Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Is iTulip Approaching a Golden Age or a Deep Decline?

Don, where are you?

[Prazak]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

I'm not sure where you got that idea or some of your facts dc but tax-wise, C corps work much better for fast growing private companies. I've owned both C corps and LLCs, they both have their place. As for your tax brackets, they're off by several orders of magnitude. Corporate tax rates are 34% on all income over $75. They jump up to 39% for a bit and back down to 34% up to $10MM.

Not solved, problem shifted. Now you pay personal income tax rates. I don't own a C corp today but I do have 6-7 LLCs. We manage the profits, expenses and estimated tax liability for each of them separately. But when tax time comes around all of the profit rolls up into one personal entity. That is, the profits aggregate. The purpose of LLCs is litigation separation not tax advantage. If one LLC goes wrong it can't touch the other entities. It's also very simple and inexpensive to set-up. Tax-wise, it make no sense if you're growing a company 2-3X per year.

Yes, and if you individually own an interest in an LLC the profits/losses flow through and are taxed in your hands at your individual tax rate. If you're losing money then, great, you're offsetting personal income with flowed-through losses. But if you're generating profits, which is the point of being in business, and your personal income tax rate is higher than the tiered rates applicable to C corps then you're paying higher rates within the LLC than the C Corp. As for litigation separation, I've always felt better about the liability shield of C corps than small-ownership LLCs -- I'm just old-school about such things. Make it a closely-held C Corp and it doesn't even require all that much more by way of respecting corporate formalities than the LLC form. To my thinking the primary advantage of the LLC is that it is far easier to define ownership interests varying amounts for varying assets.

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

hahahahahaha!...

It's hardly a radical position, Lek. There's a Matterhorn-sized mountain of evidence supporting it. Here is a quick synopsis:

The Bush administration created a power vacuum in the Middle East, then made it worse with wrongheaded decision making while occupying Iraq. Those dispersed fighters formed the insurgency which killed thousands of Americans until 2009, and then the backbone of ISIS, which now has killed thousands.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/11...h-led-to-isis/

Even Tony Blair admits that there’d be no ISIS without the invasion of Iraq: “‘I think there are elements of truth in that,’ he said when asked whether the Iraq invasion had been the ‘principal cause’ of the rise of ISIS.”

It goes to show that if someone is determined not to know something, they won't know it.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

You have amnesia over the fact that key Democrats had called for invading Iraq too:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...dy-of-iraq-war

Biden, Kerry, Clinton are no different than Bush:

Which U.S. Senators voted for the resolution that authorized the use of force in Iraq? 29 Democratic US Senators, and all but one (R-RI, Chafee) Republican. The full roll call on H.J.Res. 114, 107th Congress, A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq, is here. The vote count was YEAs 77, NAYs 23.
Below is a list of the Democrat Senators who vote YEA. I wish everyone voted NAY, but note that, in additional to Hillary, a number of very good people voted YEA at the time. Obama did not vote on the resolution, because he was a member of the Illinois State Senate, rather than the U.S. Senate, at the time. Congressman Jim McGovern, a leading critic of the Iraq war, recently discussed Obama's 2004 comments on the Iraq war in this Huffington Post blog, which includes this 2004 Obama quote "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don't know." I think that was an honest answer.

Here are the Democratic Senators who voted YEA on October 2002.

Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Breaux (D-LA), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Carnahan (D-MO), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Cleland (D-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Daschle (D-SD), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Edwards (D-NC), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hollings (D-SC), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Miller (D-GA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Torricelli (D-NJ), Yea

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

[QUOTE=vt;299586]You have amnesia...

Who's forgetting? In a perfect world they'd get their comeuppance too. But the fact remains war is waged by the Executive branch and this disaster was ginned up entirely by the Bush Jr. gang.

That administration never ceased its attempt enhance Executive authority and freedom of action. And now that the extent of their debacle is clear to all but the most tribal, the most partisan, they want to blame it on someone else. Anyone else. Yet there's no chance of that, is there? History, if anything worthy of the name endures, has begun its judgement and time will out all the guilty, the culpable and the merely enabling. Too much paper to shred. Too many witnesses to bribe or intimidate.

And I'd say the rogues gallery you lined up have one thing that distinguishes them from Bush Jr.; 30 IQ points, minimum.

[shiny!]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

You have amnesia over the fact that key Democrats had called for invading Iraq too:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/ite...dy-of-iraq-war

BOTH PARTIES ARE SIMPLY ONE PARTY. Write this down a thousand times. BOTH PARTIES ARE SIMPLY ONE PARTY.

By clinging to the belief that one side is better or less corrupt than the other, by insisting that one side is the lesser of two evils, you only perpetuate evil. You're dancing with the devil. You're an enabler bringing Big Macs and donuts to a 900 pound, bedbound, morbidly obese spouse, all the while complaining how their obesity is destroying your life.

Y'all will go back and forth with fingerpointing and "he started it!" until the end of time, not changing your minds or changing the subject. That is Mark Twain's definition of a fanatic. I know I'm not alone here in saying that I'm sick of damned near every thread devolving into partisan politics, name-calling and insults. Please, take it over to Zerohedge. Or PM each other. Or start your own forum and have at it. Because you're destroying this forum for the rest of us.

