Comments on: Princely Finance & Taxation

By: Mark E Hoffer

Mark E Hoffer — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:49:24 +0000

Mr. Hoye,

That was a fine article. Some, as you prove, should, verily, be ‘Institutional Advisors’. Sadly, for us, many who shouldn’t be, still are.

May We still have Markets, enough, to correct our Errors..

By: dunnage

dunnage — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:03:44 +0000

Bush’s re-election says it all.

By: loan shark

loan shark — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:24:44 +0000

The comment regarding ‘19th century’ liberals’ and their lack of imagination or historical context vis a vis the nature of government is misleading. 18th (and 19th) century ‘liberals’ were fully aware of the mischievious potential of the unchecked state thus the creation of the most liberal document in the history of man, the US constitution. 19th century progressives were anything but liberal in any classical sense but statists driven by abstractions about equality and democracy. The prgressive led revolution of 1913 put this country on the road we’ve taken. The new deal only instituionalized it. The nature of the state is to tend toward fraud and theft from the productive sector in order to maintain power. Power and privilege is what it’s all about while maintaining immunity, as much as possible, from the forces of markets.

By: Blissex

Blissex — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:29:33 +0000

And to remind people of what is the orientation of voters as perceived by two great political strategists, News Gingrich and Grover Norquist:

http://classwebs.SPEA.Indiana.edu/bakerr/v600/a_new_look_at_environmental_poli.htm
«If you have a society where almost every middle class person routinely fudges the law, that’s telling us something. We have laws that matter-murder, rape, and we have laws that don’t matter. [ ... ] The first thing that every good American says each morning is “What’s the angle?” “How can I get around it?” “What does my lawyer think?” “There must be a loophole!” Then he proceeds to work the angle, and the bureaucracy spends its time chasing that and writing new regs to stop him. America is the most incentive-driven society on the planet.»

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11699
«The 1930s rhetoric was bash business — only a handful of bankers thought that meant them. Now if you say we’re going to smash the big corporations, 60-plus percent of voters say “That’s my retirement you’re messing with. I don’t appreciate that”. And the Democrats have spent 50 years explaining that Republicans will pollute the earth and kill baby seals to get market caps higher. And in 2002, voters said, “We’re sorry about the seals and everything but we really got to get the stock market up.»

By: Blissex

Blissex — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:25:50 +0000

«The only constituents in this travesty completely devoid of power to stop the denuding, was the tax payer.»

That’s a huge lie: USA voters, especially affluent ones, voted enthusiastically for bubbles and speculation (and lower capital gains and higher income taxes, more gov borrowing, less poverty insurance, more military-industrial welfare); as long as their 401k and real estate was going ever up, they would have lynched politicians mentioning countercyclical dampening and sound fiscal and money policies.

The taxpayers who were voters (many more are taxpayers than voters) are the first and greatest reason why the scams lasted so long: they wanted desperately in on the scams, and to make them last as long as possible.

By: awilensky

awilensky — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:47:09 +0000

The only constituents in this travesty completely devoid of power to stop the denuding, was the tax payer. We have no voice when the only two parties that share power, both play a role in taking taxes to stoke ill gotten gains by the ‘buddies club’.

It has made me sick unto death; I want to raise an army to march on Washington and raid the capitol. I want public hangings of the bank execs.

We are all such sheep. At least native New England Yankee stock, I had hoped, would have resurrected the Minutemen.