Pretty simple, really.
And yet. While mega corps (FANG et al) horde cash, and management & bankders gets their cheddar, Joe Average investors are getting screwed, and no one's freaking out.
2007 LA Times: "Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown."
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-donors19oct19-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_fi...
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/chinese-illegally-don...
I mean, you should be able to answer those questions, otherwise you've put yourself into a tautilogical little bubble ("There is nothing new/just fearmongering, so I don't need to pay attention to it. I didn't pay attention to it, so I didn't hear anything new". Return to step 1)
"The Russia stuff has always seemed like fear mongering to me. It’s a big scary enemy messing with our political system."
Are you saying that countries don't really mess with other countries political systems? Because they do it all the time (including and maybe especially the US).
This basically reads like you saying that "bad/scary news isn't real, because I've decided that bad/scary news sounds like 'fear mongering' and couldn't possibly affect me". I mean, war is a thing. People and countries do hostile things to each all the time, often disastrously. Reporting on this isn't fear mongering.
The interference that Russia has done is unprecedented in the modern era. There are dozens of election every year. Please provide some evidence of that extent of interfence happening "all the time".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Interference that Russia has done with its internet trolls is nothing compared to bombings and assassinations that US has been doing. If you look at South America you'd have to apply blacklist filter to see which countries US didn't mess with.
metawhataboutism: when hypocrisy is pointed out scream "whataboutism". It sounds like a fancy term and shuts down the other side pretty well.
It started when I noticed that the news barely covered the US bombings of hospitals and funerals overseas. There was very little coverage of the US supported war in Yemen where thousands of innocent civilians were being killed.
At some point CNN went crazy over MH370 and gave an uneventful search for the plane wall to wall coverage while US weapons killed people overseas.
I had to go to The Intercept to learn about drone killings in any real detail.
And then I remember in particular when Bernie Sanders had just had his largest rally yet, the PBS newshour failed to mention it while devoting 8 minutes to Donald Trumps twitter comments.
So when the media that hated Trump (a position I am not criticizing) started talking about allegations of Russian interference with the elections, I waited for the evidence. But after a couple of months of anonymous officials making this claim and that claim but no hard evidence in the matter, I tuned it out.
I’ve since stopped following mainstream news, so if they’ve come up with genuine evidence by now then I’m just out of the loop. It’s fair to say I’m uninformed here but I do recall that for some time at the beginning, no evidence was presented.
Lately I use my time to educate myself in other ways. I’m 10 hours in to PBS’s 18 hour documentary on the Vietnam war. I’ve never learned so much about that conflict. I’ve been watching some John Pilger documentaries on YouTube, and trying to understand why people all over the world still live in destitute poverty even in the outskirts of wealthy cities. I’m trying to understand my libertarian friends who say that broad social programs are unfair, while I see images of people with nothing dying from poisoned water or preventable disease. But I’m also trying to understand why socialism was unfair (John Pilgers documentary about Japan was enlightening there). I’m trying to find a way to care for the poor and give them more power without giving power to despotic governments that will siphon aid money into their personal accounts (as in the IMF funded nuclear power plant in the Philippines that was never finished, but poor local tax payers are still paying off). I’m also working on a week long robotics course to teach to some university students in Africa, and the associated robot I built as a teaching aid. I leave in less than a month and it’s been a busy time.
So when I see news that sounds like baseless claims about “The Russians” on channels that don’t cover the murder of children but do feast on images of a bare ocean where a missing airliner hasn’t been found, I just tune it out.
My life has improved since I stopped using Facebook and removed the normal political feeds from my reddit. I’ve been political my whole life and to this day I focus heavily on politics, but the information I want is scarcely carried on those normal news feeds.
Mueller laid out very specific evidence in publicly available indictments. It’s published on government website, you can read the whole thing for yourself.
Another indictment filed today:
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000161-bf68-da6b-ade9-fffc2...
The tone of your statement suggests you don't have any way to know the facts of the Russia investigation, or what to believe.
That's bullshit. Mueller is gathering the facts and hard evidence in a very methodical, professional manner, and laying them out in criminal indictments, citing the relevant facts and evidence. You don't need the "mainstream media" to be informed on this subject. There are now direct sources you can go to.
Obviously, not everything is out yet, there is more to come. But what Mueller has already produced is very enlightening.
And your "couple of months" quip rubbed me the wrong way, too. How long did you expect an investigation of this scope to take? Did you expect Mueller to publish every single fact and testimony as he received it? Questioning the people involved, without necessarily letting them know what you already know, is a good way to quickly find out who is being honest with you.
