85% of Global Wealth in hands of 10%

[Guest Coy Bacon]

[quote name='bengalrick' post='405849' date='Dec 12 2006, 12:34 PM']if we doubled the tax rate on gas, who is going to pay the difference?

answer: we are... prices will go up a bunch, therefore inflation will rise...[/quote]


Inflation is not rising prices, it is the cause of rising prices, as prices are bid up by the increase in debauched currency.

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='402611' date='Dec 7 2006, 01:16 PM']I’m not sure a massive corporate model is what I’m offering here, I’m speaking solely as someone who has seen the waste for my 10 year career here in DC now. Ask yourself this, why do the services each need separate helicopters with different contractors running up separate bills? Would not a joint helicopter that serves the purposes of each branch be suffice and save the tax payer a little money in return or even use that savings in areas that could help (like maybe healthcare)? This is just one example because if we did a massive audit by a non bias party I'd be willing to bet a lot money could be found that is spent on useless things. It goes to how congress appropriates money. If I get 500 million for my needs in one year, if I happen to save the government money in the next year, (lets say I save them 10 mil in that year) then in year three I only get 490 million. Well if I’m a manager I say to myself, "what happens if I need that 500 million in year three??) Thus I will spend it and many times it gets spent on very frivolous stuff. We need some sort of bipartisan committee to come up with an alternative that allows for us to give the money back that isn’t spent while still being able to get what I need to effectively run my area of business.

What I would propose is to allow for the companies/government departments to put that extra money into a savings account (or for you democrats a "lock box" ) and when the work is done if its a company let them keep a percentage to encourage the savings, and if a government department give it back at the end of the contract. You would see a massive change in how money was spent. Streamline this beotch!!

Then add on top of that a cut into reproduced efforts, with the example of the helicopter being just one of many things that I could see that duplicate effort type of things. Another example is these voting machines, do you really need separate ones for every state with multiple contractors doing each again? One machine for the country with one way to vote, save money there. (Seriously how many ways do people vote? A single toughly looked at machine would suffice.)

As much as I hate Rummy he was doing some of this within the DOD. It was the one thing he was doing right.

Mark Warner did some of this here in VA as well and ended up with a 76% approval rating in a “red state”. He also did it while cutting taxes for 65% of us in VA and still turned a turned a $6 billion deficit into a $544 million surplus.[/quote]
Jaime, with all due respect, you should know better than to believe that the military and/or the government (regardless of which party "controls" it), is worrying about the tax burden on Americans! It is the absolute least amongst leadership's worries.
And also, your argument for a joint helicopter is already in place, and has been forever. It's called a Huey, which has been retrofitted for many different assignments, including MedVac, assault, rescue and recon.
But now in this modern era, there is no substitute for an Apache, or even a Cobra, and those helos are specifically designed to be attack helicopters.
Now, whether or not their existence betters our lives in any tangible way besides a sense of security is another matter altogether.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='406272' date='Dec 12 2006, 10:11 PM']Jaime, with all due respect, you should know better than to believe that the military and/or the government (regardless of which party "controls" it), is worrying about the tax burden on Americans! It is the absolute least amongst leadership's worries.
And also, your argument for a joint helicopter is already in place, and has been forever. It's called a Huey, which has been retrofitted for many different assignments, including MedVac, assault, rescue and recon.
But now in this modern era, there is no substitute for an Apache, or even a Cobra, and those helos are specifically designed to be attack helicopters.
Now, whether or not their existence betters our lives in any tangible way besides a sense of security is another matter altogether.[/quote]



While I may not have been aware of the Huey, we both know there are areas of unneeded duplication between the services. And we both know the "pet projects" that go on at the Pentagon just because of the money that has to be spent. This goes on throughout the goverment, and its wasteful and should be looked at.

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' post='406273' date='Dec 12 2006, 10:15 PM']While I may not have been aware of the Huey, we both know there are areas of unneeded duplication between the services. And we both know the "pet projects" that go on at the Pentagon just because of the money that has to be spent. This goes on throughout the goverment, and its wasteful and should be looked at.[/quote]
Oh there's no doubt that there's wasteful government spending, and it certainly isn't confined to the military budget, it's in everything.
And the "pet projects" you mention are inherent to constiuent-voted representation, as that level is where the corporate corruption begins, in the House.
I know for a fact that many failed weapons systems were pushed through Congress by overeager Generals whose desires were being pushed through a mutual benefactor process by which the defense contractor, the subcontractor, the government and other outside entities mutually benefited to the detriment of American (With respect to Coy, I should have said "US Citizens") people's paycheck.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Bunghole' post='406279' date='Dec 12 2006, 10:29 PM']Oh there's no doubt that there's wasteful government spending, and it certainly isn't confined to the military budget, it's in everything.
And the "pet projects" you mention are inherent to constiuent-voted representation, as that level is where the corporate corruption begins, in the House.
I know for a fact that many failed weapons systems were pushed through Congress by overeager Generals whose desires were being pushed through a mutual benefactor process by which the defense contractor, the subcontractor, the government and other outside entities mutually benefited to the detriment of American (With respect to Coy, I should have said "US Citizens") people's paycheck.[/quote]



And this is what I speak of, this is the waste that needs to stop.

[TheBZ]

Very interesting stuff all around...Thanks, guys!

[quote]I think generally, companies act quicker when they sense an opportunity to make money. I really think the case for alternative fuels would be much strengthened if tax credits and the such were rolled out. The Scandinavian countries are great for this, where the government not only waives taxes, but provides long term interest free loans to companies in the field. Norway for example is one of the the world's largest oil producers, yet has a $3 billion fund to encourage renewable energy.[/quote]

I love this kind of incentives...I do.

But it does bother me to have the hands of governments philosophically tied as far as decreeing what they can do with taxes...To me, it implies that the current system is broken if the market decrees to governments, and not the other way around.

I could almost accept it if we were primarily talking about North America, where there is a surplus of resources that simply aren't being developed and tapped efficiently enough. Outsourcing and cutting jobs to avoid re-investment and more R&D is a really lazy way to do things, and I don't see how it can possibly pay off in the end.

Maybe the problem is implied in the immediacy of stock pricing...Because it doesn't seem to bother people to invest in a company and then jump out as they are about to crash and burn (Except when people don't get out in time), or get swallowed by another company.

If the philosophical mandate of many of these corporations is only to grow as fast as they can and rake cash, even at the cost of their own existence 3 years down the road...Is that not a fundamental problem?

Because the only incentive there is to take the cheapest and easiest way out, use up resources as quickly as you can, and bail on a flaming wreck...Eventually, you run out of easy resources, and end up inheriting the research and investment that should have been done previously.

If you're going to pay for it eventually, do we really want to pay for the lack of progress all at once?(See: Fossil Fuels, Sewage, and Waste Disposal)

BZ