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[Thad]

Oh, wait

Meanwhile, buried on page 83...

Interesting footnote?

Subtle update on the above.

Note the lines towards the bottom of the article.

Sure wish I knew what the fuck those guys were talking about.



But the biggest change since 2008:

I love Dodd.

ALSO:

Tangentially: awhile back, Brad and I were on the beer aisle at Safeway, and an enthusiastic young employee engaged us in conversation.  He pointed out the "per ounce" fine print on the price tags and tried to explain how that's useful for knowing what you're really paying.  I responded that that's great for produce but is completely irrelevant when you're buying a product that, uniformly, comes in 6- or 12-packs of 12-ounce bottles.  He didn't seem to follow.

I just told this story two days ago.

[Mongrel]

http://www.yourbofa.com/lessons-learned

I don't know if this site is a parody or what. If it is, better get your bleak laughs in now, before they get a takedown notice.

[Mongrel]

A very interesting, if all-too-brief point/counterpoint regarding CEO pay in other countries:

1) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/ceo_pay_in_japan.html

2) http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/executive-compensation-by-any-other-name/59209/

Each article also links each other.

[Shinra]

I don't know if you guys have heard about this JP Morgan thing but what are the odds it ends with a no strings attached bailout?

[Mongrel]

Not high. Bailouts are kind of politically toxic right now, bank bailouts doubly so.

Much more importantly, that isn't really a devastating loss for a bank that size. It hurts, sure, and they *may* actually have to do something beyond just writing it off and adding the loss to the quarterly reports, but it's still not all that large a sum in a big bank's scheme of things.

[Büge]

http://www.myfinances.co.uk/investments/2012/05/17/can-a-monkey-with-a-pin-outperform-investment-experts

I know it's probably junk science, but I can't say no to a monkey.

[Thad]

I had a math teacher who used to refer to true/false questions as "Beat the Monkey questions".  (He was British.  Presumably "beat the monkey" does not mean the same thing over there.)

The reason was that, in one of his early courses, his class averaged below 50% on a T/F test, and the rest of the math professors razzed him for it, on the grounds that a monkey picking random answers should be able to get better than 50%, and therefore he was actually making his students WORSE at math.

[Büge]

I had a math teacher who used to refer to true/false questions as "Beat the Monkey questions".  (He was British.  Presumably "beat the monkey" does not mean the same thing over there.)

Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey

[Thad]

Forbes: The Real Job Creators: Consumers

But even if we grant the argument that business taxes and regulations are high (which is by no means clear–in fact, it’s easier to make a case for the opposite), this ignores two crucial facts. First, as my friend Mike Norman has pointed out, employees are a cost, usually the most significant one faced by firms (Mike Norman Economics). For that reason, every rational entrepreneur’s goal is to reduce, not increase, the number of workers they have to pay. And quite right. Entrepreneurs have families, too, and they need to feed and clothe them. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

Second and more fundamentally, no matter how much you lower costs, if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs.

And this, it bears repeating, is Forbes.

[Royal☭]

The tide is slowly turning on the rich as job creators mantra. Mostly because, well, average Americans are seeing a lot of really rich people and hardly any jobs. The easiest way to do this, of course, would be to put a salary cap and increase the minimum wage. The easiest way, however, has been sacked.

[Mongrel]

You can't do that. THAT'S COMMUNISM!!!1

[NexAdruin]

Forbes: The Real Job Creators: Consumers

But even if we grant the argument that business taxes and regulations are high (which is by no means clear–in fact, it’s easier to make a case for the opposite), this ignores two crucial facts. First, as my friend Mike Norman has pointed out, employees are a cost, usually the most significant one faced by firms (Mike Norman Economics). For that reason, every rational entrepreneur’s goal is to reduce, not increase, the number of workers they have to pay. And quite right. Entrepreneurs have families, too, and they need to feed and clothe them. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

Second and more fundamentally, no matter how much you lower costs, if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs.

And this, it bears repeating, is Forbes.

