An Open Market on Economics

[Mongrel]

Where the Science! thread and the Economics thread collide: The Biology of Risk

[Büge]

Not sure where else to put this, but, I was reading an article on how the Democrats are trying to override the Hobby Lobby ruling, and a comment caught my eye:

The Senate should pass a law that overturns the HobbyLobby case.
First, the HL case is a matter of discrimination. The company selected medication/devices that are only used by women and said they would not be covered by the company health care plan. (I cannot help but wonder what some of you would say if a company did something similar for men, e.g., prohibit coverage of cialis or pumps, etc.

Second, the HobbyLobby case should send a shiver down the spine of every "free market" and capitalist advocate. The Court pierced the veil of a corporation to look at the religious identity of the owners.

Courts do not do that. The whole purpose of forming a corporation is to form a legal entity that is separate from the owners. People create corporations in part to shield their personal assets (house, car, stocks, bonds) from the liability of the corporation. Now if I slip and fall in HobbyLobby, the court has established that there is no difference between the corporation and the owners and I am going after the owners house, car, stocks, bonds, etc.

Is this true?

[Blossom]

Innerestin'.

[Mongrel]

I suspect that there is legal fine print that overrides that. If the ruling had changed the very nature of of corporations, I'm pretty sure that would have been mentioned.

[Blossom]

Well, that's actually kind of the point - piercing the corporate veil is historically extremely difficult and not possible for the vast majority of corporations, you really need a situation like having all your paychecks made out to MongrelCo which then issues you a dividend, and trying to pay a different tax rate because of it. Except that now this ruling pierces it from the other direction, saying that the personal religious beliefs of the owners can limit the legal responsibilities of their companies. This is pretty unprecedented and I believe it's still being figured out what exactly the fuck it even means.

[Thad]

I haven't read the complete ruling but from the summaries I've read they couched it very carefully to avoid setting any kind of precedent beyond "companies can claim religious reasons for not covering a specific limited subset of birth control."

Because even Scalia would probably think twice at the idea of letting Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to cover vaccinations.

Maybe.

[Esperath]

Burger King in talks to acquire Tim Hortons.

This will be another corporate inversion, but while their taxes will go down a few points, apparently Burger King doesn't have tons of overseas capital to exploit in terms of dodging repatriation tax.

[Mongrel]

Kraft and Heinz to merge, becoming world's third largest food company.

UNIVERSAL STUFF INC.

[zaratustra]

3G has squeezed a lot out of Heinz

[Mongrel]

So, uh, at some point last fall paypal increased the length of their dispute process to 180 days and this was publicized literally no where so that when you google it the only confirmation are very angry seller discussions in various paypal/ebay/e-commerce forums.

[Mongrel]

http://citypaper.net/uberdriver/

Citypaper bit on what it's like to drive for Uber, as well as driver rates and other information. Unsurprisingly, Uber's business model seems incredibly exploitative.

[Joxam]

9.32 an hour after expenses... I hate to like... Let me just put it like this. I'm a member of management of which there is only one person above me at the theatre, I'm the most qualified, and I've worked here for 4 years. I make 8 dollars an hour. If someone has never made less than 9.32 an hour, even at an ice cream parlor... That drips of privilege to me.



I only say this because that seems to be after the estimation for expenses (which include estimation for labor and gas)

[Joxam]

And don't get me wrong, I know my industry is exploitive, and I'm also not saying uber isn't, but in this country, in this job market and economy, she's going to lose a lot of people saying that a full two dollars more than minimum wage is the least she's ever made, including ice cream shop high school job.

[Mongrel]

Soooo... possible Greek Exit (here we are again!) with the not-impossible possibility of another global recession being a following result?

[Mongrel]

Greek bailout fund

[Caithness]

Fixed funding, huh? I wonder how that will affect enthusiasm for the campaign as opposed to flexible funding.

I've donated to one of these before, but it was for an individual in trouble, not an entire nation state.

[Mongrel]

The Sarah O'Connor thing may have been briefly amusing, but it led me to trip over this way more interesting tweet: As a global average, interest rates are currently the lowest they've been in 5000 years.

[nosimpleway]

What a weird thing to say. Modern banking as we understand it (namely the use of loopholes to allow Christians to charge interest without accusations of usury on their immortal soul), only came around about 700 years ago. The first actual bank was founded only 400 years ago, to say nothing of stock exchanges, studies on inflation, and global markets.

That just... that's information that seems pretty useless without context, if it's even accurate.

[pacobird]

9.32 an hour after expenses... I hate to like... Let me just put it like this. I'm a member of management of which there is only one person above me at the theatre, I'm the most qualified, and I've worked here for 4 years. I make 8 dollars an hour. If someone has never made less than 9.32 an hour, even at an ice cream parlor... That drips of privilege to me.

brother, if it's privilege to be upset your job pays you at or below the poverty line, the word has no meaning

[Mongrel]

What a weird thing to say. Modern banking as we understand it (namely the use of loopholes to allow Christians to charge interest without accusations of usury on their immortal soul), only came around about 700 years ago. The first actual bank was founded only 400 years ago, to say nothing of stock exchanges, studies on inflation, and global markets.

That just... that's information that seems pretty useless without context, if it's even accurate.

Well, the chart may be a little glib, but loans and interest have existed as long as currency, so while modern institutions and tool have certainly revolutionized the way we handle interest, it doesn't make the chart actually wrong, or less interesting.