2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress

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dumbo said:
You can't just throw google in there with crooks like Appe, willy nilly. Their entire ethos is Do Not Do An Evil Thing.
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Well, actually – first of all it's "Don't be evil", secondly - it's well-documented that Google hasn't been using it even as an aspiration, for quite a while now. Here, check your facts and educate yourself on them a bit better:
As for Apple, despite their many other shortcomings, out of big tech companies they are indeed most privacy-friendly for their consumers.
 
warren is a lying snake. I won't be voting for her or anyone but bernie in the general. Their answers last night made that decision for me. At every stage, warren has chosen to prioritize her own career over the things she claims to support. I cant wait for her to drop out and endorse buttigieg. If bernie has the most delegates and the nomination is given to someone else at the convention, I will never vote Democrat again. The democratic party will no longer be nationally viable. We'll see if they hate bernie enough to destroy the party, I suspect they do.
 
Eboue said:
warren is a lying snake. I won't be voting for her or anyone but bernie in the general. Their answers last night made that decision for me. At every stage, warren has chosen to prioritize her own career over the things she claims to support. I cant wait for her to drop out and endorse buttigieg. If bernie has the most delegates and the nomination is given to someone else at the convention, I will never vote Democrat again. The democratic party will no longer be nationally viable. We'll see if they hate bernie enough to destroy the party, I suspect they do.
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What if they stand on one ticket. Will you stop voting for Bernie because of her..

Love Bernie, the man is genuine
 
Eboue said:
warren is a lying snake. I won't be voting for her or anyone but bernie in the general. Their answers last night made that decision for me. At every stage, warren has chosen to prioritize her own career over the things she claims to support. I cant wait for her to drop out and endorse buttigieg. If bernie has the most delegates and the nomination is given to someone else at the convention, I will never vote Democrat again. The democratic party will no longer be nationally viable. We'll see if they hate bernie enough to destroy the party, I suspect they do.
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My thoughts too but I'll make exceptions for Justice Democrats.
 
Eboue said:
warren is a lying snake. I won't be voting for her or anyone but bernie in the general. Their answers last night made that decision for me. At every stage, warren has chosen to prioritize her own career over the things she claims to support. I cant wait for her to drop out and endorse buttigieg. If bernie has the most delegates and the nomination is given to someone else at the convention, I will never vote Democrat again. The democratic party will no longer be nationally viable. We'll see if they hate bernie enough to destroy the party, I suspect they do.
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Sanders is arguing for the one with most delegates if it ends up being a brokered convention right? I think Bernie will win outright easily.
 
NewGlory said:
Well, actually – first of all it's "Don't be evil", secondly - it's well-documented that Google hasn't been using it even as an aspiration, for quite a while now. Here, check your facts and educate yourself on them a bit better:
As for Apple, despite their many other shortcomings, out of big tech companies they are indeed most privacy-friendly for their consumers.
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Congrats on having a benign tech-daddy. Suckle away to your hearts content.
 
dumbo said:
Congrats on having a benign tech-daddy. Suckle away to your hearts content.
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No need to be sour when people point out that your post is devoid of reality and provide facts proving it.
 
NewGlory said:
Your hearing may improve if you stop being so busy brown-nosing to Dumbo
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Might want to look up the definition of brown nosing. You got wooshed by a joke that went over your head. Take the L and quit being a little salty cracker about it.
 
Florida Man said:
Might want to look up the definition of brown nosing. You got wooshed by a joke that went over your head. Take the L and quit being a little salty cracker about it.
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If you have to explain that it was a joke maybe it wasn't a great joke to begin with? Just a thought...

So many comedians around here. Hard to tell if it's a general section of a football forum or a stand-up club on a slow night... You know?
 
Florida Man said:
What's wrong with having a cap at $900 million? Do you think they'll be able to survive? Poor billionaires.
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The vast majority of money the billionaires have is actually in stocks. Put a cap at 900m, you are essentially making people who build a company to lose control of the company when the company becomes successful, and giving the control of that company, to ... no idea, have yet to hear a proposal that does not totally suck.
 
