Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Sunday, May 06, 2007
This blog o' mine mostly covers politics, with some baby pictures gratuitously thrown in, but one of the big passions of my life is football; that is soccer to you Americans, Canadians, and Australians. Today, Chelsea FC drew at Arsenal 1-1 guaranteeing the league to Manchester United.
What intrigues me about the race this year is how it parallels events going on in the business world. Manchester United used to be the big boy on the block. They had Beckham, Scholes, Gary & Phil Neville, all players who were developed under their academy system. However, they augmented this with big cash payouts to players from around the world, and through their size they crushed the competition.
That is until Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea and started spending money that made Manchester United's payouts seem dainty in comparison. After a few years, Chelsea's all stars dominated, until now. This season, they signed top Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko, and German captain Michael Ballack for ridiculous amounts of money. €45 million transfer fee for Shevchenko alone. Ballack came over on a free transfer, but at a high salary.
They lost the league this year all the same. With a strong economic regulatory process in place, the same thing happens to our business sphere. Woolworth gets replaced by K-Mart, Wal-Mart passes them by, and now Wal-Mart is starting to see flattening sales for one example.
Capitalism is about picking winners and losers after all. I just wish that our oil industry would get that way. It would be nice to have an Exxon, or a Shell post a losing quarter because of the cutthroat competition. But when they all are making record profits, it doesn't do consumers very much good. The cost of getting into the business is so large, that there is no Jet Blue or Southwest, to give an equivalent in a different industry, that can force these companies to slash prices, and run at a lower profit margin in order to compete with their lean and mean competitors. So prices go up.
Here's to Bolton, Everton, Newcastle, or Reading winning the Premier League next year. It would be an inspiration to all of us who root for the underdog.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Newt Gingrich has a scare article out at Human Events about how much those "liberal taxers" are planning on raising YOUR taxes. To do this, he uses funny numbers to lie to anybody stupid enough to not understand logic and math.
You Know You're Going to Pay More Under the Liberal Tax Increase When ...
... You're a family of four earning $60,000 a year: Your income-tax bill will rise 61% in 2011, from $3,030 to $4,893.
... You're an elderly couple earning $40,000 a year: Your taxes will go up by 156% in 2011, from $583 to $1,489.
... You're a woman: You could be one of the 83 million American women who could see their taxes rise by an average of $2,068.
... You're married: You could be one of the 48 million married couples who will pay an average of $2,899 more under the liberal tax increase.
... You have kids: 42 million families with children will pay an average of $2,181 more in taxes.
... You're a small-business owner: 26 million small-business owners will get a tax bill for an average of $3,960 more than before.
Which one are you?
First let me get to the easiest part. Averages are a funny thing. Let's say Bill Gates' taxes get raised $500,000,000 a year. 4,000,000 people get a tax break of $100 a year. On average, everybody's taxes went up $25. It is an outrage! Whenever a Republican throws an average tax rate figure at you, know that this is what they are doing. Average means it doesn't really affect you greatly if you are working class so we want to fool you into fighting a tax break for our corporate masters who are working against your interests. We think you are dumb enough to go along with it.
If democrats were really going to hit Joe Six Pack who has 3 kids with a tax hike of $3,500, the Republicans would scream about it from the roof tops with those specific numbers. When they start using averages, it means that taxes on the super wealthy are rising, and in order to make people unaffected by it outraged, they average Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, and Oprah in with you who aren't getting taxed, as an average so you get offended by those people messing with your paycheck. For all you know, you could be getting a tax break. Newt would never tell you that.
Secondly, projecting numbers way out into the future is typically pointless because things change. Whatever the democrats plan today, or Bush planned yesterday can be quickly countermanded by facts on the ground, or changes in leadership. Bush submits proposals that will do certain things by 2012 in his mind. Yeah, and I plan on my car that flies in 2012 too.
The woman thing really cracks me up. The only thing women are good for in Newt's mind are blowjobs and divorcing. 83 million women might see their taxes go up ON AVERAGE $2,068. Ok, now remember that Oprah, Martha Stewart, Venus Williams, and Sandra Bullock are included in this average. Newt is hoping that you can not tell the difference between throwing a bunch of numbers together and dividing them, and what somebody at the say 50th percentile of income would be paying in taxes.
