patrick.net

Randy H Says:
Oh DS, my oh my. I can’t believe you’re actually trying to pin something like happened today on folks like me who dare to — hold your breath — *create* jobs in the economy.

I accept what you're saying, Randy, more or less, but you were just talking about destroying jobs. The reality is that you use others as instrumentalities in order to achieve a business purpose. There is a huge level of debate and discourse over what is acceptable practice in workers rights and conditions and safety nets, as per the earlier reference to Marris' writing on exactly this topic, if you Amazon it. The argument is that risk is being increasingly heaped upon, passed down to and internalised by the weakest and poorest, by corporations and business. There is something being implemented here right now by a neoliberal Federal govt called 'Work Choices' which takes away all worker choice by regulation -- it is scary enough to most that they will probably lose the next election over it.

e.g.
Prof Ron McCallum on Workplace Relations - The Fantasy of Choice

or e.g.
"A critical audience like this one is conscious of the shadow side of globalisation, which includes:

- Subversion of national development strategies – often products of democratically arrived-at choices about what sort of socio-economic development we find desirable;
- Contraction and destruction of social programs for the alleviation of poverty, morbidity, relative social deprivation, social insecurity, and so on;
- Undermining of labour rights – directly through ‘deregulation’ – such as the Howard govt’s destruction of a great deal of our labour rights recently – and indirectly through moving manufacturing to labour-repressive, low-wage areas such as China.
- Accelerated socio-economic polarisation, within countries and internationally: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer much faster under globalisation.

So let’s unpack some of the rhetoric of globalisation. For starters, where did it come from? Far from dropping from out of space, it was and remains a political project driven by powerful nation-states (USA and UK above all) and their client states (such as Australia) in which neo-liberals have dominated political life. To a large extent, globalisation means Americanisation, especially when we look at how it is institutionalised, and the main international organs pushing it, such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO.

The political program of economic liberalism was first put into effect in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. It came in a series of aggressive legislative interventions (palaver about ‘small government’ and ‘laissez-faire’ notwithstanding), much like those of the Howard government today. The economic liberals set out to destroy poor-relief systems and all forms of social provision and security, in order to bolster capital’s power to force labour into the new factories of the industrial revolution and suppress unionism, so that the owners had complete control over wages and conditions. In its recent interventions into welfare provision and industrial relations, the Howard government has followed the same agenda 160 years later. In both cases the goal of policy has been the creation of radical social insecurity.

The ideology churned out in support of this program consisted in a theology about the market as the beneficent guarantor of economic efficiency and equitable distribution of income and life chances. If you insert the word ‘global’ in front of ‘market’, we can see that the same idolatry of market mechanisms, as the mystical guarantors of efficiency of social equity, confronts us today.

In spite of its rhetoric, economic liberalism – past and present – has never had anything to do with small government, or with the governing class abandoning the will to govern. During the greater part of the 19th century most of Britain was under permanent (para)military occupation to enforce the simple ‘freedoms’ of the rich under economic liberalism against popular resistance. But the labour market itself (that artefact of liberal politics) has proved the greatest mechanism of domination and subordination: now, as then, the propertyless every day face the ultimatum: buckle under, or starve.

Once again, we must note that – rhetoric notwithstanding – neo-liberalism had nothing whatever to do with small government and abandoning the will to rule. Thatcher’s and Reagan’s regimes, its prototypes, were spectacularly authoritarian and interventionist, especially towards organised labour, and internationally aggressive."

SP Says:
In other words, 21st century Communist Aristocrats seem to have the same attitude as 18th century French Aristocrats.

This is post-communist market China where narcissists drive BMWs, SP. Besides, China has never really been Communist , it's been a totalitarian command-capitalist state. And the corruption of party officials is legion. But this story was about the rise of rich factory owners and their self-entitled kin. The long-standing business activity in Shanghai, HK, and so on is certainly not Communist in inspiration.

Narcissism and self-entitlement is a constant everywhere, unfortunately.

CB Says:

> Usually I don’t like to debate gun control but I
> went to Virginia Tech and I am really saddened
> by what happened.

It’s a sad day, but it’s even sadder to think that we will see more stupid laws when more gun laws will do as little to stop gun violence as drug laws have done to stop drug use.

> Pro-gun supporters always trot out the “guns don’t
> kill people, people do argument”.

Most Pro-gun people want tough punishment for people doing bad things with guns, but most Anti-gun people just want to ban guns but will not support tough crimes for people who do bad things with guns (e.g. come on he had to deal with poverty les give him probation since it was only his second drive by shooting)…

Different Sean Says:

> There is a huge level of debate and discourse over
> what is acceptable practice in workers rights and
> conditions and safety nets, as per the earlier reference
> to Marris’ writing on exactly this topic, if you Amazon it.

