Ernst Blofeld wrote:
> On Feb 24, 7:01 pm, Jeffrey Turner <jtur...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Man, Friedman could bull**** with the best of 'em, eh? The wealthy
>>are taking out payday loans because their consumption is outstripping
>>their income? Transitory v. permanent income? Right.
>
> I note that his work on the marginal propensity to consume was one of
> the
> elements for which he won the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic
> Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, AKA the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Almost as big a travesty as Kissinger's Peace Prize.
> You're digging a deeper hole.
>
>>>Economists across the political spectrum agreed with Friedman's
>>>refutation of Keynes; as the liberal Paul Krugman of Princeton (and of
>>>the New York Times op-ed page) noted recently, Friedman's ideas on the
>>>subject provide the foundation "of how economists think about spending
>>>and saving to this day."
>>
>>Really? Do tell.
>
> I just did. If you're interested in refuting Friedman there's
> probably a Nobel Prize in it for you if you pull it off.
Any economist who thinks the rich spend as big a fraction of their
income as the poor, "In fact, consumption does not decline as incomes
generally rise" in your words, is off his bird. Can you point me to
some quotes of Friedman?
>>>The idea that the work will be done by others is faulty, I think. We
>>>want the work to be done by the most productive people possible;
>>
>>Why? Who is the most productive person on an assembly line?
>
> The guys on the assembly line aren't making your notional $5 million a
> year.
> That's more like someone such as Steve Jobs, who turned around
> Apple in the course of making their stockholders billions, made
> Pixar a successful company, and along the way created jobs for
> thousands of employees. He could have punched out of either
> or both of those companies easily enough, but I don't think Sculley
> or Gil Amelio where quite the drop-in replacements you envision.
What about NeXT?
>>>In the entrepreneurial world--say, starting up a new
>>>technology company--there are a limited number of people who can pull
>>>off the job.
>>
>>Really?
>
> Yes. It takes some skills and mindsets that few have. The majority of
> the world are happy enough to go to work, collect a paycheck, and
> go home.
Every recession seems to bring on another round of start-ups.
>>"Over the last year, dozens of new technology-based firms have started
>>operations in Berkeley, and City officials expect the trend to
>>continue."
>
> "Dozens" out of a population of a few million in the East Bay. Many of
> them have prior startup experience.
Dozens in one year. In one industry.
> To pick one of the companies listed in the link, Ask Jeeves,
> it was founded by Gruener and Warthen.
>
> ----
> It wasn't his first. Gruener, who had both a UCSD bachelor's and
> master's (UC-Berkeley, '77) in political science with an emphasis on
> technology, had started two businesses by the early '80s. His first
> had never taken off, but his second, a small communications software
> business in Berkeley called Virtual Microsystems, had attracted
> venture money and achieved modest success.
> ...
> Though Warthen left the company after a few years to start a desktop
> software company and then a software outsourcing business,
> ----
>
> Both of the founders had started up other companies.
They attracted capital, that doesn't mean it's anywhere near as hard
as playing third base and hitting .300 in the majors. You don't have a
very high standard of competence for POTUS, I can't imagine that
starting a company you hold to a higher standard.
>>>(As some people have put it, there are only 5,000 people
>>>in Silicon Valley, and they just keep rotating into new companies.) If
>>>you exclude them from the market via 100% taxes the companies will
>>>simply not get off the ground. Joe Blow coder or accountant is not
>>>going to have the skills to pull it off.
>>
>>That's nonsense.
>
> Take a look at the rosters of a few startup companies. Picking a few
> at random from Kleiner-Perkins' list of funded companies,
>
> http://www.fortifysoftware.com/company-partners/team.jsp
> Before settling on security, Brian spent a decade in Silicon Valley
> working at huge companies and small startups.
> ..
> Prior to founding Fortify Software in 2002, Mr. Thornton led key
> development efforts at E*TRADE, guided a major architecture redesign
> effort at eBay, and served as an interim executive and investor to a
> number of other successful startups.
> ...
> Mr. Marshall has an extensive background in working with customers in
> high technology companies. He co-founded and served as CEO of
> Photoloft, the world's first Internet photo sharing site
>
> http://www.amyrisbiotech.com/management.html
> Previously, Mr. Melo was a director with Ernst & Young in San Jose,
> California, and a management team member for several Northern
> California start-ups,
> ...
> During a ten-year term with Symyx Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMX) as
> Executive Vice President and CFO, having joined as its twentieth
> employee, Ms. Hilleman grew the company from seed stage to over $125
> million in profitable revenue and more than 500 employees.
> She was the second employee and Vice President at Geron (NASDAQ:
> GERN), taking the company through a successful IPO.
> ----
>
> And so on. Troll through the "management team" link of any VC-funded
> startup. You'll almost certainly see prior startups in teh resumes of
> the major cor****ate officers that are doing it. The saying in the VC
> world is that you fund people, not ideas, and the best people have a
> track record of startups. In the physical sciences they'll have an
> academic or three along to act as CTO, perhaps straight out of the
> classroom, but if you're going to get funding the VCs want to see
> prior startup work among the management team, even if in a failed
> company. And very often the same people are rotating through the
> startups, maybe going from CFO to CEO or CTO to CEO, but it's the same
> set of people. They're basicly serial entrepreneurs.
So a failure is as good as success in attracting funding? Sounds like
it's a skill that can be learned like any other.
>>The Laughable curve doesn't hold. You want to show us the poor economy
>>from the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was over 90%?
>
> Who says it wouldn't have been better without the high marginal rates?
All you've got are hypotheticals. Show me some results.
> In fact there were a raft of deductions back then, which lowered the
> effective rate at the cost of distorting the economy by paying people
> to look for deductions.
Those deductions didn't lower the top rate that much. And make work
rules, even for accountants, aren't such a bad thing overall.
>>Sob. So everyone else has to suffer so that some million-a-year prick
>>in a pin-stripe suit can get everything he wants?
>
> What the hell business is it of yours what A wants to pay B?
Because it affects the whole economy.
> You aren't
> either party. Next thing you know you'll be telling them what ***ual
> positions are moral or not.
Sorry, that's a Republican thing.
--Jeff
--
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without
formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to
deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree
odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government
whether Nazi or Communist."
- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943
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