[puckerman]

What has happened to Mark Cuban? This is a man who once read Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead. He's the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and is one of the most maverick owners in the history of sports. He criticizes officials and sits courtside wearing t-shirts.

Lately he's become politicially correct. I used to have a Facebook group called "Draft Mark Cuban for President." I don't feel that way anymore.

Just look at his tweet. It's pure socialist drivel. He argued somewhere else that these corporations make taxes "higher" for the rest of us:

[The Reactionary Tree]

I wouldnt call it socialist per se. It is definitely a protectionist & populist belief. "BUY 'MURIKAN!!"

Most people are too dumb to see the benefit in things like off-shoring or free trade. They just resort to:

[TravelerKai]

Why does wanting to invest in domestic companies make him a socialist? It's just a tweet but more context would be nice because it does not imply that he would be against lower taxes on businesses that do not offshore. His offshore comment is consistent with the same views that certain kinds of pro capitalism conservatives like Paul Craig Roberts, who is a paleo conservative from the Reagan Era as an assistant secretary.

[monster]

That's not socialist. That's accountability. He's absolutely right.

The middle class (80% of america) gets taxed at 30-40%.

Corporations, who earn billions of dollars, fleece the system, promote excessive materialism and profit off government contracts pay a rate of 5%. They do this through funneling profits made in America offshore and various other mechanisms.

Corporations have consistently and effictively lobbied for millions of tax loopholes. Corporations profit and gain much more from American than Americans gain from their own country as individuals.

Cuban is absolutely right to suggest that corporations start paying some fucking taxes with the rest of us.

[puckerman]

I focus on reducing my own tax burden. If the tax burden of others is reduced, then good for them.

The fact is that voting with your feet is more effective at reducing your tax burden than voting at the ballot box.

Do you try to remove your chains? Or do you resent others for trying to remove theirs?

[The Reactionary Tree]

I am one of the mostly staunchly right-wing, anarcho-capitalist, reactionary people I know... with that said I am not some big corporate toadie. I am indifferent towards them. I see the benefits they provide but also that they pretty much dont give a shit about employees or the country they live in. They are driven entirely by profit... which is okay but I am not going to be their cheerleader by any means.

[TigerMandingo]

Calling everything that doesn't comply with the corporate agenda "socialist" is starting to get old. I feel like we're back in the McCarthy era.

[scorpion]

(08-01-2014 05:16 PM)objectivist tree Wrote:  

Most people are too dumb to see the benefit in things like off-shoring or free trade.

There is no benefit to off-shoring or free trade to the domestic U.S. economy and U.S. citizens. Off-shoring and free trade simply provide short term economic benefits to the owners of corporations, who can take advantage of cheap foreign labor to lower their costs and increase their profits. Of course, over the long term this obviously destroys the domestic labor force, which is exactly what's been happening in the U.S. for decades now. This results in economic destruction all around, as the consumer base depends on people having decent jobs in order to afford goods. The result is that companies that heavily offshore and take advantage of free trade end up killing off their own domestic customer base over time.

Free trade is literally a complete and utter economic scam. There has never been an economy that has become fully developed with free trade rules in place. There simply has to be some protectionist elements in place in order for domestic industries to escape the infancy stage without being crushed by foreign competition. Every great economy started out heavily protected, including the United States. Free trade is pushed heavily today for two simple reasons: 1) It provides substantial short term growth prospects for large corporations, 2) It allows developed economies to exploit poor countries for their resources and cheap labor. The only winners from free trade are people at the top. Working people in rich and poor countries end up screwed - workers in the developed economies lose their jobs, and workers in poor countries labor in terrible conditions for pennies on the dollar. International corporations end up controlling the production in most third world countries, meaning those countries are never able to develop their own economies. This is all exacerbated by "development" loans from the IMF and World Bank, which result in these countries getting into massive debt and being forced to sell off their resources and production ownership to foreigners.

Anyone who thinks "the economy" is more important than the health of the nation is foolish and shortsighted, especially since "the economy" is always measured in things like GDP, corporate profits and stock prices, rather than on median annual income, quality of living and inflation. If a country is going to be anything more than a place to make money, then absolutely must make preserving its domestic economic production the cornerstone of its long term economic policy. This has absolutely nothing to do with socialism, it's simply a recognition that nations have an interest in preserving the health of their economies.

