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I'm with you for the first paragraph but then what the fuck, man? Why present a worthwhile argumentative point and then supply cans of ammo for attacking it via

I'm with you for the first paragraph but then what the fuck, man? Why present a worthwhile argumentative point and then supply cans of ammo for attacking it via your character?

scottlocklin 12y ago
It's interesting that the left has pretty much given up on ideas of economic equality and inclusiveness in favor of pointing and sputtering when people say things which are not politically correct. If I were a suspicious type, I'd wonder if political correctness had corporate sponsorship; it certainly seems to have paid off for the oligarchy... To his first point, it's not really true. Many of the largest and scariest businesses are still family businesses. Louis Dreyfus Group (yes, Seinfeld girl is a scion of this $120b/yr "family business"), Cargill, Koch, Bechtel, Bloomberg, Mansfield, Kingston, Sungard, Dole, Bausch & Lomb, Deloitte, Hearst, Bosch, PWC, Aramco, Vitol, Continental grain, Scoular, Consolidated Grain & Barge, Safra Group, Armajaro. Most of these companies are deeply embedded in the power structure of their host countries and other countries. What's scary is how huge they are, and how little people are even aware of their existence. When you start looking at them, well, some of them look kind of like they are run by James Bond villains.
- adsenseclient 12y ago
  You must be joking. Any publically traded co these days is hardly family owned: the family members, in those rare example cases are by far the minority shareholders. Compare that with 100 years ago.
  - scottlocklin 12y ago
    You evidently didn't read my comment. None of the companies I listed above are publicly traded: they are all family owned, and the families which own them have almost unfathomable power. Of course, many of the families which sold shares in their businesses also have considerable power. I originally learned about these people by studying the grain and commodity markets.
    - adsenseclient 12y ago
      I am curious to know the proportion of GDP generated by publically vs privately owned companies in the US and how it has changed in the last 150 years
      - nostrademons 12y ago
        It's possible to estimate this using public, easily Googlable data: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_ http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_ Total U.S. GDP is about $15T. Of that, $8T is compensation of employees, so roughly half accrues to wage-earners (this ranges from the janitor to the CEO, but is probably exhibits a bit less inequality than returns to capital. $5.6T is gross operating surplus: this is profit that accrues to incorporated businesses. GDP is defined as wages + profits + gross mixed income (effectively profits accruing to unincorporated businesses; things like sole proprietors and landlords) + taxes - subsidies. Subsidies is negligible (about $60B) and taxes are about $1T, so that leaves about $500B as GMI (this seems pretty low to me, but I guess most business owners choose to incorporate these days). Now the question is how much of the $5.6T in profits accrues to publicly traded vs. privately traded companies. This isn't broken out by the government stats, but you can estimate it from financial data. The total market cap of the S&P 500 is about $18.5T: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500 The P/E of the S&P 500 is about 18.68: http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html Market cap divided by P/E gives earnings, by definition, so the total profit accrued by publicly-traded companies is roughly $1T. Similar math done on the Wilshire 5000 index gave the same result. So as a very rough ballpark estimate, the total value-add by privately-traded companies is roughly 5x that of publicly-traded companies. It would likely be hard to find similar figures for 150 years ago, both because you can't just Google up 150-year-old data, and because 150 years ago the NYSE operated out of coffeehouses and the ticker symbol hadn't yet been invented.
        adventured 12y ago
        Just a small correction. US GDP is closer to $17 trillion. Going by the IMF and World Bank.
easong 12y ago
All of his comments are rants against women/minorities (including admitting not hiring a female programmer because her resume had too many mentions of "women") and complaints about google banning his adsense account for fraud. I'm sympathetic to the "faceless shareholders are poisonous" argument as well, but...yeah. It's hard to differentiate neoreactionaries from trolls.
- adsenseclient 12y ago
  If you do not like an argument, factually refute it, rather than labelling its author. Otherwise your ad hominem style looks too much like Lenin's or Mao's
  - easong 12y ago
    My intent wasn't to refute your argument (I can't imagine engaging here would be a productive use of time for any party) - I was just adding a bit of context to the above comment. Cheers!

