Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
um... you got it wrong. Public transportation costs should be pushed to people who buy cars/gasoline because cars are bad for society (e.g. polution) and public transportation is very good for everyone. In a society with good public transportation system cars becomes more of a luxury (which it should be) and should be taxed.
I passed the Turing test.
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).
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.
Just read that he's the Republican *candidate*
My bad....
To all you people in Alabama: don't elect this crap
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.
a portion of drug money can be used for various social causes, like federal elections
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.
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.
... 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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Err okay. Problem number one is that it's not possible to define good or bad scifi. For example, Star Trek 4 was actually a good movie. I think you meant Star Trek 5. Starship Troopers had horrible dialog, but was still fun to watch.
Problem number two is that even if there was a way to fairly measure good or bad scifi, it still wouldn't stop scifi from getting made. Look at cigarettes. Those are taxed, people still buy them.
Personally, I'd rather pay extra to watch Scifi and have that money go towards Nasa etc rather than try to vote for the right guy to make sure Nasa gets well funded. Being able to directly say what areas I want funded with my tax money is a right I'd take advantage of TODAY.
"Derp de derp."
I rather doubt that it's constitutional to tax speech based on its content. Coming next, 1000% tax on publications supporting the Democratic party?
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 ?
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
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.
Next time vote for al gore, taxes would be higher but NASA would have more money
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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).
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.
We need a space program which is not at the whim of the government of the day, or the will of the people (who are more interested in Oprah's weight than weightlessness).
A Mars mission would be a big fanfare for those who like to see people saluting flags, but not for long-term space exploration. It would suck up funding from everything else in sight, and TV coverage would be cancelled by the 2nd week. After that, no more funding. What's the point of flag-waving if no-one is watching?
Anyway, who said space had to be all gosh-wow? Is the welfare program gosh-wow? Are farming subsidies gosh-wow? Why should space exploration be any different? I was struck this morning by the low-key, no fanfare approach of the launch from Baikonur. No countdown, and about as much fuss as launching a boat. That's what we need - willingness to get the job done, without need for spectacle and fanfare.
In order to insulate the space industry from reliance on fanfare, we need to get it self-funding as quickly as possible, and asteroid mining is the most obvious medium-term objective.
I say skip the moon. It's still at the bottom of a hole, and the regolith on the moon is poorer as ore than the slag we throw away from refining plants on Earth.
Therefore, I propose a cancellation of all manned Mars mission plans and instead concentrate on sending an automated factory to a NEO by 2025.
It should create something useful in Earth orbit (solar cells? steel girders? fuel? water?) and launch a package or packages back to LEO for less money than it would have taken to get them up there from Earth in the first place.
Also, scrap the shuttle and contract out to commercial launch companies. Award development grants and incentives for cheap launch technology.
And above all, let's stamp on the meme that Space = NASA. It doesn't.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Because they're so busy trying to compile their kernel and write crappy Microsoft look-alike programs for Lunix that they don't have time to have a job. Although it's interesting that the l33t Lunix h4XX0rz in your area actually leave their parents' basements to beg for money; most of the h4XX0rz that live in my area do it online.
They that would sacrifice their
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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?
Or he could actually be a total nutcase and can't hold a regular job
Which means he's perfectly qualified for Congress!
--Jim
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"
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)
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)
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.
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.
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?
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
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)
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
Astros
Rockets
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Since the vast majority of NASA's budget projections are fiction shouldn't we be funding NASA by taxing it?
Seastead this.
...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
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
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.
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.
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.
Well, we just cook up some arbitrary utility function, assume that everyone acts rationally, and then argue that the utility function is maximized. Therefore, it's the perfect system!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
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
As a libertarian, I do not argue for zero taxation. Instead I argue for minimal taxation. There are legitimate functions of government, and they need to be financed. But that doesn't mean that the income tax (or scifi tax) is the way to do it. There was no income tax in the country prior to 1916. But guess what? There was still a government! There are some states today that don't have income taxes. Yet they still have state governments!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Nice troll; I'll bite anyway, because I am bored as hell at work and spouting vitriol is much more fun than analyzing structural fatigue in airframe components :). Keep in mind that these are my personal beliefs, and not necessarily those of any other libertarian or especially not those of the LP.
The parent post has given a reasoned, and insightful response
First off, the parent post was not reasoned in any sense I am familiar with. If you look closer, you'll see that his argument is based on a feeling that taxes are ok, because he likes the way the world is, and because he is proud to be an American. He makes several ad hominem attacks, and uses an argument from authority, but in no way does he construct a logical argument for his feelings. In addition, he is quite badly mistaken in the one or two concrete examples he gives. Because of this, I'm forced to assume your definition of "well-reasoned" is "something I agree with", which is your perogative, but that doesn't make it so. (if you consider pointing this out to be sophistry, I'm guilty, but at least I'm honest about it.)
Anyway no sane person advocates complete abolition of taxation, even those closest to the LP. I don't mind paying taxes for things that form the basis of civilization. The difference is that my idea of what constitutes a base for a civilization is somewhat different than yours. I also have a very strong belief that INCOME should not be taxed -- but that is a different post.
