Swedish Tax Office Targets Webcam Strippers

Sweden's tax authorities are cracking down on unreported webcam stripper income. They estimate that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law, resulting in a tax loss of about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually. The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes. A slightly disheveled project leader said 200 Swedish strippers had been investigated so far, adding the total could be as much as 500. "They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

Comments

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are they, their pimps?

Re:Seriously?

[deraj123]

Isn't that basically the relationship we all have with the government?

Re:Seriously?

[scorp1us]

When you have an income tax, the government is everyone's pimp. The government can extract anything from its taxpayers with little recourse.

When the US started the income tax it was 1% on incomes over $250,000 (adjusted) We now tax everyone 20-30% of anyone making over $600. Furthermore, your "fair share" is determined on how productive in enterprising you are. The more you stimulate the economy, the more you're penalized for it.

I wish people in the US would realize that the more people in government there is, the exponentially more the burden on private enterprise. Assume 1 government worker in a population of 100 can pay 20% of their salary (say $1000) back. The remaining 80% of that salary comes from private enterprise. Now, imagine 99 government workers and one private enterprise person. We then have a $76,200 bill to be paid by one person. Good luck with that.

Today fully one half of Americans receive federal funding in some way. Good luck with that.

We have a federal debt of 12 Trillion dollars and a $1+ trillion deficit this year alone. Our taxes should be 60%. But our unborn have no representation in congress. I love those Obama girls. I can't wait to tap them - for their taxes!

Of course, it is the income tax that allows this. It is so easy to collect as as long as we can keep raising it, we'll keep demanding more and more. Good luck with that.

With a consumption tax this kind of spending would be impossible.

Re:Seriously?

[Leafheart]

The same way the government is the pimp for us all. You make money you got to pay your taxes.

Re:Seriously?

[cayenne8]

"When the US started the income tax it was 1% on incomes over $250,000 (adjusted)..."

As I understand it, it was also supposed to be temporary.

What happened to that??

Re:Seriously?

[tjstork]

As I understand it, it was also supposed to be temporary... what happened...

Oh, let's see. On the right, we have a 600 billion dollar a year defense budget, and on the left, we have a welfare state.

We can go back to having no income taxes if we get seriously cut the size of the military, get rid of medicare, all the welfare crap.. and, well, we also have to pay off the national debt.

sounds like a plan to me.

we'd still be stuck with a big payroll tax for social security. really, the only way your state can escape the us welfare crap is to have your state secede.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, your "fair share" is determined on how productive in enterprising you are.

It's protection money for your... profit. You can be perfectly productive in a charitable or academic manner and your organisations will not have to worry much about tax. But if you want that money just to fund a larger house or private yacht, you're paying n% protection against the unwashed masses stealing the other (100-n)%. It's only right that the more personal wealth you amass, the more you should have to pay to protect it. If you want, we can move to an anarchy and see how long Gates gets to live safely.

The more you stimulate the economy, the more you're penalized for it.

The "economy" is just a bunch of people trading, not some huge singular blob. Just because x does a lot of trade benefitting set X, it doesn't mean I should care about x's successes unless I'm a member of X. But the government will stop me looting x because x pays the government protection money. Understand?

Re:Seriously?

[cayenne8]

"We can go back to having no income taxes if we get seriously cut the size of the military, get rid of medicare, all the welfare crap.. and, well, we also have to pay off the national debt."

Honestly, personally, I don't have a problem with paying a reasonable amount of tax. I'd prefer most of it be to my state I live in, since that govt. is more apt to answer directly my needs, etc. I'd like to cut the MAJORITY of the tax payment to the feds off. I'd like to pay them enough to keep up a strong defense, especially seeing as that is one of the very few roles and powers they are supposed to have constitutionally. I don't like the ponzi scheme that social security is, but, I am somewhat for a very bottom layer safety net...for the elderly and truly infirmed. I guess that that is something that might be best at the national level....but, for most everything else, screw the big federal govt. behemoth.

In general, I don't mind paying some taxes...locally for where I live, and a small portion to the feds to let them do the few things they are supposed to do constitutionally. Let's get rid of all the welfare and extraneous crap the feds currently do, and I would think that once we do that...saving enough money to pay off our debts in a few years, we could do much better letting the states have more of their own power and choice. I'm in a state that gets back more than it pays in the tax game...and I'm all for QUITTING the feds gathering taxes and using the redistribution to the states as blackmail to gain unconstitutional power over the states. I'd give up that income to the state from other just to get the federal power monkey off our backs.

I guess I should quit now....lest I be put on a list of militia group membership by a govt. study of potential troublemakers.

Re:Seriously?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Furthermore, your "fair share" is determined on how productive in enterprising you are. The more you stimulate the economy, the more you're penalized for it.

This argument is based on the assumption that those who are payed more in our society are more hard working and productive. As any fool can tell you, in reality the exact opposite of this assumption holds. Typically the more you are paid, the less productive you are.

While there are exceptions, it is safe to say that those on the lower end of the payscale work very hard jobs for very long hours, whereas those in high paid executive positions are on a gravy train, with high salaries, bonuses, short hours, little responsibility and who actually do atrociously little work.

The truth, and it is something that many simply cannot bear to face, is that the wealth of many individuals has very little to do with their own productivity and labour, and very much to do with the productivity and labour of the many people who work for them. This notion was, and still is, denied by many, particularly whose at the top end of the pay scale, who struggle to find some rationalisation for why they, who spend most of their day idle, spewing out buzzwords, on telephone calls, making powerpoint presentations or surfing for porn, should receive an order of magnitude or more compensation for their day than the people on the factory floor who visibly sweat in order to make their living. It's a powerful juxtaposition and one which I'm sure people in top paying jobs are subconsciously uncomfortable with. Hence they rationalise. Oh do they rationalise.

Read Galbraith's book, "The Great Crash", where he analyises the 1929 stock market crash. Among other things, he argues that one of the main causes of the crash was the huge wealth disparity between the super rich and everyone else. Basically, there were a small number of people who had sucked up a sizable proportion of the money in the US, and gave nothing in return. When they stopped spending, the whole system froze up. They were essentially black holes which money flowed into, but never out of. Consumption taxes wouldn't have helped. Their money was idle and remained so.

So I don't buy this idea about the "injustice" of taxing higher earners. In my opinion, the true leaches in our society are the people in top positions who sit around doing nothing while creaming off the labour of others. they are the true parasites, and they are ultimately the ones who got us into the current crises we now find ourselves in. I'm not a communist, but I don't buy the idea that people should receive unlimited compensation simply because they had a rich parent, an expensive education and the right contacts. And make no mistake, those are the only qualifications that 90% of business managers have today.

Re:Seriously?

[node 3]

Only if you choose not to participate when you live in a democracy.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Billionaires are just a recent form of totalitarianism, just because it is secular does not mean these people are not in principle and practice kings. Always keep an axe handy when a King is around.

Re:Seriously?

[saiha]

Wow you have a lot of hatred for people making more money than you. It can't be that they actually have worked harder, its some flaw in the system that they exploited to make tons of money while holding you down.

I also enjoyed this gem "And make no mistake, those are the only qualifications that 90% of business managers have today."

Re:Seriously?

[node 3]

You anti-taxers are amazing. You're all about "hey, this great country, what it really needs is less money, then it would be even greater!"

What's so troubling about paying your fair share? And yes, your fair share goes up as your income goes up, as those with greater incomes are taking greater advantage of the public infrastructure.

Actually, in the US, your fair share doesn't actually track your income. The middle-class carries the greatest tax burden. That's why the economy is so screwed--the middle class has been decimated.

First they destroyed the unions and free college education. Then they raised our taxes. Then they lowered our wages. Then they had us working more hours. Then they shipped our jobs overseas. The final straw was when they had us go into debt so we could maintain our middle class lifestyle for just a little longer so they (the upper class) could take just a little bit more of our money.

Once the credit ran out, this whole house of cards collapsed. Fuck the rich, it's their avarice that brought this whole thing to pass, and it was the Conservative fiscal ideology (primarily Republicans, but far too many Democrats as well) that placed the Dollar over The People.

Taxes are not our problem, except when it comes to the rich, where the tax laws are set up to reward fucking over the economy and decimating the middle class.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The true leaches are corporations. They are penalized LESS (much less) than individuals, and often get more tax-breaks the bigger they are. Since when did corporations have more/better rights than people? Maybe in my next life I'll be a corporation...

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those hard-working people you love so much only have jobs because more business-savvy people are constructing environments in which their hard labor can be turned into something of value, and are directing the efforts of their employees toward appropriate goals.

Working hard is a very straight-forward proposition that doesn't require your labor to be *worth* anything. But as a result it doesn't guarantee that you will be creating any value - for yourself or others. You come across as a pure "means of production" communist. If you succeed in running your little experiment you will discover that everyone can be working their asses off and still producing jack-shit, if the people who are good at preventing that scenario are held back and the free market is tied up with taxes, regulations, protectionism and government-granted monopolies.

Your mistake is that you think labor is intrinsically worth something. It's not. Supply in an environment of demand is intrinsically worth something. Pure laborers are just one cog in the production of the supply.

Entrepreneurs set up the equation to actually produce value and - as a result - wages; and they do so at great risk to their own livelihood. Risks pure laborers are disinclined or outright unwilling to take. Middle managers, while easy to pick on, exist primarily because pure laborers are so unlikely to efficiently produce things of value if left unmanaged, so if you hate them so badly you have only your workers to blame. It's true that they aren't setting up the value environment like the true business leaders, but it's not true that they are unnecessary. They may well be overpaid, but it's not *your* money they are being paid with so you don't have any right to deny it to them.

Re:Seriously?

[BZ]

> While there are exceptions, it is safe to say that those on the lower end of the
> payscale work very hard jobs for very long hours

You're thinking low end of payscale, not low end of income, right? Note that while some of the people you describe do end up working very long hours, especially due to holding down multiple jobs, there are reasonably many jobs of this sort where hours are capped (and/or overtime pay paid for anything over 40 hours a week).

> whereas those in high paid executive positions are on a gravy train, with high salaries,
> bonuses, short hours, little responsibility and who actually do atrociously little work.

