6 ms·

And how do they increase their profits? By providing goods and services that customers want. Increasing profits and having your product/service valued and wante

And how do they increase their profits? By providing goods and services that customers want. Increasing profits and having your product/service valued and wanted by your consumer base is the same thing. Why do you say "profits" as if it's a bad thing? As the Democrats argued when Grover Cleveland was elected, taxes make goods more expensive and subsidize monopolies. This will be no different.

bitJericho 12y ago
When a blue collar worker can make $30/hr again maybe I'll agree with you. It isn't taxes that's lowering our paychecks (taxes are lower than in the Cleveland's day).
- innguest 12y ago
  You've got it backwards. Once everyone considers these principles I'm putting forward, then blue collar workers will make $30/h again. Taxes are what is lowering paychecks. Taxing comes in several shapes, including inflation. In this sense, taxes are higher now, since the dollar was pegged to gold then.
  - opendais 12y ago
    No, you have it backwards. The Gold Standard died in 1934 when the President was authorized to devalue the Dollar up to 40%. In the 70s, things were fine. It wasn't until the 80s when the "$30/hr" bit started to fall off. How do you explain 40+ years of reasonable wages going into the crapper over the past 35? Hint: It isn't the Gold Standard which didn't change over this period in any significant way.
    - innguest 12y ago
      In economy, changes take a long time to shows symptoms in the system. How long each change takes is anyone's guess. The gradual unpegging of gold had both immediate and long term consequences. In 1971 the US ended the Bretton Woods system, finally freeing the dollar from any pegging. (Thanks for the wrong hint) In 1973 there was the Oil Crisis. In 1979, the Fed switched its monetary policy from targeting the exchange rate to targeting the money supply, believing they were following what they called Neoliberal ideas. Do not confuse this for Libertarianism, as we wouldn't have a central bank targeting this nor that in the first place.
      - opendais 12y ago
        > In 1971 the US ended the Bretton Woods system, finally freeing the dollar from any pegging. (Thanks for the wrong hint) Eh? You were complaining about inflation not foreign exchange rates. For reference you said: > In this sense, taxes are higher now, since the dollar was pegged to gold then. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-in... http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1917&year2=1918 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1917&ye... You can verify the #s there too, cept by year to give you an idea. 1917-1918? 18% inflation Let me point out a few lines for you: 1917 12.5 15.4 14.3 18.9 19.6 20.4 18.5 19.3 19.8 19.5 17.4 18.1 17.4 1918 19.7 17.5 16.7 12.7 13.3 13.1 18.0 18.5 18.0 18.5 20.7 20.4 18.0 1919 17.9 14.9 17.1 17.6 16.6 15.0 15.2 14.9 13.4 13.1 13.5 14.5 14.6 1934 2.3 4.7 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.5 2.3 1.5 3.0 2.3 2.3 1.5 3.1 1935 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.8 3.8 2.2 2.2 2.2 0.7 1.5 2.2 3.0 2.2 Bretton Woods was for handling international exchange rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Fixed_exchange_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Fixed_exch... Do you get it now? Or are you confusing the rate for gold for the rate for real goods [e.g. Food, Housing, Labor] still?
        innguest 12y ago
        From the site you linked: "Rates of inflation are calculated using the current Consumer Price Index" The CPI presents several problems when used to measure inflation: http://goo.gl/Ywh3T9 http://goo.gl/Ywh3T9 Members of the Bretton Woods system "were required to establish a parity of their national currencies in terms of the reserve currency" (that's the US Dollar) and "to bolster faith in the dollar, the U.S. agreed separately to link the dollar to gold at the rate of $35 per ounce of gold". When Bretton Woods ended, so did the 1 Ounce of Gold <-> $35 USD promise, and Nixon in 1971 said "I am now a Keynesian in economics".
        opendais 12y ago
        So, basically, your argument is you ignore reality and substitute your own. The Gold Standard pegged the cost of one good [gold] to the price of the USD. It didn't magically make inflation disappear. RE: Bretton Woods Fixing the exchange rate doesn't magically make inflation disappear is a fact. The value of gold [relative to other goods] did vary overtime. Here you can see it in Oil: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F000000__3&f=A http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F0... 1940's 1.02 1.14 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.41 1.93 2.60 2.54 1950's 2.51 2.53 2.53 2.68 2.78 2.77 2.79 3.09 3.01 2.90 1960's 2.88 2.89 2.90 2.89 2.88 2.86 2.88 2.92 2.94 3.09 Under Bretton Woods, it roughly tripled. If inflation does not exist on the gold standard and technology/economic efficiency of production always improves, how does this happen? Perhaps Cattle? http://nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Historic_Data/livestock/cattlmya.pdf http://nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Historic... 1944 - 10.60 1970 - 27.00 Or are you going to claim everything just magically gets more expensive over time due to "market forces"? Hint: If you do, that is inflation. RE: The CPI A) The changes you complain about are all post 1980s. So, your complaint about changes in methodology aren't relevant since they don't affect the previous measurements. B) Even if they were relevant, I can cherry pick data to BS my way to my proof if I really wanted but let us just show exactly how much reality you have to ignore to believe Schiff: "From 1970 to 1980, the CPI rose 112% according to official statistics. During the same time period, the price of Schiff’s basket of 20 goods rose 117%. This leads to a difference of just 5% points." Try paying 95% of your bills and see how that works out for you. You can't just make economic measurements up out of whole cloth and ignore entire industries. "To prove there are problems with the official CPI, Schiff calculated the price changes of a basket of 20 goods that consist of common household purchases. Schiff’s CPI basket of 20 goods included: eggs, new cars, milk, gasoline, bread, rent for a primary residence, coffee, dental services, potatoes, electricity, sugar, airline tickets, butter, store-purchased beer, apples, public transportation, cereal, tires, beef, and prescription drugs." Things in the CPI ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm ) that he ignores: 1) People who purchase homes, which is the majority. 60+% of people own rather than rent. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/u-s-homeownership-rate-falls-to-lowest-in-19-years.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/u-s-homeownership-r... So we throw out 60% of housing data [31% of the total basket] because he says so? That is sheer stupidity. 