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Romney vs. Obama

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My one and only post in the political forum:

For me it boils down to this: A person that knows how to make money and create jobs(Romney) vs. someone that is more than willing to take your money at the expense of jobs(Obama).

Vote up!
 
America needs less government, the more government power the less freedom we have and People start to become lazy because the government will take care of you
 
A.Nonymous said:
Facebook has over 3,000 employees and a market cap around $60-70 billion. Not sure how that qualifies as "worthless crap". You have much different standards than I do I guess.
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Yes, 3000 is not that many people for such a well known company. A single paper mill that you have never heard of can employ more people than that.Your market cap will be gone once idiots finally realize that Facebook is a bubble without anything of particular value. Luckily for Zuckerberg, Facebook fans paid $38 per share at the IPO. Look what happened to their investment now.[/QUOTE]
A.Nonymous said:
Small town residents are mostly poor? Wow. Elitist much? Around here the small towns house a lot of the very wealthy people. Those people are small business owners. They own 2-3 car lots or a chain of laundromats or whatever.
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Delusional much? I used to live in a small town; I know. I hope you are not referring to the rich suburbia or affluent retirement communities when you claim that people in small towns are doing well. They only do well if there is a corporate employer nearby. Chain of laundromats speaks for itself. I bet the residents use the laundromats because they can't afford a washer and a dryer.
A.Nonymous said:
Have you no experience with doctor's offices are not? The vast majority of them are small businesses. Dr. Jones in private practice isn't a small business? A handful of docs in private practice together isn't a small business? And you think the care you get there is worse? Elitist much?
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Once again, I prefer academic medical centers. What? Do you think all physicians are created equal? Of course, there is better and more streamlined care at a good medical center than at a good small private office. I was talking about big physician groups that function as big companies though the physicians are physically spread all over the town, giving the illusion of a private practice.
A.Nonymous said:
Small businesses are the life blood of the economy. How could they not be when they make up 99% of all companies and employ half the work force.
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Exactly, 99% of companies and employ only almost half of all wage earners and responsible for only 20% of exports. You have yourself made a great compliment to big businesses. They constitute only 1% of all businesses, but they employ more workers, pay more taxes, and by large are responsible for U.S. exports, the net flow of money into the United States. Corporations are the bloodline of everything. Kill the corporations and all your small businesses will go belly up.[/QUOTE]

A.Nonymous said:
Who picks up your trash?
Who services those appliances when they die?
Who repairs your car?
Who sold you that car in the first place?
The local tire store you buy your tires at?
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I think municipal company picks up my trash.

When my appliances die, I either fix them myself or buy new ones. Big companies also provide a one year warranty. After that, it is usually cheaper to buy a new appliance than to get it fixed by a local business. I have not used an appliance repair shop as far as I remember myself.

Myself, but I would have to go the dealership or shop if it is something major, such as transmission failure. Furthermore, there are corporate chains of repair shops these days as well.

Car dealership, but I bet Walmart would sell it to me at a better price if they were allowed to. Furthermore, most small used car lots are rip offs that exploit dumb people or people with poor credit. Again, I can buy a used car at Carmax, a big company.

I buy my tires at Discount Tire, transnational corporation.

Anything else? Small businesses are not essential!
 
Well, you've convinced me. According to your logic 99% of the businesses in the US could disappear tomorrow taking half of the jobs in the entire company with them and they would have little impact.

The Facebook thing astounds me. A market cap of 60 billion and you still dismiss them as worthless. You do realize that Google had about 2000 employees itself when it IPO'd and half of them (by Google's own numbers) were sales weasels. Yet you'd consider them worthless crap at the time as well I take it?

Your elitism speaks for itself. I love your idea that someone who own several laundromats doesn't matter because only poor people use his business. That is awesome in and of itself.

I also love the idea that you judge a businesses worth entirely by it's exports. Small businesses account for only 20% of exports therefore they are worthless. Just take one small sliver of the economic picture and discount 99% of all businesses because of it. Nice.

If you want a rip off for sure go to Carmax. That's another topic. If your car needs bodywork I'm going to assume you take it to the dealership where you are sure to pay higher prices for the same quality of work that you could get at small body shop.

Just because a doctor's office has several branches across down doesn't mean it's not a small business. The feds define a small business as less than 500 employees. It's still a small business whether it has multiple branches in town or not.

