RE: The House passes a punitive tax

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variation30 -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 11:23:25 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Politesub53 Here is a serious question for all anti-bailout posters. Would you take the same stance, if it was the bank with your own finances in it going under ? my money is in gold. so lol.

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 12:25:39 PM)
FR - Stealing a post that sums up my thoughts pretty well from another forum... Immagine a senario in which NBC pays all of their employees via bonus, keeping in mind that the contracts of the individual performers are not negotiated collectively, but individually. General bad-programming happens, and the network falls near bankrupsy, but the government feels they are essential to the economy or nation, so it bails them out, in terms of a loan. It serves to reason that the network failed because it had a glut of poor programming. Most, but not nessecarilly all, shows have done poorly. Heroes loses money, Medium loses money, Conan loses money, Chuck loses money, ect... however, lets say that Leno has a very highly rated show, individually, despite the failings of the rest of the network. He has reached the incentive clauses in his own contract by merit of his own performance. In this senario, Leno is clearly the type of programming the networks needs to turn the corperation around, and make it profitable in order to pay back the sizable taxpayer loan NBC just aquired. It makes sense that you would want to retain him. Why would you try to take away his justly begotten gains? He made money. He honored his contract. If you take away his money, which he is legally and morally entitled to; why would he stay? He is clearly a cut above, making money in an industry where their is none to be made, and there just arent that many people in the world who can do the job as well as he can. You have to attract people like him to the business if you want to see a return on your investment. You can't attract people, or retain your best people. if you punish them for doing a good job. The people who got bonused by AIG are people with degrees in finance and economics from MIT and the like. They are the reason AIG functions at all. We need them there unless we admit that we don't want to see a return on our investment. We can't disincentive that. Million dollar incentive bonuses are the reason these brilliant people do the work they do. Take away that, and you may as well trust the running of our newly managed economy to the folks who run the DVM and the teachers unions. In addition, these are contracts. You don't want the government empowered to tax punitively, or to break legally contracts that were legally entered into. The government had every opportunity to stop these sorts of payments by placing stipulations into the bailout language. They did not, so there are no stipulations. You could argue then, that their aren't enough Ivy League lawyers in the federal government, but then I'd laugh at you. The fault here lies with congress. Don't punish hard working Americans who are achieveing the goal of paying back your 30 billion dollar loan. AIG is not a collective. The companuy failed in large, but that doesn't mean that everyone who worked for them failed, and they shouldn't be treated as such.

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 12:31:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife Oh I agree it is, but you want to give the blame to the new administration which was committed to a course of action by the old administration. Not propping up AIG further would have been basically pissing away all the other billions that the government invested. Yeah, that's one of Bush's big mistakes...he was originally against it, but allowing the Democrat-run Congress to talk him into this farce was a screw-up on his part.

