Yes, it’s a terrible problem for someone to have better health because he has more money and can give people compensation for more of their time and/or more use of their equipment and facilities. Much better that he should not be allowed to do that.
[quote]spyoptic wrote:
Not related, but are taxes right now set up so that working wages get taxed and “unearned” income doesn’t??[/quote]
No.
It might be the case that some could think that since the taxation rate on dividends is lower than that on “earned income” that this was more favorable to investment income, but this really is not the case because the investment income is taxed twice: first with corporate income tax, and then the tax on dividends. The sum comes to a similar rate as the top personal income tax rate.
To illustrate, let’s say that you have three ways of possibly handling your finances from the work that you do:
- You could simply receive it as ordinary income from whomever pays you
- You set up a corporation which receives the money and have it pay everything to yourself with salary or 1099 income, leaving no profit for the corporation and thus no corporate tax is incurred
These two will result in similar personal income taxation assuming that there aren’t more involved circumstances such as depreciation of equipment and so forth, which might make the corporation work better for you.
- You likewise set up a corporation but pay yourself no salary or 1099 income, but receive everything as dividends.
In this case you pay the corporate tax rate on all the income, and then you pay tax again on the dividends as you receive it. The sum will come out about the same.
So you won’t do better from arranging it as unearned income.
I don’t know whether it’s the case presently, but in the past the opposite problem (to the IRS) existed: people tended to try to arrange income as being classifed as “earned” rather than “unearned” as they, at least in the past, could get their taxes lower that way.
Obama reportedly wants to jack the rate on dividends to the same as the top personal income tax rate, which is insane because the total taxation would then be that PLUS the corporate tax rate.
[quote]spyoptic wrote:
[quote]dhickey wrote:
Who gives a shit about disparity of wealth? Would equal distribution of wealth be more desirable if quality of life in general was worse? I say the system that best grows quality of life, and increases wealth for the society as a whole, is the best system.
My quality of life is absolute, not some fraction of what my neighbor enjoys. Take my neighbor down a peg does not increase my quality of life.[/quote]
Thats true, but when unequal distribution of wealth starts to equal different laws for different people, one person having better health because he has more money, and social immobility guaranteed for you and your kids, it starts to become part of the problem. Basically, when government becomes a tool for the rich to stay on top.
Not related, but are taxes right now set up so that working wages get taxed and “unearned” income doesn’t??[/quote]
Well let’s do a little history, the first taxes were on the people that owned businesses. The government got greedy and taxed more, eventually taxing each worker. Then it turned into a back and forth thing of workers and owners.
The reason why passive income and business taxes is less than the income from labor is because those that earn the passive and business income bring more wealth to the community, because they have the ideas and pay the wages of their workers.
Both are taxed, right now all passive income is taxed at 15%, 20% for business.
OK Thx Chris and Bill!!
[quote]Archone wrote:
well, for starters… Microsoft…[/quote]
Wrong.
And so what if it was? Don’t you enjoy the use of your Windows machine? Were you forced at gunpoint to buy it or did you just buy the best product you could offered at the price you liked?
Couldn’t you buy a Mac instead? No one is forcing you to use Microsoft.
Hello, Ma Bell was in fact a real monopoly and guess what? they were protected by gunvernment from any outside competition.
Monopolies cannot naturally arise without protectionism.
DeBeers is the only true monopoly that is still allowed today. They control 95+% of all legal diamond trade in the world. When a new mine is found they go in and buy it up. They did that a few years ago in Russia.
Ummm, De Beers is not a monopoly in the truest sense of the word.
My thoughts they are the truest worldwide monopoly if one really could be found. They control the price of diamonds. Diamonds in my opinion are not as rare as DeBeers would like you to beleive.
