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A Minor Political Screed
AN ELECTION-SEASON EPISTLE ABOUT PYRAMIDS, DIAMONDS, INHERITANCE TAXES AND A CLOSE ELECTION THAT SOMEHOW HAS EVERYBODY BORED STIFF
Hello all. Here's hoping that autumn 2000 finds you well as we continue our transition into a new century.
Has anyone noticed something interesting? The complete lack of any voices proclaiming that December 31, 2000 is the _real turn of the century? Odd huh? I haven't heard a single call to celebrate this formal milestone -- even as a simple excuse to have another party! You'd expect at least for some Society of Nit-Pickers & Pedants to do so..
Anyway, whenever it's time to bid adieu to the Summer Olympics and prepare for Halloween, you can be sure that we in the USA are also approaching another bizarre ritual - our quadrennial presidential elections.
As usual, there is the politics you see on the surface... and what's going on below. Issues that get little play in the press. Issues that are really driving the deep agenda of one party or the other.
I've noticed one of these. And it bothers me enough to provoke spending an evening to pen this letter, offering a comment or two, in case some of you are interested.
SPOCK VERSUS DARTH?
Something strange is going on in the States (for those of you who live outside and cannot feel it in the air.) Times are good and that tends to seep some passion out of the political contest. Also, nobody is particularly scared of the choices being offered. Or excited, for that matter.
True, almost everyone agrees that Al Gore has about twice the IQ of George W Bush, more experience and a much better idea what's going on. Some call him "overqualified the same way Spock was, to be captain of the Enterprise, and therefore unromantic, a rather unpalatable choice for those preferring the zing of human fallibility in their leaders.
(See the latest issue of Yahoo Internet Life Magazine for a fascinating interview that seems to support this view.)
But for those who worry about George W's paucity of intellect, do not fret. By nominating Richard Cheney as his running mate, Bush quite properly signalled that he is front man for a brain trust that has considerable experience and knowledge about the workings of policy and government. As they did under Ronald Reagan, these gray eminences will handle most decisions with utter seriousness. They are not scary madmen or boat-rockers.
Government will function either way. To a large degree (at least compared to past empires) it will leave us pretty much alone. Those of us in the middle class, that is.
Then why am I writing now? Clearly I care, and wish to influence your vote, speaking openly, as one citizen to another.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE
Well, for one thing, I utterly reject the silly platitude going around that says the republican and democratic parties are just the same. What hogwash!
On the left, some males swallow this romantic twaddle and go running off to Ralph Nader, seeing him as a Don Quixote-type, ignoring his programmatic vagueness, his oversimplifying demonization of markets and his many questionable personality traits. Very few women seem to have joined the Nader campaign. Maybe because they are more practical, knowing that the next president will appoint at least three Supreme Court justices. I've seen quite a few buttons saying "It's the Supreme Court, Stupid."
That issue, alone, should eliminate any thought of voting Republican this year.
But there is another, far more important reason. It has to do with a blatant attempt at social engineering that none of us should like or put up with. An effort to fundamentally alter a social contract that has done very well by America and the West for several generations.
A SOCIAL CONTRACT THAT WORKS
Look at the difference between European and American societies. Both have changed considerably since World War II by becoming much less pyramidal and more "diamondlike".
Some of you may have heard me talk about this before. It's an obvious metaphor for our unique culture. Throughout history, almost every civilization had a social structure shaped like a pyramid, with a few at the top lording it over uneducated masses below. And it was in the best interest of those on top to make sure those masses stayed down. Social position was inherited. Above all, information flows were tightly controlled.
In sharp contrast, our contemporary social pattern is diamond-shaped. For the first time, the well off actually outnumber the poor, at least inside our national borders. The educated outnumber the uneducated, and those who see themselves as somewhat empowered make up a majority. For the first time, most people merely envy the rich and do not hate them, because each of us can daydream taking our own turn in the pointy upper half. And if not us, then perhaps our children. It's called "social mobility" and it never happened before - at least not on this scale.
Above all, we feel that society's elites are somewhat accountable - or at least they are limited in the degree that they can use their elevated position to wreak capricious and direct harm on us, unlike the impunity that cloaked aristocracies in pyramidal cultures of the past.
(Harm done to the earth is another matter, we can discuss elsewhere.)
People who rage at "government bureaucrats" seldom stop to think how little those bureaucrats can actually do to harm you, compared to the impulsive power-abuses of aristocrats and oligarchs in nearly every past culture. And not too long ago! Forget Caesar and Louis XIV. Read Dickens, Jane Austin, Faulkner, Steinbeck! Hell, look at Myanmar and China today. It's like peering into a strange and desperately lopsided world -- the world that all our ancestors toiled in, friends. We are the ones living in an anomaly. The social engineering that occurred since WWII -- through marvels like the GI Bill, the explosion of literacy and expanded state universities, etc. -- caused a peaceful revolution in human affairs that was unprecedented across all time. And unlike other revolutions, it happened without much violence or bitterness. This revolution benefited those below without tearing down those above. We ought to appreciate such a marvel; it's incomplete, by a large margin, but it's also quite unprecedented. Our diamond-shaped social structure, with its implication that any of us may succeed next year, promotes a vibrant, can-do spirit that makes vigorous use of tools like mutual criticism and accountability. And note this symptom of health -- America has seen a burgeoning in the number of millionaires, but the vast majority of them made their own fortunes in the marketplace, through competitive delivery of goods and services.
Hey, that's what capitalism is supposed to be for, right? We can (and should) argue all day about how to help the poor. But at least their brightest sons and daughters already have a much better chance than the peasant kids did in the past. Every year, some of the best (or luckiest) make it all the way to the top. And countless sons of the rich find themselves having to earn it all over again.
*=> In Europe, by contrast, a majority of millionaires inherit their riches. Studies show that few of them seek to learn useful occupations or do anything dynamic with their fortunes. They do work hard at politics, striving to keep property and inheritance taxes low, while sticking the poor with high sales taxes. This way, they will be able to pass on their money, titles and life-style as entitlements to their lordly kids without impediment or inconvenience.
A DIAMOND UNDER SIEGE
Don't get me wrong! I have every intention of getting into the upper brackets myself. I've already made some progress in that direction. And I plan to be sure that my children get some advantages from my success. But that's a far cry from entitling them to billions from goods and services they never did a thing to produce or provide to anyone. My success does not entitle them to a position in life that safeguards them from competition.
I lived in the U.K. when Margaret Thatcher succeeded in ramming through a bill ending all property taxes. The chief beneficiaries were 1,000 landed families who no longer had to worry about actually earning some money to keep their grand estates. The chief effect? An increase in the VAT paid by normal folks... oh, and many castles and manor houses stopped having open house days, since they no longer had to earn tourist dollars to pay the rates! Oh boy, now the art collections could go back to being "for our eyes only!"
Here in the States you see the same movement at work. Lots of "Simple Tax Plans" take advantage of citizens' (justified!) anger at tax code complexity, pandering to that anger by pushing a National Sales Tax, with the chief effect of shifting the burden of taxation from the top of the diamond to the bottom. And the underlying agenda of turning that diamond into a pyramid once again.
(An aside: I am working with a group developing ways to simplify the income tax code using a computer program that will find politically neutral simplifications, taking the whole issue out of politics. It's an exciting project, requiring fascinating algorithms, but more than we can get into here.)
*=> Now comes along George W. Bush with his grand plan to "cut taxes" in a manner that blatantly gives fully half of the benefits to the richest 1%. Delaying the payoff of our grandchildren's public debt for a decade, he'll use most of the budget surplus to achieve such wonders as completely repealing the inheritance tax.
WHAT THE INHERITANCE TAX DOES
Now there's a funny thing about the inheritance tax - it's effects are vastly greater than they seem at first sight. At the surface, it doesn't look like the government's biggest source of revenue. In fact, its chief effect over the years has been encouraging super-rich folks to create charitable foundations, in order to keep their money away from the IRS!
Get this -- in the USA, charitable giving by the rich is MORE THAN TEN TIMES as high as it is in Europe! Studies credit most of this difference to the inheritance tax, spurring the wealthy to use their money to buy fame and gratitude, rather than let Uncle Sam decide how it will be spent.
Yes it's kind of quirky and ironic. But there's a kind of beauty to it, leaving the super-rich free to choose WHICH charitable use their money will go to. That's a lot of pleasure and power to have while doing a lot of good. And the pleasure goes to the people who got rich by actually providing goods and services, not their spoiled kids. (Andrew Carnegie set aside a nice little fund to ensure his kids' comfort, then dedicated the bulk of his fortune to giving libraries to the poor, all over the world. He said -- "I'd rather leave my son a curse than the almighty dollar.")
Care to guess what'll happen to charitable giving if GWB gets his way?
We are entering a period when some estimate that fifteen trillion dollars will shift hands between generations. For those in the middle class, this may be the only sizable dollop of cash they'll ever see, since most of their current savings are tied up in their homes... and the Inheritance tax won't touch a penny of it. But about a third of that fifteen trillion dollars is set to flow to a few thousand people who never produced a thing to earn it. Fortunately a large portion will also go into charitable foundations, taking on a myriad bold tasks that simply don't appear on the radar screens of either government or corporate planners. Fascinating projects, chosen by real innovators. That is, if things stay the way they are.
THAT is why the effort to revoke the Inheritance Tax is so frantic and urgent right now. It is why the bosses of the GOP have made it their number one priority. A trillion or two, taken away from bold foundations and slipped into the pockets of new lords. What a cool agenda!
FAMILY BUSINESSES? BALONEY
Oh, don't talk to me about "family businesses & family farms". That's been debunked, big time. The effect of the inheritance tax on small and mid-sized family business is virtually nil today. Nil. Moreover, Clinton & Gore have shown willingness to push upward the exemption from a million dollars to two million. Hell, make it five! TEN! That's a heap of equity to pass on. The kids should be able to do a lot with it, even if they must reconsolidate a bit
That's still a far cry from letting a small cadre of lazy preppies scoop in billions without paying a penny of it to the nation that protects them, pays for the research, protects them, educates their workers, protects them, keeps the poor from rioting, protects them, maintains labor peace, protects them, enforces contracts, protects them, invests in saving the environment we all share and then protects the rich some more, in ten thousand more ways than they would ever willingly acknowledge.
It's ungrateful, churlish and just plain nuts.
No, I am not preaching class warfare... though that is exactly what you will get eventually, if the pyramid is restored.
A lot of people are upset because the fraction of our economy controlled by the top 5% is rising, higher and more rapidly than at any time in 3 generations. I'm a bit less concerned by that, so long as the diamond remains healthy. So long as most of the millionaires in each generation still have to earn it and their kids still go to college with our kids. In that case they'll keep intermarrying with us, instead of thinking themselves a different species.
...which is exactly how the rich always thought of themselves in other cultures/times/places. As a different species, justifying their status with absurd racial notions or self-serving ideas about divine authority.
(SOME EXCEPTIONS)
(Okay, not all of the rich! Not today.
(It depends on which kind of wealth eggs you on -- RELATIVE wealth or ABSOLUTE wealth.
(Take those who want to be rich in order to have lots of fun and cool stuff. These folks don't compare themselves to those below them. They don't begrudge if others get rich too. In fact, the more the merrier! Let's all get so rich together that everybody vacations on terraformed Mars! Ski Olympus Mons! Ain't it awful how crowded Europa is getting these days?
(Others need to feel rich-er than the masses. It's the "er" suffix in richer that gives their life zest and meaning. The relative comparison to others. They would feel happier being in the top 1% of a poor society - with shabby servants to scream at - than being at the mere 90th percentile in a fabulously wealthy nation of equal citizens.
(I'll bet you know both types, admit it! This personality factor makes a big difference in which political movements each wealthy person donates money to, even if they buy similar cars and belong to the same clubs.)
WOULD-BE PYRAMID BUILDERS
People, it's time to say no-thanks to those wanting to bring back the old social pyramid. The diamond deserves our loyalty.
But alas, the diamond ain't stable, ladies and gents. The natural human tendency is for those with power to want more power.
I accept the productive value of capitalism, when the market is a vibrant place for fair competition of goods & services. But if accumulations of wealth pass a certain point, capitalism will die and feudalism will replace it, as happened every other time there was a brief renaissance of competitive opportunity in human affairs. Seriously, name a bright era when that did not happen, shutting down opportunities and progress for centuries at a stretch.
Anyone who wants the pyramid back is your political enemy, folks. Not just the enemy of us but an enemy of his own children. Just ask the innocent young baronets who lost their heads during the French Revolution. THEY didn't rape the serfs, but they paid a stiff price for their grandparents' arrogant, insatiable greed. Alas, those yearning for pyramids are too stupid to grasp how wealth is really made, or what happened to the pinnacle classes in every other culture, when the people below got fed up. They are too stupid to realize that the diamond is their own best friend.
OKAY, OKAY, OKAY....
Oooh, Brin is really starting to go over the top now!
Oh, all right.
Maybe the social diamond won't fall apart overnight if George W. Bush becomes president. Maybe he'll be balanced by a Democratic Congress. Maybe we'll be fine. There are lots of other factors involved than which figurehead occupies the White House.
Still, his blatant campaign to give a few trillion dollars to those who need it least bothers me deeply. Especially the raging avarice and ingratitude of it. People who have thrived immensely under the protection/support/subsidy of a great nation don't want to help pay to keep that nation prospering and growing, or to help poor kids rise up high enough to compete with them on an even playing field.
They want to be lords. OUR lords. And we shouldn't let them. Merely as rich as Croesus, that's all they should get to be. Getting to be rich as Scrooge McDuck should be enough for anybody.
Oh, pity their poor offspring, who must graduate from Andover or some other prep school knowing that now they have to go to university alongside the bright scions of accountants and teachers and laborers!
Oh no, they may actually feel a need to study something useful in school, in case their measly inheritance ever gets frittered away. Their mere ninety million dollars instead of tens of billions.
Worst of all, they have to suffer and watch as Dad's fortune goes to some prissy goody foundation to cure cancer, or to some university to buy buildings named after him and Mom.
"What an outrage! That money's MINE, you hear? Do you have any idea how little ninety million dollars can buy, these days?"
ENOUGH
This is the GOP's absolute top agenda item - they say so themselves - and we should reject it resoundingly. Send the Republicans back to the drawing board.
If Bill Clinton and Al Gore can see the light about welfare reform and budget balancing, then Dick Cheney can bloody well go back to the brain trust and report that the GOP needs some fresh ideas. And, please, some fresh blood while you're at it.
There are fresh ideas out there! * Ideas about how markets can be used to help stimulate and promote sustainable occupancy of the planet without putting all our faith in bureaucrats or the almighty dollar. Ideas about how markets can be made more vibrant than ever, spurring innovation while helping forge a diamond that floats ever higher, carrying everybody on Earth upward with it.
Go away this time, Dick. Give poor George W. a nice cushy job somewhere in the oil biz and bring us someone else in 2004. Somebody with brains... and proposals that make sense.
====================================================== ========================
NOTES:
* For those of you who are libertarians, see the next issue of LIBERTY magazine for an article about ideas like these. Ideas about freedom and "reduced government" that are worth campaigning for and that aren't about helping foster an old-fashioned inherited aristocracy in America. When you think about how many interesting things Cheney & co. could be talking about - like ending the Drug War - you'll wind up holding your nose and voting for Gore.
For those of you on the left who are actually thinking of voting Nader... gadzooks, do you know anything about that person? A gadfly needs personality traits that would be calamitous in a President. Learn more about him, for Gaia's sake. Then think about Global Warming, the Supreme Court and the Internet. You'll hold your nose and vote for Gore.
Me, I ain't holding nothing when I vote for him. He's a geek, but a smart/nice one. We've done worse. Most of the time, in fact. A lot worse.
The US is prosperous while Europe continues to plod along with a lame-duck currency. This isn't by accident - its a result of policy.
One thing I don't understand is why everybody around here seems to be favoring Gore over Bush. True, I would never in a million years vote for someone as mind-bogglingly stupid as Bush, but I would also never vote for Gore - he is extremely in favor of censorship, and his wife Tipper is even worse. True, she won't have any real power if Gore is elected, but she will have way too much pull. She is a very dangerous woman.
Why is censorship so bad? You tell me.
--
I disagree with Dr. Brin's self-assessment: this is not a rant, it's well thought out and carefully considered. It's the best piece of political commentary I've seen this entire (endless) campaign season. Should be read very carefully by all.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
This whole peice is dedicated to the principal that Government is smarter than people are. "We are from the Government and we are going to help" is one of the most scary thoughts anyone could have.
Thomas Jefferson said, "People who give up freedom for security will get neither".
The problem is Government thinks that your money is their money. And since we are the government, your money is my money, and that my friend is called Socialism.
Our founding fathers knew that the only way to keep America free is to limit the Federal government, something this generation has not learned.
People who think they are superior to others, aren't.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
> Has anyone noticed something interesting? The complete lack of any voices proclaiming that December 31, 2000 is the _real turn of the century? Odd huh? I haven't heard a single call to celebrate this formal milestone -- even as a simple excuse to have another party! You'd expect at least for some Society of Nit-Pickers & Pedants to do so..
Actually, I'm a Life Member of the SNPP. But that's exactly why I don't call for the celebration.
Sure, I'm all agreed that this New Year's it the millenial anniversary. But anniversary of what? A WAG at the date of a possibly mythological event? We NPPs would rather pick at it than celebrate it.
Besides, only lamers need holidays as an excuse for a party. If any day is holy, then they all are.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
One thing, and one thing only makes anybody wealthy: capital. Savings applied to productive uses. Death taxes destroy capital. They force the sons of farmers and businessmen to sell the business in order to pay the taxes on what they have inherited. This destroys capital.
Inheritance taxes make us all poorer, even if we don't pay them ourselves.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
He has some interesting points, though. But, as he dismisses the notion that we have a single-party system, I dismiss the idea that this election is simply about the inheritance tax and Supreme Court justices.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I know more about Nader than I really know about either of the two republicrats, and that's part of why I've decided to vote for him.
And it's not about the Supreme Court. It's about scare tactics.
...and let them know that you think they're impeding any progress in the American ploitical process.
I sent them this last night:
I'm just wondering how you people sleep at night knowing that you are hampering any progress that this country has tried to make past the same old crap spewed forth decade after decade by the two parties whom you solely represent.
The American public, as well as the global community, is appalled at your evil nature for not allowing Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan to speak to the American public.
People all over the world are mocking Americans for your exclusion. We know that any non-partisan inclusion in your decision making was removed about 8-10 years ago when the formerly conscientious comittee resigned in disgust at your two party insistence, stating that they would not be involved in "hoodwinking the American public."
I am a patriot, and I love my country, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so due to your heavy-handed control over the political process. How your representatives can stand in front of a live television audience and feel good about themselves while screwing us all is beyond me.
The political process needs to be fair to all Americans. Your process is so self-interested that it leaves us all wishing that someone within your organization would wake up one morning and say, "My God, how can I continue to belittle the American political process and silence the voices of millions in the elections."
Hopefully, someday, your consciences will speak up and you will fight to help us regain some voice in our own political process.
I see that David says that farmers and businessmen are not affected by the inheritance tax. I'll accept his point regardless of its veracity. My point still holds: the inheritance tax converts capital into consumption. This is a bad thing in the long term.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Why do I get the feeling that Gore will also do as his predecesor and lie and tell the people what they want to hear? Gore seems to be a great story teller. Other then the supreme court issue (Look what happened when E. Warren was appointed! SHEESH! Talk about back scratching deals!) Andy Roony could be president because all the real work, ie. Speech writing, negotiations, bill props etc. are done by advisors. However, the one thing that Clinton/Gore have hurt is the USA military. The Voice of America recently put out an editorial about the Cole. The state department who approves such editorials denied its printing because the death of the 17 Navy boys don't out weigh the 100s of palestineins (sp?). Thats the Clinton/Gore state dept. Thats just sad. An editorial cant be printed because it might enrage Palestine and the deaths of their 100 outweigh the deaths of our 17 that serve us and our country. Ugh.
-- Whee
Get real.
The biggest issue this year is "Who is government working for?". And until this question is answered, no other issue even makes sense to talk about. You can't decide how (or if) to fix social security or respond to terrorist attacks unless you know who your constituents are and what they believe.
THAT'S why I'm voting for Nader. Bush and, to a slightly lesser extent, Gore are both working for Big Business. Nader, Browne and Buchanan are all working for The People (or subsets thereof). Buchanan's subset is the religious right and therefore I'm not voting for him. Browne is working for people, but defines businesses as people--which I don't agree with and therefore I'm not voting for him.
Nader is the only candidate that recognizes that government belongs to people and businesses are NOT people. Therefore he gets my vote. But not because I want him to win. I want to use Nader's candidacy as a medium through which I can send my message: I want goverment to be of, by and for the people.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Rather than "over-the-top", I find this to be well-thought and well-argued.
It's a shame that it'll never become a prime-time topic of conversation...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I'm voting for Harry Browne. I'm not holding my nose to vote for Bush OR Gore. Gore frightens me. The things he says in _Earth in the Balance_ are indistinguishable from the Unabomber Manifesto.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Contrary to what the uninformed of the world are trying to claim, the inheritance tax *is* a huge factor in small business progression. I myself am one of thousands of people who *would* inherit my father's farm, but it's not gonna happen! I'll have to disolve the farm in order to pay the inhertance tax! No really! I'm not making this up! Imagine that! If Brin had actually used his own grey matter instead of that which was spoon fed to him, he might have noticed that this is a real issue affecting real people!
Ben
The federal government controls so much of the economy, that I don't see how we can elect someone who isn't an economist.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It does not take much of a farm or small business these days to equal 1 million dollars, the new amount at which inheritance tax will kick in. I know that sounds like a lot, but experience with my family's farm showed us that it was not. When you add up land at thousands of dollars/acre, and the value of lots of heavy machinery and buildings, even a modest farm can be raped by these taxes.
End result? It gets sold to a huge agri-business concern, since the family cannot afford to give away 1/3 of all it owns (and has already paid taxes on) to the government and stay in business. And then people complain about corporations taking over our economy... Sheesh. Get a clue and look at the consequences of the policies advocated by the Democratic Party. Just because what they say sounds warm and fuzzy should we believe it?
I've read nearly every one of Brin's SF books, enjoying their scientific approach coupled with his humorous cynicism directed at politics.
But in this screed, I see Brin finally abandoning any hope for political change. This is cynical realism at its hopeless worst.
Sure, the Supreme Court scam is no excuse for voting for Gush, but geekyness is about the worst reason I can think of for voting for Mr. Status Quo Bore.
As for me, I'll be watching CSPAN on Friday night from 8:00-9:30 EDT to hear the "Rest of the Story."
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
It's the perfidy (stupid): Same lies, same sellout to, e.g. Russians selling nuclear stuff to Iran, or Russians pols and mobsters stealing the aid we send them, or sombody selling our nuke secrets to China. This is the biggest reason why, in a time of nearly unparalleled prosperity, the ruling party is losing. Charater does count: "loathing" the military traslates into some pinhead at Voice of America spiking a piece on the Cole bombing because those deaths do "not compare" to the Palestinian loss of life in the new Intifada.
Also, this Europhile thing is misplaced. Sure, I like blondes (and I am one), and SAABs, BMWs, and Mercedes are cool cars. IKEA makes cheap furniture that isn't ugly. But what about violent crime in gun-free London going out of control because you can be sure to be able to do a housebreak or a mugging without encountering a gun? What about ramapant mafias and endemic official corruption in southern and eastern Europe? What about the ever efficient and rational Germans going broke becuase their welfare state is unsustainable?
The real reason we are prosperous is that we have moderate taxes (that could be lower), pretty good rule of law (could be better), sanctity of contract (that is mostly enforceable), and private property (that could be better protected from bureaucrats). If we ever got freedom of choice in puclicly supported education, we would have a new Golden Age.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Dr. Brin earlier this year. A wonderful thing about him is his ability to go off on a discourse such as the one above off the top of head, in real time. In person he has a great enthusiasm and clarity that few people have. Whats more he's right (IMO of course)
The wealthy are being disproporionately taxed, but they are also disproporionately benifiting from the society that they are helping to fund with their taxes.
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
When it comes to matters of technology, programming, etc., I trust the /. editors in their decision making, just like I trust my favorite musicians' and actors' creative decisions. But for the love of God, stay out of politics! You clearly have no idea what on earth you're talking about.