samboct -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 1:57:59 PM)
There have been a number of interesting points raised here- Let me throw in my $0.02 1) The idea that you can selectively reward or punish individual sectors in a corporation is a bad one. Corporations often act terribly irresponsibly and by this schizophrenic interpretation of corporate behavior, you discourage all attempts at whistle blowing and accountability. It's NOT sufficient to say that my division had no part of this fraud (guaranteeing transactions with inadequate assets is certainly a fraud in my book.) since if you're an employee of the company- you benefited from the fraud via your salary, bonuses, stock etc for a number of years. I certainly have sympathy for the employees of AIG who were unaware of the companies fraud, but that doesn't justify trying to keep ill gotten gains. If you worked in the insurance division- what would your salary and bonuses have been without the transaction fraud taking place for a number of years. 2) Thomas Friedman in the NY Times suggested that the leopard should shed his spots and that if that if Obama had seized the moment and made an impassioned plea for the bankers to return their ill gotten gains, they would have done so. I blow a razzberry in Friedman's direction. What do you do if your impassioned plea falls on deaf ears? These people would not have been in the positions they're in currently if they're not greedy- and greed means snagging whatever comes your way with no conscience. I know greed all too well, I worked for an employer who gave me a first hand education in its actions. 3) The financial system is broken. What has happened is not a fundamentally sound organization being subverted by the actions of a few- this is a systemic enterprise where greed reigns unchecked. There's also no fundamental profit. Consider what's happened. Mortgages have been sliced and diced in a dizzying fashion. Yet the amount of interest paid on a mortgage is relatively fixed- and less than double digits. So how can mysteriously slicing and dicing these mortgages lead to consistent profits of more than 10%? And why should slicing and dicing mortgages actually make money? It costs money to do the slicing and dicing. In any real business, the more people taking a cut, the smaller the profit. Answer- as we see now- they can't. There's not all that much difference between the banking sector and Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The slicing and dicing of mortgages has effectively beent that by chopping up a carrot, which would feed one, by slicing and dicing it correctly- it feeds 10. Well, it's still only one lousy carrot. 4) Yes, we need a working financial system. But a working financial system will have rewards consonant with risk and work and there is no sign of this appearing in the current black hole. The current bonus system is part of this warped enterprise and needs to go. With the claim that by not paying bonuses, we will lose the "best" people in the financial industry- hey- there are lots of people looking for work. Honest folks who've been shafted by this financial industry and know very well-first hand- of the dangers of overextended debt. Seems to me that somebody who's lost a home might make a great mortgage officer- they'll want to prevent others from following in their footsteps. Since the "best" people have landed us in this mess- why would we want to keep them? 5) What's broken about the financial system? It relies on scientific mumbo jumbo to provide smoke screen for a fraud. The scientific mumbo jumbo has been written into computer driven trading. Unfortunately, the assumptions of these programs was never carefully scrutinized and the old programming adage of GIGO has shown up yet again. (Garbage In, Garbage Out.) Reliance on computerized trading programs which promised returns not consonant with a simple evaluation of profit are the cause of the current crash. This isn't new by the way- the same problem showed up in the crash of '87. It also showed up with the crash of Long Term Capital Management which needed close to $4B in bailout money in '95 (IIRC). Same problem as Enron. It's just bigger here- but it's the same problem- and until it's dealt with, the financial system is going to be unstable. 6) Is the tax structure punitive? You bet. Is it good law? Probably not. Is it a good idea? Yep. The idea that a handful of individuals should reward themselves after having caused so much misery to so many is an anathema. The law frequently lags science and public opinion- but this is a case where the public opinion involves justice and the law does not. I'm not a lawyer- and I don't have the reverence for law that seems to be shoveled into us via the media. If laws work- good. If they don't-change them. But a society without justice will break down as quickly as one without laws. 7) Prosecution of people for this vast fraud seems to be impractical and ill deserved. While the law may pompously proclaim that ignorance of the law is no excuse, the complexity of the fraud and its widespread nature show how many innocent people were swept along. A punitive tax measure is practical- prosecuting the vast numbers of people involved is not. But should that be the option? Give back 90% of your ill gotten gains to the tax man or get prosecuted? 8) Since we've got to start rebuilding our financial industry from essentially the ground up-does a tax punishment for excessive greed deter the job applicants for the existing positions? We're revisiting the old rules on mortgages- i.e. 25-30% of income on housing. Maybe it's time to throw out the computer programs which have been gamed and go back to the old idea of human judgement and interaction in business. In short- local banks lending local money for local homes and businesses. Break up the mega financial superstores and return to a distributed banking network. Who are the people we want running these banks? The ones that pocketed these obscene bonuses (and they are obscene- the same as the Russian czars extravagant meals, palaces, jewels and plunder while the population starved.) aren't the people I'd want to talk to about getting a loan to start a business. 9) Our long term economic dilemma is simple. Too much money has wound up in the hands of too few. The economy will contract unless more money winds up in the middle. Option 1) Tax the snot out of the people who have all the money- give it to the poor, and enterprising individuals will create new businesses. Option 2) Hyper inflate the currency so that those who have all the money discover it's effectively worthless. People with tangible goods will make out better, but it's liable to lead to economic global collapse. Option 3) Listen to the idealogues who've landed us in this mess proclaiming that taxing the wealthy is tantamount to socialism, and those that have gotten their money from these absurd financial frauds deserve to keep it. Again, a global economic depression is the likely result, since that's what happened in the '30s. OK, I've rambled enough. Sam