I know you would disagree with me and that's fine, but I would much rather do business with a small business where they know me by name and I get much better customer service than a large chain where I'm just a number. That's just me though.

99% of businesses employing half the workforce are not essential. Just wow.
 
They are not essential because small businesses will follow where the big businesses are. You can argue that jobs created by small businesses are in reality the jobs created by big companies indirectly.
Several branches of physician's office? No, I meant more like hundreds of physicians working for a group.

Yes, exports are important.

Anyway, the point is you need the capital to create even a small business, unless you want to explore the world of gofertunity. And when people say that businesses are created out of nothing, it is a bunch of bull!
 
And yet there are businesses all over the place that were started from nothing, but you choose to ignore them. I could give example after example, but you dismiss them all. Dell started with nothing. Microsoft started with nothing. But you say that was back then and this is now. Yet Google started with nothing and Facebook started with nothing. But that means nothing.

I'm a computer tech. I could start a computer company today. What would it take? me pounding the streets looking for clients to hire me. That's literally all it would take for me to start a business. As I acquired accounts I could hire people and farm those accounts out to them. I realize this is ridiculously unrealistic yet my previous employer started just like that. And so did most of our competitors. You don't start a business by gathering millions of dollars and hiring a 100 people off the bat. No one starts a business that way in reality.
 
A.Nonymous said:
I think part of the problem is the public doesn't want compromisers. They want hard line, party liners who will ram their agenda down their opponents throat no matter what the other guy tries to do. These people with back bones of steel are the ones we need to lead us to the future. Reality is all that leads to is the political fighting we see today and nothing gets done.
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Agreed and I think it's absurd. Ultimately this doesn't seem to be a sustainable status-quo. Again, just look at the debt ceiling debacles (yes, the debt ceiling keeps coming up and they just kick it further down the road), the recent transportation/student loan debates, etc.

Should I be scared that we are agreeing on so many things lately? :D


bigbadwulff said:
My one and only post in the political forum:

For me it boils down to this: A person that knows how to make money and create jobs(Romney) vs. someone that is more than willing to take your money at the expense of jobs(Obama).

Vote up!
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You're view on this is a little misleading. Obama's view is that there are people out there making tons of money that can afford to pay a little extra. There are many more out there who cannot afford things right now, so we cannot raise taxes on them. Given the state of our country right now and the lack of money, we either have to raise revenue or decrease spending (or BOTH!!!). Obama has pushed some spending cuts, but does want to increase revenue as well. It's just that he only wants to increase revenue on the "rich".

Typically he seems to have defined the cutoff for "rich" at $200,000/year for a single person (married filing jointly is $250,000k). For example, in the Affordable Care Act:

- Income taxes are increased by 0.9% on those making over $200k ($250k if married). That's an extra $1800/year if you make $200k.

- Taxes on dividends, capital gains, etc. go up from 15% to 18.8% if you make more than $200k/$250k.


If you make less than that then he doesn't want to raise your taxes. So I think it's wrong to say Obama wants to tax you and take your money -- unless you are a high income earner. Something like 98% of the country falls outside of this bracket. So it's more reasonable to say that Obama wants to tax rich people and take their money. Hell, it's more reasonable to say that Obama doesn't want to take your money since that statement applies to 98% of Americans. Your statement that he wants to "take your money" only applies to about 2% of Americans so it just doesn't seem very accurate to me.

P.S. If you are married and make over $250k/year but don't like the additional 0.9% increase then please let me know. I'll gladly switch salaries with you and pay the additional tax. I guarantee you that you won't have to pay the additional 0.9% given my income. ;)

Android311 said:
America needs less government, the more government power the less freedom we have and People start to become lazy because the government will take care of you
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In some ways I agree, in others not. Lack of oversight led to crap like Enron collapsing, banking issues that led to our current financial crisis, etc. History has proven that people and corporations are greedy and self regulation doesn't always work.

However, do we really need to government issuing software patents and then hiring judges and juries to hear arguments about them (especially when software is already covered by copyright, meaning you cannot copy it or create derivative works)? Do we really need the government spending trillions of dollars to build nations abroad (Iraq, Afghanistan) when we cannot even pay our bills at home? Do we really need the government trampling on the Constitution with bills like the Patriot Act?

The regulatory bodies created by our government were created because history taught us a lesson. I agree that there is wasteful spending in our welfare programs, but I think those loopholes need to be fixed, but we can't just do away with welfare entirely. Also, there is a plethora of wasteful spending out there, and it would be naive and incorrect to think that none of that was a direct result of ideas proposed by Republican presidents and legislatures in the past.
 
