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Post by prince2250 on Feb 13, 2019 16:11:22 GMT -8
Hello everyone,
I've been a member of this particular group of Clippers fans from the ESPN message board days. I've essentially grown up reading the posts of Dyce, Trapp, Nuraman, Brand4MVP, CAM, and many others. As such, I consider many of you as Clippers family. I know at times we may start other topic threads to discuss hobbies or political ideas. However, has anyone ever given a thought towards forming some sort of business think tank? I am sure that this board has far reach globally, so it would be interesting to know what resources are available just amongst this small community.
Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts, positive or negative.
Cheers!
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Post by nuraman00 on Feb 13, 2019 22:55:02 GMT -8
What business sector?
I agree, these boards have been a family.
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Post by clippers1121 on Feb 14, 2019 10:06:06 GMT -8
You can ask me advice on business anytime you want. I would be happy to respond with my wealth of experience. Other people will weigh in if they are so inclined.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 12:03:39 GMT -8
Hello everyone, I've been a member of this particular group of Clippers fans from the ESPN message board days. I've essentially grown up reading the posts of Dyce, Trapp, Nuraman, Brand4MVP, CAM, and many others. As such, I consider many of you as Clippers family. I know at times we may start other topic threads to discuss hobbies or political ideas. However, has anyone ever given a thought towards forming some sort of business think tank? I am sure that this board has far reach globally, so it would be interesting to know what resources are available just amongst this small community. Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts, positive or negative. Cheers! Business think tank? I was a finance major in college, got an MBA and have worked as a finance guy for over 25 years. I have plenty of opinions. Here we go: This country made a commitment to what was called at the time "voodoo economics" with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. This meant the government would lower taxes, lower interest rates, lower regulation and engage in deficit spending to boost consumption and investment. With mostly unrestricted capitalism, we pursued tech development and global trade to increase business profits, which led to increased business valuations. This made owning assets (stocks, bonds and real estate) more attractive and profitable than earning wages. The stock market has returned about 8% per year since 1980. Home prices have shown a similar return. Unfortunately with this growth there have been downsides. Government and consumer debt has exploded, benefits for full-time workers have diminished and many people face economic uncertainty. Tax and interest rates can't go any lower and raising them would hurt the economy. The number of billionaires has exploded but the median household income for the US is only $57,652, meaning 59.4 million households make less than this amount per year. There is growing sentiment, first mined and exploited by Donald Trump, that the middle class is disappearing. Trump convinced enough people this was a result of a race war, thus his insistence on building The Wall. Some Democrats like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and now AOC believe the real villain in this story is big business. I think people are starting to come around and accept that corporate America has been given a free pass for too long and now needs to pull their fair weight. My idea to redistribute some of this wealth is to raise the capital gains tax and to increase the tax deductibility of paying full-time equivalent salaries. For example, if a company paid someone $100,000 in salary and benefits, the company could deduct $125,000 on their tax return. This would give businesses a greater incentive to hire actual Americans to work for them rather than replace those jobs with machines or outsource to a developing country. Companies like Apple and Google should employ over 1 million workers each given their market caps. Walmart employs over 1.4 million people in the US alone. Henry Ford believed in paying his workers above market wages because that created customers for his cars. It is time we return our focus to American workers. |
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Post by clippers1121 on Feb 14, 2019 14:28:35 GMT -8
Automation is here to stay. Why pay systems programmers to take care of computers when you can put the computers all in a cloud and access them via the internet. It is a hell of a lot more efficient and cheaper than maintaining your own data center at your corporate headquarters or wherever you choose to locate it.
Why have people building Iphones when you can have robots assemble them faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Same with automobiles although Musk had a lot of issues with trying to do this at Tesla. And we did have seven million people who were at least three months behind with their car payments this month.
So yes income inequality is a huge issue in this country. A lot of people want to address it with socialistic systems. I agree that things like raising the capital gains tax by 5% would do a lot to promote a more just system for everybody and provide the government massive amounts of money to address some of these social problems. Problem is people don't get elected to public office by advocating tax increases. They get elected by promising tax decreases
I would oppose giving businesses more tax cuts. They already get too many tax breaks and should never have been given the tax breaks in the Trump legislation. Businesses in this country were already making billions in profits without that tax break. Now they just buy back their own stock with the money instead of investing in capital to improve worker productivity while our government sinks 22 trillion into debt.