I believe in “equal” rights.

If a worker commits to say for 5 years no matter what an employer should commit to pay them for 5 years no matter what.

If a worker can leave with two weeks notice an employer should be able to let them go with two weeks notice…

Most Pro-gun people want tough punishment for people doing bad things with guns, but most Anti-gun people just want to ban guns but will not support tough crimes for people who do bad things with guns

Yes, my support for board application of efficient death penalty has been attacked many times.

If a worker can leave with two weeks notice an employer should be able to let them go with two weeks notice…

In fact, the "two week" notice is merely a courtesy. As a result, employers do not have to give notice at all.

If you remove the guns as completely as possible, as has happened in UK and Oz, then drive-by shootings would diminish markedly... There is an iterative process of confiscation under the law. Admittedly, it's harder to keep black market guns out of circulation in UK with a relatively easy supply from East Europe etc, but it is contained within a smaller and smaller section of the population, as Tony Blair just got into trouble over saying... As HARM's cited article points out, tho, homicide rates in UK, including from firearms, were already very low historically.

I don't have any experience to back me up, but I assume if a company has more than one or two rounds of sudden layoffs or if an employee has more than one or two sudden departures, people will start to notice.

last e.g. : Revealed: how AWAs strip work rights

Bap33,

That's why you gotta be a moderate. Then you can be FOR killing babies AND criminals. Like me!

in explaining my views to my 16 yr old daughter I said its like a nyc subway shooting shutting down wall street
or an la gang shooting closing disney

The difference is that this is Virginia.

And not the Northern Virginia/DC part.

Around those parts, crime doesn't happen other than the usual alcohol related ones. They live in a very special place.

(Well, not nearly as special as the Bay Area, but you get what I mean.)

but most Anti-gun people just want to ban guns but will not support tough crimes for people who do bad things with guns

I think you meant to say "tough punishments".

But in any case, therein lies the rub. Politicians always campaign on the platform of being tough on crime - it gets the police vote, it gets the senior vote... heck, it gets every vote.

But look at our success story, or lack thereof. How is it that we have more people in prison per capita than... well... any country?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. What we're doing is insane.

And, as usual, I only offer problems - no solutions. :) :) :)

apropos of nothing in the later stages of this thread but strangely relevant if 'twere nigh the start:

"Double, Double, Toil and Trouble"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double,_Double,_Toil_and_Trouble

I am pro gun control and I am all for putting people on death rows. I think it is a huge waste of tax payers' money to support life imprisonment of serial criminals who have proven themselves to be harmful to the society.

Btw, I am pro prison labor as well, they might as well do something productive for our tax dollars.

Btw, I am pro prison labor as well, they might as well do something productive for our tax dollars.

I am anti-prison. There should be four kinds of punishments:

1. Community service
2. Canning
3. Execution
4. Combination of (3) and (4)

the left seems to not mind killin kids in the womb, but hates killin murderers or using deadly protection to save life and property. Why is that?

They call it pro-choice.

I am not against abortion when situation warrants (like rape, genetic disorder, etc)

But calling it a "choice" cheapens human lives. Abortion should not be banned but it should be strongly discouraged (parental/spousal notification, etc).

2. Canning

I think you meant "Caning". "Canning" would imply a punishment far more sinister.

LOL. Canning is also a "punishment" for perfect fine TV shows like Firefly.

SP Says:
You can rationalize it that way if it suits you, but the attitude of Communist Aristocrats even before it became ‘post-communist’ is the same as that of the French Aristocrats.

I have lived for some time in a communist country, so I know a little about what it is really like - although I concede you certainly may have read more books about how it should be.

Fair enough, I suppose, but I don't think the attempted point really holds under inspection. You don't seem to have considered what implementations of Communism are supposed to be about, and the whole history of where they may have gone off the rails. Further, China still has a 'peasant'-based economy, and, in fact, the social class or type of 'peasant' is still the most common mode of living in the world. Therefore, you might find something similar occurring in a number of places which are not nominally 'Communist', such as Iraq, central Asia and eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and so on. I think we just established that homicide rates are very high in many of those countries. I absolutely concede I hear very little good out of North Korea or China in parts, because many countries which nominally became 'Communist' often came from underdeveloped status backgrounds with little regard for individual rights as we understand them in the industrialised West -- and the message of Marxism is a very powerful one for people in those societies, being the selfsame peasants. However, Marxist theory, such as it is, proposes that Communism should be a post-high capitalism phase where capitalism basically self-destructs without prompting due to mass movements of protest, and that it would not be suited to pre-industrial societies. We haven't quite seen that yet anywhere either. So I wouldn't blame the event of the BMW on 'Communism', I think that's quite a biased long bow to draw, somehow. Apparently no-one gets necklaced etc in South Africa because it's a good capitalist country that supplies you with diamonds for engagement rings...