In between, there are a great many people who get taxed rather heavily (more heavily than either of the two extremes you describe) and work very hard. Doctors are a typical example (though both the higher pay and the hard work are results of rationing by medical schools, in my opinion).

But the real issue is not that of tax rates affecting people in different professions but of tax rates _within_ a profession. To use your example of people on the low end of the pay scale, someone holding down two full-time jobs at $7 an hour ends up paying a higher fraction of their income as taxes than someone holding down only one such job, even though the former is almost certainly adding a lot more to the economy no matter how you slice it.

Re:Seriously?

[timeOday]

Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics. The average CEO "earns" 250 times as much as the average worker. Let's assume the average worker is an overpaid, underworked union slob (as "wealth=merit" types tend to believe) and does only 10 minutes of actual productive work per day. The CEO would still have to work 104 hours per day to work equally for each dollar. Not even Ayn Rand can fail to see that logic. So you need to switch to something else, like "they're smarter and more disciplined than you and I," or, "sitting around in meetings is much harder than backbreaking repetitive labor," or something like that.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. I am a software engineer. I deal better with machines than (unintelligent) people. I do well with my intellectual peers, though and am fortunate that my boss is one of them (he still codes, and manages little other than to say, "This is to be done, how are we going to split the work, and what schedule can we realistically meet?") By now, after doing this for 30+ years, I should be managing dozens, if not hundreds of people. I don't: see my third sentence. Promoting me would be a waste of my talent. See, I get the tough jobs done, find the bugs that no one else can. With apologies to my mother, I have a reputation as one stubborn fucking son of a bitch when it comes to solving the problem. I am on the bottom of the "totem pole", yet I earn a hefty six-figure salary. I produce code, generate ideas (which are sometimes passed off to others to implement when I am too busy), and my employer leverages my work in physical products that are sold. So, I don't buy the bit that the more you earn, the less hard you work, at least to the point where one has moved from the lower to the higher tax brackets, and one can do this without managing anybody. I earn what I do because I have a relatively rare skill, (compared, say, to framing houses, though I'm told that pays surprisingly well). Furthermore, to compare physical effort, to mental effort, is not reasonable: a hundred people can't make a bridge if a civil engineer can't design it to not fail under expected load. The bottom line is that people deserve to earn what others are freely willing to pay them, even if some people get very rich because of other people's poor choices. A tax, therefore is nothing more than theft: if a million people are each willing to give me a dollar "just because" (the ultimate example of income without work), who the hell has a right to take some of it away from me? If the state provides me with a service, then it can damn well send me a bill.

Re:Seriously?

[shadowofwind]

You neglect to mention that government bureaucrats tend to be even more idle than business managers. So notwithstanding that people in the middle are getting screwed by their corporate overlords, they're also getting screwed by their taxes.

Re:Seriously?

[smellsofbikes]

I love your summary (and it's intrinsically pleasing to me, as I've spent much of my life much closer to the bottom end of the scale than the bottom.)
However, with that said -- the people on the top of the scale want to model the scale as being directly proportional: the more you make, the more you must've provided or be providing to your job (and that's why you deserve to make so much!) and obviously in the case of the ex-CEO of Enron or GM, that's a bunch of crap.
The people on the bottom want to model the scale as being inversely proportional, along the model of Marx, where the people who are doing the production are the ones actually generating the money and the economy, and the further up you go, the more parasitical people are, and that's an emotionally enjoyable argument.
From my observation, having actually gotten a real job, it's a non-linear system.
The people at the bottom work their fingers to the bone for very long hours, for very low pay, usually because they're not too bright and that's the best job they can get. Then there's an increase in amount of money per unit time up well into the salaried positions, where people are getting paid quite well to work 40-50 hours a week. At that point the amount of time invested -- and the amount of energy and responsibility invested -- starts to rise steeply, where mid-level managers working 70 hours a week and always off on business trips where even after working hours they're still working, show up. Then the salary starts rising very rapidly, in the upper-level management and CEO range, and often the hours start dropping off as well, back towards the 40 hour level. I think that's mostly driven by a sense of entitlement: they figure they've worked themselves to the bone getting to where they are, and they deserve $100M salaries, conveniently ignoring the janitors who are working just as hard and for just as long but are making 1/1000 or even 1/50000 as much.

Re:Seriously?

[scorp1us]

You suffer from the "engineers view", or wage-earner's view as being an engineer I once did.

The fact is there are two ways to earn your money. The first is to go work for someone. You put in 40 hours, and you get a market rate. The work is generally uniform and regular. This is our wage earner. He's paid to assemble widgets.

The other way to be paid is a percentage. The creation of an opportunity or the avoidance of a catastrophic expense is is another way to provide value. But here, they pay is not steady. There may be no opportunities to make or mistakes to save. The other way is to be a material participant in the creation of a wholly new product. (Generally opportunities are about finding customers)

When you create a product as part of a team and not earning wages for it, you put in "sweat equity". When the revenue comes in, the profits are distributed in proportion to the sweat equity. This is where you really make money. A $5 slap shop might make millions, and you get your cut.

I really think engineers (but not so much IT) get the wrong deal. Being that there are so many companies that make or save a substantial amount on software sales, these people should be treated as partners. After all their contributions functions long after they leave. They shouldn't get a wage, just revenues.

The other part you miss is the responsibility aspect. A lowly engineer writes code to the specs, fixes bugs. Generally all the heavy lifting is already done. The people who wrote the specs and all the way up to creating the market opportunity have a responsibility to make sure what you produce will be right for the market. You are concerned with the how (linux, php, .net) they are concerned with the what (a CRM for our clients...) If they are wrong, the company can lose thousands of dollars paying labor or equipment costs for fixes. If Apple puts a bad chip in the iPhone, then whomever signed off on that has responsibility. Signing the paperwork isn't hard. Putting the signature in the right place is. You can't say that only engineers made the iPhone. Clearly it was a company effort. And all those lazy management people nailed it.

Then you go on additional taxing higher earners more. Have you ever considered what could be wrought with that additional money? In a worst-case scenario, it sits in a bank and is lent out again. In the best case it is invested to produce future dividends. But by taking higher earners more you take that away, and given the talents outlined above, you really prevent talent from re-entering the economy, creating more economic growth.

Re:Seriously?

[Kuciwalker]

Let's try 'the work they do is vastly more valuable'. God, you're an idiot.

Re:Seriously?

[ClosedSource]

"It can't be that they actually have worked harder, its some flaw in the system that they exploited to make tons of money while holding you down."

Right. It's not as if CEOs of one company are on the compensation committee of another company along with other members that are on the compensation committee of the original CEO's company with the effect that the CEO "club" really sets its own salaries. Oh wait..

Re:Seriously?

[ClosedSource]

Remember, the whole point of corporations is to avoid personal responsibility while enhancing the owners wealth.

Re:Seriously?

[vjoel]

I wish people in the US would realize that the more people in government there is, the exponentially more the burden on private enterprise. Assume 1 government worker in a population of 100 can pay 20% of their salary (say $1000) back. The remaining 80% of that salary comes from private enterprise. Now, imagine 99 government workers and one private enterprise person. We then have a $76,200 bill to be paid by one person. Good luck with that.

You are ignoring the facts that many private sector jobs depend almost entirely on public financing (defense contractors) and that almost all of the private sector depends to some extent on public expenditures (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing).

Re:Seriously?

[vux984]

Let's try 'the work they do is vastly more valuable'. God, you're an idiot.

Then the CEO should be fired immediately for not getting his thousands of wage slaves to do more valuable work.
If this 'vastly more valuable work' isn't actually 'harder', then why aren't more people doing it?

I mean, if its not actually intrinsically harder (and it largely isn't), than supply and demand pressures should put massive downward price pressure on 'vastly more valuable work', as everyone would be stopping harder less valuable work to do this easier and 'vastly more valuable work'.

God, you're an idiot.

Look in the mirror.

Re:Seriously?

[pugugly]

Okay - first of all, either you don't know the definition of the word exponential, or you're deliberately being stupid. Doubling the number up people in government with salary 'x' does *not* raise your investment by a factor of four, but doubles it. It is therefore not exponential, nor geometric, nor even an increasing level of inefficiency as would be implied by a Fibonacci series, but arithmetic.

Second - since the investment is simply arithmetic, the important question is 'what is the return on the Investment.' If the ROI > 1, then there is a (debunkable) case for having the government do it - to debunk that case you need merely to establish that private industry can deliver a better return to society (Not to it's shareholders) than the Government. Quite often they can, or can do so sufficiently efficiently that it's not worth the energy lost in arguing about it to have the government do it.

But measuring the 'size' of the government with an idiotic 'it's *EXPONENTIAL*' argument while ignoring the fact that there is a return on the investment in government services for society as a whole is just incredibly sloppy thinking. Who the fuck modded that 'interesting.

Pug

Re:Seriously?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

While I don't believe I actually disagree with the policies I think you favor, I still must attack one assumption that you and GGP are making here: that how much you get paid should be a function of how hard you work. That's just counterproductive, because it provides an incentive for working harder, and a disincentive for working smarter. There are countless cases where somebody who works less hard should reap a higher reward per unit of work, because they achieved more per unit of work.

The big problem here is how to measure the value of somebody's work. This is, in theory, set by supply and demand, and the free-market orthodoxy will proceed to justify CEO vs. worker compensation by saying that the labor market must be correctly pricing the value of the work of the CEO and the average worker. However, when you have a society with a very high concentration of wealth, this just skews the numbers, because this impersonal "market sets the prices" theory boils down topeople get to impose their judgements and interests at different rates, in proportion to their wealth. Or, in other words, if free-market is one dollar, one vote, then enormous wealth disparities mean that 1% of Americans get a third of the vote.

Re:Seriously?

[ClosedSource]

It's really "value" that is the illusion here.

Most people are paid to produce something from natural resources that is basically unnecessary which the company advertises to convince people they need.

Then other people who also produce unnecessary stuff use the money they earn to buy it. Thus fundamentally worthless stuff is exchanged.

Some people use the money they get from making useless stuff to start their own company in the hopes that they can create new worthless stuff they can get others to buy. These people are called Entrepreneurs.

