American Budget Cuts

Errr, you were talking about profit. Why are you now talking about salaries? Perhaps to emphasise my point?

I didn't have a lot of time to Google and it's the best I was able to find in about 3 minutes. In fact it's the top result for "Airbus vs. Boeing reliability." That's simply as much FAA data as that person was able to get. I don't see how it's "misleading" in any way.Wikipedia says:

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Both aircraft manufacturers have good safety records on recently-manufactured aircraft. By convention, both companies tend to avoid safety comparisons when selling their aircraft to airlines. Most aircraft dominating the companies' aircraft sales, such as the Boeing 737-NG and Airbus A320 families (as well as both companies' wide-body offerings) have good safety records as well. Older model aircraft such as the Boeing 727, Boeing 737 Original, Boeing 747, Airbus A300 and Airbus A310, which were respectively first flown during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, have had higher rates of fatal accidents.[34]

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The difference in annual, non-bonus compensation between Boeing's CEO and Airbus's CEO is more than 12 million dollars. That's approximately 1% of their total annual budget for the development of commercial airliners according to their 2007 annual report (which was the most recent I could Google.)Boeing recently filed suit against the EU for providing what they view as illegal and anti-competitive government subsidies to EADS. Perhaps if Boeing stopped overpaying for CEO services they would find themselves on a slightly more competitive footing. Again, if there's a case that the CEO of Boeing is an order of magnitude more effective than the CEO of EADS, it should be reflected in their products. Is it? I can find no evidence of that and much against.

How does taking out large chunks of capital (aka profit) improve the effeciency of a company?

Then you are an extremely rare breed. I assume you also make your purchasing decisions based on what aids society rather than what provides the best value? Thats not quite the same thing. Its helpful to society to allow individuals to amass wealth for themselves and their descendants as it is a powerful incentive to be productive. Overall though it aids society because the most successful people gradually gain access to more resources allowing them to leverage whatever it was that made them successful.Wealth isn't a static resource that is simply spread around. The rich getting richer doesn't imply that the poor are getting poorer. Again, no health insurance company ever made money denying coverage. They may have avoided losing money, but you haven't provided an argument for why a company should be compelled to bet on a losing prospect. You are just trying to paint an unrealistic emotional picture to justify something you can't honestly defend.

The public sector's control over legislation, however, is both circumscribed by the Constitution and fundamentally legitimate. That's actually what they're there to do and because legislative self-dealing was envisioned by the Founding Fathers, they structured the government to minimize it. Yeah, I did. To repeat:

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Greed, as it turns out, is not consistent with free-market capitalism, contrary to popular perception. In a perfectly capitalistic and highly competitive market sector, the competition drives the price of a widget down to the marginal cost of producing a single widget, and nobody makes any profit.

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The profit motive creates inefficiency, it doesn't result in efficiency. That's because profits are inherently inefficient. The free-market notion is that the inefficiency of profits will somehow be overcome by the efficiency gains in other fields - by magic, I guess - but that's not what we empirically see in private industry. We see self-dealing, regulatory capture, rents, and other deadweight losses that stem from the fact that it's people, not businesses, who are motivated by profit. Right, so naturally, insurance companies try to find new ways to avoid putting themselves in contractual obligation to pay out. That can mean lifetime coverage caps, involuntary arbitration, overbroad interpretation of "pre-existing conditions", or outright rescission of contract the first time you attempt to make a claim. These abuses became so commonplace that Congress took action to regulate or even ban them. Maybe you heard something about that - it was "shoved down your throat" after a period of approximately a year and a half of continuous, nationwide debate. Well, people who have no choice but to buy - people who have to be covered as a function of their employment, or people who anticipate having medical needs in excess of their ability to save in advance for them. And, of course, you don't know that you're getting "no payout" insurance until it comes time for them to pay you. Obviously, the profit motive suggests that insurance companies will attempt to sell people insurance that pays them as little as possible, but convince them that the coverage is very generous. No, competition forces those companies to insure the least risky client pools as possible. Hence "adverse selection." There's no money to be made insuring people who actually need medicine. That's why we have Medicare. You do recognize that if premiums and payouts are balanced, nobody makes any money, right? Since profit equals premiums minus payouts. You can do basic math, right? How are they supposed to pay premiums that are higher than they can afford? Are you saying that poor people should die of untreated diseases? What about people who can't work because of their illness? They just deserve to die? I'm saying that the benefit of college is known not to be the instruction - there's no evidence of college being a fundamental "value-add" for students beyond the prestige of simply having been admitted. It's even more true of private secondary schools, where the difference in test scores between students at private schools and at public schools completely vanishes when you control for the fact that private schools can be selective but public schools have to take all comers.Private schools sell selection, not education. The value of a Harvard education is the ability to say that you got into Harvard. How so? What's better about it? The Post Office delivers on Saturday and picks up mail from your house. They can drop mail right into your mailbox; UPS frequently makes you pick it up at a service center. That's assuming they even have a business presence where you live. If you really want some UPS horror stories, you can just read here. Everybody knows the Post Office has way better service than any private company, and for less. In many rural locations it's the only option. I earned my paycheck, and they earned theirs. Don't you believe in paying your bills?

