tedolph

You should have fought him and told him to make the first move. He needs to be off the streets and locked up. tedolph

Not sure this is the right place for this comment. It seems to me that the #1 development thing S.S. could do would be to push the city and RTA to connect S.S. to U. circle with a light rail link. It is a PITA to get from SS to UC on the bus and UC doesn't have anywhere near enough housing. CH is just up the hill but that is a PTIA too in bad weather. TEdolph

In China. And as long as we allow the Chi-Coms to devalue their currancy by 25% in an economic war against the U.S., that is where all the job creation will be if you goose consumer demand. TEdollph

Interesting that New York State cities like Buffalo and Rochester were able to build subways (Cincinati too!) but Cleveland, which struggled mightily to do so, could not. I know each city's situation was unique, but are there any comonalities with the N.Y. cities that made them sucessful in this endeavour? Tedolph

I was thinking of it more as an already-existing redistributive mechanism, and one that has an element of "reward for working" to it since one has to be working (earned income) to qualify. How about just creating an economic climate where the 99% can be i) fully employed and ii) make decent money? Would that be better than just shifting around pieces of the same old pie? TEdolph

Oh, you mean all these po' folk are going to go out and buy CAT scanners, heavey machinery, Jumbo Jets and other stuff that we make in the US, or are they gong to go out and buy shirts and shoes and handbags from Walmart? Maybe they will buy more middle east gasoline for thier Hundai? Have you looked at the balance of trade numbers lately? Well you are correct, your so called "Robin Hood" tax will be great for job creation........ in China! Our economic prblems are structural and will not be fixed by goosing customer demand. That is another big lie by the political establishment. TEdolph

And exaclty how is that going to put people to work? TEdolph

Very nice photojournal. THis is the way to do it. Kent and Akron have excellent leadership, and it shows. tEdolph

Funny, looking at all the Case Nerds looking at this wierd thing with quizical looks on their faces. TEdolph 'Cause they look like Case nerds-I oughta know! What, you don't think they have any Case Nerds in K.C.? Why Case Nerds are everywhere! You just don't know it-they keep low profile. TEdolph, class of '81

Funny, looking at all the Case Nerds looking at this wierd thing with quizical looks on their faces. TEdolph

You don't need to spend 30% for heath care. I have been self employed for over 25 years. I have a personal blue cross plan with a $1500.00 anual deductable that costs me $200.00/month. Our employees have a gold plated plan that costs over $400.00 per month. The difference? I pay for my plan out of after tax income so I have no incentive to overconsume, and an incentive to save my deductible. The employees are paying with pre-tax income and it is taken out of thier check whether they like it or not so there is no oppotunity cost for them, and they have no disincentive for consuming as much as possible. Again, government intervention has perverted the supply and demand system. what is killing us for exports is that China is devaluing thier currency by about $25%. That is equivalent to a 25% tariiff on all goods exported to China and a 25% discount on all imported goods. TEdolph

Other than the loopholes which should be closed, I think that the marginal income tax rates are about right. Also, people that aren't paying any tax (both rich and poor) need to pay tax. Anyway, fixing the tax code, while it is a good thing to do is not going to generate any jobs. Let the rich keep more money and they will (right now) just keep investing in paper games. Tax the rich more and somhow give it to the poor (send them checks?) and they will either buy cheap Chinese shirts from Walmart, or pay down credit card debt. None of that will generate a single U.S. job, although it will be great for job growth in China. We really need to fundamentally restructure our economy away from a consumption of goods economy, to an export economy. That means we have to undo TARP (impossible, that horse is our of the barn), force China to stop devaluing its currancy (there is acutally some bi-artisan movement on that issue), maybe revoke most favored nation status (remember how tought we got with Japan?) and start treating OPEC like the illegal monopoly that it is. We only let the OPEC nations get away with what they do to keep the peace in the Middle East-somthing that is becoming a losing game of tennis. I fear however that this is way above the heads of the "occupy_____movement" and certaintly isn't what their handlers have in mind. The Tea Party was gettin close but then the social zealots took over that movement. Oh, one more thing. The current administration is so beholden on both wall street and the far Left (talk about being caught between polar extremes) that we can't expect any meaningful leadership from there, just more useless Keynsian economic stumulus and I am not convinced that the Republicans have the political balls to tell the American people the truth. TEdolph

Morris Shankar (sp?) Tedolph

Man, one billion dollars is serious money. Well, I guess I can be expecting a phone call soon. Better get my check book ready. Tedolph