The flip side of this that I tend to hear from a rich person I know is that less money taxed means more money to be invested back into the company, which can mean expansion and therefor there would be more jobs. I agree with what that article is saying but that is the argument I hear for "there is no reason to think that firms would expand employment."

[Brentai]

If there is no increased demand, then the firm will not expand employment no matter how much money is invested in it.  Why would it?  It's already meeting demand.

The concept of an infinitely expanding entity in a vacuum needs to die a definitive death.  This boiling pot economy, based on constantly expanding and bursting bubbles, is not benefitting anyone, including and ironically especially the super-rich.  They're in a position where their money is worth less every day in real terms and accruing more money will make absolutely no difference.

Like I keep saying, the current problem isn't that the rich are greedy, it's that they're greedy and incompetent.

[TA]

Forbes: The Real Job Creators: Consumers

But even if we grant the argument that business taxes and regulations are high (which is by no means clear–in fact, it’s easier to make a case for the opposite), this ignores two crucial facts. First, as my friend Mike Norman has pointed out, employees are a cost, usually the most significant one faced by firms (Mike Norman Economics). For that reason, every rational entrepreneur’s goal is to reduce, not increase, the number of workers they have to pay. And quite right. Entrepreneurs have families, too, and they need to feed and clothe them. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

Second and more fundamentally, no matter how much you lower costs, if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs.

And this, it bears repeating, is Forbes.

The flip side of this that I tend to hear from a rich person I know is that less money taxed means more money to be invested back into the company, which can mean expansion and therefor there would be more jobs. I agree with what that article is saying but that is the argument I hear for "there is no reason to think that firms would expand employment."

"You've been saying that for thirty years, and every time we listen to you, the evidence is that they don't expand employment.  That, instead, the rich just keep the extra money."

[Shinra]

Forbes: The Real Job Creators: Consumers

But even if we grant the argument that business taxes and regulations are high (which is by no means clear–in fact, it’s easier to make a case for the opposite), this ignores two crucial facts. First, as my friend Mike Norman has pointed out, employees are a cost, usually the most significant one faced by firms (Mike Norman Economics). For that reason, every rational entrepreneur’s goal is to reduce, not increase, the number of workers they have to pay. And quite right. Entrepreneurs have families, too, and they need to feed and clothe them. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

Second and more fundamentally, no matter how much you lower costs, if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs.

And this, it bears repeating, is Forbes.

The flip side of this that I tend to hear from a rich person I know is that less money taxed means more money to be invested back into the company, which can mean expansion and therefor there would be more jobs. I agree with what that article is saying but that is the argument I hear for "there is no reason to think that firms would expand employment."

There is close to 0 incentive for the massively rich to invest in hiring employees and keeping their existing employees at the current tax rate. Long term the difference between investing back in the company and pocketing the money is so miniscule and short term it's so much better to just pocket the money. Look at the banking crisis - a thousand+ investment bankers all making the decision that sinking their businesses is worth it if they can pocket tens of millions of dollars upfront. They'd make more money in the long term if they made better decisions, but why wait for a ten or twenty year payoff to be the next warren buffet if you couldn't spend 200 million dollars if you tried anyway?

[Mongrel]

Money IS re-invested into to companies, but that's often in ways that bring down production costs, or improves productivity. The latter (and sometimes the former) of which generally leads to layoffs sooner or later.

True, funding for expansion does result in larger companies, but fast expansion is usually just leveraged (i.e. funded through debt) anyway. And also usually means you're cutting someone else's market share, causing layoffs elsewhere (which is not to say companies shouldn't try to compete).

[Mongrel]

A really nice editorial on the the way the unemployment debate has been sidelined, with a bit of a take on false centrism and some of the more hidden forms of polarization.

[Brentai]

So... Specific Social Group statistically more likely to pay attention to issues that affect Specific Social Group.  Am I misreading this?

[Mongrel]

More that he's calling out a specific social group which is not usually recognized as a specific social group for pretending it's not a specific social group.

[Brentai]

Uh, are you sure?  Pretty much all they're about is being separate and distinct from those other jerkweeds.