2) We ignore fuel oil and the price of the gas you buy from the utility like he does? No, we don't. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=49&t=8 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=49&t=8 Once again, he ignores 60% of households with his basket. That is 32% of the CPI basket he ignores now. 3) Medical services? Everyone needs those, he ignores those. That is another 5.8% of the CPI measure he ignores and pretends doesn't exist with his made up bullshit. That is 37.8% of normal household expenditures he now ignores. 4) He ignores CLOTHING for fuck's sake. That brings us up to 40.1% of the CPI basket he ignores. You are apparently naked. 5) He ignores the difference between eating out vs. eating in. We are up to 45.8%. No one ever eats out. Ever. Clearly, this is true. You've never eaten in a restaurant. 6) He ignores Tobacco (included in the CPI). This puts up to about 46.5% of real world purchases by households you are ignoring. So just to reiterate in Schiff (and your) reality: 1) You are naked. 2) You do not eat out. 3) You do not use the gas utilities. 4) You do not change the oil in your car. 5) You do not own a home. 6) You never utilize a physician or hospital. 7) You don't use tobacco. I don't know how you can take Schiff seriously if you do any of those 7 things. Given you aren't posting this from jail for public indecency ... I'm assuming you have to admit you wear clothes. Some other people bitching about the complete ignorance of reality: http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-everything.html http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-ev... http://theweek.com/article/index/258502/no-the-government-isnt-lying-about-inflation http://theweek.com/article/index/258502/no-the-government-is...
notahacker 12y ago
Taxes also make people have education and not die of preventable diseases, and fund a rule of law and property enforcement which plays a huge role in enabling companies to actually sell the products their customers value. All of these have certainly benefited Amazon and Google (and their shareholders, and their end users) to a far greater degree than the minimal amount of tax they deign to pay in my country where they have multiple offices and generate huge revenues. Tax avoidance, one might say, makes everyone else's taxes more expensive and subsidises monopolies.
grecy 12y ago
> And how do they increase their profits? By providing goods and services that customers want. Or by not paying taxes, thus lowering their expenses. > Why do you say "profits" as if it's a bad thing? Because they're making billions in private profit, at the expense of public good. Public education, healthcare, roads, infrastructure are all severely bad in America. There is a reason for that. > taxes make goods more expensive That's not the entire story. Keeping high profit margins makes goods more expensive. I'm quite certain Amazon, Google or Apple could all drop a couple of zeros from their yearly profit, pay their taxes and the goods would not increase in price. Their profit would still be very large.
- innguest 12y ago
  What ethics do you have that makes you insist on trying to regulate the behavior of others? What is the philosophy behind it, and how do you deduce that we can achieve peace and prosperity by forcing others to do the will of a small group in power? Who gives anyone the right to steal from Google? I'm not on board with that. There's a reason companies leave the US and it's because it has the highest corporate tax in the world at 35%. Google does not live in the US. It does not owe anything to public education, healthcare, roads or infrastructure. Google is a company that allows me to search on the internet. They get paid to show me ads. I could go on and on about what they are and the topic of "roads" would never figure. If you want to argue that the founders or the employees of Google need to care about education, healthcare, roads, that's another topic, but I'm talking specifically about corporate tax. How is Google making billions at the expense of public good? How much do they owe the public, exactly? Is Google forever indentured to the State? Will it never be free? Are you OK with never being free? I would say Google has provided plenty of goods to the public and it has paid more than its share several times over. We're all better off because it exists, and the service they provide is even free. It's free and you want to make it more expensive. It's almost as if you're angry at how much money they're making. "Keeping high profit margins" is exactly what anyone would do because as human beings we want to feel safe, and high profit margins provide the safety that you will have enough resources to change your course of action if necessary, adapting to new market conditions and consumer demands. You want to erode that safety buffer and make Google more fragile. Your wording says it all: "Google [..] could [...] drop a couple of zeros from their [...] profit". The profits are their reward for supplying something we all want. We all use it daily, it's free, it's amazing and they keep making more cool stuff, and because of that the market has rewarded them. And you're advocating stealing their reward to fix roads. But we don't even know if people want roads! They're there so that's why people use them, but who's to say we don't want something better? Well, we'll never know, because the State said "roads it is" and they're sticking to it, even when the upkeep gets harder and harder. Is the State looking into alternatives to roads? No? We went through a bunch of search companies like AltaVista and Lycos and so on and it took all this time to realize Google was what we wanted, and we've rewarded them for that. What is the State doing to foster a bunch of alternative ways of transportation in order to pick the best so we can reward it? Oh, you mean you just want roads period, and you want to force everyone to pay for this product, and you don't think there could be alternatives so that's why you're not looking into competing ideas? So let's force Google to pay for this product that was artificially designed and not evolved from market forces like Google's product were? And Google should pay up because it has so much money and it would still be profitable if it sacrificed a few zeroes? Can you please justify this line of thinking to me ethically? Here we have two organizations, one puts out a crummy product it can't maintain, and the other puts out a good product that people said they would pay for; and you're saying we should take money from the successful product and use it to build more of the unsuccessful product. Do you see what I see? Because from here it's clear the solution would be for the State to simply stop making crummy products and stop stealing from successful products, but somehow we've escalated this problem all the way to the level of global corporate taxes.

