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Taxing Sci-Fi Products to Fund NASA?
LordNimon writes "According to an article in the Huntsville (AL) Times, Michael Williams, a Republican candidate for Congress, is proposing a 1% tax on any science fiction- or space-related products (e.g. books, toys, and games) and using that money to fund NASA. At first I thought this guy was crazy, considering the administrative nightmare of determining which products should be taxed. But then I realized something - this tax would make those who are most interested in space the primary source of space development funding. Instead of making everyone pay for NASA, those who care most about it also fund it the most. Maybe if the guy didn't work in a supermarket, he'd be taken more seriously."
I read practically nothing but one sort of SF or another, and I'm not even vaguely interested in the space program. So why should *I* be taxed for it??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
all the Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Herbert and other SciFi books again ? Not only NASA will be happy, IKEA and the moving companies also : new schelves, more volume to move, etc.
Whatever you call them, it's still a tax. Monies will be taken, put into a beaurcratic windmill, and a lot less will be spent on stuff that is useful.
Take 1% of Lucas et al's income from the Star Wars movies over the years.
:)
Probably end up about 15X NASA's budget
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Why not just take a portion of the sales tax used on Science Fiction products and move that towards NASA? Instead of 8.25% sales tax going torwards my state, 7.25% gets to them and 1% gets to NASA?
This could work for all products, 1% of food taxes (junk food, sodas) can go towards the FDA, 1% of medical taxes can go towards hospitals. I think it would be nice, the State and Gov't still get their taxes and we are sure some of it goes to those who might need it.
So..... anything with Velcro on it is taxable?
Yeah, great, let's all shift the taxes to the people who directly use them. Great. Next they'll be pushing the maintenance of public transport and taxes associated to the commuters; thus you'd be better of if u use your car...
Great idea...
::hmm.. 1st post?
::53 from VIC, AUS
if it'll enlarge NASA's badget, it's good. ever since the cold war space exploration have been underfunded. almost anything that will help is worth considering. i know i'm willing to pay the extra tax!
I'm all for this kind of targeted taxes policies.
People who buy SUVs should pay for environment protection, people who make money of building/renting houses/apartments should pay for affordable housing projects etc. People who buy scifi stuff should fund NASA. Sounds fair.
Note that I like scifi and don't care much for NASA, but I still think that this makes sense.
I passed the Turing test.
Why all scifi? What about a book about nanotechnology, or biochemistry? Or how about most of William Gibson's stuff? That's got almost nothing to do with space exploration. Would there be an agency to evaluate each and every piece of scifi-related material?
And while a lot of people who read sci-fi might not think it's a bad idea, there are also a lot of other sci-fi fans (myself included) that think NASA is largely a joke these days, and private interests could probably do a better job, but that nasty gov'mint keeps NASA as the only credible space agency instead....
When all the money funding NASA results in some technological breakthrough (eg, Teflon) that benefits millions, do the people who paid for the research via the SF tax get dividends?
All the plastic toys from the next starwars movie should yeild enough tax money to fund many manned trips to mars!
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augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
Is it just me or do the articles these past few weeks really freaking blow?
Let's tax NASA and use the money to buy SciFi products for geeks instead.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think that space and space exploration are cool, but I'm not at all a SciFi fan.
Hey, while we're at it, we might as well tax Africa, because thats where AIDS came from. And we should tax Canada, because they're Canada. And while we're on a roll, lets tax Cowboy Neal, because his name has "Cow" in it and everything with "Cow" in it should be taxable.
Sheeple....electing this CRAP
He's got my vote if he adds to his platform a tax credit for sci-fi induced pain.
We need to get *something* beneficial out of all the Jar Jar Binks doll sales.
This guy has a masters (political science) and a bachelor's (business management) degree. Yet he works at the local supermarket? Unless he owns the place the going to college was not worth it for this guy (even then perhaps not).
ACs deserve first post always, way to shove it down the throats of those logged-in trash-trolls.
...only people with children should have to pay taxes that go into education.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to pay for things that benefit society as a whole, even if those things don't affect them personally. If we're agreed that NASA benefits us all (please, no Tang jokes), we should all pay for it.
This guy's a kook.
the church of Scientology--then we're talking! They already have two people that want to be the first actors launched into space--Travolta and Cruise.
..and if Nasa wasn't a flop, we wouldn't need to listen to crazy ideas like this.
I'm all for funding NASA but this is the kind of stuff that keep accountants employeed: confusing and vague tax laws. The whole notion of "what to tax" will be debatable for many, and it's yet one more algorithm to add to my annual tax party.
If NASA needs more money, just sent Tito up again!
And they could charge him the 1% tax. Surely a trip into space qualifies as a scifi product/service!
alt.binaries.erotica.hamster.ducktape
Hey wait, you mean some people don't want to pay taxes for things they're not interested in?! Stop the presses!!!
NASA has produced a lot of stuff that has benefited the entire country, not just the 'geeks' that are interested in it - I'm thinking nylon off the top of my head. Saying that the 'geeks' who want space exploration outght to be taxed for it is somewhat analagous to saying the people who want some other benefit seen specific to them (low-cost housing, riparian rights people) should foot the bill for those agencies. It just doesn't seem right.
Simple simile: taxing sci-fi products to promote the space industry is like taxing Barbie products to promote the fashion industry. This, folks, is socialism at its finest.
Mod me down if you need to, but you've gotta admit the world would be a better place.
Steve
a portion of drug money can be used for various social causes, like federal elections
That people breathing would pay for the clean air act? I'm not really interested in clean air, as long as the earth doesn't blow up while i'm alive, its all good. *the humour light blinks*
Seriously now, there's one problem with this whole idea: Double Taxing. Yo pay a sales tax, but ALSO the Star Wars Tax. Isn't that like taxing twice? Seems like our founding fathers would be mighty angry...
s/space/chocolate/
s/spaceship/chocolate chip/
s/light-speed/very very fast/
...to evade tax.
So how will he define science fiction?
Will LOTR be taxed? (Aliens)
Will Bond be taxed? (Gismos)
Would Shrek/Monsters inc/Toy story be taxed?
Would stories featuring missiles or fighter planes have the space tax?
I personally favour the idiot tax. All politicians favouring new and innovative taxes will give 50% of their earnings to NASA. That oughta fix it.
We should give 2% so the sci-fi people get more of a say as to what's going with the space industry...I'd be happy to know that my star-wars ticket costs would go to the development of a brand new death star
My name is Monkey and I am an Economic slave. Close as I can figure it the year is 2002 AD and I'm being taxed to my death. It wasn't always like this... I had a real life, once.
>Instead of making everyone pay for NASA, those
>who care most about it also fund it the most.
Hmm, this is a dangerous way of reasoning. I suppose your country has at least some kind of system that helps homeless people, unemployed, orphans, etc...
Most/many people with homes and jobs won't really care about them. So they shouldn't pay, according to your reasoning. Let the homeless and unemployed pay, eh, for themselves.
You can argue that NASA is luxury, that we don't need their research. Perhaps. There's no way to know what we are going to find up there. Moreover, NASA developed a lot of stuff that is in common use today.
--
GCP
That's a great idea - we should only tax the people who care about NASA for NASA!!
And while we're at it, we'll pay for police protection with a tax on handguns, alarms and mace (after all, those are the people interested in protection); fire protection with a tax on smoke alarms and extinguishers; cleaning up the environment by taxing granola and birkenstocks; and welfare by taxing Volvos!
Aside from certain use fees and excise taxes where consumption is generally related to some gov't service (e.g., gasoline consumption is generally related to highway use), the gov't taxes us generally and then allocates the monies according to priorities.
I don't see a decent rationale for why scifi consumers should fund NASA when the population at large reaps the benefits of the scientific and techological discoveries. It's not just the kids with Jar-Jar dolls who drink Tang...
Well, in my plan to become President I want to put a 2% tax on all murder mysteries to pay for crime prevention, a 3% tax on all adventure books to pay for the army, and a 5% tax on all romance books to take care of unwanted children.
We can fund the whole planet on book sales!!!!!
kd
There is no one who utilizes all functions of the government. That's the idea. We all pay for everything, and then use these things disproportionately. If we broke the system down into things along the lines of "pay for what you use," we would have an administrative nightmare.
There is also a great deal of overlap within government projects. For example, much NASA research would be applied to a missile shield, but many science aficionados are strictly against such a project. If you operate under the idea that we should pay only for what we support, then I most certainly will not pay for a shield, which thus means not paying for NASA in the first place.
~Kumomancer
Here's an idea: fund the space program with a tax on organizations that USE the space program. Want to launch a satellite? Pay your NASA tax, they paved the way. Your satellite needs a repair? Call NASA, and have your checkbook ready.
Why should sci-fi readers foot the bill for a program that greases the wheels for telecom companies, DirecTV, spaceimaging.com et al? Why can't they (and their customers) pay their own freakin' way?
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
This is pointless. How much revenue could this possibly bring to NASA? A few million? How about we shave 1% off of our massive defense budget and send a couple billion over to NASA? And while we're at it we could shave off 1% more and feed most of the hungry people in America. We need to spend less money on failed spy games, meddling and trying to play cold war and more on helping research, education and wellfare.
... you're closer to the truth than you probably realize. The budget on Brian de Palma's awful Mission to Mars was US $90 million... more than 75% of the budget of an equally-flawed but substantially better-intended real-life mission.
When Hollywood drops a bomb, nobody cares. When NASA loses a similar amount of money trying to advance human knowledge, it's practically the end of the world. Congressional inquiries are launched, indignant editorials are published, and modern-day Great Society pundits bemoan the tragic waste of funding that could have gone to their own pet causes.
This is the unfortunate reality of publicly-funded space exploration. It's perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the "bread and circuses" social phenomenon that attended the fall of Rome. Never mind the urban myths -- think of the money NASA could have saved if they actually had hired Stanley Kubrick to stage the Apollo missions in the Nevada desert. Apparently, that would have been good enough for us.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Okay, while this may be a good idea (after all, I'm all over targeted tax collection methods - its a first step towards complete privatization) I don't think that spending this money on a trip to mars would be beneficial at all.
Much of the benefits of space technology are gained just by getting into space in the first space, not doing some huge manned mission. The round trip time for a manned mission is very long, and what is really to be gained from it?
I think that collecting such money for the space program should be funneled into activities which will benefit industries beyond aerospace. Space stations could offer advantages to many scientific fields (more precise electronic manufacturing facilities enabled by zero-g) instead of just giving more money to defense contractors.
Its our tax dollars, so why not have them work for us. I'd rather have manufacturing facilities orbiting the earth than a warm fuzzy feeling inside because we made it to mars and back....
Just because the guy has a stupid idea does not make it cool to take shots at people that work at supermarkets. We do not know what he does in his work capacity. Maybe he is an executive.
It is sad for me to see it when "educated" people ridicule others for what they do for a living.
Next time just keep it on topic
The only beneficiaries will be the accountants.
NASA will not gain much from this kind of tax.
Maybe closer relationships with Sci-fi authors who can be used as a PR tool.
The authors on the other hand will pass the tax on to the consumers.
The extra paper work alone will eat up the 1% tax.
And again the overhead expenses will be passed down to the consumer.
The best thing for NASA is to get to Mars or come up with alternative energy sources.
Then everything else will take care of itself.
I see I rubbed the CLIT the wrong way.
There HAS to be a big project to catch the imagination and attention of the next generation of Space exploration workers. Right now Space is Boring. Computers are hot, no one is growing up wanting to be an astronaut anymore. There needs to be something done to fire the imagination of the world again, we're so embroiled in our petty border squabbles between people of differently shaded skin or slightly modified philosphy that people can't realize that we are all human, we are all at heart the same, and we should all be working together to spread ourselves to the stars. It's possible, it can be done, and it will be done. I'd love to live to see it, and I'm willing to pay to make it happen.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Is where it's at. One step away from asteroid mining.
There are asteroids out there with *trillions* of dollars worth of platinum. And of course, you need lots of platinum for fuel cells.
Ok I gotta ask, what happens if I write a book that is not exactly science fiction but sort of "stretches" science a little bit? Is that tax evasion?
Is Kurzweil's book SciFi?
What about fantasy genre? Is that taxable, or are the flying dragons taxes exempt?
This is stupid. Sci-Fi fans may well follow NASA, but all that supposed return on investment from NASA pays back to everyone.
Would it have been right for Sci-Fi fans to have paid for developing Tang(tm), just so everyone else could mooch off the invention?
I think not.
