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45300. Ms. No - 11/17/2012 12:27:15 AM Re: 45288. concerned
My point is that for 97% of small business owners their taxes will not increase.
I can walk down the street past hundreds of small businesses where the owners are not only not making a quarter mil a year, they're not making 100k.
The idea that the owners of "small businesses" routinely make upwards of $250,000 is a total crock. 45301. concerned - 11/17/2012 2:56:03 AM US Census Bureau Figures from 2008 show that sole proprieterships and small businesses with 10 or fewer employees that would comprise the vast majority of firms with profits less than $250,000/yr employed fewer than 35 million people. And sole proprieterships (only one person in the business - no employees) made up over 21 million of that total - additionally, many sole propieterships do not make enough to support even one person, but are 'side' businesses.
Businesses with 10-100 employees which would basically round out the rest of what would be considered small businesses, employed over 29 million people in 2008. Most of these would expect to average profits well over $250,000 a year.
The rest of the private sector, employing over 100 people per firm, is very important, needless to say, providing work for over 78 million people in 2008. Here, we are looking at profits ranging from the millions to the billions of dollars per year per firm.
So, to say, as you are, that the only thing worth considering is that only the smallest businesses providing livings for only about 15% of private sector employees won't be directly hurt by Democrat tax increases is unacceptable. The other 85% requires full accountability, not to be ignored as Democrats would want.
The disastrous impact of 0bamacare makes the above situation even worse. 45302. concerned - 11/17/2012 3:00:05 AM I noticed some of you sneering at Hostess shutting down throwing 18,500 people out of work, due to incredibly stupid union intransigence.
You Lefties have all the innate sympathy for others of a scorpion. 45303. Wombat - 11/17/2012 3:35:45 AM Yup, and the fact that the Romneyesque holding company that ran Hostess--while filing for bankruptcy--tripled the pay of its President (to over $2 million per year) and handed out generous salary increases to other executives, had nothing to do with it.
From the Wall Street Journal:
"Creditors of Hostess Brands Inc. said in court papers the company may have "manipulated" its executives' salaries higher in the months leading up to its Chapter 11 filing, in what the creditors called a possible effort by Hostess to "sidestep" Bankruptcy Code compensation provisions.
The committee representing Hostess's unsecured creditors alleges that information it has gathered suggests "the possibility" that the company converted a chunk of its top executives' pay from performance-based bonuses to salary, "at least in part to sidestep" rules...."
So, the union gets blamed for the actions of sleazy executives, and workers lose their jobs. That's Romney-style management for you. If Concerned had the innate sympathy of a scorpion, it would be a step up, even if it is an insult to scorpions. 45304. arkymalarky - 11/17/2012 3:37:56 AM You mean stupid hedge fund investors. But hey, they gave their CEOs a raise! 45305. arkymalarky - 11/17/2012 3:40:40 AM Amen Wombat 45306. arkymalarky - 11/17/2012 4:25:26 AM I thought a lot about posting this, since I didn't ask permission. This woman and her husband are wonderful people. She lost her job a few weeks ago. He works full time. There are a few typos, but I think it's one of the most eloquent, touching perspectives on the working poor I've ever read:
“Although I do not claim to have the patience of Jobe [sic], I am however, thankful for having more patience than the couple behind me at the grocery store today when I messed up my WIC items and had to go back to exchange them….it took a whole 30 seconds because to keep someone else from being “put out”, I ran…pregnant and all…and still got the dirty looks, toe tapping, and grunts and sighs…made me really sad to see that two people could get so angry (and even make a comment as I pushed my buggy out of the store) because I cost them a whole extra 30 seconds of standing in line or maybe it was because I receive WIC and they feel they paid for my milk and juice….why don’t people have compassion any more…Why don’t they exibit [sic] empathy any longer??? Here I was with a three year old, pregnant and just trying to get the groceries to feed my family, and made a little mistake, and I even felt the need to apologize and didn’t so much as get a nod or an its ok, just another hateful look….I am also thankful the cashier was so very sweet and understanding and showed compassion toward me when those behind me could not….she made me feel better, you know like a human who means something, and for that I hope God blesses her…what a sweet smile to brighten a dark experience.”
I cried and cried when I read it, then sat on it awhile. I personally think she should edit and publish it. 45307. thoughtful - 11/17/2012 4:56:50 AM I'm not so sure that's a comment on being part of the working poor or as much a comment on the general loss of empathy, compassion for others, and a general rise in self-centeredness that seems to be permeating society. I doubt the couple could care less that she was on WIC....I suspect they were miffed for being inconvenienced.
Trinkaus' work suggests that small courtesies (cooperating with the limit of items in the express lane at a grocery, stop signs, pushing shopping carts back) are not only rarely observed but that the rate of observation is deteriorating. 45308. arkymalarky - 11/17/2012 5:24:11 AM That as it may be, the hostility against people on public assistance is getting very unpleasant, which is ironic in such a poor state. I hear it all the time--far more in recent years for some reason. 45309. iiibbb - 11/17/2012 6:06:04 AM There's jobs, and there's jobs
As George Carlin once said...