Re:Seriously?

[ClosedSource]

You make a nice salary but you're not really in the category people are talking about. The question is whether CEOS that make 100x times your salary are really hard workers.

Re:Seriously?

[Hognoxious]

It's only right that the more personal wealth you amass, the more you should have to pay to protect it. If you want, we can move to an anarchy and see how long Gates gets to live safely.

Bundle in Larry Ellison and I'll sign up now.

Re:Seriously?

[ClosedSource]

Taxes in my view should be based on the power of money. Thus we shouldn't all pay the same amount, because the power of money is not a constant. We shouldn't pay the same percentage because the power of money is not linear.

In the 21st century we should get rid of the paper tax tables and have closer to a contiguous range of tax rates based on income.

Re:Seriously?

[Hognoxious]

I've read this about three times and while it's clear you're being sarcastic, I can't see whether it's aimed at rhe parent (who appears to agree with you) or the GP.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agree that CEOs (or even highly paid engineers, architects, lawyers, doctors, etc) don't work nearly as hard per dollar earned as your average blue-collar.

Note on Rand though: ol' Ayn wanted to claim a lot more than "hard work" vs "laziness" (though a lot of that protestant nopain=nogain sort of ethic is all over the place vis a vis her randomass moral judgements). Her notion of how you could morally justify HUGE inequities in wealth went more like this: people who have the vision/will/smarts/chutzpah to inventnewthings/buildproductivecompanies etc generate a lot of wealth for everyone. Even if they take a massive 10% or whatever off the top, they still make everyone a lot richer.

Thing about fatcat CEOs? Virtually none of them were responsible for building the wealth-producing system (company, invention, idea, etc) they head in the first place. So its pretty hard to argue they deserve the massive windfalls that blow over their fields every year....

Re:Seriously?

[aaandre]

Mod parent up, this is interesting and insightful.

Re:Seriously?

[node 3]

To the moron who modded me down (and who most likely will never read this, oh well...):

Do you realize you modded down the sentiment "take part in your Democracy"? I really don't care much about being modded down in general--there's always going to be some idiot somewhere with mod points (or I may have been the idiot myself, it does happen).

But some things go beyond the pale. Really? Modding down Democracy? Unbelievable...

Re:Seriously?

[Hognoxious]

Okay - first of all, either you don't know the definition of the word exponential, or you're deliberately being stupid.

Or he's a pretentious jerk who just thinks the word means either "a lot" or "very rapidly" or "more" and using it makes him sound intellectual, because it's long and everybody knows that smart people use long words.

I called some chickenshit cretin out on this and he's been stalking me ever since.

Re:Seriously?

[aaandre]

I wonder if this is less about value and more about power and influence. More powerful positions with more ability to change the behavior of the company carry more responsibility and potentially bring more value to the company.

That would be the logic from a corporation's standpoint. From a human standpoint, it is absurd to value one's time thousands of times more than another's.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture where early conditioning in greed and separation result in a belief system that puts money and possessions ahead of life, safety, dignity and health.

Re:Seriously?

[TheNarrator]

Well you raised a good question. Now you have to go deeper into it than just the surface level.

So if all you have to do to get paid 250 times what the average worker makes is be a ceo why doesn't the average worker go out, start a company and pay themselves 250 times what people who work for them make? If you can answer that question you might have a good chance of understanding the underlying causes of wealth inequality.

If you keep following the chain of questions all the way back to the beginning you will eventually wind up where so many of us have, In a nutshell, if you can get access to credit worth thousands of times what the common worker makes you can pay yourself 250x what that worker makes using the worker's own bank deposits. If you can get access to credit for 4% you can buy every single business in the world that has a profit margin of over 4% and make money virtually risk free using the business owners own bank despoits if you are good friends with his banker.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont understand the system. The point is to keep people busy so they don't rise up and kill you.

Re:Seriously?

[master_p]

Why do you consider taxation as penalization? many things must be done for the general population. Your giving is a way to sustain the organized society.

Re:Seriously?

[crabboy.com]

Typically the more you are paid, the less productive you are.

So?

When did it become government's job to make sure everyone's pay is fair? If you don't like your pay, do what it takes to change it. Don't use government to punish others for doing what it took to get the well paying jobs.

Re:Seriously?

[jamstar7]

And now you know why I pack a chainsaw in the boot of my car for 'emergency use'. It's SO much more satisfying than an axe...

Re:Seriously?

[dbIII]

No. The modern CEO effectively gets a salary and has very little risk or even personal responsibility to deal with. Underlings take the fall for failure. Even in extreme case where the board decides that security should escort the CEO out the door they have no criminal charges to deal, get an enormous payout and can find themselves another spot as a salary earner at another company they do not own.
Consider people like Solomon Trujillo - bouncing from one disaster to the next and living like a Rock Star all the time. There's a HUGE difference between people that own large chunks of the company they run and the modern CEO of a public company. You just have to hope that the CEO you get treats it like a job and not an excuse to party - and that they have impressed someone with their ability and not some drinking party antics at school.

Re:Seriously?

[Trailwalker]

Genius in not needed.

I start in a new warehouse. Look around, see men carrying boxes in their hands. Get men hand trucks. Make their job easier. They can now move three or more boxes with less effort.

Excessively simply explanation why I get paid more than dock workers.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect. I live in California and if our taxes just stayed in California instead of all the red welfare states, life would be good.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what makes you think it isn't harder? I suppose you've spent 7 or 8 years getting a few degrees, worked at various corporate positions for another 20, and are now a qualified executive ... willing to work for 2 or 3 times what an assembly line worker gets paid.
There's nothing wrong with being a 'union slob' (or a clean, efficient hardworking Toyota factory worker), but the 'value' people keep talking about is the value you contribute to society ... the easier it is to replace you with a machine, the less you get paid. Obviously there are exceptions on both ends of the pay scale, and we've seen many recent examples of grossly overpaid executives who were in fact incompetent - but they *are* the exception to the rule. You think you're qualified to run GE all by your lonesome?

Re:Seriously?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

It's really "value" that is the illusion here. Most people are paid to produce something from natural resources that is basically unnecessary which the company advertises to convince people they need. Then other people who also produce unnecessary stuff use the money they earn to buy it. Thus fundamentally worthless stuff is exchanged. Some people use the money they get from making useless stuff to start their own company in the hopes that they can create new worthless stuff they can get others to buy. These people are called Entrepreneurs.

No, value is not an illusion in the nihilistic manner that you outline here. Value is a real relation between people and goods.

What is an illusion is the objectification of value when a market sets a price on a good. The market is compromising between the differing values of various people, according to how much wealth they have. Therefore, the wealthy get disproportionately high influence on the "objective" value that the market settles on. So, for example, the super-rich get a disproportionate influence on the relative prices of different types of labor.

Re:Seriously?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Entrepreneurs set up the equation to actually produce value and - as a result - wages; and they do so at great risk to their own livelihood. Risks pure laborers are disinclined or outright unwilling to take.

...except that American CEOs, on average, are so much wealthier than the average American that the marginal cost to them of the potential losses on the extra "risk" they take is much, much lower than the marginal cost to an average American. I.e., to an average CEO, the financial "risk" that s/he must take to achieve large investment returns is actually not very risky.

The way in which the financial world has perverted the word "risk" is pretty obscene, when Warren Buffett is said to bear orders of magnitude more risk than a minimum wage earner with no health insurance, living check-to-check.

Re:Seriously?

[supernova_hq]

Oh, let's see. On the right, we have a 600 billion dollar a year defense budget and a welfare state, and on the left, we have a welfare state.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Seriously?

[Fjandr]

You also have to be on the 50%+1 side who has been promised by their politician of choice that they can be the pimps, while making the 50%-1 the chattel. Participation, even in a large group, is not enough to accurately qualify that statement. You have to participate and be in the largest group.

Re:Seriously?

[novakyu]

You anti-taxers are amazing. You're all about "hey, this great country, what it really needs is less money, then it would be even greater!"

There's the saying (in fact, you can buy a T-shirt saying this at Washington D.C. airports): "I love my country. It's the government I'm afraid of."

America is the greatest country in the world in the human history, and it's precisely because it was the only country to celebrate individualism for what it was—the only practical way to promote collective good, given that men are men and angels do not govern.

America (the people, that is, not the bureaucrats or politicians in D.C.) will even be greater if she has more money (naturally), and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of money taken by the government, and the easiest way to do that is to reduce tax, and the easiest way to reduce tax is to cut income tax, which is also the best way to uplift the middle class—there's no easy, arbitrarily set invisible line that separates the middle class from the ultra rich, and given that the ultra rich do not, as a group, pay so much tax anyway (or so you claim), cutting all income tax will help the middle class most, the exact group you want to help.

Re:Seriously?

[rubycodez]

I don't live in a democracy, I live in an oligarchy called the U.S.A.

Re:Seriously?

[ImABanker]

I don't think most people who attempt to justify CEO salaries use the "hard work" approach. After all, digging ditches is a hell of a lot harder than being in IT, no? How does IT justify making more than minimum wage? The answer I believe most would give to the executive salary is relatively simple: supply and demand. The CEO who is capable of only marginally improving productivity can generate billions of dollars. Look at what happened to Apple's stock price when Steve Jobs began fading into the background. Without him, the company was worth more than 20 billion dollars less to investors. If one rank and file employee left, what would happen to the value of the company? Fundamentally, the CEO of a company has more impact on its value than the lower tier employees. The tasks that the CEO of boeing performs aren't more physically demanding than the person on the assembly line. But how much does a single person on an assembly line impact a 100 billion dollar company? Is it fair to say that a good CEO, who guides the company, is worth 1/10 of 1% of its value? Oh, and most CEOs are slavishly devoted to their jobs, often at the expense of their families and friends. That's how you get to the top. Most would laugh at the idea of a 40 hour work week. 80-90 is more reasonable.

Re:Seriously?

[winwar]

"We now tax everyone 20-30% of anyone making over $600."

No we don't. You pay 25% on ADJUSTED income over 32K or so (about 40K before basic deductions). You pay 15% from about 8K to 32K. And 10% below that.

