Quote: Original post by Goober King
LessBread for example is obviously well read and backs up his thoughts with data where as you claim victory by right of your own vanity. I am also confident that given enough evidence LessBread could be persuaded to chance his opinion on any matter.

Interesting. Ive been around here for years and years, and i never pass up an opportunity to argue with lessbread, but i couldnt come up with a single data point giving empirical basis to your confidence.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to agree with his positions, but i digress.

Well read, ill give him that.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by Goober King
LessBread for example is obviously well read and backs up his thoughts with data where as you claim victory by right of your own vanity. I am also confident that given enough evidence LessBread could be persuaded to chance his opinion on any matter.

Interesting. Ive been around here for years and years, and i never pass up an opportunity to argue with lessbread, but i couldnt come up with a single data point giving empirical basis to your confidence.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to agree with his positions, but i digress.

Well read, ill give him that.

Just so I'm clear, are you saying that Less doesn't back up arguments with data* or that Less can't be persuaded regardless of the amount of evidence?

*I've seen data dismissed so many times because of their source. So I'll leave it up to the reader to determine what they consider as data.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds

Quote: Yeah, blame it on Obama. Not the god damn retarded "let's get rid of regulation!" policies of the Bush administration that caused this mess. Yeah. Ok.

You tell me what gives investors confidence with proposals of increased marginal tax on successful business, capitol, dividend and even private funds?

p.s. - calm down, i know you're smarter than me but using curse words doesn't necessarily indicate that

You tell me what gives investors confidence when assholes like Madoff are out there robbing investors blind? Now that all Greenspan Funnymoney™ is gone, the Ponzi schemes are coming out of the woodwork.

You tell me what gives investors confidence when you can't even tell what your money will eventually be invested in. How many layers of crap is your fund hidden under? How many hands did all those bad mortgages get sliced up, repackaged, and passed through so that no one even knows what they're even investing in?


Investor confidence is tanking because for too long, "common knowledge" has shown that investing is a safe place for money. For far too long people have ignored that the market is just a sophisticated form of gambling, and now that people have been seriously burned by it, they're not investing anymore.

It's not the taxes that scare me from investing, it's being robbed that scares me. It's being lied to by these fund managers who claim to know what they're doing when all along they've just been skating by on the fact that the entire 90's and 00's economic growth was based on an ever-increasing supply of imaginary money.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
I'm not solely basing the recent economic troubles on this one particular tax, it's all the taxes and uncertainty that obama is bringing. In the past 5 weeks it has become clearly evident that obama's new policies are scaring investors and slowing the recovery process. True, obama did inherit a recession but it has become considerably worse with the introduction of the policies.

From election day until now, the DOW has dropped nearly 3000 points, with the steepest drop occuring just this past month.

There is hardly any doubt in my mind that America will see the fault in electing obama over the next 6 months. And when that day comes, I believe I will be the one saying "told you so".

I fully hope I don't have to say that as I'm 20 years old, and obama's future is my future. But this spending and taxing is out of control. If I were born in the year 0 A.D. and spent a million dollars every day for 2009 years, it would still not amount to the amount of spending in the stimulus bill.

I want my instant fix and I want it now!

Have you considered that the stock market might be tanking right along with the employment figures? Or that they might be tanking because the Obama administration hasn't faced up to the inevitability of nationalizing the banks? Your complaint reminds me of the yarn that since it's snowing there's no climate change. It took America five years to see their mistake in electing Bush, a year since reelecting him. The abysmal federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the levy breaks in New Orleans made it abundantly clear to the public that Bush was out to lunch. Love him or hate him, it's hard to imagine that Obama would have responded to calamities by sitting on his hands, or flying to Arizona to celebrate John McCain's birthday. And let's not forget Iraq, a preemptive war, a war of choice, a war that cost as much as the stimulus bill and will cost us another $2 trillion in time. You'd have to go back to 6500 BC and spend a million bucks a day to equal that. Many of us said "I told you so" on that one. Here's the difference though, for the borrow and spend associated with that war, we've gotten nothing for it. Worse, it's been a drain because we've gotten wounded soldiers and a reputation for torture from it. In contrast, with the tax and spend associated with the stimulus package and the new budget, we'll at least get new roads, bridges, schools and so on. The war was an investment in destruction. The stimulus is an investment in production. And we'll still have to pay for the Iraq war too.

You're 20 years old. Do you make more than $250k per year? If not, don't worry about tax increases.

At any rate, it sounds like you've gotten caught up in the Republican public relations plan targeting Obama. Check this out: Exposing The Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?. There's more at that site taking down the nascent anti-Obama astro-turf campaign.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
That is a good point. But it still doesn't justify taxing the industry. Sure people's money might make it back around to the economy, but the planned tax hikes on big business coupled with new federal taxes on the industry spell out layoffs. And this is all part of early term stimulus?

Not necessarily. You're forgetting that along with those tax hikes comes a provision to give tax breaks to companies that hire American workers. Obama has said that in many speeches. In other words, while they've jacked up taxes, they've provided a way to reduce the burden and put people back to work.

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
That is a good point. But it still doesn't justify taxing the industry. Sure people's money might make it back around to the economy, but the planned tax hikes on big business coupled with new federal taxes on the industry spell out layoffs. And this is all part of early term stimulus?

Not necessarily. You're forgetting that along with those tax hikes comes a provision to give tax breaks to companies that hire American workers. Obama has said that in many speeches. In other words, while they've jacked up taxes, they've provided a way to reduce the burden and put people back to work.

To a businessman, that's basically a tax hike regardless. Why should they hire Americans when they can hire slaves in Burma and Vietnam for 1/100th the cost?

There will be such chaos in the world when the 3rd world workers begin to fight for their rights.

Quote: Original post by Tha_HoodRat
I think they should raise ammo prices and tax the hell out of them. Imagine if a bullet cost $20 (street price), a full clip on a glock 21 or Beretta 92-F with 1 chambered would cost $360.

Yeah, that wouldn't increase illegal arms trafficking in the United States at all.

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by Goober King
LessBread for example is obviously well read and backs up his thoughts with data where as you claim victory by right of your own vanity. I am also confident that given enough evidence LessBread could be persuaded to chance his opinion on any matter.

Interesting. Ive been around here for years and years, and i never pass up an opportunity to argue with lessbread, but i couldnt come up with a single data point giving empirical basis to your confidence.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to agree with his positions, but i digress.

Well read, ill give him that.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to disagree with his positions...

Quote: Original post by LessBread

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by Goober King
LessBread for example is obviously well read and backs up his thoughts with data where as you claim victory by right of your own vanity. I am also confident that given enough evidence LessBread could be persuaded to chance his opinion on any matter.

Interesting. Ive been around here for years and years, and i never pass up an opportunity to argue with lessbread, but i couldnt come up with a single data point giving empirical basis to your confidence.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to agree with his positions, but i digress.

Well read, ill give him that.

One would be inclined to suspect that your opinion might be influenced by a predisposition to disagree with his positions...

As for the subjective parts, one would be wise to harbor such a suspicion. Nothing human is alien to me.

As for you changing your opinion: thats a matter within the realm of hard empiricism. Comprehensive analysis is out of scope for anyone with even anything resembling a life, but just one anecdotal datapoint clearly contrary to my experience would more than supply my daily dose of wonder.

Quote: Original post by Goober King
I am also confident that given enough evidence LessBread could be persuaded to chance his opinion on any matter.

Chance? That's a typo right? You mean "change" correct?

Any matter? I don't know about that. There are matters I'm not going to change my opinion on.