“We” people in general. I must disagree with you on this point. Most people don’t consciously want the govt to run their lives, but through vast social engineering programs and other govt mandates, and an increase in rules and regulations that is exactly what is happening.

I would go with hopeless optimist. Was it CSNY who sang it’s always darkest just before the dawn?

I agree. But you can’t be ideological about it. There are times when the market approach flat out doesn’t work. Times change and you have to be prepared to move with the times.

We no longer even have to think for our selves just let the govt handle it.

Whadda mean ‘we’, cowboy?

I don’t think that a majority of people truly think that way or want the situation to be like that.

But I am a hopeless optimist.

There is also another issue. As an American do you believe this country was founded on the premise of individual freedom? Do you believe that our founders wanted less government intrusion into our lives or more?

I think we have gotten away from what made our country so great and truly free. We have allowed our selves to become dependent on a type of nanny state. We pay higher and higher taxes each year in the hopes that big govt will solve every little problem that comes our way. We no longer even have to think for our selves just let the govt handle it.

The Libertarian answer is ‘the market will provide the means’. I confess to being skeptical about this approach but it does have an appeal to me.

That said I’m really of the Practical Politics persuasion. If it works, great. If it doesn’t work then we need to change the rules or stop doing it.

I admit his isn’t attractive to people who have an ideological ax to grind. The upside is that if we all thought like this we could move on to bigger and better things.

My take on taxes… they support the community (although also graft at times). Taxes are OK, but we will always debate more or less. I support a progressive tax. I think we could use more $$$ for social services. I also used to live in Colorado and was a fan of TABOR – a law eliminating tax increases unless approved by a majority vote of the citizens.

Taxes provide community infrastructure and sometimes a helping hand. I could reverse the question and ask how would companies survive without this infrastructure? They rely on a functioning community from which they can draw employees. They rely on a relatively safe community, without debilitating crime. They rely on the roads to ship their goods, and to enable customers to travel to stores to buy said goods.

The real question, in my mind, is how to strike a balance between too much or too little tax. Then that question leads to how we spend tax dollars, and are we using the funds wisely. Then that leads to politics and military power. Bigger questions… I have no concise answers.

By doing so we cause the companies to lose money thus forcing them to either curtail expansion or in the worst case down size.This leads to fewer people being hired and more people being fired.

Who then picks up the cost of these people and their families being unemployed?

I too am confused about how private equity provides a tax dodge. Public or private companies pay the same rates on profit that they report to the IRS. Perhaps it is because private companies leverage debt so much that they reduce earnings and therefore their tax burden. Subsequently they increase the value of the business and make money off of the sale/IPO of the business… taxed as capital gains.

Another scenario might be that they plow back earnings into the business to grow it long term, thus increasing expenses, reducing earnings, and reducing their tax burden. Still another is that the private equity firm charges “management fees” that equally reduce the business earnings.

I thought the provocative questions about social responsibility were appropriate, but our good host’s biases for Robert Reich and against HBS MBA’s were palpable. I think the argument on social responsibility can be seen as the short term or long term value for society. Personally I believe that creative destruction / disruptive innovation driven by “shock therapy” drives greater long term value for our society than the short term costs. Most communities need an external stimulus to provoke evolution and change. Otherwise, we – and our country’s economy – will stagnate. It will always be painful, but that pain is the stimulus.

How is it a tax dodge? If they buy Chrysler at one price and sell it at a higher price they pay capital gains, the same as you or me.

The question no one here (or in the show) asked is what was the alternative? Chrysler and its workers should be grateful that SOMEONE wanted to buy them because things sure weren’t working out as part of Daimler and there’s no way they could have lasted on their own.

I find it darkly amusing that some people are dead set against public companies going private when _last_ year (or so it seems) publicly held companies were the bogeymen what with sending jobs overseas ‘just’ to raise the stock price for a quarter or making short term choices that would work well for the short term and raise the stock but were long-term bad for the company.

Robert Reich is .. well he’s singing the same tune that he always has, different chorus.

“Why did the CEOs wait to apply their good ideas until they were part of the private equity system”.

Because .. and Mr. Reich knows this .. the market would punish you for making choices that were bad in the short run, but good for the company as a whole. Mr. CEO makes such a choice, he lacks the backing of his board and bam he’s out. Or facing a shareholder lawsuit for devaluing their stock.

Likewise the assertion that public companies have more social responsibility than private equity people have is .. well it’s rather absurd. Show me that this is the case, Mr. Reich, and not mutter about dark private secrets.

Right. As if wealth just sits in a huge money vault, with Scrooge McDuck pushing around bullion with a bull-dozer.

Puh-lease. If companies do better as private firms then people do benefit – jobs are created, wealth spread around. Do the ‘ultra-rich’ (whomever they are) benefit? Sure. So do the rest of us.