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1776 > 1984
The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.
The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide
Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled
When the economy crashed, the Zippys were saying that it was Detroit's fault for not making more fuel efficient cars, because that's what people wanted. We knew that was bull$#@! but that didn't stop them from chanting it. The Volt was paraded around as the technology of the future. Every time we posted a chart showing that the sales were sucky even with the rebates and subsidies we were told it was misleading.
Yes it's true the sales of sedans are really really down, but that's because of the insane fuel economy rules as well as the safety fatwas that dictate that all of them look practically now. We are no longer allowed to buy an inexpensive entry level pony car, because the standards imposed on us from above will make them cost as much as a damned truck.
In just a few years, there will be a gas crisis and the demand for small vehicles will surge but the Zippys will insist we need more public transportation.
I bet they were. They spend money on researching safety, and then lobby for the legislation to ensure that everybody has to adhere to the same standards. Keeping the playing field level, as it were. Creating entry barriers. They don't want those little $4000 cars available in this market.
The only time I heard of the effort failing was in the 80's, when GM pushed hard for daytime running lights. They lobbied hard to make those mandatory. Heck, for a couple months the news was filled with stories about how much safer we would all be if only our cars had daytime running lights.
Maybe I am wrong, but did you hear any stories about legislative pushback to the safety and fuel standards imposed?
"Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul
"We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book
Couple that with the fact that the people working on these programs almost always come from the industry they're regulating. Just in the past 6 months at least 1 of the Big 3 immediately issued statements pushing back against Trump's efforts to repeal the CAFE standards
https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...mpanies-2017-3
But automakers weren't pleased with what some termed a "short circuiting" of the review process. Ford CEO Mark Fields was particularly vocal. Fields said that it was important for the government to consider automakers' data and have an open discussion about whether it makes sense to stick to the CAFE timetable. Specifically, Fields wants the government to take into account the profitable surge in SUV and pickup truck sales, which have led the US market to record highs.
Sales of gas-electric hybrid vehicles, meanwhile, have been declining. And electric cars have largely disappointed, with sales only amounting to 1% on the global market. Carmakers haven't abandoned these vehicles, but from their perspective, they would prefer to modify the CAFE timetable so that they can sell as many trucks and SUVs as possible before the arrival of a downturn.
I know why you don't know this... it's because you don't work in IT.
To offer just my favorite example:
Mankind has been charging interest on loans for thousands of years.
Mankind has been calculating interest on loans with computers since the 1950s.
P=RI. We all learned it in high school. It's a simple arithmetic problem.
It isn't even in the same galaxy cluster as the problem of having a car drive itself.
It is something we've been doing with computers for almost 80 years, and IT STILL GETS $#@!ED UP MILLIONS OF TIMES EVERY SINGLE DAY.
My youngest kid is going to be learning to drive about the same time a critical mass of these predetermined killing machines are on the road.
You and I both know the auto corporations are going to be made legally impervious to lawsuits. Well, if your self-driving car kills my boy, that means I have nobody to come after but YOU, and buddy, I am NOT backing down. Because I can see it coming, whether you choose to or not.
There are no crimes against people.
There are only crimes against the state.
And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.
If you think about it , the avg amount of vehicles being sold ea yr is good for such a stagnant economy and the high avg price of the product . US GDP , not adjusted for any inflation from the years 2000 to 2017 hit 5 or 6 percent just five times ( 2000 and 2003 - 2006 ) . Since 1988 growth has only hit 6 1/2 percent once ( 1999 ) . Basically it appears our economy is driven by people buying things they should not . Only 6 in 10 Americans work , half of those pay no Fed tax . Three people in 10 carry it while they spend a trillion more ea yr than they take in . Avg new pickup price being sold in the US is 48K , or twice what it was a decade ago , everybody earning twice as many FRN's ? No.
Last edited by oyarde; 11-27-2018 at 03:43 PM.
Do something Danke
Just at the end of the press conference, the president himself weighed in on Twitter to discuss the GM layoffs, and suggested that the company may see its subsidies for electric car production revoked. White House officials had indicated during the press conference that punishments may come for the auto maker over its thousands of layoffs.
"Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland. Nothing being closed in Mexico & China. The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars. General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) - don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!" Mr Trump tweeted.
More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-hou...184600859.html
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
We need more tariffs.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
It is good when the government tells private industries how they should conduct their businesses.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Gulag Chief: "Article 58-1a, twenty five years... What did you get it for?"
Gulag Prisoner: "For nothing at all."
Gulag Chief: "You're lying... The sentence for nothing at all is 10 years"
The best form of Constitutional taxation, it can also be used to compensate for foreign subsidies and tariffs designed to destroy our economy and subject us to world government.
No, it is taxation or compensating for foreign trade attacks.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Tariffs are subsidies for protected industries. Same as tax breaks are.
Are tariffs the best form of taxation? No- they are a more hidden form of taxation. Taxes should be visible and felt.
