the whole budget so that we are not in an endless rehash of social policy. Cut everyone and tax everyone(no more sanctifying the middle class-everybody has to have skin in this game) then use the money as specified above
Click to expand...

1. Why? What difference does it make where the oil/gas comes from?

2. Fat chance. If anything, politicians have demonstrated their ability to ALWAYS spend more than they take in. So letting them collect "more money" will result in them spending "more money + $1".

3. Yeah, all we need are more "highways to nowhere."
a. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-timely-lesson-of-the-bud-shuster-highway/
b. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...way-project-marc-station-parking-parking-lots
c. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/19/nation/na-bridge19
d. [Your pork-barrel project here.]
 
I said in my perfevt world...

1.) It matters because we are completely in thrall to the idea that everything that happens in the world becomes our problem as result of dependence on the middle east for oil. In fact we only get 10% from there but never mind the facts. The navy keeps up a carrier force of 11 ships and task force just to be able to fight an Asian war AND keep the Persian Gulf open. Every President tries and fails to settle the Israeli / Palestine dispute only because the region is so sensitive on the oil front. Get rid of the oil issue and the Middle East is of virtually no strategic interest at all.

2) In a perfect world they would actually reduce the deficit and debt.

3) Well, if you think there aren't infrastructure needs in this country and only boondoggles to throw money at, I don't know what to say.
 
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