If they tax the holy living fuck out of people who watch Star Trek: Voyager, then maybe those dogfuckers at Paramount studios will quit this syndication bullsthit, and I can finally have some peace and quiet while I'm trying to whack off to CG porn of Seven of Nine getting fucked up the ass by Lieutenant Commander Data.
Or is that going to be taxed too, under this idea?
Oh fuck.
I think other posters are right when they call this unfair. (Not all sci-fi fans care about NASA, many people would benefit from technology developed by NASA, whether they payed or not).
So if you want to create an incentive, just pass a law making contributions to NASA be tax free and let people contribute as much (or as little) as they want. Maybe NASA could put advertisements in sci-fi products encouraging people to donate (the product manufacturers could then write off some promotional expense or whatever). Maybe theaters could show a brief promotional trailer (put together by NASA) during the trailers in sci-fi movies. Afterall, their doing so could be a TAX DEDUCTIBLE contribution to NASA, even though it doesn't really cost them anything and would likely not anger customers at all.
Maybe this could usher in an era where we see a whole new class of quasi-governmental organizations with tax-exempt status.
I'm not sure this is a good idea, but it is an idea.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
K, I agree that catching the imagination of people will help promote space exploration. Heck, putting a man on the moon was something everyone could watch and it drove alot of technological progress.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, it just shouldn't be done right now. Getting more space stations operational, and then manufacturing components for future crafts in zero-g is the way to go.
The current cost to get stuff into space is insane.. its like 100,000/lb... with orbiting space stations the cost of producing the materials for future spacecrafts would drop greatly. I see space stations as the first stepping stone, then a moonbase, and then mars once its a little more economically feasible.
The NASA budget is driven by politics, not revenue. If this 1% tax yielded any noticeable funds for NASA, the gain would be offset when they take away funds from the general revenue. Naturally, this is justified by the limitless "needs" of "social" programs.
In any event, the idea isn't so great. Making the unfortunate people without social lives pay for space exploration would only be fair if they introduced a ton of other user fees -- for example, introducing more toll roads for drivers or taxing people who buy copies of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" for the cost of educating the children which result.
And for those of you who say NASA's money should go to social programs, I ask you this: Where would America's poor be without Tang? Huh? Smart guy?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
This idea is just dumb. All people benefit from space exploration, whether directly or indirectly.
Because the benefits aren't obvious to this guy, he believes there are none. Why does NASA always seem to be the whipping boy of conservative politicians?
I guess we need another sex scandal to occupy their time!
Politicians are scum but they are smarter than the typical slashdotter. A SciFi tax will accomplish nothing. If an extra billion comes in from a SciFi tax then the politicians will reduce traditional NASA funding by a billion so they can spend that money elsewhere. This is an old trick and you should have recognized the pattern, "state lottery income will increase funding for schools", "a slight increase in the gasoline tax will increase highway funding", etc.
intelligence != common sense
intelligence != good judgement
It's only the location of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. The guy's just trying to funnel taxes to his home district.
Oh, and he does sound like a freak-o dweeb.
Instead of 8.25% sales tax going torwards my state, 7.25% gets to them and 1% gets to NASA?
Let me get that straight. Under your system, as a consumer you will pay the exact same rate as you did before, and NASA will receive the same number of billions. What did you change exactly?
Money doesn't smell. Whether you pool it and split it afterwards, or whether you route it in a complicated manner, it makes no difference if at the end every source and sink in the network sends and receives the same amount of money.
The shape of the "money flow network" has no effect. That's why governments use the simplest network possible: centralize and distribute. Enlightened?
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Everytime you buy army toy figures you fund a bomb made to blow people up.
I'm ok with funding NASA like this but only if everything else was funded like this too.
If NASA is the only thing thats funded like this it seems like another trick to redirect resources.
Bush used that trick, trillion dollar tax cut yet an increased military budget, increased spending, putting us in debt, oh and we lose out on stuff like social security.
Tax cuts are fine if we learn to use the money we have more efficiently. If not, tax cuts end up hurting us.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
a change to the tax process where we can at least specify what a small percentage (I'd be happy with even 1%, but more would be better) of our income tax goes directly towards.
I don't think that's too much to ask. You'd be forced to still give up 99% of your income tax to whatever 'they' decide, typically wasteful crap. It's OUR damn tax money, we should be able to at least specify where a tiny amount goes. We should be able to specify ALL of it, directly, but that ain't gonna happen.
Just think of other ramifications this kind of a change could have. I think it would be great.
And maybe with another 1% of it you can say "This 1% of my money will definitely NOT be spent on X" That'd be cool.
Possible, but highly unlikely, I admit. But does anyone see any bad coming of this, except slightly higher tax administration/distribution costs since they don't just throw it all in a pile.
The solution is to fund all government programslike that.
Why should we be forced to have our money sent to airport companies for a bailout? We spent 20 billion dollars bailing them out!
You are right, interest should decide how much is spent on where, however we dont have a true democracy, we are a republic and thats going against the nature of the government itself.
You allow US to decide where the money goes, and most of the people in the government and congress will be out of a job.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Can Congress actually leverage a sales tax?
I know that Congress has jurisdiction over interstate commerce, but if I buy a locally-produced sci-fi product, well, Congress doesn't have the Constitutional right to tax me on that.
Remember, boys and girls, they had to get an amendment just to do that silly income tax.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
NASA is an immensely wasteful, bloated bureaucracy that's still riding on the glory days of Apollo. More than any other factor it is responsible for the LACK of private space development. Rather than stealing away more money from the people who earned it, how about just auctioning off NASA's facilities to private companies who actually want to make space accessible on a real commercial basis. Then perhaps those of us who don't have $20 million to spend on a ride will have a finite chance of getting into space before we die of old age.
...why not just put a tax on breakfast burrito and muu-muu purchases?
>>Maybe if the guy didn't work in a supermarket, he'd be taken more seriously.
OMG, an idea is an idea, no matter who it came from. And besides:
"A Hampton Cove resident, Williams, 28, holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a bachelor's degree in business management from Athens State University."
...and Mars is finally habitable due to terraforming, will only the sci fi lovers get to reap the benefits and move to Mars?
intelligence != common sense
intelligence & common sense are mutial exclusive.
Anybody remember the nightmare in California with the Snack Tax? It was fucking insane. This man is an idiot.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
This is always the same, old, demagogic rant about making pay for public services "those who benefit" instead of everybody. Schemes about as ridiculous as this one have been proposed for road usage, pollution control, public television and what not. This is just childish and pointless.
The only way I could agree to paying tax on sci-fi is if they layed everyone off from NASA and used the money to hire new people to replace them. The loosers they have there now blow money faster than grannies in a bingo hall. I'm all for the space program, but that bunch are heading no-wheres fast.
I may seem crazy to some, but I actually support this tax. It would only make sense that money from a tax on our imaginary goals be used to achieve them.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
I'm not an accountant, and I don't know much about what NASA's done in the past. But I know we owe velcro, teflon, nylon, and tang to them. So why can't NASA just retain rights to these products, and divert 15% of the income the brands that "own" them back to NASA? They came up with this stuff. Then again, it'd be kind of hard to tax "velcro usage". Maybe when they come up with some great new groundbreaking product or device, they could sell it to the private sector for inane amounts of money? NASA is smart enough to provide its own income, I mean come on, they could build a "Tourism Wing" to the ISS and sell tickets there for $15 million a pop, that'd fix a lot of budget problems wouldn't it? I think it'd be cool to walk into a giftshop myself and buy a jar of "Real Moon Dust, courtesy of NASA Commercial Flight Dept." Just a few thoughts here, can't NASA see their gadgets, services (who else has reusable space-worthy craft? Or as much experience sending junk into space).
Let's see... we spend $125B a year in corporate welfare. NASA is asking for a little over $15B. Which one is most likely to see cuts?
The economic benefits of the space program go far beyond Tang and Hubble calendars. The space race is second only to war for causing advances in technology. (Not that it's a race anymore.) Sure, a lot of the funding goes to dog-and-pony type operations, and things that count more towards PR than knowledge; but considering the return rate for the knowledge we *do* glean, why the *HElL* are we so tight with funding?????
Taxing SF to fund NASA is like taxing full-contact sports to fund war, or taxing Big Wheels to fund roads. Everyone reaps the benefits (except those who die in the war, I guess); everyone should pay. Hell, they didn't ask if I wanted to help fund the S&L bailout; why should they ask short-sighted tight-fisted bastards if they want to fund space research?
If they want to use opt-in funding, they should do that for everything. I don't want to bail out Enron and Boeing and the airlines; send my money to NASA and university research, instead.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!
Whenever an item becomes more expensive, less of it will be consumed. Do we want fewer people reading science books!?!?!??!?
Taxing based upon book content sounds highly suspicious. If there were a 20% tax on books with native american characters, that would NOT pass constitutional muster (in addition to being just a plain horrible idea).
This is how NASA should be making its money:
This would be a shaky argument even if you could prove that the only beneficiaries of the space program would be those who were taxed.
Would you support public schools getting their funding through taxes only on those with children?
Personally, I think that targetted taxes for programs that are of benefit to the public as a whole are a bad idea. Many people who can afford their own (insert private alternative to publicly funded institution) would very much like to not pay for such things.
why not tax the profits from previous NASA projects, and use that to fuel further projects? such as a tax on microwaves, aluminium foil, etc... that way everyone who is benefitting today from previous space projects funds the next generation of products...
All of the useful and cool science Nasa is doing is coming from the satellites and other unmanned mission Nasa is doing. The cheap satellites going to Mars, the mission to an asteroid, detailed observations of Earth are all unmanned missions. Unmanned missions can be launched with a FRACTION of the cost of manned missions.
On the other hand, the space station has been nothing beyond a giant cost overrun, and the wobbles of station have the possibility of throwing off even the few semi-useful microgravity experiments you can think of.
To put it plainly, putting men in space has little value other than novelty appeal, and given that cold war jockeying with Russia is over, we should send the billions spent on manned flight somewhere useful.
how about we take all the stupid sales taxes, which are basically a double tax akin to the taxes on inheritance, and funnel it into NASA instead?
I'd much rather NASA got the money than the state governments who really have absolutey no valid claim to it. It's funny how policies that were once considered temporary, unfair, and illegal can become indoctrinated in juts a few generations.
-rt
Than we do on the NASA budget
Than we do on welfare
Than we do on building schools.
Hell we spend more money bailing airport companies out than we do on schools, whats more important than schools?
In my opinions our priorities are all wrong, because dumbasses in our government dont know how to spend money properly, this goes for both the republicans and democrates.
Our money should go to technology, healthcare, schools.
Technology will allow us to live better, Healthcare will allow us to live longer, School will allow us to have the intelligence to actually live without destroying ourselves.
Now how much money is being spent on technology? well nano technology got less than 100 million, we spent less than 100 million searching for vaccines for aids and cures for cancer, we spent around 20 billion for public schools but what we really need is complete reform, and doubled budget so schools use all the latest technology to bring kids into the digital age.
instead, 20 billion goes to airports in a bailout, tax cuts all over the place but the military budget is increased with next to none of this budget being used for homeland defense.
Its almost insane that we spend almost a trillion a year on the military (most of the budget) all of these nuclear bombs and secret weapons, yet not a single bomb shelter, no way to stop a biological attack, no way to stop nuclear attacks, no way to stop terrorist attacks like 911.
We have absolutely no defense, the best our government does is warn us and we can only hope our under funded local law enforcement can handle the situation.
ALot of people especially people from slashdot say tax cuts are good, my question to these people, Do you all have bomb shelters? How will you survive a nuclear terrorist attack?
So if we lower taxes it just means more money gets put into stupid programs that we dont want or need, or programs we dont know about.
Perhaps anti tax slashdotters and anti government types have a solution for terrorism?
Not only that, but will we ever go to mars? I doubt it, it would be too expensive to do so for about another 20 years, and the more tax cuts, the less likely we will ever venture out into space in this lifetime.
NASAs budget is insanely small,
The Nano Technology budget is insanely small
The Science & R&D research budgets are too small, the ones which arent too small are classified government projects which we wont know about for about 20 years or the next war.
The problem isnt that we spend too much on taxes, the problem is, the money we spend on taxes we have no control over, perhaps if we were given control, taxes could be raised and no one would care.
Perhaps we need a system to allow us to control where the tax money goes. So that I can pay all my taxes to a certain thing, like bomb shelters and schools.
I dont want to fund the war on iraq, the attack on south korea, vietnam or any other pointless war our government throws us into.
I certainly dont want to fund some secret project i know nothing about.
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Is there some way to make this "opt in"? I like the idea of an author or whatever saying, "Buy my product and a percentage will go to NASA". Or something like that.