Median household income for 2006-7 was about 50K according to the census bureau. Hence, most people paid less than 20%.

Re:Seriously?

[saiha]

Not everyone is a CEO. W/e apparently it is flamebait know that.

Re:Seriously?

[saiha]

*to know that

Re:Seriously?

[drsquare]

Cutting taxes doesn't increase the amount of money available, it just changes how it's spent. If anything, cutting taxes could damage the economy, as government will spend everything it taxes whilst the people might just save it.

America is the greatest country in the world in the human history

That can't even provide healthcare and decent education to all of its citizens?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's so troubling about paying your fair share?

It's the equivalent of paying the mafia their "fair share" and you get basically the same results.

Re:Seriously?

[pbaer]

So what? If you think the government can allocate resources better you're delusional.

Re:Seriously?

[node 3]

Absolutely false. Just participating, even being on the losing side has an effect. Just by being someone that the politicians have to compete with each other for your vote, you are taking part in Democracy.

Or your could just be a fucking moron, like those with mod points today, and just tune out when you're on the losing side. I'm glad the voters of America weren't sympathetic with your philosophy last November.

Re:Seriously?

[Fjandr]

Nowhere did I say participation from the losing side didn't have an effect. </strawman>
If you tune out, it just means the other side needs one less vote to become the pimps.

In regard to you being modded down, the vicious tone of your responses following your first post probably contributed to your continuing downmodding. Even if your argument has merit, people are less prone to see it if they have to wade through a cesspool of bile and vitriol to get to it.

Re:Seriously?

[novakyu]

That can't even provide healthcare and decent education to all of its citizens?

Yes, keep repeating the lies.

As for the education, U.S.A. spends more per student than any other country (including the socialist European ones). If there are any problems with the public school system, it's not a matter of funding, as you suggest.

As for health care, why is it that nearly all new, more effective drugs are invented by American companies and, all over the world, for the best medical care money can buy, people come to America?

Socialism may help you provide leeches and substandard medical care to all the masses, but it's only by the brilliance of capitalism and individualism that good medical technologies can be invented in the first place. Whether you can afford it, well, the free market is still the undisputed, most efficient resource allocation mechanism (if central planning could even begin to compete, U.S.S.R. would've won the Cold War). Those whose lives are worth the cost of the system will be able to afford the care they need.

Re:Seriously?

[Hurricane78]

Just by being someone that the politicians have to compete with each other for your vote, you are taking part in Democracy.

You must be new here... (in a "democratic" country).

Since when do politicians care for you? They care for the lobby with the most power/money. And more often than not, they are also inside that lobby themselves.
The whole "votes" and "parliament" game, is just that: A game, to have an excuse and scapegoat for you, to explain why things happen the way they happen.
In reality: When was the last time, politicians did something for you?
And who profited all the other times? Did those people even profit in the cases where you thought they did it for you?

See...

Re:Seriously?

[paving-slab]

That can't even provide healthcare and decent education to all of its citizens?

Yes, keep repeating the lies.

Education

Health

Re:Seriously?

[iNaya]

If you want, we can move to an anarchy and see how long Gates gets to live safely.

Quite a long time I imagine. Being able to afford a personal army without federal interference and all that.

Re:Seriously?

[Wildclaw]

When did it become government's job to make sure everyone's pay is fair?

Since the majority wants fairness to some degree because they realize that it makes the society as a whole more stable and pleasant.

I know, it sucks that people worse than you want to have some freedom also. Freedom should only be for have's and not have not's.

Re:Seriously?

[Wildclaw]

The CEO who is capable of only marginally improving productivity can generate billions of dollars

But noone has been able to show a real relation between CEO pay and performance so using the supply & demand argument is flawed.

Re:Seriously?

[iNaya]

Oh dear... human society is all pointless... I think I'll just go build myself a small hut in the forest and live there forever.

Re:Seriously?

[pbhj]

I mean, if its not actually intrinsically harder [upper management work] (and it largely isn't), than supply and demand pressures should put massive downward price pressure on 'vastly more valuable work', as everyone [peons] would be stopping harder less valuable work to do this easier and 'vastly more valuable work'.

God, you're an idiot.

Look in the mirror.

Erm? A few quick points.

1. CEOs won't devalue their position by flattening the pay system.

2. If everyone were to be given a management position then there would be no people to manage.

3. Just because not everyone is able as a manager doesn't mean that that position is harder. Most managers would be rubbish as workers (if you believe in the Dilbert principle then that's how they got there).

I'm for flat pay schemes. If you do an hours work you get paid an hours wage (that doesn't mean you can slack off). The person who cleans the loo has committed an hour of their life to their job just as much as the CEO has (if it's not the same person!) - the company needs both people. Yes, apply your capitalist ideas and realise that you can cut the peons wage to the root because you can find a million other people to clean the loo - you can pay them less and greed is a strong motivator. That doesn't mean you should pay them less.

Re:Seriously?

[drsquare]

As for the education, U.S.A. spends more per student than any other country (including the socialist European ones). If there are any problems with the public school system, it's not a matter of funding, as you suggest.

I never said it was a matter of funding. Stop putting words in my mouth. If you're spending twice as much for inferior results, then how can you call yourself a great nation? The same goes for healthcare, you spend twice as much as anyone else yet leave tens of millions uncovered. A truly great nation would get it the other way round.

As for health care, why is it that nearly all new, more effective drugs are invented by American companies and, all over the world, for the best medical care money can buy, people come to America?

The best healthcare money can buy is only relevant to the mega-rich. A great nation looks after all its citizens, not just those with the biggest bank account.

Socialism may help you provide leeches and substandard medical care to all the masses, but it's only by the brilliance of capitalism and individualism that good medical technologies can be invented in the first place.

It's interesting then how many technologies are invented by universities are other government-funded bodies, even in the US. Capitalism isn't interested in curing diseases, it's more profitable to cure the symptoms, and give people erections.

Re:Seriously?

[Mateo_LeFou]

I wonder about this sometimes:
Manual laborers can probably generate 20-50k a year in value without much in the way of special skills.
People with special technical knowledge, skills, and/or talent can likely generate 50-200k a year in value.
But 3 million? 8 mllion? Really?

I suspect that the huge increases in balance-sheet values of companies depend on circumstances, luck, in short: a lot of factors totally independent of the CEO and hisher labor.

A problem I see is that the experiment that might verify this would never be carried out: replace a few hundred CEOs with random reasonably-intelligent but otherwise ordinary people. See what percentage of the companies thrive/perish, and compare to the general corporate population.

Re:Seriously?

[Sparky McGruff]

Exactly. A-freakin-men. Bingo. Dead-on.

The compensation of a Fortune 500 CEO generally has no relation to their performance. And, what's even worse, the compensation for most companies that is tied to performance is usually only gauged in the shortest of terms. The US taxpayers are footing bills in the trillions of dollars to bail out the whiz kids at our "premier financial institutions" who were paid "performance bonuses" for their short-term gains. These financial geniuses sold piles of crap that carried immense risk -- risking thousand of times more money than their company could ever conceivably pay -- for a relative pittance in short term cash. They got their multi-million dollar bonuses, the company (and now the taxpayers)got the risk.

I think that any million-dollar bonuses should be required to be tied to long-term performance. Tax the crap out of any compensation over a million bucks, but give a favorable rate to compensation that carries some risk. Like stock options that can't be cashed in for 5-10 years, or long-term ownership of the company by some other agreement. Otherwise, we're going to continue to support the profitable trade of long-term health for short-term quick cash.

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics.

It's also very irrelevant. The money you earn is an indication of how useful the collective "others" deem you to be. Anyone who makes billions must be doing something useful for a lot of people (or fooling a lot of people into thinking so). In the first case, it's hardly justified to use an axe, in the latter, the courts should be enough. Like it or not, people don't get paid because it's "the right thing to do", but rather so that they would continue to do the work they are doing. If a CEO isn't worth his salary, those who pay it should stop paying (and, no, he doesn't pay his own salary unless he owns 50% of the company + 1 share).

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

I still must attack one assumption that you and GGP are making here: that how much you get paid should be a function of how hard you work. That's just counterproductive, because it provides an incentive for working harder, and a disincentive for working smarter.

Welcome to modernity. Increased efficiency leads to bankruptcy of a large fraction of people involved in old ways of doing things. Those who profit from being the first to work smarter are eyed with jealousy. Those who cease enabling the old ways of doing things are seen as plain villainous.

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

Actually, if you read Atlas Shrugged carefully, you'll see how the CEO fit into Rand's model. Towards the end of the falling apart of the looting society the people who were top earners were the people with the closest access to political power. CEO's main function is generally managing interactions with power structures (politicians, courts, unions) more than actual production. The fact that this interaction is more imperative to company's survival (and profitability) than actual production is an indication of how regressed society has become.

Re:Seriously?

[mobets]

Malcolm, is that you?

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

I think you confuse freedom with free lunch. Look up "free as in beer" vs "free as in speech".

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

What's so troubling about paying your fair share?

Top 1% of earners in the US pay 40% of all of the government's expenses (ie, they provide 40% of the tax revenue). If they paid their fair share, they would be paying 1%. "fair" means of equal value. They pay more than others. I don't think you want them to pay their fair share.

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

It's interesting then how many technologies are invented by universities are other government-funded bodies, even in the US.

That's an often repeated lie. Academic research is not interest in providing anything "useful". It's only interested in providing stuff that is "interesting". Very little useful research comes out of academia. The statistics that say otherwise use false measures. For instance, they count the number of "papers published" as a criterion for amount of research produced. But 99.99% of all papers never lead to anything useful. Whereas, corporations have no interest in publishing papers. They only have interest in creating stuff that people want so much that they are willing to part with their money for it. So they are forced to created actual treatments (and if they get lucky cures) for diseases.

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

You are ignoring the facts that many private sector jobs depend almost entirely on public financing (defense contractors) and that almost all of the private sector depends to some extent on public expenditures (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, housing).

Defense is less than 5% of the US GDP. If you want to realize just how insignificant those jobs are, count how many of the fortune 500 are defense contractors (a rough look at the list tells me that it's way under 10%). Other sectors (infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc.) have to go through expenditures regardless of whether they are in public or private hands.