First off, in Bush's tax plan, when you look at the entire thing instead of the tiny little bit Gore harps on in his overbearing debates, the top 1% pay MORE of the tax burden than they do now. MORE. MORE. MORE. Are you listening, or do I have to say it again? Now, they pay 62% of the tax burden, under Bush's plan, 67%. 67 > 62.
Also, if you're worried about the rich having more money, please read some Adam Smith, people. What do you think they're going to do with it? Keep it locked up in a chest under their bed? No! They spend it! On buying things from the lower 99%, which gives us the money.
I am begging the /. editors now, before I lose any more faith in them, please stop posting this drivel.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
Facts are such difficult things for people with your opinion. Best just to ignore them, eh? The first generation earns the money, the second spends it, and the third gives it away. At least that's what's happened historically. Look at any of the wealthy families from a hundred years ago.
Now, that said, as a practical matter, there are no safe investments. All capital must be managed, or it will slip away. It takes effort and skill to manage capital well. That's work. Sorry if you don't appreciate it as work, but perhaps you haven't tried to do it yourself.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If you go to the academic record, they were both mediocre (at best) undergraduate students, with Bush having a slightly higher GPA while taking a slightly tougher courseload (including "Mr. Environment" Gore's 'D' in basic science). But Bush managed to earn a Havard MBA -- Gore dropped out of Vanderbilt twice in graduate programs, once in divinity (after he failed most of the courses he took in a program he got an early rotation home from Vietnam for) and once for law (I don't know what his grades were there -- he left to run for Congress).
Ok, so coursework isn't always the best example. But Gore's reputation for brilliance comes more from being very detailed as opposed to having original ideas. And seeing whom each candidate has surrounded himself with as advisors tend to make me think that Bush may really be the smarter one, especially in where it matters for a President. I personally prefer a delegator to a micro-manager. (Also true in business... but I digress...)
Of course, the real reasons to vote for someone are basic competence (I think either candidate is competent), trustworthyness (Bush beats Gore hands-down here), and issues (all depends on your own philosophy). There may be many reasons to vote for one candidate over the other, but please don't fall for the "Gore is brilliant and Bush is stupid" line as a factor in your decision.
--
Well if we want to base our Callandear on the supposed birth date of Jesus Christ, the end of the Cent happened in 1996. Because the Callandear we currently are using was declared around 300AD by a ruler who guessed the birth of Jesus 4 years off from where historical evidence points it to be.
And even if 1AD was Jesus's birth, we should be good C programmers and count from 0 anyway.
And should time really be based on one religion's views? (suppose it's too late to change it now)
I know this is barely relevant, but I get so annoyed when people who claim the new Cent starts on 2001 think they're so smart.
I feel better now.
It's turtles all the way down.
I pay almost 50% of all money I get (47%, exactly). I pay more in taxes then most people make in a year..
It's not fair, true - but someone has to do it I suppose
In my home town that I grew up at, in one month I pay more in taxes then some of my old friends yearly income. Granted, they were single and living in apartments running $200/month but it still is ridiculous. The cultural divide based on annual income is huge.
But, I grew up poor and I'm doing really well now so I dont have too much sympathy for people who complain about being poor and never getting a chance to get ahead. I was 12 and 13 working on ranches illegaly to get money for computer parts. I did what I had to do, and it paid off in the end.
I doubt anything is going to change any of that.. it's just the way people are.
But I'll keep paying my 47% and deal with it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
There are several ways of responding to this without giving the wealthy a tax cut. Perhaps cracking down (via tax law) on companies like Microsoft and Cisco, the porportion that the wealthy pay would go down. And before anyone decries the horrible taxing regime placed upon the rich today, please consider that several decades ago (60s? 50s? Can some older /. readers indicate when?), there was a fifty percent tax bracket. What frightens me most is how much popular support there is for regressive taxing schemes (like a flat tax).
The money in charitable foundations is not "tied up" at all, but is used, for example, to pay salaries to researchers, purchase equipment, rent buildings, and so on.
This is placing real, maximum-liquidity cash money directly into the economy - an even better thing as far as this student is concerned.
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Well, for one thing, I utterly reject the silly platitude going around that says the republican and democratic parties are just the same. What hogwash!
Thank you. Last time I brought this point up on slashdot, I was shot down by people who find it easier to group the parties together than actually follow the issues. And I have to agree about Ralph Nader; I'll probably be voting for him because my state seems a lock for Gore, so he doesn't need my vote, and I'd like the Green party to get matching funds. But I haven't been impressed by Nader as much as I would like to be, and if the race was close where I live I doubt I'd vote for him.
Me, I ain't holding nothing when I vote for him. He's a geek, but a smart/nice one. We've done worse. Most of the time, in fact. A lot worse.
It will be really interesting to see how a really intelligent president will handle things. Clinton's brilliant, but not in a geeky, policy-oriented way, and the last few presidents before him have ranged from moderately intelligent to downright dim. The other comment (besides the both parties being the same one) that always annoys me around election time is the charge that the President "shouldn't be too intelligent" because it will somehow limit their leadership ability. That's a particularly ridiculous claim, and one of the last vestiges of a thread of anti-intellectualism that's run through our country for too long. Gore was blasted for "talking down" to us during the debates; if you're going to avoid voting for someone because you don't like him to express his knowledge, then you deserve the President you get. Unfortunately, the rest of us don't, but we still get stuck with them.
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Two scenarios:
1. Rich man dies. Passes equity, property to son, who promptly spends the rest of his life partying and frittering away the wealth his father acquired.
2. Rich man dies. Equity, property is sold to some other rich man. Money obtained is used to set up charitable foundation. Note that the equity, property is not "destroyed" but is in fact in better hands than in scenario 1.
So in which scenario does society benefit more?
well, if you only consider the US's bi-party system, then sure democrats and republicans are not the same. however, compare the political structure here and in other countries. let's take France for example. last presidential elections, there were more than a dozen parties running, ranging from comunists, socialists, greens, republicans (doesn't mean the same thing over there and here), all the way to extreme right wing party (the FN, totally racist bastards who should be removed from the face of the earth, but that's not the point). those are just a few of the most important ones. if you were to put the republican and democrat parties on that scale, they would both be very close and somewhere next to France's RPR (sortof republican). so you see, to someone used to seeing a great variety of political parties, the choice between republicans and democrats is really irrelevant, since they will pretty much do the same thing with just a few minor differences. There, i guess that's all i have to say.
consider the money stored in charitable foundations. Typically those are setup as true "foundations" according to the law, and that involves a couple of things:
The foundation must spend a certain percentage of its assets every year. This usually means funding programs, which employ people, who spend more money, etc. This ends up having the same effect as government spending, which is probably the biggest promotor of growth in an otherwise stagnant economy. If you build a wing on a library, you have to hire people to build it, design it, clean it, buy books, etc.
The foundation invests the money it hasn't been spending in order to maintain the foundation. While this money isn't then used actively, it has the same money multiplier effect as if I just sat there and invested on ETrade.
Now consider someone who just sits there on his money. If they're really serious about wealth protection, it's in bond funds, money markets, annuities, etc., which are all probably in some offshore country (switzerland, Luxembourg, the Caymans, etc.). This has some money multiplier effect, but less than spending a large portion of it every year, and is probably less likely to help than maintaining the endowment of a foundation, because it's being held elsewhere in low-yielding investments.
I'm not arguing for a tax-the-rich policy. I think that it's largely wrong to overly tax inheritance, and the example of France shows that it just transfers money to corporations (look at family wineries in France....there are very few of any size remaining, because the inheritance laws encourage sell-offs to corporations and require splitting the land if you have multiple children). That's not very good either.
But don't say that having scions just holding all money is a positive economic effect. Your high school economics class may have taught you something, but obviously not THAT much.
...and so you won't hear me wailing about how unfair it is that they pay 1/3 or even 1/2 of all taxes.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Hey, anyone on slashdot have David Brin's email address? He's always been a man I wanted to communicate with. Mostly, I think, to explain my love/hate attitude towards him. I need some closure on this.
;) ) And here he's giving me reasons to hold my nose and vote for someone, when I'm so far planning to not even vote because of how depressing the choices are this election.
It started in '92 when I met him at a sci-fi con. I'm a physicist who wants to write; he's a writer who learned physics. (Or so he told me then.) I was annoying, I admit, following him for about half an hour asking how one could do both physics and sci-fi at the same time. And he eventually rebuffed me as I deserved. After reading Startide Rising and Sundiver, see, I was just another worshipping fanboy, and although he was polite he did remind me that he was just human and I should get a life.
Then came what I call the 'political' era of Brin's writing, and I lost some interest in him as an author. Still a good thinker, though. After the IMO failed stories of his last trilogy, I find myself still reading Brin for his political and opinion pieces. I lost taste for his writing, even though he's the man I wanted to emulate...but I'm learning more from him now than before.
Now I'm a bit older, a bit wiser, I have a life and I've had one story published so far. (I'm planning on more, but I'm in no rush. I too shall one day spawn a trilogy or three.
It's an interesting cycle I'm in with David Brin. I act childish, and get kicked in the ass. I grow up. I act childish again, and get kicked in the ass again. Pardon me, I think it's time I registered to vote.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
If indeed they are paying such a large slice of the pie than I say great!
The top 10% make more money than the bottom 90% combined! Just think, the assets of the US's two richest people match the combined assets of the bottom 25%!!!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Well, it seems that Katz bashing and M$ bashing have been pushed aside in favor of something new: Republican bashing!
In all seriousness, folks, this piece goes pretty far (okay, VERY far) past moderation. Yes, most politicians are not the brightest of folks. Yes, they're mostly not geeks. But they are charismatic, and that's why they make good front men for the ideals behind them.
Probably the MOST disturbing idea in the above nonsense, for me at least, is the idea that the wealthy owe proportionately MORE to the country, simply because they've done well. If you're a failure, society will pick up the bill for you. If you're doing all right (read: middle class), society wants some back. If you've come up with something truly interesting, and are making big bucks, society will grab everything it can, and try for more. This leads to convoluted tax code, as the wealthy find it FAR cheaper to pay lots of lobbyists than to pay the taxes they might otherwise owe. As to inheritance tax: the constitution forbids double jeopardy: the government isn't allowed two bites out of the apple, in criminal matters. But inheritance tax gives them (at least) two HUGE bites out of the financial apple: this money is taxed when it is earned (income tax), taxed as it grows (capital gains tax), and taxed AGAIN after you die, and want to leave it to your kids (inheritance tax). And we wonder WHY people try to hide money overseas??
Elloquent, well-structured nonsense remains nonsense.
You have an account, filter out the stories. They told you this was coming.
Idiot.
BilldaCat
Screw lawyers and economists (whoops, sorry hawk), what we need for setting policy are philosophers, who think in terms of right and wrong. That eliminates the need for an economist, since the first thing a philosopher would do would be to make the government stop having so much control over the economy. ;-)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
First of all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And I am glad that you realized that what you have is nothing more than just that: an undocumented, un_backed, un-provable opinion. Frankly I think your evening would have been beter spent watching the debate and gathering some facts before spouting off with sci-fi generalities. (Granted it was a letter intended for a few but proclaimed to all.) First some background on your stance for an inheritance tax. FACT!: The current inheritance taxes are destroying the American farmlands! You claim that the American farmer is not affected because of the $1,000,000 base for estate value. Well, use your brain for more than fiction. FACT!: Average price per acre $5,000. That is 200 acres of farmland. A small farm starts around 6,000 acres. These are not the rich, these are everyday people who work more than you ever have writing your fiction. The current administration has destroyed the future US economy. FACT!: The basis for an economy lies in how much value it can produce, NOT how much it can pass around. A first year economy student cann tell you the only industries which CREATE value are farming and mining. Everyone else just passes around the wealth. FACT!: By the agenda of the current White House (of which Gore is a part) the price of American grain has fallen to a PRICE LOWER THAN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESION! These facts alone should sway any informed voters who want the US to have a future rather than the UN to have a future. Besides who wants to support Al Gore who supports CARNIVORE JohnJake@JohnJake.com
> it will in fact bring about a stronger economy due to the fact that rather than having money tied in up in charitable foundations, it will be in more liquid forms
Ah, I see that the "Trickle Down" philosophy is still current among Republicans.
After all, everyone knows that "5417 runs down hill", so why shouldn't money, too?
A convenient myth, if you need to justify handouts for the rich.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The president need not know anything of ecconomics to run the country when he has capable assistants who can do the job.
By that logic, the president need not know anything about international relations, the military, the environment, law, or domestic affairs either. I find Bush's insistence that he'll have competent advisors somewhat pathetic. During the debates when asked how he'd handle an economic crisis, he said he'd turn to the commerce secretary. Now the man has an MBA from Harvard, which supposedly gives him an advanced knowledge of economic theory; in theory, he should know more about the economy than just about any President we've ever had. Not sure how much time he spent in class though.
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This money, of course, disappears into the ether, never to seen by society again. What people do not, unfortunately, realize, is that morality has nothing to do with economics. When the son is "frittering away the wealth his father acquired," that is A Good Thing. Who is getting this wealth he "fritters away"? The poorer people he has to pay for products and services. Thus, more people are gainfully employed, rather than recipients of the largesse of a charitable foundation.
So, in response to your question, society benefits more from the first scenario.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
As for Brin's "rant", it just seems to be more liberalist crap. He's just perpetuating the liberal notion that it's the government's money, not yours, and even if it was yours, the government knows best how to handle it. Never mind that for inheritance taxes, they are taxing income and goods that have already been taxed. Never mind that the government should be in no way whatsoever entitled to get up to 50% of someone's equity and goods and such just because they died and wanted to pass it on to their offspring.
This makes the flat tax idea seem a great one. Bring on the flat tax, remove the marriage penalty and the inheritance tax (it bothers more than just the rich ya know, though some people wouldn't want you to know that), and dammit, tax EVERYONE equally (that's the way percentages work).
hey, who knows. Giving the government less of our money to work with might be the single most effective way at reducing government.
This is impossible on its face. Every complication was put there to serve some political special interest; removing any of them is inherently a political decision.
More fundamentally, even the simplest replacement (e.g. zero taxes up to X income, then Y% of everything above that) requires a determination of X and Y based on a political decision between appeal to envy (set Y high to "soak the rich" and set X at upper-middle-class level to avoid hitting the bulk of voters) and appeal to fairness (set X at a lower-middle-class level to spread the load as widely as possible while protecting people who really can't afford to pay, set Y at the minimum necessary level to fund the government).
The natural human tendency is for those with power to want more power.
True. Too bad Brin doesn't apply this principle consistently, noting that the power of the people in government office increases with both the total amount of taxes levied and the amount of discretion applied in who shall be made to pay what amount.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
do yourself a favor: stop tossing around "liberal" like some kind of insult, making yourself sound like a mindless dittohead. your argument is reasonable but you sound like Yet Another Angry White Male with your subject line. it's just become too common a pejorative term among said AWM's without two brain cells to rub together to produce a spark of truly independent thought. i'll avoid using "right wing" for the same reason. deal?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Much as I love David Brin's novels, I find his political analysis to be shallow.
... the Al and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story... that Al Gore discovered the Love Canal problem... that the greatest national security threat is the automobile (form Algore's book)...
He says he is not advocating class warfare, and then does exactly that. He objects that Bush's tax cut gives back a disproportionate amount of money to the top 1%, but seems to ignore the fact that those people are paying an even more disproportionate amount of taxes. Even Bush's tax plans make the tax system *more progressive* (and thus, in my opinion, more unfair to those who strive to achieve and be rewarded for it).
He decries social engineering, and yet supports a candidate who will use the tax code to do exactly that. Every time the tax code gets more complex ("targetted tax cuts") the government engages in more social engineering, more programming of our choices, and thus reduces our individual freedoms.
He also doesn't seem to realize that since the end of income averaging, the tax code taxes many more "rich" people who are just happen to get a bunch of their income in one lump sum, and thus hit a very high tax rate. For example, if you trade some of your salary for equity, then when you finally cash in on that equity, you will be "rich" as far as the tax code is concerned, even though you may end up with no more money than someone who took the money as salary and payed less taxes than you did. It has happened to me. And it happens to small business owners all the time.
He is willing to unfairly tax people twice in order to satsify his dubious social policy goal of preventing idle rich kids (not exactly a significant problem in the US, and not because of the tax code) and to encourage charitable giving. Folks, it ain't charity if government extortion forces you to do it. Furthermore, some of the greatest charitable foundations in the country were set up before we had those taxes! And, if you do the math, you will see that the tax hits hardest at those who are the children of the not-very-rich. If your parents have $100 million, and the tax takes $55 million, you can still be an *evil* idle millionaire if you want. But if they only have a couple of million, the tax makes a difference between a retirement cushion for you and not having one! David, you are a physicist... DO THE MATH (DTFM). Do you really believe that Bill Gates set up his foundation to avoid taxes? Carnegie? Ford? How much more money would go to charitable foundations if the government wasn't taking it from people and then redistributing it according to whatever buys the most votes?
And then there is the specious attack on W's IQ. OK - W wouldn't be the top guy at a geek convention, but neither would Algore. If you extrapolate their SAT tests to IQ (which, for verbal SATs is a very good extrapolation), there is only a slight difference, and both are almost two standard deviations above average.Furthermore, there is no evidence that high IQ is correlated with presidential success - just look at Nixon and Carter! Also, it is clear that Gore's "high IQ" has not blessed him with any degree of judgement when it comes to science - his environmental conclusions are not based on science or scientific reasoning, but rather radical romanticism. I'd rather take a solid guy who knows how to delegate over a genius who wlil pander, engage in class warfare, exagerrate his own achievements, make most his income from oil and tobacco while pretending to big their biggest enemies, and in general behave like a spoiled, power hungry rich kid.
And let us not forget who "owns" the democratic party... it is the teachers' unions (who bring us a public school system that consumes more money per pupil than almost any country in the world, and delivers far less educational results than every first world country and most second world countries)... it is the tort lawyers who use the billions of dollars that they got from the tobacco companies to attack the very capitalism that David naively thinks he supports... and who one of these days will get around to going after the software industry (after they destroy the pharmaceutical industry, the auto industry, the chemical industry, the firearms industry, etc)... it is the giant companies that prosper from *more* government regulation... and who use things like extreme environmental regulation to prevent small, less well capitalized companies from entering their field.
If you believe that the tax system should be used to control individual decisions... that the money really belongs to the government and they are just letting you use it... that the government should discriminate based on skin color or other artificial characteristics... that the problem with our schools is that we don't give them enough money or federal control... that Al Gore is a farmer... that Al Gore invented the internet
Sure... vote for Al.
And to those Libertarians out there...
Do you really want a government that believes IT can make the important decisions for you (taxes, who you can hire, what you can do with your land, etc, etc, etc)?
The only good weather is bad weather.
This is one of thos commonly cited ideas, this notion that because the top 10% pays 1/3 of all taxes, that they're disproportionately taxed, and it's true. They should pay more. After all, they also receive more than 1/3 of the income.
I'm not some money-hating liberal either, I'm a member of the group that I think should pay more taxes.
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"Don't trolls get tired?"
There's a reason GWB (disclaimer:yes, he's a moron) is proposing a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans - the top 10% is current paying at least 1/3 of all taxes, by even the most conservative estimate.
That same top 10% also holds more than 50% of all wealth in this country. By that standard, they should be paying 1/2 rather than 1/3 of all taxes.
That becomes especially true if taxation only affects (as it should) disposable income. It is quite unfair to tax the portion of income required to meet the minimum of food, clothing, and shelter. In the modern world, add in transportation and utilities since it is nearly impossable to be employed without those. Otherwise, taxes force inverted values in spending that would be seen as inexcusable at a personal level (A person who would buy fine art with the grocery money probably deserves to go hungry).
What annoys me is that rightist like to say the "economics" is strongly on their side, as if there was any semblance agreement on these issues in the economic community. No, Trickle-Down, give-it-to-the-rich-so-they-invest-more-of-it is far from the only legitimate economic theory. In fact, Trickle-Down had its chance for 12 years, and where did it take us? The biggest recession since the Great Depression (thank you Regan/Bush). Unfortunately economics (or anything else really) is not as simple and concrete as libertarians would like us to believe. The biggest falacy of this system is that this invested money ever "trickles" out of the closed circle at the top of the ladder. The more left leaning ideas that you need to balance the degree of social programs with the amount of capital the rich retain have been proving themselves rather nicely in Europe and in America for the last 8 years.
And before you say it, nobody is raised in a bubble, nobody deserves sole credit for their standing (do you think B. Gates is 100,000 smarter and ingenuitive than Alan Cox?:). We are all products of this great society we have built together, it is not us and them.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
First, you have to actually know what they have enough to uniquely identify it. That may be more difficult than it seems. I can't remember how the registry works, but it isn't that great.
Next, they can arrange the time within reason. You work during the day? How about going to see something 400 miles away from your home at 8am on a Wednesday? Probably not that convenient for you.
Finally, you don't have the right to see it in its proper light or anything. So they can (and have) move a painting from the wall, lay it on a corner of the floor of an unlit barn. You might see it a little, but probably not enough to give it its full mastery.
While I agree with the principle of letting people see the art in exchange for keeping it out of the inheritance taxes, the loopholes have destroyed the spirit of the law there.
"When you think about how many interesting things Cheney & co. could be talking about - like ending the Drug War - you'll wind up holding your nose and voting for Gore. "
Not bloody likely. You'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me to vote for a man who finds lying easier than breathing. Bush may be bad, but Gore is much, much worse. I *do* hope you aren't serious.
On another note, how did this Nader guy get so much press? He's little more than a publicity-seeker; no clear grasp of economics, no real understanding of the important issues. There IS a real alternative: the Libertarian party. If you don't like Bush (and i'm not especially thrilled by him), vote Harry Browne next month.
I think Brin is on the right track, but at the end he clamps down his conclusion to voting for Gore. Pyramids are bad, diamonds are good, Republicans are demons from hell, therefore be VERY SCARED, RUN and HIDE go vote for GORE. I don't buy it. Lesser evilism has resulted in these stupid chips off the old corporate block for candidates.
As a young woman said after the Madison Square Garden Nader super-rally, in response to the question of why she was voting for Nader:
"I am making a statement that I will no longer compromise"
We have been compromising way too long. Now is the time to take a stand and topple this exploitive and corrupt duopoly.
Don't like Nader? Fine. Vote Libertarian. Vote something other than the status quo, for your own sake. You're screwed either way if you vote for BushGore.
Personally I agree more with Nader's platform, history and experience, and am voting Green. Stop the mentality of lesser evilism. Grab the reigns of your *own* government.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There's a reason GWB (disclaimer:yes, he's a moron) is proposing a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans - the top 10% is current paying at least 1/3 of all taxes, by even the most conservative estimate. Even left-leaning economists are beginning to concede that the wealthy are being disproporionately and perhaps unfialry taxed.
The US is prosperous while Europe continues to plod along with a lame-duck currency. This isn't by accident - its a result of policy.
I don't follow. In your first comment you seem to imply that the wealthy shouldn't be taxed so much. In the second you claim that US policy (presumably tax policy as well) creates prosperity. Which one is it, should the wealthiest be taxed less, or are you saying the system works just fine like this?
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Actually, the top 1% of wealthiest Americans provide 37% of the US' income tax revenue.
This is the most ridiculous thing about Gore's recent "apples-to-rocks" comparisons: he is comparing Bush's 33% tax cut for the wealthiest 1% (i.e. 12% of all revenue) to Bush's education spending (very likely to be less than 12% of all total revenue), instead of comparing Bush's education spending to his own education spending.
That's a little like me saying "You are clearly more thrifty than I am, because you spend less on Coke in a week than I did on a set of Nordic skis." (Actually, it's closer to "I am deciding to bill for two fewer hours this week, but my cubemate is more responsible because she is buying six cups of coffee every day and working a full week," but I digress...)
I'm not a fan of either of them, though.
WRT the death tax: Why not allow greater deductions for charitable contributions now? Instead of assuming that the recently deceased would rather donate money to universities, libraries, etc. than to Uncle Sam, why not let them do it while they're alive for a tax break? Then they can see the results of their philanthropy, which will (I'll assume) motivate further giving. I paid 42% taxes at my last consulting gig (I'm a grad student now, so I'm paying a lot less....). I would have gladly donated that money and more to impoverished schools, soup kitchens, free clinics or any number of charities instead of sending it to a monolithic federal government.