MikeAtIF*ckStuffedAnimalsDotCom
They should tax the NON-SF stuff. The SF stuff lets people dream about space, it makes NASA worthwile in the minds of the proles. It's the trashy, meaningless marketing hyped crap that saps the minds of our children. Tax that crap!
Here's the article, in case the site gets slashdot'd. Which for some reason just isn't happening.
The web servers are obviously holding up pretty good, right now, but it goes without saying that they will eventually melt under the magnificent load.
And since I am the first one to realize this, I should deserve plenty Karma.
Now, you can all moderate me down, whilst the thing is still going strong, but in the morning, when all there is, is the smoking remains, and this one simple post, my revenge will be sweet.
Without further adoo:
5th District GOP hopeful wants sci-fi to aid NASA
Williams sees tax on science fiction books as space funding solution
04/22/02
From Staff Reports
Michael Williams, a Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District seat, has a novel plan to fully fund NASA: Tax science fiction.
Williams proposes a 1 percent "NASA tax" on science fiction books, science fiction comic books, space sciences books and any other space-related literature.
The tax would also apply to "space, space-related, and science fiction toys, puzzles and games," Williams said in a listing of his platform.
He also proposes increasing tax depreciation for research and development expenses to at least equal similar tax breaks granted by European governments. Several other tax breaks he proposes include investment tax credits and a 3- to 5-percent tax cut for the middle class.
A pro-life candidate, Williams also promises if elected to sponsor a bill that would allow abortions only in cases of rape, incest or for medical reasons. He also favors providing money for medical research to perform "pre-birth" adoptions, which "will allow for the safe removal of unborn children from their mothers that does not harm the mothers or the unborn children."
Congressional candidate calls for 'global grand convention' Sci-fi Continued from page B1 Williams wants Congress to adopt a resolution establishing a "global grand convention" that would ensure all inhabitants of Earth the same basic rights found in the U.S. Constitution.
His resolution would also require holding a constitutional convention when 30,000 colonists have settled or been born "on the moon, Mars or any other celestial body besides the Earth."
A Hampton Cove resident, Williams, 28, holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a bachelor's degree in business management from Athens State University. He works at Publix Super Market at Hampton Cove.
He is a graduate of Madison County High School, a member of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce and the North Alabama African-American Chamber of Commerce.
Williams faces Stephen Engel of Athens in the June 4 GOP primary. The winner faces U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, in November.
I rather doubt that it's constitutional to tax speech based on its content. Coming next, 1000% tax on publications supporting the Democratic party?
A school in Victoria is having it's funding cut from a project to send spiders into space (I'm feeling lazy, so use google and search for "site:.au victoria school spider space -porn -goatsex" ) We could put a 1% tax on fly-spray and the people who hate spiders can fire some into space.
I'll be happy to pay.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Actually, if Earth becomes unlivable, Mars is our next big bet. With politics going on the way they are these days, I really would like a guest house for humanity to move into.
"Derp de derp."
Yes, NASA patents sci-fi. Does it also read in NASAs sci-fi EULA that no free (no tax incomes for NASA) products may not use any space related material ?
Is there any doubt that that 1% tax on Scientology books would be ruled unconstitutional? Then by the same token the SciFI tax would not fly (Bad pun sorry)
Help fight continental drift.
I personally will not send any money ear marked for "science" until the current administration takes it upon themselves to institute a science advisor. As far as I can recall, GW has been running without one since his swearing in. Hell, they even have the office space now that Hughes has packed up and moved out. Moreover, I really don't belive that Dick Chaney has any business heading NASA, despite his VP Duties.
Exactly!
I'd rather have a complete democracy than a republic
Republic is exactly the problem with government, if it is a democracy, then its no longer big brother, its us.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is one of the worst ideas I've seen in while.
How about we add a tax to sporting goods to support the olympics.
How about we add a tax to classical music Cds to support music education.
How about we add a tax to rolling papers to fight the drug war.
This is just stupid, classification is nearly impossible, and actually almost discrimination.
If people would fund public programs by their purchases, I fear that many good causes would dissappear and other causes would be flodded with money.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
Did any of you guys read the article about solar arrays on the moon? OMG.
"There HAS to be a big project to catch the imagination and attention"
Hello? I think colonizing the moon to create an installation which would supply limitless energy to earth might fall into this category.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
So we all should pay for it. If it werent for
NASA we wouldnt have stuff like satellite TV,
some materials, drugs, foods and technologies.
People who do not want to pay for NASA shouldnt
be allowed to board escape spaceships when giant
meteor will be heading for Earth.
The real issue isn't the funding of NASA, it's the funding and managing of Space initiatives.
When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, the US government felt challenged to respond. The result was NASA receiving about 1% of US government revenue to land the first men on the Moon.
But there was another way that was overlooked. A consortium of Bechtel Engineering (builders of the Hoover Dam and other massive projects) and Disney (Walt was in charge in those days) could have done the Apollo Project without government funding -- and made money by doing so.
I applaud this as an attempt to come up with an imaginative approach to Space funding. That said, I'd suggest folks keep looking.
Science fiction has been subsidizing Space development for years by giving it ideas. Consider then extreme case of Arthur C. Clarke, who gave the world the concept of telecommunication satellites. Rather than patent the idea, Clarke included the idea in a science fiction story. By putting the concept into public domain in this way, Clarke personally subsidized the Space sector to the tune of billions of dollars by not requiring royalties from everyone who uses them.
Like the whole semiconductor industry.
They should really be paying, as the stuff that NASA develops eventually filters down to the high-tech companies to use in new products.
Now, I'd sure like to do my part in adding to NASA's budget, since I think NASA is doing a fantastic job and gets little or no recognition. So if a "scifi" tax got implemented I don't think I'd be against it.
What bothers me is people often find it hard to give NASA money (eg, politicians), because of the "oh, we've been to the moon, and walked in space, what else is there?" mentality.
But that's exactly the point! What else is there, and what can we learn?
Just look at history... limiting space budget only hurts us. We could already have had a colony on Mars for 10 years if it wasn't for cutbacks after we went to the moon.
Handguns arent about protection. If they were, then why on earth would countries with the lowest number of guns have the fewest gun deaths, and those with the most guns have the most deaths?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
This tax is very stupid.. Most of the replys I read, say exactly what I feel about taxing only to those "interested" in space. I just want to add, that from space explortation NASA has been able to push technology to the limits creating wonderful things.. Just think about lighter materials that are very resistant, etc.... So, everyone should be taxed anyways, because everyone is benefiting (sp?) from it.. even other countries...
Another problem with this scheme is that more people benefit from NASA than are interested in it. Pure science research pays off (low-gravity manufacturing, tang, etc...) But what fraction of people that use perfectly round ball-bearings are really interested in space science and research?
This type of tax unfairly burdens those who are interested in a subject with paying for it, when everyone reaps the rewards.
How about a tax on blank media (CD-Rs) to support the music industry.
Think about it before you mod it down.
Brought to you by the same guys as the $700 toilet seat.
Welfare reform (our way of giving up on the unemployed)
We have state by state homeless solutions, some have none, some states have homeless shelters, the federal government doesnt solve this.
According to most republicans and capitalists, its every man for himself, no helping the homeless, no taxes at all etc.
Its up to the people, while the people voted for gore, bush is president, bush cut taxes by about a trillion dollars, most of this money is taken from welfare, helping the homeless, social security and other freebies and put into the military
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Everyone benefits from NASA, whether they realize it or not. These types of "targeted" taxes never work anyway. Politicians always figure out a way to steal money for their other interests. Example? Social Security.
Don't worry, in 10 or so more years, China's space program will be enough of a threat to make American rise up the only way we know how. In a competition of "mine's bigger than your's" and then we'll spend some money on NASA again.
(just posting to undo a mismoderation)
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
we should begin terraforming mars right now, then we can go to europa and see if we discover any aliens under the ice, after that, we can begin building on mars to prepare for when we need to move to mars (or want to move there)
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
next they'll want to tax crypto products to fund the NSA!
It hurts to know that where I live we have reduced tax on hollywood movies to support culture.
It's that everyone benefits. If they only let us Sci-Fi geeks reap the rewards then sure, tax only us 1%. But if I see a none Sci-Fi person using the next great intellectual property to come out of NASA, I'm going to be pissed.
"Hey, the Sci-Fi people paid for that space age coating on that pan! Hand it over!"
That's why responsible targeted taxes are used to pay for the costs of the tax payer, in theory at least. Such as taxing cigarettes to pay for health costs.
that there is a ton of money already gotten by taxes. The real problem lies in the allocation of tax money and how NASA keeps on getting cut more and more. Just allocate 1% of the military budget and we'd get people zippin' all across the solar system.
Have you heard about the 'bullet tax' being proposed in California? It would go to pay for bullet wound victim expenses...
;-p
...or how about the 'soda tax' that would go to offsetting 'obesity' expenses...
just a few more examples of ludicrous taxes being proposed.
I'm thinking a 'shoe' tax for expenses due to sidewalk revovation...
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I can say the same thing about a lot of Slashdot users...
If the movie flops, big deal. It's their loss of money. Nothing to cry over.
On the other hand, if a Nasa mission fails, the millions of dollars that we, as taxpayers, have poured into the project has gone down the drain.
Yes, you could argue that we ourselves finance Corperations that make lousy movies. But then, not only is this voluntary, but it they also happen to give us something back the moment we pour money into our cause. We get... Scarface (Brian De Palma isn't all bad)!
On the other hand, it takes years for the money that we pour into the government to somehow trickle back to us. And when we do get part of that money, it hardly seems worth highway robbery we face each and every tax period. After millions spent on aid to other countries and welfare, what do we get back from the government that seems satisfying? A sex scandal now and then. That's it.
That's why people get pissed every time something from NASA blows up.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Jesus.. when will they stop making me pay for sports arenas?? I have never been to one, don't watch them, don't care about any of it, yet I still have to pay. Make sports people pay for that shit.
Fine - tax the books, games, movies, etc that I pay for every year.
But, I want it run for profit, and I want a cut of the profits. No Department of Defense Freebies, knock of the senators having any frigging say in what gets researched, swipe my national ID card and give me a cut of the profits based on the copious amounts of sci-fi that I read/watch/play.
BTW - that means TV (sattelite launches) missle shield, possible microwave power futures, whatever.
Let everyone else live in the stone age
Make people who buy gun & survival stuff pay for wars, tax sugar & fat content in snacks to pay for food for starving people in the third world, tax political thrillers to fund the Enron investigation, best of all tax stupidity, typos and people who are in jobs beyond their capability to fund Bush's 2004 campaign.
Well, after bombing the shit out of afghanistan, just 'maybe' its allright to help them build up what you destroyed?
They're not exactly in a financian situation to do that themselves.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
My name is j0ey and i am herer to hackser your gibson mainframe WHER AERE PASSWERDZ???? CRACKSZ???
sh0uts to:
d4de
l0rd n1kon
jesus christ
How would a bomb shelter have any effect on you surviving a terrorist nuclear attack? Do you plan to live there?
yet not a single bomb shelter, no way to stop a biological attack, no way to stop nuclear attacks, no way to stop terrorist attacks like 911.
Guess what? That's because there is no way to stop loonies like that. How will you ever defend against the possibility of two guys with a backpack nuclear bomb blowing up New York? Perhaps we should outlaw backpacks?
Here's the rub - the only way to protect the US population is to stop making enemies and to work against poverty and illiteracy all over the world. The guys who get drafted for fundamentalist causes are mainly poor and uneducated orphans from the streets. A standard brainwash takes place, where the organization offers food and shelter, thus getting total emotional control over the victim.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Since Nasa is the only way in the US to get your ass in space (in the US I said) can they patent and copyright it?
Then license it and fund themselves?
Yankee doodle came to town riding on a pony. The chinese will progress to Mars whilst NASA is still arsing around in the Earths orbit.
This idea would modify the whole philosophy behind public management. If we agree to do this, why should anyone without a car pay for the cost of building highways?, or even funnier, what happens if I am not interested in financing the educational system because my sons are going to be sent to private schools?
Turning all taxes into direct taxes is not the way to go for a modern society, I think.
Of course, if the idea is that the NASA is kind of a luxury, then it should be just privatized, and let it survive by its own resources (how long do you think it would last?).
Maybe I was forgetting that candidates sometimes need to be known more than taken seriously, though. We should congratulate this guy then.
You want to force ME to pay for the space program by giving my tax dollars to a bunch of dolts who:
-can't launch a space mission more than once every couple of months TOPS.
