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Old 02-18-2011, 01:05 PM   #18 (permalink)
dksuddeth
Junkie
 
Location: bedford, tx
Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton View Post
So? No business can spend more than it brings in. Aside from semantic issues, the real question here is whether accumulating debt is an acceptable way of bringing in money.
there's no semantics here, wherever that came from. bottom line, if a business outspends itself, it goes out of business. as i stated earlier, if it's a publicly owned business on the stock market, there might be tons of capital cash available to maintain operations while a business alters their model, but a mom and pop business that raises prices to make up for lost revenue is only going to succeed as long as there's no competition and there is demand for their product.

Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton View Post
You don't think they accumulated any debt?
again, didn't follow them. but being big companies, i'm sure that, like other big companies, the amount of assets they had allowed them to get appropriate loans, up to a point. the governments of 46 states are very close to that point.

Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton View Post
That's weird, my cell phone company just tacked on an extra $10 dollars to their data plans and it hasn't seemed to get in the way of their profit (as far as I can tell).
because you, and many others, didn't seem to mind paying that extra fee. if that fee caused thousands of their customers to move to another service, i'll bet that fee gets removed very quickly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton View Post
Really, though, my point in this threadjack was that businesses frequently utilize debt when it benefits them to do so. Our government is no different. Further, businesses are motivated by profit, and it would be massively stupid for us to motivate our government officials using profit.
yes, those business' utilize their debt because they have the assets to do so through loans. our government has been doing that also and for far too long. it's catching up to them now and at a very bad time when the majority of the population demands no more raising taxes, but cutting spending.

as to governments using a profit model, i'm with you. governments of any sort in this nation are not constitutionally authorized to operate on a profit scale. they don't produce anything, they just consume.
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