Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (82791)	9/7/2008 5:17:32 PM
From: Stan J. Czernel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541634

I'm not against carefully targeted and limited spending. However I don't think "helping" the middle class with handouts is the job of the federal government. Have you heard of Reductio-ad-absurdum? Here is the Wikopedia definition: "a tactic in which the logic of an argument is challenged by reducing the concept to its most absurd extreme." The "middle class" can be helped in many ways that produce worthwhile benefits - no one is suggesting 'handouts'. Here is an example of getting good things at a small cost. Do like many European countries have done and implement capital item take back laws (IE. "you make it, you own it"). This would force companies to take back the stuff they manufacture after its useful life. This must be combined with laws that place a very heavy tax on waste disposal. Now. Corporations are going to scream like stuck pigs, and claim it is the end of prosperity as we know it - not to mention an egregious interference with free-market prerogatives. But experience abroad shows something amazing: these take-back laws create many new jobs; it causes Industry to re-engineer their products to be more durable and repairable and disassemble-able. IT CREATES NEW PROFIT OPPORTUNITIES. And it reduces manufacturing and landfill waste. It has also caused many companies to sell a service rather than a product. A case in point is Interface, a carpet maker. Interface redesigned its carpet so that it could be remanufactured into new carpet with no loss, and with a fraction of the energy originally used to make the carpet. They also sell a floor-covering service - not carpet: every year, they visit their clients and replace the 20% or so of stained or worn carpet. They remanufacture the reclaimed material and they save their customers from the choice of expensive full carpet replacement vs. living with ratty carpet.