Revan said:
The vast majority of money the billionaires have is actually in stocks. Put a cap at 900m, you are essentially making people who build a company to lose control of the company when the company becomes successful, and giving the control of that company, to ... no idea, have yet to hear a proposal that does not totally suck.
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I didn't realize billionaires' money existed in stocks, thanks for letting me know. You're also talking to a guy who believes workers should get equity. But for the sake of argument, the cap is just the amount of wealth one can keep, and $900 million or so should be more than enough for any individual. The excess wealth just gets converted into public funds without actually losing control of the company — not sure how you concluded that. That way, their e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶i̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ hustle actually benefits society. Make billionaires millionaires again! MBMA 2020
 
NewGlory said:
If you have to explain that it was a joke maybe it wasn't a great joke to begin with? Just a thought...

So many comedians around here. Hard to tell if it's a general section of a football forum or a stand-up club on a slow night... You know?
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Are you still here crying?
 
Florida Man said:
Might want to look up the definition of brown nosing. You got wooshed by a joke that went over your head. Take the L and quit being a little salty cracker about it.
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hehe.

and this is also why I don't usually point out the joke even if it's a stupid and obvious one: some people are super sensitive. Better to be a covert arsehole having a private chuckle to myself, than out there claiming an unspectacular internet scalp. Guess it didn't work out this time.
 
Wednesday at Stoke said:
I have a problem with people demonizing wealth, like making money is a sin. Among the many attacks on Bloomberg, that is my least favorite. I can understand people attacking him for his policy choices as a mayor but attacking him for merely being wealthy is a bit of a pointless exercise. Its not like someone consciously chose not to produce a billion dollar trading data platform because they didn't feel like it.
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It's interesting to note that as recently as in 2008 (long after Bloomberg had left business) his net worth was only $11B, which is one-sixth of current worth. So, while his current net worth (north of $60B) is extremely high, it is mostly a result of the company having done really well, without him, and him somehow managing to keep onto whopping 88% of Bloomberg L.P.'s shares. Very few founders are able to do so. Most startup founders end-up with next to nothing after multiple rounds of VC funding. Especially in this day and age, when VCs have become very skilled in robbing founders.

Statistically speaking the size of Bloomberg's wealth is an aberration. There's zero indication that he did anything wrong to amass his wealth. He has also spent $8B of it on philanthropy.
 
Florida Man said:
Are you still here crying?
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Your lousy attempt at bullying is noted. It's not working, and I am sorry that you are visibly struggling with something in real life that makes you be so bitter online.
 
Florida Man said:
I didn't realize billionaires' money existed in stocks, thanks for letting me know. You're also talking to a guy who believes workers should get equity. But for the sake of argument, the cap is just the amount of wealth one can keep, and $900 million or so should be more than enough for any individual. The excess wealth just gets converted into public funds without actually losing control of the company — not sure how you concluded that. That way, their e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶i̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ hustle actually benefits society. Make billionaires millionaires again! MBMA 2020
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Most of the demonized companies in this forum actually pay a large part of the employers salaries in equities. An entry level engineer in Google/FB etc easily gets 200k for 4 years in equities (and this is by choice from the leaders of the companies, because it works and it makes people work better when they own stocks of that company). Should they all become instant millionaires when joining the companies (if you actually get rid of the money from the owners).

Governments are bad at managing money. Getting money from billionaires to governments is an idea used in practice, and failed in practice. Higher taxes sure, but putting artificial limits won’t ever work. And stocks have voting power. If you take away (in some cases with this 900m threshold) those stocks, the founders of the companies lose the power of the company they built. Awesome idea!

Again, I have yet to see a non-ridiculous plan on dealing with the issue (of taking the majority of stocks from founders).
 
Revan said:
Most of the demonized companies in this forum actually pay a large part of the employers salaries in equities. An entry level engineer in Google/FB etc easily gets 200k for 4 years in equities (and this is by choice from the leaders of the companies, because it works and it makes people work better when they own stocks of that company). Should they all become instant millionaires when joining the companies (if you actually get rid of the money from the owners).

