"Patriotic millionaires" call for their tax cuts to expire

[Shadow Wolf]

I presume that you're not talking about just bankers, but rather about all such executives. I've never met a roofer who works as hard as Mrs Rev.
Sure, she gets no blisters working a 60 hour week, but she must juggle multiple projects, give performance reviews, fire people, etc, etc, often
without enuf time to even stop for lunch. I know many roofers, & their work is nothing worse than the manual labor I do for fun. Physical labor
is merely one type of work, one which many people prefer. Moreover, rewards should not be based upon how much one thinks one suffers relative
to another. You generally gotta do something of higher relative value to get the extra bucks.

Ripping shingles off a roof, laying paper, getting new shingles on the roof, laying those, and then cleaning the mess up is indeed much harder than giving performance reviews or firing someone. Sure there is some stress to it, and firing people can be difficult to do, but it is no where close to being as hard removing shingles from a roof. Even when it's easy, it is still a very hard and labor intensive job.
True that there should be more involved in wages than just how physically demanding a job is, but there is something very wrong when there are roofing companies here that only pay minimum wage. Now of course they can get away with this because people will work for it because it's all there is, but working yourself to the bones from sun rise to sun set and not making a livable wage is just wrong.

 

[Revoltingest]

Ripping shingles off a roof, laying paper, getting new shingles on the roof, laying those, and then cleaning the mess up is indeed much harder than giving performance reviews or firing someone.

Been there & done both. Roofing is a piece of cake by comparison. Of course, tis personal preference, rather than some absolute.
Roofers who hate their work should apply for office jobs. They're welcome to rise thru the ranks & see what that is like.

 

[Magic Man]

That wraps it up in a nut shell. When I grew up, there was no air conditioning, cable TV, internet, or cell phones. We had only one car in the drive way and my father made good money with a union scale job he worked 36 years.

He retired when he was 55 because he saved and invested. He is in his 80's now and still plays golf every day.

Matt thinks you should be able to work stupid and still live a comfortable life.

I'm telling you, you young whipper snappers would have starved if you where born a 100 years ago.

Did I mention that we had to walk to school in the snow uphill both ways?

Did you even read what I said? I didn't say you should be able to work stupid. I said you shouldn't be able to work hard and live a comfortable life. That's to distinguish between working hard and working hard and smart. Generally to get wealthy you have to work smart and hard, and that's the way it should be. But you should be able to live comfortably and retire before you go into a nursing home and if you just work hard, like your father did.

I know you like to throw in all kinds of irrelevant details like how much simpler things were back when you were a kid, but please keep them to yourself until they're relevant. These days, having cable and internet are normal parts of middle class life.

 

[Reverend Rick]

working yourself to the bones from sun rise to sun set and not making a livable wage is just wrong.

I gotta agree with you there. People pay good money to get their roofs fixed, the workers deserve their fair share.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

These days, having cable and internet are normal parts of middle class life.

Today having internet is considered a very important and vital education tool. If I didn't have it, I would have to drive into town several times to go to the school to use theirs. In which doing that would end up costing alot of money after I pay for all the gas. Cable is still a luxury, although still very important for education, but internet is almost to the point of a basic necessity as it is needed for school, applying for jobs, checking emails, and so on.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I gotta agree with you there. People pay good money to get their roofs fixed, the workers deserve their fair share.