There’s lots happening in the world. The mainstream news media wants to focus on a few pet issues and I just don’t feel well informed when I listen to repeated hand wringing about the same subject. Today I’ve been spending most of my work day listening to the political debates in South Africa after their state of the union. It’s a fascinating subject and one that I feel comfortable assuming is not well covered by US news outlets.
You obviously care about the Russia investigation. Great! But you accuse me of being generally uninformed just because I don’t follow this issue. Please. I don’t care about every twist and turn of this investigation. If they can convict somebody great, but I don’t see the value in following all this when so much else is going on in the world.
I understand a certain degree of skepticism around the conclusions of national intelligence services, especially on topics directly related to government, but the fact that such services do not immediately release the information underlying their conclusions is not unusual even in cases that have the strongest support; about the only time they’ll publicly release detailed evidence is if action is being sought by some body like the UNSC, or to the extent necessary after the matter moves from intelligence to law enforcement to the courts.
> I’ve since stopped following mainstream news, so if they’ve come up with genuine evidence by now then I’m just out of the loop. It’s fair to say I’m uninformed here but I do recall that for some time at the beginning, no evidence was presented.
National security officials don't generally present the support behind their conclusions to the public, and even when it became a law enforcement case, the evidence is only sparingly provided before a trial. There are pretty good reasons news media does report on announced intelligence and law enforcement positions before those agencies provide detailed support; blaming the media for the underlying evidence not being immediately presented is, well, somewhat naive.
OTOH, since then, while still little evidence has been directly provided to the public (because criminal investigations are ongoing and investigators are reluctant to tip their hand), we do actually have both the confession of an attempted colluder and a pile of indictments (which are grand jury findings of evidence providing probable cause to believe particular persons committed particular crimes.)
There is the real possibility that if Russia didn't interfere in the Brexit referendum and the US election that alternative outcomes could've happened. Both decisions were down to single percentage points.
If Trump isn't elected then you have the possiblity of the US joining the TPP, taking a leadership role with the Paris climate change accord, no massively expensive tax cuts etc. Those are fundamental decisions that effect every single American.
Globalization has already done quite enough hollowing out and selling out our blue collar workers. We don't need the same with more vigor.
US placed sanctions on wealthy Russians through Magnitsky act, which they didn’t like, so Putin ran an intelligence operation to get someone elected more likely to overturn it. This is still about putting the interests of the wealthy first. They see each other as peers and allies regardless of nationality.
I really don't see how you wouldn't. "Russia" investigation I think includes not just the investigation itself but the insinuations and rumors around it. The time and money spent talking about it, writing about it and so on.
It started with the Russians hacked our elections idea. As in KGB agents in the bushes in Wisconsin with laptops twiddling bits on voting machines. Remember the Stein's recount. /r/politics was abuzz with everyone sure how it will be discovered and Trump will swap places with Hillary next Tuesday. https://patch.com/michigan/detroit/hillary-clinton-could-sti... except in the end it gave Trump 3 more votes.
Then it went to Trump colluded with Putin. And how at the G20 they were exchanging secret coded hand gestures between them: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/07/20/trump-appears...
Then Comey's hearing. People took the day off to watch Trump's collusion being exposed. /r/politics talked about him being impeached next Tuesday again. It turns out that Trump was mean to Comey and nothing else happened.
Then it was the piss "dossier". That surely would impeach him next Tuesday after it came out. Except that it didn't.
Notice how the goal post keeps moving every time and how it's always "next Tuesday" when the impeachment is coming. This is not unlike the doomsday cults where the day comes and then you'd think, finally the followers will see it was a scam and go home. But in a counter-intuitive way many stay and become even more zealous.
In the end some Russians were indicted because they were internet trolls. Half supported Trump while others supported BLM, Muslims for America, Bernie Sanders and Hillary. Even organized an anti-Trump protest in New York. I was invited and almost attended that one. It's sure good thing to catch those and worth a few weeks of reporting, but not a whole a year of hysteria? Didn't all the media companies, the blogs and the journalists who should have known better play into the Russians plan to destabilize and demoralize the country. It looks like they did. Did they "collude" as well perhaps? Are they secret agents, maybe? (/s)
The saddest part is really the opportunity cost. Some were working on fixing the DNC, there is effort in flipping some legislative seats in Congress with good results. But a lot more could have been done had the effort not been wasted on the "Russians".
Those rates have very clearly not impeded their exceptionally high standards of living.
