Quote:
Originally Posted by Beingist  Of course, I can speak for every central bank structure, but in the U.S., this is not entirely true. The Federal Reserve Board has stockholders, and is guaranteed a 6 percent profit (though on exactly what, I'm still trying to figure out).
Oddly enough, there are a LOT of people, seemingly, who fight to death the idea that it's otherwise, and others who are quite adept at keeping that information obscured. |
Making profit does not make an organization ''for profit''. It's just not the main goal of a not-for-profit organization. You need some level of profitability if you wish to continue operating after all. I don't think a fixed 6% profit would disqualify an organization from being ''not for profit''.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beingist I simply disagree with this, anymore, and the reason why is because you can't tax a country into prosperity. Most often, the way it works, is that you raise the tax rate, and those who are really sharp with tax codes figure out the loopholes and get even richer, while those who are simply "providing value" to the economy get screwed. The top corporate tax rate might be 35 percent, but I just read that General Electric (whose CEO doubles as a member of the President's "Economic Recovery Board") just paid 0 percent taxes on $14 billion profit.
No, I really think throwing out the tax code entirely, and starting completely from scratch is in order. Not that anyone, either businesses or government is ever really going to let that happen. It's not in their interest to do so, despite what they may say. |
There is some hope in the matter. Herman Cain is proposing what you're describing. Problem is his numbers don't add up. Ron Paul wants to do something similar I think. It's possible. Not likely I'll give you that much. Not now that corporations have been given legal personhood and the power to just ''lobby away'' (ie. buy politicians) with however much money they can use. Just think of the power 14 billion dollars can wield. And that's just GE.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beingist The problem I have with the Central Banks, though, is that they just continue to print the money, as if to tell the rest of the government "go ahead, spend away!!" and I think that such is irresponsible, at best. |
I think they're more of a symptom than a cause. Essentially all money created creates more debt. In other words if we could somehow gather all the available money and paid it back to the central banks we would still be in the red due to interests and other factors. I think the problem stems out of the underlying philosophy itself. Unlimited growth. On a world with limited resources. We're seeing more and more that most of this growth is imaginary. We're forgetting concepts like sustainability due to the myopic self-interested view that the system promotes.