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 2:32:07 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: samboct 9) Our long term economic dilemma is simple. Too much money has wound up in the hands of too few. The economy will contract unless more money winds up in the middle. Option 1) Tax the snot out of the people who have all the money- give it to the poor, and enterprising individuals will create new businesses. Option 2) Hyper inflate the currency so that those who have all the money discover it's effectively worthless. People with tangible goods will make out better, but it's liable to lead to economic global collapse. Option 3) Listen to the idealogues who've landed us in this mess proclaiming that taxing the wealthy is tantamount to socialism, and those that have gotten their money from these absurd financial frauds deserve to keep it. Again, a global economic depression is the likely result, since that's what happened in the '30s. Option 1 = Scary as hell...those are the people capable of just taking their money and leaving the country with it to avoid those taxes (As some people I know are already doing.) Option 2 = Scary as well, and in some ways what we're on the road to doing already. Bad for the reason you say. Option 3 = Strawman of sorts. I certainly have little sympathy for those who have gotten themselves rich through fraud...but that doesn't describe everyone either. The number of self-made millionaires have been increasing quite a bit lately, many from fairly normal, hard-working people who were successful and smart in their chosen field. And claiming the depression in the 30's a likely result is a red herring at best...keep in mind the depression of the 30's started out as a recession no worse than the one in the 20's...Hoover/Coolidge cut taxes and spending and the end result was a decade of economic boom now known as the Roaring Twenties.

rulemylife -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 2:45:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Raiikun quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife Oh I agree it is, but you want to give the blame to the new administration which was committed to a course of action by the old administration. Not propping up AIG further would have been basically pissing away all the other billions that the government invested. Yeah, that's one of Bush's big mistakes...he was originally against it, but allowing the Democrat-run Congress to talk him into this farce was a screw-up on his part. Yes, those evil Democrats were at it again. But tell me, were Paulson and Bernanke secret undercover Democrat spies that used their clever ways to trick our beloved former President?

samboct -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 2:49:03 PM)
"Hoover/Coolidge cut taxes and spending and the end result was a decade of economic boom now known as the Roaring Twenties." Yup- and a massive accumulation of money in the hands of a few- which had lead to previous crises in the 1870s and 1890s. To date- every historical boom has been followed by a bust- because accumulation of money in the hands of a few reduces investment. People with lots of money are risk averse- it's the average joe who stuffed money into 401ks that has a long term investment outlook. Wealth and long term economic growth result from a large and burgeoning middle class-economic contractions occur when the money has moved into the hands of a few. The best example I can think of a boom with a limited bust was the dot com era. Microsoft actually did something right- by giving people that worked in the corporation lots of stock options, there were hundreds of Microsoft millionaires (thousands?) Compare this to someone like Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller who amassed vast fortunes- but only for themselves. And people that worked for Microsoft (and many software firms used a similar model) were productive- they knew that they could get rich too. Contrast this with the labor relations from the railroads and oil industry that lead to the rise of unions. Sam

variation30 -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 2:55:57 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife Yes, those evil Democrats were at it again. But tell me, were Paulson and Bernanke secret undercover Democrat spies that used their clever ways to trick our beloved former President? no. Bush is as interventionist in the economy as he is in foreign nations. and he has no right to be intervening in either of those places. we moved a ways towards socialism and a centralized government under eight years of Bush.

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:04:19 PM)
FR - Still, one recession had reduced taxes and government spending as a response, and the result was a fast recovery, many advances/inventions, reduced unemployment, etc. The next recession had a massive government spending program, and the result was a decade long depression with high unemployment. That was my point.