> "Comparisons of corporate tax rates should focus on the measures that reflect what companies actually pay, not the top statutory rate. Proponents of slashing the corporate tax rate often note the U.S. statutory tax rate is the highest among developed countries. But many U.S. companies use an array of targeted tax breaks and loopholes to significantly lower the taxes they pay. These include tax subsidies for certain types of investments (such as in research and development) and for particular industries (such as oil and gas).
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that in 2016, while the corporate income tax raised $300 billion in revenues, targeted subsidies delivered to companies through the corporate tax code cost about $270 billion. As a result of these subsidies and other tax avoidance measures, many large U.S. companies pay very low rates. For example, Pfizer paid a rate of about 7.5 percent on its $12 billion in worldwide pre-tax income in 2014. Studies generally also find that U.S. companies’ tax rates vary widely by industry and type of investment."
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-corporat...
The former effective US corporate income tax rate, for all corporations, was higher than Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark's statutory rate.
The effective rate for the S&P 500 was higher than the statutory rate for Finland, Sweden, and comparable to Denmark. And that's for the elite of the elite of tax avoiding companies. eg:
"The average effective tax rate among S&P companies that had posted calendar fourth-quarter results as of Friday was 24.11 percent"
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/tax-cuts-sp-500-may-not-get-...
"The United States’ corporate tax ranks relatively high on all three measures [among the G20]. The U.S. has the highest statutory rate (39.1 percent), the third highest average effective tax rate (29 percent), and the fourth highest marginal effective tax rate (18.6 percent)."
https://taxfoundation.org/cbo-report-compares-us-corporate-t...
You can't use taxes paid as a percentage of revenue because it's meaningless. A retailer with a 3% profit margin would have a ~1% effective tax rate because 97% of their revenue goes to tax-deductible expenses.
But if you use taxes paid as a percentage of profit then you're not counting any of the tax avoidance, because the way international tax avoidance works is to shift profits to sister companies in other countries instead of the one with a high nominal tax rate.
FANG pays ~10% on income.
Our official capital gains is 20%; I have no idea what the effective rate is.
But I still regret attributing low wages solely to shifting tax burden. Labor glut is probably the biggest factor.
Though I do think automation will be biggest factor in the near future.
Healthcare is obviously dramatically expensive in the US, with per capita costs about twice that of the next highest spending nations. For most employed Americans, that ends up becoming a $5,000 to $10,000 'perk' in their compensation (which isn't counted in wage figures). If you make $50,000 at a full-time job (the median figure for full-time), you're liking getting a health insurance plan that is worth upwards of 10% of your salary.
Buffett likened healthcare costs to a monster that is eating the US economy. It's spot on. There's a trillion dollars per year there in excess costs, that if even half went into labor competition, would do wonders for giving wages a jolt at the median.
https://i.imgur.com/rNa2smF.gif
Which can be lined up with this chart, showing the extreme cost inflation in healthcare:
https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/8...
Not if Joe Average invested on FANG stock.
Argh.
Suppose you have a company with a business worth a billion dollars. The company makes $200 million in profits, so now they have a business worth a billion dollars and $200 million in cash, so now the total of the company's shares are worth $1.2 billion.
Suppose they have a million shares. When they make the money the price per share goes from $1000 to $1200. If they pay the dividend the share price goes back to $1000, but each shareholder now has a $1000 share and $200 in cash, so they still have $1200 in value.
If, instead of paying a dividend, they pay $200 million to buy back a sixth of their shares and each shareholder tenders a sixth of their shares in the buyback, then at the end of it for each original share the shareholders now have... wait for it... $1000 in shares and $200 in cash. Or, in particular, for every six shares they had they now have $6000 in shares (5 x $1200) and $1200 in cash. Which is basically the same thing.
But then the taxes are due on the ~17% profit from share price appreciation instead of on 100% of the dividend. And the shareholders who would have reinvested the dividend back in the company simply don't tender any shares and don't realize any taxable gains at all.
And then if the price per share gets too high they can have a stock split.
Of course, you also get almost the same effect by leaving the cash inside the company and letting shareholders who want immediate returns sell that percentage of their shares on the market, and if the cash is inside the company then it can be inside a foreign subsidiary in a jurisdiction with lower corporate income tax rates. Which is how the tax code encourages multinational corporations to hoard huge piles of cash.
People who are investing with a long-term view in mind might prefer stock buybacks because it defers the taxable event until sale. I prefer stock buybacks when I'm planning to hold my shares. With a dividend, I have to pay taxes on the dividend before I can reinvest that cash by buying more shares; with stock buybacks, the share price just increases by that amount over time instead.