Here's a good book for anyone who wants to get red pilled on free trade: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Trade-Doesnt-...578079674/

[TravelerKai]

Ian Fletcher is awesome. PCR , and economists like the folks at shadowstats, are like the Realists of Foreign Policy ideology. States or in this case, economies should only pursue options that benefits the health of itself and not the interests of one nor a few.

[Switch]

I don't understand your problem with this. The guy wants to help out the USA. He's saying that he'll invest in companies that pay American taxes. That's very congruent with his personality and past behavior IMO.

[Ping]

Taxes are theft. The only reason I pay a single cent is because I end up in a cage if I don't. Mark and others make me laugh.

This sort of thing is political theater. Who wants to bet that Mark has a army of accountants, both for personal wealth and his businesses whose sole job is to minimize his tax bill? That for some reason is completely fine...

[Sonsowey]

Some guys here are a little too brainwashed by Fox News.

Most large corporations are just trying to get money any way they can. That involves not paying taxes here, hiding profits overseas, and getting corporate welfare from the government.

Not good for anyone but those at the tippy top.

Stop shilling for billionaires. Have some self respect.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/busi...s/2480281/

[kerouac]

To some people, calling someone a socialist is like calling him a faggot; It's meant as an insult, not as an actual label that means anything.

[berserk]

Corporate tax rates make no sense, why tax productive working capital? I hope everyone here understand that corporate tax is taxation on money that is still in the company and hasn't been converted to personal income yet. The only thing you do by taxing a corporation is to limit its investment.

It makes no sense and I predict corporate tax to largely be abolished within 20-30 years. The US has a lot more room to tax capital gains though which is very low compared to European countries. If you must increase taxation, do it on income that hasn't been worked for or increase the top income tax rate with 10% above 1 million or so.

[El Chinito loco]

(08-01-2014 06:09 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Free trade is literally a complete and utter economic scam. There has never been an economy that has become fully developed with free trade rules in place. There simply has to be some protectionist elements in place in order for domestic industries to escape the infancy stage without being crushed by foreign competition. Every great economy started out heavily protected, including the United States. Free trade is pushed heavily today for two simple reasons: 1) It provides substantial short term growth prospects for large corporations, 2) It allows developed economies to exploit poor countries for their resources and cheap labor. The only winners from free trade are people at the top. Working people in rich and poor countries end up screwed - workers in the developed economies lose their jobs, and workers in poor countries labor in terrible conditions for pennies on the dollar. International corporations end up controlling the production in most third world countries, meaning those countries are never able to develop their own economies. This is all exacerbated by "development" loans from the IMF and World Bank, which result in these countries getting into massive debt and being forced to sell off their resources and production ownership to foreigners.

This is an accurate description of how free trade "works" by Scorpion. Just to reiterate a bit.. economists call this "kicking away the ladder" because all developed countries used a combination of land reform and protectionism of infant industry to get where they are today. Then when nations become developed they start talking about how all protectionism is bad. Alexander Hamilton even created the blueprint for the U.S. model of industrial development through the infant industry protectionist method.

Aside from trumpeting the virtues of neoliberalist economics, developed nations start becoming more dogmatic about deregulation. Gradual deregulation itself isn't seen as a bad thing and it's even necessary but some institutions (finance) should always be closely regulated. Developed nations still need to adhere to a hybrid system to avoid big business from casting a long shadow over politics. This is what Hamilton actually predicted would happen way back during the founding of the nation.

The idea that total free trade has become thought of as the proper and patriotic thing to do is bipartisan corporate propaganda. This crackpot theory turned policy was lifted partially from Adam Smith and morphed into an economics frankenstein. The modern version is some nonsense created by economists at University of Chicago who were completely bought out by the political and wealthy elite. These policies harm the average middle class American more than most people realize.

[soup]

My sense is that offshore labor is bad overall for both the people here job wise and the people who doing the work in other country in essentially slave like conditions.

[WestIndianArchie]

(08-01-2014 07:59 PM)soup Wrote:  

My sense is that offshore labor is bad overall for both the people here job wise and the people who doing the work in other country in essentially slave like conditions.

China moved 100's of millions of people out of abject poverty.

