Not Somalia. They want more Singapores. Controlled by companies and no one owns guns except the corporate security.
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Singapore is one of the most heavily regulated states in the world. People invest there because it is known for its lack of corruption and outside influence by companies. Its courts are considered extremely fair for international investors.
Rating higher than the US on the "Transparency Index"
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But Singapore is effectively a one-party system with a very corporation-friendly government. Corruption is not needed when you control the state.
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One party system in the sense like Taiwan, Mexico or Japan are in that one party consistently did well in the elections. But even that has changed somewhat. Opposition parties have gained
The country is very corporation friendly but it is also organized labor friendly and has a government which has been tough to buy off and fairly transparent about its efforts in dealing with corruption. More than most.
Corruption is by definition when outside parties control the state. Which is not the case with Singapore. If you want to see examples of corporate control of a state, look at Japan. The influence of the keiratsus pretty much ensures very obvious corruption.
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The Boeing executives live in Chicago these days.
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One guess:
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Well then, that explains even more.
Yep, pretty much
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How’s that infrastructure in Venezuela doing these days?
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I’d be fine with the United States of America in the middle of the JFK administration. Remember the Mad Max anarchy of 1961?
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Venezuela pays for its infrastructure through the nationalized oil industry. Which means its turned to shit as of late with oil prices at an all time low.
They also spent like drunken sailors on shore leave when it came to military expansion. A military which has not fired a shot in anger at a foreign foe in over a century but is hell bent on pissing off the Colombians.
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And that’s what happens when you don’t diversify your economy. Flint/Detroit leaned that the hard way too.
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The Corporatocracy is real.
That can’t be a word.
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Be honest, there is no amount that is “just right”
Starve the beast is policy and ideology.
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Which is what the Ron Paul libertarians and other Bircher-kin have wet dreams over. No lobbyists because private companies have destroyed slash run the FDA, EPA, USDA. No corruption because the inmates self-“regulate” the asylum.
No rational actor would ever dare kill their customers without the State to blame, after all.
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A 70% personal top tax rate & 47% corporate tax rate would be called socialist today. JFK - cold warrior/socialist.
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How do YOU propose we pay for roads, an educated populace, police, firemen, national defence, etc?
“muh roads”, wow. There was, is, and will be a time & place, when private individuals get together to pay for roads, education, police, firemen. Where governments take over those tasks, they naturally crowd out competition, which is something for which we are supposed to be grateful - and keep paying.
Starve the beast is policy and ideology.
While it is a beast, sure. Perhaps it can be thinned down to a pet or butler.
In many cases government action is the only thing which ensures liberties of the public.
I’d turn it around. Government actions should apprx. only be things that ensure liberties of the public.
By conflating Obama’s argument with Warren’s, you’re acknowledging that their argument was that businesses are largely successful because the infrastructure was there to help them be successful, and that said infrastructure was paid for by taxpayers.
That seems like a reasonable summary of their argument. (Add Raich’s “customers are the real job creators” woowoo in a similar vein.) Substantial arguments against that exist, beyond the toy wikipedia “that was disingenuously used against Pres. Obama’s campaign” whine.
For example, businesses are not largely successful because of prior infrastructure. They are successful because of the value they themselves generate. To credit success to mere prerequisites like infrastructure - or dollars in customers’ pockets - diminishes the crucial contribution of the entrepreneur.
For another example, that prior infrastructure cannot be fully credited to government (as Warren & Obama do), but more properly to taxpayers (as you do). And it ignores privately funded “infrastructure” - like post-secondary education, countless other businesses that provide the services one needs to operate. We’re interdependent far more on other private citizens and businesses than on governments, if you count things like dollar flows, interactions such as transactions. And that is a good thing.
(No one claims business people each built their prerequisites. No one claims Obama claimed that they do. Don’t bother with that line of argument.)
Well, there is a certain logic in “If people don’t have any money to spend, the economy comes to a stop,” but if that was what he was arguing, I don’t think you’d be arguing against it, so I’ll just let that drop.
And no one is arguing against that.
From Obama’s speech:
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
From Warren’s:
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it
The idea that they’re saying “businesses are largely successful because of prior infrastructure” is the straw man that people are accusing you of arguing against, the straw man inherent in “You didn’t build that.” The argument that Warren and Obama are making is that it’s hypocritical to say that government can’t do anything right, that only the private sector can get anything accomplished that is worthwhile for the average taxpayer - which is an argument that people are making.
What is the old saying? “The nine scariest words in the English language are, ‘I’m with the government, and I’m here to help?’”
Funny, I’m a taxpayer, and I don’t remember hiring the people to pave the roads, or to stop developers from bulldozing parkland, or to hunt down murderers.
Government, done correctly, is the taxpayers paying for things that improve their country. You’re making a distinction where one doesn’t exist (or ought not to, in theory).
Highly subsidized by the government-backed student loan system? Not to mention all of the publicly-owned colleges.
And no one is claiming that those don’t exist. The heart of the “You didn’t build that” speech is that businesses get value from things that the taxpayers paid the government to build. Fair enough; we all get benefit from those things. However, the businesses should kick forward a portion of their profits to pay for the infrastructure for the next people to use.
The Republican party seems to take issue with this idea, contending that no tax is a good tax - but it’s hypocritical to claim that no tax is a good tax, while at the same time using infrastructure paid for using tax dollars.
That’s the hypocrisy highlighted by Warren and Obama’s speeches, and they each present a different picture of government: that if we all work together on something, we have a much better chance of success than if we each pull alone in our own unique direction.
That’s a progressive theory of government, and you’d be quite right to point out that it doesn’t always work out that way in practice. However, that’s a reason to try harder to make a better country together, not to stop trying altogether and become out own individual nations, disclaiming any responsibility towards the greater good.
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Give me the whole 1961 tax code - with the credits and deductions exactly as they were in place on April 15, 1961, and with the brackets indexed for inflation during the last 55 years - and I will take it in a nanosecond. Just catching up with the bracket creep of the 1970’s would be well worth it.
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