And that has historically been the incentive for land reform, etc. in other couintires, not a bottom up incentive as many would like to believe. The so called "rich" are well aware of the social and economic dangers of gross income maldistribution. They just don't think (and I agree) that the solution is to take it from them by force and sprinkle it like pixie dust on the masses. The Romans used to do that (remember bread and circuses) and it is not a long term solution. The way to redistribute wealth in a meaningfull and long term way is to grow economic opportunity for the middle class and especially the poor-then you will see the rich investt in productive assets rather than paper speculation (very profitable in the short term). The great increases in capital wealth by the rich is an indication of people making money pushing essentially worthless pieces of paper back and forth in a game of the last man to hold the bag. It doesn't generate any real wealth and it is a game the rich play when there are no producitve assets (e.g. factories) to invest in. We have some really serious structual problems with our economy due to concious decisions we have made over the past 20 years (NAFTA, China MFNS, TARRP) which have made it impossible for us to be competitive, and attractive for the rich to engage in pure financial speculation. The most egregious of these (all though they are all egregious) is the belief in "free trade" rather than "fair trade". The Chinese and OPEC has been fleecing us for decades and finially it has brought us to our knees. This is the real cause of the so called "income gap". Tedolph

Because the law requires them to, silly. (Channeling Denzel Washington).... you do remember the law, don't you? Strnge that you don't understand this: the corporations write the laws. TEdolph

Really, I don't know how you get away with all the ad hominem attacks. Are you capable of posting without making one? TEdolph

No, that is what my short wave, super heterodyne radio, and pirate radio station told me. As for what the Ohio Surpeme Court told you I have no idea. Perhaps you could explain that to us? Tedolph Psshht... you could at least give me a challenge: "The Act exists “'to enable unfortunate employees, who become and remain involuntarily unemployed by adverse business and industrial conditions, to subsist on a reasonably decent level and is in keeping with the humanitarian and enlightened concepts of this modern day.’” * * * * * “‘The [A]ct act was intended to provide financial assistance to an individual who had worked, was able and willing to work, but was temporarily without employment through no fault or agreement of his own.’” http://www.sconet.state.oh.us/rod/docs/pdf/0/1995/1995-ohio-206.pdf Take special note what the holding of that case is..... if your skills are inadequate for the job, your employer may fire you for just cause and you are not entitled to UC. For your support, perhaps you could find a podcast from last Sunday night? Wouldn't be the first time a Supreme Court was wrong about something. Again, why would an employer pay for it if it didn't ultimately benefit the employer? As for yor podcast comment, I presume you are refering to the Republican debates. What makes you think I would waste my time listenting to that pablum? As for unemployment compensation for me, you are correct. The self-employed are entitiled to nothing except to pay an extra 7.5% of SS tax! Tedolph

This would make a really neat area for housing and a better use than a multistory casino. The working Cuyahoga is a unique residential concept and seems to hav done well where it has been tired. Tedolph

Even in the real estate market of years past, few people could just up and move to wherever an immediate opening might appear. That's like running around chasing herds of buffalo, a lifestyle involving houses you can roll up and carry. People who live in modern houses have to sell them. Even people living in apartments have to get out of the lease somehow, unless they're month to month, which most leases aren't. Unemployment compensation is a cost effective way to deal with the commitments inherent in our property system. When more people own their homes, it needs to go even longer, so it becomes less cost effective. But that's not unemployment's fault. The inefficiency, the bottleneck, is in the property arrangements. But mass migration buffalo hunts aren't efficient either. It makes no sense to have your population scrambling around the continent to stay afloat. We're better off stimulating employment where unemployed people already are. Sorry, history does not agree with you. Aerospace engineers did the three city shuffle (Seattle; Burbank; St. Louis) for fourty years until Lockeed got out of the commercial aviation business and Boeing bought McDonald-Douglas. For that very reason, many of them never bought houses but only rented, especially if they were single. Agian, the benefit was to the employer. Think about it, if the benefit was to the employee, why woud Boeing pay the premiums-they would have let the union do it. Tedolph