That is how I feel about any job. Roofing without question is the hardest job I have done, and the second best paying job I have done. When I was working at Dollar General it really sucked knowing that I was lifting cases ranging from a few ounces up to 70 pounds several hundred times a night, for 10 to 11, sometimes 12 hours, and I was making the same amount of those who were filling plastic totes with individual picks of shampoo, deodorant, shaving cream, and boxes of candy.
And with management wanting more productivity with fewer people and no wage increases makes things very frustrating. It's like the one inventory company I was a supervisor for. They were expecting very high hourly productivity from people, often new averages that were above the expected rates for the fastest counters, and yet a few people where cut down by over $20 dollars an hour, and most of those who had been with the company for many years lost over $10 dollars an hour. Not that many people quit over it, because it was quit over principle and have no job, or deal with because there are no other jobs. However it did add quite a few people to the list of those getting food stamps. Which shows there is an amount of corporate responsibility. The company was actually making more money, with large pay cuts, making inventories take less time which means even less wages, and the company was picking up some new accounts and some accounts that had been previously lost. But yet my boss, who I feel very sorry for because it's nothing for him to put in over 70 hours a week when travel is considered, and he lost custody of his grand daughter because his boss didn't let him go to court, and yet he makes $30,000 a year on salary. And his time away from home is comparable to a truckers, and he probably knows the roads in this state and the surrounding better than most truckers.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Your ignoring the fact that the top 1% did not spend every dime they made on personal expenditures. They took risks. They worked harder and longer than anyone else.

I call BS on the highlighted phrase.

The 40-60% range folks went home on time, took the weekend off and spent time with their family. They failed to save and invest for the future. Many lived beyond their means and incurring a large amount of debt along the way.

Living paycheck to paycheck like cattle in the field awaiting the farmer to give them their next meal.

Not everyone who goes into business becomes rich. Many risk it all and lose everything.

We don't need to pay more taxes, the Federal Government needs to SPEND LESS.

The Government IS THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION.

Revoltinjest said it best. We take away money from productive people and give it to unproductive people. Thats rewarding mediocrity and penalising success.

Christ, man, do you still believe in a 100% correlation between good, heard work, and money received? Has not the economy of the last two years shown just how false that belief is?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Christ, man, do you still believe in a 100% correlation between good, heard work, and money received? Has not the economy of the last two years shown just how false that belief is?

And lets not forget about they executives who wanted bailout money to go on vacation.

 

[Revoltingest]

And lets not forget about they executives who wanted bailout money to go on vacation.

Ugh! Don't remind me. An intelligent person can't take a dollar from Peter, give it to Paul, & claim he just injected a dollar into the economy. I'm sure vacations were a teensy fraction of bail-out money. The real problem is the amount of money given them, which is taken from someone else, & reduces their spending. Even if this money is taken by printing fiat currency (rather than by taxation), it's still taken from everyone whose money is reduced in value thru dilution. Also, we shouldn't send the message that if you fail, Uncle Sam will make someone else pay for your mistakes. This has terrible long term repercussions for business stability & corrupting influences between business & gov't.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Also, we shouldn't send the message that if you fail, Uncle Sam will make someone else pay for your mistakes. This has terrible long term repercussions for business stability & corrupting influences between business & gov't.

There were legitimate needs though. Had the auto-industry bailouts not happened, Indiana would have been devastated if Chrysler, Delphi, and GM went under, since all three of them have factories here. But at least they are all having to pay the money back, which I think GM already has. Actually I don't even want to think about what would have happened here if the auto industry would have collapsed.

 

[Revoltingest]

There were legitimate needs though. Had the auto-industry bailouts not happened, Indiana would have been devastated if Chrysler, Delphi, and GM went under, since all three of them have factories here. But at least they are all having to pay the money back, which I think GM already has. Actually I don't even want to think about what would have happened here if the auto industry would have collapsed.

GM hasn't paid the money back. The gov't lost money on their IPO. But Ford might be doing even better if they didn't have to compete with Government Motors. Still, I can see some use in bailing out major industries.....I don't favor it, but there is some good in it. I can't say the same for banks. In their case, the assets (loans receivable) would not be lost, but rather purchased by new owners at deep discount. The original investors would lose, but that was their risk. As things happened, we lost since we had to use our money to prop up the failed businesses. Financing bail-outs by taxation & fiat currency is hurting us now. Dilution of our currency is driving other countries away from dollars, eg, Russia & China.

 

[Reverend Rick]

I'm not opposed to bailouts when recipients pay the money back with interest. I'm glad our auto industry is doing better. Our National security would be at risk if we did not have any manufacturing plants in the U.S.A.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm not opposed to bailouts when recipients pay the money back with interest. I'm glad our auto industry is doing better. Our National security would be at risk if we did not have any manufacturing plants in the U.S.A.

