I heard Obama refers to small business owners as petit bourgeois in private circles but he'll still let them use his bathroom.

Yeah, any individual piece is easy enough to argue both ways.

But if you layer it on top of the incessant call for businesses to pay more taxes, outright confiscation and subsequent caps on wealth, etc, it should be easier to see why I'm skeptical of your position that this is all just some misunderstanding.

Someone brought up Amazon in NYC earlier, and I'll toss out the Foxconn deal in WI, too. Why do certain Democrats work so hard to actively prevent "family-sustaining" jobs from coming into their neighborhood? Particularly when they won't just be a Walmart displacing all the local options? It's the absolutely worst kind of partisan bull****. I don't know many details about NYC, but the Dems in Wisconsin were against Foxconn just because it made Scott Walker look good. They had to try to twist words beyond their breaking point to make it seem like the reasons were financial, but make no mistake, it was just because the red team would've gotten credit.

foxconn is a scam, bro. lol at using them as an example of good deal sabotaged by the dems..

I strongly disagree, but we'll find out soon enough. Facilities are being built as I write this.

The new governor was essentially given marching orders by his handlers to torpedo the deal, but he's all over the board on it. Tried saying he wanted to renegotiate the contract, but he met with Foxconn CEO last week and has walked it all back and now seems to be in favor of just leaving things alone.

Foxconn doesn't get any of the incentives if they don't hold up their end of the bargain, so you calling it a scam just comes off as being very uninformed.

they scammed pennsylvania, they scammed china, and they scammed brazil.. why not line up to give them a bunch of money again, im sure there was a lot of due diligence.

Arguing that the Foxconn deal turned out well is an interesting take. The subsidies increased by over 1/3 since the initial deal and the initial deal was already a subsidy of $230,000 per job. With the increase a generous estimate is that it will have been profitable for the state by 2050 at the earliest and many people think it will never pay off. This wasn't even just a tax subsidy either - the state was spending millions of taxpayers money upfront and would only ever see any return via income tax from employees as the state's corporate tax rate is 0% - essentially the entire $4.1 billion subsidy is being footed entirely by the residents of the state.

And all of that is before even mentioning that the planned $10billion investment by Foxconn is now just ~$2.5billion with the rest coming at some unspecified time in the future. The whole thing went so badly that in his speech announcing that he was running for re-election in 2017 Scott Walker didn't even mention the deal.

You might think that it's easy to criticise in hindsight, but Foxconn already had a history of doing exactly this. Foxconn promised investments in India, Vietnam and Brazil and never hit anywhere near the numbers they initially promised. Closer to home there was the Pennsylvania fiasco where they publicised their intention to invest $30million and create 500 jobs, none of which ever happened.

All in all I would hold Foxconn up as a great example for states to learn how not to operate when it comes to giving large subsidies for the promise of large investment. Using it as an example in the other direction clearly shows you don't actually know many of the details.

My take is that Obama is not anti-capitalism/entrepreneurialism but rather the opposite. He’s praised both and criticized their detractors way more than political expediency required. However, I agree with you that he’s criticized capitalists and entrepreneurs for “not paying their fair share” way more than he’s praised them for the contributions they have made, so there’s a question. But I think the likely answer is that he doesn’t praise capitalists or entrepreneurs for the same reason he doesn’t criticize the poor because he believes that environmental conditions are the determining factors in how life works out for people.

...

Yeah, sorta like this.

In any event, I look forward to not paying out incentives if Foxconn doesn't produce. I'll eat crow and pay my $20 toward that freeway exit to their empty buildings though. Man of my word.

Interesting that you omitted intelligence.

This is pretty much a strawman. Who are these business people that claim that government laws, infrastructure, and regulations had nothing to do with their success. To me the expectation are that government create a “level playing field” as much as possible.


Bolded again proves my point about the Dems. Govt by allowing success is bequeathing a favor.

You can be pretty much assured that Obama wasn’t into entrepreneurs in say the oil industry.

Except that's not what Obama said, not what he meant, nor how any Dem believes the actual system works.

Essentially your post is 100% fail.

Please explain to me how stating facts is somehow twisting words around? The only part of what you quoted that isn't hard fact is the estimates of how long it would take to be beneficial (and even initial estimates had it taking until 2043).

Incidentally generous estimates for the upfront costs for roads and electrical transmission is ~$300million or roughly $130 for every household in Wisconsin. In total there is ~$1billion dollars with no ties to any job creation/investment so if you end up with an empty building that would be over $400 for every household in the state. In the best case scenario (all targets met and all subsidies paid) it will cost each household $1774 for a project which even at its conception (before any increases to the subsidies that have happened since) was not expected to recoup the subsidy until 2043.

Strangely this is how my condo board works too. The bigger condos have to pay more in fees than the smaller ones. How about that.

You have a better formula, professor?

I'll believe Obama has some kind of antipathy towards business owners when he posts a guillotine meme

Looks like the people with the big condos didn’t read Trumps book. Or maybe they would have figured out a way to leverage and not pay any fees.

Might not translate perfectly, but I'm guessing the guy with the biggest condo pays the largest fee. However, if his condo is 10% of the total square footage of the entire complex, he probably doesn't pay 20% of the overall fees.

Or maybe he does, as a premium for that sweet bonus room. God, that guy is such a jerk. Stupid jerk and his stupid bonus room.

The problem I have with the speech isn’t that he says business owners had help along the way. Of course they did. What I hate most about the speech is it suggests that government played a significant role in the success which isn’t true, IMO. It was not govt that funded those roads - it was taxpayers and entrepreneurs.

It is typical politician (dems are worse at this than Republicans but republicans do it too) talk to take credit for things they didn’t do. Many people today still blame the free market for ‘08 and credit the government for the recovery which I think is the complete opposite of what happened.

Taxpayers and Entrepreneurs didn't build anything, you're like the idiots who think they don't have to listen to professors in college because "you pay their salary." You don't. Likewise you didn't build any roads, enforce any regulations, or provide for the common defense.

This discussion has been a useful reminder in this era of Trump that progressives aren't the only ones that obsess over strained readings of presidential rhetoric.

LOL - when did Taleb become this dumb?

Neither did Obama. Entrepreneurs are just as much part of the collective "we" responsible for all that stuff as anyone else.

Surplus value of labor is a rudimentary economics concept dating back to the 19th century and one wonders if it's Good Faith Valuable Discourse to talk economics with people who clearly have never encountered it before. Are we allowed to educate people on subjects they are ignorant about, or is the implication that Inso isn't conversant with the academic discipline a naughty slur that coarsens the goals of this form?

If you think someone is making a mistake in reasoning related to a lack of knowledge about some subject, and you think you can do a good job explaining that subject, then my view is you are encouraged to try to explain that subject and show why the reasoning is wrong. I didn't use the word "educate" because it probably assumes too much in this context that one party is in the privileged position of knowledge, and unlike a professor in a classroom you probably also shouldn't assume that your "students" will accept your proffered wisdom, even if they should...

My question for you is: can you make a post in this forum that is more about an actual political topic than a meta-commentary?

Well, he was commander in chief for a while so did provide common defense, but he never claimed he did did he?

Trump wants to appear tough and milk this trade war with China for as long as possible.

Trump's political incentives are to keep waging the war, even if China offers the farm and give US a good deal.

Trump will declare headline victories (they just agreed to xxxx) all along the way but I don't think he's interested in a grand bargain.

He's looking to score political points, not to negotiate a real long term deal.