Wow, I can't believe you of all people said that. You know how quickly any sort of enforcement of this would blow up in terms of racial discrimination & ACLU lawsuits? What's next, knocking on the doors of those in the housing projects to see what they are doing to get back on their feet? Checking up on those who receive food stamps to make sure they are spending them wisely? Holy crap, where would you stop in terms of enforcement? And do you really think it's tea party people who are preventing this enforcement on argument of "no more big govt?" How about the fact that these social programs are being carried out exactly as intended: mini-stimulus for a large percentage of the population. Cutting this back through enforcement or otherwise would have alot of negative unintended consequences, and I doubt very little people would "get off the couch & find work". Big picture, you open up a new department with 100 people on staff in Cuyahoga county to "enforce" this and other social welfare programs - how much money do you think you would actually "save" by weeding out the lazy folks and revoking their checks? Wow. Just wow. Can't believe you posted that. As to the mini-stumulus comment, havent we figured out yet that "stimulus" doesn't work? It might have when the textile mills and shoe factories in New England were humming in the 1950's but today all it does is support buying cheap shirts from China or paying down credit card balances, niether of which do anything to put U.S. citizens to work. Think about it this way, the stimulus programs have been very effective in creating jobs-in China! We have serious structual problems with our enonomy. The only way to generate wealth in a global economy is to make something here and sell it to soneone else. Giving more money to poor people might eliviate their suffering but it is't gong to generate any jobs. As long as we allow the Chi-Coms to devalue their currency by 25% we are going to be in a continuing downward spiral. Tedolph

No, that is what my short wave, super heterodyne radio, and pirate radio station told me. As for what the Ohio Surpeme Court told you I have no idea. Perhaps you could explain that to us? Tedolph

Unless you'd rather sit at home and do nothing for unemployment benefits. Which actually pays more than alot of entry level jobs like retail or food service, especially if you have to commute, pay for gas/parking, etc. But that is not the way unemployment comp is *supposed* to work. Like I have said countless times, these systems need to be beefed up in terms of enforcement. But..... oh no.... that might require bigger government. Heaven forbid. Unemployment compensation is supposed to be available for those who are unemployed THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. It is not for people who were fired for cause or who REFUSE TO ACCEPT EMPLOYMENT IN LIEU OF RECIEVING A GOVERNMENT CHECK. I could live with a short-term program where benefits are given while searching for 'comparable' employment in the same vicinity. I can also live with a 'shortfall' payment after that first period expires where, if your new job does not pay you as much as you could collect on UC without a job, then UC makes up the difference. But what I can't believe we do is pay people the entire amount of UC even though they could be EARNING a good chunk of that working jobs they may not want to work. We need people checking what the unemployed are doing each week to obtain gainful employment. They need to do something (if they want their check), even if that is holding one of those closeout signs on the corner. We need investigators rooting out all those under the table workers who are collecting UC while still technically employed. For those who defraud or take advantage of the system, we need to have little sympathy. That isn't the purpose of unemployment comenation at all. The purpose is to induce laid off employees to hang around rather than move somewhere else and get a new job until thier employer can bring then back. The primary benefit is to the employer, not the employee who can always move somewhere else to where the jobs are (something we seem to have forgotten how to do). The cost of paying unemployent insurance premiums was always far less than the cost of hiring and retraining a new employee. Especially in skilled jobs like aerospace and automotive industries. That is why it is a "benefit" that was always paid for by the employer, not the employee and certaintly not the taxpayer. It was never intended to be a "welfare" program funded by the taxpayers. TEdolph

Unless you'd rather sit at home and do nothing for unemployment benefits. Which actually pays more than alot of entry level jobs like retail or food service, especially if you have to commute, pay for gas/parking, etc. And this is what is perverting the market. End of last year we laid off a secretary. Gave her a nice severance package and did not expect to need to call her back. Things changed. Three months later we needed her back. She did't want to come back-she was getting $400.00 per week on unemployment, used her serverance to go to Ireland for six weeks. We couldn't hire anybody decent, they were all lounging on unempoloyment except those that had been let go almost two years ago (the real looers) and benefits were going to run out. That's right, here in WA you can stay on unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks. If your's is a second income, it is a cake walk. Anyway, the only way I got her to come back was to convince her that if she spent the whole 99 weeks without working no one would re-hire her. So she just started back after spending 9 months on the dole. Funny thing about unemployment benefits is that they were originally designed to help the greedy capitalist (i.e. Boeing) who could hire a bunch of people to fill some orders, then lay them off once the orders were filled and hire them back later when the orders came back without having to train new workers. This was all OK as long as Boeing paid for it with L & I insurance which they did-for 28 weeks. Then the generous tax payer (you and me) stepped in and paid for it for weeks 29-99! Who got the benefit? Boeing got the benefit by turning a self funded insurance program into a taxpayer funded one. And the Left thinks that this is great! Minga Marone! TEdolph

Maybe it is time to realize that the prime mover of an economy is private enterprise and while govenment can maybe help a little-it is grossly inefficient from an econmomic point of view and the best thing for it to do is get out of the way? TEdolph