 45310. iiibbb - 11/17/2012 6:26:04 AM Message # 45306
I wish I could believe compassion was more prevalent of yore, but it doesn't take a deep perusal of history or literature to know that not much has changed about human behavior. 45311. concerned - 11/17/2012 7:58:56 AM I'm sure you guys actually have some empathy for the 18,500 former Hostess employees, but their plight to me illustrates why unions in the private sector are declining - this one negotiated Hostess out of business and is walking away without even looking back! 45312. concerned - 11/17/2012 8:10:26 AM Btw, the real reason I came here again was to mention something that the 'Tax it if it moves' contingent will never admit - higher taxes reduce the world competitiveness of American corporations - to not tax more only businesses that have profits of less than $250,000 may seem ok for a mom & pop drugstore or local carwash or burger joint, but what about an independent supermarket or medical rehabilitation center? And any business that has to invest in R&D in leading edge technology or product development? Take away their profits and you take away their competitiveness.
It's a virtual crime against rational thought to oversimplify the criteria for taxation to the point where "over $250K profit='bad', under $250K profit='good'". 45313. concerned - 11/17/2012 8:25:38 AM I'll except Wombat here - he not only has the empathy of a scorpion but the brain power of one, too. He'll post literally anything as an apologist for the worst Left wing excesses, no matter how ridiculous, as he amply demonstrates in 45303 (I'm referring to his totally gratuitous comments there, for anybody who is having trouble 'getting it'). 45314. concerned - 11/17/2012 8:58:20 AM From CNN Money:
Frank Hurt, president of the bakers' union, called the liquidation "a deep disappointment" but said his members weren't the ones responsible, blaming the various management teams in place at Hostess over the past eight years for failing to turn the firm around.
"Our members decided they were not going to take any more abuse from a company they have given so much to for so many years," Hurt said in a statement late Friday. "They decided that they were not going to agree to another round of outrageous wage and benefit cuts and give up their pension only to see yet another management team fail and Wall Street vulture capitalists and 'restructuring specialists' walk away with untold millions of dollars."
Now I know who Wombat is - certainly at least where he got his CYA talking points from. Guess all these bakers union members now out of a job as well as the other 13,000 former Hostess employees aren't going to be taking any more abuse, or anything else like salaries, from these fat cat twinkies from now on. With union bosses like this, who needs enemies? 45315. concerned - 11/17/2012 9:29:49 AM From a post to a NYT article about the Hostess shutdown:
Sure, corporations will hurt us if we stand up to their ongoing depredations on their workers. And sure, Wall Street will hurt us if we stand up to their ongoing frauds and gambling games with our nation's wealth. And sure, republicans will hurt us if we don't continue to coddle the rich with tax cuts.
But until we resolve to take it on the chin and use our own considerable power (with boycotts and protests as well as our votes), their blackmail and extortionate tactics will go on decimating our lives and our children's, too. So God bless the union, and the brave working people for standing up to the bullies at last.
Just wow. "ongoing depredations on their workers"... has this person ever even held a job, or considered changing from a job he didn't like, or maybe starting his own business if he actually has any better ideas? What a load of Leftist bullshit. 45316. concerned - 11/17/2012 9:53:17 AM Btw, if the Hostess management was planning to liquidate the company all along and skip out with obscene profits, they wouldn't have offered two board seats to union members and a 25% stake in the company to employees. Also, the Teamsters advised the Bakers Union to accept these terms (among others) because of the financial condition of Hostess.
Guess Wombat missed all that, but it did give him an opening to take some sleazy cheap shots at Bain Capital. 45317. iiibbb - 11/17/2012 4:19:28 PM sounds like a bunch of "winners" on both sides of the table... but the only political feeling I get is thankfulness a person like Romney didn't win.
I have no love for unions, my interactions with them have been very stereotypical. Although, I will side with them on virtually any worker safety issue.
Hostess isn't a measure of good managment or a good union. major missteps by both sides. 45318. Wombat - 11/17/2012 8:10:26 PM The owners of Hostess offered the union equity in the firm in exchange for the union giving up their pension rights and health insurance. Let's see, equity in a mismanaged firm going through bankruptcy for a second time in ten years, with a declining market share. Sounds like a winner to me. The workers were screwed no matter what. Management won't be losing any money, though.
I'll take "talking points" from the Wall Street Journal over Concerned's bubble any time. Notice how Concerned parrots back particular words, when he doesn't have a legitimate argument. Transference, thy name is Concerned. 45319. judithathome - 11/17/2012 8:19:04 PM 45311.
You act as though the union workers are still IN THEIR JOBS! They are SOL, too, ya know. They didn't cause this shutdown...the greed and mismanagement of the higher-ups who drove the company into bankruptcy with debt and multimillion dollar raises/salaries did that...where's your outrage toward them for Baining their company??
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