Wrong …these laws are like taxes…The EPA did some good work in the beginning but for 30 years it has been on a witch hunt against anyone who builds or produces…It is a cancer cloked in religon. .Nobody can fight them…Afterall who can be against the environment. …They are not just going after big bad corporations, they go after everyone. …If you have never been a producer, employer or builder you would not understand. .But government regulations have a strangle hold on American productivity and people that have been laid off and businesses bankrupted have risen up and said to hell with liberal elites and their anti American agenda…
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The American avocado industry is being destroyed, just like every other American business. …How would you like it if your livelyhood was exported?
I am not against government subsidies and infrastructure investment. But the money should be invested in the most productive areas. I am not convinced spending on agriculture is the most productive.
If you are paranoid about food security, sure, subsidize wheat production. But cut off the other less “strategic” crops. Do we need a national strawberry reserve? How about almond?
In the end it’s not even about farm subsidy. It’s this attitude that farming and manufacturing is so-called real work and deserving respect. All the other stuff is just fluff. That can’t be further from the truth.
Lets be clear our food supply is already in jeopardy. …Fruit from Chile is already often cheaper than local fruit…same with tomatoes and avocados from Mexico…It is not purely about economics…And that is why the government subsidizes agriculture. .Of course the biggest subsidy is food stamps. …It inflates the costs of all food…
You have an odd way of measuring productivity. We’re talking about feeding over 300M people, and you’d rather spend the money on making the commute easier for 65k .We spend $20B/yr on farm subsidies. Do you realize how little infrastructure that would build and how few people it’d benefit?
Yes, and the attitude that farming and manufacturing aren’t worth paying a living wage, and we should outsource it to the lowest bidding country shows great respect to people working those jobs.
You should ask Haiti how outsourcing their food production went.
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One thing we can agree on…Trump may have been the messager, but he definitely won’t solve the problem. …cutting immigration will drive up the cost of food and mean even more imports…
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I measure productivity by how much the market values, which takes into account supply and demand. If every country in the world can take up farming, by definition it’s not that valuable.
Compare that with Silicon Valley. We supply all the chips that go into every PC. We control every OS on every smartphone in the world. We are the only game in the world. That’s what I call competitive advantage.
Detroit used to think it was immune to competition and replacement. The top 5 selling cars in the US are Japanese. I wonder how recently Dell, HP, Sun, and Cisco thought they would dominate the hardware market with no foreign competition. China started with building the hardware cheap. Now they are designing hardware too. India and China are the QA labs for US written software. It’s only a matter of time before they’re writing software as good or better than US software.
Plus, now you’re talking about <1% of the US population having a competitive edge vs the rest of the world. They are capable of earning super high incomes. What is everyone else supposed to do? After all their jobs are outsourced, are they supposed to be thankful for some bread crumbs from the elite?
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Come on Marcus! It’s getting kind of boring to read the same thing over and over.
We all pay taxes, but some people use public services more than others. That’s all.
Think of Twhitler, scalding others for not paying taxes but at the end he stated he is one of them. But let’s keep berating, scalding others for what we take advantage of.
There is also this guy, who has been advocating higher tax for years. But he also hires an accountant team to avoid tax as much as allowed by law. Somehow, that guy is the role model for some liberals. How ironic!
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You can ignore me then.
But, did he say for years to many other rich people “you should pay taxes” as Twhitler did?
I work with people who know how to make you pay taxes going from $600K to maybe $40K. But that’s something different, these people, the benefited ones, never scald others, they encourage them to do the same.
Does testifying before congress to raise taxes count?
I am not rich so I am not affected by any of those. In fact, I admire him for his business success and I actively follow him on investments. On the other hand, I don’t agree with most of the major decisions Trump has made so far. But I at least have the open mind to accept the other side might have a point, and give my support where it’s due.
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I gave you thumbs up.
As I said, I work with people who are seeking advise on how to emulate, copycat Trump.
The tax code is full of loopholes, but they don’t work for poor people like you and I. They are used by anybody richer enough to pay a good financial adviser or a good CPA or a lawyer specialized in that area. And, without naming a particular party, they are all full of boloney.
What we see is control, thirst for power.
I think you meant Buffett. I have seen this mentioned a few times so let me make an attempt to answer the question.
I don’t think he’s a hypocrite to ask congress to set higher tax rate while at the same time pay whatever is owed under the current system. He’s not satisfied with the current set of rules but it’s the rule everybody is playing under.
Let’s say I think the current speed limit of 65 is too high. I think it should be lowered to 55. So am I wrong to drive at 60? Why can’t I ask the speed limit to be lowered if I believe everybody driving at 55 would make the highway safer?
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@manch has spoken to this a few times. America’s days of high paying manufacturing, coal mining and farming jobs are gone. That ship has sailed. Even if we institute protectionist economic policies and bring some blue collar jobs back from China & Latin America, we will lose them shortly after to automation. Time to educate our next generation and focus on developing a skilled labor force to drive innovation and growth of the American economy.
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I don’t think Buffett is hypocritical either. That may be biased though because I really like him. But a lot of people drive much below speed limit of 65MPH when the road is slippery, because they genuinely think it is the safer thing to do. And let me ask you this, when his fiduciary duty to the share holders conflicts with the national interest, which side will Buffett be on?
I have no idea which side WB will be on. Details matter here. Some people have legitimate issues some Berkshire businesses like Clayton, which sells mobile homes to low income people. So I am under no illusion that he’s a saint. I just think on this particular issue of taxes he’s on firm ground.
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There will always be a need for hard physical labor in America…Education in fact is not the solution. .We have too many educated people working in dead end jobs. We need more training for technical blue collar jobs and less liberal arts majors. …
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I read somewhere US is among the lowest spending countries on retraining workers. Instead of tariffs which just prolong the inevitable why not beef up unemployment benefits and help people retrain themselves? Singapore recently started a program to give all citizens money to spend on whatever education programs they see fit. That’s the foreword thinking we lack here.
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