Farm work is more dangerous and more backbreaking than factory work. Same reason so many folks left the farm in Britain,and left the farm in the US.

China is now facing this issue as their own rich/captains of industry shift production from Guangzhou and Guandong to cheaper places like Vietnam and Myanmar. That trend will only increase.

WIA

[Dismal Operator]

(08-01-2014 06:09 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Free trade is literally a complete and utter economic scam. There has never been an economy that has become fully developed with free trade rules in place. There simply has to be some protectionist elements in place in order for domestic industries to escape the infancy stage without being crushed by foreign competition. Every great economy started out heavily protected, including the United States. Free trade is pushed heavily today for two simple reasons: 1) It provides substantial short term growth prospects for large corporations, 2) It allows developed economies to exploit poor countries for their resources and cheap labor. The only winners from free trade are people at the top. Working people in rich and poor countries end up screwed - workers in the developed economies lose their jobs, and workers in poor countries labor in terrible conditions for pennies on the dollar. International corporations end up controlling the production in most third world countries, meaning those countries are never able to develop their own economies. This is all exacerbated by "development" loans from the IMF and World Bank, which result in these countries getting into massive debt and being forced to sell off their resources and production ownership to foreigners.

The premise of free trade is the Ricardo concept of comparative advantage, which says that if Canada is better at producing X than the US and the US is better at producing Y than Canada, then Canada should concentrate on producing X and the US on Y and they should just trade with each other. In theory that is fine. In the real world, it's easy for the production apparatus to move around such that the US or Canada is better at producing both X and Y. This sort of ease of movement has basically existed since the Industrial Revolution, and therefore the neat concept of comparative advantage has never really played out. That does not invalidate the idea as a whole or render it a 'scam,' it merely changes the nature of the discussion slightly.

The fact that it is possible for capital/factors of production to move around so easily does mean that it is possible for domestic workers to lose out at the expense of foreign workers. There are two responses the domestic economy can make to that development:

1. Increase the incentives for the capital to return home
2. Protectionism

The fact that the protectionist route is so prevalent in history is not because of its superiority from a pure economic standpoint, but because of its superiority from a political expedience standpoint. It's much easier to tell constituents that they're going to keep their jobs than say that for the time being some far away land offers a better deal and that's how it goes. Protectionism isn't costless -tariffs and other barriers to entry just means that the final goods that now emboldened domestic industry produces cost more than they would otherwise. All consumers of that product are thus made poorer.

The real problem here, if you can call it a problem, is that some other country provides better (less costly) conditions for production than your own. In that scenario, the country is faced with the immediate choice of paying for that lack of competitiveness up front via a loss of domestic jobs, or on the back end via an artificially high cost of goods. if you want to be consistent with a pro protectionism stance, you have to then apply it everywhere. For example, you'd have to be in favor of the government imposing a extra 20 or 30% 'competitiveness' markup on Microsoft Windows in order to 'protect' a company with a less popular or effective operating system. I'm sure you see how that is ridiculous, but protectionism is in the same vein. The real solution is regaining competitiveness.

With respect to the last 50 years of US companies offshoring, the idea that it's because of a recent resurgence in free trade/globalization ideology is off the mark. These factors have existed for centuries. The same companies that are outsourcing now had no issues producing in the US AND paying the highest wages in the world. What changed was the increase in the size of government which required more taxes and a constantly increasing cost of production in the form of higher prices for goods, increased regulations, increased compliance costs and the near infinite ways one can be sued. All of these things has made it less and less sensible to produce on shore, so the rational move is to go offshore. Staying onshore just means either a further loss in profitability, or a further increase in end consumer prices, neither of which are a good thing. Get rid of the impediments to production and the offshoring will stop, it's that simple. Once someone has the stones to put political expedience on the back burner things will change in that regard. I'm not holding my breath.

Quote:

Anyone who thinks "the economy" is more important than the health of the nation is foolish and shortsighted, especially since "the economy" is always measured in things like GDP, corporate profits and stock prices, rather than on median annual income, quality of living and inflation. If a country is going to be anything more than a place to make money, then absolutely must make preserving its domestic economic production the cornerstone of its long term economic policy. This has absolutely nothing to do with socialism, it's simply a recognition that nations have an interest in preserving the health of their economies.