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
My thoughts they are the truest worldwide monopoly if one really could be found. They control the price of diamonds. Diamonds in my opinion are not as rare as DeBeers would like you to beleive.[/quote]
Yes, unfortunately they do control a large supple but still it is not a monopoly. Too bad for them diamonds are just rocks and cannot fuel a car, for example.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
My thoughts they are the truest worldwide monopoly if one really could be found. They control the price of diamonds. Diamonds in my opinion are not as rare as DeBeers would like you to beleive.[/quote]
Yes, unfortunately they do control a large supple but still it is not a monopoly. Too bad for them diamonds are just rocks and cannot fuel a car, for example.[/quote]
Diamonds are nothing more than carbon. Have you ever tried to set one on fire. They do burn. I have not personally set one on fire, but I did see a Discovery Channel special where they did.
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
Diamonds are nothing more than carbon. Have you ever tried to set one on fire. They do burn. I have not personally set one on fire, but I did see a Discovery Channel special where they did.[/quote]
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
Diamonds are nothing more than carbon. Have you ever tried to set one on fire. They do burn. I have not personally set one on fire, but I did see a Discovery Channel special where they did.[/quote]
[/quote]
Jesus loves you too Bro.
Considering that artificial diamonds, visually indistinguishable from perfect natural diamonds and in fact made principally of carbon and of the same crystal structure (however of not quite the same hardness, but still extremely hard) are now about $100 per carat, DeBeers may see the value of their vast holdings drop by quite a lot.
I’d argue that you don’t need a complete monopoly to stick the consumer with much of the bad stuff that falls from a monopoly, especially if you and you’re two or three remaining “competitors” get together and decide that there’s no going to be a price war, and you set prices at whatever.
And a monopoly in itself, almost impossible because there will always be an upstart (even if it’s a new one that fails each years) will always come around, and there will always be those who buy products, not based on the best product or cost, but will “pay a little extra” for something made union/in the US/local whatever.
A basic problem with unrestricted economies (no anti-trust regs), is not that you necessarily end up with a bunch of monopolies, but that companies use a profitable section of their company to subsidize another section of their company, allowing what would be an unprofitable company/section of a company on its own, to survive, and drive down cost and quality within that sector.
While Microsoft may have stolen some idea from Apple, the main problem with them, is that they were packaging a bunch of “free” software with their operating system. They were in effect using their profitable operating system, to subsidize other software development that they were giving away.
How can anyone compete with free software already on your computer? You can’t. Notice that now all web browsers are free? All media players (minus premium content) are free? That’s thanks to Microsoft basically making the entire sector unprofitable. They just under-estimated the power of open-source software, and the backlash against them.
That’s the only reason there are still alternatives. But I wonder how much better web browsers we’d have available, or media players, if there was actually a competitive market for them, where we actually had to pay a little.
But this happens all the time, whenever someone has an agenda, and doesn’t let things like ethics, laws and/or markets get int he way (those were all and/or statements). Take Hannity for example. If Fox weren’t mega-huge, and able to subsidize unprofitable content with profitable content, Sean would be gone.
He has very few advertisers left, and the people who do watch him, are people who’d be watching whatever Fox had in that time slot anyways, but his show gets subsidized by the profitable time-slots because the powers that be at Fox (and beyond) have deemed it necessary that we be subjected to this man: it was a political/ideological decision, not an economic one.
And that’s when capitalism/free-markets get into trouble. When you get interest powerful enough to make individuals rich without being profitable, and when sections of a company and subsidize unprofitable sections with the end-game of controlling a market, or worse, controlling access to information.
A profound analysis.
FOX keeps on the air a show averaging over 2 million viewers out of ideology, no other reason.
Perhaps you can comment on various other news opinion shows with fewer viewers. Are they on only for ideology?
Or do you accuse only FOX of this?
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
A profound analysis.
FOX keeps on the air a show averaging over 2 million viewers out of ideology, no other reason.
Perhaps you can comment on various other news opinion shows with fewer viewers. Are they on only for ideology?
Or do you accuse only FOX of this?[/quote]
I don’t know of any other pundit who’s lost so many advertisers, and was not only not told to “cool it”, but encouraged to continue. Do you? They usually get yanked, at least for awhile.
Do you have other examples? Who cares about two million viewers. How does Fox make money off of two million viewers if they can’t sell the advertising time?