~wog
Separately, if the overall level of taxes is generating surpluses, that might be evidence for cutting taxes, and of course cutting them will result in the highest payers getting the biggest cuts, even though they will continue to be the highest payers, absolutely, relatively and proportionately. Supposedly smart Democrats are so dishonest on this point they should be disqualified from taking oaths of office. It's OK to want to soak the rich, but come out and say it.
Brin seems to think that no individuals really own anything. The unstated assumption behind his reasoning is that it's the government (Brin would say society, but it amounts to the same thing in a democracy) who REALLY owns everything, and because of it's benevolence it lets individuals call something their own -- for a time.
Why does Brin find it so unfair that rich kids will, maybe, go to prep schools and will not have to work for a living? Basically, because it's NOT THEIR money. It's the government's (society's) money that their parents were allowed to hold on for a while. But what government giveth, government taketh back, and "allowing to own" is personal and ends at the person's death. I would bet that economics and politics aside, Brin believes that in a really fair and ideal world inheritance taxes would be 100% -- so that everybody starts in the same position: poor. This actually makes some sense in a social Darwinism sort of way, but the resulting world won't be pretty.
A "social" reason Brin gives for maintaining the inheritance taxes is that it forces massive transfer of wealth to charities. And what's so good about that? Charities, especially large ones, are notoriously inefficient and spend a large percentage of their money on supporting their own bureacracy. I am not arguing that charities are useless, but Brin himself points out that Europeans contribute vastly smaller amounts to charity than Americans, and they seem to do quite all right.
In the classic balance of power between the group (commune, society, government) and the individual Brin's ideology falls heavily on the group's side. This is evident from his writings and from this comes his opposition to inheritance, which, after all, over time tends to create powerful individuals which the government sometimes has hard time dealing with.
Am I surprised? No. Do I disagree with Brin? Hell, yes!
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Why? The top 10% probably consume about 1% of government expenditures for social programs. The consumers of those programs should be supporting them.
I find Dr. Brin's arguments to be cogent and well thought-out. In fact, I agree with almost every conclusion he has made here, although I do disagree with some of his logic.
I'd like to further thank Dr. Brin and Hemos for a provocative and interesting commentary. ...and I'd like to urge all of the disaffected cynics out there to get off your duffs and vote in November. It might not seem like much, but it adds up....
How so? The wealthy use far fewer social services. If you look at the government as an organization that provides essential services to parts of the population, the rich certainly partake in fewer services than other segments.
What I don't like about all this pyramid/diamond talk and using as a justification for some particular tax agenda is this: it is all based on the assumption that it's the government's place to redistribute wealth and turn a pyramid into a diamond.
I just don't accept that. I certainly don't see it in the US Constitution, nor do I really see it even implied in Locke's social contract. It's just some wacky idea that liberals have pulled out of their asses.
Whether or not inheritence taxes cause rich people to philothropize, whether or not "trick down economics" work -- these things are irrelevant. It's got nothing to do with why we gave government the power to tax.
Note: I'm not saying I want a pyramid and for a small group to hold all the economic power; I just think that it's immoral for these liberals to pervert the original purpose of government and use its power (ultimately backed by physical force) to try to achieve their (possibly noble) goal. Find some other way to do it.
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Yes, the rich should pay more than the poor, but only to a certain point - the rich should be treated fairly too. This bolshevik crap that the rich should be taxed to death has been the undoing of most European economies.
And another liberal myth rears its ugly head! No, being rich doesn't allow you to hire accountants who keep you from getting taxed. The only way you avoid being taxed if you have a lot of income is to do exactly what the government wants with your money. That's what those accountant will tell you. Sure... put it in tax free bonds. But the payout on those bonds is much less as a result... so you are still paying the tax... just indirectly to the bond issuer!
The only large tax break I am aware of that is silly is real estate depreciation. The TEFRA act of 1986, with its passive loss deduction, removed that loophole from the rich - and coincidentally was the true cause of the S&L collapse.
It is a myth that the rich avoid paying taxes by using loopholes.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Why don't you tell that to the people that got up at 4:30am every day to milk cows on the family farm growing up. Then, when their parents pass, instead of inheriting the farm that they have put so much work into, some government moron decides that they need to tax it into oblivion. Forget that this person has worked his or her ass off their entire life in the hope that they could keep the family farm running after their parents were gone. Nope, that doesn't matter. We don't want them just getting something for nothing (I can't believe anybody believes this applies to farms where you either bust your ass or you lose it anyway).
Luckily, the one family farm I was involved in had a family that was smart enough to do they inherit by percentage plan where each year they are allowed to pass ownership of a certain percentage of the farm and therefore by-pass the inheritance tax. If they had tried to pass it all in the same year, they would have had to sell the entire farm to pay for the taxes on the inheritance. This just doesn't make sense to me at all. How can it be justified that the taxes for inheriting a farm are far, far more than the amount of money you can earn on it in five or sometimes even in ten years of hard honest work? I just don't understand that thought process.
Of course, corporate farms don't have to worry about that. A corporation never dies, so they never have to pay inheritance taxes. Maybe every farmer should simply incorporate themselves?
Bite my yammer.
Nor is it a vote for Bush.
It's a vote to get real left wing party established in the US. Nader's platform is far closer to the platform I believe in - but this says more about the Greens than about Nader himself. If I continue to vote Democrat, even as the Democratic leaders do less and less that represents my views, they have no reason to do anything but take my vote for granted. If you never vote for the candidate you want, you will never get that candidate. Period.
In '92 I grudgingly voted for Clinton, in '94 I voted for Nader, even though it was a write in. This year I'll vote Nader so that the Greens might get the 5% needed for matching funds. In 2004 maybe the Green party will have built enough strength to mount an even better campain. By 2008 maybe I'll finally get to elect the kind of candidate I believe in. (The universe ends in 2012, at least according the to Maya calendar, so don't waste another moment - vote for Nader this year).
Any second thoughts I've had are gone after the Illinois Democratic Party pulled all its back handed stunts to try to keep Nader off the ballot. I'm so pissed I'm thinking of sticking to 100% 3rd party candidates. If the Democratic party wants to ignore and alienate their core constituency, they're doing a great job.
When the son is "frittering away the wealth his father acquired," that is A Good Thing. Who is getting this wealth he "fritters away"?
Consider this: Rich man passes company to son. Son mismanages company, company loses half its value.
Also find out what "fritter" means. To "fritter" means that the money is not wisely invested and put to productive use, but merely consumed.
This money, of course, disappears into the ether, never to seen by society again.
As other posters have pointed out, the charitable foundation invests the money, presumably wisely, and uses some of the proceeds for worthy causes. The same cannot necessarily be said for an heir of no special merit.
After I became a rabid libertarian, I started studying economics so that I could tell whether the libertarians were right.
I concluded that libertarians have a better grasp of economics than the other parties, but most libertarians still miss important issues.
Inheritance is a problem. Capitalism works because it tends to concentrate money and power in the hands of those who know what to do with it (make more money and power). There is no good reason to think their children will be any good at managing that money.
What's wrong with socialism? You use it as if it has inherent negative connotations, which it does not.
Please defend this position, because socialism is not antithetical to democracy as you suggest.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
However, what the rich have over those that don't are numerous tax shelters that they can squirrel away money in and avoid taxes until the so-called death tax.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Actually, Cuba is officially recognizing this New Year's as the turn of the millenium.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
The richest 10% don't have to worry about whether they can afford to heat their homes this winter. They don't have to worry about getting their kids a basic college education. They don't have to choose between buying prescription drugs or food.
Maybe you've never known what it's like to be poor. I've had to sleep in unheated trailer homes; I've faced the choice between Ramen noodles or a doctor's visit. I clawed my way out of those hard times. But a lot of people are in those dire situations, and they need help. To pass them by so that Mr. Goldshorts can afford to buy his daughter another Lear jet strikes me as simply cruel.
One responsibility of the government is to help its citizens when they require it. And so yes, the richest Americans should pay most of the taxes, and no, they shouldn't get a tax break, because darnit, they don't need the help!
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
OK, that's my $.02. Neither candidate really matters, but I won't get into my long rant about why Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned, and why you should be in favor of this even if you are pro-choice, but IMHO these candidates are both pretty much the same, with the exception of a few promises. They both are in the pocket of corporate interests. So, if you really care that much, vote third party.
Can your IM do this?
Want a real-life scenario?
My parents have both worked roughly 18hrs/day for the last 35 years. No exageration. My childhood was spent living within a small company. He was a Heating/AC Contractor. Later he sold the business and bought a golf course. If I had to value their total net worth I'd have to guess about $1.5-2 mil.
If my parents were to die in a car wreck tomorrow what would I get? When the IRS asks for its tax money where do I gt it? Maybe 10% of their worth is liquid. If I have to sell either their home or the golf course it would have to be a fire-sale. Golf courses sometimes take years to sell and their home wouldn't come close to covering the tax bill.
Want another example?
The last place I worked the guy sharing a cubicle with me had his father die. His father was a farmer/small business owner in Virginia. He lived in an old farmhouse that had been in the family for over 100 years. Looking at the place you never would have guessed that his net worth was well over $1 mil. Based mostly on the value of the farmland.
In the end my friend had to sell the farm and pay a tax attourny a good chunk of money to keep the inherentence from ruining his own financial health. It made him bitter. Worse, it destroyed a family legacy.
Brin, on another point, America is completly different from England. As you well know, owning land here is easier than ractically anywhere else in the world. All a person has to do to own land is make the right decisions and be willing to put forth the effort.
Decisions are really what this is about. Some people learn to make good decisions and take responsibility for their actions. Fundamentally this ifs how people get ahead in this country. (Un)fortunatly we live in a country where a few greedy politicians discovered a sure fire way to buy the vote of those who -for the most part- have made poor decisions. Tell them that it is their God given right to take money from the wage earners and redistribute it to them. Feed their greed. Demotivate them from even trying to earn their own rewards by telling them they can have it for free.
Responsibility is also what this is about. The Democratic party has an inherent conflict of interrest when it comes to the poor. The poor are their chief source of voters. Every poor person lead down the path to success is one less vote for the democratic party. Just look at the demographics. Sure, not everyone is a poor democrat. By the misplaced idealism of essentially socialist govenrment philosophy has beeen proven a failure time and again. Your hearts are in the right place but your head doesn't understand the problem.
Wan't another reason to vote Republican (probably not but please read this anyway). Abortion. Dont' delude youself into thinking the sides of this issue are Pro-choice/anti-abortion. Abortion is premeditated murder. A fetus is a living human organism. The will come a day, maybe in our own lifetime, when female fertility will be as easy to turn control as a lightswich. When that day comes these feeble excuses over pro-choice and "a woman's right" will sound as reasonable as a southern farmer explaining why slavery is a good thing or a anti-semite explaining why the Jews should all be killed. Abortion is an absolute horror and future generations will view us, will be unable to comprehend us, for the horrors we allowed.
While it may be profitable to discuss, for example, what an ideal electronic mail tranfer protocol might be, it would not be acceptable to implement something claiming to be SMTP that in fact is not SMTP but instead some particular person's idea of what SMTP ought to be. We follow the standards, and should chide those who do not. If the standard is in need of improvement, then discussions should be opened on the subject of improving the standard. Disregarding it is not an option. So if you really think that it's in the best interests of the United States that government forcibly redistribute money from those with more to those with less (let's not sugar-coat it - that's what Gore and Brin are advocating - transfer of wealth, earned or not, by force of law), then you should advocate not a vote for a candidate who ignores the standard (hint: both Bush and Gore do so) but instead a new Constitutional Convention.
But then, I suppose when passions get aroused, the temptation to ignore the standard may become great. Funny how that works. We roast Microsoft for ignoring standards when their passion for money gets involved, but it's somehow considered acceptable or even noble to disregard the Constitution when a noted individual's passion for "social equity" is involved.
I will avoid advocating any candidate or platform in this post, because I believe it's too important that it stand on its own to give readers the opportunity to disregard it as partisan rhetoric. But I would suggest that the reader reconsider his or her choices with an eye on the Standard in question.
Yes, sorry for the ambiguity.
Back at the beginning of the 90s, the Deutschmark was more powerful than the dollar. Then the German economy collapsed, thanks to Chancellor Kohl's egocentric wish to be the German unifier i.e. taking on all the problems of East Germany. This is the reason now why the German economy is a shadow of itself. A lot of European countries are doing very nicely. Ireland, for example, exported more software than the US last year and currently has an unemployment rate lower than that of the US. The Dutch insurance and banking sector is thriving, as is Luxembourg's. What you've also got to remember is that most of Europe's economy is founded on real money, which isn't fashionable at the moment, but when the stock market collapses in the US, as it did under similar conditions in the Far East i.e. massive debts and corruption, and the pretend dollars disappear, Europe will be the place to have your money stashed.
In a capitalist society, the government's "social services" include protecting private property and enforcing contracts. Therefore, the more property you have, and the more you benefit from pieces of paper (such as stock options) that represent wealth, the more you benefit from the government.
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send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Intelligence isn't a necessary quality for a poliitician. Most of what I've read says that Washington wasn't just not a genius, but was in fact downright dim. But he was an excellent leader.
So, let's tax everybody at, say, %20. Across the board, no tax shelters, flat bleeping tax.
The richest 10% of the people in the country control at least 50% of the money. So, using a flat tax, the richest 10% would still be paying at least 50% of the taxes.
So, even with THAT proposal, some Republican will claim THIS as now being unfair, and decide to add all those nice, pretty tax shelters...
The bid to remove inheritance taxes is, plain and simple, a desire to create a permanent aristocracy in America.
If every person in America deserves an EQUAL chance to become a success, then inheritance should be outlawed completely! This runs against the common wisdom, and feels "not quite American." Fine. I even agree. That's why the inheritance tax is a pretty good compromise.
Now, if somebody could force through legislation to roll back copyright protections from "life + nn years" to simply "life..."
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"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Why? The top 10% probably consume about 1% of government expenditures for social programs. The consumers of those programs should be supporting them.
Why? Those programs are "social insurance". I'm happy to give up part of my earnings if it means that the bottom 10% get their monthly check and health care so they don't turn to a life of crime... Not to mention, I like the idea that, if something catastrophic happens to me (I become a parapalegic, etc.) I will have some sort of aid to fall back on.
Also, I believe that a larger percentage of taxes goes to non-social programs... Things like defense, the FDA, FCC, law enforcement, prisons, the space program, etc... These are programs we all take advantage of.
Josh Sisk
Unfortunately, all of Brin's writings tend to be that way. Which is a real pity. In his case, it's what prevents him from being a first-rate SF writer, the kind who's read long after the science part is obsolete. Until he can opt out of his permanent flame war, he'll just be another churner of interminable pseudo-epics, read only by the uncritically faithful.
David, you're basically a good writer. I'd kill for your ability to characterize and your rigorous imagination. But you need to turn down the self-righteousness and turn up the listening skill. You're good, but your shit smells as bad as anybody else's. Rants like this one actually harm the causes you're advocating.
__________
Brin is 100% correct about the inheritance tax, but wrong that a vote for Gore will save it. Also, there are plenty of other examples of the powerful using their power for self-preservation, and Gore doesn't seem interested in getting in their way, while Nader does:
Campaign Finance Reform: This is the most important rule that must be reset in the people's favor. Without it, one trip to the booth to vote Gore won't save your precious inheritance tax or any other check we have on the power of the wealthy.
Globalization: Gore and Bush are in absolute lockstep in keeping any sane restrictions out of our trade agreements, whether they affect the environment, worker safety, intellectual property, privacy, or consumer protection.
Environmental protection: Gore has sat silently by while Clinton broke promises on fighting for Kyoto, raising the CAFE standards, enforcing pollution regulations, and including protections in trade laws. Earth in the balance? Feh. Al seems more concerned about his political future being in the balance.
"Intellectual Property": Al has been utterly silent on stopping the giveaways and protecting consumer rights, while taking a lot of money from the entertainment industry. Want seniors to pay less for prescription drugs? Stop giving away the patents to government-funded research!
And don't talk to me about the Supreme Court. Clinton's appointees aren't saving the 4th and 5th amendments from the drug war or the 1st amendment from the corporations.
Nice try, but I (and my wife and a few sisters) will be voting Nader, even if he's not as pretty.
It's all about keeping those who are winning the game from changing the rules in the middle. Nader will, Gore won't.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
There is a whole separate question of how much the government should spend, but you didn't touch it so I won't. Therefore, surplus tax receipts indicate a tax cut is in order. If we keep a progressive tax system as you prefer, what's wrong with cutting everybody's taxes. People who pay no tax will receive no cut. People who pay moderate tax will receive moderate cuts. People who pay high taxes will receive the highest cuts.
As far as corporate taxes go, yes, there is some disproportionality (BTW, caused by folks who meddle with the tax code to encourage social behaviors they prefer, more typically a Democratic position). But, you need to understand the accounting to grasp why corporate taxes are gravy, not grave. People own corporations. People's income from investment is taxed, but taxable, successful investments represent corporate income which is also taxed. Together, corporate and personal taxes represent even more progressivity than the tax code would imply.
So, after cutting taxes, the rich will still be paying more (progressively) and the poor will still be paying less... This is the Bush proposal and I don't understand what your problem with it is since it fits the criteria you set out.
A middle of the road family, who received a small amount from their parents will be hit hard. Don't forget that wealth rarely lasts three generationsin this society. Taxes won't really touch the rich, but they will touch the middle class.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Ah, how to refute this? Let me count the ways:
You strike me as someone with a strong grip on corporate marketing strategies. I suggest you avoid trying to translate those strategies to a national economy.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
It's a good thing you posted, actually, because its probably worth concern that many people actually DO have that attitude. There's a lot of things to look at, but let's start with the important few.
(1) The US was founded by a bunch of people furious over taxation without representation, among other things. That's what you're talking about. Simply taking money from the rich because they have it and you can "vote it away" is a sort of tyranny of the masses which essentially violates people's right to own property.
(2) We actually don't live in a democracy, with live in a republic, where our elected official make our decisions on our behalf, but we choose those officials. The founding fathers seem to me to consider voting a patriotic duty -- selection of those best capable of leading the country to prosperity for everyone and keeping the nation strong, rather than trying to merely serve the largest demographic interest. Read Federalist #10.
(3) This is possibly the most important point, and its purely pragmatic. Assume for a moment that we did, as a country, all just go vote every year as to who got the money. Now assume that the people of the nation, thinking it 'fair', voted all the money to be distributed equally. Who would work, when they knew money would be doled out equally anyhow? Who would take risks to earn larger sums of money, and chance going into debt to start a business?
Among other interesting points -- most millionaires do shop at JCPenney. And Kmart, Walmart, etc. See statistics in The Millionaire Next Door. Most of them buy used cars, resole their shoes, and more. Most of them are not young. They've often spent their lives working in their own businesses. And yet, these people, taking risks, building businesses, trying to provide better for their children, sometimes work brutal hours under intense stress, all the while providing opportunities for others for employment as well as serving the economy in general by competitively providing goods and services.
Your comments are, in essence, the gist of the 'Class Warfare' attitude. And your post reflects an attitude (which I would have assumed was merely satirical if it hadn't been for the self-righteous profanity) which, if implemented fully, would simply halt the gears of the economy. It's virtually guaranteed. The USSR had that problem, and the only way they kept it going as long as they did was by having totalitarian controls that made sure people at least seemed to be working. But you can't (as a democracy or a republic) redistribute wealth at will and expect anything but disaster. And Brin's notes seem to recognize that.
One place where I'd agree with the 'take it' sentiment, in general, is the inheiritance tax. It was always conceived that our national debt would be largely erased by the predicted death taxes on the some 10-15 trillion dollars expected to free up between 2009 and 2023. Giving a free ride to a generation of rich do-nothings is the likely result of removing the tax; a small percentage of counterexamples don't help the likely outcome.
Still, all in all, your post is an excellent example of the wrong attitude behind many people who support disproportionate taxation, and simply let their envy run their vote. And it isn't good for the country, or even for you (although you may not realize it).
Money in the hands of foundations works just as hard for the economy as money in the hands of families and individuals. Both parties spend the money, and bank or invest the money. When money is spent, banked, or invested, the recepients of the money themselves spend, bank, and invest it. And so on.
The only difference is that in the foundation's hands, at least once the money may be spent on the public good.
You speak as if you think that foundations are burying the money in their backyards.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Your statement presumes that the overall economic health is the top priority and nullifies any value to equity within the benefits brought about from that economic health. Your approach reminds me of what I would describe as a pre-Millsian "Utilitarian integral". Only absolute integrated happiness over the total population space matters and it is irrelevant how that happiness is distributed. Replace happiness with money and you have your statement. This is fairly easily debunked as being value-laden. You can equally well place some value on equitable distribution. Think of it as an equation:
E + D = TH
where E is total integrated economic health/wealth (perhaps corresponding to some combination of GDP with national savings/investment figures), and D is a dollar value we might place on the ideal of a Liberal Democracy of having some equity of wealth distribution and total happiness/Utility is TH. Now you are maximizing a different equation, neh?
He may be a liberal - actually, he can be just a libertarian. But Government intervention is not the main theme of his letter.
:P
What he keep saying is that a redistribution of wealth *in the form of inheritance tax* is necessary to the stabilization of American capitalism. Abolishing it will only change distribution of wealth and power into a pyrimad that will utterly destablize our society.
Please notice that redistribution of wealth is not the same strawman as the big (scary) Federal government.
So, you should have argued:
/sarcasm
The whole piece is just an rehash of the old class-warfare rhetoric - which the author did admit. As proven in the *good* old communist model, the liberal idea of robbing the wealthies to enrich the lazies does not work. Market capitalism has provided equal opportunities to both of the riches and the poors. Any excessive taxation is an infringement of personal liberty
*sarcasm/
Hate people who can't get their soundbites right.
Nearly a decade ago, I engaged David in a mock debate at a convention just north of Seattle. He played the role of Dukakis as I remember, and I upheld the role of Bush-the-father.
It is nice to know that in a day and age of constant change, that some people do have a consistent worldview. David's libertarian streak is alive and well; though he continues to see the Republicans as antithetical to those views and the Democrats as merely misguided dupes. A fairly strange interpretation of the history of the two parties, but I forgive him his minor eccentricities.
The Republican Party has a problem. It motivates the very rich donors to its campaigns by promising them tax relief. To a wealthy Republican, paying taxes is one of the worst of all possible expenses, because most wealthy Republicans are convinced in their hearts that the money will absolutely be squandered, and worse yet, squandered on programs diametrically opposed to their ethics, morals and world views.
The problem is that most people don't have a viscereal reaction to paying taxes. (I would argue that most people have no idea how much they actually do pay in taxes because they don't ever touch the payroll deductions and rarely bother to notice the bit of sales tax or social engineering taxes on cigarettes and gasoline.) Thus, the primary plank in the Republican platform is something that their funding sources care deeply and passionately about, but the rank and file don't - and the noncommitted general public doesn't either.
The GOP needs to take a step back to first principles to address these issues. Instead of talking tax cuts, they should be talking overall reduction in the size of government. AFTER they reduce the expenses of government - including the national debt, they should then talk about reducing the tax burden. This stands in stark contrast to the current plan, which is to try and reduce the size of government in parallel with reducing the tax burden - essentially having our cake and eating it too!
Bush-the-son could walk away with a landslide in this election if he promised to delay tax reform until after the national deficit was retired, a social security reform act was passed that ensured the system would be solvent for at least 25 more years, and provided for funding a reasonable level of health care for seniors and the poor without imposing major new taxes.
The wealthy Republicans aren't going to stop funding GOP candidates if those candidates focus on limiting government not reducing taxes - where else are they going to go? The Democrats would lose the only rational argument they have left to explain why they should be allowed any measure of power in the national government if the GOP had a rational plan to address the social safety net. And the economy would benefit as the debt and eventually the national tax burden declined.
Then we could move on to the next important issue in our body politic: Why we have reduced Presidential elections in the minds of many to a decision to support or attack Roe v. Wade, and what we can do to restore sanity to the process of judicial appointments.
Rather than trying to reform a totally corrupt and misguided party, or waste time on ineffective third parties, I'd much rather see someone with Brin's insights apply their attention to the quiet consensus building in the GOP that is close to finding the right path and needs to develop a social conscience to match its fiscal prudence.