Higher capital gains taxes from 20% to 25% would reverse I think the George W. Bush tax cut or whoever implemented it. And repeal the recent Trump tax cut. I think then we use the money to at least balance the budget so we don't increase the national debt anymore. And stop draining social security and medicare funding to fund the deficit.
And individuals should have to compete in the job market to get higher pay not be handed a high paycheck just for showing up. Keep work incentivized and reward achievement.
I admit though that it is tougher and tougher to build wealth in this country for the average person because so many things are working against that person. Debt, low wages, high living costs, are not exactly letting people get ahead in this society. But I hate the idea of socialistic solutions to these problems.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 16:05:55 GMT -8
Automation is here to stay. Why pay systems programmers to take care of computers when you can put the computers all in a cloud and access them via the internet. It is a hell of a lot more efficient and cheaper than maintaining your own data center at your corporate headquarters or wherever you choose to locate it. Why have people building Iphones when you can have robots assemble them faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Same with automobiles although Musk had a lot of issues with trying to do this at Tesla. And we did have seven million people who were at least three months behind with their car payments this month. So yes income inequality is a huge issue in this country. A lot of people want to address it with socialistic systems. I agree that things like raising the capital gains tax by 5% would do a lot to promote a more just system for everybody and provide the government massive amounts of money to address some of these social problems. Problem is people don't get elected to public office by advocating tax increases. They get elected by promising tax decreases I would oppose giving businesses more tax cuts. They already get too many tax breaks and should never have been given the tax breaks in the Trump legislation. Businesses in this country were already making billions in profits without that tax break. Now they just buy back their own stock with the money instead of investing in capital to improve worker productivity while our government sinks 22 trillion into debt. Higher capital gains taxes from 20% to 25% would reverse I think the George W. Bush tax cut or whoever implemented it. And repeal the recent Trump tax cut. I think then we use the money to at least balance the budget so we don't increase the national debt anymore. And stop draining social security and medicare funding to fund the deficit. And individuals should have to compete in the job market to get higher pay not be handed a high paycheck just for showing up. Keep work incentivized and reward achievement. I admit though that it is tougher and tougher to build wealth in this country for the average person because so many things are working against that person. Debt, low wages, high living costs, are not exactly letting people get ahead in this society. But I hate the idea of socialistic solutions to these problems. If you are an NBA fan, then you already believe in socialism. The draft is a way to help the bad teams get better. The salary cap is a way to help the small market teams compete with the big market teams. If the Knicks and Lakers won every championship would you tell the other 28 teams to just suck it up and work harder? You can't retrain a coal miner or small shop owner or office worker to become a software engineer. Besides, we are already outsourcing that job to Indian software engineers that work for 1/5 the cost of an American software engineer. |
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Post by clippers1121 on Feb 16, 2019 7:09:08 GMT -8
The NBA isn't socialism. It is a franchise like a McDonald's. They have rules to maintain to achieve quality control. You can't have all the good beef in L.A. and have people eating soybean burgers in Indianapolis. They have to have a good product wherever you consume it.
True a lot of people can't be retrained to do the higher paying jobs in the new economy. I have no idea how to solve this problem. Outsourcing to India is profitable and capitalism so companies do it. Trying to maximize profits is what a capitalistic society does. And it has been producing big winners and a lot of losers. People who own assets such as stock and real estate benefit and people in debt don't. So the people in debt want more and more free stuff from the government. So raise taxes to pay for this free stuff.
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Post by prince2250 on Feb 16, 2019 7:39:45 GMT -8
Hey thanks you guys for input. I will reach out to you via personal message if there is anything pertinent I feel as though I can share or ask of you.