So, now that I have conceded the straw man and accepted the inevitability of taxation, the real argument becomes: what, exactly, IS the role of government? How do you define it, and which principles do you use to establish right-of-rule? Does "civilization" imply "government-sponsored"? I propose that it does not. A civilization can and should be supported primarily on the efforts of its citizens, not on a blind faith in the government to solve all problems (real and imagined)...
I believe the fundamental law of man should be: men should be free from harm at the hands of another man. I also believe that every intrusion of government into man's affairs must be justified by this law.
For this reason, I advocate a strong military, to keep men from other places from coming here and hurting us (and destroying our way of life).
I also advocate an efficient police force, operating independently of the military, which enforces laws and prevents domestic violence.
In order to prevent the police force from becoming too powerful, and to resolve issues which are not criminal but still require arbitration (contract law, child care law, product liability etc) I advocate a well endowed court system.
Finally, someone has to make the laws. IMHO it should be VERY difficult to get a new law passed, and it should be very EASY to overturn existing laws; again, this is just my opinion.
I realize that our current system in these 4 areas is not perfect, but it is beter than any other system which has been tried. Therefore I support that system, and would make only very minor changes in it.
Anything else- from NASA to the DOT to public school system- can be better handled by private citizens. Why do the best roads ALWAYS seem to be toll roads? Why do the best schools ALWAYS seem to be private schools? Why do the best hospitals... housing projects... retirement plans... research projects... you get the idea. Anything government can do, the private sector can do better. And cheaper. AND faster.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of privatizing most government functions at this time. Therefore, since a certain number of people are dissatisfied with the current distribution of tax revenue, and have no real way to either have their voices heard or otherwise support programs they feel are worthy, perhaps a way should be created for them to do so.
Which seems to be what this article is about: how can we find alternative methods of funding organizations which we feel are worthy, without forcing people who have no interest in funding those organizations from contributing against their will? A very libertarian idea, imho.
Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
It makes it much more difficult for the short-sighted in D.C. to pump NASA dollars into defense if it goes straight to NASA.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Why do the best roads ALWAYS seem to be toll roads? Why do the best schools ALWAYS seem to be private schools? Why do the best hospitals... housing projects... retirement plans... research projects... you get the idea. Anything government can do, the private sector can do better. And cheaper. AND faster.
I appreciate that you took the time to spell out your philosophy, and it was an interesting read.
However, you do not answer the question I was asking. I think it is generally true that if you have wealth and power, it does not matter what sort of political system you live under. Your life will be relatively pleasant. Conversely, if you are poor and powerless, your life will be pretty miserable regardless of what sort of government makes the laws. With that in mind, (and I am not looking to debate the degrees of misery at this point) how does the libertarian philosophy help those at the bottom? If one has lots of money, they will always have access to the best schools and hospitals (etc.) What options exist for the poor?
I think most people are generally self-interested. I think it is my best interests that the society I live in is stable, and prosperous. That being the case, the easiest way to achieve that is to ensure that everyone is entitled to a decent standard of health-care, education, and housing.
Sure, if I am at the very top of the socio-economic ladder, I might be a bit worse off than if I lived in a completely laissez-faire society, but on the whole I would be better off because of the stability of the system. Empirical evidence suggests that countries in which there is a great disparity between the very well-off and the poor tend not to be socially or politically stable.
BTW - private hospitals might be "better", but they are also more expensive. I believe that there are several million Americans who have no health coverage whatsoever, and that as a percentage of GDP, the US health system is more expensive to run than the public healthcare systems in Canada and Europe where everyone is covered.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
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!
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
You've never been on the NJ or PA turnpikes have you? Compare them to 95, 295 or 476 (all non-toll roads in those same state) and they are far interior to the tax funded roads.
Interesting, I have only driven on it once, on a trip from DC up to NYC. I thought I-95 was one of the worst roads I'd ever seen, while I thought the NJ turnpike portion was pretty nice. It was late at night, however, and a couple of years ago, so I may be completely mistaken.
My comparison was based on toll roads in places I've lived (Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas). It is night and day going from a toll portion to a non-toll portion; toll roads seem to be always well paved and "clean" looking, while I find myself dodging potholes on nontoll roads. Thinking primarily of I-70 through kansas/MO, 425? in Denver and 35 from OKC to Tulsa...
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
I'd have to know a whole lot more about it than I do in order to make any kind of comment. Generally speaking, however, if it isn't economically feasible to run a rail system in a town, a private company isn't going to be able o do it any better than a public one. What are the circumstances that led to privatization in the first place? Obviously everyone wasn't satisfied with the rail system, or else the idea to privatize would never have occurred to anyone...
If the government is subsidizing roads, subways, buses etc., then obviously a private company cannot be competitive. Privatization is not a magic bullet, it won't save a sinking ship all by itself. To make this a useful case study you would have to have had the government privatize ALL transportation systems in the city simultaneously. Or better yet, built the city from the ground up with a private transportation system (or systems).
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
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.