Re:Seriously?

[d3ac0n]

a cesspool of bile and vitriol

Is that anything like a hive of scum and villainy?

Re:Seriously?

[Wildclaw]

Well, they can't do much worse than the private sector banks all over the world that funneled billions and billions into worthless toxic assets.

And the goverment doesn't spend billions and billions of dollars advertising just so that the consumer can be convinced that product A is better than product B, even though they are both crap. And those billions of dollars doesn't even count in the time lost because of advertising pollution. Just TV advertising is responsible for tens of billions of lost man hours per year.

Also goverment functions general are less often underused.

Of course, if you live in a country with a coorporate run goverment, then I can't really help you. That is like the worst of all sides.

Re:Seriously?

[Wildclaw]

Not really.

What is looked down upon and which is plain villainous is making the efficency increasing discovey that allows you to fire everyone (not bad in itself), and earning millions and millions of dollars (not bad in itself) and then not being willing to share the profits of the efficency increasing discovery (villainous).

If you make a big discovery, you should expect to pay a good amount of the profits it makes in taxes (much more if you make the profits private). Is it fair? Yes. You were allowed to use resources, equipment and knowledge provided by the society. The society protected you and ensured that you could make the discovery in peace. It allows you to keep a good piece of profit to reward you efforts.

What society shouldn't allow is you taking all or next to all of the profits. Because, what is the good in society for that. A very similar reasoning goes for people who are allowed to play with huge amount of resources like most CEOs.

Re:Seriously?

[Kuciwalker]

There are a fair number of highly-paid non-executive professionals (e.g. lawyers) around the range you specified, so it's not that implausible that someone's skills could attract that much on the open market.

Re:Seriously?

[jamstar7]

No, he's in the middle someplace...

Re:Seriously?

[novakyu]

I never said it was a matter of funding. Stop putting words in my mouth. If you're spending twice as much for inferior results, then how can you call yourself a great nation?

The figure I was talking about the amount of money U.S. spends per pupil for public schools. i.e. the government money, the tax money (not all federal; I think more than half comes from local taxes like property tax).

The perceived failure of public school system is the failure of the government, yet another evidence why we shouldn't trust it with more money, more power, and more spending discretion. Catholic schools, on the other hand, are doing well, and guess what, they are teaching evolution (compared that to some public schools in certain states).

There are very few things that the government does well or even should try to do (the few things being making war or arresting criminals). Anything else should be done by private citizens, who are the most qualified people to judge exactly how their money should be spent—tax takes that power away from them, and that's why it's evil, even with the supposed "representation".

Re:Seriously?

[Fjandr]

Not really sure, I've never been to Tatooine myself. Hear it's nice this time of year.

Re:Seriously?

[Fjandr]

Unfortunately, they will always be people who want "more" until the entire population is employed by the government (or completely controlled in thought and deed by it should they not be employed) and it is decided by one massive body what the available resources of every single person are. Perfect egalitarian equality, assuming all those chaps up the food chain from you actually do what they're supposed to and the laws put in place by the labor un^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Congress are actually designed to promote fairness.

There are bad things about individualism, but there are good things too. People who are government/taxation/class warfare cheerleaders use the term like it's a curse word, and anyone displaying the tendency is a nasty, evil person. They owe their cushy existence to individualists as much as to group efforts. The day individualism dies, humanity becomes the Zerg.

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

You were allowed to use resources, equipment and knowledge provided by the society.

Whitewash. The "share" of the resources that you got for free is the same as the share everyone else got. You didn't get any more protection from the military nor any more access to public streets. The extra resources (better education, access to more financing, access to anything extra really) is something you paid for along the way. If you took those expenditures, you took risks. The rewards for risks are yours (or at least most of them).

Re:Seriously?

[superwiz]

making the efficency increasing discovey that allows you to fire everyone (not bad in itself)

You'd think so because it frees up people's time to do other things. But it's simply not how society takes it. In 1850 80% of the population were farmers. By 1950 only 5% were farmers. The biggest contributing factor? Fertilizers. Yet, around 1900 everyone seemed to be of the opinion that "banks were ruining" farmers. So banks were vilified.

And newspapers are trying to vilify craigslist right now for "destroying their profits".

Free market is not a religion. It's not ethical or unethical. It's a natural force resulting from the way human being are. Any attempt to subvert it does nothing but change price points (see "war on drugs"). Adam Smith was not preaching a religion -- he was conducting a scientific investigation of how things were happening in the world around him.

The untruth will not become true just because majority decides that it is more ethical.

Re:Seriously?

[Trepidity]

It's not clear that it's true from a corporation's standpoint either: there is very little empirical evidence (despite much trying) that CEO pay is positively related to the corporation's performance.

That leaves a bit of a conundrum, since economic theory assumes that a rational actor wouldn't pay someone a salary that was vastly above their worth to the person paying. One of several hypotheses proposed for the result is that in large corporations, the decision-makers are spending someone else's money (the shareholders), not their own, and the actual owners of the money have fairly indirect and only weakly effective methods to police them. So you end up with a bunch of executives agreeing that other executives offer a lot of value to the company; and they pay this out of someone else's money, who in theory they represent.

It's telling that this happens much less often at privately held firms, which are spending their own money, and are typically more frugal about doing so.

Re:Seriously?

[node 3]

Nowhere did I say participation from the losing side didn't have an effect.

You're splitting hairs, which is absurd when the topic is "are the 50%+1 side the pimps" as they aren't pimps and the 50%-1 side isn't hoes. In context, you essentially stated that participating in Democracy is only prudent if you are in the majority. If not, then the pimp/ho dichotomy is nonsense in the first place (not just literally, but in the sense of one side being in control of the other side similar to the pimp/ho power relationship).

In regard to you being modded down, the vicious tone of your responses following your first post probably contributed to your continuing downmodding.

I was already downmodded before I followed up. My "vicious tone" evinces my absolute disgust and contempt for those who are so thoroughly against democracy. I really don't care about being downmodded by such fools, as I have absolutely zero respect for their opinion. I just wanted to point out the absurdity of modding down democracy (which, ironically, is also a form of voting against democracy).

Democracy certainly has it's problems., but there's no other system that works as well. Any argument against democracy is an argument for some form of totalitarianism, or for anarchy (which invariably breaks down into a fractured totalitarianism of thugs, gangsters, warlords, etc.).

Re:Seriously?

[Fjandr]

You're splitting hairs...

No, you said you only get the shaft if you don't participate. I disagreed, as you can easily get the shaft even if you do participate. Participation alone is not enough to prevent any group from getting the shaft. The pimp/ho dichotomy is called "hyperbole." Of course it is nonsense on its face: that's part of the point of using it.

Any argument against democracy is an argument for some form of totalitarianism...

If you're not for us you're against us. How original, insightful, and clever. No government has ever been reformed with greater success than in a given geographical area's past history. </sarcasm>

Re:Seriously?

[Mateo_LeFou]

Yeah, I'm not skeptical that people --executive or otherwise -- can get paid that much "on the open market". I'm skeptical that these salaries arise from actual value generated.

Re:Seriously?

[ukyoCE]

Not that I totally disagree, but you're acting as if how HARD someone works for 8 hours a day is the only factor in their salary and their stimulation of the economy.

That guy who sweats all day doing construction work for $8/hour, yeah, sure, he's working hard. But *ANYONE* capable of manual labor can do that.

What about a DBA who reads news sites 20 hours a week and does light computer work the other 20 hours? To you or me that seems easy, but try giving your construction worker an Oracle DB and ask him to optimize it. Good luck.

Hard is about training more than it is about sweat. The jobs that pay the most and require the least work are the ones that require years of (often expensive) training. A country with more highly-trained individuals is going to stimulate their economy more than a similar country full of day laborers.

Re:Seriously?

[ukyoCE]

Two people can clean a loo and they each lost an hour of their life. But a doctor lost years of his life to schooling, while the guy off cleaning the loo has very little loo-cleaning education or experience.

Why would anyone go to school to be a doctor (or DBA, etc.) if they could get paid the same amount of money to sit around cleaning loos (or filing papers)?

Your suggestion that there are a million people to clean the loo isn't exactly true (or important - hypothetically it only takes 1 more person than there are jobs to cut wages to 0). Regardless, we have minimum wage to prevent easy jobs in high supply and low demand from driving wages to 0. It seems like this has worked out fairly well, although I would agree that minimum wage probably has not kept up with inflation.

Re:Seriously?

[hacksoncode]

There is absolutely no value whatsoever in "hard" work. If all we ever did as a species was "work harder", we would be limited to the productive output of the maximum number of hours an unskilled undirected population could perform with no tools and no plans. Essentially, we would still be hunter-gatherers.

What is needed at a higher scale than just individual labor is to work *smarter*, not harder.

There are (at least) 2 competing philosophies of work: 1) it's fair to pay people based on the *amount* of their work, and 2) it's fair to pay people based on the *value* of their work.

If what you want as a society is to create value rather than make work, #2 is really the only way to do it.

You scheme would pay Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor the same for a month's hard work painting a piece of fine art. This is absurd if what you want is good paintings.

Van Gogh's work is almost infinitely more valuable (Fred's painting might even have *negative* net value, as in you'd have to pay for the materials and then pay someone to haul it away).

Put both of them to work doing janitorial work, though, and I suspect Van Gogh would *still* perform better than Fred, at least after the first 2 weeks, but *at worst* there would be a fairly small difference between the value they create for society in that role.

A comparison of the value created for society by two approaches:

Pay VG $1,000,000 for a $10,000,000 painting and FtJ $1,000 for $1,500 worth of cleaning up. Net value to society: $9,000,500.

Pay VG $1,000 for $1,000 worth of cleaning up and FtJ $1,000 for a -$50 painting. Net value to society: -$50.

Humans have advanced as a species almost entirely through specialization. Let's not destroy that, ok?

Some people really *do* just have more talent in a particular field than others. Sorry if that's elistist. It's also realistic.

Re:Seriously?

[vux984]

You scheme would pay Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor the same for a month's hard work painting a piece of fine art. This is absurd if what you want is good paintings.