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

BOTH PARTIES ARE SIMPLY ONE PARTY...

That's right! Larry said it best.

Bird With Two Right Wings

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

But everyone remembers Gore.

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party . . . and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently . . . and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.

Gore Vidal, Matters of Fact and of Fiction: Essays 1973–76.

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Quote Woodsman: "And I'd say the rogues gallery you lined up have one thing that distinguishes them from Bush Jr.; 30 IQ points, minimum."

Sorry the facts don't support that.

Bush vs. Kerry:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4684384

Bush vs. Gore:

"Confidential college transcripts and test scores obtained by the Washington Post reveal that neither presidential candidate, George W. Bush nor Al Gore, were shining students during their college days at Yale and Harvard, respectively. Although each earned respectable scores on the SAT college admissions test (a total of 1355 of 1600 for Gore and 1206 for Bush), neither did that well in their college courses. Both earned a mix of B and C grades. Gore's lowest grade of D came in a natural sciences course, while his top grades were an A in French and English, an A in Visual and Environmental Studies, and an A- in Social Relations. Bush's lowest marks were a 70 (of 100) in Sociology and a 71 in Economics, while his highest scores were High Passes in History and Japanese."

From the Washington Post


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2148744/Did-Obama-worse-grades-Bush-New-evidence-reveals-college-class-got-lower-SAT-scores-Dubya.html

Bush vs. Obama (who still refuses to reveal his records)

As Shiny says they are all at fault, but you leave out half of the equation.

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

And such a talented arteest!

[vt]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Shiny,

• Please read the first dozen entries and see who, out of the blue, introduced racism and later the Iraq war into the subject. None of the original post had anything to do with either and I was hoping we could discuss the other issues with civility.

If you read this thread from the start (I started it), this was the subject:

Inspiring Possibilities

• Innovation: U.S. technology leads the world
• Higher Education: 17 of the world’s top 25 universities
• Energy: America again the world’s largest oil and gas producer
• Business: Home to 209 of the world’s largest 500 companies
• Demographics: Greatest population growth of advanced economies

Sobering Truths

• Government: Historically low public confidence
• Infrastructure: Requires at least $3.6 trillion investment by 2020
• Climate Change: Facing a ‘megadrought’ this century
• Wealth: Income inequality highest in nearly 100 years
• K-12 Education: U.S. students lagging behind global competitors

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

[lektrode]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

It's hardly a radical position, Lek. There's a Matterhorn-sized mountain of evidence supporting it. Here is a quick synopsis:



Even Tony Blair admits that there’d be no ISIS without the invasion of Iraq: “‘I think there are elements of truth in that,’ he said when asked whether the Iraq invasion had been the ‘principal cause’ of the rise of ISIS.”

It goes to show that if someone is determined not to know something, they won't know it.

uh huh... to that, i'd offer: that depends upon what your def of the word 'is' is...

[shiny!]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

Shiny,

• Please read the first dozen entries and see who, out of the blue, introduced racism and later the Iraq war into the subject. None of the original post had anything to do with either and I was hoping we could discuss the other issues with civility.

No. I no longer give a rat's fanny who started it. I. Don't. Care. You think Woodsman's a troll? Then stop feeding him! Ever hear of "turn the other cheek"?

And Woodsman, vt has a bias he is unaware of, and no amount of abuse you hurl at him will make him see it. When you become vitriolic to him or anyone else, it's a slap in my face. I come here with defenses down, expecting a refuge from the rude, bruising, anonymous cowards that populate other forums. You keep saying that being snarky works for you. You have every right to be caustic in your own domain, but this isn't your site. It's EJ's. You're in his house and he made the rule:

Polite, civil conversation.

You guys are NEVER going to change each other's way of thinking. If the definition of insanity is expecting different results from the same behavior, you're both clearly insane.

If one day you actually manage to convince a stranger on the internet that he's wrong and you're right, what exactly would you gain? Will it have been worth ruining this forum? Because Gresham's Law pertains to people and forums, too.

At this point I no longer care who's right. I'm just tired of giant egos who can't get over themselves.

Someone-is-wrong-on-internet.jpg

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

And Woodsman, vt has...

For you, Shiny, it's hugs and kisses to vt and others from now on.

[Woodsman]

Re: Is America Approaching A Golden Age Or A Deep Decline?

uh huh... to that, i'd offer: that depends upon what your def of the word 'is' is...

Don't you mean that depends on what your definition of ISIS is? Ask this conservative:

But the everlasting truth is that the relative handful of suicidal jihadi who have perpetrated murderous episodes of terror like 9/11 and this weekend’s carnage in Paris did not exist in November 1989; and they would not be marauding the West today save for the unrelenting arrogance, stupidity, duplicity and mendacity of Imperial Washington.

That is, the gates of hell have been opened by Washington’s senseless destruction of regimes in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere that refused to do its bidding. Yet not one of these backwaters of tyranny and economic and military insignificance posed any threat whatsoever to the safety and security of American citizens in Lincoln NE or Manchester NH.

David Stockman: Blowback—–The Washington War Party’s Folly Comes Home To Roost