I agree with this fully. However, we have an economic ideology in place that places inflation at the foundation of the drive to economic production. The constant inflation only can exceed in boosting metrics such as GDP, and stock prices and profits in the short term. The long term consequences aren't discussed, and almost always reverse the 'gains' made by inflation in the short run. Until you get rid of the inflation loving nature of policy the issues you worry about will continue, including the tendency to offshore.

[Dr. Howard]

I'm only behind offshoring/full on free trade when they also open up the borders for free travel. Imagine if there were no immigration requirements to the US...people would have flooded here long ago and wages would have been depressed to the point where there would be no need to 'offshore'.

[kosko]

America was at it's heights when it had the most stingy tarrifs in the world. India and China continue on with then and are chase growth while the USA opens it's legs (for trade) to anybody who's down. It's trying to play 'race to the bottom' with nations like Bangladesh whom will pack workers into collapsing factories for a dollar each day. It's playing a game it can't win.

When it had a fire wall for trade it forced investments to stay stateside to build up domestic industry to a level in which goods could get out no problem.

The only thing America is importing/exporting is debt. It's basically all debt swaps for goods. In Canada, America siphons are production via a losing few trade deal for us - with energy - and then repackages that into "goods" with the help of deal labour from Mexicans, all that ends up into debt swaps on the International trade markets.

[Dragonstone]

(08-01-2014 07:18 PM)berserk Wrote:  

Corporate tax rates make no sense, why tax productive working capital? I hope everyone here understand that corporate tax is taxation on money that is still in the company and hasn't been converted to personal income yet. The only thing you do by taxing a corporation is to limit its investment.

At least in the US Corporate Tax System, and leaving aside the perennial issues relating to depreciation and amortization, it's not so much taxing "working capital", it's taxing net income. At least some past commentators have actually wanted higher corporate tax rates to encourage corporations to spend more on employees and equipment.

There's other issues relating to the treatment of interest and equity, but that's well beyond the scope of this post.

[Dismal Operator]

(08-01-2014 09:28 PM)kosko Wrote:  

America was at it's heights when it had the most stingy tarrifs in the world. India and China continue on with then and are chase growth while the USA opens it's legs (for trade) to anybody who's down. It's trying to play 'race to the bottom' with nations like Bangladesh whom will pack workers into collapsing factories for a dollar each day. It's playing a game it can't win.

When it had a fire wall for trade it forced investments to stay stateside to build up domestic industry to a level in which goods could get out no problem.

The only thing America is importing/exporting is debt. It's basically all debt swaps for goods. In Canada, America siphons are production via a losing few trade deal for us - with energy - and then repackages that into "goods" with the help of deal labour from Mexicans, all that ends up into debt swaps on the International trade markets.

America reached its heights in spite of protectionism not because of it. For a start, a huge issue with the Articles of Confederation was that the colonies basically had set up trade barriers with each other. Getting rid of them and basically turning the early US into a free trade zone helped to start economic development. The real driver of economic growth in the US was relative free market conditions with a foundation of sound money, small government and no taxes. That enabled an explosion of production, which more importantly was actually allowed to improve living standards by continually decreasing the cost of living. To the extent that there was protectionism was a negative, but it was outweighed by the other factors I mentioned.

As for the race to the bottom, workers in India and China have been available to work for peanuts for several decades if not centuries, yet it's only recently that they've been turned to. As I said before, companies have been more than happy to pay high US wages in the past, owing to the fact that US workers are far more productive and therefore justify the costs. The proliferation of the other issues I mentioned above, like the increased regulation, taxes, litigation risks etc work against American workers because it erodes the productivity advantage they have, making the lower cost foreign workers more attractive.

The last point about the debt exporting is spot on, painfully though it's not widely understood.

[TravelerKai]

(08-01-2014 08:15 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

(08-01-2014 07:59 PM)soup Wrote:  

My sense is that offshore labor is bad overall for both the people here job wise and the people who doing the work in other country in essentially slave like conditions.

China moved 100's of millions of people out of abject poverty.

Farm work is more dangerous and more backbreaking than factory work. Same reason so many folks left the farm in Britain,and left the farm in the US.

China is now facing this issue as their own rich/captains of industry shift production from Guangzhou and Guandong to cheaper places like Vietnam and Myanmar. That trend will only increase.