-won't go back to the moon
-won't be going to Mars any time while I'm alive
-won't send my beloved mission to Europa
-won't take pictures of the areas of Mars I want to see
-and don't think I have any business going up into orbit to fulfill my life long dream?
FUCK THAT!
I already give my tax money to a stupid arrogant moron who doesn't do what I want him to do...
and he's called THE PRESIDENT!
Can somebody put something in Michael Williams' mouth, because my zipper is stuck!?!
Here's the rub - the only way to protect the US population is to stop making enemies and to work against poverty and illiteracy all over the world. The guys who get drafted for fundamentalist causes are mainly poor and uneducated orphans from the streets. A standard brainwash takes place, where the organization offers food and shelter, thus getting total emotional control over the victim.
I disagree. For a start, working against poverty and illiteracy to us is understood to be cultural imperialism by much of the Middle East. In many parts of that region, the only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran. The only reason that there isn't universal poverty is oil - Saudi Arabian universities turn out more graduates in Religious Studies than they do engineers, doctors, etc. What I'm trying to say is, there is no way to address illiteracy and poverty - by our standards - without a radical overhaul of the society, but even trying to do that is provocative to terrorists.
Secondly, the terrorists that would be provoked aren't poor or illiterate. Osama himself is a multi-millionaire who has travelled extensively in the West. Sheik Omar, on trial for the kidnap and murder of Daniel Pearl, was educated at the London School of Economics, one of Europe's most prestigious universities. Osama's second in command was a dentist before becoming an international gangster.
But you are right to a certain extent, the way for the US to stop making enemies is to stop intervening in other cultures unless it is specifically for the defense of the mainland (or perhaps to help a long-term ally).
There is no point in funding the NASA by taxing the Sci-Fi books.
In fact, the Sci-Fi fan mainly wants to dream. He doesn't really care about space travelling being possible or not.
The truth is, the guys that should be taxed to fund the NASA ought to be those who have the biggest interest in space travel : Mining companies, settlers, builders, nations, scientists, etc.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Salvor Hardin
fine.. cut social security... at the rate it's going I'll never see it.
and while their at it, cut, or seriously limit medicare. 85% of medicare spending goes to patients in the last months of their life. 90yr old women DO NOT need total hip replacements.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Uhhh, would everyone who thinks this is a good idea
just send $100 to The Planetary Society? Their
"business model" is about interested people
funding space exploration, they've launched
a few things, and probably have lower overhead
than the federal government. Anyway it sets a
bad precedent to say only people who like
something should have to pay taxes for it - the
country's too diverse to run that way. And NASA doesn't need more money, they need to stop spending it on expensive manned 'showcase' missions and invest it developing better propulsion and LEO
access technologies instead, while continuing to
explore space using inexpensive robots.
If you want starships, you have to live with the bomb
Maybe because in countries with lots of guns, we're also better at determining who needs a good killing, and thus common sense is matched with ready means.
They that would sacrifice their
It seems that more taxes are a shoddy way to pay for NASA. Less tax means a faster cooler computer for me, so I say FUCK THIS LOSER for proposing this ridiculous tax.
The same goes for ALL taxes, but this one is particularly stupid; I can spend my money in better ways than NASA ever could.
At first I thought this guy was crazy, considering the administrative nightmare of determining which products should be taxed. But then I realized something - this tax would make those who are most interested in space the primary source of space development funding.
"But then I thought about the administrative nightmare some more, and I realized something - I was right the first time. My mistake, sorry."
Anything promulgated by Disney, Sony, Warner, etc will be "Future Fantasy" and hence not taxed. Anything release by anybody else that's even remotely scifi will be. :-(
--Rob
It's a government monopoly on space travel. Replace it with commercial organisations instead.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Why does someone who works in a grocery store have to be a "nutcase" and why isn't it a "normal job"? Plenty of smart people work jobs like that; in fact, I would bet that the managers of those stores probably all have college degrees.
A store manager is not some shitty job. These people are in charge of hundreds of employees, millions in merchandise and millions in cash. Not to mention an entire giant building which needs electricity, HVAC, the floors and bathrooms need to be clean all the time, plus all of the tools like meat slicers, ovens, freezers, cash registers, accounting, payroll, scheduling, sales, bitchy customers, etc etc. I can go on, but I think you get the point.
Yes, working at a grocery store is not a regular job. It is much more challenging. So get a life you unwise person.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Amen, brother.
Chris
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It isn't all that likely that he'd win anyway; Bud Cramer has won several terms in a row with increasing percentage of the vote, and he hasn't done anything to piss people off.
For those that don't know, politicians in Alabama try to do everything with sales taxes, which results in a lot of budget shortfalls with every little downturn in the area economy. Over dependance on sales taxes is a bad idea (and since books and toys are probably among the first things people stop buying when their wallet thins, NASA would be in trouble all the time).
Also, there is currently no national sales tax like that IIRC, so this would require a new bureaucracy, which would probably eat all the money this would raise and then some.
We all know that correlation implies causation!
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Interesting you should mention war and space in one posting. Because there was a study done in the 60's by a commission to determine what, if any, are the possible ramifications of, well, total peace on Earth (disarmament). It examined the functions of war, and possible substitutes.
Besides the visible, military function of war, there are several nonmilitary functions; those critical to transition (to peace) can be summarized in five principal groupings:
ECONOMIC. War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness. A large space program, however, could possibly provide the same effect, provided it used enough resources.
POLITICAL. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government; it supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority. It has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has ensured the subordination of the citizen to the state, by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood. No modern political ruling group has successfully controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credibility of an external threat of war. But under one world government, a political system could be built soley around the exploration and mapping of space.
SOCIOLOGICAL. War, through the medium of military institutions, has uniquely served societies, throughout the course of known history, as an indispensible controller of dangerous social dissidence and destructive antisocial tendencies. As the most formidable of threats to life itself, and as the only one susceptible to mitigation by social organization alone, it has played another equally fundamental role: the war system has provided the machinery through which the motivational forces governing human behavior have been translated into binding social allegiance. It has thus ensured the degree of social cohesion necessary to the viability of nations. No other institution, or groups of institutions, in modern societies, has successfully served these functions. Except space travel.
ECOLOGICAL. War has been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining a satisfactory ecological balance between gross human population and supplies available for its survival. It is unique to the human species.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC. War-orientation has determined the basic standards of value in the creative arts, and has provided the fundamental motivational source of scientific and technological progress. The concepts that the arts express values independent of their own forms and that the successful pursuit of knowledge has intrinsic social value have long been accepted in modern societies; the development of the arts and sciences during this period has been corollary to the parallel development of weaponry. Since the space race, space travel has been driving forward technology even faster than war; communications satellites, computers, nutrition, the list is endless.
Obviously, war is very important to society. So, in a society without war, a suitable replacement for these "non-military" functions of war must be found.
One of the best possible substitute institutions is a large space program.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
The random 'let's go see this and bring back a bit or dirt' attitude is a huge waste of resource. Why not actually decide what you are setting out to do in new technology. Form a list of priorities and puts the minds and money towards a solution. What would benefit society more: knowing what metals a lump of Martian rock contains or making everyday objects cleaner and cheaper and healthier to raise the general standards of living? NASA is a wank of epic proportions.
only people with bills proving they have bought Sci-Fi articles should the be allowed to benefit from NASA works (only them should be allowed to use cool new alloys, to watch satellite tv, to do transcontinental phone calls)... or at least have serious rebates on any space related technology!
If a part of the population invests more in nasa, then this parts should also benefit more.
Through the miraculous technology of L. Ron Hubbard we have access to infinite data on not only our own solar system, nearby star systems and galaxy, but of other galaxies and indeed the entire universe across all time. The next explorers of Mars will stumble upon the abandoned outposts of the 4th Markabian invader force to whose surprise? The abilities of the Operating Thetans of Scientology make us a complete cause over the MEST universe. We command all matter, energy, space and time. Why are you wasting your time and energy sending little toys to the planets and stars when we can exteriorize and visit them at will. If you can't see the truth, then visit your local Scientology Org today and witness the power which total spiritual freedom can unlock for you.
In addition to the NASA contributions, perhaps the US Government could levy an extra 1% on sales of learning toys for educationally subnormal adults and give the money straight to President Bush?
If only sci-fi fans pay for all space exploration, logic might dictate that only those same people could benefit from any gains made from it.
If research in space led to a cure for cancer, or any other technology, would [we] be the only ones to get it? Would those who have paid take precident?
Obviously not. So why should only a certial section of people fund something that could have benefits for everyone?
This proposal is irrational, and the person who proposed it should be ousted from office at the earliest possible opportunity.
"But then I realized something - this tax would make those who are most interested in space the primary source of space development funding."
Sounds logical. By that theory, I should never be taxed to pay for my local schools, either, since I have no children. Tax revenue from the sale of guns and ammunition should support our military. Revenue from state-run lottery will fund "gamblers anonymous" programs....
Do you see how impractical things get when you run a country this way?
Nothing to see here. Move along.
First of all, being interested in science-fiction or reading sci-fi books doesn't mean you care about NASA, or even find it useful. This is a bit like if everybody reading books about the Middle-Ages would like to go back to these ancient days, or if every historian studying the second world and the fascist ideologies would like to kill 6 million judes. Stupid.
Second, representative democracy doesn't work like this. We elect people to represent the whole society in the parliament and in the government. Then, these people are paid to decide what is good for the people, and decide to fund programs (like NASA) thanks to the taxes everybody has to pay (according of course to their revenues). Just taxing some people based on their hobbies, habits or tastes isn't correct, and this can lead to very dangerous ideas. What if all anti-abortion people decide to refuse paying taxes because they finance public hospitals? What if all pacifists decide to refuse paying taxes because they finance the army?
I live in France, and given what just happened here, with the president of a fascist party elected for the second turn of the presidential elections, I tend to believe that we must be more and more careful of protecting the democracy.
Just my two eurocents.
Washington, D.C. -- Republicans in Congress are pushing for a tax on thrift store purchases to fund the welfare system. Hypothesizing that many thrift store shoppers are impoverished and, hence, interested in the welfare system, Republicans proposing the legislation claim that it's far more fair than the current system of funding where taxes collected from "hard-working Americans" (like Kenneth Lay) fund these programs.
How about a higher tax for parents with children in school compared to those who dread the though of ever having children? They want them, they can pay for them too.
cool!. I wouldn't mind paying paying for NASA research, just as long as I knew could benefit from it, and I knew that non-geeks COULDN'T benefit from it.
/. about making their own country to escape stupid laws, this is how to do it.
People keep making comments on
And let the rest of the human race die on this stinking rock.
What about people that don't agree about foreign military actions ? Maybe they should pay less taxes ?
C'mon people... Be a bit social. You don't just pay for things that you want, but also for what other people want (and even for things nobody actually wants but is in the public interest).
And yes, the space programm is in the public interest. Medical tests are done in space. Maybe those that don't buy a SF-book, should be excluded than from some medical treatments that would have been impossible without the space program ? Get real...
Apparently there was an unfortunate typo in the initial press release. Contrary to first reports, Congress is proposing a 1% tax on any science fiction- or space-related products (e.g. books, toys, and games) and using that money to fund the NSA.
Thank you.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Products produced as spinoffs from the space program should be subject to the sci-fi tax.
This would raise awareness as to how much the space program has improved our lives.
Everyone has gotten benifit by the work NASA has done. When you start putting use taxes in place it helps if the people how use the "service" are the ones that pay.
a) Sick people pay 1% on medicine to Medicare.
b) Unemployed, disabled pay 1% tax on benefits to Social Security.
c) Crime victims pay 1% on home security devices to fund police.
d) Students and parents pay 1% on income for schools.
e) Political candidates pay 1% on campaign contributions for brain research.
They're all parties interested in the particular field they're funding. My position is, if I want to fund something, I'll contribute to it directly, thank you very much. And if I want to read sci-fi, I shouldn't be taxed for it, what about freedom of speech and thought?
I think the greatest, though not the only, flaw with this proposal is that the taxes will be imposed even on those sci-fi works that warn us NOT to mess with things man was never meant to know, that warn us that if we go into space, we may bring upon humanity the wrath of giant lizards.
What a brilliant idea. Even better though, we should tax police shows and police fiction, as well as police-themed toys. We could use this money to pay for law enforcement, so that only people who like that stuff pay for it.
Also, we should tax movies about war, and pay the pentagon with that. And TV shows about the white house... would pay for politicians.
Great idea!
Remember that today's computers were developed as part of the space race with Russia. Do we tax computers? Or just anything with a chip in it?
What about freeze dried foods? They were developed for space use?