Governments are bad at managing money. Getting money from billionaires to governments is an idea used in practice, and failed in practice. Higher taxes sure, but putting artificial limits won’t ever work. And stocks have voting power. If you take away (in some cases with this 900m threshold) those stocks, the founders of the companies lose the power of the company they built. Awesome idea!

Again, I have yet to see a non-ridiculous plan on dealing with the issue (of taking the majority of stocks from founders).
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Stop letting US propaganda influence you.
 
Revan said:
You’re from Hungary dude. Ask someone older how awesome it was there before the nineties.
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Not sure what that has to do with anything. A blanket statement that "government is bad at managing money" is just rubbish, no matter what. Some governments in some systems are bad at managing money. Others aren't. Some private companies are terrible at managing money. Others aren't.

The idea that government = inefficient, private company = efficient is just stupid, no matter how prevalent it is in the United States.
 
Revan said:
Most of the demonized companies in this forum actually pay a large part of the employers salaries in equities. An entry level engineer in Google/FB etc easily gets 200k for 4 years in equities (and this is by choice from the leaders of the companies, because it works and it makes people work better when they own stocks of that company). Should they all become instant millionaires when joining the companies (if you actually get rid of the money from the owners).

Governments are bad at managing money. Getting money from billionaires to governments is an idea used in practice, and failed in practice. Higher taxes sure, but putting artificial limits won’t ever work. And stocks have voting power. If you take away (in some cases with this 900m threshold) those stocks, the founders of the companies lose the power of the company they built. Awesome idea!

Again, I have yet to see a non-ridiculous plan on dealing with the issue (of taking the majority of stocks from founders).
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It's not a coincidence that none of the major figureheads of the utopian proposals: Bernie, AOC, or Warren have ever worked in a corporate environment, let alone have any experience starting significant ventures. It's too easy for them to be so dismissive of something they cannot even relate to.
 
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Siorac said:
The idea that government = inefficient, private company = efficient is just stupid, no matter how prevalent it is in the United States.
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It's not stupid and it's not "america" thing. It's economics 101. Or at least part of it. The full story states that: market forces are typically more efficient than government control, however there are certain areas dubbed "public good" where economic efficiency is not the point and Government should run those. Examples are: environment, security etc.

Each society decides what to put in the realm of public good vs market economy. There is no universal rule. United States have indeed oversteered toward putting more into private markets which has lead to some questionable results in cases like: healthcare, private prisons etc.

But you dismissing Revan's statement as some
kind of "american" bullcrap is also inacurate
 
NewGlory said:
It's not stupid and it's not "america" thing. It's economics 101. Or at least part of it. The full story states that: market forces are typically more efficient than government control, however there are certain areas dubbed "public good" where economic efficiency is not the point and Government should run those. Examples are: environment, security etc.

Each society decides what to put in the realm of public good vs market economy. There is no universal rule. United States have indeed oversteered toward putting more into private markets which has lead to some questionable results in cases like: healthcare, private prisons etc.

But you dismissing Revan's statement as some
kind of "american" bullcrap is also inacurate
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It's neoliberalism 101 and again, it makes the classic mistake: it conflates generating profits with efficiency. And again, the initial statement wasn't about government control: no one is advocating for a planned economy. The statement I rubbished was that "governments are bad at managing money" - it is a rubbish AND toxic idea that is always always always used to justify not raising taxes on the richest: "raising taxes doesn't work because the government is inefficient" quickly becomes "we should cut social spending because the government is inefficient" and "the free market and private charity will solve everything". It's clinging on to the failing neoliberal ideology that has dominated the last 40 years, resulting in ever-growing inequality and decreasing social mobility.
 
Siorac said:
It's neoliberalism 101 and again, it makes the classic mistake: it conflates generating profits with efficiency. And again, the initial statement wasn't about government control: no one is advocating for a planned economy. The statement I rubbished was that "governments are bad at managing money" - it is a rubbish AND toxic idea that is always always always used to justify not raising taxes on the richest: "raising taxes doesn't work because the government is inefficient" quickly becomes "we should cut social spending because the government is inefficient" and "the free market and private charity will solve everything". It's clinging on to the failing neoliberal ideology that has dominated the last 40 years, resulting in ever-growing inequality and decreasing social mobility.
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A lot of what you are saying is correct but none of that is what @Revan was advocating for, as far as I can tell.