As far as inheritance taxes, I'm willing to try a system that doesn't confiscate (and yes, that's exactly what it amounts to) the accumulated wealth of a lifetime. Capital in excess of one's needs is what is invested, fueling the engine of innovation that Mr. Brin celebrates. Taking it away or forcing it to be given away under threat of loss strikes me as anti-capitalistic. I'm tired of hearing dire predictions backed up by no facts. When we passed the property tax relief bill, Proposition 13, here in California, the political establishment predicted a shutdown of government. Didn't happen. In fact, government is several times larger than before, as a percentage of state GDP, and continues to take in enormous sums. When we passed a proposition that abolished bilingual education, the education establishment predicted nothing less than the establishment of a permanent subclass of Hispanic kids who'd never become educated. Guess what? They're now rising in their education test scores. It's time for some new ideas all right, and they aren't coming from the left side of the political spectrum.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Get all the figures you could possibly want from the IRS here.
Everything else is perception only. It's far easier for the government to raise taxes as long as they can convince the majority of the people that "someone else" is paying for it.
The only way to simplify the tax system and to make it truly fair is to eliminate hidden taxes (e.g., exise taxes and corporate taxes) and double- or triple-taxation (e.g., inheritance taxes), and impose a single rate on everybody with some form of exemption. (The exemption would "untax" the poorest people and basically make the rest of the system progressive.) I personally prefer the mechanism to be a retail sales tax with a rebate mechanism.
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Keep in mind that I'm neither affirming nor condemning Brin's writing, merely bring up two salient issues.
I used to be a great welfare-hater. A coworker spoke of taxes as being 'wealth-redistribution', taking upper and middle class money and giving it to the poor. Then came the savings and loan scandal, and I realized that quite probably more of my tax dollars go to people making more than me than to people making less than me. Something of an epiphany, and that's when I began to have more respect for the cleaning people than for a lot of financial wheelers and dealers. At least the cleaning people are working, paying taxes, and not screwing anyone.
The second point is that *the wealthy are getting more out of the country than the poor.* Just about all of us get a stable place to live in, even if we may not own it. But how about the 'inner city battlegrounds' we see on the news. I guess they're better than Chechnya, but perhaps some of them would argue the point. I would argue that the wealthy pay more taxes, but in some sense, they're getting more services for what they pay. And NONE of us should sit here and say, "I did it myself," because none (or virtually none) of us really did. Public schools, playgrounds, safe places to play, a HOME that isn't getting shelled, a highway to drive our car on, a stable environment where a car dealership even feels safe to set up business so he can sell us that car!
I've no problem whatsoever with upward mobility. It is essential that downward mobility be preserved, as well.
Another point of Brin's:
In the novel Earth he presents three culturally-independent criteria for sanity. The third never stuck, but two were really good.
1: Able to be satiated. At some point, one has enough, and quits eating. Same for other facets of life, like collecting wealth or wives.
2: Able to change plans when circumstances change. Adaptability when necessary. (Arguably, aristocracy can be poor at this, and spends more time isolating their comfort zone, and influencing society so they can stay that way.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In a recent case (last session), the supreme court ruled that the federal government did not have jurisdiction for rape cases. I think the law was called something like the violence against women act, which (among other stuff) allowed rape victims to sue their attackers in federal court, even if they had lost in state court.
The government defended the law saying that rape might have a detrimental effect on interestate commerce (which they are allowed to regulate). The supreme court quite reasonably rejected this argument.
The scary part? The decision was 5-4. Yep, that's right: 4 of the justices believe that the interstate commerce clause gives the federal government jurisdiction over rape.
If Gore (or Nader if you want to go there) appoints the next justice, you can kiss the idea of limited government goodbye. If rape falls under the interstate commerce clause, then a government monopoly on health care could be made to fall under one of those clauses dealing with the militia, or maybe make it an agency of the post office.
Bush says he'll appoint strict contructionists. To me, being politics, this means, "no more liberal in their interpretations than the current court". (liberal = willing to let it slide, not "democrat"). This at least means that if they hear a case on something like states rights (medical marijuana, anyone?), then they would at least have a chance. I don't see that under people Gore would appoint.
Under Buchanan, god knows who he'd appoint. So I guess it's fortunate he has a direct line to god to ask about that.
Under Browne, it wouldn't be an issue, because most of the federal government would be dismantled by executive order in the first two weeks.
Sure didn't take long for New Deal economic policy to affect change.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Our one ruling party keeps up the illusion of being two parties, because they know that the people would not tolerate what was blatantly a single party, and a legitimate second party would increase in power.
There is little difference between Republicans and Democrats; moderate Republicans are closer, politically, to moderate Democrats than to libertarian Republicans. They're not exactly the same; Brin is correct to note that. However, the differences are small, and the existence of those differences does not make them separate parties. Any two politicians from the same party will not agree 100% of the time.
How many times, during the debates, did Bush and Gore agree with each other? And how many issues were not raised at all, because there is no difference between the two major candidates on those issues?
The one ruling party tries to scare us into not voting for second (oh, excuse me, "third") parties with the thought that, if we don't vote for the candidate we find less distasteful, the worse one will win. "Don't waste your vote!" they scream. I won't buy it. While Bush and Gore aren't completely alike, and there is one of the two I would have a slight preference for if those were my only two choices, the difference is small enough that I'm willing to risk that fate by voting for a legitimate alternative.
(Even if you are worried about that scenario, keep in mind that, despite the slogan, a vote for Nader is *not* a vote for Bush. It's half a vote for Bush. It takes two people switching from Gore to Nader to do as much damage to Gore as one person switching from Gore to Bush does. Think about it. Feel free to substitute any of the other "third" party candidates for Nader in this argument, of course.)
The tired old scare tactic of the one ruling party is becoming less effective, and they know it. So they try to beef it up with arguments that the next president will appoint Supreme Court justices. "If you don't vote for X, Y will win and get to appoint SC members!" But this argument doesn't hold water, either. Yes, the next president will have the opportunity to appoint some justices. The flaw in the logic here is failing to take into account that *which* justices resign will depend on who is the president. None of the justices are so infirm that they will have to resign in the next four years. A conservative justice is not going to resign during a Gore administration and let Gore shift the court to the left. Vice versa for liberal justices under Bush. So while the next president will have the opportunity to appoint some justices, the ideological makeup of the court will not change.
If you're the sort of person who's more responsive to slogans than to long, point-by-point arguments, here's a few for you:
Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.
If you vote for the lesser of two evils, don't be surprised when your government turns out to be evil.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Actually, we were closer to a "diamond", as Brin puts it, back in the early 1970s. Workers have lost ground since then, and CEOs have gained by about two orders of magnitude.
How many people INSIDE the US listen to Voice of America? It's a radio station set up to offer, pretty much, propaganda of one sort to everyone else around the world. Not that that ain't bad. Very popular in East Germany for a few years there. More Americans listen to that welfare whore Rush Limbaugh (sitting on his pilodinal cyst eating pork rinds collecting welfare) than this radio program.
As such, it's controlled and disseminated in a strategic way, and at the moment in the Middle East, it's more important to the situation there for people to hear that the US cares about all the carnage in Israel / Palestine than US jingoism about our own losses.
Does that mean the the Cole incident is not a disturbing, horrific tragedy? Not at all. It means that strategically it's more important if we want a chance of influencing people in the Middle East with the voice of democracy to tell them and reinforce that their situation is more important.
Sheesh, when you read a document outside your sphere of knowledge, take the time to look at the signifiers. Intelligence supports the State Department on the repeal of such propaganda, because they're trying to control information for a purpose. I figure you right wingers would be over the moon, cause it fits into all your wanktastic Tom Clancy fantasies to see a document like that.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Consumption (sales, excise) taxes, tariffs/duties, property taxes, estate taxes, etc. Except for estate taxes (levied only on estates worth over ~$1.5million anyhow) and tariffs (which are levied against businesses more than individuals), these are state (not federal) taxes. Though property and estate taxes hit the wealthiest for more than the middle class, they don't even the disparity, thanks to lower rates on, my favorite, capital gains taxes.
Why are capital gains taxed at a lower rate than earned income? Why has the number one legislative priority of the Republican party been to eliminate capital gains taxes? Who would benefit from this almost exclusively?
Not the poorest 95% of the country, I assure you. Nothing chaps my hide more than a billionaire complaining about taxes on unearned income, for that's what capital gains are - money made by shuffling other money around.
We do need to streamline the tax code, but for me, step one would be classifying capital gains as income and taxing it to the same degree as we
tax people who work for a living.
(Sorry for the rant, not directed at you particularly, Stonehand. Well, except the top paragraph)
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Brin says, "Still, his blatant campaign to give a few trillion dollars to those who need it least bothers me deeply. "
I'm sick and tired of hearing this, and I wish that Bush would have nipped it in the bud while he had the chance. To say that a tax cut "gives" someone money is predicated on the philosophy that all of our money belongs to the government first, and they decide how much of it we get to keep. "Nothing's certain but death and taxes" has been beated into our brains to the point where some actually accept as reasonable the premise that the money I earn belongs to the IRS first, and me second.
Perhaps Brin would prefer a new societal shape - flat line - we just chop off all assets above a certain dollar amount, and give them to the lower half of the pyramid. We'll all have more than enough, and no one has more than anyone else. And good news! There's no longer any need for charitable giving -- the government takes care of all of our needs.
Until it runs out of resources because those who actually DO something productive have lost all incentive to continue innovating, producing, and growing.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." It's been tried before, and it didn't work.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Believe it.
All Bush can come up with in these unscripted encounters is touchy-feely "I hate washington, but I'm a uniter" vagueries.
Gore will explain in intricate detail what he plans to do. Specific bills, dollar amounts, motivations. Bush responds by saying, "That's great Mr. Gore, but I can actually do whatever it is I think I want done."
You're telling me that's trustworthy or competent? How can you trust Bush to do something he never said what he'd do, or how he'd overcome the "rancor and discord" in Washington. He has no standing! He has no actual will! I don't even think he's read his own tax plan. Gore, when discussing his plan, or Bush's for that matter, can tell you how it will apply to you. Bush, when asked last night about his tax plan, said it'd be great and started talking about NATIONAL DEFENSE and MEDICARE (which, by the way, are "big government entitlement programs," liberal stuff).
Tell me some more about how you trust the man, what exactly you trust him to do, and how he has earned your trust. Bush is the cleanest example of a puppet I have seen in my short life. He even looks like a muppet. He has made no substantive commitments to the populace, just vague suggestions. You'd better believe that he's going to be controlled by his advisors. Voting for Bush is electing the NRA and the Christian Coalition directly into office.
Gore, conversely, is his own man. He at least knows what he wants to do as president (SPECIFICALY), and how he plans to get it done. And he can tell you about it.
Me, I'm still voting for Nader. I have no doubts that either one will succumb to PAC money until campaign finance reform is a reality.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Ah, but look beyond the static numbers and on to the tends. The violent crime rate in the UK is increasing faster than in the US (where I believe it might even be decreasing) -- it's just that the UK has a long way to go to "catch up". And in the US, there's a strong correlation between the level of gun control and violent crime, i.e., that violent crime increases as gun control increases and vice-versa.
--
Thank you!
I'm sick and tired of everyone jumping over themselves to claim that Gore's "invented the internet" quote was taken out of context and actually has a tiny bit of truth to it, yet constantly dropping hints that Bush is some coke snorting (also a media invention) moron. This is the same thing that happened to Quayle. Sure he wasn't the best speaker, but he was pretty damn intelligent and never said half of the crap people associate with him. But since he is an evil republican, we can make up anything we want about him and Bush and pass it off as true. But you take a quote a little out of context about our Democrats and we will whine like a kicked dog.
Both candidates are smart. Both are effective leaders. It boils down to this issues, and polls show that the the public supports Bush's policies hands don't believe me, of course you don't. It's here: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/zo/)
Wouldn't it be nice if we could stop the stupid name calling and false characterizations and just vote for who is proposing the policies we believe in?
Finkployd
However, I would still think that the top 10% are bringing in y% income, where y is less than 90%, but much higher than 33% (the percentage of national taxes they pay), which *is* unfair to everyone else.
IMO, a flat tax with no tax shelters outside of US bonds and such, save at near and above the poverty level where there's a sliding scale, would be better than the huge mess of tax codes we have now.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I recall that Jimmy Carter was said to be one of the more intelligent presidents. However, his term in office was not a high point of American history. A micromanager (easy to be when you have the intellectual ability to know tasks outside your sphere) has the risk of losing sight of the big picture while mired in the details.
The recent untimely death of Pierre Elliott Trudeau ("timely" would conceivably been have been forty years ago) brings to mind the legacy of this disastrous former prime minister of Canada. He was an intellectual heavyweight who during his reign alienated the western provinces, imposed country-wide martial law on the shakey pretext of a local kidnapping, and left a national debt ten times its former size.
By contrast, Ronald Reagan had no such intellectual ability (nor intellectual arrogance). But, he did have principles, and he used them as touchstones for the people who did his planning. His legacy changed the world.
So, to answer the question, all else being equal, no. The smarter a person is the less predictable. When you vote for your guy, wouldn't you feel better knowing that what you see is probably what you'll get?
I am voting libertarian this election most likely. Second choice: GW Bush. The reason is simple: I'm paying the equivalent of someone's salary in taxes. I know people who make less per month than I pay in taxes. The tax situation in this country is ridiculous. I know a lot of people say that it's because I make a lot, but I really don't. Also, people say that I shouldn't complain because others don't make so much. That may be true, but it doesn't cover the fact that *my* money is being used for things I don't approve of and things I don't need.
I've got government doing an awful lot of things I don't want and ignoring the things I do and the net result is that I pay an entire person's salary in taxes.
How about roads? National defense? Instead, several million dollars of my money was used to buy back guns in poor neighborhoods, something which I'm emphatically against.
The fact is that our current society is a result of our development into a more technical and knowledge-based economy. Tax apportionment isn't going to modify the fundamental situation of the economy, but it is unfair to me and many like me.
The Libertarians want to spend less of my money doing things I don't want. I'm all for that.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
With no knowledge of economics, how is he to choose someone who has some?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"One responsibility of the government is to help its citizens when they require it." is just not true. It'd be nice to think so, but I don't think it is.
Society has a responsibility to help it's members. Government has a responsibility to govern to protect the borders of the country, establish and enforce laws to protect life and liberty, and collect taxes enough to fund the first two. Last time I looked at the constitution, there was nothing about helping those who are poor, IIRC - it was a few months ago, and it's not my government, but anyway...
I actually agree with you - the rich should pay the taxes for more or less the reasons you state, but in the literal sense, it's not a requirement.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Since only electoral votes matter, if you live in a state where there's a strong margin between the candidates, a gadly vote can have much more meaning than a vote for Gore or Bush - an extra percent for the Greens (or Libertarians, or Refomers) does much to bring the attention of to major parties to their causes, whereas an extra percent of victory for Gore (a shoo-in in Maryland, unless he's caught sodomizing small dogs in a Satanic ritual by the light of burning Americans flags) won't affect things one bit.
Good points on the inheritance tax; I'm really disappointed that I haven't heard more discussion like this from Democrats. Maybe if we did hear stuff like this from Gore, more of us would be voting for him instead of the gadfly.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Nor do I, actually. :) I'm taking this all way too personally, and I think it's time I stepped back and took a break for a while. Forgive me if my tone got a little strident there.
We're not passing them by so that Mr. Goldshorts (who's he? I've never met him...) can by his daughter another Lear jet. We're saying that Mr. Goldshorts deserves respect, credit, and happiness for the work he's put in to EARN his money. And in the process for all the money he's put into the economy hiring workers and buying products.
This hypothetical rich man already has all the happiness money can buy. Repect and credit for his accomplishments are something he can only get from his peers, not the government. Once you have no debt, sound investments, a car/house/wife/dog/and toybox then you're as happy as you can get financially. He's earned this comfortable lifestyle. What more does he need that money can buy?
The cruelty is that people consistantly harm one another either financially or emotionally by making the ability to earn money a sin.
No. The ability to earn money, like all other exceptional abilities, creates an obligation to use a small part of your abilities to improve the world. There is no great power that does not carry a great responsibility. It only becomes a sin when a person denies this responsibility and is selfish with their excesses.
There is no responsibility for a government to help it's citizens financially. It is the government's responsibility to protect them from enemies, foriegn and domestic. It's their responsibility to make the laws fair so that all citizens are EQUAL before the law. Under no circumstances is it the government's responsibility to make sure they eat right, or have heat in their homes. That's charity. For that sort of thing, turn to churchs, foundations, and community help.
I disagree, and I think this is the essential Republican/Democratic divide (not that I'm a democrat; I'm registered independant, but obviously somewhere in that cloud left of center.) The varying worlds of thought on this subject is also why the Libertarians scare the hell out of me.
It is the government's responsibility to safeguard the populace. Yes, that means policing the food they eat. Without the FDA, we'd all be eating food laden with sawdust. Even with food aid programs there are still children in the south ill from malnutrition. And it means protecting those who cannot find adequate shelter. We're talking about people dying, here. A government exists in part to prevent that from happening.
And it's not a tax break, it's a tax reduction.
Semantics. The rich don't need it, other people do. And I believe it is the government's role to make that distinction.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
> What absolutely astounds me is how people like Brin will slavishly vote for whatever felon the Democratic machine happens to dredge up. There is a danger to our republic, and it comes from people like Brin who support candidates that actively undermine the rule of law. The laws the Clinton-Gore adminsitration have broken are well documented elsewhere. Brin and others seek to reward them by voting them back into power. If scoundrels like Gore continue to get elected, eventually we will wind up with a modern day aristocracy: the poltical class that is above the law and everyone else. Does anyone seriously want to be part of the "everyone else" that is at the whim of the political class? Vote to keep our republic: vote for ANYONE but Gore.
you might be more effective if you didn't start with the insulting presumption that i don't know anything about nader and that's why i'm voting for him. on the contrary, is it just possible that i'm voting for nader because i know something about him? in that case, a more detailed critique would at least be debatable.
for myself, i'm no great nader apologist, and i have my own problems with him. doug henwood had a good leftist critique of nader back in 96 which is still useful today on two scores: 1) why leftists might have problems with nader, and (2) why leftists should still vote for him. the scene is a little different now, but much of this is still applicable, adding in the fact that votes for nader could get matching funds for the greens -- ahem, mr. environment.
i realize nader isn't going to fly among libertarians and objectivists, but let's not expect potshots to be persuasive to people who have actually thought about voting for nader.
"I've come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable." -kevin kelly
Yes, but did you read the disclaimer on the Greens website? It states-
This platform is not binding for candidates on any level.
Seriously.
People that support Bush are certifiable if they think he's got "policies." What he's got is notions and "I'm not the other guy" rhetoric.
Is one of his policies "I'll bring dignity back to the Oval Office?" Well, what will he do for an encore? It takes 30 seconds to bring dignity somewhere, and then he's got 3.999 years left to sit and be dignified. Furthermore, the voters who think that such an "issue" is a legitimate reason to elect a person president have been decieved by the right. Dignity alone does not get bills passed or provide national security. It's a red herring.
As far as I can tell his other policy is to end partisan bickering. Which is impossible unless there are no partisans. So he can only deliver on this promise if the Republicans carry a wide majority in the house and senate and there is no disagreement on how to screw the public. A democrat can just as easily accomplish the same thing with a congress of the same party. Hell, if we elected an entire capitol filled with trained rats there'd be no partisan bickering because they'd all agree: cheese.
Bush is a non-candidate. He's using the anti-incumbent rhetoric just swell, using to his advantage that the republican majority has made for a noisy but EQUITABLE few years, but has no other issues. He's got strategy, not issues. He's saving that until the people controlling him can whisper their issues in his ear after he's elected.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Get this -- in the USA, charitable giving by the rich is MORE THAN TEN TIMES as high as it is in Europe! Studies credit most of this difference to the inheritance tax, spurring the wealthy to use their money to buy fame and gratitude, rather than let Uncle Sam decide how it will be spent.
Now, assuming these studies are credible (unreferenced 'studies' are always dangerous quote generators), wouldn't this comment encourage us to repeal any taxes possible? If the 'wealthy' (conveniently undefined) would rather make their own decisions than let Uncle Sam do it, why not give them more money to do it with?
So long as most of the millionaires in each generation still have to earn it and their kids still go to college with our kids. In that case they'll keep intermarrying with us, instead of thinking themselves a different species.
What!?!?! No class warfare in this piece? What is this drivel? Elsewhere he claims to have no issue with people of wealth, yet his class bias clearly seeps through. It's like the guy at the bar who, when turned down by a beautiful woman, loudly proclaims her a lesbian. I don't have what it takes to belong to a certain group, so I must find a reason for their not including me. Besides, if I want to spoil my grandchildren with my wealth, that's my prerogative...IT'S MY MONEY!
People who have thrived immensely under the protection/support/subsidy of a great nation don't want to help pay to keep that nation prospering and growing, or to help poor kids rise up high enough to compete with them on an even playing field.
This is patently false. Even if you assume that such pure selfishness existed, if the wealthy want America to discontinue its prosperity, who would purchase the goods and services that reinforce their wealth?
Rather, the issue is the fairness of the tax cut itself. Gore's tax benefits are mostly credits, not cuts and are directed specifically to certain groups. This is blatant social engineering and allows him to claim that he is helping almost every person in the country. You're a one-eyed, peg-legged gay eskimo? Gore will design a tax credit for you. No, it won't make much difference in your life once you actually look at the details, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that Gore cares.
In contrast, Bush's tax benefits are mostly cuts, and primarily distributed across ALL classes, not just the segments that Mr. Brin favors. That means that the eskimo will benefit, just as everyone else benefits. And it's only fair that the top 1% get 30-35% of the tax benefits since they pay 32% of ALL taxes. I can't imagine anything more fair than that. Or is Mr. Brin only interested in "social engineering" that serves his own purposes?
ENOUGH If you really want to vote against social engineering, vote against Gore.
I guess I should have put the emphasis on STUPID, not rich. I intend to be rich .I just don't intend to be stupid and amoral. My $2000 in luxury spending, or savings is less important than $200 a piece for 10 families to spend on food and necessities. This is why a flat tax is regressive it imposes a greater burden on those who are poorer because it is taking money from necessities, while the rich pay the same percentage, but that money comes form luxuries. A prograssive tax like we have now is fairer because the poorer person gets more money for the necessities while the rich person has to get the 20' boat instead of the 25' boat.
Quick fix, no income under 20K per year will be taxed, above that there will be a 15% flat tax for everyone. If you Still think that unfairly taxes poor families then do it this way.
1 Person, 20K = No Taxes
2 Person, 25K = No Taxes
3 Person, 30K = No Taxes
4+ Person, 35K = No Taxes
Any person or family where income is greater than the amount shown pays 15% or the amount neccessary to drop them to the top of their bracket, whichever is less. So 1 person making 20,025$ a year won't get screwed and have to pay 3 grand in taxes. Just 25$.
That way a family of 4 where one parent has a decent job making around 30K pays no taxes which will significantly add to their ability to take care of their children.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Unless you live -- er, "lived" -- in Chicago.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The wealthy have this neat trick of having the public bear costs while privatizing profits. This tradition was manifested in the European colonization of Africa and the sub-continent. For example, the Dutch East India Company used the publicly funded Dutch national army to protect it's "investments" (read economic pillage) in India. However, it kept all profits for itself.
One might argue the company generated wealth, but all it really did was shift wealth from India to the disproportionate benefit of Dutch elite. (And BTW, India had a thriving economy before the Europeans stepped in.)
This tradition is carried on today by the transnationals and wealthiest families. The wealthy benefit from our substantial distribution system, our university system, our R and D systems, and our security systems (including police, military, and intelligence). All these things combine to protect their wealth. Yes, we all benefit, but then we all contribute. The letter is suggesting, and rather convincingly IMHO, that those who benefit the most are trying to shirk their responsibility by socializing the costs of maintaining a civil, technological society.
After all, they've done it in the past.
Regarding the percentages issue, I'd like to point out that there's more to it than the hard numbers. We all have basic living expenses. Ie, there is a minimum we could possibly spend to keep nourished and sheltered. What's left over is disposable income. Taxes for the less wealthy therefore have more of an impact because they have less disposable income.
Like all mathematical modelling, percentages don't fully capture reality. 50% of $100 is more significant than 50% of $10000000000000000000. I mean, how many yachts do you really need? Ie, if all I have is $100 to spend, and you take half, getting that half back is significant in terms of my basic material comfort. To a middle-class family, a tax break could mean more sporting and academic activities or even something so basic as healthier food on the table.
