Werthless wrote:
We have some version of corporatism, and both Democrats and Republicans are complicit.

complicit, and/or irrelevant to that development. Capitalism is not at all about anything like competition. Capitalizing pays no particular respect to the concept of competing. Capitalism is about owning, and not, especially, about doing anything. It is certainly not about anything like due process.

Private employers of 5,000 or more employees make up three one-hundredths of one percent of all employers in the US. Corporations make up a serious fraction of those 1,900 or so enterprises

They employ thirty-three percent of all employees in the US.

Employers of 4 or fewer employees - the employers who are competing - make up 62% of all US employers. And employ 5% of all employees.

our way of doing things is owned. Owned by corporate entities. Corporate entities that define the capitalism that provides a sort of operating system for 'leading' economies.

And yet, big businesses go out of business all the time, and new ones emerge to replace them. The top of the Fortune 500 today looks different than it did 40 years ago, and not all of the new big businesses are in new industries. Wal-Mart is in the same basic business that Sears was in. IBM could have done what Microsoft or Apple did, but they couldn't.

I suppose you could say the list doesn't change rapidly enough, but I'm not sure that more disruption is ceteris parabis a good thing--that is, I doubt any of us want to see more Lehman Brothers or more ever larger disruptive corporations.

IBM is not struggling

IBM is in its next reinvention. No more hardware (except for a few special places), just software and services. It is winnowing its workforce once again. I think that there are more IBM employees in India then America (but that could have been the talk of a disgruntled soon to be former employee for all I know).

Do we get to put the missile shield hardware in Poland and the Czech republic now? Are all bets off? Is the US Government too otherwise occupied to do anything at all? Europeans are not too happy with our lack or response to Putin, but then again they are not stepping up to do anything either.

Next month there will be some other issue and they will be telling us to mind our own business.

TenuredVulture wrote:And yet, big businesses go out of business all the time, and new ones emerge to replace them. The top of the Fortune 500 today looks different than it did 40 years ago, and not all of the new big businesses are in new industries. Wal-Mart is in the same basic business that Sears was in. IBM could have done what Microsoft or Apple did, but they couldn't.

I suppose you could say the list doesn't change rapidly enough, but I'm not sure that more disruption is ceteris parabis a good thing--that is, I doubt any of us want to see more Lehman Brothers or more ever larger disruptive corporations.

I don't believe the issue is which entities comprise the pyramid as much as the fact of the pyramid itself.

Concentration of ownership is probably a more pivotal structural matter, but this is a politics thread so I went where the bodies are (no) buried.

The EU is going to have to do more. It's not fair to badmouth us one minute and then make demands of us the next. Nobody likes America until they need us for something

drsmooth wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:And yet, big businesses go out of business all the time, and new ones emerge to replace them. The top of the Fortune 500 today looks different than it did 40 years ago, and not all of the new big businesses are in new industries. Wal-Mart is in the same basic business that Sears was in. IBM could have done what Microsoft or Apple did, but they couldn't.

I suppose you could say the list doesn't change rapidly enough, but I'm not sure that more disruption is ceteris parabis a good thing--that is, I doubt any of us want to see more Lehman Brothers or more ever larger disruptive corporations.

I don't believe the issue is which entities comprise the pyramid as much as the fact of the pyramid itself.

Concentration of ownership is probably a more pivotal structural matter, but this is a politics thread so I went where the bodies are (no) buried.

There may be problems with certain companies being large enough to distort the market, or perhaps they become so big that their failure results in massive and unpleasant economic dislocation (ie too big to fail). On the other hand, bigness does provide certain economic benefits that we might not get in a John Locke world of petit bourgeois capitalists.

So, if you want to argue that the government should break up Citibank and should not allow the Comcast merger, fine, I won't disagree. But R&D is expensive, and I like shiny new toys.

I suppose we could do something cool like provide government funding for not just basic research but also for say pharmaceutical product development and maybe then drug prices could be lower and drug development would focus on more real problems than old guy's soft penises. But I'm not sure it would work out exactly as planned. It'd be interesting to try though.

Sooo... how'd I do?

7.5 million signed up through the site, as of now

pacino wrote:7.5 million signed up through the site, as of now

Yea, but they're probably all <insert strawman>

blah people?

is 7.5 good? bad? don't they have to or they get fined

I dont think the "fine" happens this year

well, it's now above what was thought to be first year open enrollment benchmark for it be considered 'working'. This doesn't count Medicaid signups, people added to their employer's insurance plans, people under 26 added to their parents' plan, or people who bought the insurance directly through their insurance company (thus forgoeing any potential subsidy).

pacino wrote:well, it's now above what was thought to be first year open enrollment benchmark for it be considered 'working'. This doesn't count Medicaid signups, people added to their employer's insurance plans, people under 26 added to their parents' plan, or people who bought the insurance directly through their insurance company (thus forgoeing any potential subsidy).

So it does not include people who have sign up for expanded Medicaid under the various state programs like the Arkansas Private Option?

Sebelius is resigning.

Someone threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton during a speech today, almost got her square in the head.

TenuredVulture wrote:

pacino wrote:well, it's now above what was thought to be first year open enrollment benchmark for it be considered 'working'. This doesn't count Medicaid signups, people added to their employer's insurance plans, people under 26 added to their parents' plan, or people who bought the insurance directly through their insurance company (thus forgoeing any potential subsidy).

So it does not include people who have sign up for expanded Medicaid under the various state programs like the Arkansas Private Option?

Correct.

I have no clue why Arkansas went with that dumb option in comparison to straight up Medicaid.

pacino wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

pacino wrote:well, it's now above what was thought to be first year open enrollment benchmark for it be considered 'working'. This doesn't count Medicaid signups, people added to their employer's insurance plans, people under 26 added to their parents' plan, or people who bought the insurance directly through their insurance company (thus forgoeing any potential subsidy).

So it does not include people who have sign up for expanded Medicaid under the various state programs like the Arkansas Private Option?

Correct.

I have no clue why Arkansas went with that dumb option in comparison to straight up Medicaid.

Because there was no way the Republican Legislature would have passed that, but there was pressure from the local hospitals and many businesses to do something, so that was the compromise. It almost didn't get renewed, which would have eliminated the whole thing, thanks to a bizarre state constitution that requires a 3/4 supermajority to do this. Anyway, I wouldn't totally trust that article from Forbes, since I'm pretty sure they want to totally kill the ACA. I do know that many states are looking at the Arkansas Private Option as a model for Medicaid expansion, for what it's worth.