As I pointed out, the woman represents the new social class of rich factory owners in China, who are also the ones purchasing more and more 'status goods' from the West with their new wealth. The family may or may not have Party connections. There was a case recently of a Party member who basically put a guy out of business and jailed him because he didn't give the local Party members their perceived share of the loot from his business. This was to the tune of millions. However, equally well, there is tons of corruption in Western politics and business, so I don't really see that Communism is the ultimate evil in that, greed is the universal factor. Just as the French ex-aristocracy quietly worked their way into govt and diplomacy positions post-Rev'n, Chinese citizens saw the Party as the place where all the money was -- and scratch the surface of Chinese 'Communism' and they are still pretty fiercely individualistic and market-oriented...

3. Execution
4. Combination of (3) and (4)

that's recursive as well...

Peter P,

Russia also moved too quickly. Fortunately, Putin seems to be making sure that things go well.

I sometimes wonder whether some of your comments are deliberately designed to ignite debate. This is one of them.

Define 'going well', because to me Russia is returning to the 1950's. Rule of law ignored when inconvenient to the Kremlin (E.g. Forced nationalisation directed against Shell and BP, not to mention Yukos). State-sponsored assassination of an expatriate critic in the UK.

And now the administrative actions being taken against any real opposition parties, with the 'law and order' excuse being trotted out to support riot police crackdowns on any resulting peaceful demonstrations.

Russian life expectancy is falling, the population is falling, and the education level is falling. This is all shielded for the moment by windfall profits from energy exports, much as the 'Thatcher Revolution' in the UK was supported by the oil discoveries in the North Sea.

Vicente,

Very true. We humans miscalculate risk.

I'm very offended that some people equate me to a fertilized egg, or even a 7 month fetus. What makes me truly human is not a combination of my father and my mother's genes, what makes me human is that not only do I have a brain, I've packed it with 20+ years of knowledge, trivia, experience, etc.

ahj to Peter P,

"I sometimes wonder whether some of your comments are deliberately designed to ignite debate. This is one of them."

Only "some"?

ajh,

Sorry for misspelling your name.

Another tax day has come and gone. How many of us took full advantage of all of our available options? How many will resolve "to be better prepared next year" (and how many of us will just continue to piss and moan)?

Ironically, I just remembered I had a huge 'debate' with someone on the blog at the Roanoke Times about a year ago concerning gun control. It's not too far from Virginia Tech from what I can gather. The thread became so vitriolic (for some reason) that the Times removed it. ;) I pointed out on the thread that in the time we had debated the issue, the Times had reported 3 deaths by firearms, one of them a suicide, one a jilted boyfriend, just in the local area. I really had to pull out a lot of international stats and do some research for that one, it makes this debate look like a lovefest, this 'J.D.' character wouldn't budge. I wonder if he has budged now, or will just say 'this proves every kid on campus should be packing heat' despite the ludicrousness of the proposition.

Different Sean Says:

> If you remove the guns as completely as possible,
> as has happened in UK and Oz, then drive-by
> shootings would diminish markedly…

We would also have to remove all the American gang members.

If we took every American gang member (and kid on a ton of psychotropic medication) and put them in the UK or OZ you would have daily drive bys (and school shootings) just like we do and we would be a big happy peaceful country with lots of gun owners just like Switzerland…

P.S. No country (including the UK and OZ has ever “removed” guns…

P.P.S. I bet this the Koren guy in VA was on psychotropic medication just like the kids at EVERY other school shooting in US history…

P.S. No country (including the UK and OZ has ever “removed” guns…

yes they have, they bought thousands of them off collectors, farmers and other owners and crushed them or disabled them. had amnesties, etc. buyback cost a fortune. same in UK. if they find new ones on arrests, they crush those as well.

If we took every American gang member (and kid on a ton of psychotropic medication) and put them in the UK or OZ you would have daily drive bys (and school shootings) just like we do

nope, there's much less to fear here, and people raised here behave better obviously. maybe less financial stress and poverty or something. there's only one particular group of recent arrivals who have proven to be a problem with handguns, and that is in sydney in particular. hence i'm leaving sydney. these particular people have very little of worth to offer our culture in other ways either.

Gun control, violence issues for this blog = BORING and OFF Topic!

Guns, shootings, blah blah blah. Then DS starts derailing everyone into some libertarian/capitalist vs.communist debate.

