Which is exactly why your average worker with a retirement plan investing in mutual funds and other investments might want to wake up and realize that they, too, own parts of large profit-making companies - and they, too, will have the return on those investments impacted by the taxes the invested-in companies bear.

Because they have competition, which puts pressure on them to keep prices low enough to attract, rather than repel customers. How is this not obvious to you? Everyone should run a retail business for a year or two so they can learn some basic facts, thus making them a far more constructive person for the rest of their lives.

A change in the tax law impacts every business that operates under that law. The way a business structures its pricing has to take into account cost pressures that impact the entire market of retailers (their competition) so they can make judgments about what will leave them in a competitive position on prices. Business owners wrestle with that topic every single day, and are acutely aware of what factors put pressure on them (and only them) and on their entire market segment. Overhead they take onto themselves, for their own convenience (say, operating in a slightly more expensive part of town) is something they may decide not to reflect in their pricing, knowing that the better location will increase volume. Overhead costs (like a bump in taxes) that impacts everyone in their market will result in higher prices across the board. This isn't just a theoretical, you can watch it happen every day.

What are you talking about? We've never been in a more competitive environment. You have at your fingertips more information about price and availability and the quality of various retailers' services than ever before in human history. Retailers who don't react to that bright light of consumer comparison shopping lose sales to those that do. It's exactly because Amazon (and Costco, and everyone else) use their well-oiled operations and buying power to keep prices down that brings in long-term, repeat customers. Modern retail shoppers are notoriously well-informed and fickle - retailers who aren't competitive are serving a quickly vanishing audience.

Cheating? Are you saying they were actually operating outside of the tax law?

You know they weren't. The law has now changed, and they're changing their operations and accounting to reflect that change. Their competition has to do the same thing.

Please provide specific examples of this illegal activity. Don't you think that prosecutors would like to have your evidence?

Or are you referring to documented campaign donations, just like millions of people and organizations make to support those with whom they align themselves? If you like a candidate or cause that says they're going to do [X] to Teh Eeeeevil Businesses, do you consider providing that candidate with your support as they try to get elected to office ... a bribe? No? I see.

And, as expected, this wasn't a mental health issue. This was a pre-planned extortion exercise involving more than one person in holding the victims captive, torturing their son, and arranging for a pile of cash to be delivered. Accomplices, helping out this trained welder who new the family in question would be good targets because he used to work for the victim's company.

What are you talking about? The police say this was a planned event carried about by more than one person. He didn't "snap," he set up a captivity/torture scenario in order to try to extort $40K in cash from a former employer, and had help from accomplices. You're going to have to find another way to feel sorry for the crew that did this.

People tired of other people apologizing on behalf of the Obama administration, and those already tired of Hillary weasel-wording on the subject.

No, I'm saying that the Obama administration, with the direct involvement of Hillary Clinton, was lying - deliberately, repeatedly, for weeks - about what happened. In order to influence the imminent election.

Here's an idea: how about you tell us which things the administration said about the US deaths in Libya were actually true. Because that will take less time.

Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear. Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative. Of course you, just like everyone else, already know this. Have fun being a part of theatrics, but just remember that pretending it's not so doesn't make you come across as any more credible. It's kind of embarrassing, actually.

Except for people who care that Obama and his administration blatantly lied about what happened in the period right before an election. And we see that Hillary Clinton knew very well that what was being said by both State and White House spokesdroids (and by her, and the president himself) was pure fabricated BS meant to placate prospective voters. They deliberately lied about what happened so that those events wouldn't contradict the narrative that Obama was trying to sell in his re-election bid. The people who actually know this, and who claim they don't care, are desperately hoping that Clinton's complicity in spreading that lie won't remain on people's minds during this upcoming election.

Not at all. It summarizes a causal relationship. The disingenuous GP is the one that says, "Having little money is a case of having little money." He doesn't address the why, whereas I'm pointing out that it's the lack of specific action that causes the lack of desired results.

There are plenty of poor white people who are poor for their own cultural reasons. The fact that you think culture is the same as skin color shows what a confused person you are. Culture is about behavior, not pigment. Avoiding that reality is just more PC deflection on your part. Nice try. Well, not really.

No, it's not. Poverty is caused by not doing the things that make you prosperous. Certainly a kid born into a household where nobody does the things necessary to provide a prosperous environment is a victim indeed. The parents are the only ones responsible for that, period (yeah, yeah, we can make exceptions to that ... women who are raped and never the less bear the child, and don't take advantage of endless opportunities to allow the child to be adopted into better circumstances, etc).