rulemylife -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:05:17 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Mercnbeth quote: Let me ask you this, if you knew someone who was in a bad financial situation and you loaned him some money to pay his bills would you think ahead to make sure that person wasn't going to go out and use that money for a new car or a Caribbean cruise? I appreciate that with government and most people, contracts and integrity to honor them is meaningless. I won't take to task any person who fulfills his contractually obligations, personal or corporate. As a success he must have a lot of that in his background. I suggest that in taking this job, on behalf of the government, he didn't realize that he would have to compromise his integrity. Congress provided the money for him to fulfill his contractual obligations. In the private sector, when someone provides capital, you assume they've read the documents pertaining to that release of capital. In this case that would be the specific bonus language. Why should he think that Congress and the President, who know his resume, would expect him to do anything else but fulfill his company's obligation? There is a big question here about these contractual obligations and whether they are valid. Again, going back to the UAW and the automakers there were contractual obligations that were renegotiated. The same with numerous airlines and their union contracts. But in this case we have to see these contracts as being untouchable? We have a company that is literally in bankruptcy, save for government support, yet you believe their employees should not have to make any sacrifice to save their own jobs. And this is not even their salary we are talking about but bonus money, which I assume was predicated on performance. How can a performance bonus be justified in a company that is failing?

variation30 -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:09:58 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: samboct Yup- and a massive accumulation of money in the hands of a few- which had lead to previous crises in the 1870s and 1890s. To date- every historical boom has been followed by a bust- because accumulation of money in the hands of a few reduces investment. People with lots of money are risk averse- it's the average joe who stuffed money into 401ks that has a long term investment outlook. Wealth and long term economic growth result from a large and burgeoning middle class-economic contractions occur when the money has moved into the hands of a few. not exactly true. if the boom is artificial - that is to say that if credit was created cheaply which led to rampant malinvestment because the citizens could not accurately gauge risk or success due to a central agency obfuscating the market - then yes, a bust that fixes the problem is inevitable. this dates back to the first huge crisis in america, the panic of 1819. it's funny how similar that panic that is almost two centuries in the past is to our current situation. and you people just do not learn. your theory about wealth is...charming. quote: The best example I can think of a boom with a limited bust was the dot com era. Microsoft actually did something right- by giving people that worked in the corporation lots of stock options, there were hundreds of Microsoft millionaires (thousands?) Compare this to someone like Andrew Carnegie or John Rockefeller who amassed vast fortunes- but only for themselves. And people that worked for Microsoft (and many software firms used a similar model) were productive- they knew that they could get rich too. Contrast this with the labor relations from the railroads and oil industry that lead to the rise of unions. granted, Rockefeler was not the seamark of capitalism. he was a rentseeker. but still...do you have any idea how much Rockefeller single-handedly dropped the price of kerosene? It was around 80-90%. creating wealth is more than just having money in a bank account or stock options. forming new means of production and being able to offer more products at a cheaper price and enabling more of a consumer base to buy those products...that is what creates wealth...that is what has enabled even the poor in industrialized nations to enjoy luxuries that hereditary monarchs two centuries ago could not even fathom. and the boom of the dot com era was awful and has had its fair share in eading us where we are now...thanks greenspan.

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:11:14 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife And this is not even their salary we are talking about but bonus money, which I assume was predicated on performance. How can a performance bonus be justified in a company that is failing? Depends on how the individual is performing, as explained in the NBC example posted above. If you're desperate to turn a company around to make good on the vast amount of money pumped in to save it...the last thing you want to do is drive away the people who are actually performing well at their jobs in the company. Edit: Forgot to add, about the "salary vs bonus" thing...that's a common misconception here. If you apply for a job, and they offer "x amount of salary with y amount of bonus for performance", then that's what you're expecting to get at that job. My mom in the past had taken lower salary jobs because she was confident enough in her ability to earn her performance bonuses that it compensated for the lower salary...and she relied on those bonuses to pay the bills.

rulemylife -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:12:21 PM)
Yeah, $218 million here, $218 million there. Pretty soon we are talking real money.