No it wouldn't. If you swapped Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor, we'd have shitty artwork. Van Gogh does something that is "hard" he made good art. Fred might not come up with good art if spent his whole life at it. Good art is "hard".

Remember this discussion is (was) in the context of massively compensated CEOs and management, particularly those at major banks.

Now, if you swap Fred the Janitor into bank CEO position... I seriously doubt he could have done much worse. That job really ISN'T "harder". Making 'good decisions' or being a 'good leader' is hard... but the current crop of CEOs are neither. So why were we paying them as if they were doing something special? Any Fred the Janitor could have done the same thing.

Some people really *do* just have more talent in a particular field than others.

Sure. But what talent do colossal fuck-up CEOs have that is so rarified that we should pay them millions?

"We need to investigate this... closely..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd like to volunteer for this job myself."

Re:"We need to investigate this... closely..."

[furby076]

The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes.

Yes, I do this all the time too. I wonder if I can use this line with my boss?

Hiring?

[natespizer]

Are they hiring?

Re:Hiring?

[internerdj]

Interesting comment, that I'm sure plenty are thinking. So how does this sentiment reflect on those who hunt for child-porn prosecution purposes? What better place for a predator than to have offensive material sent to them as a "necessary" part of their job?

Re:Hiring?

[DavidChristopher]

Well, In this case, they're not looking for some kind of morality charged justice to be handed out, they're looking for tax revenue.

But it remains an Interesting point. You're basically asking "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" When those who are tasked to protect the weak exploit the weak, who will protect us from our protectors?

Re:Hiring?

[moderatorrater]

I'm fairly certain that, were you to be into kiddie porn, you'd be looking at it more than necessary and be noticed by those around you or be caught with it outside an investigation. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work out quite as well as you're implying.

Re:Hiring?

[SnarfQuest]

I think most of these sites are self-run. I don't think you need to be hired.

Re:Hiring?

[DerekLyons]

It's not a job you'd want. After the first 100 or 1000 sites you visit, it becomes just another site rather than a perv's dream.

Re:Hiring?

[blitzkrieg3]

Yeah, not unlike those guys that sign up for the Geek Squad to get free amateur porn, or the stories of the National Security Agency listening in to our men and women overseas having phone sex.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'"

"But if you have nothing to hide", the security officials say, "then you'll let us listen in to your phone calls!"

It makes me sick that Obama changed his policy on warrantless wiretapping.

Re:Hiring?

[Attila Dimedici]

It makes me sick that Obama changed his policy on warrantless wiretapping.

He didn't change anything, he just stopped lying about it.

Re:Hiring?

[cayenne8]

"I'm fairly certain that, were you to be into kiddie porn, you'd be looking at it more than necessary and be noticed by those around you or be caught with it outside an investigation. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work out quite as well as you're implying."

Yeah, I kinda gotta guess they'd get a bit suspicious of you if you were constantly taking work home with you.

:)

Re:Hiring?

[cayenne8]

"It's not a job you'd want. After the first 100 or 1000 sites you visit, it becomes just another site rather than a perv's dream."

Let me get this straight, you actually get TIRED of looking at nekkid chicks? (assuming you're a guy)

Re:Hiring?

[Neptunes_Trident]

Image this being on your resume.
Cyber Pimp yo! Makin sho them stripp'in bitches be sharin they duckets!

Re:Hiring?

[DerekLyons]

It's not that you get tired of looking, it's that you become jaded.

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's not a job you'd want. After the first 100 or 1000 sites you visit, it becomes just another site rather than a perv's dream."

Let me get this straight, you actually get TIRED of looking at nekkid chicks? (assuming you're a guy)

Let me get this straight, do you think all 1,000 of those shows hostesses remained a happy whore on cam the entire time, or do you think, just maybe, the depressing face of a girl who has no other viable options popped up?

In theory, free market and all, prostitution is awesome. In practice, it makes for a depressing and bitter world. Sort of like working with "tech" but really just taking helldesk calls to troubleshoot an Access database app...

[gun in mouth]
[blam]

Re:Hiring?

[cayenne8]

"Let me get this straight, do you think all 1,000 of those shows hostesses remained a happy whore on cam the entire time, or do you think, just maybe, the depressing face of a girl who has no other viable options popped up?"

What's that song...something like "The lapdance is better when the stripper is crying..."

:)

Re:Hiring?

[Hognoxious]

It's not that you get tired of looking, it's the carpal tunnel syndrome. Plus your dick ends up like a bit of beef jerky

FTFY.

Re:Hiring?

[jamstar7]

It's not a job you'd want.

Says you. It's a government job, probably with all kind of government perks. What's not to want?

Re:Hiring?

[DerekLyons]

It's a government job, probably with all the crap that comes with government jobs. What's to want?

Re:Hiring?

[jamstar7]

Let me get this straight, do you think all 1,000 of those shows hostesses remained a happy whore on cam the entire time, or do you think, just maybe, the depressing face of a girl who has no other viable options popped up?

In theory, free market and all, prostitution is awesome. In practice, it makes for a depressing and bitter world. Sort of like working with "tech" but really just taking helldesk calls to troubleshoot an Access database app...

Didn't RTFA, did you? Stripping in Sweden is legal, prostitution isn't. And nobody's saying these cam girls are prostitutes. They just wanna know if the fees they collect for the pays per view are getting taxed.

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't RTFA, did you? Stripping in Sweden is legal, prostitution isn't. And nobody's saying these cam girls are prostitutes. They just wanna know if the fees they collect for the pays per view are getting taxed.

No, why would I read the article? I just read the comment I replied to, which you didn't seem to get. Web cams are generally a low grade form of prostituition, like stripping. Incidentally, prostitution is legal in Amsterdam, and it's pretty depressing to see the mostly "imported" south east asian women there. The "happy smiling" face you see there, or in a webcam, is (almost) always a a facade, and is frequently "downtime" for actual prostitution.

Re:Hiring?

[drsquare]

I don't know about Sweden, but in the UK, a government job generally means cast-iron job security and a gold-plated pension paid for by private sector workers. And all you have to do is vote Labour every four or five years to keep the gravy train on the rails.

Re:Hiring?

[DerekLyons]

I don't know about Sweden or the UK - but in the US cast-iron job security means the assholes and the dolts too...

Re:Hiring?

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN!

How on earth...

[DavidChristopher]

...do these people land these porn watching jobs?

Mind you, I'd probably look a little disheveled too if I had to watch porn for a living.

I Volunteer...

[TexasCelt]

OK, so what red-blooded geek male *wouldn't* want that job, tracking down the perps?

Re:I Volunteer...

[Samschnooks]

OK, so what red-blooded geek male *wouldn't* want that job, tracking down the perps?

Strippers or any other woman in the sex industry basically thinks men are "suckers" and "losers". All women in the sex industry are head cases. Stay away from them.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vulcan blood is green, you insensitive clod! And close the basement door on the way up!

Re:I Volunteer...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Probably for roughly the same reasons that phone support techs think that users are "idiots" and "losers"...

Just as working phone support means dealing with the self-selected population of users-who-can't-figure-it-out-for-themselves, being in the sex industry would mean dealing with the self-selected population of men who can't, or don't want to bother, inducing people to see sex with them as something one doesn't need to be compensated for.

Re:I Volunteer...

[rjstegbauer]

This sounds like you are speaking from experience.

Well?

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you got the "user" perspective.
When I was in college in Miami, I used to have some girls working for me, so I could keep my lifestyle.
I provided them with basic infrastructure (phones, bedrooms at my apartment on the beach, taxi rides) and some bodyguards to help them when they were going to outcalls.
Besides my part of their money, they used to give me plenty of free sex, and they are the best women to deal with, as they think they are totally worthless, so if you ORDER (like a MALE, COMMANDING them! Not like a fag-geek, begging...) them to do anything they will do without a sigh.
This is a rough life we have out there. But girls in the sex industry are really fragile and cool ones, if you are not on their "customer" perspective...

Re:I Volunteer...

[maxume]

It was written to sound that way, regardless of said experience.

Re:I Volunteer...

[interkin3tic]

Probably for roughly the same reasons that phone support techs think that users are "idiots" and "losers"...

Because phone support techs are the absolute smartest people in the world? What's that got to do with strippers? (I'm not a phone support tech, so I can't see the connection that may be obvious.)

Re:I Volunteer...

[I_Voter]

Samschnooks wrote:
Strippers or any other woman in the sex industry basically thinks men are "suckers" and "losers". All women in the sex industry are head cases.
---------
Is the distance provided by an internet connection far enough away?

Also this could just be their natural response to men who believe in "free love."

I_Voter
Work in Proggress
Political Power in the U.S.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get emotional, now.

Re:I Volunteer...

[thedonger]

Until you get herpes, HIV, syphilis, etc. Just because you may have had a jimmy-wrap on your peckerwood doesn't make it safe.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Darth]

Strippers or any other woman in the sex industry basically thinks men are "suckers" and "losers". All women in the sex industry are head cases. Stay away from them.

i have a very good friend who is a stripper. She is not a head case and does not think negatively about men in general. Though she does think poorly of some men, it is for reasons specific to the individuals.
Through her, i have met a few other strippers who were also charming and friendly people (my interactions with them were not in strip clubs, so there was no potential monetary incentive for their behaviour).

Some strippers are head cases. Some are junkies. For some, it's a service industry job that pays well and allows them to have a very flexible schedule.

Re:I Volunteer...

[BrokenHalo]

When I was in college in Miami, I used to have some girls working for me, so I could keep my lifestyle. I provided them with basic infrastructure (phones, bedrooms at my apartment on the beach, taxi rides) and some bodyguards to help them when they were going to outcalls. Besides my part of their money, they used to give me plenty of free sex, and they are the best women to deal with, as they think they are totally worthless, so if you ORDER (like a MALE, COMMANDING them! Not like a fag-geek, begging...) them to do anything they will do without a sigh.

What a revelation.

I am definitely not new here, and I am accustomed to reading opinions with which I disagree on Slashdot, and I don't have a problem with that. But I don't recall encountering an unrepentant asswipe pimp on this forum before.

I have never seen any point in making a "foes" list here, but if you had the balls to post non-AC you would be on it.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll get you, Internet!