If you don't like taxes and want smaller government, that is the worst way to go about it. Why? People don't even realize the taxes they are paying because they are hidden in the higher prices they pay for goods and the lower wages they receive. Out of sight, out of mind. They don't worry about them. Now if you have taxes they can see- like income taxes where they have to regularly come up with the money they have to pay- that they are more likely to complain about. (will they do something about is another question). Now for this to work best towards reducing spending, you need a strong link between spending and taxes. But politicians have figured out a way around that- borrowing. Somebody else will get to pay for it- you won't and you will get the benefit. Sounds great, right?
So what about if they had to pay right now for what they spend right now? If they increase spending, they are required to notify the taxpayers how much more they are going to have to come up to pay for this or that new program. Direct cause and effect linkage. Now people may not want to add that new program or be against expanding that existing one. If you want that ten percent increase in Social Security payments this year, you are going to have to come up with another $500 say in taxes at the end of the year. Do you want to pay those higher taxes? Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
Tariffs completely removes any link between spending and what the residents of the country pay for that spending. There is zero incentive to care how much is spent since they have no clue that this is why their lettuce now costs $2 a head instead of $1 last year.
Last edited by Zippyjuan; 11-27-2018 at 05:53 PM.
You assume an ideal world where foreign countries don't make trade war on us, you pretend that there is no domestic production, you pretend that people are aware of what they pay in income tax, you pretend that people aren't aware of tariffs when history shows that they are.................................
Somehow spending was limited and people seceded over taxation when we had tariffs, on top of that people can avoid tariffs and are encouraged to produce instead of being discouraged from doing so.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
How much of the price of a new car is added due to tariffs? How much on that can of soda? Can you say how much tariffs effect the price of any specific item? Yet you do know how much the sales tax is going to cost you. Same net effect. The tariff amount is hidden- the tax isn't.
If you want to avoid an item with tariffs, how do you know which items have tariffs and which do not? You can't make a free choice to avoid them if you have no idea where they are.
Last edited by Zippyjuan; 11-27-2018 at 06:03 PM.
The only reason people are less aware of the costs of tariffs is that the US has had hardly any for longer than anyone can remember and production has been globalized, yet people are still aware of the costs of tariffs because the affected companies make sure people hear about the effects, they even exaggerate them.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
There are other ways of restricting trade and subsidizing exports and average tariff numbers ignore which products are targeted to manipulate the trade balance.
Low spending and taxes of any kind is best but tariffs are one of the best forms of taxation and the income tax is one of the worst.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
Why are tariffs the best form of taxation? Is that just some cliche you heard someplace? Because people have no idea they are paying the taxes? Is it the illusion that foreign companies are paying them and not us? "No- we aren't taxing you! China is going to pay for the tariffs." Trump claimed. (We are the ones actually paying them- with higher prices, lower wages, and fewer jobs).
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...924-story.html
If hiding taxes is the goal, yes, they are the best.At an event earlier that day, Trump talked about the trade negotiations with Mexico and Canada, then said, “China is now paying us billions of dollars in tariffs, and hopefully we’ll be able to work something out.” That’s exactly backward. The tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese goods are paid by the businesses and consumers in this country that buy them.
In other words, the tariffs are a tax on our people, not theirs. The pain ultimately is borne by U.S. consumers, as businesses pass along the tariffs they pay on the Chinese components and metals they buy. Alternatively, when businesses shift to higher-priced U.S.-made components and metals to avoid the tariffs, their costs go up, and their prices follow.
ImI sure that there's a statist solution for this. @Swordsmyth ?
Tariffs are one of the best forms of taxation because they penalize consumption instead of production and because the consumer can avoid them by either buying American or saving the money, they are better than a sales tax because they have beneficial side effects that protect strategic industries so that the UScan't be subjected to world government.
Who is paying the tariff again?
The Chinese lower their prices/increase subsidies to their exporters to try and keep the market share and the rising dollar also helps.President Donald Trump is succeeding in making China pay most of the cost of his trade war.That’s the conclusion of a new paper from EconPol Europe, a network of researchers in the European Union. U.S. companies and consumers will only pay 4.5 percent more after the nation imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and the other 20.5 percent toll will fall on Chinese producers, according to authors Benedikt Zoller-Rydzek and Gabriel Felbermayr.
According to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr, the tariffs will do what Trump has longed for: They will cut American imports of affected Chinese goods by more than a third, and lower the bilateral trade deficit by 17 percent.
The Trump administration selected products with the highest “price elasticity,” or high availability of substitutes, according to Zoller-Rydzek and Felbermayr. The Chinese products hit by Trump’s tariffs can mostly be replaced by other goods, forcing exporters to cut selling prices to keep buyers.
“Through its strategic choice of Chinese products, the U.S. government was not only able to minimize the negative effects on U.S. consumers and firms, but also to create substantial net welfare gains in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote.
The U.S. is due to raise duties on the largest $200 billion tranche of goods to 25 percent from 10 percent on Jan. 1. In retaliation, China has slapped tariffs on $110 billion in imports from the U.S. and effectively shut off its purchase of key American agricultural exports including soybeans.
With the economic costs shifted to China, the U.S. levies will lead to a $18.4 billion net gain for the American government, the researchers wrote.
More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china...134813450.html
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert Heinlein
Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler
Groucho Marx
I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.
Linus, from the Peanuts comic
You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith
Alexis de Torqueville
Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it
A Zero Hedge comment
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