I do worry about setting up a system of "privatized profits" and "socialized losses". If the government is going to shoulder some of the risk by being the auto industry's (or anyone else's) "rainy day" fund, then I think it's only fair that the goverment receive a commensurate share of the returns when things go well.

Edit: or, at the very least, if an industry's behaviour can expose the government to financial risk, then I think that it's appropriate for the government to manage that exposure through regulation.

 

[Revoltingest]

I do worry about setting up a system of "privatized profits" and "socialized losses". If the government is going to shoulder some of the risk by being the auto industry's (or anyone else's) "rainy day" fund, then I think it's only fair that the goverment receive a commensurate share of the returns when things go well.

Edit: or, at the very least, if an industry's behaviour can expose the government to financial risk, then I think that it's appropriate for the government to manage that exposure through regulation.

All excellent reasons for gov't to get out of the bail-out business.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

There were legitimate needs though. Had the auto-industry bailouts not happened, Indiana would have been devastated if Chrysler, Delphi, and GM went under, since all three of them have factories here. But at least they are all having to pay the money back, which I think GM already has. Actually I don't even want to think about what would have happened here if the auto industry would have collapsed.

Exactly. Given the circumstances, the decision to bail out GM and Chrysler was seen as the lesser of two evils. It sucked, but losing tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, right in the middle of a catastrophic downturn, would have literally sucked more.

GM hasn't paid the money back. The gov't lost money on their IPO. But Ford might be doing even better if they didn't have to compete with Government Motors. Still, I can see some use in bailing out major industries.....I don't favor it, but there is some good in it. I can't say the same for banks. In their case, the assets (loans receivable) would not be lost, but rather purchased by new owners at deep discount. The original investors would lose, but that was their risk. As things happened, we lost since we had to use our money to prop up the failed businesses. Financing bail-outs by taxation & fiat currency is hurting us now. Dilution of our currency is driving other countries away from dollars, eg, Russia & China.

You mean, as of NOW GM hasn't paid the money back. Look at TARP, for example, which has mostly been paid back and will likely cost taxpayers only a few billion dollars, as opposed to hundreds of billions. There's still time. ETA: Actually, by some standards, GM HAS repaid the loan plus the interest.

 

[Reverend Rick]

The stimulus bill would have worked that way too if it actually created jobs and people actually sent the government tax money. The thing is, government should not be an employer, they do not look at the bottom line like business does.

The stimulus package would have been better spent on giving every American tax payer a check.

It would have been more fair too. These are the people who are going to have to pay for this all anyway.

 

[Smoke]

The stimulus package would have been better spent on giving every American tax payer a check.

I'm not sure about that. I think it would have worked better, and been more popular, if it had been tied to stringent conditions about how the money was to be used, and if the government had required the elimination of bonuses for the sons of ******* who drove the economy into the ground in the first place.

 

[Revoltingest]

You mean, as of NOW GM hasn't paid the money back.

Yes, that's what I said.

Look at TARP, for example, which has mostly been paid back and will likely cost taxpayers only a few billion dollars, as opposed to hundreds of billions. There's still time. ETA: Actually, by some standards, GM HAS repaid the loan plus the interest.

Mostly paid back is less than fully paid back. Source for the GM repayment plus interest, please?

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Yes, that's what I said.


Mostly paid back is less than fully paid back. Source for the GM repayment plus interest, please?

Sure: General Motors Repays Bailout Loans Early - DailyFinance

 

[Revoltingest]

Sure: General Motors Repays Bailout Loans Early - DailyFinance

Your article is dated 4.21.10.
Contrast it's rosy predictions with this 11.29.01 Detroit News article.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20101129/AUTO01/11290397/Estimated-government-loss-dips-to-$19B-in-auto-bailout <-- Link won't work for some reason.
The CBO now predicts a $17 billion loss for GM.
The taxpayer appears to still be taking a bath.