BORING!

agh, ski and SP are back....

skibum,

Agreed. It's not that I'm "totally" without empathy it's just that there's very little I CAN do about it?

This is a time of year when I spend a lot of time reflecting about the things I could have done better in preparing and tax planning. See, right now I'm facing something of a "burn rate" my damn self! The first few filing years after I sold my primary res. *not having major bubble bucks MID write-off was no big deal. The first year I was under a non-compete agreement so basically I *couldn't make any money. So at that point, no MID=no big deal. In the 2 filing years that followed MAX! SEP contribution filled the hole. But now I'm tapped. Totally tapped out.

In 2007 I will have NO dependent children and NO MID! I sure as hell don't want to buy just when the fruits of all of our research are paying off but another year like '06 and I'll be forced to do something drastic. (Even if it ain't right!) Thoughts?

DinOR,

Ouch! I can't believe your younger daughter would do that to you.

@astrid,

Yeah! How DARE she grow up like that!

I was helping the 22 y.o and she will definitely get everything back (filed as F/T student) and we did a final "walk through" and I asked her if she was Over 65.... OR! BLIND? I mean... like I "could" be... I mean if that would help?

One thing about OR though, the 40S (short form) has been pretty well overhauled and has no provision for student loan int. etc. It's strictly for baby sitters and lawn boys. So... the "40" drags you through "Alternative Fuels Tax Credits" and a lot of other stuff that's N/A for 99% of us. Weird.

DinOR,

Don't feel bad, most of the time, paying a lot of taxes means you're earning lots of dough. Would you rather not earn lots of money?

When you get to a high earned income level, there's really not that much planning you can do lower taxes, legally. Most of the strategies just end up deferring taxes until the next year anyway.

If you're deduction starved, you can always give money to charity. I can maybe setup a "Help MtViewRenter Stop Renting" Foundation...

I wonder how difficult it is to setup a deferred comp plan....

agh, ski and SP are back….

DS,

Well, I must apologize for trying to redirect this blog discussion back to HOUSING. How impolite and rude of me!

If I wanted to hear long-winded blowhard diatribes about the glories of sociali$m, I would be logging on to commietalk@blogspot.com. Instead, imagine my nerve - wanting to talk about housing on a housing blog!

MtViewRenter,

I wasn't really complaining, I just thought it might be an interesting time to look back on the "resolutions" some of us made last year yet somehow got side tracked from following through on.

I fully intended to create an HSA (health savings acct.) but couldn't seem to find a decent HDHP, the time or the GUMPTION to follow through? I was curious to see what challenges (or excuses) others might have encountered.

Having MID to fall back on is such a lazy solution. It's kind of like saying, "tax planning and investing baffle me, so I just load up on house" which seems to be what we've been saying as a country for the last 7 years or so. But you could tell this was coming. You just had to know that the intersection of a) going independent b) selling your primary residence c) waiting for the bubble to completely deflate without d) tap dancing and tightrope walking the tax code... was a LOT to ask!

I never thought for an instant that the whole world would fall over with it's legs up in the air and for the most part things have worked out fairly well. It certainly would have worked out better had the Fed started to raise earlier, '06 moves to '05 (complete w/subslime meltdown) DinOR swoops in w/lowball offer on 2 JAN 2006 and White Sox repeat as World Champs.

BUT NO!!! The REIC Juggernaut wouldn't stop until it hit a WALL. Still and all, I'm pretty happy about the way the bust is progressing so (2) checks are infinitely preferable to a lifetime of giving your lender 24/7 access to your checking account!

DS says:

"There was a time when the govt would offer returned servicemen extremely affordable housing in new suburbs and so on post-WWII. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of that housing are now selling them for $850K with no new affordable housing being constructed for anyone… "

Are you talking about OZ? Or are you refering to the US Gov GI Bill? Where was it that the US Gov had homes in the suburbs to offer to returning WWII servicemen? Also, most of the homes bought through the GI BIll in the late 40's were small 2 bed 1 bath types. Only in a few select areas would something like that go for $850k. Virtually everywhere outside of such areas, $850k will buy a very upperclass home.

Sevicemen today still get VA housing benefits, in the form of VA backing of zero down loans. Even before the bubble, this drove up home prices in the vicinity of military installations (except altready high markets like CA). Even so, when Castle AFB (Merced/Atwater) closed down in the 90's, I knew quite a few Air Force fellows who made good money selling there VA financed homes to the then climbing market.

By the way, you will not be able to build "affordable" homes as long as you have short term thinking people with easy credit. Dry up the credit and plenty of existing homes will fall into the affordable category for people who will save for a down payment.