Someone else already addressed why Dell is a bad example. It was started at the good entry point with no need for much capital back then.
Now, it is still a good time to start a software company. You don't need much for that besides computer, education or skill, and a place to sleep. Even though you can start your company, you still need savings or work to pay your bills before your business picks up.
What about other companies? I want to start a pharmaceutical company. What do I do? Take a beaker and start mixing? I want to make meat products. How do I start it without capital?
Programming company is easy too start because you don't needed much for that.
 
Spike15 said:
Someone else already addressed why Dell is a bad example. It was started at the good entry point with no need for much capital back then.
Now, it is still a good time to start a software company. You don't need much for that besides computer, education or skill, and a place to sleep. Even though you can start your company, you still need savings or work to pay your bills before your business picks up.
What about other companies? I want to start a pharmaceutical company. What do I do? Take a beaker and start mixing? I want to make meat products. How do I start it without capital?
Programming company is easy too start because you don't needed much for that.
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Again, Facebook started with nothing in 2004. Google started with nothing in 1998. Ebay was started in a guys living room. The idea that you need a bajillion dollars, a huge office, a staff of hundreds and lawyer on retainer is a complete myth. I know that's what they teach in business school as I was a business minor, but in the real world, that's not how it works. The world is full of businesses that started on a card table somewhere whether you believe that's true or not. 99% of businesses are small businesses and I can guarantee you they didn't borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to get off the ground.

I know of people who run catering businesses out of their homes. I know of one of them who found that she needed a commercial kitchen in order to grow. She went around to the local churches and found one that would rent her their kitchen. She didn't go out and rent a building and fill it with commercial appliances that cost thousands of dollars.

Just how much business experience do you have? Have you spent much time around entrepreneurs?
 
Do you have any examples of non-software, non-catering, non-gofering company that started from nothing, such as a pharmaceutical company or chipset manufacturers.
Yes, I know how companies are created, but being an elitist, I don't consider gofering service a company.
I used to work for a company that was started by a venture capitalist with a $25 million investment. So, companies are created like that for sure.
All your friends with catering and gofering services are not entrepreneurs. They are a joke, small fish in the pond. It would not be worth my effort to start something like that, and I would feel myself really unsatisfied to say the least.
 
Spike15 said:
Do you have any examples of non-software, non-catering, non-gofering company that started from nothing, such as a pharmaceutical company or chipset manufacturers.
Yes, I know how companies are created, but being an elitist, I don't consider gofering service a company.
I used to work for a company that was started by a venture capitalist with a $25 million investment. So, companies are created like that for sure.
All your friends with catering and gofering services are not entrepreneurs. They are a joke, small fish in the pond. It would not be worth my effort to start something like that, and I would feel myself really unsatisfied to say the least.
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...And I bet people here think I'm anti-business, heh.
 
ElasticNinja said:
I think the experience of communist countries would tell us they are very important though.
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No, that's not true. The problem was that there was no competiton among big companies. One or two big government companies were making all refrigerators without competition, for example. Soviet government focused on weapons and did not care that refrigerators were crappy. People had to buy no matter what they produce, for these two government companies were allowed to make and sell refrigerators. In fact, in the 1980s, there were analogs of small businesses in USSR, but it did not help a bit.
India and Pakistan have small businesses. And what? These countries are still crapholes.
 
Spike15 said:
Do you have any examples of non-software, non-catering, non-gofering company that started from nothing, such as a pharmaceutical company or chipset manufacturers.
Yes, I know how companies are created, but being an elitist, I don't consider gofering service a company.
I used to work for a company that was started by a venture capitalist with a $25 million investment. So, companies are created like that for sure.
All your friends with catering and gofering services are not entrepreneurs. They are a joke, small fish in the pond. It would not be worth my effort to start something like that, and I would feel myself really unsatisfied to say the least.
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WTF??? How is a someone who started their own catering business not an entrepreneur? I really have no idea at all where you're coming from. Are pharmaceutical companies and manufacturing companies the ONLY kinds of companies that you can start from scratch?

I'm on a fish forum as that's a hobby I've got. There is a guy there who makes CO2 reactors out of PVC piping and sells them on there. It's not his main job, but he makes decent money on the side selling them. That is not a business of any sort to you?