And don't forget Tang. (Does anyone actually drink that stuff?)
If applied properly (yeah right, politicians doing something the right way) this would really be a flat tax on just about everything.
you think that once that tax is enacted it would actually be used for NASA and NASA only... kinda like in Virginia when they told us that the LOTTO would solve our education budget problems... Yeah, it sounded like a great idea then, but how much money went from the lotto to education? Not a significant percentage and with that I'm being generous...
The moral? Never trust a politician. Especially not one who can only think about the money in your wallet...
So far I have also not seen any discussion on why we should throw more funding at an agency that has really lacked direction in the last couple of years. I'm all for the idea of NASA (and having them be well funded), but I'd rather my tax dollars get used efficiently, not squandered on budget overruns from a station that won't even serve its intended function.
I don't know if taxes targetted toward the primary users of a service only became trendy over the last 15-20 years, or if I only became aware of them then (reference: I'm 33 y.o.), but I find them selfish, obnoxious, & rude.
I have always felt (even pre-9/11-let's-all-get-patriotic) that Americans should behave as if we are all a united, team-oriented group, striving for to improve things for everybody and make this a great country. I strongly believe in the pitch-in and help each other attitude.
Things balance out over time. I hate when some person or group declares that he/they should not pay for something, because the speaker doesn't use it.
This is all crap. If gasoline taxes rise $0.01/gallon, and tolls are abolished, than the people that travel the toll roads get a break. Why begrudge them for that? They might be senior citizens long past the stage where they enjoyed the benefits of public schools, yet they still pay taxes that support the public school system.
You may never have a fire in your home or business. Does that mean you shouldn't have to pay whatever portion of your taxes supports the local fire department?
IMO, things even out. If you get shortchanged a little bit in one place, you'll make it up elsewhere.
This country's citizens need to quit whining and begin to behave with a little bit of maturity.
Steve
--sorry for the rant, I'm just tired of this BS.
Why should the folks who are interested in the things NASA works on be taxed heavier than the rest of us?
Personally, I'd prefer yet another form to fill out at tax time â" one that would direct (in broad-brush terms) how my taxes were spent. It seems that our elected officials cannot be entrusted to spend our money wisely â" they not only end up blowing it on themselves (have you looked into congressional pensions lately?), but even then it's not enough and they wind up as the puppets of the lobbyists with the biggest checkbooks.
Any legislation involving the compensation of elected officials so DEFINITELY be required to be approved directly by the taxpayers. I realize that this would result in a permanent wage freeze for our greedy stalwarts in DC, but it would take a very long time until it became a problem, especially with the continually increasing flow of soft money from every interest wanting to own its very own elected official.
He's overqualified! He has a degree from a school that isn't ivy league, and he's held gainful employment that wasn't obtained by his billionaire dad. Politics will never take him seriously.....
Yet another larval politician with yet another proposal to tax and tax, spend and spend.
The damage done to our economy by this asinine practice of using taxation as an instrument of policy is staggering.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The US defense budget is nowhere near one trillion dollars. More like $400 billion. And the defense budget is not most of the government budget. Actually it is about 18%. Look it up.
The US doesn't intervene in other cultures. If they truly did, Afghanistan wouldn't be the armpit-of-the-world it is. What most of the terrorists hate is that their youth tend to look at western culture and get drawn to it. I mean, you choose: 1) I want to live in a mud hut, shovel camel manure for a job, and read the Qu'ran every night when I get home. 2) I want to order a pizza with extra pepperoni, pop the top off a 40oz beer, and sit on my ass and watch football while guzzling pizza and beer.
The people that hate the US are those that are against changing their culture. They also have this flawed idea that everyone else around them should also think the same way. How are they really any different than the US? Don't we here do the same thing? When was the last time anyone thought Ahmish people were anything but fricking nuts?
oh... DAMN!
Do sci-fi geeks, then, reap more of the rewards of space travel? Unless the benefits are going to be heaped more greatly upon sci-fi fans, it should be everyone's responsibility to pay.
Or he could actually be a total nutcase and can't hold a regular job
Which means he's perfectly qualified for Congress!
--Jim
Would there be an agency to evaluate each and every piece of scifi-related material? I think the US Patent Office would be in charge.
I think they used to give it to George 'dubya' Bush
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Wait? Where did you say he came from? Huntsville, Alabama? Isn't there that they have a BBORS (Big Bunch of Rocket Scientists)?
Must be more pork...
Seriously... Taxing science-fiction... How about free-speech issues? How about taxing sectors that beneficy from Space, say, like satellite communications (especially satellite TV networks)?
However, if I were a yank, I wouldn't mind paying a 1% tax on computers for that, too.
Personally, I'm interested in space travel, but I don't want to fund NASA. I'd rather they just get out of the way and let private enterprise work on it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Tax science FICTION to pay for science FACT?
Makes as much sense as "you must score points before you're deemed fit to moderate"
Let's add a tax to frou-frou coffee drinks and cutesy two-inch books sold at corporate megabookstores, and use it to fund public libraries.
Please. Do you really think if YOU stopped paying taxes the country would fall apart? Say you make $75 a year. You'll probably going to pay around $10k in taxes. But let's say $20k, because most of you live with your parents. :)
What would stop functioning for $20k? What would benefit from an additional $20k, and what REALLY needs that $20k?
There are thousands of programs that our tax dollars fund. When you pay your taxes, it all goes into one big slush fund before it's distributed. If you don't like a particular program, which probably has plenty of it's own supporters, just figure your WHOLE tax 'donation' is going to the program of your choice.
Maybe I'm too laid back, but it seems to me that if we all had our way (drop program X, fund program Y), and we could send dollars directly to the programs we want to fund, it would really end up the same as it is now.
Kinda like getting screwed by Best Buy, if you put too much energy into it, you'll miss the opportunity where that money will come back to you. (Say, you lose $1 in a Coke machine, but a couple weeks later the checker at Cub Foods only rings up 3 gallons of milk instead of 5 - Hey, I have 3 kids :)
My advice: Chill. It all works out in the end.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
A tax and spend republician!?! Boy, that rolls off the tongue rather nicely...
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Why? Space is cold and empty. What are we going to do in space? What makes you think there won't be "petty border squabbles" (only petty if it isn't your border I'm sure) in space?
I think it's kind of funny that I saw this on Bad-@$$-Mo-Fo before I saw it here. www.badassmofo.com
You are so far out of touch with reality it's not even funny. I bet your travels abroad can be counted on one hand and you want to go into space? What a joke. Go hug a tree, fucktard.
It might get the bookstores to separate the Sci Fi from the fantasy.
There's a strain of SF (often known as libertarian SF) that often depicts NASA as the enemy. Should sales of Stephen Baxter's work fund a government takeover of space? (Manifold:Space,for instance, depicts, among other things, the struggles of a private citizen to mine an asteroid in the face of violent governmental opposition)
How about not only taxing everyone interested in space, but taxing everyone that has benefited from the space program, as well. Let's tax everything from GPS systems to freeze dried ice cream, if it was directly or indirectly influenced by the space program it should be able to be used to fund the continuation of the program.
The universal result of outside funding has been to reduce legislative funding. For instance, if your state lottery money is supposed topay for X, the availability of outside money will simply mean less state money for X (or that the state funding for X will not be increased to keep up with inflation, which is effectively the same thing).
It won't help NASA one damn bit after the first couple of years.
It's taxation without representation.
I can't go for that, regardless whether I
think it's a good cause.
How would NASA budget when the sales on Sci-Fi products aren't known until the year end? You'd have to work a year out and never know more than a year in advance what your budget would be.
Hard to run any organisation that way...
Maybe we should fund the military with a tax on Tom Clancy novels. That would cut a huge chunk out of my taxes every year. And our local fire department could get $.50 every time Blockbuster rents out Backdraft.
Wouldn't it be great if your 1040 form had an extra page that broke down different areas of government spending, and you could fill in where your money goes (e.g. 10% military, 30% healthcare, 60% research) or a "leave it up to Congress" check box. Of course, that would be too much like democracy -- if Americans could decide how their money gets spent, our "representatives" might actually have to do some real work. As for taxing science fiction to pay for space, if Congress taxed Hollywood 1% for every movie it made, we'd probably have golf courses on the moon by now.
Cry me a fscking river!
Since when should the west, let alone the US become the social welfare service for the rest of the planet ?
I just want to be there in spirit when 'poor and uneducated' orphans feed you your testicles in thanks for all the help you've given them.
You really havent a clue.
Curmudgeon.
The notion that the semiconductor industry owes its existence to NASA is a gross exaggeration. Integrated circuits were not invented by NASA, nor were they first used by NASA. At best, NASA during one period in the 1960s bought a significant fraction of the (then tiny) production, helping to support the industry. But those days are long gone. Today, the flow is almost entirely 'spin ons' from industry back to NASA.
I would love to see this idea succeed, and work. Then we could start applying it to other groups within American society, such as:
- A huge tax on children's school supplies to support schools. I am getting ready to move out of the county I live in because of taxes going up to pay for schools, maybe if only the breeders payed taxes to send their little broodlings to school they wouldn't have so damned many kids.
- Tax the living crap out of gas to pay for traffic cops, roads, etc..
- Tax ramen noodles, rice, beans, and Budweiser to support welfare.
- Tax pro-wrestling to support literacy campaigns.
This is definately a great idea! Run with it!
First I think it needs to be said that NASA benifits the human race, not just science fiction fans.
.05 - .06 cents. I think that's reasonable, IF they use it wisely.
Secondly, it also needs to be said that NASA is a money burning black hole bun by a bunch of blunder-budget bloated bought-out nearsited beaurocrats.
Third, it's the best shot at a future in space that we have.
Seriously, NASA needs to have some fresh blood pumped into it by having a public audit by the most penny pinching science obsessed geeks they can find. I hear on slashdot that a group at a school built a working satilite that interfaces with the gps system and ham radios for a tiny fraction of the cost of a similar satilite built by NASA, albiet they needed help funding a launch into orbit, but the cost of building it was staggeringly small compaired to NASAs.
I also remember reading in the local paper that it cost NASA $500 for a hammer and even more for a standard toilet seat in the GROUND COMPLEX. There's nothing special about NASA's ground complex restroom toilets that need hundred dollar toilet seats!
Their budget needs to be totally audited and publically analyzed.
As far as taxing another 1% on all "space oriented" merchandise, I'm all for it if they show me the budget and that the money was going directly to cost effective NASA projects. The only thing I would suggest to whomever wants to collect the tax, PUT IT TO A VOTE!
Litterally, go into every store that sells stuff you plan to tax, and have a voting box, go online and at every website that sells the stuff, ask if they would support a 1% tax for NASA projects.
This will get a much better reception by the people if they followed the above budget plan, and if they ask the people they plan to tax, then they might like the response they get. After all where do you think their budget comes from now? And 1% off an average paperback book sale is around
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
That's similar to what I was wondering: Where's the line between Science Fact and Science Fiction (...and fantasy...)?
What happens when Science Fiction becomes Reality?
Should we tax the technology which derived from NASA work? (Not Tang, it was developed before the space program -- although it should be taxed due to its successful ads based on the science fiction that Tang's creation was related to NASA)
Should the web server of http://www.moller.com/ be taxed until the Skycar goes into production?
Should income from ads viewed on Slashdot pages with science fiction related topics be taxed?
This idea of having science fiction fans pay for the space program is the silliest idea I've heard in days! Just because someone has a fantastic interest in things non-terrestrial they should be made to pay for a space program that has resulted in things that benefit everyone?
I feel like space exploration belongs in the public domain and public cost for it should be offset by taking money from a graduated tax structure. Trying to identify who is "most interested" in such programs or "who benefits the most" is not very instructive (like everything, the rich benefit the most, but that's a different discussion).
Then, I guess when companies start seeing benefits from the commercialization from space, those of us who helped push the space program forward with targetted taxes get some kind of big refund?
The shortsightedness of the guy's whole plan is to think that space exploration and utilization projects are just some type of hobby that needs a luxury tax. In reality, one day our progress into space will look a lot like our progress onto the Internet -- it will get cheaper, and all the young people will be amazed at how even their grandparents (you reading this now) are getting out into space too.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I can't remember where I heard this (or I'd include a link), but I believe one of the reasons we need to keep launching the shuttle is that we risk losing the knowledge if we don't.
As with most technical projects, it is almost impossible to entirely document something, leaving a good amount of knowledge locked in people's memories. With retirement/attrition/etc. it is important to keep the event active so that the current staff (which changes over time) always has 1st hand experience with the process.