No, Phage. It's honestly not all that hard to meet people who are motivated by more than the love of money. You just have to leave the corrupting, distorted, sick, destructive world of corporate cronyism.Almost everybody makes decisions on the basis of more than mere love of money - they're getting married, starting families, reading books and learning, having fun with friends, getting politically active in their community donating their time and effort to various causes, etc.People who view every interaction through the lens of personal monetary profit are sociopaths, and for the most part they're blessedly rare. No. But the rich are getting richer as the poor get poorer. That's objectively happening, and we know it's not good for society. The answer is progressive taxation - higher marginal taxes for higher margins of wealth. A society where all the gains in GDP since 1970 are captured by the top 5% income earners is inherently not a healthy society; that's a society where the wealthy are stealing from the middle class and poor.

Perhaps number of Boeing flying vs number of Airbus flying would be a relevant statistic...?I will get back to the rest tomorrow as it's late.

I do prefer to buy from locally owned and small companies since they tend to benefit society more than large companies. I prefer to buy a hamburger from the local mom and pop for a dollar more than I would pay at one of the big chains. "Whatever it was" can turn out to be practices with questionable morality. Umm, yes they do. Where do you think that money goes? Do you think it just disappears? Unrealistic? You have never heard of people being denied coverage once they get sick?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

1) Cart before horse2) Why are you assuming profit is "taken out"?3) When profit is "taken out", can you think of ways in which this would lead to growth of the company, hence enabling it to capitalise on economies of scale, hence further improving efficiency?ABE - just noticed this. Please do not confuse capital and profit. They are very different concepts.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

And as I pointed out, and heck *you* pointed out, a perfectly competitive environment would tend to drive profits down to zero. Thus minimizing that "inefficiency" of profit and completely contradicting your point. All of which essentially constitute not selling a product. So either they have effectively removed themselves from the market or are engaged in fraud. Are you really going to base your argument upon the assumption that every company is going to not deliver their product or honor their agreements? It looks like you are. Well two can play at that tactic; your position is invalid because governments are always totalitarian monarchies despite what the Constitution and people say. Therefore despite what these public sector organizations were created to do they are clearly more wasteful because they only serve the interests of the dictator. There is always insurance available provided the premium is appropriate. I defy you to define a situation so risky that one cannot find insurance. Ahh, there is the issue isn't it? They can't pay for something they want. Whats your solution to that I wonder? Just taking other people's wealth by force is it?We are back to that same basic issue. You want other people's wealth for use in your own goals. Well I'm glad nobody seems to care if you graduated. Of course you *might* be wrong there. Speed. Reliability. Care. And do you really think people are just wasting their money on an option if they don't think its worth it? Or if you accept that they do think it is worth it, do you think UPS or FedEx has somehow perfected mind control?

Oh certainly, but I suspect you would go to a job that was identical in every way except that paid twice as much without a second thought. I also suspect that if you stopped getting paid you wouldn't be willing to work there anymore. See what I mean? Its not the only factor... but its an important one. Really? Can you cite some data showing that the poor are poorer than they were 50 or 100 years ago?

Right. That would be perfectly efficient. Thus, the profit motive is to avoid being in a perfectly competitive environment and thus avoiding efficiency by such means as regulatory capture, rent-seeking, and other forms of anti-competition. Yes, fraud. Until last year perfectly legal fraud. The profit motive is one that leads to fraud, because fraud is the best possible profit mechanism - all of the income of selling something with none of the fixed costs of actually making the sale. Fraud is certainly inefficient, but the profit motive ensures that profit-minded people will always be trying to defraud others.The profit motive causes inefficiency, not efficiency. You're proving my case for me. On the private market? "Being older than 65" and "serving in the military." Right, the issue is that people should receive the medical care they need without being limited by their ability to pay. Both conservatives and liberals agree on that. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals who deliver that care deserve to be paid to do so, so the question becomes how we get doctors paid when they treat people who can't afford to pay them.Clearly, that's not something the free market can deliver; that's the reason that more Americans are on public health coverage than private. The Post Office is faster, more reliable, and cares more than any of its private competitors, in my experience. I think you mean "advertising."

But thats... *wait for it*... wasteful! Money represents your effort, and you just spent more effort for that burger than you needed to. Your frequenting the local mom and pop joint was just an overall waste for society.Think about it, the benefit from your daily effort is symbolized by the money you are paid. You could have spent that dollar on some widget from another hard-working person except that you decided to give it to mom and pop, who either make more money from the transaction than the larger chain or have somehow frittered it away in having less efficient operations. Maybe their supply chain could be optimized, who knows. The point is you didn't help society overall at all; you helped mom and pop at the price of society. Question away, I'm all for making dishonesty illegal. What money, that money that was paid for no coverage? Or are you still assuming that the company isn't paying for an eventuality they said they would cover?Or are you saying the company should pay for something they didn't say they would cover because... something emotional?

Economics fail. By definition aggregate spending equals aggregate income.

When Bill Gates buys a yacht with the money he made at Microsoft how does this lower the cost of their programs and improve their bottom line? If that money had stayed in the company to pay for more quality assurance wouldn't this improve the product more than a yacht for Billy?