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Pay Limits? Great!

Obama is set to issue limits on "Wall Street" executive pay, according to this article by Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn.
The Obama administration will give a new Treasury official power to reject executive pay packages at firms that receive government assistance and wants legislation that would seek to tame compensation across the corporate world, an administration official said Wednesday.
You, perhaps this great idea should be extended to other areas.  Many films made by major film studios lose money, and yet various state and local governments offer incentives to attract or retain film production.  How about we go to all of those studios and production companies and place limits on pay?  Some of those stars are paid tens of millions of dollars a picture, after all.  Isn't that "excessive"?
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Auto Union Bailout

There are some great points made in this batch of letters to the Orange County Register.

James Haynes of Irvine wrote:
How would you feel working at Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW manufacturing plants in the United States, knowing that your government just gave your competitor $50 billion?
Very good point.
Deese will force GM to make smaller cars. How will he get people to buy the cars no one wants? That's easy. Don't fix the energy problem. Oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear resources won't be developed. The government will subsidize ethanol, which drives up food prices.
The whole letter is worth a read.

Bobby Florentz of La Habra wrote:
The trouble with the president buying GM for "us" is that now the company is owned by people who don't want it and who will never profit from it.

A better solution would have been to give these billions to the stockholders to buy the company for the autoworkers union. Let's see the union take on debt and turn a profit while saddled with the exorbitant salaries, pensions and restrictions it imposed upon the industry.
Wouldn't that be something?  But the best solution would have been to let the market work.

Harold McDonnel of Fullerton wrote:
As a former employee of a General Motors subsidiary, I purchased a few General Motors bonds in 2002 to aid my retirement. I paid full price for senior bonds that had first claims on all the assets of GM, should GM go bankrupt. It was a gold-plated investment.

Then the U.S. government decided, senior though my bonds are, that the assets should be given to other people. The union workers were put first in line, then the government, and then me.
Hope and change, baby!
Two and a quarter cents on the dollar is what I can expect for my bonds. I wish the government would follow the bankruptcy laws. I hate playing poker with a government that makes my three aces lose to a pair of sevens.
Yes they can!

What a mess.
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Why Not 20 Million New Jobs?

If Obama, Pelosi, and Reid can "create" or "save" millions of jobs through legislation, then why just go for a few million?  Why not 20 million new jobs?  Make it so!  Too expensive?  What, and $800 billion isn't too expensive?  Once you've decided to print a trillion dollars of Monopoly money, what’s the harm in printing a few trillion more?

Meanwhile in California, lawmakers are working to raise several of California’s taxes, including the sales tax, income tax, and gasoline tax.

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Go For the Reredefault

Who knew that it was possible to "redefault" on a place and still keep it?  Heck, let's go for the REredefault.  Let's make sure all of the people who have lived within their means are taxed and charged more so that those who haven't lived within their means can be comfy.
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Sometimes, We Should Abandon Ship Instead of Bailing Out

Why should taxpayers be forced to make grants and loans to businesses?  Why should we be forced to pay for a bureaucracy to oversee this process?  Where is the Constitutional justification to do these things?

Free markets will correct themselves.  It won't always be an easy process to experience.  We're not always going to have record growth, or even growth.  But in general, as long as the sun is shining, free markets will promote growth in the long run.

Downturns are an important part of the economic cycle because they force people to consider their priorities, and vote with their dollar accordingly.  Maybe some banks should be closed or bought by others.  Maybe some car manufacturers should shut down, sell off assets, or be bought out.

Nobody wants to lose their job.  Nobody wants to lose money in investments.  We all know that politicians hate having less tax revenue to deal with – but sometimes, that is life.

What kind of a deal is it if I get a car for $25,000 if that car really cost me $40,000?

Nobody has a right to a job.
Nobody has a right to certain compensation.
Nobody has a right to use someone else’s private property.
Nobody has a right to a loan.
No business has a right to always make a profit.
Nobody has a right to have their investments grow.
Politicians don’t have a right to ever-increasing budgets.

The government is supposed to be there to protect rights, not manage our lives.

If you provide goods or services for which someone is willing to pay, you will have a job.  How much you will be compensated should be a mutual agreement between you and the person who is paying.  It is a voluntary transaction.

You can acquire private property by offering other property, or good and services in return.  You can work out the terms with that property owner.  If you don't hold up your end of the deal, you don’t get (to keep) the property.  It is a voluntary transaction.

If you need more money now - to buy a house, a car, pay tuition, or whatever - it should be up to someone with more money than you if they want to make the loan to you or not, and what the terms will be.  You might not be able to pay the money back.  It is up to the lender to assess that risk.  It is a voluntary transaction.

A business will make a profit if it can get people to make more for goods or services that it costs that business to provide them.  Whether or not someone else buys those goods and services or works for that business or invests in that business are all things that involve voluntary transactions.

Whether or not your investments will pay off depends on whether or not what you invest in generates revenue, and whether or not someone else is willing to invest more.

Let the free market work.  Let it correct itself.  We don't aid long term growth by centralizing control of the free market in our nation's capital and by forcing people to invest in businesses.

Our government should be spending less in a recession, not more, because a recession means less tax revenue.

Our government should be going after fraud and theft, but not protecting people from the consequences of their own voluntary decisions.

If the GOP can get these points across to the public, we'll all be better off.
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Two Things On Which Our Financial System Should Rely

1. Voluntary interactions.  We should not be using taxpayer money to employ anyone (except government employees), pay anyone for their non-government job, to prop up companies, to back up loans, or to give people housing beyond their own means.  The risks and rewards of taking a job, employing someone, buying a home, taking out a loan, or making and investment should be suffered and enjoyed by people who have entered into those agreement voluntarily.  Only when there has been coercion or some form of theft of fraud or true monopolization should the government get involved.

2. Decentralized Power.  This means that individuals and voluntarily associations (such a companies, where people voluntarily work and voluntarily invest) should engage in voluntarily exchanges of goods and services, including capital and loans.  They should make decisions for themselves, enduring the risks and rewards.  It should not be up to the President (or anyone in his cabinet) or Congress to tell people what to do with their resources, as long as those resources aren’t being used for fraud or some other coercive crime.

An economy may thrive temporarily in a house of cards, but an economy that grows based on actual value and productivity will be more sound in the long run.

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