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Post by prince2250 on Feb 16, 2019 7:40:40 GMT -8
What business sector? I agree, these boards have been a family. Doesn't matter. Whether it be technology, tourism, agriculture, marine-based. As I'm from the Caribbean I try to think of business ventures that would make sense and are feasible for that region. |
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Post by trapp76 on Feb 18, 2019 10:33:58 GMT -8
Automation is here to stay. Why pay systems programmers to take care of computers when you can put the computers all in a cloud and access them via the internet. It is a hell of a lot more efficient and cheaper than maintaining your own data center at your corporate headquarters or wherever you choose to locate it. Why have people building Iphones when you can have robots assemble them faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Same with automobiles although Musk had a lot of issues with trying to do this at Tesla. And we did have seven million people who were at least three months behind with their car payments this month. So yes income inequality is a huge issue in this country. A lot of people want to address it with socialistic systems. I agree that things like raising the capital gains tax by 5% would do a lot to promote a more just system for everybody and provide the government massive amounts of money to address some of these social problems. Problem is people don't get elected to public office by advocating tax increases. They get elected by promising tax decreases I would oppose giving businesses more tax cuts. They already get too many tax breaks and should never have been given the tax breaks in the Trump legislation. Businesses in this country were already making billions in profits without that tax break. Now they just buy back their own stock with the money instead of investing in capital to improve worker productivity while our government sinks 22 trillion into debt. Higher capital gains taxes from 20% to 25% would reverse I think the George W. Bush tax cut or whoever implemented it. And repeal the recent Trump tax cut. I think then we use the money to at least balance the budget so we don't increase the national debt anymore. And stop draining social security and medicare funding to fund the deficit. And individuals should have to compete in the job market to get higher pay not be handed a high paycheck just for showing up. Keep work incentivized and reward achievement. I admit though that it is tougher and tougher to build wealth in this country for the average person because so many things are working against that person. Debt, low wages, high living costs, are not exactly letting people get ahead in this society. But I hate the idea of socialistic solutions to these problems. Raising taxes on the rich is actually very popular in polling. |
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Post by mistwell on Feb 18, 2019 11:44:14 GMT -8
Uh, there are only 540 billionaires in the entire U.S.. |
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Post by mistwell on Feb 18, 2019 11:46:06 GMT -8
Automation is here to stay. Why pay systems programmers to take care of computers when you can put the computers all in a cloud and access them via the internet. It is a hell of a lot more efficient and cheaper than maintaining your own data center at your corporate headquarters or wherever you choose to locate it. Why have people building Iphones when you can have robots assemble them faster, cheaper, and more reliably. Same with automobiles although Musk had a lot of issues with trying to do this at Tesla. And we did have seven million people who were at least three months behind with their car payments this month. So yes income inequality is a huge issue in this country. A lot of people want to address it with socialistic systems. I agree that things like raising the capital gains tax by 5% would do a lot to promote a more just system for everybody and provide the government massive amounts of money to address some of these social problems. Problem is people don't get elected to public office by advocating tax increases. They get elected by promising tax decreases I would oppose giving businesses more tax cuts. They already get too many tax breaks and should never have been given the tax breaks in the Trump legislation. Businesses in this country were already making billions in profits without that tax break. Now they just buy back their own stock with the money instead of investing in capital to improve worker productivity while our government sinks 22 trillion into debt. Higher capital gains taxes from 20% to 25% would reverse I think the George W. Bush tax cut or whoever implemented it. And repeal the recent Trump tax cut. I think then we use the money to at least balance the budget so we don't increase the national debt anymore. And stop draining social security and medicare funding to fund the deficit. And individuals should have to compete in the job market to get higher pay not be handed a high paycheck just for showing up. Keep work incentivized and reward achievement. I admit though that it is tougher and tougher to build wealth in this country for the average person because so many things are working against that person. Debt, low wages, high living costs, are not exactly letting people get ahead in this society. But I hate the idea of socialistic solutions to these problems. Raising taxes on the rich is actually very popular in polling. The majority wants the minorities stuff. News at 11. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2019 12:51:10 GMT -8
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Post by mistwell on Feb 18, 2019 14:52:39 GMT -8
That's lovely but a total non-sequitur. You said, "The number of billionaires has exploded". There are only 540 billionaires in the entire U.S.. Even if they owned ALLLL the money that still would have nothing to do with the NUMBER OF BILLIONAIRES. The number of them is not exploding. It remains an incredibly small number. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2019 17:50:40 GMT -8
That's lovely but a total non-sequitur. You said, "The number of billionaires has exploded". There are only 540 billionaires in the entire U.S.. Even if they owned ALLLL the money that still would have nothing to do with the NUMBER OF BILLIONAIRES. The number of them is not exploding. It remains an incredibly small number. Forbes listed 49 US billionaires in 1987. Today they list 594. That is a change of 1,212%. US median household income in 1987 was $26,061. It was $61,372 in 2017 per the US Census Bureau. That is a change of 235%, or 2.9% annual growth over 30 years. US income has barely kept up with inflation, but the number of billionaires has EXPLODED because wealth is created through owning businesses and/or real estate. The 594 US billionaires represent .0002% of the US population of 327 million. Their combined net worth is $3.15 trillion, or 2.89% of total US household net worth of $109 trillion (according to Federal Reserve's latest Z1 report). |
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