What, are they not running commercials, or substantially fewer than the normal number? I find that hard to believe. Do you have evidence that rates are unusually low now?
Do you have evidence that revenues are less than many left-leaning news opinion shows that could be named, which you don’t seem to accuse of being on the air for the corporation’s ideological reasons?
Or are you just getting this off of the Daily Kos or someplace like that?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]Archone wrote:
well, for starters… Microsoft…[/quote]
Wrong.
And so what if it was? Don’t you enjoy the use of your Windows machine? Were you forced at gunpoint to buy it or did you just buy the best product you could offered at the price you liked?
Couldn’t you buy a Mac instead? No one is forcing you to use Microsoft.
Hello, Ma Bell was in fact a real monopoly and guess what? they were protected by gunvernment from any outside competition.
Monopolies cannot naturally arise without protectionism.[/quote]
I think he’s talking about when Microsoft got fined some 800$ million for putting their media player in their computers without giving the choice to the consumer ie trying to control supply/demand.
[quote]spyoptic wrote:
Monopolies cannot naturally arise without protectionism.
I think he’s talking about when Microsoft got fined some 800$ million for putting their media player in their computers without giving the choice to the consumer ie trying to control supply/demand.
[/quote]
That is part of it, yes. Also, the fact that MS software is typically bundled with IBM hardware; it’s impossible to purchase an IBM machine without having to pay for Windows as well. And yes, you can purchase and assemble the individual components to build your own tower. Most people are not capable of doing so.
That being said, Microsoft must be congratulated for making computers accessible to the common person (In 1979 Larry Niven wrote “Death by Ecstacy,” in which his protagonist wrote up a report by hand and then noted in passing “I’d have to get a programmer to put it into the computer. I wasn’t that good yet.” Today grandmothers send emails with attached jpegs of their grandkids.). But… again. Monopolies and near monopolies are only a small part of what I’m asking about. I’m not talking about the wealthy being able to spend their money for better medical care than the poor. I’m talking about pharmeceutical companies in the 1980s refusing to pay for testing to prevent the spread of HIV via their products and causing the deaths of thousands without anyone going to jail for it.
I’m not talking about rich people driving mercedes that they bought with their own cash. I’m talking about rich people committing vehicular homicide and getting away with a slap on the wrist instead of years in prison.
http://wcbstv.com/local/ceo.plea.deal.2.945919.html
[quote]Archone wrote:
[quote]spyoptic wrote:
Monopolies cannot naturally arise without protectionism.
I think he’s talking about when Microsoft got fined some 800$ million for putting their media player in their computers without giving the choice to the consumer ie trying to control supply/demand.
[/quote]
That is part of it, yes. Also, the fact that MS software is typically bundled with IBM hardware; it’s impossible to purchase an IBM machine without having to pay for Windows as well. And yes, you can purchase and assemble the individual components to build your own tower. Most people are not capable of doing so.
That being said, Microsoft must be congratulated for making computers accessible to the common person (In 1979 Larry Niven wrote “Death by Ecstacy,” in which his protagonist wrote up a report by hand and then noted in passing “I’d have to get a programmer to put it into the computer. I wasn’t that good yet.” Today grandmothers send emails with attached jpegs of their grandkids.). But… again. Monopolies and near monopolies are only a small part of what I’m asking about. I’m not talking about the wealthy being able to spend their money for better medical care than the poor. I’m talking about pharmeceutical companies in the 1980s refusing to pay for testing to prevent the spread of HIV via their products and causing the deaths of thousands without anyone going to jail for it.
I’m not talking about rich people driving mercedes that they bought with their own cash. I’m talking about rich people committing vehicular homicide and getting away with a slap on the wrist instead of years in prison.
http://wcbstv.com/local/ceo.plea.deal.2.945919.html[/quote]
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Are you arguing that there is no competition in the pharmaceutical industry? Are you insane?
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How is a rich guy getting away with homicide a monopoly power? The only guy I know that has done this (other than the source you give) is Ted Kennedy, and he never did an honest day’s work in his life.