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The price of dairy wouldn't go up.

Dairy has alot of fat, so dairy would be subject to a fat tax.  When you tax somthing, the price increases.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a fat tax would increase the price of dairy.

Duckling, I know it is hard for you to agree with me, but can we at least agree that it is better to have a tax system with tax brackets instead of a flat tax?

Will you still want to replace transfat with unsaturated fat in fast food, if it leads to greater amounts of calcium deficiency and an increase in the price of fast food, pizza, mexican food, italian food, german food, and any other food that uses transfat, dairy, cheese, butter, non-lean meat, and est.?

I am not going to debate the captial gains tax and payroll tax in this topic.  If you want to talk about, then make a new topic.

Good news, some of the main players who caused the economic downturn are losing money.

Explain to me how a company opperates without providing jobs and earning profits.

The protesters are not protesting the fact that corporations are earning profits--they are protesting the fact that the corporations (1) responded to the crash by slashing jobs, and (2) are not creating new jobs now that they are back to making record profits.

(1) Can you really blame them for cutting jobs when the economy went bad?  When the economy is bad, people are spending less.  When people are spending less, companies bring in less revenue.  To remain profitable, companies respond to the loss of revenue by reducing expenses aka cutting jobs.  (2) The political uncertainty (created by both parties) makes companies unwilling to hire more, because they are unsure if they can remain profitable if they hire more.  Lets take Obamacare for example: Companies are unsure if the law will remain or if the courts will strike it down.  If the health care law goes in effect, the companies will have to pay for health insurance for every employee.  At the companies' current employment levels they can afford to buy health insurrance for their employees and remain profitable, but if they can't afford to pay for health insurance for new employees.  So you don't think I am picking on Democrats, lets take the deficit standoff as another example: If Obama called the Republicans' bluff and the US defaulted, then the economy would get worst and companies will lose revenue.  Companies couldn't afford to have hired more employees and still stay profitable after a default on the national debt. (3) Companies are owned by stockholders who demand companies to be profitable, so the stockholders can get paid in dividends.  I get that the protesters don't like that companies opperate that way, but I don't see how the protests are going to change that.

That, in their view, is an example of "corporate greed."

It seems like you are saying more of your views then the protesters' views.  Unlike most of the protestors, you have practical and legitimate reasons for your grievances.  Based on the Reuters and AP articles I read, it seems like there are two main groups of protestors.  The first group are socialist who are againt corporations and all other forms of private ownership.  The second group doesn't seem to know why they should be mad at the wealthy and corporations.  The second group is angry at the economic and unemployment situation, so they turn the wealthy into scapegoats in order to direct their frustrations at something. 

I do not see what devotion to Obama has to do with one's like or dislike of Perry. Those are surely two separate considerations.

There are two types of people who devote themselves to Obama.  There are those who think Obama can do nothing wrong which is based on stubbornness and denial.  They don't like anyone who criticizes Obama which Perry has done several times as governor of Texas.  The other people who devote themeselves to Obama, because they agree with his rhetoric.  They wouldn't like Perry because Perry's beliefs are very different from Obama's.

Oh, about the 9-9-9 plan: check out Cain discussing it with David Gregory on Meet the Press.

Do you have any opinions on it or did you just want to post the video?

For those who don't know: Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan isn't a Dominos pizza deal.  The 9-9-9 plan is a 9% Business Flat Tax, 9% Individual Flat Tax, and 9% National Sales Tax.

I don't really like the 9-9-9 plan per se, because it seems a little too regressive, but I do like how it encourges reforming the tax code.  Even though the 8% sales tax works very well for the state of Texas, I am not sure that a national sales tax work nearly as well.  The continually growing 67,204 pages long tax code (as of Feb 2009) is overly complex.  Only the most wealthy corporations and individuals can hire the necessary accountants and lawyers to read and understand the massive tax code to take full advantage of the massive number of tax breaks and loopholes.  Because of the massive number of tax breaks, 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes at all.  Another issue I have with the 9-9-9 plan is that it wants to do away with the payroll tax.  The payroll tax is a much more effective way to run social security and Medicare, then having congress pick how much of the budget they will spend on Social Security and Medicare.  I do agree with lowering the corporate tax rate (maybe not as low as 9%).  The United States doesn't need to have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world.  If one lowers the corporate tax rate, then it may make it possible to make the capital gains tax more progressive without drastically lowering the value of stocks.

Can someone do me a favor and find stuff they agree with me about, instead of only nit-picking things they disagree with?