While I don't agree with the logic on this, if it were to happen, could we do the same thing for the military?
Anybody who buys GI Joe's gets taxed. Anything camo. Man, they could have made a mint back in the 70s/80s off sales of "Better dead than red" shirts alone!
Don't know what money from Spawn figures would go to. Occult organizations?
How about we tax every product that has benefited from NASA and the space program 0.5%, and use that to fund NASA?
<rant>
I get so damn sick of the "gimmes" saying "Why are we wasting money on the space program when there are homeless people to feed. Excuse me, I have a call on my pager, let me get my cellphone and return this call."
Where do these people think the money goes? It goes into the economy, creating jobs (you know, those things that allow poor people to become not poor?) and therefor increasing the tax base (you know, the thing that funds all those programs you love?)
</rant>
NASA was required BY LAW to share the fruits of its developments with anybody who wanted them. Had NASA held on to the technologies it developed and licensed them at fair market value, NASA would be funding the Government, rather than the other way `round.
www.eFax.com are spammers
www.theonion.com
Point-Counterpoint: The Space Program
[According To The Economist, NASA Is An Industrial Subsidy In Disguise]
[The Economist]
By Ben Pratchett
I grew up with the romantic notion that NASA is not merely a government agency, but an organization dedicated to bravely propelling the human race forward into a glorious future of scientific advancement and discovery. But after reading a recent article in The Economist, I have no choice but to question that idealistic view.
According to this piece, which ran, I believe, in the April 9 issue, NASA exists largely to provide an economic boost to the American aerospace industry, particularly Boeing. NASA gets away with this thinly veiled pork-barrel politicking, the piece contended, by distracting the public with "bread-and-circus" space missions that emphasize thrills over genuinely useful scientific discovery.
Case in point: the tremendously wasteful expense of sending humans into space. A robotic probe costs far less to launch than a human, does the work far more reliably and efficiently, lasts centuries with no food or air, and never needs to be brought back. But the massive public interest in manned space flight and the human drama it offers renders all that moot.
Consider the hoopla surrounding John Glenn's return flight to space. He got a ticker-tape parade and front-page coverage, but what did science actually gain? Meanwhile, how often does your favorite newscaster mention the Hubble telescope, a genuinely useful yet far less compelling tool of exploration?
The article noted that a reassessment of NASA's motives and goals is especially relevant now. As we speak, one of Christa MacAuliffe's fellow teachers is undergoing training to ride the shuttle in what the media are portraying as "the mission Christa never got to carry out." With all due respect to the families of the victims of the Challenger disaster, can we really justify the tremendous expense for what essentially amounts to a touching, movie-of-the-week photo-op? What exactly do we plan to learn from this shuttle mission? Will it lead to scientific advances that remotely begin to justify the exorbitant costs?
It's too bad the folks in Washington aren't likely to heed the lessons of this article, because it's time we started making NASA accountable for its wasteful, PR-driven expenditures.
[Oooh, Look At Me, I Read The Economist!]
[Ooh, I Read The Economist]
By Glen Schraft
Eeeeeeuuuuuwww! The Economist says! The Economist says! I read The Economist! Aren't I cool? Aren't you impressed with me?
What do you read? Time? Newsweek? Those are for people who can't handle a real news magazine like the one I read. That's because you're not as smart or sophisticated as me.
On weekends, I like to sit out on my porch in my wicker chair with my bifocals and my subscription copy of The Economist . Then, when I go to a professor's wine-and-cheese party later that night, I can casually mention all the fancy stuff I read about NASA and Venezuela and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in my fancy magazine and impress everybody.
Question: Do you think I'm smarter than everyone else because I read The Economist, or do I read The Economist because I'm smarter than everyone else? Now, there's a conundrum! I should mail that one in to The Economist and see what they think!
Oh, no! My brain just got larger! Help! I need more knowledge to fill up the new brains! Get me the new issue of The Economist at once! I can't live if I'm even remotely unaware of anything that is happening in the universe! I must have my weekly issue of The Economist, or I risk de-evolving into the sort of mouth-breathing rabble by which I am surrounded daily!
I say, old chap, here comes Lord Smartingford of Braintonshire! Shall we dine upon a nice cup of tea, then? We can discuss the economy, and the global situ-AYYY-tion, and ever so many other matters! I am so very versed in such matters, reading as do I The Economist, just as soon as the postman delivers it by the estate, don't you know. I find that only the right cracking coverage of The E-CON-omist keeps me jolly-well informed and all that, wouldn't you agree? Mmm, yes, I did think you would!
Fuckin' prick.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
It's obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the public doesn't want NASA. Even though I'm pro-space I don't want NASA either. I mean Challenger exploded because politics demanded that it go up in weather that was too cold so Reagan could look good on TV. The lack of flexibility in the O ring that the cold weather caused was what caused the Challenger to explode. The engineers were over-ruled by the politicians in this case and people died for that. Politics will always win over good science at NASA. Why are we so hot to preserve this system, especially at the loss of our freedom?
More taxes specifically on SF mean less SF. It will be a great way to keep the people from dreaming of the future. Also, it will be great because as SF becomes less popular, interest in NASA will wane. At which point, they'll jack up the SF tax and reduce funding for NASA. Eventually NASA will be gone and we'll have a great new tax on intellectual malcontents, and a way of suppressing speech. (Oh, someones writing a new science fiction novel criticizing the government? Let's raise the tax to 1000%)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Well he may be a "grocery store employee", but he is a rather educated one at that.
A Hampton Cove resident, Williams, 28, holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a bachelor's degree in business management from Athens State University. He works at Publix Super Market at Hampton Cove.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Here's a better idea - howzabout a NASA-sponsored lottery... with the prize being a trip to space? Tickets go for $10. I think that would be a interesting (note that I didn't say fair) way to get money for NASA by people interested in NASA.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
NASA only does manned and interplanetary launches. The Air Force does unmanned launches like missile defence and satellite TV (and they charge the TV companies out the wazoo for it)
If us geeks are being forced to pay for NASA, we should get first rights to any alien technology they find !
The main reason you all are opposed to this is because you are a bunch of computer nerd Dungeon and Dragon playing losers who are offended by something that will interfere with your pursuit of fantasy and science fiction.
People who smoke have to pay more to fund anti-smoking ads. This is far less ludicrous. Most people don't give a shit about space, but the people who are amazed by this (particularly people who read these sci fi books) ought to foot the bill a bit more than the rest of us.
Take your nerd biases into consideration. And get a life too, while you're at it.
Why tax? The Russans have figured it out while NASA brass have draget their feet on this one.
Start haulling tourist! Those guys are getting 20 million a pop! Pluse they get free work when the guy gets up there.
If you are going anyway why not haull a paying person! Nasa is thinking of starting the Teacher In Space program again. Why? Start haulling paying people instead.
Also NASA need to work out cheeper ways to LEO. Once that is done, as the saying goes, you are half way to anywhere. The suttle is basically 60-70 tech even though it has been upgraded they need a cheeper and better way up there. There are way too many parts that break or take forever to fix or even get at.
With paying people then you could finish the station and really make it a place not a hope.
I always thought a special lotto would be the way to go. $5 ticket and it would be a national drawing once a year. The winner would be next in line for the space tourist trip. The amount earned on the drawing would more then cover the flight, the PR would be good ( assuming NASA didn't blow up the winner ) and NASA could use any proceeds to fund other stuff.
Astros
Rockets
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I don't think that the Amish are crazy. They've made a difficult choice that I surely couldn't (gots to have my computer), but if that's how they want to live then more power to them (they're definately not blowing up our buildings because they don't like us. anybody who wants to live one way and isn't bothering me isn't a threat, so I really don't care one way or the other).
Without the technology developed NASA we probably wouldn't be able to watch live sport, play computer games or fry eggs in a teflon frying pan. To say that only sci-fi fans benifit from space exploration is just plain wrong.
Since the vast majority of NASA's budget projections are fiction shouldn't we be funding NASA by taxing it?
Seastead this.
This is not fair because everybody reaps the benefits of Nasa's research and inventions evenly. SciFi fans are not the only people who get to use velcro and the wealth of other materials that Nasa invented/pushed into the main stream.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Please paypal me some of those "peanuts".
...without filling out the proper forms, they can get you on DMCA, CBTPA, and Tax Evasion??? No thanks.
Followed by, "hey, have you noticed that all of the sudden there is a lot less interest in sci-fi?", followed by "yeah, but DVD burners are flying off the shelves".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It's bogus to claim that the people who are interested in space should pay more than people who aren't, because we ALL have to pay for EVERYTHING the government does. The government doesn't do only things that everyone likes, or they would never do anything. I shouldn't have to pay more to get the government to do what I want them to do unless everyone else has to do the same.
That means - no tax-exempt status for religions, because people who are anti-religious wouldn't want to pick up the slack for those freeloading churches. No school lunch programs because childless people shouldn't have to pay to feed someone else's kid. No workmen's comp because the working won't see why they have to support the disabled; if they want the government to do it, they can pay for it themselves.
Further, singling out sci-fi as a popular culture for taxation is as crackheaded as singling out simulated kiddie porn because it's intended to give the 'impression' that children appear in it.
And THAT'S why you should care when laws get passed that single out ANY form of freedom of speech, even disgusting forms, because they will come for YOU next. The law doesn't have aesthetics. It cannot and should not be allowed to try to make distinctions about who may speak and how they are to be taxed based on aesthetics - be it a kind of porn, or deciding what 'genre' a story is in.
bomb shelters are better than that idiotic missle defense system we are wasting money on.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Taxes from the sale of trashy romantic novels should help pay for garbage pickup...
If that's the case, why not tax crapola like 'Titanic' or real bombs like 'Glitter' and that damn Britney Speares thing? Give THAT money to NASA and put us on Mars with it. There's no point to singling out sci-fi.
Besides, if it's tax money, it will be wasted on pork barrels anyway.
By law, "All taxes must be uniform". Not that the government pays attention to that requirement.
-- Will program for bandwidth
into the creation of Hobbits and Elves ?
Okay, I know it's a little off-topic, but there's an excellent story on scifiction ( http://www.scifi.com/scifiction ) with a clever twist on space exploration funding... I enjoyed it, anyway. Check out "The Children's Crusade" at http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/
- CD
Federal sales tax is illegal in the USA. Therefore, the idea is both stupid and illegal. obviously an amednment to the US consitution would make it legal, but who wants the US government to start levying sales taxes also.
If the US government really wanted to play fair with certain programs, they would fund those programs based upon the portion of the GDP which it is responsible for. eg... if Space stuff is responsible for 15% of the GDP, then 15% of federal tax receipts should go toward Space stuff.
This way, the government woudl spend money on what people were actully interested in and cared about. Which I sincerely doubt means giving any money to any foriegn country.
Of course this wouldn't work because then the government would have to put 50% of it's tax receipts to fund porn.
If NASA wasn't a government monopoly, private enterprise would have financed a Mars mission with the movie rights and weekly "reality show" a long time ago.
NASA is bad for the taxpayer, but it's also bad for space exploration.
In a recent interview, Bill Gates was quoted as being interested in investing in space and far reaching missions that advance science and humanity. When directly questioned about it and asking what he would consider an investment, BG tossed out a 1B figure for a mission to Mars if it was implimentable and had a high chance of success.
.25% tax to pay for it, even though they benefit for the resulting technology every day. If we don't get our asses off this planet and out in to the void to explore and better understand the universe (and conversly our selves) we are dead as a species... end comm.
Now, I know you are going to say... the Red Planet becomes the MS Planet... I say more power to him. Commercialization of space is one HUGE way to pay the bills that schmucks buying lottery tickets and working at McDonalds fear having that extra
Okay, so Only which products do we tax to provide welfare dollars? I get no welfare, nor is there any way, by any stretch of the imagination that I ever will...
If all gov't was funded in this way, which products would we tax to provide for the Military? Pay for our politicians?
On the plus side, we definitly would achieve a smaller gov't!
How about a tax on everything pr0n related to help the fight against AIDS?
was created by going from 100% regulation, to near 0% regulation.
If we had no regulations you'd see all sorts of crazy stuff being marketed
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
this is the kind of idea that looks good from afar, but is far from good.
taxes are supposed to be taken from all to be spent for all. sometimes this principle is hard to recognize - eg in military spending - but who can seriously claim space programs are not for the good of all?
If you dream that you are levatating your income tax should increase to fund levatation research.
If you dream of hot women your income tax should increase to fund the porn industry.
If you dream of slashdoting somebody your income tax should increase to pay for their bandwidth.
This is a fundamental basic of economics: You always face trade-offs, in this case equity and efficiency.