bitJericho 12y ago

When a blue collar worker can make $30/hr again maybe I'll agree with you. It isn't taxes that's lowering our paychecks (taxes are lower than in the Cleveland's day).

innguest 12y ago
You've got it backwards. Once everyone considers these principles I'm putting forward, then blue collar workers will make $30/h again. Taxes are what is lowering paychecks. Taxing comes in several shapes, including inflation. In this sense, taxes are higher now, since the dollar was pegged to gold then.
- opendais 12y ago
  No, you have it backwards. The Gold Standard died in 1934 when the President was authorized to devalue the Dollar up to 40%. In the 70s, things were fine. It wasn't until the 80s when the "$30/hr" bit started to fall off. How do you explain 40+ years of reasonable wages going into the crapper over the past 35? Hint: It isn't the Gold Standard which didn't change over this period in any significant way.
  - innguest 12y ago
    In economy, changes take a long time to shows symptoms in the system. How long each change takes is anyone's guess. The gradual unpegging of gold had both immediate and long term consequences. In 1971 the US ended the Bretton Woods system, finally freeing the dollar from any pegging. (Thanks for the wrong hint) In 1973 there was the Oil Crisis. In 1979, the Fed switched its monetary policy from targeting the exchange rate to targeting the money supply, believing they were following what they called Neoliberal ideas. Do not confuse this for Libertarianism, as we wouldn't have a central bank targeting this nor that in the first place.
    - opendais 12y ago
      > In 1971 the US ended the Bretton Woods system, finally freeing the dollar from any pegging. (Thanks for the wrong hint) Eh? You were complaining about inflation not foreign exchange rates. For reference you said: > In this sense, taxes are higher now, since the dollar was pegged to gold then. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-in... http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1917&year2=1918 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1917&ye... You can verify the #s there too, cept by year to give you an idea. 1917-1918? 18% inflation Let me point out a few lines for you: 1917 12.5 15.4 14.3 18.9 19.6 20.4 18.5 19.3 19.8 19.5 17.4 18.1 17.4 1918 19.7 17.5 16.7 12.7 13.3 13.1 18.0 18.5 18.0 18.5 20.7 20.4 18.0 1919 17.9 14.9 17.1 17.6 16.6 15.0 15.2 14.9 13.4 13.1 13.5 14.5 14.6 1934 2.3 4.7 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.5 2.3 1.5 3.0 2.3 2.3 1.5 3.1 1935 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.8 3.8 2.2 2.2 2.2 0.7 1.5 2.2 3.0 2.2 Bretton Woods was for handling international exchange rates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Fixed_exchange_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Fixed_exch... Do you get it now? Or are you confusing the rate for gold for the rate for real goods [e.g. Food, Housing, Labor] still?
      - innguest 12y ago
        From the site you linked: "Rates of inflation are calculated using the current Consumer Price Index" The CPI presents several problems when used to measure inflation: http://goo.gl/Ywh3T9 http://goo.gl/Ywh3T9 Members of the Bretton Woods system "were required to establish a parity of their national currencies in terms of the reserve currency" (that's the US Dollar) and "to bolster faith in the dollar, the U.S. agreed separately to link the dollar to gold at the rate of $35 per ounce of gold". When Bretton Woods ended, so did the 1 Ounce of Gold <-> $35 USD promise, and Nixon in 1971 said "I am now a Keynesian in economics".
        opendais 12y ago
