shooter242
June 11, 2012 at 6:54 am

I’d like to encourage more trollery on left wing sites. Specifically pushback on common memes such as identified by Jonah Goldberg as unchallenged cliches. It can actually work, and it can actually change the course of debate.

For instance, I always challenge “the rich take too much of the pie” meme. There is no pie, no one decides who gets what, and the “pie” is a measure of contributions to a total. Ergo the rich don’t take they contribute. It’s been gratifyingly effective.

Try it you’ll like it. Don’t curse and keep the personal insults to a bare minimum, don’t allow moving goal posts or distractions. Ignore trollish responders, and be four times more civil. They hate that.

http://moelane.com/2012/06/09/troll-hunting-101/

oh, thanks for the morning laugh.......

Shooter - actually there's also another thing that creates jobs - not filibustering and voting against job-creation legislation. The American Jobs Act - scored by economists to be likely to create over a million jobs - blocked by Republicans - and it goes on and on.

As for the O'Keefe link - you've got to be kidding. He is as dishonest and manipulative as they come - not a shred of credibility.

Yes, Shooter, your cold calculating intellect did leave me with a chuckle too this morning!

Klink you idiot, demand is what creates jobs! -Kevo

And the two trillion dollars in profits, record-breaking profits that businesses are sitting on today, 3.5 years into the Obama administration, isn't profit enough to generate jobs?

Always nice to see the #1 drooling wingnut troll out doing his daily celebration of ignorance and stupidity and demonstrating to those of us with brains just how stupid you have to be to flunk the IQ test low enough to be one of you morons.

For those wondering why profits are staying on the sidelines I'll cite the Boeing experience in South Carolina. They invested billions, only to have the NLRB rule their investment illegal because of a union contract. (They lose all that money) Boeing prevailed, but every corporation knows they could be next.

The CEO of Coca Cola actually said it was easier to do business in China than the US. Meanwhile, Obama denigrates business owners. And you folks are surprised that business moves offshore?

The part that really surprises me is the resistance to oil and gas exploration. Welfare programs like this jobs bill aren't going to pass while we are struggling nationally. Do you really think it's a good idea to beg from China or print money to have people do busy work? Perhaps you should check out how the average citizen in Saudi Arabia lives before you turn your noses up at the offers of cold hard cash for our energy production.

But hey, some people would rather noble and poor than sacrifice their principles. Your choice.

Wrong, again, Mr. Mitty. Demand is why they're not investing.

The Main Problem With Jobs Growth Is Lack Of Demand, Not Taxes

Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem

Regulatory uncertainty not to blame for our jobs problem

Bruce Bartlett: Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs

Regulation | Economic Policy Institute

As far as it being difficult to do business in America, ..., NOPE. From the World Bank, the U.S. comes in 4th. Only Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand score higher

http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings

Oil and gas drilling. Not a disaster (unfortunately):

Drill, Baby, Drill Fails: Obama Presides Over Record Growth in Oil Rigs, Still Gets Blamed by GOP for High Oil Prices

Yes, oil production is booming under Obama. No, it hasn’t lowered gas prices.

1. The NLRB didn't "rule their investment illegal" they brought a suit at the request of a union for what looked like illegal behavior. Boeing only prevailed (something you don't do if a ruling is against you) only to the extent that they agreed to raise wages and expand jet production in the Washington plant.

2. The NLRB doesn't tend to bring cases it doesn't think it can win. That indicates that Boeing at least behaved in a way that the NLRB believed it could prove was illegal. Lesson to other companies? Don't do things the way Boeing did.

3. The CEO of Coca Cola is not the only company that thinks its easier to "do business" in China, so did several toy manufacturers that had to pull toys with lead paint off the shelves in the past few years.

4. Look at what happened to Boeing's profits since 2009.

5. Oil and gas exploration has increased under Obama.

6. If you start a business, you are accepting great risk. To assume that businesses are willing to back away and not stand a chance of making more profit because there is a slight risk that the NLRB will bring suit is not silly, its stupid. There is only one reason businesses are not hiring--demand.