Another economics basic: taxes reduce total surplus in a market. The money raised by the government with this tax would be less than the money lost by buyers and sellers as a result of the tax. This is called "deadweight loss", and it would be enormous if you tried to introduce a 1% tax on such a huge market.
You've also got to consider who pays the tax. Whether it's the buyer or seller who actually pays the government, the burden of the tax falls on one or the other depending on the elasticity of the market. I'd wager that the sellers would mostly foot the bill, and I don't see the fairness in that.
Of course, that's all theoretical; however, something tells me that an economist (I'm not one) wouldn't like this idea.
I look at the civilization we have built and I think the price is still low -- a few thousand dollars a year in exchange for personal liberty and the rule of law? A bargain by any measure.
The parent post has given a reasoned, and insightful response to the libertarians who whine about taxes and government intervention at every opportunity. I wish I had some moderation points, because it deservers to be +5 insightful
What is the libertarian response? And if you want to respond, please, spare us rhetoric and sophistry. Demonstrate to us how minimal government and no taxes would benefit society as a whole. How would it help those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder? How the widespread implementation of libertarian principles make the world a better place?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Our society appears to be like Rome, but who exactly is running Rome? The Romans? Check this site out to see who is putting the horses in the Senate.
www.opensecrets.org
Yes. I totally agree with you about the world we live in. The rich and powerful will always run the current society, and pass that power on to their heirs... that is ALWAYS going to happen. If you check the website above carefully, you will see who is in charge of the henhouse. But the more the rich control society, the fewer opinions rule, and the more upset everyone becomes. If one person is a king and rules absolutely? Say hello to Mr. War. If you look at ALL wars, they are started by totalitarian regimes or totalitarian rulers.
I am all too happy to pay taxes too, to live in this society. Call me nuts, but I am very happy that my offspring are not going to have a Kalashnikov against their head for a dissenting opinion.
But at the same time I do not see taxes as being "the liberator." Like Rome, our society is peaceful because it is "ruled by the rabble," as the Romans would say. All great civilizations share this trait, even the Greeks. Fuck with the people because you're all powerful? We'll hang your ass or stab you out in front of the Senate. Get your ego involved and send our children to war because you have to prove you're a big dog? Then we'll kill you too. Take away our bread, movies, entertainment of choice, or anything we want for ourselves for your religious or personal motives? Say hello to the Guillotine.
Taxes just levy the government. I have no problem with them, if they actually pay for some service. I would seriously resent giving the coffers of some Emir who spends it on polo ponies, breaking every religious law that put them in power, chasing international models, and then tells us we "need to kill" infidels (but obviously not after they have shagged all the hot infidels).
Did you know that Saudi Arabia's diplomat to the USA has published poetry that speaks of the glorious suicide bombers on September 11th? Did you know that Saudi Arabia is so backwards that they let 12+ girls burn in a school fire because they didn't let the girls outside without proper coverings? They wouldn't let the fire department in because they might see girls without their "correct" garments on. Little girls screaming and burning alive, but you couldn't save them because of "the big God rules."
I'm sorry, but I have only one thing to say about a society that praises killing innocents and enforces its dress code with lethal consequences. You can guess what that is.
Those bastards are our real enemy, not just Osama. We should be taking those bastards out too. Why do I hate Saudi Arabia? One word: king.
As you can tell, I have a definite opinion about how a king should be treated.
I don't worry about the taxes so much as I worry about who's in charge.
It's not that sci-fi fans would be supporting NASA, I'm sure his point is that only this tax would go to funding NASA. The next step is that given that all this taxable sci-fi stuff is produced by small to large businesses, to which Republicans are beholden^H^H^H^H^H attentive, they would all be loopholed out of the tax, leaving no money for NASA. Besides and Professor of Theobiology can tell you that sci-fi fans are all atheists and communists, anyway!
Of course, the schools in CA have been fscked for decades now, ever since Proposition 13 passed, which made it damn near impossible to get more property tax revenue for anything.
In Colorado, Lottery revenues (including, since last summer, Powerball) go towards parks, and actually seem to have done some good. Guess the state wasn't funding parks very much for awhile...
Eric
Be who you are...and be it in style!
NASA isn't the answer to getting off this planet. It will be commercial interests that get us in orbit, and beyond... NASA is primarily a military-style organization (owned by the government), which means it's got a bad case of the bloat.
Compare the cost of the space shuttle, and re-usable SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) prototypes. You can build and launch a re-usable SSTO with "off the shelf" componenents for orders of magnitude less than the cost of a single space shuttle mission.
I don't want a tax on the products I buy to be pigeon-holed for an organization like NASA. Let them set up a treasury bond for NASA instead.
Rather than a coercive tax levied by the Government, citizens should have an easy way to directly fund NASA. I'd throw a few bucks at such a thing if I knew doing so would definitely help NASA, rather than being diverted who knows where.
There is already a way to give extra money to the Government as a whole (the additional payments line on for 1040), but that just goes to the general fund, and there are check-off boxes to redirect some of your taxes to funding the Presidential election. Why not a check-off for NASA? Hell, check-offs for everything!
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
That would be a perfect large project that is at the same time incredibly practical. So what's stopping us?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
How about we tax NASA at 1%, and use that money to fund serious low-cost alternatives for spaceflight?
Sensible use of 1950's technology could cut the cost of spaceflight by 10x to 100x. This sounds completely ridiculous, but it is true. NASA, in collusion with big government contractors and government regulators, keeps the cost of spaceflight artificially high.
This is fundamentally because the current mindset is to optimize the performance of launch vehicles and payloads. If commercial-grade (instead of military grade) systems were designed, they would be technically less efficient, but far, far more cost-effective to use.
As it stands now, NASA has more than enough money to pursue manned spaceflight as well as interplanetary scientific missions, if the technologies used were rationalized. Read Col. London's book "LEO on the Cheap", and hang out in the sci.space.tech newsgroup to see what I'm talking about.
It's not as if society is already benefitting off the minds of these sci-fi lovers, or benefitting from the technology spinoffs of the space industry. No, the geeks should pay for it all, and the public should reap the benefits, right?
If you tax to fund NASA, you are telling
merchants of "the future" that they don't
need to innovate and put companies (or other
countries) in space.
Looks like lots of Free Traders kinda forget
how trade works, when it's not their pork project.
D.
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him. * -** *-** --- *-- - **** * *-*
NASA is legally prohibited from accepting money from any source except Congress. Lucas or Cameron could offer up their entire fortune to NASA, and the agency wouldn't be able to touch it.
A better "Hollywood" tax for space development would be a promotional deal between a studio and one of the startup companies trying to build an SSTO or suborbital ship. That would be a much better use of "sci-fi" funding (and would not be a tax, but a bus. partnership), that would be very useful for real space development, and it'd be legal.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
For example - the movie "Forrest Gump". Millions paid to see it, and collectively paid far more than the production costs, but the writers were told that it made a loss (and shown specially cooked books to prove it). I suspect that tax is paid on very few movies - does anyone have any figures on "Episode 1"? I suspect the tax records will show, against the evidence of reality, that it didn't make much money at all.
This is a ridiculous suggestion (and post). So sci-fi readers / watchers are the ones most interested in the space program? Businesses have made a fortune selling by-products of the space program including freeze dried food products, medical devices, computer technology, advanced materials, water purification technology, micro lasers, engine lubricants to name just a few. See this detailed list
for more products and benefits.
A tax on these types of products would generate a lot more money than a tax on the next Larry Niven novel.
Normally, at least, we don't scream for the extermination of other cultures. We tolerated the Taliban, for instance, until they decided that protecting their "guests" was a higher priority than obeying any semblance of international conventions regarding terrorism.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
We already pay a NASA space tax. It's paid out at every store cash register and on April 15th of each year. This Senator should give us 1% of the GNP for suggesting such an assnine idea.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Nice... Mod this man up further.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
1% for wildlife preservation from:
Eagles, Tigers, Bears, SeaHawks, Cardinals, Rams, Ravens, Dawgs, and all variations of 'Cat or 'Hawk. And of course, Da Bulls.
1% for Indians from:
Chiefs, Redskins, Reds, Seminoles
1% for the IRA from:
the Fightin' Irish
It sounds ligical at first but what about other areas of society. For example: Why do some of the taxes I pay go towards improving schools when I don't have any kids? Why do people with kids get deductions when their kids are using the schools? Should we tax people who use the police or fire departments more when they make use of those services. And then will that money really be put towards the resource it was collected for. Think of the cigarette tax. Its suppose to go towards covering the cost of health and education about the dangers of smoking, but not all of the money is put towards it. Same with the money states got from the tabacco settlements.
If an extra billion comes in from a SciFi tax then the politicians will reduce traditional NASA funding by a billion so they can spend that money elsewhere.
On the other hand, aren't those anti-smoking advertisements you see on television (at least in California) funded by taxes on cigarettes? It certainly is possible for a tax on a product to actually be used to fund related projects.
Also, as many people pointed out in one form or another, if the NASA gets more money from a sci-fi tax than it presently gets from Congress, then its budget would actually increase, even if all of NASA's other sources of funding were cut off.
Either way, if Congress used this tax to shift funds from NASA to (for example) funding cancer research, that would be just as well, at least as far as I'm concerned! Would they? Who knows. As always, the devil is in the details.
The only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran
I can't speak to the real reason that children are taught to read, but it isn't to read the Qu'ran. A written copy of the Qu'ran is not considered an 'official' Qur'an -- the real Qur'an is only spoken, passed down through an oral tradition that must be traceable back to the Prophet himself through anyone who has the whole thing memorized (like the people who run Islamic religious schools). Granted, there are over a billion people in the world who accept the Qur'an as the Word of God, so I'm sure there are a lot of people who do learn to read by reading it, but much of Islam teaches it orally and by rote memorization of oral repitition.
Why are we limited to NASA? Why can't someone else set up shop and provide access to space? Rather than give more tax dollars to a government buracracy, why can't I buy stock in or products/services from a space company, or donate to a non-profit space exploration corporation?
NASA probably has rules on how it can or can't accept money, so that would require investigation. But I don't see why you couldn't just "tax yourself" and send off money when you rent Robinson Crusoe on Mars. No need for the government to be involved. Hell, you could probably set up a jar at your local Blockbuster and get some money. Or we could set up a NASA Charity derived from the /. membership. Or whatever.
I realize that most of the time people say "I'd be willing to pay for that!" they are being a little optimistic, but for those of you who aren't... I much prefer voluntary donations to mandatory ones, i.e., the many forms of government handouts.
I'm okay with this, but they better not use my money to develop general purpose things. I want to see them develop phasers, civilian transport and whatnot.
If they want to research medial stuff, tax the doctors who would use it. If they want to tax geeks, they should produce things that geeks would use/enjoy.
What is it that you are thinking of when you say that working against poverty and illteracy is seen as cultural imperialism by those in the Middle East?
Would this tax include items sold in the dealer's rooms at SF conventions? What a nightmare that would be for the people organizing small relaxacons (like LA LA CON). Also, how could we, the SF fans, be certain that this money is really going to NASA and not into the general fund, or worse yet into the pockets of legislators.
This idea is completely ignoranct, since everyone benefits from it, unless SF fans will get exclusive access to technologies derived from space exploration, plus additional tax right offs on existing products that they use. (I can see it now, SF user of Velcro line on the long form)
I have a magical new system that is much better, and uses 0% extra bureaucratic overhead! It is a NOT-tax on sci-fi products! This is how it works:
.com.
1) Buy a sci-fi product (or don't, what do I care?)
2) Pay the sci-fi NOT-tax to yourself
3) Put the money you just gave yourself into an envelope, and send it to your favorite sci-fi organization!
This system is so amazing, it even works for non-sci-fi products! But don't even think about using this method. I am patenting it and staring a
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I would *so* mod this up if I actually had moderator points.
That only the people who paid for space exploration reap any of its benefits, including any of the fantastic materials that are developed as a result of space exploration.
I can think of numerous products that came from space programs of years past...
-Mylar and other aluminized plastic films (my, aren't these potato chips nice and fresh!)
-Teflon (what would Reagan have done without it?)
-Transdermal drug delivery systems (think Nicoderm EQ, or whatever it's called)
And so on.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Well, there is already a precedent for this sort of thing. There is a special federal tax on guns, ammunition, and archery equipment that is earmarked for wildlife and habitat projects, to the tune of over $200 million a year. This doesn't include the cost of licenses, stamps, etc. which pump about $950 million a year into the system.