Mathematically unfair? Who cares!
Now, one may use the 'garden path' argument and attempt to discredit my points by taking the extreme. So, let me take this opportunity to say that I do not support big government or big taxes. Let me also say that I can be in favour of a (truly) free market without being an economic rationalist.
--
Ireland had the benefit of billions of dollars worth of support from the EU, which let them cut taxes and increase spending. That money came from the richer EU nations --- like Germany.
All money was someone's taxed income at one time or another. Consider this; someone who inherited enough money to live off of it without working is one less person with taxable income. That money gets taken out of taxable circulation, potentially for hundreds of years. So the only taxable money is the stuff that is trading hands in the middle and lower class segments, and the income that gets added to the pile for the upper class. Aslong as they make more money than they spend, that money will stay within the family prepetually, and any taxes on them will only be on the part that's added to the large amount of wealth they already have. Without inheritance tax, money slowly trickles out of the taxable domain and into a pool that cannot be taxed.
They don't. The Constitution, read as written, would prevent all these things. Problem is, it would prevent Dr. Brin's "social engineering", too. If you believe that the US Federal Government is really responsible for the blossoming of the middle class in the 20th century, maybe it'd be best to take his advice, and hope we can influence the legislature to make amends.
For my own part, I can neither see that social engineering is compatible with freedom, or responsible for prosperity. And I sure as hell don't trust Congressfolk, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise.
I don't much trust businessfolk either... at least big businessfolk, like Gates and Ellison. But it seems to me that it's their influence over government that really poses the greatest threat. Again, limit the sorts of laws Congress can make.
For that matter, I don't really trust the rich. But if Gates and I can both get an X% tax cut, fine by me. Why? Because I don't compare myself to those above me. I don't spend my time worrying about their lordly children, or where they ski, as the author seems to do.
And please... don't tell me that we're "spending money" on anyone by not taking as much of their money. That's really obvious... I like my propaganda mild, with milk and sugar.
Geez, I've gone over my two minutes...
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
OK, I researched this one. What matters in crime rate is the rate at which crimes are solved and criminals are locked up. Guns are a distant second in having an effect on crime, but, in fact, more guns does in general mean less crime. On the other hand, "violent society" seems to have nothing to do with it. If you have competent police and enough prisons that are not clogged with small time marijuana peddlars, you can play all the Doom you want, have guns or not, be religious or not, be rich or be poor, educated or illiterate (though illiterate police are unlikely to succeed), and your crime rate will be pretty low. The main arguments for guns are political, and that they have a unique ability to stop crimes as they are happening, which police cannot do in the vast majority of cases.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Yes. The term is "progressive tax code." The idea is to have those that can help support those that can't, and like it or not, this is a Good Thing. Paying $1000 a year or 10% is a hell of a lot more painful for someone making $10k a year than paying $250k or 1/3 of $750k. Big numbers, yes, but at the bottom levels a little goes a long way, and at the top they should be investing what they can to minimize the damage from the tax hit. Progressive policy has done a lot to create the diamond structure Brin describes, and flat or regressive taxes (same thing, really) would gut that progress. Do you really want a class war?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
-m
David -- this is a fascinating rant, but you miss the point entirely: one side will provide the means for you to join the rich (like maybe help fund the large R&D effort for the cold war that led to our present economic boom), and the other side will do all it can to prevent you from getting rich (by taxing the shit out of you if you exceed the median, playing devisive politics to split the nation, etc... Ted Kennedy does not seek peers.) Still, I can't believe that either side will make a whole lot of difference in the end. Most people don't care. Clinton will be remembered as a good president because he didn't break anything, not because he did anything.
I'm sure you don't like the Republicans as much as I distrust the Democrats, but I'd urge you to look at both sides of the wealth equation. It's not as skewed as you make it out to be.
I'm a Canadian, so I don't have a vote in your election. For me, it's a cross between a circus sideshow, and an oncoming oil tanker heading right at my canoe.
:)
But the strange way your electoral system is set up means that third-party votes are, for all intents and purposes, thrown away. All they do is reduce the size of the population who actually determines who gets to win. And the smaller that portion gets, the more likely the decision is going to be made by power blocs that vote en masse for one of your two parties.
Depending on the relative size and power of these blocs, you're giving power to some pretty scary people with some pretty scary agendas....
A protest vote may feel nice (and here, in Canada, it can actually be effective - our version of the Republicans went from running the country to effective non-existance in one election!) but they way your system works, not only does it accomplish nothing, it actively works against you.
I'd go so far as to say "Any vote for a third-party candidate in a US election is a vote for the guy you don't want"
I don't disagree with any of your motivations, but were I in your shoes, I'd hold my nose, and vote Gore.
It's the Supreme Court, Stupid.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
My understanding of economics must be really shaky, because I can't see how encouraging class warfare would do anything to help the economy...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
freedom of choice in puclicly supported education: codephrase for "there there, you don't have to learn about that nasty Darwin fellow if you don't want to"...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Why can't \. just stay out of politics and stick to what is "technically speaking" important to the online community? Granted, you can filter out these political diatribes WHEN THEY ARE MARKED AS SUCH, but this left leaning influence often permeates other articles.
I don't care to hear how electing Republicans is the same as taking away some "God" given right that people seem to think they have. I don't care to hear that conservative views are destroying our "right to net." I want geek news! Not tilted rants! Even when you filter out the politics with \.'s filtering, this leftist dribble just influence's the culture on the website among the readers to rant from the left on those posts where politics don't belong.
Enough already!
We should all be voting for Harry Browne anyway...
Au contraire, mon frere! I've actually listened to the men, and have definitively concluded that they're both idiots! Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber, I say, and it'll be a cold day in Helsinki that I cast my vote for either of them. I'll take Nader, thanks... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
(An aside: I am working with a group developing ways to simplify the income tax code using a computer program that will find
politically neutral simplifications, taking the whole issue out of politics. It's an exciting project, requiring fascinating algorithms, but
more than we can get into here.)
So... where exactly CAN we get into this?
Good grief, one area where geeks could positively affect policy, and we don't get more info?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This man clearly didn't read the essay, he just zoomed in on a Bush catch-phrase and fired off the obligatory canned response. It's not just that you're offbase, you're baseless. This talk about farmers & businessmen makes no sense because the estate tax proposals have nothing to do with these warm, fuzzy characters. This is about landed wealth & big business, not Jed with 500 acres in Iowa or Sue with her corner store in Boise. It's about Bill Gates. It's about giving people like his kids even more money than they already have, removing the incentive for people like Gates to do the one thing I like about him & his wealth (namely, the Gates Foundation). Quit this nonsense about small farmers & think about who you're trying to give this money to, and who you're trying to take it away from. It's not Jed or Sue's kids that you're taking it from, and its not Gates' kids that you're giving it to. It's the money that never makes it into public hands that you're eliminating -- you're taking it from all of us.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Sorry, but I cannot agree with the inheritance tax. While all his conclusions may be true if the inheritance tax is repealed, I believe people should decide what is done with THEIR money and NOT THE GOVERNMENT. When my parents died, the thought that the government was going to tax their hard-earned money yet-again (income tax) really pissed me off. Then I found out the first tier was at $600K - so we were well below that and weren't taxed.
I still believe the best tax solution is a simple 15-20% sales tax and NOTHING ELSE. Tax people when the spend the money not when they save it. Some institutions would be tax exempt like charity and schools. 15-20% may seem high, but it is roughly the same amount of tax you pay now through sales tax and income tax. After you turn 65 (for example), there is no sales tax. That is ncentive to save for the future.
A couple friends of mine and I started talking about starting our own business and the first order of business was our goals. We all have children, but our goals were to sell out after a few years and not to build a legacy for our kids. I don't want my son having a free ride. I'll pay for his school and any emergencies, but that's it. If he turns out to be a crackhead loser, then he deserves the life of a crackhead loser, not that of a RICH crackhead loser. (Hopefully he didn't turn out that way because of bad parenting, but even if so, giving him money out of guilt doesn't help him.)
I find that the most charitable people are those that clawed their way up from the bottom (or the middle).
-tim
- The assumption that government, specifically the Federal government, is the proper vehicle for guaranteeing subsistence needs.
- The assumption that all income belongs to the government, to dispose of wherever it can find a "need"; the desires of the people who made that income have no special status.
In response I remind you: the power to tax is the power to destroy. The power of taxation is also one of the most insidious anti-productive forces in the economy, because it focusses efforts on the avoidance of taxes instead of on productive pursuits. This is one reason why I find Al Gore's "targets" so repugnant, because it substitutes Al's priorities for those of the people who are actually affected and who might have better ideas of what to do with their money.And I don't care if the rich don't need it as much. The truly poor pay 0% income tax. If you really want to make things fair, you should be taking away the Social Security benefits of rich retirees. Remember, the poverty rate among seniors is the lowest among all age cohorts, and the Social Security system is one of our biggest fiscal time-bombs. Take away the hand outs from the people who don't need them; that's fair.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The fact that people are indicating who and who does not need money is very dangerous and reeks of socialism/communism. Where do you draw the line? $30k/year? $50k? $100k?
Given that our society is capitalistic, money is not guaranteed. When the job market wasn't looking good, I risked $25k (in loans, mind you) on a college education with the hope that it would pay off while my friend bought a Jeep Cherokee. I have health care, he doesn't. Is it charitable to give him health care, within the government's bounds, with part of my income, because it was beyond his control? Should he take care of himself, or should wealthier taxpayers? You mean I don't HAVE to risk a college tuition and still have health care? Count me in!
I don't mean to suggest that all poor people are responsible for their situations. I grew up with a blue collar single parent and one sibling. But it galls me to see people, some of whom I know, waste all of their money on frivolous items for short-term satisfaction without setting any of it aside for retirement or education. A friend of mine is almost 40 years old, makes $50k/year, and has no retirement fund because he cashed his 401k. And I know he'll be a needy one for Social Security and Medicare when he's older. He's put himself in that position. And I'll be paying for it.
Whether or not you think the rich should give to the poor is an issue that should not rest within government's hands. I care about people not having health care and food. But lets give them fishing poles, not fish. I'll help these people out, donate time and money, but _I_ want the control. I don't want my money being funneled and wasted by government bureaucracies that have practically zero accountability.
You may feel that the many of the rich aren't selfless enough to give their money to those that need it. But you know what? It doesn't matter. Just as you can't regulate ethics and morals and laws shouldn't serve as a moral foundation, you also cannot regulate selflessness. And you can bet it isn't going to help the relations between economic classes.
This hypothetical rich man already has all the happiness money can buy. Repect and credit for his accomplishments are something he can only get from his peers, not the government. Once you have no debt, sound investments, a car/house/wife/dog/and toybox then you're as happy as you can get financially. He's earned this comfortable lifestyle. What more does he need that money can buy?
Did it occur to you to ask him? Seriously. You are advocating your right to decide for him what is best for him.
[...] The ability to earn money, like all other exceptional abilities, creates an obligation to use a small part of your abilities to improve the world. There is no great power that does not carry a great responsibility. It only becomes a sin when a person denies this responsibility and is selfish with their excesses.
Look at your argument here. By claiming there is an obligation, you are asserting your own right to decide how to use the finances you say he has earned. Ownership means nothing if you don't have the right to say how the thing is used. You are advocating taking the decision out of his own hands and giving it to a bureaucracy.
Actually, I favor abolishment in stages.
- Anyone may, at any time, opt out of the system.
- In doing so, you lose forever government benefits that may assist you in your retirement, or which may aid your family if you die.
- You may choose to take what you've paid in so far as a lump, or to voluntarily forfeit that money to the government (if you are filled with "good will" - and I might just opt to do this...).
- Should you choose to stay in the system, you will receive benefits based upon your age.
- Those 55 and older (born before the end of WWII) will receive full benefits.
- Those 40-55 will receive 60% benefits (this is an arbitrary number).
- Those 30-40 will receive 30% benefits (again, arbitrary).
- Those younger than 30 receive no benefits - you have to fend for yourself! Better plan ahead!
- Those who can demonstrate a real, unadulterated hatred for HTML are eligible for special benefits.
As you get older, you have less time for your planning to pay off, so you may receive benefits. There is no excuse for anyone 40 years old or younger to have to rely upon the government, picking the pockets of the rest of society, for your retirement but, because the government has been stealing from you all your life, the government will pay some benefit to those 30 and older.With careful planning, someone making $22,000/yr. can retire comfortably (as will likely be evidenced by my mother, who makes about that much after more than 25 years of employment).
Anyone not able to make that kind of money is not sufficiently motivated. McDonald's pays shitty wages for shitty work because it is an entry-level job, not meant to make you rich, but meant to give a pimply-faced teenager a taste of the working world, hopefully to motivate them to bigger and better things. I worked at McDonald's as a teen, and never saw it as a career path, but as a plain old job.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I faced all those same problems - I grew up in a poor family. I had heat only because as a kid I helped chop wood from the trees around our house. I had to use money from my part time job while in high school to pay our electricity bill after we got cut off!! The car that I managed to save $100 to buy I kept going for five years and about 250,000 miles through my own efforts, inclduing spending a whole spring break at college rebuilding the engine. What did you do on your spring breaks?
I had to work 40-50 hours weeks through the last two years of college - the first few I got by with as little as 20 as I had a good grant. I'll bet I ate more Ramen than you could even dream of. The doctor wasn't even an option - I saw a dentist perhaps every five years and only had a checkup because an exam was required for admission to school.
Now I'm a software architect at my current company, making more money than both my parents combined, which I am also using to help them. So don't tell me you'd like the government to take away more of MY money that I have worked so hard for, and I share with my parents and siblings and charities!! All I ask of government is that it stay the hell away from me.
Yes, some people need help. But what they need is help up, not a pillow in the face smothering them to death with kindness.
Remember that if you give EVERYONE a tax break, they all have more money to help others with, and the poor have more money to help themselves. If I was able to save enough to retire on for instance, I would donate a large portion of my time to helping charities with computer work. But if captical gains and income taxes are too high (though capital gains seem to matter little personally with the quality of my investments!), it will be a long time before I'm able to do that.
More money for indivduals means MORE free time and resources to help others with, including themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I posted this down there somewhere in the chaos, but I decided to repost it up here where someone might read it. This is the way I think taxation should work:
1 Person, 20K = No Taxes
2 Person, 25K = No Taxes
3 Person, 30K = No Taxes
4+ Person, 35K = No Taxes
Any person or family where income is greater than the amount shown pays 15% or the amount neccessary to drop them to the top of their bracket, whichever is less. So 1 person making 20,025$ a year won't get screwed and have to pay 3 grand in taxes. Just 25$.
That way a family of 4 where one parent has a decent job making around 30K pays no taxes which will significantly add to their ability to take care of their children. This way the poor don't get shafted by taxes, and the rich aren't bearing the burden of a whole bunch of lazy bastards. I'm also in favor of removeing the current welfare system and impleneting a new system whereby current welfare recipients live in a policed apartment complex and are required to take 3 hours a day of job training. Are given a couple of sets of decent clothes, and are required to get a job in 6 months or out they go onto the street and someone who actually needs help instead of just wants to sit on their ass can come in.
Comments are welcome.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I was in Las Vegas this weekend (25th Rocky Horror Con), and my SO and I walked the strip. Beautiful buildings, magnificent structures, amny based on historical themes. As we walked, we passed two workers on break, chatting about overtime and completion bonuses.
It struck me hard that the originals (the pyramids, the greek structures, the Taj Mahal) are national treasures, all built by slave labor. The American variants, also built to be (and often are) impressive symbols of pride, were being built by well paid workers who could take a break in the middle of the afternoon.
Who needs big bucks? The people who will "waste" it on things like Viscaya (a beautful manor donated to Miami, host to many Renesaissance Faires), large scale pieces of art, or (god forbid a *complete* waste of money) a civilian space program.
Now, in the past two years, I've had some trembling moments where I was almost homeless, where I had to live off of Ramen for months at a stretch... but now it's starting to pay off, and the company I founded is starting to take off. Soon I'll be able to celebrate the rewards of those intentional lean times... or do I not deserve a reward for 18 hour days, months on end?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
If you're going to do anything that benefits one group at the expense of another (which pretty much describes any significant legislation), then you should expect to have to fight for it. Saying that "politics needs to have less fighting" or "politics needs to be more civil" is, besides being plain wrong, also pretty boring.
My biggest disappointment with the debates, aside from the near-criminal exclusion of my candidate, was the complete lack of friction between the two candidates most of the time. This isn't a choice among different ideals or great visions for the future, this is more like deciding if you'd rather have espresso or cappucino from Starbuck's. I was screaming for some contrast. I was dying for a point that would bitterly divide the two puppet^H^H^H^H^H^Hmen. It doesn't even matter to me whether I agree or not, I just want to see one of them take on some idea -- hell, let's have something controversial for a change -- and run with it.
But I've set myself up for a fall, of course. In this day or focus group, middle of the road, bland to the core campaigning, hoping for a little blood -- in the vein and out in the open -- is clearly too much to ask for.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
If these substances were inert they wouldn't have any psychoactive properties, would they? Most of them are dangerous if misused and certainly merit some degree of regulation (even if not the prohibition we currently have).
And in the spirit of the current fortune at the bottom of the page ("Quod erat demonstrandum. [Thus it is proven. For those who wondered WTF QED means.]"), I offer my own: non-sequitur is literally "does not follow". In other words, you can't get there from here using logic.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I resent you justifying your personal need for a lethal penis substitute in terms of it helping the crime situation.
Guffaw Ever notice how much the anti-gun nuts love to compare firearms with male genitals? And in the same breath point out how BAD guns are? Gun == penis == bad. Gag. Which is worse, man-hating-women or men who wish they were dickless?
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Unlike some of the other posters, I will not accuse you of making this error because you're a stoner. On the other hand, I hope that you'll study the matter before repeating this claim, and hopefully learn that it's false and try to spread the truth whenever you find someone making it in the future.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
who here would like to see Jon Katz and David Brin square off... any topic.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
The hell it wasn't. It produces a bunch of enzymes, including alcohol dehydrogenase, which are specific to the function of handling alcohol. Since the digestive system produces alcohol in the normal course of business (some of our symbiotic bugs like to make ethanol), and there's some methanol in various foods including grape juice, you simply cannot make that claim. Western culture has made alcohol into a social substance, and we've co-evolved with it for hundreds of generations. The long and short of it is, we are adapted to alcohol.
I stand corrected. I did not know that.
But the liver certainly is not equipped to handle the huge quantities of alcohol that some people throw at it (frat boys come to mind).
--
Is it too late to start a write-in campaign for McCain?
He read someone elses missive, got all fired up and feelin' holy and penned a missive of his own. All well and good, but his status as a writer lends it a nebulous credibility it doesn't deserve.
**>>BELCH
First of all hidden taxes already place that burden (higher tax rate as a result of higher consumption as a percentage of income) on the shoulders of those who spend a larger percentage of their income on consumption, so on the balance that doesn't change. If a "rich" person chooses to save and/or invest, then he or she is doing the economy a favor, providing capital for business to provide more and better paying jobs.
Next, consumption is a better overall measure of ability to pay than income is. It is also a much more stable source of revenue for the government. (Income can fluctuate significntly, but consumption always remains somewhat constant.)
Third, the rebate mechanism makes the system more progressive, while giving everyone the same marginal rate. (In the AFT plan, a family of four can spend $22,500 a year and have an effective tax rate of 0%.) The rebate is preferable to exempting any retail items because the latter opens the door for the lobbyists to get back into corrupting the system for their benefit. Also, if everyone pays tax on every purchase, even if their effective rate is at or near zero, they will have a greater stake in keeping government accountable. (It's the perception game again, but in reverse.)
Finally, there are the freedom aspects to going to a sales tax. Under such a system, the tax system can't be tinkered with to give anyone a preference based on age, gender, race, sexual preference, social/ecomoic status, etc. -- i.e., no more class warfare via the tax code. No one needs to provide the government with an accounting of their finances. (The only information needed by the government is the number of adults and children residing at your address for the rebate.)
Also remember that many of the hoops the tax code makes you go through is so that you can perform certain activities with pre-tax money (health care, professional development, retirement savings, charitable contributions, etc.) -- under a sales tax plan, all income is pre-tax until you decide to spend it.
--
Well - I do own a small company; this may sound self-serving as hell - but I felt the same way as a private in the Army many years ago...
..."
If you had a 20% flat tax for everyone, no exemptions at all, how much tax would a guy earning 45,000 per year pay and how much would a guy making 1,000,000 per year pay? $9,000 Vs $200,000 of course.
Now go check out which groups actually pay the most in actual dollars of tax under the current tax codes, loopholes and all.
Pretty simple I know, but that, to me, is the heart of the matter. The so-called "rich" already pay the bulk of taxes (the assumption is they have more benefit and stuff to protect so pay more). Dont take my word for it - check it out. If you take something from somebody, give it back to the people you took it from.
Most folks believe that corporations don't pay much in taxes; here's one example - check your paycheck for how much social security got - Your employer pays an EQUAL matching amount for all their employees - if "Joe" had $1000 pulled out, I also sent in a matching $1000.
How about "hidden taxes" - do you have health insurance at work? How much did you pay? Now check out what your employer paid. Guess who's underwriting the vast bulk of health costs?
On inheritance taxes, I guess it comes down to: who owns the fruits of you're labor? You or "the people"? Mr. Brin follows a very tortured "ends justify the means" argument but bottom line, he's for grabbing what's yours to achieve a little social engineering....
"... But about a third of that fifteen trillion dollars is set to flow to a few thousand people who never produced a thing to earn it.
Uh, so what? what's your point Mr. Brin? We're already subject to an annual shakedown - we work every year right thru May to support our government. If after a lifetime of work Grandpa or Dad leaves me some bucks (or great-great grandpa for that matter) - I have to justify that too? Why? How many times do I have to go thru the tax gate on the same dollar?
Just to keep it straight, 90% of those few thousand people will squander all of it in the first generation. And they'll do it by spending it on stuff that produces jobs - big houses, travel, boats and planes that lots of "normal" people have jobs making. The few that keep it have invested it, stocks, bonds, bank accounts - money that goes right back into circulation growing companies, financing homes, etc. It isn't stuffed in a mattress someplace.
The point is that family fortunes are invested - which creates jobs; or squandered on products or services, which creates jobs. Rich people create jobs.
The diamond Vs pyramid example is wonderful. Mr. Brin makes a mistake in suggesting the changes came about peacefully - two world wars is hardly peaceful. The industrial revolution created the economic imperatives for a "middle class", not enlightened europeans. You can't get filthy rich selling Windows and NT unless you've got somebody with enough bucks to buy it.
Mr. Brin mentions Andrew Carnegie - Mr. Library himself - in the same paragraph with charitable tax relief. He forgot to mention that NONE of those tax codes existed when the grand old man passed his fortune along! Carnegie did it because that's where he got his start - in a library reading; and very much believed that everyone should have access to what he had. No one asked him to do it, no special "tax relief for libraries" tax codes existed. To even imply that Carnegie did it to save taxes is to impune the man and his motivations. Broke people don't start charities, rich people do. Sorry if that rankles, but it's true.
Look; there's always a little class-warfare hiding under the well chosen prose - in the case of "rich" people - that little irritation is that someone has more than you and they didn't sweat enough (in your opinion) to have it. You can't pander to that for a hundred lines and dismiss it with a paragraph - or claim you're trying to somehow prevent it.
Two points for your considerstion:
From here on out, everytime you hear a group described - rich, poor, black, hispanic, whatever; substitute the desciptive with "white" or some term that describes you. Offensive is offensive, despite the historical accidents and current cultural relative positions of any group.
Number two; unless you're a gifted writer or other artist, you'll have to make your money like the rest of us. If you think creating wealth is easy - I suggest you go out there and meet a payroll sometime. For every high profile rich person you can name, there's thousands of people out there eaking out a net in some corporate park - employing 5 to 15 people and working far into the night when they go home at the end of the day.
Unless you're a crook, use a gun or you're a government (see use a gun); money is exchanged as a measure of the value of your service to the other party. If you want more, better find a way to increase the value of your services: learn a skill that pays well (like writing well and the ins-n-outs of the publishing game); or multiply your personal worth by building a company; - or get a gun, OR, if you don't like guns, get the government to do it for you - they have plenty of guns. If you think the gun analogy too extreme; pick any ethical or moral stance in opposition to government edicts and keep saying "NO". You'll eventually see what backs up government rules and regulations strapped to the waist of the latest representative paying you a courtesy call.