Free market and private charity is indeed bullshit idea that ignores government's role as the safeguard of public goods and public interest. But such extreme views are more libertarianism than neoliberalism

Either way, my reading of @Revan's point was that forced redistribution of wealth is bad and not the same as more fair taxation of wealthy (which is overdue in the US)
 
NewGlory said:
A lot of what you are saying is correct but none of that is what @Revan was advocating for, as far as I can tell.

Free market and private charity is indeed bullshit idea that ignores government's role as the safeguard of public goods and public interest. But such extreme views are more libertarianism than neoliberalism

Either way, my reading of @Revan's point was that forced redistribution of wealth is bad and not the same as more fair taxation of wealthy (which is overdue in the US)
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That might have been his point but again, the blanket statement that government is bad at managing money is from the same school of bullshit as the stuff I outlined above. It IS propaganda, it is used to justify cutting state-sponsored programs and trapping them in a vicious circle. Hence why, whatever your overall position is, you shouldn't perpetuate that sort of propaganda.
 
Siorac said:
That might have been his point but again, the blanket statement that government is bad at managing money is from the same school of bullshit as the stuff I outlined above. It IS propaganda, it is used to justify cutting state-sponsored programs and trapping them in a vicious circle. Hence why, whatever your overall position is, you shouldn't perpetuate that sort of propaganda.
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I hear you, but these things are not always mutually exclusive. Government collecting taxes and allocating money doesn't mean government should also be an operator. An example of private operator paid by government is single-payer healthcare system (e.g. in Canada). Such healthcare is not government-run, it's private, but heavily regulated by government and paid for by government, using taxes. Seems to work ok.

On the other side, a very bad example of the same system is: private prisons in the United States. Those, in my opinion, are total abomination and government-run prisons would have been better, if other prosperous countries are any indication.
 
Edgar Allan Pillow said:
That's nonsense. Stocks prices are result of company performance and investor confidence. Companies hire new CEOs to boost both. Depending on situation, it's their fault due to mismanagement and in other cases due to wider financial situation and market trends.
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So in other words fecking gambling. As you brush off so lightly with 'in other cases due to wider financial situation and market trends' what you're actually alluding to is that a companies worth can be wildly overinflated or completely undermined due to absolutely nothing to do with the performance of the company or its management, but simply due to outside trends or activities that can and do create massive distortion in terms of what something is actually worth in the real world.

I'm fecking tired of this idea that market traders are some amazing geniuses who deserve their wealth, they're bloody gambling and the fact they deeply analyze the game they're playing doesn't make it any less a game.
 
Kentonio said:
So in other words fecking gambling. As you brush off so lightly with 'in other cases due to wider financial situation and market trends' what you're actually alluding to is that a companies worth can be wildly overinflated or completely undermined due to absolutely nothing to do with the performance of the company or its management, but simply due to outside trends or activities that can and do create massive distortion in terms of what something is actually worth in the real world.

I'm fecking tired of this idea that market traders are some amazing geniuses who deserve their wealth, they're bloody gambling and the fact they deeply analyze the game they're playing doesn't make it any less a game.
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:Lol:

Nonsense. Long term correlations of stock prices to RoE, earnings growth is irrefutable.
 
Please try and keep the discussion on topic. This thread's about the election, the primaries, and the potential candidates.

I understand the reasons for the digression, but it's time to take the more general stuff to another thread. This thread is going to be big and broad enough without it.
 
Brilliant night for Bloomberg imo. He got the Dem establishment to change the debate rules for him, got national exposure and imho didn't really get bodied on any issues Americans typically care about in my experience. They should have brought up his stance on Medicare and Social Security more and his support for the Iraq war and the veto and court case on the minimum wage.
 
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