Re:I Volunteer...

[malelder]

he actually explains his point quite well in the second sentence of his post (:

certain jobs place you in contact with certain groups of the population, and after time, the workers begin to see the customers traits as representative of the population in general.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, by stereotyping strippers you attempt to demonstrate that they stereotype men and therefore should not be trusted.

And you got +insightful for that?

Re:I Volunteer...

[interkin3tic]

he actually explains his point quite well in the second sentence of his post (:

I'm not a phone tech support staffer so I can't read that far you insensitive clod!

Actually I did notice that, but there was a joke which wouldn't have worked if I didn't ignore the second part. It was clear I was joking, right?

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...sex with them as something one doesn't need to be compensated for..."

Lokking at it from a long-term perspective, it is rare for men to not have to pay for sex (paying for the entire date, making more than half the family income but letting the wife spend most of it, costly divorces based on extremely biased laws, etc. etc.)

Women are genetically programmed to manipulate money out of men. Sex-for-sale (strippers, prostitutes, etc.) is just more brazen than usual.

Re:I Volunteer...

[cayenne8]

"certain jobs place you in contact with certain groups of the population, and after time, the workers begin to see the customers traits as representative of the population in general."

Growing up, while in highschool through much of college, I started as a dishwasher in a restaurant...worked up to busboy, and also at times as a waiter and bar tender (never a fast food worker, avoid that if at all possible). I also worked in retail sales at a decent department store.

I gotta tell you, from those experiences...I know and still consider that about 95% of the general public out there are completely fucked in the head. They are idiots, and you have to wonder how they know enough not to wander blindly in traffic. It amazes you what people out there are really like.

I often think and wish we had some compulsory program that forced kids growing up to work a year in retail and food service. Just at the very least, to let them know how to treat people. I cannot believe how rude some people are to service people...if you've been on the serving end, you aren't likely to be that way when you 'grow up'. And don't get me started on people not knowing how to tip. But, that's another rant.

Anyway, yes....if you work and deal with the public for any length of time, you start to understand how 'people can be that stupid' when you see something stupid on tv. You start to wonder how the world actually functions with so many dullards wandering around. It gets kinda scary.

And I really feel sorry for those today working service....people are MUCH more rude and inconsiderate than back when I was young and did the gig. Hell, the other day, I was eating alone for a lunch...at a sushi buffet. I saw 2 couples in a table next to me with 2 very young kids. They were all well dressed, and did decent you could tell. They had let the kids throw fucking food EVERYWHERE...on the seats, on the floor...everywhere around them.

I sat and ate and watched...to see if they would at least try to clean up a little. No. As they left, I muttered.."you're not really gonna leave all that mess are you?" Well, short story was, one guy started yelling "Hey, that's why we tip, so we can leave as much mess as we want...etc...etc.". We almost got into a fight (I did nothing to provoke it other than my comment), and he finally stormed out of there with his family and friends....but, man....just rude of them. And my comment didn't warrant the outbursts that followed either.

I guess it is just this day in age....common decency is gone.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Phroggy]

Well put. I have a friend in that business, and she's told me it's often not very pleasant. Some clients are even abusive. Apparently it pays pretty good though.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that the majority of the sex industry's clients are married.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Reapy]

I think it is and always will be that way. I worked at a grocery store and then a retail store growing up and experienced much the same as you, but for all the memorable mean people there were just as many memorable nice people. I think it is largely a product of the population density, culture, and location of where you are working. My retail experience was in a 'small town usa' so to speak, while living now in jersey, just seems a different atmosphere.

I try to leave a 20% tip as a baseline for people, but do disagree with your and generally people who have worked for tip's, views on tipping. Tipping in the US is fucked. It would make more sense to raise the menu prices slightly, pay the waitstaff a reasonable wage, and tip ONLY when someone goes above and beyond their job for you.

Also remember that while the waitstaff is working hard for their money, so have the customers worked hard for theirs, and shouldn't have to part with because a person managed to take 5 seconds of notes and carry food ~20 feet from the kitchen to the table. I realize at 'upscale' places the waitstaff will try to go above and beyond to justify the insane markup on the food being served, but still, that should be reflected in their salary rather then the amount of tip given.

I notice many tip waged people get so mad that people aren't willing to part with 2 + dollars over the already inflated prices on things they are paying for. Here, buy this 8 dollar shot, and you better fucking tip me 2 dollars on top of that for me walking 2 feet to the side, pulling a bottle out and tipping a few ounces of liquid into it then placing it on the counter....

Shrug, it'll always be a war of perspectives, as most of life is.

Re:I Volunteer...

[cayenne8]

"Tipping in the US is fucked. It would make more sense to raise the menu prices slightly, pay the waitstaff a reasonable wage, and tip ONLY when someone goes above and beyond their job for you."

I hear that a lot from foreign people. Well, thing is..it is so ingrained here, it isn't going to change. So, I take it to mind, that the price of dining out, is what the menu says, plus tax, plus at least 20% tip. Since that is the way it is here...if one can't afford to pay that much, then they shouldn't be eating out at a place with service.

Not to mention, I'd venture to guess that most people in tipped service jobs would NOT want that to change, as that you can make a damned good bit of money if you are good and know how to 'shmooz' people. This is especially true of bartending.

"I notice many tip waged people get so mad that people aren't willing to part with 2 + dollars over the already inflated prices on things they are paying for. Here, buy this 8 dollar shot, and you better fucking tip me 2 dollars on top of that for me walking 2 feet to the side, pulling a bottle out and tipping a few ounces of liquid into it then placing it on the counter...."

Well, I found it almost ALWAYS pays to tip your bartender well. You get better service, and MUCH better pours on drinks. I know it worked when I was on the other side of the bar. You learned that non-drinkers, those that occasionally had a frozen daquiri or some damned ice cream drink...are not going to tip you, and those drinks take a long bit to make, thus slowing you down. So, often, those drinks, got shorted on alcohol pours, and I'd give the 'extra' I'd saved in bar costs to those people that really drink, and can appreciate when you do give them a 'little extra'. Frozen fluffy foo-foo drinks...God, I hate the thought of them still today, and I've not been working in a bar in decades.

But, I hear your point of view. But, it isn't going to change to just salary in the US, so, I implore you to just consider it part of the cost of going out to dine/drink. That tip *IS* their salary. What they pay on the clock to servers, basically covers what they have to pay in payroll taxes, not much more.

And too , at the end of the night, that server has to declare at least 8% (it may be more today) of their total sales (food and booze) as taxable tip income. So, if you still a waiter, it actually costs them money to wait on you in essence.

Re:I Volunteer...

[master_p]

If you want to have a stripper in your bed, then you should not want to have a stripper in your bed.

If you understand this, strippers will flow to your bed like water flows on a river.

Re:I Volunteer...

[Voyager529]

I gotta tell you, from those experiences...I know and still consider that about 95% of the general public out there are completely fucked in the head. They are idiots, and you have to wonder how they know enough not to wander blindly in traffic. It amazes you what people out there are really like.

I often think and wish we had some compulsory program that forced kids growing up to work a year in retail and food service. Just at the very least, to let them know how to treat people. I cannot believe how rude some people are to service people...if you've been on the serving end, you aren't likely to be that way when you 'grow up'. And don't get me started on people not knowing how to tip. But, that's another rant.

Anyway, yes....if you work and deal with the public for any length of time, you start to understand how 'people can be that stupid' when you see something stupid on tv. You start to wonder how the world actually functions with so many dullards wandering around. It gets kinda scary.

...

I guess it is just this day in age....common decency is gone.

This has got to be the most insightful post I have EVER read on Slashdot. I too have said that in order to graduate high school, one should spend 30 days in foodservice, 30 days in retail, and 30 days as a janitor scrubbing toilets. I can't wrap my head around the kind of mentality that deems it acceptable to treat your customers like utter crap and still complain about them.

Re:I Volunteer...

[religious freak]

Pon farr is a bitch, isn't it?

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the tip, now I know how much to NOT tip incredibly rude /incompetent(not new, just totally incapable) wait staff. I generally tip 20%, and make excuses, I worked as a cook, I know how it goes sometimes. IF, however, the waiter.tress is seen schmoozing whit his/her boy/girlfriend or ignoring people while talking to other employees(generally waiters/resses or "greeters" of all stripes) while I watch my table's food get cold for more than a couple of minutes, that's not inexperience and needs to be slapped down. What option do I have? Take forever with the manager or just skimp on tip.

Well...

[Dracil]

"When we investigated the sites manually it worked better," he added.

What he really meant to say was, there was a lot more motivation and job satisfaction when they investigated it manually.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I can't help but think that this is more a scam to allow the tax officials to look at strippers while at work. But that does beg the question, what is left to do when you go home in the evening?

Re:Well...

[dzfoo]

Overtime!

Re:Well...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Manually, adverb. "By means of the hand."

I suspect that there may have been, shall we say, more than one "manual investigation" going on...

Re:Well...

[BrokenHalo]

You mean like...

$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
$

Serious matter

[riceboy50]

They are being sure to give this close, personal attention.

Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Samschnooks]

Ya know, there's these reports in the news about folks who are "breaking tax laws" and what not. Let me ask you folks this, How many of you check your local tax laws before engaging in a money making activity? I don't. I go ahead and worry about the tax consequences later.

It's bad for an economy when an entrepreneur has to first take into consideration the taxes before engaging in a business enterprise or even consider them. That's just idiotic.

Taxes are a necessity for a society, but when they become a burden and retard entrepreneurial activity, then its tax structure needs to be examined.

Yes, BTW, I think prostitution should be legal.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[CRCulver]

It's bad for an economy when an entrepreneur has to first take into consideration the taxes before engaging in a business enterprise or even consider them.

Getting a new "tax card" from your local tax office before engaging in any kind of serious employment is how it's done in many parts of the world, from Finland to Japan. You worry about taxes before the money starts rolling in, not when you have to file like in the US. Is that bad for the economy? I don't think so, as plenty of states with high standards of living work like this.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[morgan_greywolf]

How many of you check your local tax laws before engaging in a money making activity?