Maybe, someday, I'll have some bucks to pass on to my kids - right now I get downright giddy when there's something left over and I get my tax return done on-time. But in the meantime, if I live to be a hundred, I'll never understand how the baby-boomers got from personal freedom advocates to a cabal of condo-CC&R committees who don't give the slightest thought to funding their ideas with other people's money.
Steve Brown
All well and good, but the attitude you describe is fueled by a thing called 'morale'. This is the glue that keeps troops from heading for the hills at the first sign of danger or adversity. Morale is fuled by any one or both of 2 things, Leadership and/or Money. Most soldiers will gladly do with less of the second and more of the first. For the past 8 years, they haven't had either.
**>>BELCH
That has nothing to do with the issue. Even ECON 101 will give you more insight on the nature of taxation.
We already have a tax surplus, so right off, there is no need to soak anyone, regardless of income.
Secondly, there are a raft of issues that you haven't even considered, like investment vs. consumption, proportionate taxation, etc.
Taxation has nothing to do with "getting back" at people who are wealthier than you - it is an integral part of the eceonomy and should be managed as dispassionately as possible - which means as much as it pains you to say - rich people are an asset to the economy, and how their wealth is taxed in proportion to other citizens should be considered from a perspective of utility and fairness.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This is just another purely voluntary exchange in our capitalist society. It puzzles me that people object so strongly to it. Sure, it would be nice if I could pick and choose which services I wanted to receive, and it'd also be nice if I had some anti-gravity boots.
If you want to end this voluntary exchange between yourself and your government, there are two simple ways to do so: 1) Emigrate. 2) Vote for people who will eliminate services.
Option 3, whining about how it is 'immoral' for the government to charge for services seems inefficient, if popular.
--
share and enjoy
The quote bush has been tossing around the debates is that after his cut the richest 1% will be paying 1/3rd of the taxes at only 1/5th of the benefit. Current taxes are actually much higher.
Note: 1/5 1/3
The concept behind it is this: everyone in the united states works hard for their money. Therefore, if there is a cut, everyone should benefit.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Is it wrong to pump more money into public schools? Is it wrong to expect the rich to pay more taxes? Is it wrong to vote for someone who is obviously more intelligent? Is it wrong to dream that a Great Society can help improve the lot for all its citizens with directed government programs and ideas? Is it wrong to think that a corporatist richie toady will sell out to corporations, annihilate the wilderness, eliminate the freedom of abortion choice and generally make everyone more miserable? Is it wrong to think that maybe we could all stop thinking about MINE MINE MINE for a minute and see that everyone gets food, shelter, a decent job, a superior education AND FOR GOD'S SAKE PROVIDE FOR EVERYONE TO BE ABLE TO PAY FOR MEDICINE AND SEE A DOCTOR? What the fuck is wrong with everyone? What is the fucking problem? I'll sacrifice the cost of a couple of new hard drives if it will get some poor black kid in Watts a new book for algebra or help his community fund a new school. Jesus...you people---by definition---are affluent. YOU'RE TYPING ON A GODDAMN COMPUTER. Wouldn't you sacrifice that shiny new Lexus for a shiny new elementary school, decent roads, research into fuel efficient vehicles, funding for a universal health care system? Don't we all owe the responsibility of trying to help each other? At the very least here in America? No? Well then fuck yourselves. Your cruelty and callousness will lead to our collective downfall. Enjoy your Mercedes and your cell phone. They didn't earn it so they don't deserve it....right? You think about that and remember the hungry, the cold, the ignorant and the sick. Remember it, eat your cake....and choke.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Very good, we're getting somewhere. Now are you ready to generalize this flash of insight to cannabinoids? ;)
Heh, of course. Pot isn't something I use to get fucked up, it's something I use for the positive benefits it gives me - relaxation, creativity, headache relief (NOTHING is better than pot for getting rid of a headache), and a general sense of well-being. And so I don't smoke an obscene amount of it. If I did, I'd be stoned right now. But I've been at work all day.
--
So you can say, pretty reasonably, that if you decrease or abolish one form of tax, another is going to go up. You can hide it by reducing government spending, but it doesn't change the fact that, say, if you abolish inheritance tax, income/some-other tax is going to be adversely affected.
Now, my thought on it: If I have to pay taxes anyway (and I don't see why I shouldn't), I'd rather pay (most/some of) them when I'm too dead to enjoy the money.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is counterintuitive for some people. However, its not as though everyone puts money into the same investment yielding the same rates for the same time. Last time capital gains rates were lowered (to the 20/28 short/long term, not the recent merging to the flat 20% at 12 mo rate), the revenue realized from those capital gains taxes rose.
Why? It's a combination of factors, but probably the best answer is that taxes are an incentive to leave your money tied up in investments, rather than to free your money to make better investments. The capital gains taxes restrict the liquidity of our capital, and therefore hamper the economy. I think taxing capital gains is reasonable, and agree with Brin. But the lower rates promote investment, _especially_ investment in new enterprises, which are a higher risk and a higher reward.
It might seem convenient to say, "capital gains are just income for the wealthy", but that's not necessarily true, and in the cases where capital gains ARE income for the wealthy, it doesn't assess the whole picture. The gains are made because the value of an asset has appreciated. Those assets tend to be securities of businesses. Investment in businesses creates jobs, and the money invested is used to fund the creation of wealth, and taxes are paid on the wealth through money paid to employees, corporate taxes, etc. And even those considerations only scratch the surface of the dynamic nature of the economy.
For a more detail treatise on the topic, there are a ton of documents you could find. One is here. This was discussed because of the 'Contract with America' capital gains cuts. These predictions came true. Here's are some quotes that illustrate the point:
Or...
And this is why capital gains taxes should be low, and should remain low. Brin is dead on with the death taxes (haha), in terms of their impact, but if you look at this without envy over Other People's Money, you'll discover this works best. (In fact, the whole concept of capital allocation is interesting, because if you instantly redistributed all wealth in the nation so everyone had an equal dollar amount, we'd be set back countless years. Because most people would create consumer demand only with their money. A smaller but significant portion might invest (by pooling funds) to take advantage of that demand (if they had some reason to believe the money wouldn't be redistributed again), and the creation of wealth by entrepreneurs would be likely much more difficult. (Relatively speaking to his net worth, Bill Gates spends little money. If you divided his fortune amongst 1000 people chosen at random, the distribution would be more even, but the allocation would benefit the economy less because those people would spend more on consumerism and less on capital reinvestment, but this is _really_ disgressing...)
On one final note: "we who work for a living". People with a great deal of money tend to work hard with it. Money growing itself does so poorly. These people must select and promote good investments, etc. If you have rich loafers, that's why you get them with the death tax. But just because someone isn't getting a paycheck, and lives on investment income, doesn't mean they're loafing. And the average person in that 1% isn't some stuffy billionaire, he's a small business owner living in the suburbs with a net worth of about $4M, still working, providing jobs, etc.
I don't plan on voting for Bush (or Gore for that matter), but was curious about this whole 1% thing. My household is three people (two adults, one child) with an income around $30k annual. Found a site that let me figure out my taxes under both plans -- Bush's cuts my taxes by almost $1200 while Gore's cuts it by a grand total of $500.
Any tax decrease is fine by me, but I guess I'm one of these evil 1 percenters that Gore's worried about since he's apparently going to take my tax dollars and give it to the truly needy. Whew -- I can feel less guilty at my largesse.
A Vote For Anyone But Bush Is A Vote For Gore
It's as simple as that. Stomp your foot and make all the childish 'statements' you want.
**>>BELCH
I notice Brin deigned to recognize those of us whoa are libertarians in a footnote writing,
"When you think about how many interesting things Cheney & co. could be talking about - like ending the Drug War - you'll wind up holding your nose and voting for Gore. "
Ummm...when did Al Gore endorse ending the drug war?
The only difference between Al Gore and George Bush is they put different faces on their brand of drug war fascism to appeal to constituents who can be made to believe they represent very different viewpoints. Brin falls for this political act hook, line, and sinker.
"No, wait, on second though don't even try to get it right, we'll just withdraw funding and open our own school." Huh? What kind of nonsense is that? As near as I can tell, the kind that could only come from an education that failed to teach that it is often (usually, perhaps always) better to fix something than to abandon it.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Money is not taxed - Income is taxed! Say it with me one time... Money is not taxed - Income is taxed!
Example:
John Doe Sr. starts a company and builds an estate worth $4 Billion. He pays income tax on his income as it's earned. He has one son, John Doe Jr.
John Doe Jr. inherits the $4 Billion estate when daddy dies. Junior earns his money through the inheritance. The Inheritence is his income and therefore subject to income tax payments by him.
The fact that Daddy derived income from his business, and Junior derived income from his inheritence is irrelevent! Each of them derived an income - and all income is taxable.
Why don't people understand this? It is basic common sense!
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Of all the great fortunes that have been created in the last ten years, how many would still exist if the government hadn't started plowing money into the development of computer networks 30 years ago? How many of these businesses could have taken off without an available pool of talented engineers educated largely at public expense? How many tech fortunes rely on the government's enforcement of intellectual property law? The attacks on Brin's letter posted here invariably refuse to acknowledge these facts. The wealthy in this country aquired their wealth not only because of their own hard work, but also because they live in a unique system which has allowed their work to be rewarded more than they could have ever dreamed of in any other time/place in history. They owe a cut of their newfound wealth to the maintenance of the society which has allowed them to prosper, and they shouldn't whine about it.
Has the US ever gone to war to protect corporate interests overseas? Well, does Joe Poorboy own any stock in BufuCo? no, Ritchie Rich does. Joe Poorboy's SON gets drafted or more likely, is economically compelled to sign up (unlike Richie Rich's offspring), and has to go overseas to fight, and most likely die, to protect some company's assets from waking up one morning in a communist country.
Poor Americans end up fighting wars, at cost to the government, to protect the vast interests of the American rich overseas. Poor Americans live on PCB dumps, because the rich Americans' stock holdings are in companies that only look at the bottom line, and therefore do not give a rat's ass about the environment, so they dump crap on land, which devalues it, so the poor can afford to live there and drink contaminated water. And, of course, who pays to clean up the mess? The governement.
Just a few examples.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If Mr. Goldshorts HAD put his money into the economy, it wouldn't be saved as inheritance, and wouldn't need to be taxed as inheritance, only on a Sales Tax basis.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I going to respond to the troll, just for the hell of it.
Unless something is quantifiable and repeatable, it is an opinion. Even opinions held by everyone or nearly everyone such as "Murder is a crime" or "Humans are more intelligent than rabbits" or "Polluting the water with cyanide is bad" are nonetheless opinions.
None of your facts are quantifiable or repeatable. They are not scientific facts such as "The molar mass of carbon". Therefore, they, too, are opinions.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Your Libertarian vote, while well-intended, will effectively go to Gore.
**>>BELCH
There's a difference here.
Some people are looking at money as a SURVIVAL issue. A fraction of a percent of income tax could mean life or death for a large number of very poor, borderline homeless people.
For the middle-class, they're still struggling, but they've replaced SURVIVAL with MAINTENANCE OF STANDARD OF LIVING. Certainly this justifies raising taxes a tad on them, because they won't starve, they just will have to cut back to 3 packs of pokemon cards a week for their kids, or they'll have to cut out the premium channels on cable. If a family member comes down with cancer or something, they're essentially screwed, even with good medical coverage. They're back in the soup-lines.
Then there's the upper-class, who have NO CONCEPT of survival anymore. It's taken for granted, a given. The only thing they are frightened of is a revolution or national invasion, and their government takes good care of them. Standard of living maintenance similarly has no meaning for them. They've replaced that impetus with something else, something else that I have no clue about, and I'm sure most people in this discussion don't either. Is it a contest to be the richest in the world? Is it a contest to establish an everlasting legacy of wealth for their family name? What is it? I don't know. But they certainly don't want to have to go down to the level where they have to go into a BMW dealership and have to decide on a 5 or 3 series. Especially if the evil government is robbing them of it. It certainly makes no sense to me why this impetus for a very rich person to become very much richer, is more important than perhaps thousands of people eating, or getting proper health care, or for fuck's sake, breathing clean air.
Especially when, eventually, if this money is kept hidden away from the consumer-level economy, it will weaken the government to the point where ecological regulation will become impossible, and without that, we will all, with 100% certainty, bake like potatoes, choke, shrivel up, and die. Private enterprise cannot do this task. Well, if humanity's survival isn't important enough, then I guess we need to cut the taxes. We all die anyway, at least those super-rich people will die happy.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's frustrating but true. It's the power/problem of a multi (more than 2) party system. If you vote for the lesser 3rd, you vote for nothing. You can only really vote AGAINST someone if you choose between the two most likely to win.
**>>BELCH
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'll be generous and allow that, just because the point that you base your argument on is flat out wrong, that you still might have a good point. The fact that you didn't make it I'll set aside
Parents may be qualified to care, but ...so what? That does not, by extension, mean that they are qualified to educate. Educators, by profession and by societal expecation, are qualified to educate (thus the term!). Unions have done a whole lot of good for the average workers in this country, but if you think they're in the way here then that's fine. But that notwithstanding, the goal here should be to fix the existing public school system, not to scrap or scuttle it. That is exactly what would happen if those that can afford to do so would draw money away from it, leaving what remains for those that cannot afford to bail out. That's wrong, and leads directly into the old "rich get richer..." game, as the offspring of the gutted public school students attend even more gutted public schools, and the private school offspring go to Andover & Exeter.
I realize I'm being inflammatory here, & apologize in advance, but I can't help it -- I really feel like this is an assault on a public -- meaning For Everybody, meaning Base Level -- institution here, that benefits a very small number of people at the expense of the greater majority's well being. Sometimes, that's acceptable & necessary, but with public education, it's dangerous and should not be done without good reason. I've heard no good reasons for it, and however bad public schools may be, I will not stand for harming them further.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Plus for Nader: he actually has opinions on things, and isn't simply catering to raw demographics.
Minus(es) for Nader: Ow, that smarts.
I'd like to see a 3rd party candidate who was a bit more honest AND practical (heaven forbid, eh?) like Jesse Ventura, who has impressed me with his candor, opinions, and success (at least in contrast to Bush and Gore, although that's not saying much.)
Gore, as a member of the incumbent party, and given his popular image as 'smart' and 'experienced' is most likely to win. At this point, if you don't vote against Gore, you're voting for him. The ONLY way to effectively vote against Gore is to vote for Bush, who actually has a chance of winning.
If you don't mind the idea of having Gore as your president, then by all means vote for Nader.
Sad, but that's how it works.
**>>BELCH
Are fresh out of college and still full of the 'Liberal College Activist' mindset that makes college life so exciting and important-feeling.
They haven't grown out of it yet, but they will.
**>>BELCH
With regard to your valid and deep concerns over things like the Supreme Court- what on _earth_ gives you the idea that Gore will be trustworthy and do as you wish, or as he promises? I'll give an example- environmentalists (not my core issue, BTW) used to put a lot of stock in Gore. He practically campaigned on that- for instance, swearing up and down that a proposed toxic waste burning facility 150 yards from a _school_ in New Jersey would never open. After years of being Vice President, guess what? The facility opened. It runs. It has _missed_ several quality inspections and is still not being shut down, and the inhabitants of the town and the children attending the school are getting sick at rates far beyond the normal- and where's Gore? How is this different from if it'd been Bush all those years? How can you even think Gore can be trusted to appoint Supreme Court justices the way you expect him to?
I'm not voting Nader because I believe he will win. I think it would be fascinating and astonishing if he did, but he'd probably be killed anyhow. I am voting Nader (and, locally, a Progressive ticket) because there is NOBODY else that embodies my own concerns so well- primarily, corporatism. What I'm seeing here in Vermont (which in theory is well suited to cottage industry and small business!) is a complete freeze-out across the board- it's becoming unthinkable to run your own business. I see many people staying afloat by working 18 hours 6 days a week- I've known several go under even doing that, for instance the finest bookstore I've ever known that had to accept the terms of Barnes and Noble or they'd not have access to stock- and in other cases I'm working until 3 in the morning trying to help local businesses that have not gone under yet. Main Street is spotted with empty storefronts, more every month- but Wal-Mart offers extremely competitive pay! I don't accept this as a picture of my ideal country. I don't accept that my only role is as a consumer and corporate cog- and with all Nader's faults he's the only guy who plainly has Lots Of Issues with the corporations.
Beyond this, there is my decision (in a way, a deeper decision) to side with the Progressives. Much of their platform seems like hippie fantasizing to me but I'll accept that since there are a few 'radical' points in there that I feel are profoundly important- that actually coincide with your feelings on inheritance. The Progressives (at least here in Vermont) take issue with wealth being derived from position or power, and that is the issue that resonates most strongly with me. As I see it, wealth needs to correspond directly to WORK. Now, there are lots of IT geeks who work absurd, impossible hours- they should get their share of wealth. However, the bookseller working 18/6 and doing good work should also have his chance at that- and the flip side is that the boss of those IT geeks, or the vice president of Barnes and Noble should _not_ get many times that amount of wealth based on the amount of damage they can cause. I'm not saying these guys should be made _poor_, I'm saying that right now the disparity between worker 'wealth' in proportion to the work they do, and boss/corporate PHB/Rambus-patent-holder/stock-option-speculator 'wealth' in proportion to the work they do is absolutely ridiculous. Never mind that in many cases (such as Rambus) the controller of this 'wealth' is actually doing damage to society and blocking progress, adding insult to injury!
I don't see Gore giving a tinker's damn about this stuff. In fact, I expect him to further prop up the corporations, appoint SC judges that will back the corporations _for_ him so he doesn't get the PR hit, and in general do everything he can to obliterate the free market in the sense of 'people can enter it and do business at whatever level they operate on'. You cannot make me trust him. Both the major parties are worthless to me now- it's like asking which major record label is the 'good one'- they are indistinguishable. Either way your vote says simply 'More please'. I refuse to say that.
Frankly, I don't think it's necessarily such a bad thing if the country goes to hell under Bush because people didn't support Gore- it takes a lot of unreasonable behavior before the general public begins to get upset and agitated, and I'm not convinced that the system can be changed through the main, two-party, existing channels. If I _really_ disbelieved it, I wouldn't be voting: I'd be throwing bombs, and I would be doing it to corporations, not clueless government officials. However, I am not and don't plan to do any such thing- instead, I'll give the system a chance. I'll vote for Nader, unhesitatingly, and I will be counted by each party as 'somebody who went and voted not for us for specific reasons', and I will _keep_ voting for anyone reasonably acceptable who supports the issues I consider absolutely crucial, and will keep voting third party.
Before Nader and, on the local level, the Progs came along, I was not going to vote at all.
Cheers. If Nader can't win, I hope we _do_ get stuck with Bush, not because he's any good but simply because he's liable to turn up the heat until it's completely intolerable. Something's got to give, sooner or later. Bush is probably the one guy most capable of designating W2K the official U.S. operating system, for instance, and impeding anything else. It would seem about as significant as designating a state bird, to him. Be careful what you wish for.
I've heard no good reasons for it, and however bad public schools may be, I will not stand for harming them further.
This is your problem in a nutshell. Which is more important -- harming the public school institution or the harm to the public school students? Isn't the point that we want students to be educated as well as possible?
Educators, by profession and by societal expecation, are qualified to educate (thus the term!).
The "educators" are the problem, not the solution. Yes, some teachers are good teachers, who have the best interests of the children in mind. But others are typical government beauracrats whose only function is generate more money, students be damned. Explain to me how we got "social promotion". Explain to me how we got "whole language" (that destroyed a generation of reading skills). Explain to me how a student can make it all the way through school without being able to read!
As far as "qualifications" to teach, there has been study after study showing home schooled students do far better than the average because of the personal attention. Let's face it... teaching is important, but it's not rocket science.
That's wrong, and leads directly into the old "rich get richer..." game,
The rich already send their kids to private school. Hell, I forget the statistic, but an absurd number of public school teachers send their kids to private school. I think it's the ultimate in classism to insist the poor can only go to the school that the Government dictates (no matter how bad), and the rich can send their kids to any school they want.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
See, the government is here to help the little people get ahead in life when they might be down on their luck, or handed a pair of duces in life's Poker Game.
Using the tax law to spread the wealth around a bit and keeping it from being clumped together is a good thing. You know how all those kids who inherit million$ always hoard it and never spend it on things and possessions.
This is a vital role for the government. Another vital role for the government is to protect those kids who may not have caring parents, and as such we NEED filters in our public schools' Internet access to keep them from viewing porn or learning about how to make a bomb.
We also need to protect the elderly from being ripped off by monitoring all lines of communication for scam artists and thugs. It would be helpful if we could do this with email and websites as well, so that we can watch for terrorists while we're at it.
Hey, here's another idea! You can shampoo my crotch! Government always does things badly, no matter how well intentioned. Rose and Milt Freideman described it best when they explained the four (and only four) ways to spend money:
This is how middle aged men shop for Porches. You get exactly what you want at the lowest price.
This is how second-wives of middle-aged Porche drivers shop at Neiman-Marcus. You get exactly what you want, but don't care about the price.
This is why kids get underwear for Christmas. You get a good price, but don't care as much as to whether you're pleasing the recipient.
Government spending of tax revenues falls into this category, and NOBODY gives a good Goddamn as to the price or quality or neccessity.
You can do whatever you want with your money when you die, I don't care. DON'T, however, use a gun (Government) to take mine.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
We're not talking about the Millionaire Next Door. We're talking about the Billionaire Next Door. Millionaires are now middle class. We're not talking about people who risk it all, we're talking about people who risk 500 million, and don't even blink.
Stock options have been very good to me, and I still remember what it was like to be poor. It disgusts me to remember how banks and credit card companies used to treat me back when I was poor, and that some of my old friends who DIDN'T strike it rich, are still treated that way. Today, if I walked into my bank, they usually would recognize me, call me MISTER, and if I had an overdraft in my checking account, they usually let it slide. But I remember times in the past where an overdraft, even if it was the result of a clerical error or delay of a deposit due to obscure bank rules, would result in a major disruption, and many hours making phone calls to companies to assure them that the funds were coming. Plus fines, fees, derision, scorn, cancellations of service, reposessions, etc. The same goes for applying for loans, and all kinds of other opportunities. I'm rich and I'm telling you, it's just plain not FAIR the way poor people are treated. I have NO PROBLEM paying a proportionately higher tax rate than my fellow citezens who are less well off. I have NO PROBLEM knowing that my childrens' inheritence will be taxed highly when I pass on, knowing that they have a fair shake at competing and succeeding when they get out into the world. I'm concerned that if they fail, they'll fall into ruin. I'm really concerned about that, but I'd rather they work for what they get, than have it given to them on a silver platter, be it coming from me, or the government.
I don't mind paying taxes, as long as it is being used and spent wisely, and as long as people who have several orders of magnitude more wealth than I do, (who will never have to worry about spending it all, no matter how hard they try), are taxed at much higher rates. We all need food and shelter, and nice standards of living are gravy. Those who have earned a nice standard of living should be able to enjoy it too. But the Billionaire Next Door is maxed-out on his standard of living, they've got more money than they can possibly spend if they went on a non-stop 24x7 internet shopping spree. Why waste that money on a vault? Why not put some of it to use?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm sorry, I should have said "stay the hell away from me, as much as possible".
Of course I realize that you need some social programs - but on the other hands, are not a lot of those needs met through private charities? Why do you assume that government is the only source of such support?
For instance, I give presents every year to an organization that gives me the list of a needy families. I then buy the things for them, wrap them up, and drop them off. Should they close thier doors and wait for a government agnecy to fill that need?
My own idea of wanting to help charitible organizations with computer work would, I'm sure, be greatly improved by having to register myself with the gorenment (hey, new word if Gore is elected!) Agency of Charitable Programming Needs, where my time would be doled out by someone living 2000 miles away.
What I'm saying is that I deserve a choice of where my money goes for charity. I think people are a lot more charitable than you give them credit for, and the government is not nessicarily the best source. I'd agree that you need some level of support, but there needs to be a limit... Perhaps a tax credit where if you donated to charity that would actually reduce your tax burden by 1.5 times the amount donated to account for reduction in needs of government programs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Pre-Reagan. I believe the super wealthy got taxed at even much higher rates. They still got by. I believe the private jet industry was still booming back then. But when Reagan changed the tax codes, there was a huge windfall for these people. "Reaganomics" claimed that with all this extra money, it would go into the economy, and "trickle-down" to the masses, because there would be more spending, more robust economy, more jobs, etc.
