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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You and I have talked about this. As I said before, the M.O. of this Administration, and this Congress, are to draft bills like that one to try to divide moderate Democrats from the business community. They don't want a bipartisan approach. They are trying to craft things so that reasonable Dems won't be able to sign on. That means "free trade" agreements designed to undermine environmental and labor protections, and so on.
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By definition free trade acts undermine "labour protections". The reason why the Democrats are stopping it is they don't want to give Bush a win going into the congressional elections.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop No, but neither does that prove that there is much a problem, nor that it is one of the free market's biggest problems. Doctors commit malpractice sometimes. They cannot police themselves. The legal system has to do it. If you tell me that the legal system doesn't do a particularly good job of that, I might agree, but the reforms proposed -- esp. limiting pain and suffering awards -- don't address the problem. Trial lawyers are filling a need.
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For the California Chamber of commerce the biggest complaint coming from their members is liability issues. Are all the members just stupid? Don't understand how to run their businesses? You can quote me all the stats you want, but the bottom line is that small business owners are in the best position to judge what is threatening their businesses. I just can't fathom that anyone would disagree with that.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop They started with a massive giveaway to the credit-card industry
Both businesses and unions support things that narrowly benefit themselves at the expense of the public good. We have all sorts of protections for various industries that your free-trade pals won't touch. Unions are no more prone to acting out of self-interest than businesses are.[QUOTE]
Small business do not have special interest. High tariffs on cream do not help the ice cream business. High tariffs on Steel do not benefit the car industry. Collectively, all the small businesses have one special interest in common. They want the US Business environment to be business friendly. When small business succeeds all of America succeeds. Most of the Job growth comes from small businesses. So what is in the interest of Small Businesses is in the interests of all Americans. The Unions only care about the jobs held by their members. Keeping those jobs at all costs is not always in the best interset of all Americans, let alone consumers. Unions do not want a flexible, dynamic economy. They just want job secuirty which is the antithesis of that. The US Chamber of Commerce understands better than anyone what we need to do to help small businesses. And they almost always support Republicans.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop They do understand that, but want the safety of Social Security, and to invest in the market on top of that.
The only way to pretend that that's true is to really manipulate the figures and ignore what's actually happening in Chile.
People would be able to count on Social Security if it was invested properly. And how does Bush's plan only benefit the fat cats? You are the one reading talking points now.
So in your view, we should be overthrowing the elected government of Venezuela right now?
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Absolutely. He is turning that country into a Socialist dictatorship. And socialist dictatorships can last a very long time - see Cuba and Burma.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop As history has proven, you are simply wrong here. So wrong that it's hard to know where to begin. ?
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Where was I wrong?
1) Clinton was not against the Republican Spending cuts
2) Spending cuts do not help balance the budget.
3) Clinton did not criticise Dole and the Republicans for trying to "cut" Medicaid.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop No, we got to pensions because you were saying that trial lawyers and unions are the biggest threats to the free market around, and I listed a bunch of things that I thought posed much greater economic risks, including pension regulation.?
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Economic risks is a different subject than free trade and growth. Those things you are talking about may hurt certain people and cause economic pain to certain groups but not the country as a whole. I am for growth. There is no questions that the entire legal system is a drain on growth. As much as you would like to believe they do, lawyers do not ad to the GNP. The more business litigation there is, the worse it is for business.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop I don't want get fringey going again (no mas, fringey, you win), so I will simply repeat my understanding that federal regulators have permitted companies to get away with underfunding their pensions, which will leave lots of workers (and the federal government) holding the bag. To the extent that the federal government is letting companies walk away from their obligations to these workers, there's a real problem..?
First of all, I'm not interested in defending California's workers comp system. I hear stories, too
That said, if you want to prove that something like workers comp is a problem for the economy, you're going to have to come up with something more than "they say it's a problem." Where there's smoke, sometimes there's a smoke machine.
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Workers Compensation was the number one issue for the California Chamber of Commerce when they helped Arnold get elected. I know this because half of the board of the Chamber also sits on my board. I was also there when the Chamber listed their complaints to then candidate Arnold. On most of the bills that go through the legislature the Chamber of Commerce is on one side and the Unions are on the other. The same is true of the trial lawyers. So somebody is taking the side against growth, a healthy business environment and free trade. They both can't be on the side of free trade, growth and a healthy business environment because they are almost always on different sides. Call me crazy, but when it comes to free trade, growth and a healthy business envornment I think such issues are better in the hands of the Chamber than the Unions and Trial lawyers. Do you disagree with that?