samboct -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:15:44 PM)
"Hoover/Coolidge cut taxes and spending and the end result was a decade of economic boom now known as the Roaring Twenties." Some second thoughts on this statement. I'm getting pretty aggravated with the claim that reduced government spending results in economic growth. We'd actually made a lot of money supplying arms to Europe in WW1 and had not suffered the physical hardships of France, Germany or the UK. There was an economic vacuum and we filled it. Also- economic growth really comes from technology and innovation. The 1920s saw some of the most impressive advances in aviation which drove other industries such as chemicals and metallurgy. I'm not sure what impact government policies had on the growth of the economy- but I know that there were a number of new businesses spawned. The rise of the dirigible drove the development of aluminum- Zeppelin was the first big commercial order for the new metal (OK, this was back in the early 1900s) and allowed the cost to come down so it became commercially viable. Aircraft engines need for higher octane gasolines drove oil refining processes so that US companies dominated the oil industry- and that certainly took place in the 1920s. In short- I'm not sure what lower taxes had to do with any of this. From my perspective the Bush tax cuts have helped cause the current economic crisis because of deficit spending to pay for them- an idiotic idea from nearly any perspective except the Reaganesque dystopia of strangling the beast (our gov't) in red ink... If the Hoover/Coolidge tax cuts had the same effect of concentrating the wealth- then rather than cause the economic expansion of the 1920s- it seems more likely they lead to the economic contraction of the 1930s. a further example-You can have the most wonderful capitalist system in place in a poor country in Africa, and with abysmal literacy rates and lack of science- you're still going to have a poor country. I'm underwhelmed with the evidence that's been presented that cutting taxes always leads to economic growth. So far, it doesn't seem to work- at least in the longer term. Sam

rulemylife -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:17:43 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Raiikun quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife And this is not even their salary we are talking about but bonus money, which I assume was predicated on performance. How can a performance bonus be justified in a company that is failing? Depends on how the individual is performing, as explained in the NBC example posted above. If you're desperate to turn a company around to make good on the vast amount of money pumped in to save it...the last thing you want to do is drive away the people who are actually performing well at their jobs in the company. Absolutely. And since the majority of this money went to AIG's financial services division then it was perfectly justified for their brilliant performances in the sub-prime mortgage and derivatives crisis which brought the whole economy to its knees along with their own company.

Raiikun -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:22:41 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: samboct From my perspective the Bush tax cuts have helped cause the current economic crisis because of deficit spending to pay for them An economist I once went to school put this well though...tax cuts without spending cuts aren't really tax cuts...because the people still end up paying the expenditures in other ways. Bush cut taxes yet increased spending...very different than Hoover/Coolidge.

rulemylife -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:46:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Raiikun Edit: Forgot to add, about the "salary vs bonus" thing...that's a common misconception here. If you apply for a job, and they offer "x amount of salary with y amount of bonus for performance", then that's what you're expecting to get at that job. My mom in the past had taken lower salary jobs because she was confident enough in her ability to earn her performance bonuses that it compensated for the lower salary...and she relied on those bonuses to pay the bills. A common misconception huh? So let's take a pro sports incentive contract for example. If a running back in the NFL gains 1,000 yards in a season his contract generally guarantees a performance bonus. But considering the common injuries, off-performance years, and many other factors, do you think it wise for that running back to count on his performance bonus as a guaranteed part of his salary?

samboct -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:47:34 PM)
"Bush cut taxes yet increased spending...very different than Hoover/Coolidge." Good point....

variation30 -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:54:10 PM)
quote: If the Hoover/Coolidge tax cuts had the same effect of concentrating the wealth- then rather than cause the economic expansion of the 1920s- it seems more likely they lead to the economic contraction of the 1930s. the boom in the 20's was artificial. the contraction was inevitable (and good, as it fixed the problems the fed created). unfortunately fdr tried to spend his way out of a depression and ended up extending it unti around '48. quote: a further example-You can have the most wonderful capitalist system in place in a poor country in Africa, and with abysmal literacy rates and lack of science- you're still going to have a poor country. um...I wouldn't say that. I will say that you can have the most wonderful socialist state in place with excellent literacy rates and an abundance of science (you could even be the first into space) and it will eventually fail as you cannot accurately calculate what should be produced, how much should be produced, and who should get it. quote: I'm underwhelmed with the evidence that's been presented that cutting taxes always leads to economic growth. So far, it doesn't seem to work- at least in the longer term. it doesn't. you can cut taxes and still screw yourself over. republicans do it all the time. they cut taxes but do not cut government spending. so in order to pay for their spending, they either create credit or borrow.

variation30 -> RE: The House passes a punitive tax (3/22/2009 3:55:17 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: rulemylife for their brilliant performances in the sub-prime mortgage and derivatives crisis which brought the whole economy to its knees along with their own company. do you really think this was caused by AIG? really?

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