The fallout of this though was yes, there were more jobs, but most of the new jobs were service-industry jobs, low-wage jobs. Nothing you coould support a family on. At the same time, the normal "white-collar" kind of job that built this nation back in the 50's (which is what the republicans believe they want to return to - more like the 20's), was reduced. People would get laid off from $50k/yr jobs, and had to pick up two $15k/yr jobs to try to compensate.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Gift: When one person takes something from another, with the another's permission.
Theft: When one person takes something from another, permission be damned.
To quote Ronald Unreasonable, "I did not ask for, did not receive, and will not pay for, Item 21, `Tax', on your invoice."
All taxation is the moral equivalent of theft. I never gave my government permission to take almost 40% of my paycheck. In fact, the government never even asked if they could take 40% of my paycheck. Now, they might have very good purposes in mind and undoubtedly a lot of that taxation goes to very good purposes--but it doesn't change the fact that, through taxation, the government is taking what does not belong to them and they are doing it regardless of whether I give them my permission or not.
That's theft, clear and simple.
What makes taxation legal is that the right of the people to enjoy certain government services outweighs my right as an individual to not have 40% of my paycheck taken away. This is a balancing act of liberties.
Taxation is legal, and oftentimes taxation is right.
That doesn't mean it's not theft.
Oh, don't talk to me about "family businesses & family farms". That's been debunked, big time. The effect of the inheritance tax on small and mid-sized family business is virtually nil today. Nil.
Brin is just plain wrong here. To put it in the venacular of the victims of death taxes, "Brin is full of BULLSHIT."
Let's just use an average here of about $1000/acre. A modest spread of 2000 acres is worth two million dollars. The government will take half of that when the owner dies.
Brin is well-known for writing fiction. This is more of his fiction, and should be labelled as such!
If he doesn't think it's fiction, he has his head up his ass so that he's on a steady diet of his own shit.
As the 4th-generation descendant of two ranch families, I know the effects of the death tax in its painful details. I ain't no rich kid whining here, I am a future land steward who will help feed the world. Beat that, Brin, you second-rate Sci-Fi hack!
Many, many, many ranch families have had to sell their ranches just to cover the death taxes on them. Just go to a rural town and ask a few folks.
And don't forget -- these landowners have been paying property taxes all along. Basically, they have to rent their own land. Then they die, and the government takes what's left.
Another frightening aspect of Gorespeak is that he keeps talking about "family farms" never ranches. As anyone slightly familiar with agriculture knows, ranchers are ranchers and farmers are farmers, again visit a rural town for all the information on the difference. It is safe to assume that farmers will get all the goodies and the ranchers, as usual, will work their 18-hour days and keep getting screwed by the taxman.
DAVID BRIN IS FULL OF BULLSHIT!!!
-Todd Hartmann
My father grew up dirt poor in the Depression. He worked constantly, doing back-breaking labor for low pay working on road crews. He saved his pennies, went to the cheapest college he could find, and applied himself.
After he graduated with honors, he applied to every law school he could find. He wound up attending GWU in DC; he attended night classes while spending days working in a men's clothing store. He worked his fingers to the bone and then some. Three years later, he received his JD in law and a few years after that, he was a successful lawyer.
My own story was a little different. I went to college on a four-year full-ride scholarship. I worked like hell in high school and blew away the PSAT/NMSQTs; I had nine different offers for four-year full-rides, just because I worked like hell.
Today I'm a college graduate, a software engineer, doing pretty well for myself.
How does a person who can't afford to feed his children, let alone send them to college, have an equal opportunity to a person who sends their kid to Harvard with his pocket change?
The answer is mind-bogglingly simple. You work like hell, and that makes opportunities happen for you.
I know, I know, this entire "if you work hard and apply yourself, you can succeed in life" sounds like it came out of a Horatio Hornblower novel. However, it happens to be right, and that's something you haven't quite seemed to comprehend yet.
It is a civilized government that provides a safety net for its citizens.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much a pipe dream. Government nets are made by the lowest bidder, which means it's not going to be a quality net.
I have my own safety net called insurance. I get to choose the quality of my net, and that's not something I'm willing to give up.
And yes--I have needed such a net in the past, and I know plenty of people who've needed one as well. Guess what? The nets we made for ourselves worked just fine.
Government is not the place to look for solutions to our social needs. We need to look to ourselves first. You'd be surprised at how many "government functions" you can take care of yourself, if you only have a little bit of gumption, a touch of creativity, and the willingness to work like hell.
...and should be taxed AT LEAST as much as earned income. I'm in the top 5%, and I don't approve of the morality that says I should owe less taxes because it would be an incentive for me to spend more. Fuck that, money I make by moving money around should be taxed the same as money made by the sweat of my brow. The "trickle down" arguments are equivalent to saying "Fat man should eat more food, not less, as when he gets bigger portions, more crumbs fall to the beggars at his feet."
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
...and that's good, because he won't. What I do want is for the other candidates to adopting his ideas in an attempt to get the Green Party voters to vote for them. Just like Clinton adopted "balance the budget" from Perot in '92 and '96.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Great. So if the government were to pass a law saying "Jim Nolan's house is now forfeit", you wouldn't consider that to be theft?
(Yes, I know it's a bill of attainder. The point still stands.)
Trusting the law to make determinations of right and wrong is like trusting Charles Manson to be a sane and lucid human being. It's not just wrong, it's entirely opposed to history.
Trusting the law to provide a moral framework, so that we can say "theft is the unlawful taking of property", is foolish. Immoral laws are passed all the time.
Remember that, at one point, you could just as easily say "voting rights are held by all those Americans permitted by law to vote", and exclude women, the non-landed, minorities, some religious sects, etc.
Your definition of theft needs a lot of work.
Yeah, yeah. The spectre of Supreme Court nominations is raised in every election. We'll never get away from it. The fact that the Democrats bring it up so often in an effort to scare people into voting for them is just another indicator that they have nothing of substance to bring to the election. Gore will say anything, anything to get elected. He's got no real message or direction. And the Democrats know it. That's why they're resorting to these fear tactics.
Besides, you don't really believe that the President can get away with just appointing whomever he wants, do you? Look at the way the nominations have gone in the last few decades. The confirmation process has become a total Kangaroo court! There is no way someone with a clear agenda can get past it! The only hope a president has is to try and nominate a moderate or a "stealth" candidate who has an agenda, but doesn't display it out in the open. But even that rarely works. The idea that Bush or Gore will be able to just walk in and dump their favorite conservative or liberal in the court is nonsense.
Very few women seem to have joined the Nader campaign. Maybe because they are more practical...
The average citizen, both male and female, responds to pandering. GWB and Gore have done a lot of pandering to women in their campaigns. Nader has done very little. It may be a nice bit of fashionable PCness to assert that women are somehow smarter or better than men, but it isn't true.
Free Hans!
"marriage penalty" is actually a misnomer.
Taxing a couple who both work at a higher rate than a couple making the same amount when only a single person works is actually GOOD for the country.
Having one parent home to raise kids is GOOD for the country. Adding another incentive to have more families where both parents work is not a good thing. And if couples aren't going to have children, then tough.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Difference between Republican + Democrat:
|---|
Difference between Republican + Libertarian
|-------------------------------------------|
Difference between Democrat + Libertarian
|-------------------------------------------|
The Demopublicans only seem different when compared to each other. Considered within the wider spectrum of political thought, they are two peas from the same centrist pod. There may have been ideological differences in the past, but they are rapidly dwindling, what with Democrats supporting censorship and Republicans supporting massive federal spending programs.
--
Exactly. Actually, from what I've heard, Bush's tax cuts, etc are for giving back/making things more proportional. i.e., if you are of the 10% rich, then you get more back, because you have paid more. Conversely, if you paid little, you get little back. Why in hell people have problems with this I'll never understand. You pay more, you get more back. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
Except that the rich are already getting more out of society than the poor. Plus, the money which is taxed from them is money that would go to luxury uses as compared to the basic necessities that the poor and middle class have to spend their money on.
As for Brin's "rant", it just seems to be more liberalist crap. He's just perpetuating the liberal notion that it's the government's money, not yours, and even if it was yours, the government knows best how to handle it. Never mind that for inheritance taxes, they are taxing income and goods that have already been taxed. Never mind that the government should be in no way whatsoever entitled to get up to 50% of someone's equity and goods and such just because they died and wanted to pass it on to their offspring.
What did their offspring do to earn it? What will losing a few million more matter to the top 1% of the nation? Compare that to what $1000 more would matter to the bottom 10%. Yes, the government does know best how to use some of that money. The military, environmental protection, farm relief, federal law enforcement, and other domains are areas in which an individual rich person could do little to help out even if they were so inclined. This redistribution of wealth to protect the entirety of the nations from others and from itself is the reason we have the "diamond" that he describes. It's not a square block, like in a pure socialist society, but it serves the majority of the people far better than the old "pyramid" system. Isn't that what democracy is all about, serving the needs of the majority?
This makes the flat tax idea seem a great one.
Oh, except that it has the exact same effect that he describes of eliminating the motivation for rich people to give to charity that our current progressive system uses while simultaneously penalizing the lowest income brackets. No wonder the Republicans are so much in favor of this. It's the rich that will most benefit.
Giving the government less of our money to work with might be the single most effective way at reducing government.
Not that anyone's given a good reason for wanting this other than it means more money in their pockets -- in the short term, anyway. What exactly is wrong with large government, and how do you think reducing their income in taxes will reduce the government instead of just racking up more debt.?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sounds good. From this point forward, you will be required to provide your own roads, and will have to live in this sovereign territory over here with no defenses... oh, yes, and you should be aware that you will recieve no benifits of technology produced under the auspices of government grants...
Idiot. Do some reading on the reasons we formed societies, and the reasons we don't allow selective opt-outs on the benifits and costs. Opt out on the whole, or on nothing. If you opt out on the whole, I'm sorry, but you'll have to be dumped naked on a deserted little atol somewhere. It wouldn't be fair otherwise...
Some libertarians make me sick. Some conservatives make me sicker.
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
Nowhere in any document describing the foundations and obligations of the American government will you find anything referring to your statement. You're thinking of France.
A purely economical standpoint leads to a corporate strategy, not a national one. Or in other words, a fascist state.
You seem like a lefty - read some Chomsky and you'll see that we already have that, and the government is the chief culprit.
You do *not* want to maximize the total output of a national economy. That's why the Fed has been trying to slow us down.You're making an implicit correlation between inflation and productivity that doesn't necessarily exist.
As Brin explained, top-heavy taxation leads to redistribution of wealth through charitable giving.
Which is utter gibberish.
HUH? Investments count as inherited wealth. Are you saying old people should blow their money on fast cars and televisions?
Its easy to take the high ground when you have no hope in hell of ever being elected.
Ontario's NDP rode the high horse for years and then finally got elected in the early nineties. They came crashing down to earth with all the scandal, scum, grift, and influence peddling that surrounds every mainstream party.
Of course, since they wouldn't shutup about how moral they were all those years in opposition, the voters essentially voted the party out of existance on a national scale in a few years.
While the stories posted to Slashdot are at the discretion of CmdrTaco, Hemos, et al, I would hope they'd use more discretion in the future. I don't go to the Republican or Democrats for Linux news, and so I don't wanna come to Slashdot for a politcal opinion...especially one not even closely related to Linux or Opensource.
There's a saying that goes something like this:
"If you don't do politics, politics will do you"
Fortunately, judging by the response to this article, most of the slashdot community seems to understand this :)
Fixing copyright
Just to clear some things up-- here's a piece a friend of mine wrote to rebut anti-Nader arguments. These address some of the things Brin wrote...
Answers to Seven Anti-Nader Arguments
--
Ran Prieur
ranprieur at yahoo.com
"Ralph Nader's candidacy is irresponsible because it will take votes
from Gore."
The Gore campaign is irresponsible for trying to take votes
from Nader! Al Gore is not entitled to and votes. He has to
earn them. Ralph Nader has earned your vote by courageously
serving the public interest for 40 years, and by closely
representing your political views and priorities. Al Gore
demands your vote just because he belongs to the ruling party
and he's better than Bush Jr. We will never get anywhere if we
keep voting for candidates just because they're from the same
parties that everyone voted for last time.
"If you vote for Nader, you're throwing your vote away."
A vote for Nader is the best and only way to use your vote to
strengthen the progressive movement. After the election, the
votes for Gore and Bush will be thrown away and forgotten. But
the votes for Nader will be counted again and again for
years. 5%? 10%? 15%?! The bigger the Nader vote, the more
attention Nader's issues will get from the dominant media,
from decision-makers in government and business, from
political campaigns of the future.
Historically this is the way progressive issues have always
entered the American political system - first by drawing a lot
of votes to fringe parties and candidates, and then, because
of these votes, being adopted by a dominant party.
A vote for Gore is worse than thrown away - it is actively
misused. Every progressive vote for Gore gives Gore the
incentive to ignore progressive issues. We'll vote for him
whatever he does, so he can take our votes for granted - which
he has already done by choosing an especially conservative
running mate.
Every vote for Nader gives Gore and all democrats the
incentive to adopt Nader's positions, or at the very least
give lip service to Nader's issues, which will do enormous
good by bringing these issues into the mass public
consciousness.
"What if Nader costs Gore the election?"
Then Nader and his issues and the Green party will get the
full attention of the dominant media; then this election will
echo through countless future elections where candidates will
court the Nader voters, thinking they need us to win; then,
with Nader or another Green party candidate running in 2004
with federal matching funds, progressive issues will be at the
center of the campaign for months and get exposure that a
billion dollars of advertising couldn't buy.
"The country can't take 4 years of Bush."
Of course it can! We took 12 years of Reagan and Bush Sr. and
we're still alive and fighting. We're standing at the end of
several thousand years of almost unchecked abuse of the Earth
and the human spirit. Four years of the small margin by which
Bush seems worse than Gore is trivial.
What the world cannot take is many more years of corporate
rule, which Gore represents as much as Bush. A Gore presidency
is not a victory, just a prettier defeat. We need to stop
negotiating surrenders and start fighting.
Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. A
terrible Bush presidency (or Gore presidency) will only bring
more attention to the value of Nader's perspective. What goes
around comes around. The farther the pendulum swings to the
right, the farther it will swing back to the left.
And don't be so sure Bush would be worse than Gore. No
Republican would have got away with butchering welfare the way
Clinton did. They needed a democrat. Maybe they needed a
democrat to pass NAFTA. Maybe they need Gore for further
abuses of poor people and the environment that we would never
take from a Republican. A wolf in sheep's clothing is more
dangerous than a wolf in the Bush.
"I've read Gore's book Earth in the Balance and I know he really cares
about the environment."
Yes, he does. It doesn't matter! Gore has to do his job. Like
all of us, he has to do what his job requires, regardless of
his personal beliefs. And his job, should he be elected, is to
represent the interests of the giant concentrations of money
that financed his campaign - to turn the Earth, you, me, and
everything living and unliving into an object for commercial
exploitation.
"What about the Supreme Court?"
Indeed, Democrats and Republicans still differ on the cultural
issue opinions of their court appointees. This will change as
the giant concentrations of money that rule the world discover
which court opinions on cultural issues are profitable. But
for now, court appointments are a danger of a Bush
presidency.
Changing the world is not safe or
painless. People before us were beaten and jailed and killed
in protests and strikes to earn what little social and
economic justice we now have. For eight years Clinton and Gore
have been selling these gains out from under us. Are we going
to let this continue for fear of something as tangential as
the appointments of people who interpret laws? We're supposed
to have power to make the laws.
Bush is not running for
dictator. He has to work with the system. And he wouldn't dare
overturn Roe v. Wade or any well-known court-created right,
because his handlers know that the people would rise up and
get an actual law for that right. We would learn to pass laws
instead of relying on interpretations of laws by courts held
hostage by the dominant parties. We would start using our
democracy again instead of just casting a cynical vote every
four years. The last thing the ruling powers want is for us to
get energized and feel our political power.
"Ralph Nader is not qualified to be president."
Of course he is! Nader has been working with the American
political system for decades. For decades he has been getting
actual results. He has been working from the outside not the
inside, but surely you're not suggesting that this
disqualifies a candidate. If only people who are already
working inside the system can work inside the system, then the
system will only get more insulated and inbred and corrupt -
just as it has been doing for many years!
Ralph Nader is an opposition leader. Of course he doesn't have
experience as a governor or senator or vice president. What
qualified Nelson Mandela to be president of South Africa? What
qualified Lech Walesa to be president of Poland? Both became
president only a few years after a time when it was absurd to
think either could be president. Ralph Nader can be President
of the United States.
Taxes are a fee for services rendered. Enforced insurance, sort of. But most of the governments services are the sort you never want to need. Like the cop, the ambulance, the medical research, etc.
Then... as an H1B non-resident alien.. why do I have to pay taxes to the IRS? Surely if my taxes are paying to keep the INS going, I should have my greencard in no time instead of this interminable wait?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Remember that, at one point, you could just as easily say "voting rights are held by all those Americans permitted by law to vote", and exclude women, the non-landed, minorities, some religious sects, etc.
Just as you can exclude voting rights today from H1B workers who pay 35% of their wages in taxes.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Now lets look at the poor. Somebody making $5K a year is really struggling (poverty level income is what, around $13K a year?) So lets be generous, and draw a line 10 units DOWN from the middle of the crossbar to represent the gap between the poor and the middle class.
How about the rich? Well, $10 million a year doesn't even really get your started on the road toward the super rich, but hey, lets not be greedy, so draw a line 250 units long UP from the crossbar to represent the difference between the middle class and the rich.
Now connect the tips to make your diamond. Dang! looks more like a pyramid to me...
And if our diamond is so healthy, why is our much vaunted middle class making less today in adjusted dollars than they were in 1970? Sounds like a topological transformation is underway to me, and somebody didn't want you to notice...
You missed the guys point.
Not at all. Given X amount of money, there exist n different ways to spend it, not all of which bring the same benefit to society or have the same multiplier effect.
But the previous poster is also right. Either way, that money will end up benefitting a number of people.
I'm arguing that the money in the hands of a charitable foundation will likely have a much more beneficial effect on society than the same amount of money in the hands of an heir.
The Postman(on DVD)
Ok, so, here we have David Brin's book, turned into a Hollywood movie, proudly displayed on Amazon as having "Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)."
What amazes me is that such a man can make money from a system designed to make sure Jack Valenti can have yet another ivory back scratcher, and yet he can sneer at the inheritence tax that is one of the things responsible for the transfer of property from living people to the undead. By undead, of course, I mean the neither living nor dead corporate persons who represent the real threat to things like social mobility in this country.
You see, when grandpa croaks and leaves the family business to his kids, the business is an asset, not liquid cash. That means, in order to pay off the government, the grandkids have to sell of the business, farm or whatever. Like as not, they'll sell it to OmniGlobalMegaCorp, which is a person which can own things in its own name. Now, what about OmniGlobalMegaCorp? A big company like that must pay a lot of taxes, right?
IT giants who don't pay tax part 2: how Microsoft does it
Hmmm, apparently, not only doesn't OmniGlobalMegaCorp pay inheritance taxes, he/she/it doesn't pay much in taxes at all. No wonder the family farm is going under, to be replaced by FrankenFood, Inc.
As to the Supreme Court, Clinton appointed one good judge (Ruth Bader Ginsberg) and one reactionary (Stephen G. Breyer), as evidenced by the case which redefined Free Expression in this country:
High court upholds limits on nude dancing
This case firmly established the authority of local government to regulate any speech it finds offensive, as long as it can suggest that the speech will cause the "secondary effects" of a crime. This effectively guts the First Amendment, all that keeps anything from being censored now is massive popular outcry and the whims of lower court judges.
John Paul Stevens, the other pro-First Amendment judge, was appointed by Ford. Souter, who is _sort_ of pro-First Amendment, was appointed by Bush, Sr.
As far as I'm concerned, if a supposed liberal, like Clinton, can appoint one bad judge, then a social reactionary, like Gore can appoint 3. As to abortion, I fully expect that the same reactionaries who allow "reasonable limits" on the First Amendment will allow similar restrictions on any other proposed right, as soon as the right case gets before them.
If you want to change politics in this country, you have to vote for the person you think is the best person for the job. That person is neither of the two major party candidates.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Who CARES? The point is: society didn't work, didn't earn the money; the rich man did. If he wanted his son to have the property, why should someone step in and say, 'well, society would benefit more from it'?
If it's determined that redistributing the contents of wealthy persons' bank accounts would 'benefit society more,' is that justification enough for stealing?
I'm not american but these are the principles that your country is founded on (i assume you're american). e.g. read up the justification for intellectual property and apply it to this case. I think you will see that it is analogous.
If no one bought any new cars (as they didn't in the 70's, when people decided Japanese and German quality were better than American made junk) whole families ended up destitute.
So, I just don't understand the attitude here at all. Most people would rather work at an honest job than accept charity, and it often seems to me that the whole purpose of government personel is to make you feel about two inches tall when you go for their services. (At least charities are mostly staffed by people who believe in what they are doing, not hostile, cynical bureacrats.)
Of course, it wouldn't matter if I wanted a new car or not, I can't afford one right now. But it seems to me that working people are getting shafted at both ends. By corporations, who do whatever it takes to get salaries down, and by rich liberals, who would rather help the work-shy than the guy running a cash register at K-Mart (which I did for a while... no picnic, believe me!)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Even left-leaning economists are beginning to concede that the wealthy are being disproporionately and perhaps unfialry taxed.
I asume that "unfialry" is supposed to be "unfairly" (no criticism intended -- I spell as badly as anyone).
Fairness is a philosophically tricky subject. "I know it when I see it" just doesn't cut it. The best formulation I've seen is to think of a situation as a game with different positions you can play. You sit down with the other players and agree on the rules that govern each position -- with the proviso that you don't know in advance which position you get to play. The problem with most attempts to consider what is fair is that it is infected by our knowledge of our own position, or the position we aspire to play. This way of looking at fairness removes this distortion.
So, imagine we are setting the rules of the game called "Taxation", which has three positions -- poor slob Sam (who makes $10K), middle class Joe ($50K), and billionaire bill ($5M). A head tax goes right out the window -- you don't want to be stuck if you have to be Sam and have to pay the same money as Bill.
A flat tax of say, 20% would still make the Sam position untenable, since he'd pay 2K$ out of his 10K$ income, which is barely enough to live on to begin with. Joe really feels the pinch of $10K out of his $50K income -- its an OK position, but his lifestyle is a lot different than if he could keep all $50K. The cool million that Bill pays has absolutely no impact on his lifestyle -- he only experiences it when he looks at it as numbers on a spreadsheet. So Sam still stinks, Joe is tough to play, but if you get to play Bill you'll have a blast.
Now consider a progressive tax under which Sam pays $50, Joe pays $5000 and Bill pays $2M. Sam's position is much better, Joe's position is also much better, and while Bill's position is somewhat less fun than it would have been, but it's still pretty good position to play.
If you were sitting down to play this game but didn't know which position you'd have in advance, which set of rules would you prefer?
Looked at the other, fuzzier way, I still think it makes sense. While public goods make up a much larger fraction of Sam and Joe's total consumption, Bill still gets lots more financial benefits. Police property protection affects him more, his firm's goods travel over publicly funded roads, and benefit from publicly educated workers. If you added up the dollar value of these things, Bill is getting many times more value than Joe's total income.
As far as the "Double taxation" argument is in the interitance tax debate is concerned, I'd appreciate if somebody can come up with a sensible explanation of this position. Don't we simply tax money when it changes hands? I'm taxed on my income, and when I spend that income at the local bar the innkeeper pays taxes on that too, even though it was taxed when it originally passed into my hands. The only difference I see with the inheritance tax is that in that transfer of money the recipient doesn't have to work to get it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Its the parent's right to give their hard-earned money to whoever they please, not the child's right to receive it. Get it? Their money, not yours. Theirs. The parents. Theirs.
It's also their right to give their money to their gardner, who has to pay taxes on that money when he gets it. The only difference is that he has to work for it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
'then tough'????
How easy it is for you to dismiss the rights of thousands of people.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
No. Thank you for confirming use of the word "racism" is a substitute for critical thought.