        So, basically, your argument is you ignore reality and substitute your own. The Gold Standard pegged the cost of one good [gold] to the price of the USD. It didn't magically make inflation disappear. RE: Bretton Woods Fixing the exchange rate doesn't magically make inflation disappear is a fact. The value of gold [relative to other goods] did vary overtime. Here you can see it in Oil: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F000000__3&f=A http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F0... 1940's 1.02 1.14 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.41 1.93 2.60 2.54 1950's 2.51 2.53 2.53 2.68 2.78 2.77 2.79 3.09 3.01 2.90 1960's 2.88 2.89 2.90 2.89 2.88 2.86 2.88 2.92 2.94 3.09 Under Bretton Woods, it roughly tripled. If inflation does not exist on the gold standard and technology/economic efficiency of production always improves, how does this happen? Perhaps Cattle? http://nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Historic_Data/livestock/cattlmya.pdf http://nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Washington/Historic... 1944 - 10.60 1970 - 27.00 Or are you going to claim everything just magically gets more expensive over time due to "market forces"? Hint: If you do, that is inflation. RE: The CPI A) The changes you complain about are all post 1980s. So, your complaint about changes in methodology aren't relevant since they don't affect the previous measurements. B) Even if they were relevant, I can cherry pick data to BS my way to my proof if I really wanted but let us just show exactly how much reality you have to ignore to believe Schiff: "From 1970 to 1980, the CPI rose 112% according to official statistics. During the same time period, the price of Schiff’s basket of 20 goods rose 117%. This leads to a difference of just 5% points." Try paying 95% of your bills and see how that works out for you. You can't just make economic measurements up out of whole cloth and ignore entire industries. "To prove there are problems with the official CPI, Schiff calculated the price changes of a basket of 20 goods that consist of common household purchases. Schiff’s CPI basket of 20 goods included: eggs, new cars, milk, gasoline, bread, rent for a primary residence, coffee, dental services, potatoes, electricity, sugar, airline tickets, butter, store-purchased beer, apples, public transportation, cereal, tires, beef, and prescription drugs." Things in the CPI ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm ) that he ignores: 1) People who purchase homes, which is the majority. 60+% of people own rather than rent. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/u-s-homeownership-rate-falls-to-lowest-in-19-years.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-29/u-s-homeownership-r... So we throw out 60% of housing data [31% of the total basket] because he says so? That is sheer stupidity. 2) We ignore fuel oil and the price of the gas you buy from the utility like he does? No, we don't. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=49&t=8 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=49&t=8 Once again, he ignores 60% of households with his basket. That is 32% of the CPI basket he ignores now. 3) Medical services? Everyone needs those, he ignores those. That is another 5.8% of the CPI measure he ignores and pretends doesn't exist with his made up bullshit. That is 37.8% of normal household expenditures he now ignores. 4) He ignores CLOTHING for fuck's sake. That brings us up to 40.1% of the CPI basket he ignores. You are apparently naked. 5) He ignores the difference between eating out vs. eating in. We are up to 45.8%. No one ever eats out. Ever. Clearly, this is true. You've never eaten in a restaurant. 6) He ignores Tobacco (included in the CPI). This puts up to about 46.5% of real world purchases by households you are ignoring. So just to reiterate in Schiff (and your) reality: 1) You are naked. 2) You do not eat out. 3) You do not use the gas utilities. 4) You do not change the oil in your car. 5) You do not own a home. 6) You never utilize a physician or hospital. 7) You don't use tobacco. I don't know how you can take Schiff seriously if you do any of those 7 things. Given you aren't posting this from jail for public indecency ... I'm assuming you have to admit you wear clothes. Some other people bitching about the complete ignorance of reality: http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-everything.html http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-ev... http://theweek.com/article/index/258502/no-the-government-isnt-lying-about-inflation http://theweek.com/article/index/258502/no-the-government-is...