What in the world qualifies as a "business"? And what qualifies as an "entrepreneur"?
 
Spike15 said:
Something that will eventually bring good income on its own without personal participation, but remember I am an elitist.
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So by your definition an investor is an entrepreneur. You do realize that this definition is not found in any dictionary I've come across. The dictionary defines entrepreneur as "1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
2. an employer of productive labor; contractor." Another dictionary uses the definition, "1. the owner or manager of a business enterprise who, by risk and initiative, attempts to make profits 2. a middleman or commercial intermediary"

Your definition doesn't fit either of those dictionary definitions. It wouldn't describe anyone at Facebook, Google, Microsoft or any other company that I can think of. It might describe a venture capitalist. I know of no business owners who have little involvement in their businesses and just rake in the dollars.

 
The only ones who support Romney have delusions of becoming robber barons, while the most likely outcome is serfdom.

Why won't Romney release more tax returns? - CNN.com

"Since George Romney inaugurated the practice more than 40 years ago by releasing 12 years of tax returns in his bid for the Republican Party nomination, presidential nominees have been transparent with voters about their personal finances. For this reason, we have not suffered a significant tax scandal involving a nominee or sitting president since President Richard Nixon's abuse of the tax code."

"The IRS announced in 2009 a partial tax amnesty for unreported foreign bank accounts, in light of the Justice Department's criminal investigations involving several Swiss banks. To date, some 34,500 Americans have taken advantage of such amnesty programs. Did the Romneys avail themselves of any of these amnesty programs? One hopes that such a suggestion is preposterous, but that is what disclosure is for -- to replace speculation with truth-telling to the American people."
 
A.Nonymous said:
I know of no business owners who have little involvement in their businesses and just rake in the dollars.
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Eventually, not from the very beginning.
I am sorry, but your friend with a gofer business sounds more like a loser than an entrepreneur.
 
OutofDate1980 said:
The only ones who support Romney have delusions of becoming robber barons, while the most likely outcome is serfdom.

Why won't Romney release more tax returns? - CNN.com

"Since George Romney inaugurated the practice more than 40 years ago by releasing 12 years of tax returns in his bid for the Republican Party nomination, presidential nominees have been transparent with voters about their personal finances. For this reason, we have not suffered a significant tax scandal involving a nominee or sitting president since President Richard Nixon's abuse of the tax code."

"The IRS announced in 2009 a partial tax amnesty for unreported foreign bank accounts, in light of the Justice Department's criminal investigations involving several Swiss banks. To date, some 34,500 Americans have taken advantage of such amnesty programs. Did the Romneys avail themselves of any of these amnesty programs? One hopes that such a suggestion is preposterous, but that is what disclosure is for -- to replace speculation with truth-telling to the American people."
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Still waiting for someone to tell me why this is even relevant. What data could possibly be in there that would be relevant?

Spike15 said:
Eventually, not from the very beginning.
I am sorry, but your friend with a gofer business sounds more like a loser than an entrepreneur.
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All I know is the guy works all day and brings home enough to feed his family and pay his bills. Guy got laid off and rather than draw unemployment he went into business for himself. Personally, I find it admirable, but I guess you think the alternative is better. The thing is after doing that for awhile, his old job picked back up and hired him back. He worked there for a few months and then quit to go back to his gofer stuff that you find so reprehensible. Why? He enjoyed the freedom of working for himself and he makes a living do it.

Not sure how that doesn't qualify as entrepreneurial to you, but I have a feeling very little does. Somehow I think that if someone stuck a gun to your head and forced you to start a business today that you'd go out and borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions if you could get your hands on it, rent the fanciest office in town and start hiring at least 50-60 people right off the bat. The reality is businesses don't start that way in real life. I'd tell you to go talk to some entrepreneurs but the guy running the independent body shop, the gal running the barbershop and the mom and pop running the gas station don't count to you so I have no idea where to point you to.
 
A.Nonymous said:
Still waiting for someone to tell me why this is even relevant. What data could possibly be in there that would be relevant?
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If he did something illegal in his taxes, that would be relevant. Of course, there is also plausible deniability since I seriously doubt that Romney does his own taxes and knows the intimate details of them.
 
Spike15 said:
Something that will eventually bring good income on its own without personal participation, but remember I am an elitist.
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Don't agree with something? Start changing definitions! Makes me think of the quote from Adam Savage... "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"
 
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