I'm with you for the first paragraph but then what the fuck, man? Why present a worthwhile argumentative point and then supply cans of ammo for attacking it via your character?

scottlocklin 12y ago

It's interesting that the left has pretty much given up on ideas of economic equality and inclusiveness in favor of pointing and sputtering when people say things which are not politically correct. If I were a suspicious type, I'd wonder if political correctness had corporate sponsorship; it certainly seems to have paid off for the oligarchy... To his first point, it's not really true. Many of the largest and scariest businesses are still family businesses. Louis Dreyfus Group (yes, Seinfeld girl is a scion of this $120b/yr "family business"), Cargill, Koch, Bechtel, Bloomberg, Mansfield, Kingston, Sungard, Dole, Bausch & Lomb, Deloitte, Hearst, Bosch, PWC, Aramco, Vitol, Continental grain, Scoular, Consolidated Grain & Barge, Safra Group, Armajaro. Most of these companies are deeply embedded in the power structure of their host countries and other countries. What's scary is how huge they are, and how little people are even aware of their existence. When you start looking at them, well, some of them look kind of like they are run by James Bond villains.

adsenseclient 12y ago
You must be joking. Any publically traded co these days is hardly family owned: the family members, in those rare example cases are by far the minority shareholders. Compare that with 100 years ago.
- scottlocklin 12y ago
  You evidently didn't read my comment. None of the companies I listed above are publicly traded: they are all family owned, and the families which own them have almost unfathomable power. Of course, many of the families which sold shares in their businesses also have considerable power. I originally learned about these people by studying the grain and commodity markets.
  - adsenseclient 12y ago
    I am curious to know the proportion of GDP generated by publically vs privately owned companies in the US and how it has changed in the last 150 years
    - nostrademons 12y ago
      It's possible to estimate this using public, easily Googlable data: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_ http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_ Total U.S. GDP is about $15T. Of that, $8T is compensation of employees, so roughly half accrues to wage-earners (this ranges from the janitor to the CEO, but is probably exhibits a bit less inequality than returns to capital. $5.6T is gross operating surplus: this is profit that accrues to incorporated businesses. GDP is defined as wages + profits + gross mixed income (effectively profits accruing to unincorporated businesses; things like sole proprietors and landlords) + taxes - subsidies. Subsidies is negligible (about $60B) and taxes are about $1T, so that leaves about $500B as GMI (this seems pretty low to me, but I guess most business owners choose to incorporate these days). Now the question is how much of the $5.6T in profits accrues to publicly traded vs. privately traded companies. This isn't broken out by the government stats, but you can estimate it from financial data. The total market cap of the S&P 500 is about $18.5T: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500 The P/E of the S&P 500 is about 18.68: http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html Market cap divided by P/E gives earnings, by definition, so the total profit accrued by publicly-traded companies is roughly $1T. Similar math done on the Wilshire 5000 index gave the same result. So as a very rough ballpark estimate, the total value-add by privately-traded companies is roughly 5x that of publicly-traded companies. It would likely be hard to find similar figures for 150 years ago, both because you can't just Google up 150-year-old data, and because 150 years ago the NYSE operated out of coffeehouses and the ticker symbol hadn't yet been invented.
      - adventured 12y ago
        Just a small correction. US GDP is closer to $17 trillion. Going by the IMF and World Bank.

easong 12y ago

All of his comments are rants against women/minorities (including admitting not hiring a female programmer because her resume had too many mentions of "women") and complaints about google banning his adsense account for fraud. I'm sympathetic to the "faceless shareholders are poisonous" argument as well, but...yeah. It's hard to differentiate neoreactionaries from trolls.

adsenseclient 12y ago
If you do not like an argument, factually refute it, rather than labelling its author. Otherwise your ad hominem style looks too much like Lenin's or Mao's
- easong 12y ago
  My intent wasn't to refute your argument (I can't imagine engaging here would be a productive use of time for any party) - I was just adding a bit of context to the above comment. Cheers!