notahacker 12y ago

Taxes also make people have education and not die of preventable diseases, and fund a rule of law and property enforcement which plays a huge role in enabling companies to actually sell the products their customers value. All of these have certainly benefited Amazon and Google (and their shareholders, and their end users) to a far greater degree than the minimal amount of tax they deign to pay in my country where they have multiple offices and generate huge revenues. Tax avoidance, one might say, makes everyone else's taxes more expensive and subsidises monopolies.

grecy 12y ago

> And how do they increase their profits? By providing goods and services that customers want. Or by not paying taxes, thus lowering their expenses. > Why do you say "profits" as if it's a bad thing? Because they're making billions in private profit, at the expense of public good. Public education, healthcare, roads, infrastructure are all severely bad in America. There is a reason for that. > taxes make goods more expensive That's not the entire story. Keeping high profit margins makes goods more expensive. I'm quite certain Amazon, Google or Apple could all drop a couple of zeros from their yearly profit, pay their taxes and the goods would not increase in price. Their profit would still be very large.

innguest 12y ago
What ethics do you have that makes you insist on trying to regulate the behavior of others? What is the philosophy behind it, and how do you deduce that we can achieve peace and prosperity by forcing others to do the will of a small group in power? Who gives anyone the right to steal from Google? I'm not on board with that. There's a reason companies leave the US and it's because it has the highest corporate tax in the world at 35%. Google does not live in the US. It does not owe anything to public education, healthcare, roads or infrastructure. Google is a company that allows me to search on the internet. They get paid to show me ads. I could go on and on about what they are and the topic of "roads" would never figure. If you want to argue that the founders or the employees of Google need to care about education, healthcare, roads, that's another topic, but I'm talking specifically about corporate tax. How is Google making billions at the expense of public good? How much do they owe the public, exactly? Is Google forever indentured to the State? Will it never be free? Are you OK with never being free? I would say Google has provided plenty of goods to the public and it has paid more than its share several times over. We're all better off because it exists, and the service they provide is even free. It's free and you want to make it more expensive. It's almost as if you're angry at how much money they're making. "Keeping high profit margins" is exactly what anyone would do because as human beings we want to feel safe, and high profit margins provide the safety that you will have enough resources to change your course of action if necessary, adapting to new market conditions and consumer demands. You want to erode that safety buffer and make Google more fragile. Your wording says it all: "Google [..] could [...] drop a couple of zeros from their [...] profit". The profits are their reward for supplying something we all want. We all use it daily, it's free, it's amazing and they keep making more cool stuff, and because of that the market has rewarded them. And you're advocating stealing their reward to fix roads. But we don't even know if people want roads! They're there so that's why people use them, but who's to say we don't want something better? Well, we'll never know, because the State said "roads it is" and they're sticking to it, even when the upkeep gets harder and harder. Is the State looking into alternatives to roads? No? We went through a bunch of search companies like AltaVista and Lycos and so on and it took all this time to realize Google was what we wanted, and we've rewarded them for that. What is the State doing to foster a bunch of alternative ways of transportation in order to pick the best so we can reward it? Oh, you mean you just want roads period, and you want to force everyone to pay for this product, and you don't think there could be alternatives so that's why you're not looking into competing ideas? So let's force Google to pay for this product that was artificially designed and not evolved from market forces like Google's product were? And Google should pay up because it has so much money and it would still be profitable if it sacrificed a few zeroes? Can you please justify this line of thinking to me ethically? Here we have two organizations, one puts out a crummy product it can't maintain, and the other puts out a good product that people said they would pay for; and you're saying we should take money from the successful product and use it to build more of the unsuccessful product. Do you see what I see? Because from here it's clear the solution would be for the State to simply stop making crummy products and stop stealing from successful products, but somehow we've escalated this problem all the way to the level of global corporate taxes.