Newt Gingrich thinks you all are stupid. Seriously. The numbers are nothing like he suggests. However, there is a philosophical school that is opposed to taxes on the wealthy. It can be argued on the grounds of trickle down economics. Newt isn't making that argument though. He is trying to deceive. In other words, he is an asshole.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Today, the Conservapedia honors us with an economics lecture by world renowned economist Andy Schlafly. He's Phyllis Schlafly's kid who isn't the one whom Ann Coulter would call "a faggot". He is well qualified to teach economics because he is a lawyer who specializes in medical malpractice cases accusing doctors of creating cancer through abortion.
Schlafly also is the legal counsel for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a right wing medical organziation that opposes manditory vaccines, opposes HIPPA regulations, and filed a brief defending Rush Limbaugh for his hillbilly heroin usage. I am ready to learn from the economic master now!
Why should we spend a semester learning economics? Why is it important? And what is economics, anyway?
We all need goods and services. The goods that are essential include food, clothes, cars, and books. The services that we need include help by doctors, dentists, teachers, lawyers and barbers.
The Roman Empire actually collapsed due to the lack of the essential goods known as cars. Food, clothing, and shelter was the old standard. Now you don't need shelter so much, just some books, and your car. Hey the car can double as shelter in a pinch! If you get bored, read a book.
Economics is basic to our freedom, and is very influential in determining who we elect. Countries that lack economic freedom often lack religious freedom. If we lack rights in deciding what career to go into, then we will lack rights of worship also.
How we buy and sell things is almost as important as which goods we choose. Since nearly the beginning of the world, something called “money” has been the medium for buying and selling goods and services. The “money” itself has only the value that people assign to it. It can be made of a worthless material, such as green paper.
Ok, I need to trade my rubles in for some freedom money. I want the worthless green paper, not that Canadian funny stuff.
Money is, in many ways, a form of communication. Donating money to a political candidate or a charity makes a statement. Buying expensive clothes, a luxury car, or a certain houses is like free speech. We often judge the value of something by looking at its price. We expect a car that costs $30,000 to have higher quality than a car that costs $15,000. We don’t even have to look at the two cars to have a high probability of being correct in that conclusion. Sometimes the price can be misleading, of course. But often it is a good indicator.
That $250,000 donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a statement. It's a statement that you believe in irony. It's my free speech rights to raze down a forest and build a mega mansion on Spotted Owl breeding grounds. If you don't like it, you are a communist who hates free speech. Go back to
Freedom depends on the free exchange of money. Communism and other totalitarian systems consist of government control over how money is earned, saved and spent. Loss of this freedom inevitably results in the loss of freedoms of religion and speech too.
If we tax the wealthy, that means that Karl Marx will take your bibles away, and put you in a Charles Darwin re-education camp where you are required to practice homosexuality. Do you want that for your kids?
Finally, there is the concept of “redistribution”. That is the concept that government should try to even out the wealth in society, taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. The process inevitably causes a loss in total societal wealth. Some visualize redistribution as a leaky bucket taking water from one pool and putting it into another, with water leaking out during the transfer. The leak in the bucket corresponds to the direct and indirect costs of the transfer, including salaries for people to do the transfer and disincentives to those affected by it.
These concepts will become clearer for you as the course progresses.
If we redistributed wealth from Paris Hilton, and say open up a community center for single working moms to place their kids, our economy would suffer. When Paris Hilton goes to Europe, and spends $5,000 on a pair of italian shoes, spends $3,500 a night on the luxury suite at a hotel in Milan, she might tip the bellboy $20. He could theoretically buy Paris Hilton's sex tapes off the internet, which I think is owned by some guy in America. You see????
It's true. I can hardly wait for the "advanced" economics lesson from Professor Schlafly. The invisible hand apparently made the people in Jamestown stop being lazy, and ignoring it caused Stalin to starve people in Russia. But, that is for the next lecture. There is enough here to digest for one day.
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