What makes you say the "left is anti-profit"? AND, how about the "job creators" using some of those profits to create some jobs?

Shooter the troll was corrected on this before , as many here have just pointed out pretty much , he used that lame line before and it was pointed out how Boeing lost BILLIONS trying to out source their manufacturing else where , and ended up rebuilding everything back in america .....

why are conservative such chronic liars? and doing it knowing they are incorrect is just sociopathic , it is a shame america has to struggle with the insane so much , my theory is the @!$%#ing prison colonies of old , they shipped all the crazies here , the gop today

There's a weird kind of irony or symbolism in that O'Keefe story. Digging up dirt and having it fall back in the hole. Except for the fact that he never found any dirt in the first place, so my analogy sort of falls apart. But his operation is just as pathetically useless to society.

Maybe the analogy works better if you think of O'Keefe as the dirt. He crawls out of a hole, reality kicks him back in, rinse, repeat...

Yep if profit creates jobs, we should be at 0% unemployment by now. Heck, 90% of us should be working for oil companies.

Don't forget the drug cartels...

Steve, why the fascination with criminal enterprises? Are you anti-profit also?

My point, my obtuse trolling friend, is that opposing profitable, but anti-social, behavior isn't the same thing as being an anti-profit socialist.

It's just more poo flinging, Steve. If they don't get a semantic "win" on one thing, they fling more poo. A "win" occurs when they get the last word no matter how stupid it is.

Its because you and people like you are criminaly insane shooter

There's no such thing as an anti-profit socialist, anyway. Socialists and Social Democrats want growing economies, too. They just don't believe that social and economic justice are impediments to economic growth, and must be sacrificed in the name of profits. Just the opposite. I would go further and say that an economy is necessarily less healthy when social and economic justice are pushed aside. If anyone is going to be described as 'anti-profit', it should be the so-called 'conservatives' as their obsessive concern with a tiny, parasitic subclass is doing immense economic harm.

He didn't so much "miss" that point as he donned a fake moustache, sunglasses and trenchcoat and studiously avoided being anywhere in the vicinity of that point.

What he doesn't get, and, as a dogma-blind Republican cannot get, is the business is in the business of making profits, and, from the narrowly microeconomic standpoint businesses apply to their actions, moving labor cost toward zero is an easy way to increase profits, even if from a macroeconomic standpoint, doing so will ultimately result in less aggregate demand and thus less profit for everyone.

At least as conceptualized by some guys in Philedelphia in the eighteenth century who managed to free themselves, and the world, of the idea that governments are ordained by God for the benefit of a privileged few, that's why we have governments. Governments are instituted by people to promote the general welfare and the common good. And, at the most basic level, the purpose of government is protect the people who do the work from the inherently endless rapacity of the rich and, thereby, protect the rich, and the society as a whole, from the inevitable consequences of their rapacity.

Yet more otherwise rational progressives get their trajectories altered by the gravity well of a troll black hole.

Mike's point is the key one. US profits are very healthy. If US workers were getting the same share of GDP growth as they were in 1970, every worker in the US would have almost a $10,000 boost in salary.

I am not making this up. Here's the math:

• This Federal reserve graph shows that since 1970, the share of US GDP going to workers has declined from 53% to 44%. A reduction of 9%
• 9% of 2011 GDP is 1.35 trillion dollars
• There are 145.5 million employees in the US
• The 9% reduction in their salaries is $9278 per year.

The administration is focusing on education and populist messages about taxing the rich. Education is important to the US, but it is hardly key to growth- the fact is there is a global glut of highly educated workers (source). The key thing that is killing the US consumer economy is the fact that it has been starved of 1.35 trillion per year in purchasing power.

Restoring that purchasing power has a multiplier effect. Is it protectionist? I think not, because a strong case can be made to trading partners that they benefit just as much from strong US consumption.

So, Mr Messerly, you solution to competition is protectionism? Why do lefties always fall back on force to get their way?

More freedom for the slave master isn't the answer.