WIA

Yes and no. If you have King Cobras swimming around in your rice paddies and tea plants in large numbers, then yeah. Some factories kill you in ways that are hard to see, such as the spike in Leukemia and cancer in Samsung employees in S. Korea. Some factories are so dangerous a farm with no snakes would be easy living, like lead smelters and coal mining. When certain countries have shitty worker safety laws, a factory is no better than a farm, problem is, most poor people do not see it that way. What entices them is that the factory is more reliable or consistent in offering a paycheck. Something that they can buy anything else with. You can see how desperate grape farmers in China are for cash because sometimes you can see them having to barter for some of the stock and get cash from the rest.

Edit: The reason they end up bartering grapes is because on some roads in China you can see 20 people on a 5 mile stretch selling essentially the same damn grapes. Rice is no different. Too many sellers in a saturated market. BTW buy those grapes if you get a chance, they are so fresh it's crazy. Strong earth tone flavors add an exotic taste to them.

[polymath]

Here is a graph of US corporate profits over the past 50+ years:



Note the steep rise. All else being equal, this should mean that we're getting more money on the whole from corporations, right? Well, while profits are higher, the effective tax rate is lower...corporations pay less per dollar now than before. See this graph of their effective tax rate:



OK, well, how much has that changed total corporate tax revenue for Uncle Sam? See for yourself in this GDP-adjusted graph:



We're getting less and less from corporations as a portion of our nation's GDP.

So, corporations' tax rate is down, and the tax revenue they send to Uncle Sam is not commensurate with their growth. Putting it all together in one graph:




Corporations are making tons of money yet they're paying less and less on the dollar to Uncle Sam, which means that all the stuff our government does gets more expensive for individuals. If they're not getting the money from corporations, they're getting the money from other sources including individual people.

Mark Cuban is saying that he wants companies that do business in the US to contribute their fair share of taxes. He wants to see corporations pay up fair and square.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(08-01-2014 06:09 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

(08-01-2014 05:16 PM)objectivist tree Wrote:  

Most people are too dumb to see the benefit in things like off-shoring or free trade.

There is no benefit to off-shoring or free trade to the domestic U.S. economy and U.S. citizens. Off-shoring and free trade simply provide short term economic benefits to the owners of corporations, who can take advantage of cheap foreign labor to lower their costs and increase their profits. Of course, over the long term this obviously destroys the domestic labor force, which is exactly what's been happening in the U.S. for decades now. This results in economic destruction all around, as the consumer base depends on people having decent jobs in order to afford goods. The result is that companies that heavily offshore and take advantage of free trade end up killing off their own domestic customer base over time.

Free trade is literally a complete and utter economic scam. There has never been an economy that has become fully developed with free trade rules in place. There simply has to be some protectionist elements in place in order for domestic industries to escape the infancy stage without being crushed by foreign competition. Every great economy started out heavily protected, including the United States. Free trade is pushed heavily today for two simple reasons: 1) It provides substantial short term growth prospects for large corporations, 2) It allows developed economies to exploit poor countries for their resources and cheap labor. The only winners from free trade are people at the top. Working people in rich and poor countries end up screwed - workers in the developed economies lose their jobs, and workers in poor countries labor in terrible conditions for pennies on the dollar. International corporations end up controlling the production in most third world countries, meaning those countries are never able to develop their own economies. This is all exacerbated by "development" loans from the IMF and World Bank, which result in these countries getting into massive debt and being forced to sell off their resources and production ownership to foreigners.

Anyone who thinks "the economy" is more important than the health of the nation is foolish and shortsighted, especially since "the economy" is always measured in things like GDP, corporate profits and stock prices, rather than on median annual income, quality of living and inflation. If a country is going to be anything more than a place to make money, then absolutely must make preserving its domestic economic production the cornerstone of its long term economic policy. This has absolutely nothing to do with socialism, it's simply a recognition that nations have an interest in preserving the health of their economies.

Here's a good book for anyone who wants to get red pilled on free trade: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Trade-Doesnt-...578079674/

Ay:

   

No - seriously. Libertarianism was financed by the trillionaires of our world (or billionaires if you still think that the Rothschilds and Rockefellers really lost or gave away their money).

Free trade is a scam. Anything that a country can produce within should be done within its' own borders, because it gives the people a chance to survive in our system.