A kid born into a family where there is no culture of learning, or creativity, of movement towards the things that have lifted untold millions out of poverty ... that kid is poor because of the culture into which she was born. Not because there is no prospect for a comfortable life in the world, but because those prospects are being squashed by the local culture. In some cases, that culture is no larger than the single parent. Or it might be the size of a multi-generational household. Or a whole city block. Or an entire nation-state. But it's cultural, pure and simple.

In order to avoid having to give up on your moral relativism and turn in your PC/SJW card, you'll pretend that you just read someone talking about skin color. The fact that you so reflexively resort to that perspective in order to avoid talking about the real problem is, ironically, a stellar display of either disingenuous, craven intellectual dishonesty (or just a juvenile lack of rhetorical skills) on your part, or the sign of someone who really hasn't thought this through.

Ah, an "addressor" in our midst. Say what you, mean. Tear down people who have something so you can spread it around, right? No. Places like west Baltimore are saturated in lavish education spending, free or heavily subsidized transportation (and walkable blocks from places without even needing it), awash in grant money that's just looking for ways to turn abandoned properties into livable homes and viable businesses, and it's been run by people at the legislative and executive levels (since you're so obsessed with this) roughly the same color as those who live there. Health and legal expenses? Covered by taxpayer-funded medical care and legal clinics where you can hear the crickets chirping for lack of interest in use other than when someone's arrested for street crime.

We've been "addressing" those issues, lavishly, for decades. Miles away, there's prosperity. In that spot? People living in fear of the local street gangs and those squatting in abandoned homes and businesses. Why? Because the members of those gangs, the thugs who make that area intolerable as a place to live or run a business, have safe haven, culturally, in the households in which they were so passively raised. Ask the people who live there, and they'll tell you that's exactly the problem. "Addressing" that problem means (ready?) not tolerating the crime. And that means police presence and activity. But we're being told, by the president no less, that what's really needed is a less visible and active police force. And indeed, the police in that area have dialed it way back in the last few weeks ... and surprise! The violence level, including murder on the street, has surged hugely.

Just what you look for when deciding where to build your next fire-proof retail store, right?

Really, you're going to split those hairs?

OK, so really the GP is saying that the only reason we have people in poverty is because we have other people who aren't in poverty. Which is nonsense.

Prosperity is not a fixed-size meal to be spread around. If it were, we'd all be living like paupers because the population has grown so much. Prosperity is created, and people of modest means create it all the time. Then they become the ones who are resented for no longer being impoverished. Too bad, they earned it. The fact that they are no longer impoverished is not what's keeping someone else from having a better life.

So, impoverished people will suddenly start raising kids in two-parent households, or start teaching kids to read and think critically and have a work ethic ... if we can only just limit what CEOs earn? If we can just tear down immoral prosperity, that will fix the broken household and neighborhood cultures that prevent prosperity from taking root in those places? Are you even listening to yourself?

How about CEOs that make 50X? Does that pass your moral standard? 49.5%? 49.4%? When exactly does a business owners or director's pay become "moral." What is the standard you're using? Do you really mean that morality is based on statistics, not on actual principles? You agree that the person who runs a company is worth more than a person who sweeps the floor at that company. Why? What MORAL grounds to you have for that distinction? Be specific. And then in one percent pay increments, start describing exactly when it's suddenly immoral.

Because once you nail that down, you'll see how you've just set yourself up to be the immoral one for making more money, yourself, than someone else does. By someone else's standards (if we use your model), you yourself pure evil for not being as poor as someone else. How DARE you live a lifestyle so rich that you can afford the time to sit around expressing opinions on the internet! Other people don't have that luxury, so you must be immorally prosperous. If you stop being that prosperous, that will finally other people to be prosperous, right?

Yeah, right.

Which is fine until you're killed by someone who irrationally thinks you're responsible for their poverty. Or your home loses half its value because a change in the local demographics means an encroaching street crime problem. Indifference doesn't change the problem you'll have renegotiating your upside down mortgage. But that's fine, you're much too cool to worry about such stuff.

Yes, there can be racist cops, just like there are racist black people. That has nothing to do with the assertion that the DC police only went after this quadruple murderer because the killer is black and victims are white. DC police go after killers every day. Given the local demographic, most of the killers are black, just like most of their victims. The GP wants to imagine that the DC police don't ever go after killers of black victims, which is BS on the face of it.