Let's get concrete. What would this sort of jobs proposal look like?

Ok, The Purchasing Power Restoration Act of 2013 would state:

Within a phase in period of 10 years, businesses must allocate to US employee payroll no less than 52 percent of their contribution to US GDP.

• "payroll" includes all forms of employee compensation
• US employees means workers living in the United states earning salaries up to $100k (say the lower bound of salaries of the top 5% wage earners).
• The 10 year Phase in period is necessary since many businesses have models based on offshored workers, and will require time for reconfiguration.
• 52 percent represents the median peak percentage between 1960 and 1974 as shown in the Federal reserve graph (If you can't find the link above, here is a more colorful way of illustrating it: link to "Jocularity in Romney World graphic)

Modifications/ Comments?

I think you can use the tax code to achieve a better result than a mandate. The business deduction for employee compensation including benefits could be 150% of the total, all executive compensation over a percentage of net profits would be taxed at a higher rate while the business deduction for same is limited to the percentage of net profits, no deductions for overseas operations and taxation of all foreign profits wherever located would be taxed and losses limited by no carryover of losses. I am sure I could come up with a lot more if I knew a lot more about the tax code.

The implementation is a tax. It's the company's choice whether the company observes the 52 percent cutoff or not. The US government tax is for any shortfall. This will motivate companies to use it or lose it. It's also the company's choice what jobs they create to grow their US payroll sufficiently. They might for example hire trolls.;-)

It seems to me that the 52% is an arbitrary figure based on an economy that was very different from today's economy. Also the GDP and the tax cannot be certain until the end of a given year which creates uncertainty in the business community and makes business planning difficult. Companies will not hire trolls because they are too short to be of any use other than passing out towels in bathrooms.

I think you are right for a different reason.

I am wrong to tie it to "GDP"/ market value of a produced item even though the bill could specify a method for calculating that market value in a timely way. The problem is that it does not necessarily restrict extraction of purchasing power greater than the fair share for a company, and that is the whole point, right? Consider a Chinese car company with dealerships in the US . Most of the market value for the car was created in China, even though they would be extracting the full dollar value of the car from the pool of US purchasing power.

If a company extracts X dollars of purchasing power from the US economy, they must pay back 52% X in the form of US payroll. Of course, the intent is not to injure the purchasing power of consumer economies of other countries, so any payroll paid into non US economies could be deducted from this total.

52% may well not be the correct balance point not just because we are talking market value of goods or services sold in the US. Because of the multiplier effect, the economy might do quite well with a lower percentage. That is something that an independent body akin to the federal reserve might decide and adjust depending on market conditions and particular trade balances at a particular time.

As I recall from one of the Christmas specials, the obstacle for employing large numbers of trolls concerns their tendency for excessive flatulence, not their size. Perhaps you were thinking of dwarves or elves.

Steve

Governments are instituted by people to promote the general welfare and the common good.

Exactly , the gop can not understand the concept that people do not want a corporation that is a detriment to their society , that sucks the life out of everything so a few people can profit , the New Englanders did not want to live under a kingship , like in Europe , that gave privileges and profits to the few , , conservatives have no idea how anti u s constitution they are

I think the maddowblog had a post on this, saying that most 200k people are self employed CPAs/ITfreelancers/professionals.

Without a clearer idea of what he does, I can't be sure, but he seems to be doing what financial arbitrageurs do, but in the labor market. If he's hooking up highly qualified people with better paying jobs and the new employer is paying, what's your problem? He would be decreasing the information deficit for the worker and driving up the median wage to what the job is actually worth to an honest employer. That's better than utilizing a deficit of information about inferior financial instruments to drive a housing bubble and tank the economy like the bankster arbitrageurs did.

Thinking more, is he working solely on the executive class and driving the VP/CxO salary and benefit bubble that we've seen since the '70s?

NOTE: In the first sentence of blue's post, the word "politics" should be "democracy". Please excuse my error.

More like 1981.

Umm... That's not Kool-Aid, Flavorade, or even lemonade, despite the color. They do tend to lap it up, though.