I an immigrant Hispanic computer operator and father of three and quite frankly I am profoundly disturbed by what I see in your post.
Since I made no mention of Hispanics, and you are writing anonymously, there is a very good chance you are not Hispanic at all, but merely posing as one for rhetorical advantage. I don't have a particular problem with Hispanics, but if you are Hispanic, you're correct to be concerned. If you think my post is abusive, and as long as we're being anecdotal, you should have heard the response of a San Diego teacher I knew to the following situation:
She had foregone, not without some serious misgivings, the option of having a family of her own to teach secondary public education. She ended up teaching English as a second language to Hispanic students at a high school that had, while she grew up in the area, made a transition from almost entirely "white" (including Jews) to almost entirely Hispanic. Like most of the rest of the faculty, she was white while almost all of her students were not in the US legally. She was exceptionally attractive and was continually put upon by the young men and began dreading going to work in her chosen profession. One day, the vice principle, a Hispanic, noting her vulnerability said, with a sarcastic smirk to her "You know, you whites are just giving it away."
The principle was Hispanic and known to play favorites. The school district superintendent was also Hispanic and believed by the female teachers of the district to get away with having teachers fired who he had approached sexually.
With fellow Hispanics accepting the altruistic sacrifice of a life's work and even the option of having children from intelligent attractive white women to teach Hispanic illegals and then treating them with contempt, you are well advised to tell your eldest son to beware.
You have three children? Good for you. Children are true inspiration -- a material motive to work hard and build a better future.
But remember this:
People without children are people who really don't have much to live for and therefore they don't have much to lose.
Next time, try addressing the arguments -- especially if they are based on documented and reference facts -- as presented rather than launching into ad hominem rhetoric.
Seastead this.
Society has a responsibility to help it's members
And in a democracy, the government is one of the best expressions of the will of Society; Society can, and often does, choose to dump its responsibilities on the government --- that's what it's there for.
Umm, I'm not one of those people who's going to vote Nader. In fact, I used to be a huge Republican. I changed my mind when I realized that both Republicans AND Democrats absolutely suck.
;-)
This gentleman who wrote the above letter claims that it's a trite platitude to believe that Republicans and Democrats are the same. Well, how are they not the same? They both adhere to the same fundamental assumptions about government, and those fundamental assumptions all revolve around our current monstrous system. No one is interested in a small government which does what Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have wanted it to do, but otherwise leaves us the fuck alone. Republicans want to censor sex, and Democrats want to censor violence. They're BOTH for censorship, for doing what they think is good for us instead of letting us choose.
I mean, did you actually listen to the debate last night? They said practically the same thing about trying to get the entertainment industry to change its ways. Well, most Americans don't want the Federal government to tell the studios what kind of films they can give us, what kind of music we can have, etc. If you are a parent and don't want your kid to listen to Eminem, that's your business. It isn't, however, the government's business to try to get record companies to "self-censor" music. It's still censorship. One of the things most often forgotten is that freedom of speech is worthless if all the outlets for speech are closed to you--and that's what the Federal government wants to do, by telling the industry it needs to police itself better. Screw censorship in all its forms. When this country was founded, broadsides with the most obscene possible content were easily available in any big city, yet never once did Washington whine like Gore does about it.
The system today is monstrous, and neither party wants to restore small government. The gentleman who wrote this article talked about bureaucrats as essentially harmless. Sure, they're harmless if you forget that it's your own money paying them, money which is stolen from our pockets by an income tax which was unconstitutional until circa 1900. None of the people who founded this country and forged its laws believed in income tax. In fact, the very notion of taking money so directly and blanketly from the common people was abhorrent to them. Let's also not forget that not only have bureaucrats wasted TRILLIONS of our tax dollars over the years, but they've also created terrible things in so doing. Does anyone remember what a piece of horse-shit the Meese Commission Report, done primarily by bureaucrats, was? They wanted to take away our right to express ourselves in any sexually explicit materials. They considered Playboy magazine a gateway drug to the evils of pornography. Bureaucrats are not harmless. They're a big threat to every right we have, because they spin the facts to fit into politicians' preconceived plans. How is it that Gore has one set of figures for everything, and Bush has another? They each have their own set of bureaucrats, of course...
As more and more laws and regulations are passed, it becomes more difficult for a man to do anything without the government's permission or denials. Do you know what the country with the greatest social mobility is? Hong Kong. Do you know why? Very little bureaucracy and very little government intervention. Fifty years ago Hong Kong was a useless, poor rock in the ocean. It was literally a rock--people couldn't even farm there. There were no big industries. But the British controlled it and instituted a government of benign, salutary neglect. If someone harmed you, the police and justice system would take care of it. But otherwise, the government didn't do a damned thing. And today, fifty years later, Hong Kong is an economic giant. All that in five decades, from a pre-industrial-revolution level of existence, practically, to the average median income being only $2000 less than that in the US. And economic mobility here is NOTHING compared to Hong Kong. There, you fill out one sheet of paper, one-sided, and you're registered as a business. Anyone, literally, can start a small business. Here, people need to file so many papers that many give up--a stack of tax papers, a stack of forms to submit to the health department even if you're not serving food, a stack of forms over and over again. It's hard just to open your doors in the US because of the bureaucratic red tape. And then there are the thirty-page forms a business sometimes needs to fill out just to pay a few bucks in taxes...
The economic mobility of the present in the US is largely an illusion of the tech sector. Nowhere else is there upper mobility, unless you want to become an MBA business drone. And even then, I know a girl with an MBA who's working at Red Lobster.
Take me, for example. I have no upward mobility. I have no mobility at all. I am one of many lost in the cracks, lost to the complexities of new laws which an increasingly intrusive government saddles us with. Republicans and Democrats both--and, Democrats controlled the legislature, BTW, this wasn't a partisan thing--decided it would be a good idea to keep teenagers from having sex by making a new law, one very few in my state know about, which makes it a crime for anyone 18 or over to have consensual sex with someone who is *above the "age of consent"* but below 18. Well, when I was in high school I knew the age of consent in my state was 15, so when I was a high school senior and started dating a high school junior who was a year and a half younger than I was, I thought I was fine. After all, lots of high school seniors date even freshmen and sophomores, so dating a junior put me squarely on firm ground. Well, I wasn't on firm ground when her dad had me arrested for having consensual sex with her, even though she was above the age of consent, even though I was still in high school, even though she was only a year and a half younger. Even my teachers were shocked that I was being prosecuted. But thanks to those primarily Democratic lawmakers, I was in big trouble.
Here's where the story gets interesting: the judge was a smart and reasonable guy, and he dismissed the case. After all, the law was meant to keep old perverts from taking advantage of vulnerable teenagers, not to prosecute teenagers for dating people who are well within their own peer group. Nevermind that I'd been a virgin and she'd had more experience back then than most 25 year olds, so if anyone was seduced it was me.
Well, thank god for all that bureaucratic recordkeeping, because I can't get a job thanks to that arrest on a charge I wasn't even convicted for. Thanks to the fact that the Federal government does more than the Constitution says it should, I have an FBI record which prevents me from getting a job anywhere in the academic world. Since I was in 10th grade I knew I was meant to be a poorly paid, but happy with my career, teacher. That dream, that vocation, that entire life has disappeared. Thanks all to a few politicians who didn't think to write a law which couldn't be abused by being applied to an innocent high school kid like I used to be once. And then, thanks to the FBI which keeps records of arrests even if THE JUDGE DISMISSED THE CASE.
Now, if the Federal government were as small as it's supposed to be, if it only did what Jefferson and Madison designed it to do, I could have a new life. I could have moved a few states over, and forgotten about that horrible period in my life when I was being prosecuted for doing something many, many, many, many teenagers do and is considered a normal part of adolescence, and taught middle or high school English or history. But instead I have a number, given to me by the Federal government, which follows me wherever I go and keeps me from ever having a life, a career, anything worthwhile since I have to give that number to my prospective employers and with it they find out from that same Federal government that a long time ago I was once arrested for something so minor and normal and such a misapplication of the law that the judge dismissed the case. And then they don't hire me, despite my degree from a prestigious private liberal arts college, completed in only three years of Dean's List hard work, with two full majors.
You see, people like me are forgotten in this Information Age. People like me are invisible. People like me have no future. People like me hate bureaucrats and unnecessary or poorly written laws, for good reason. And people like me have good reason to dislike both Republicans and Democrats for creating a country so Orwellian as this one out of a country as wonderful as the one Jefferson and Madison and Washington made.
And I'm not the only one. A fifteen year old kid in Michigan is on the sex offender registry because he had consensual sex with his girlfriend, who was a year younger than he was. He'll never have a future, either. I could list a dozen more cases just from the top of my head, since I'm acutely aware of such things. But they're invisible to most of you. We are invisible to most of you, the victims of the Information Society where one small step can stay with you for the rest of your life, thanks to laws which change yearly and a number which doesn't.
Anyone want to hire a very good, very educated, very dedicated English and history teacher who was never actually convicted of anything? Didn't think so. So tell me why I should vote Democrat, when they did this just as much as Republicans did? They are the same.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Pray tell how much _money_ this top 1% of earners makes. You talk like it is unthinkable that the top 1% of earners should earn ten times what all the other earners do, put together. Yet, this is far from unrealistic- particularly if your percentage breakdown is according to population, the top percent is going to be earning significantly more than 1/3 of the total income.
Regarding Gore being his own man, may I mention the trial lawyers? This is the biggest lobby for the democrats. They have given Gore ten times as much as tobacco has given Bush.
The NRA I like. If you don't like the second amendment, that's fine. I would oppose your efforts to repeal it, but I would respect your honesty. Don't try to work around it.
I don't see how Bush has any more ties to religious groups than Gore. I mean, what's the democrats stance? Evil movie producers clean up your act, or we'll do it for you?
Yes. If you make $100k/yr, and pay 30% in taxes, you pony up $30k. Take a low income family that only makes $35k/year. You think it's fair to make them live on $5k/year, just so you can feel better about not paying more than they did? I bet it would be REEAALL easy to live on $70k/year NET income. I'd be willing to try... (in case my boss reads /.)!!!
Eric
The problem with a flat rate is that it is either too low, and the government doesn't have enough money for things like public school, roads, etc. (I imagine even libertarians see the need for these things), or the rate is high enough that it is an unfair burden on the lower class.
As I said in another post, 30% of $100k/yr still gives you $70k NET to live on (more than I gross a year, and I have a pretty good job). Take 30% a year away from someone making $25k/yr, and you leave them with $18.75k/yr. That hurts.
Now before you gripe about that amount, $25k/yr works out to around $12.50/hr, about what a construction worker makes around here. I'm not talking about some welfare mother with 5 kids, but about an everyday blue-collar worker doing a very important job. Hell, policemen around here (in RTP, NC) only make about $30k/yr. They had to remove the clause in their contracts stating they had to live in the county in which they worked. The police force realized they weren't paying enough for them to live on in Wake Co., so they were allowed to move to an adjoining county. The same thing is going on in SV, CA as well.
Eric
Hogwash. This is the same kind of scaremongering nonsense employed by gun controllers, anti-home schoolers, and most other nanny-statists. Do you honestly believe that there's enough of a market for sawdust-laden food that an industry that produced it as opposed to clean, healthy food could remain profitable for very long? Do you honestly believe there are not and could never be market alternatives to sawdust-laden food producers?
Might I suggest you read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, published in 1905... This is the book that brought about the existence of the FDA. In that book, there are things that will make you want to eat nothing you didn't grow/kill yourself. I haven't read it since senior year of high school, over a decade ago, but when I think of it, I still get somewhat nauseaous.
If corporations were not forced to adhere to strict rules on food production, the result would be that, because it is cheaper not to follow these rules, they would be producing foodstuffs of lower quality. If a competitor came along, and offered high quality food at a higher price, which do you think the lower class would choose? Most likely the stuff that will allow them to eat their fill (who really wants to 'enjoy' the feeling of an empty stomach all day?). This already happens. When was the last time you saw someone buy a round of brie and a bottle of Mouton-Rothschild on food stamps?
Eric
Seems strange to me that the default assumption is that money should be given to corporate barons to be "trickled down" at their whim on the lowly serfs. To me it is more natural that money trickle *up*. *Ensure* that there is a livable wage. *Ensure* that people have a baseline of health and education. And guess what? Those people will be healthier and more prosperous and have more leisure time. And they'll do strange things like -- wait for it -- *buy stuff*!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You have to be able to measure the quality of the work. How can you do that without knowing anything about cars or restaurants?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
No, silly. Hardware!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm not talking about shooting anybody, I'm talking about -er, compelling Robert and Steve to work together so neither of them die. Robert can still have a much, much, unimaginably higher lifestyle than Steve. He worked for it, he deserves it, he can have it. Maybe he has to sacrifice solid-gold toilet seats for gold-plated, eh?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fuck, I worked my ass off to help build this company, I deserve every penny. But I'm also not going to forget what it was like to be poor. It really sucked. Everyone deserves a chance.
And no, my feelings weren't hurt by the bank. But I do find that the difference in treatment, the discrimination, was unethical.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...well, maybe not in the top 1% but certainly the top five.
And my objective is not to collect more tax dollars but to hava a tax policy that recognized the value of work for hire by not taxing it at near twice the rate of capital gains. Most people work for hire and they're the people without which investments don't become reality. Ignore them at your peril!
Now, if this could be accomplished by cutting the top income tax rate to the level of capital gains, reducing the lower tax brackets accordingly, then great, that's ideal. Unfortunately, I don't think it's realistic.
And I still think it's immoral that unearned income is taxed at a lower rate than earned income.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I haven't seen a pimply-faced teen working at McDonald's in a long time. I only see foreign workers. For a lot of these people, McDonald's is a career, because they can't get other jobs with their poor English skills.
I've tried to communicate with these people, for example if they screwed up my order. It doesn't work. They are taught "When you hear "Quarter Pounder with Cheese", hit this button". They don't actually understand the words, they just connect sounds to finger motions.
These people aren't biding their time, waiting for their webpage hobby to attract venture capital.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
But stuff like school vouchers won't change this. The rich will still send their kids to private schools, but with school vouchers they get a nifty rebate...which comes out of money that would otherwise have gone to public schools. So the public schools--which are already running on shoestring budgets in many communities, especially large cities--have even less money for day-to-day operations. This leads to two possible outcomes:
Since most groups who advocate school vouchers are also in favor of reducing taxes, (1) isn't an option...it defeats the purpose of vouchers anyway. So I can only come to the conclusion that these groups want (2)...the complete abolishment of public education.
This of course leads to the inability of poor children to get any education at all. Which leads to them being unable to get higher paying jobs, which prevents them from getting out of poverty, which prevents their children from getting an education...ad nauseum.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Even "Murder is a crime" is very, very subjective.
First, take murder as "The unlawful killing of one human being by another." Does this include war? Well, you might say, "No", because war isn't unlawful. But, then, Milosovic just had a war with Bosnia (?) and we're accusing him of being a "war criminal" and want him to stand trial in the U.S. Has he committed murder? If so, is it a crime?
Second, the law itself is subjective, so the phrase "the unlawful killing" is subject to interpretation, as well. If a man beats his wife for 20 years and she shoots him, was her action unlawful? Well, that's decided by the opinions of seven random people in her area.
I'm not suggesting that murder isn't a crime; it's my strongly held opinion that it is. But it's just too subjective to be labeled a fact. "The netmask 255.255.255.192 represents 64 addresses" is a fact. It's repeatable and quantifiable.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
'Perhaps always?' Wow! Let's see, how would you suggest one go about 'fixing' the geocentric viewpoint? Or the flat earth theory? Or the crusades? Or the witch hunts? Or prohibition? Or Mir? Are these not examples where it is better to abandon than to try to fix?
The fact that you think it might be possible for it to always be better to fix than to abandon seems to say something about your own education.
"How is a gutted science curriculum different from a gutted reading curriculum?"
How are these different from a gutted music program or a gutted arts program? While you are I may agree that science and reading are even more important than music and art, we should not assume that all parents feel that way, and we should not force them to make the sacrifices we choose for them, particularly if those sacrifices involve giving up something that may be even more important to them, like religion (whether it be the Christ on a stick flavor, the sacrificial goat flavor, or something else).
Of course -- don't argumentam ad absurdam me, boy
How are these different from a gutted music program or a gutted arts program?
They aren't, of course -- I just didn't want to delineate every facet of a well rounded education as you seem to. But you're right, they're all important -- the arts equally as much as the sciences (kids need Michealangelo & da Vinci & Mozart every bit as much as they need Galileo & Newton & Einstein). And the fact that they need all of these things is exactly why I think that we need to publicly step in & provide them.
<diversion>I know it's a confrontational idea, but people really do need to be taught about, for example, both science and religion, and I wouldn't favor excluding either. Science does an excellent job of explaining the "how" questions we face, including all the "how to" questions that enable a technological society. But science fails utterly on the "why" questions, and only religion and philosophy can fill that void. I'm a raging athiest, but I cannot escape that conclusion, and I can see where just about everyone, on either side of that divide, probably has to grapple with the same split. Only by providing a balanced education can we give a future generation to decide which it prefers -- science's useful but sometimes bitter truths, or (in my opinion) religions heart-warming, sweet lies. Either way, that will likely tick off the current generation of parents, but I think it's necessary, and I think a comprehensive public education system is a very necessary component of that.</diversion>
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I believe the points I was making are as follows:
1. The definition of "murder" varies by culture and situation;
2. The definition of "crime" varies by culture and situation;
3. Whether a culture considers murder to be a crime at all is not absolute; and
4. Whether a killing is "unlawful" could be subjected to different cultural standards.
If you dropped a pencil in front of me once, that could be construed as fact to the immediate parties (you and me), but to no one else. First, perceptions are fallible and I could, for some reason, merely believe you to have dropped a pencil in front of me. I make it a point never to trust anyone's perception of an incident. Some people exaggerate; some cast themselves in a postive light; some lie completely. Second, if I reported the information that a pencil had been dropped to someone, and they were skeptical about it, there'd be no way to verify it. So, to them, "A pencil was dropped in front of Chiasmus by AnotherMacHack" could not be construed as fact.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Hey dittoboy,
I haven't seen all of those quotes, but I recognize the first three and the last two as Dan Quayle's exact words, not Gore's. Especially the third - I specifically remember that one.
In any case, I'd probably have some slip-ups if I made a stump speech every day for a year just campaigning, so it probably doesn't reflect much on either of them.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
I grew up during the civil rights movement in a family of Quaker heritage where interracial marriage was considered the proper solution to ethnic conflict. I grew up with mass media telling me the same thing, I went to public schools and higher education where I was told the same thing and I've been working in multiethnic urban centers like Miami, San Diego and Silicon Valley since 1981, but I've yet to see a case where the words "racism" etc. were used in conjunction with critical thought as opposed to mere ad hominem critique.
Jim Bowery: Since I made no mention of Hispanics, and you are writing anonymously, there is a very good chance you are not Hispanic at all, but merely posing as one for rhetorical advantage.
Anonymous Coward: You have just confirmed for me that you really are a bigot. Do you think Hispanics are only concerned with matters directly involving Hispanics?
Hispanics are just as "bigoted" as other ethnic groups. If you don't believe me, visit the gang-lands of various urban centers sometime. But, of course, you knew that already. Furthermore, you knew I knew it, etc. Your denial is simply part of the pathological social contract imposed by the real organs of propaganda.
Anonymous Coward: If I wanted to propagandize I'd have claimed to be an English immigrant. That would have caused you considerable cognitive dissonance...
Not really, but even assuming it would cause me congitive dissonance, my point about rhetorical advantage was not concerning that which would cause me the most cognitive dissonance. What I actually had envisioned was someone who wanted to hide behind a Hispanic identity to cause any resulting negative backlash to fall on Hispanics rather than on whatever ethnic group they were actually servicing. This is a fairly common tactic in anonymous communications involving ethnic conflict.
Jim Bowery: I don't have a particular problem with Hispanics, but if you are Hispanic, you're correct to be concerned.
Anonymous Coward: I think you do have a problem with Hispanics;
I said I don't have a particular problem with Hispanics. As I said above: Hispanics are just as "bigoted" as other ethnic groups. To that I would add that the current population ascendency of Hispanics, while not shared by all other ethnic groups, is not unique to Hispanics in the US. I do have a problem with ethnic groups that did not create this nation coming here, flourishing and then labeling people like myself, all of whose known ancestors were here before the revolutionary war with smear words like "bigots" and "racists", and then claiming that all stages of immigration groups are essentially the same. Hispanics aren't the only ethnic group that is prone to this treacherous abuse of hospitality. Pointing to the abuses of native Americans by the founding British subjects as justifying abuse by later immigrant groups fails to accord proper respect the profoundly different situation that existed when the first settlers to the British colonies were suffering a 1 in 4 mortality rate in the first year of immigration. This is a far cry from the challenges facing immigrants showing up today to a country with a technological civilization and political system more advanced than the one from which they were fleeing.
you prove your bigotry in the following passage:
I prove only that Hispanics are just as guilty of nepotism and "bigotry" as any other ethnic group.
Jim Bowery: Next time, try addressing the arguments -- especially if they are based on documented and reference facts -- as presented rather than launching into ad hominem rhetoric.
Anonymous Coward: Don't be so condescending. All you did was launch an ad hominem attack on David Brin, who launched his own ad hominem attack on the presidential candidates.
You are the only person in this context who is actually relying on ad hominem attack.
David Brin admitted he was acting a bit "over the top" with his comments on "preppies" and I excused that behavior on his part by pointing to the probable historic causes. This is a far cry from attacking Brin on an ad hominem basis. I then went on to point out, via facts and figures with references, that the definition of "preppy" has changed so much that it is now Brin's own ethnic group, Jews, who are most properly thought of as "preppy" in the very university, Yale, that Brin was attacking by attacking Bush, from a Yale educated family line, as an archetypal "preppy". This points out a faulty premise in his thinking and possible hypocrisy. I don't know whether Brin actually identifies with Jews as an ethnic group or not. For all I know Brin may be like many WASPs; quite ready and willing to attack those of their own ethnic group they see as weilding undue privilege within a universalist society. Although I doubt Brin is so universally motivated from a number of his statements I've heard and read in the past, and may therefore be a hypocrite, that is not the main point which is, again, it is Jews, not WASPs who are the Yale "preppies" of today -- the ethnic group that is apparently holding down non-"White" enrolement at Yale while keeping their numbers in that institution at a disproportion so high it cannot be completely accounted for by other factors. If Brin wants to distance himself from the epithets to which he almost certainly would subject others, then he can consider this a challenge to be more forthcoming with his critiques of his own ethnicity or stand accused of being a hypocrite.
Further, if people want to get bent out of shape over the distribution of wealth and power in the US, they are best served by looking at which ethnic group has the most millionaires and which ethnic group has most influence on mass media -- neither of which are WASPs. Again, it is those new "preppies" who are holding down the non-"whites" at Yale while holding their own in those halls of ivy: Jews.
This is not simply the result of hard work, intelligence etc. as amply calculated Yggdrasil's document "Diversity's Losers II", which you should try reading instead of just maligning.
Anonymous Coward: I'm praying for you.
Your sanctimonious public posturing is of little interest to me except as evidence that you are spiritually as well as intellectually bankrupt.
Seastead this.
I apologize for my delay in answering this thread which no one will ever read.
Whether a culture considers murder to be a crime is totally absolute, because murder is defined as unlawful killing. Whether a culture considers a particular killing to be a murder is subjective.
If you believe that law is totally absolute, I've got some beachfront property in Utah for you. Sure, I see what you're saying - "Murder is defined as 'criminal killing'". But even a definition is very subjective. Anyone can see that a dictionary's denotative definition is often worthless compared to the common-usage connotative definition. The issues of whether murder is criminal and whether a specific killing is a murder are more linked than you make them out to be. Often, a jury will make a decision based on the fact that they don't accept the legal definition of murder.
Now, certainly, I believe that there are objective facts. To me, an objective fact is a fact which can be demonstrated--and repeated--to anyone; for example, "When you throw a quarter in the air, it will fall to the ground."
If you drop a pencil on the ground, it becomes a fact to you and me, because we have seen it, and it could be repeated. When we relay that fact to someone else, however, it becomes hearsay, and can no longer be trusted as fact. Let me say right now: I just threw a rolled-up velcro strip at my co-worker's head. Can you safely consider that a fact?
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."