These taxes cost sportsmen money, but help ensure that habitat will exist for their game of choice, so they strongly supported them. Not only do these taxes ensure that hunters will have game available, but the overall habitat improvements benefit non-hunting nature lovers as well.
What's stopping them? Nothing, other than they see no financial reason do to so. Private enterprise already launches satellites. (Which they wouldn't even know how to do without the government money spent on the space program back in the 60's.)
Another typical flaw with miniarchism libertarianism. They don't seem to realize that not everything has immediate financial benifits, and that companies look for quick profits, not for the long term.
Who argues that the Internet is not a good thing? Yet if the governemnt hadn't done the original research, and created the original network, today our "internet" would be competeing prorietary online services, with no way to communicate with each other.
Actually, you tollerated the Taliban until they wouldn't let you build a pipeline through Afghanistan, the fact that they decided to protect their guests was just a nice reason to give to the press.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Yes, the O-ring was stiff due to the cold.
But that was just a tiny part of the problem. It was just the culmination of more than 10 years of bad decisions.
The boosters should have used liquid fuel, rather than solid. But a budget cut forced the decission to use solid fuel.
Then, for political reasons, the contract for them had to go to Morton Thiocol.
Having been awarded the contract, Morton Thiocol wanted to build a manufacturing plant in Florida to make the boosters but were told they had to build out west.
The boosters were too big to be transported in one piece, so they had to built in sections, transported and then assembled in Florida.
Sectional rockets need a flange, where one section fits into the next. This had been done once before. The folks who designed the first sectional rocket did it right. They designed it so the "female" part fit down onto the "male" part. That way, if it rained. water would just run down the outside of the assembled rocket. A lot like siding on a house.
Morton Thiocol designers were working in a desert, where it seldom rains. They designed the sections upside down. Structurally just as good, but they built a rain catcher.
For the first few launches, a midget was hired whose job it was to crawl up into the assembled solid tocket boosters and putty the joints between the sections, as a backup to the O-rings. He was fired in a cost-cutting measure before the Challenger disaster.
The original test plan called for testing down to 20 degrees F. As a cost saving measure, that was reduced to testing down to 50F, since "it never gets cold in south Florida".
It rained in the days before that fatal launch. Then, the night before the launch the temperatures dropped below freezing. Rain water in the up-side-down connecting flange that should not have existed turned to ice -- and expanded in doing so. This bent the flange and created the gap that was not protected by putty. The O-ring certainly got hot as flames passed around it on the way to the liquid hydrogen tank in the Shuttle.
The engieers said don't launch and the PR folks said "let's go"... You know the rest.
And who in their right mind would put a pipeline there? No one would insure it, let alone be able to guard it against even a lone saboteur.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Hundreds of these special so called 'user fees' or 'sin taxes' exist. All they do is make the collection of taxes much more complicated. This provides lots of freedom for politicians to establish careers, strongarm donations out of affected industries, as well as for bureucrats to slow down the nation's standard of living advancement via not contributing any economic product.
Can't government just build roads, schools, provide for national defense, preserve our established national parks/forests, effectively manage indian trust funds, and just all around work somewhat effeciently?
No more of these narrow special interest money laden regulations/taxes on whatever group.
...privatization. The government continually proves that it is unaware of the value of a dollar (which is ironic since they print them). The private sector could accomplish much more for less money than the government. Cut NASA loose to the private sector.
If the country was all pay-per-use, many of the programs we have today would never be in place. Sometimes you need to support a program with the excess you get from others. However, some programs never get any buy-in from the voters unless they are supported by their own tax.
So what you have is a mess of people who feel we should have a flat tax on income, sales, etc. and those who prefer to fund only programs they like. I think this is unavoidable in America.
Perhaps NASA is at a critical point where it needs the support of a specialized tax or it will cease to be productive. Hell, if the Navy can squeeze in recruiting ads with movie previews, why not?
Hecubas
who read sci-fi are interested in exploring space? What about my mother who reads romance novels and is firmly in favor of space exploration?
Some sci-fi material is about how much better things would be if NASA would step out of the way and let everyone who wants to (private firms or universities) have a go at space projects themselves. While I don't entirely agree that that makes sense (I'm a fence-sitter on that issue), I do think it's wrong to make the sales of such anti-NASA material end up subsidizing NASA simply because it is in the same genre as books read by people who do like NASA.
Being in the same genre as NASA does not necessarily equate to being in support of NASA.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Yes, there were several organizations in the US (and almost everywhere around the world) that were screaming for US intervention in Afghanistan, but the US Government didn't give a shit, because they still had hopes they could do business with the Taliban.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Ok thats just cruel.
90 year old women dont need medicine to keep them alive if they have diebeties or cancer?
Whats wrong with you? Dont you have grand parents?
Social security allows you to retire, without it you'll never be able to retire.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I think this is a great idea because when you extrapolate this meme just think of the SAVINGS you'd get with directed taxes...
- military funding by people who support war books and toys
- arts funding by people who support whatever art
- education funding by people with children (buying educational books)
- sports funding through people who buy sports illustrated
- health care funding by sick people
- foreign aid by the creed (WOOT! no more 13 billion including my tax dollar to buy tanks and guns for Israel to kill Palestinians armed with sticks and stones)
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
this solution is better than income tax solutions. However the question still remains of why there must be a tax and not general voluntary funding. No matter what rhetoric or lawyered wording is presented, you just cannot get around the issue that if 'the people' want something funded, why must they then be forced to fund it?
Why is it that the city in the US with the most strict gun control laws has the highest murder rate in the world?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I don't see how those 'less able to pay end up paying more', since playing a lottery is itself entirely voluntary. If someone who can't afford it is blowing cash on lottery tickets, in my opinion it's that person's gambling problem, not the state's regressive tax.
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
If he had any common sense he would play it like the graphics chip market; wait until they start going to the moon and get his Earth Orbit Superdeal at a fifth of the price it was 6 months previous.
Ali
"Windows and Linux can co-exist on the same machine." - Microsoft Corporation.
is to tax it.
By gum, authors already have a hard enough time making a living writing. Only a small percentage actually make a very good living. The bulk are scraping by as it is.
With the regular price increases of books as it is, adding another tax on top of the current city/county tax will NOT help sales.
Look what happened to the yacht industry 15 years ago. Congress decided that only rich people bought them, and decided to add a hefty tax to the sale (no pun intended). People stoped buying the boats, and the mfrs went out of business. Lots of jobs lost with the net effect of DECREASING tax revenue.
I'm not sure if the industry is even back yet. The tax was repealed, but the industry was dead.
Start taxing books even more, and this will not help the literacy problems that the US already has.
According to the Economist, NASA is an industrial subsidy in disguise: Point/Counterpoint
If the taxes on my cigarettes and booze went to NASA we'd all be living on Mars by now
This SF tax looks like a good idea, but it does not fundamentally change the fact that one has not guidance or control on how their taxes are directed.
Considering the tax system, it seems to me the most optimal would be for you to select the general categories you want your taxes to go too. This would in proactice, this would not only eliminate pork to some extent, it would also allow the budget to follow the outline of general public desires.
So, for instance, the slashdot crowd may desire their taxes to fund NASA and the NSF research grants, the progressives could have their money directly applied to the aid for the poor, Republicans could spend their money on security, etc...
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.
Jean-Paul Sartre
To tax only sci-fi products makes no sense. Sure, the space program is expensive, and desperately needs more funding, (and less of the 'faster, better, cheaper' crap if you ask me) but why should only sci-fi fans have to shoulder the burden of the space program? Everyone from people in IT, agriculture, engineering and many other fields, (not to mention consumers) benefits from the discoveries made in space, and the technology we develop to get there. There are a virtual plethora of technologies we wouldn't have today if it weren't for the pioneering efforts of scientists working for NASA. There's a reason this shouldn't be taken seriously, and it's not because they guy works in a grocery store!
And just what reason would a private space company have for exploring the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for life, or paying for a multi-billion dollar venture to Mars. There isn't very much money out there now. Once we can get into space mining of metals and other stuff, then there may be some money. Satellites are another thing, but there are private companies launching them already.
Most of the stuff NASA researches is because they don't need to worry about making a profit. And I would tend to agree with the original idea that you can tax certain items to be used to increase the budget of the space program. But I think there is some law against charging sales tax for the federal government.
Or rather a "conservative" idea. Democrats can be champions of conservative causes.
It's a user-fee.
user-fee is conservative code for - "make someone else pay for it". Brought to you by the same brilliant people who thought up toll-roads and sin-taxes.
The whole point of a tax is to pool everyone's resources for an expensive item that benefits everybody. A road, for example, benefits EVERYBODY, even someone who doesn't drive. Even someone who never drove. Even someone who doesn't even live in the same state. The system of roads enables commerce, and commerce IS the economy, and without that commerce, Joe "I don't drive, why should I pay for the roads?" doesn't enjoy the benefits of living in a society with a vibrant robust economy.
Sure, there seems to be something unfair about having to pay for schools when you don't have any children. But then again, I sure feel better if that truck driver has at least a high school diploma, and understands the basics of physics when he tries to steer or brake his 18-wheeler laden with liquid nitrogen.
So how does space research benefit all of society?
One example:
The GPS satellite system. Funded by the military, but made possible by civillian space research.
Without GPS, we might not have beaten Saddam Hussein. If we had not beaten Saddam Hussein, first off, there'd likely be a whole buttload of dead Jews, but that's beside the point. Hussein would then likely have moved on to Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Lybia, and anyone else who would rather be a part of the Great Arab Third Reich than be squashed by anthrax-tipped scuds. Osama Bin Laden would have been irrelevant. England, Russia, Mexico and Venezuela would also become irrlelvant, as more than 1/2 the world's Oil reserves would be controlled by a single source. The measely few million we "wasted" on space research back in the 70's and 80's would have been nice, but now with oil at $200 a barrel, our economy is fucked, our ability to wage war to defend our way of life is fucked. Better grow a beard, learn Arabic, and grab a copy of the Quaran, buddy, because you didn't want to look into the future, we're going back to the 12th century.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The science parts of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program weren't very good, but it was exceptionally successful fiction. There were some nice papers in the mid-80s about the targeting problem being NP-complete (ignored...), and a bunch of rigged demos (See the nice movie of the missile hitting the other missile with the transponder in it!) and the Post-Soviet attempts to retread SDI as a project to stop Rogue Nations (while it's more likely to stop a single ICBM than 5-10000 MIRVed warheads, it's really useless against truck bombs, and probably useless against cruise missiles or repainted commercial airliners. UA35 Heavy requests clearance for landing at SFO...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, you are all wrong. Our aim should be to take NASA OUT OF OF THE EQUATION. NASA is a slow, aging bureaucracy, and it is time to limit its involvement in space activities. Maybe short term, it can be a sort of "the FAA of space". But long term? Get rid of NASA and let all privateers come to the party. NASA has been obstructing private businesses in their quest for space. It's time for it to get out of the way, and let some people with real ideas get us there.
So what you said is factual if you said, "taxes raise prices thus reducing the number of buyers" then you would be correct if that number of buyers who do not buy is very small. However as compared to income tax, it is minimal.
Now keep in mind that this is in reference to taxes that are about 1-3 percent. One time it was thought that if we taxed Luxury Yachts at a substantial weight the government could punish the rich and make more money at the same time (and like any communist/socialist method, 'rich' is always defined by those that do not tout the party line... rich government officials 'earned' their stolen money). The result? No one bought yachts, and the industry suffered greatly. Who suffered in the end? Not the rich buyers. Not the rich producers... not it was the mid to low level Yacht industry folk that got laid off! Typical liberal solution... punish the poor in the name of helping the poor.
We already pay more than sufficient taxes for any State run space program if the money wasn't squandered on other things. Slapping other taxes on top of the over half our incomes we actually pay when you add everything up is asinine and insulting. The guy should be run out of office.
Not what I'm saying... but it's just a bad investment to do a total hip replacement, an expensive, complicated procedure, on somebody who's got a life expectancy of /maybe/ 2 years. It'll take damned near that long for them to get out of the physical therapy to recover from the procedure. Walkers & wheelchairs should be plenty good enough. Refusing to perform major medical procedures on old people is presently considered discrimination.
If you ask any ecconomist if it'd be a good idea to replace a turbine in a hydro-plant whose building will collapse in 5yr, they'd laugh in your face.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
what about inner space? what about voyages through that? if we explore our psychology and then write a trip report on it, would it also be counted as talking about space? and if we're outside u.s. and content ís not in english, does accessing it on the web from the u.s. also count as taxable? btw i don't fell like anonymous coward, just forgot both nick and passwd made long time ago and not needing to comment, my name is Petr Bren.