Sweet!

[spoiler=about TSoG Mission 5]Why do you fight D'kah if Malekahin delays you long enough, but if Fernatus delays you long enough it is just assumed that D'Kah kills everyone?  Aren't you pulling a one of these?[/spoiler]

Like "Manage Team" and "Manage Orbs", should the player be able to switch Duvalier's attacks between battles.

Will ice become destructible?  It would be cool to make someone fall through the ice.

These anti-capitalist protesters now have support from people like Hugo Chavez and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

How is the government suppose to change anything when the protestors, in your words, "make literally no concrete demands"?

It's not like people in Congress need the protesters to tell them what legislation to write to address Wall Street abuses and favorable treatment of the wealthy. They know that complex derivatives need to be regulated. They know that banks need to be prohibited from owning investment companies so they aren't tempted to make bad loans, turn them into derivatives, and sell them as AAA investments. They know that capping the payroll tax makes no sense, and they know that the 15% capital gains tax results in a lower marginal tax rate for wealthy investors than it does for ordinary working people who make dramatically less money. I could go on, but you get the point. The solutions are there, and have been known for years now. The thing that's missing isn't solutions: it's the political will to actually vote them through. To the extent that the Occupy Wall Street protestors can exert pressure on their elected officials to act, they could end up being highly effective.

I tired of explaining why increasing captial gains and uncapping payroll taxes is stupid, and then have nobody dispute my sound reasoning. It is just incorrect to think that the Obama admistration hasn't added new regulations to Wall Street.  The Dodd–Frank Act alone added 243 new rules.

These anti-capitalist protesters don't make any sense.  They complain about "unemployment" and "corporate greed".  If corporations aren't making money, then they can't provide jobs.  I think New York mayor Bloomblerg explains it best, "You can't have it both ways. If you want jobs, you have to assist companies and give them confidence to go and hire people."

"Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history. As a share of gross domestic product, corporate profits also have been increasing, and they now represent 11.2 percent of total output. That is the highest share since the fourth quarter of 2006, when they accounted for 11.7 percent of output."  So corporate profits are back to pre-crash levels, and yet corporate hiring is not even close. The protesters are accusing the corporations of greed. Based on the facts, I find that pretty plausible.

Explain to me how a company opperates without providing jobs and earning profits.  Because of uncertainty partly created by the government, companies aren't able to expand and remain profitable.  Companies are becoming profitable not through increasing revenue, but by reducing liabilities by refinancing at lower interest rates.  When a bunch of new regulation is added or could be added in the near future, it creates uncertainty.  After the government adds hundreds of new regulations, businesses can't do anything untill they learn and study all the rules.  If they don't have complete understanding of all the new rules, then they might end up breaking the law. 

I have a different idea about what gives you mental resistance now. Maybe Close Minded people have mental resistance compared to those who believe in Yaweh.

I think you are on the right track, but Qudssi doens't seem ver closed minded to me.  He joined the Resistance to philosophia and learn.

Or might his poll numbers have ended up worse had he not made the attempt to bring Osama bin Laden to justice for his crimes?

That is not how things work.  His approve rating was in the low 40s before the bin Laden raid.  After the raid, Obama's approval rating jumped to 61%.  Due to short attention spans, people forgot about his foreign policy success in a week and his approval rating dropped back to the low 40s.

Among the less wealthy, yes. And if you're content to stay less wealthy, yes.

Senseless half-thought.

But if you're rich, and you have a finance manager working for you who will invest your money for you...

Smart middle class people talk to financial advisors and stock brokers.  Dumb middle class people spend as much as they earn without savings or investing.  Don't punish people for being smart and investing.

Or if you're poor, but you really want to achieve...

Again, that is why the government invests heavly in higher education.  "One of the reasons that America is the land of opportunity is because of subsidized student loans, subsidized public universities, and numerous scholarships allow almost anyone who his hardworking or talented to have access to higher education."

redistribution actually pressures and allows, respectively, Americans to accomplish more.

How does taking money away from the successful and giving that money to the unsuccessful suppose to encourage anyone to be sucessful?

You are missing my point.  I don't think we should encourage politicians to micromanage our diet, because politicians tend make stupid decisions.  For example:  You allow the government to ban transfat one day and the next day they heavly tax all foods with fat including healthy ones like milk.

Who cares!  I am sorry for getting everyone off topic.


Does anyone have any opinions on Herman Cain or his 9,9,9 plan?