In most countries, as well as the United States, if you are engaging in any legal 'money making activity' you have to claim the income on your taxes, for sufficient values of income. (If the activity is illegal, claming it on your taxes is among the least of your problems. :)

Of course, lots and lots of income often goes unreported because people either forget to claim it or deliberately don't claim it. Getting caught entails high penalties in many countries. OTOH, if you get paid in cash and neither party reports it ("under the table") getting caught is difficult at best.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[mea37]

I don't check my local tax laws, because I know the law is pretty simple in that regard. "If you make money, you must report it" isn't the complex part of the tax code. (If you want to get technical, that may be read as "if you make/lose more than $1" instead of "if you make money"; but that's no practical difference.)

But hey, I'm in the U.S. Maybe there are complex rules for which income you report in Sweden. I doubt it, but maybe.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[MoellerPlesset2]

Ya know, there's these reports in the news about folks who are "breaking tax laws" and what not. Let me ask you folks this, How many of you check your local tax laws before engaging in a money making activity? I don't. I go ahead and worry about the tax consequences later.

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it. Besides which, it's not as if 'income tax' is something most people have never heard of. And 'worrying about the consequences later' is hardly a good idea in Sweden, for instance, where you're liable to incur a tax penalty for not registering beforehand.

It's bad for an economy when an entrepreneur has to first take into consideration the taxes before engaging in a business enterprise or even consider them. That's just idiotic.

No, 'idiotic' would be to start a business without taking taxes into consideration, as well as any other expenditures. Also, any other laws and regulations that might apply to the business you're doing.

Taxes are a necessity for a society, but when they become a burden and retard entrepreneurial activity, then its tax structure needs to be examined.

Either your employer withholds tax and pays it for you, or the responsibility is on your head. (Well actually it's always on your head, ultimately) How is that difficult?

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree 100%
UK used to have 0% tax for new businesses, but that was before my first venture, and they scrapped that unfortunately.

I have started a business in the UK but didn't quite get past the first bureaucracy hurdle.
The point between starting up, and being able to employ the number magicians to deal with VAT and corporation tax. Having health & safety manual updates, thicker than encyclopaedia Britannica posted though the door is pretty intimidating.

Anyway, my current enterprise is internet only and involves no physical goods. I incorporated offshore right from the get go, and it's really simplified a lot of things. Including paying UK taxes AT ALL!

Entrepreneurs tend to be sort of not that good at a lot of things; and tax is boring as hell, so governments would be smart to keep it simpler than BASIC.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[furby076]

It's bad for an economy when an entrepreneur has to first take into consideration the taxes before engaging in a business enterprise or even consider them. That's just idiotic.

No it isn't. Just like it isn't bad to check up on safety regulations before venturing into a business. It's also very inexpensive. I registered a company by paying my cpa $200. I have an LLC. My cpa then told me what I had to do for taxes. It was quite simple. It's also good for the economy.

Yes, BTW, I think prostitution should be legal.

Depending where you live it may be. Depending where you live, even if it isn't, the cops get bribed and turn a blind eye. But this is not prostitution it's video and that is legal in most countries.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Tacvek]

Yes. It is always A good idea to report all illegal income on the tax form. There is a special spot for it on the US tax forms, although I believe having a non-zero value for that line is is considered sufficient to issue an arrest/search warrant. (More on that later). Therefore The best course is to add it into the general income. I think that might technically be fraud, but the IRS would be very reluctant to prosecute any fraud that results in a greater amount of tax income.

Many organized criminals have been very well known, with the police being pretty darn certain about various crimes that have been committed, but lacking enough evidence to obtain warrants. It is often quite possible that with a search warrant They could find enough evidence, but they lack the evidence to get a search warrant, and are rarely ever confident that they would find enough evidence to convict if a search warrant was executed. The last thing they want to do is upset a organized criminal by executing a search warrant, but end up with insufficient evidence to arrest him/her. Often times by the time they have enough evidence for a particular crime, the statute of limitations has made it impossible to prosecute them for it. But if the crime resulted in unlawful income that was not reported on the tax forms, they can still charge them with tax fraud.

Little of that is probably news to those reading this post. But the important thing to remember is that quite a bit of that also applies to white collar crime. So the best course of action is to report any unlawful income, but not in the designated location, so as to avoid giving the police reason to obtain warrants. Not that I advocate having illegal income, but if you are going to do it, you might as well do it right.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[dwye]

> (If the activity is illegal, claming it on your taxes is among the least of your problems. :)

Tell that to Al Capone.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you are engaging in any legal

illegal income must also be claimed or they will get for tax evasion also.

Remember, the police have other things to do (give out sweet money making traffic tickets) than hunt your ass down. But the IRS doesn't. The IRS will spend $1000000 to get that $0.50 you owe. Don't. Fuck. With. Them.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[mooingyak]

If the activity is illegal, claming it on your taxes is among the least of your problems.

If the activity is illegal, but a lesser crime than tax evasion, then no.

Also, you needn't declare that the income is illegal, just that it exists.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.

Not quite true. First of all, one must consider that there are far to many laws for any person to be aware of them all. The fortunate thing is that many of them are not applicable to the average person. So in general the courts adopt the attitude that if you are going to do something you should look up the relevant laws related to it. If you plan to start a business, you should look up the relevant laws. If you plan on an activity that has risk of significantly injuring somebody, you should look up the relevant laws regarding safety.

Thus in most cases if you have violated the law without knowing it, it is because you failed to look up the relevant laws beforehand, which you should have done. There is an important exception to that, which is that in some cases no reasonable person would have reason to suspect that there may be a law related to an activity. In such a case it is not reasonable to expect people to have read the law first. In such cases, ignorance of the law would most certainly be an excuse.

For an example, let us assume that there was a local ordinance that prohibited chewing gum in public. (We will ignore constitutional implications of such a law for the moment.) That is not an activity that any reasonable person would suspect may be covered by law, if a person were to claim to the court that not only were they unaware of the law, but had no reason to suspect that there be any laws governing that activity, they would have a pretty decent defense.

For the recordL IANAL.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[vertinox]

Getting a new "tax card" from your local tax office before engaging in any kind of serious employment is how it's done in many parts of the world, from Finland to Japan.

We don't do it like that in the US. The way it works is that it is automatically taken out of your paycheck if you work for a registered corporation.

Or if you are self employed, you are simply expected to report it directly to the Feds using a very complex system of itemization. If not, eventually someone looks at your bank account and audits you.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[vertinox]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.

I always hated this reasoning simply because it is usually said by people who study or write laws for a living.

The crux of the matter is that society often has too many laws that it impossible to know them all without consulting a lawyer who even then has paid legal assistants to look up the issue in question.

I can't find the quote right now, but there was a Roman senator who once said, if they made enough laws, they could simply arrest anyone for any reason at anytime.

In that regard a government could hold power over its people because the people did not know what laws they had broken when they were in jail. (Which is one of the reasons the US Constitution specifies that the accused to be allowed to face his accusers so to know why he has been arrested)

In that regard, if a corrupt government made enough laws, they could cherry pick any one of them to arrest someone whom they did not approve of while letting everyone else scott free simply because it would not be practical to arrest everyone who actually did break the law except this particular person who they did not like.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

"retard entrepreneurial activity"

we have some of that around here.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Cytotoxic]

In most countries, as well as the United States, if you are engaging in any legal 'money making activity' you have to claim the income on your taxes, for sufficient values of income.

Actually, you have to report any income, legal or not. Not doing so can often be worse than getting caught for your illegal activity. Just ask Al Capone.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Brandybuck]

In the US taxes are extraordinarily complicated. In some cases you don't know what you owe until AFTER you've earned the money. It's a tax system that encourages big business, because they're more able to absorb the accounting and legal costs of doing business in America.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[vertinox]

Oh and two more things...

The US Government don't not have tax permits for private individuals but rather corporations, so many of us are scratching your head about "tax permits" that you have to get first to perform business. Many of the US private citizens do often have income "under the table" and the government turns a blind eye because everyone does it and only goes after people with big bucks.

(Perhaps this is why the US has more economic activity that most nations... Or it might be the black market because of the war on drugs, but that is speculation)

The US tax system is very complex and people are good money to exploit it legally.

And lastly... There are some laws in the US that are codified specifically for "intent" and "purpose" of the accused.

In which depending on the motive of those charged will depend on how they are charged (like manslaughter versus murder or conspiracy etc etc) and often you can be charged for attempting to willfully bypass a law.

If your lawyer can argue your ignorance of the law, then you can be charged with a lesser version of the crime. Not because of your ignorance but rather that you weren't doing the crime maliciously.

It might be different in Sweeden...

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[DuBois]

Either your employer withholds tax and pays it for you, or the responsibility is on your head. (Well actually it's always on your head, ultimately) How is that difficult?

Actually, it's that gun to my head that worries me. Never forget that taxation is real force and real violence, and that the gun really is the source of all political power (paraphrasing Mao here). The difficulty happens when someone prefers to live their lives free of violence.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Attila Dimedici]

I have a friend who makes his living with an Internet business. He tried three or four things before he hit upon what he is doing now. If he had to get a new "tax card" every time he changed his business plan, it would not have been worth his time to try the first several ideas. If he hadn't tried the first several ideas he would not have learned what led him to the one that is successful.
I know of people who have done similar things with non-Internet businesses.
In those countries where you get a new "tax card" before trying a new business opportunity, what do you do when the business doesn't make any money and you want to give it up?

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[raynet]

In Finland income tax is also automagically taken from you paycheck, but if you don't give your employer a taxcard, they will take 60%.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[cayenne8]

"Or if you are self employed, you are simply expected to report it directly to the Feds using a very complex system of itemization. "

It isn't really that hard.

First thing to do...incorporate yourself. I went the "S" corp route. Out of the companies earnings...I pay myself a 'reasonable' salary. For easy example, let's say I bill out and the company collects $100K annually. Now, I pay myself about $30K salary. I only have to pay employment taxes (SS, medicare, unemployment ins, etc) on that $30K. The remaining $70K falls through at EOY on my personal taxes...and I just pay state and federal income taxes on that (LA has state taxes). Now, I do, throughout the year, keep up with mileage I drive, all expenses..etc., and I write that off as company expenditures....to make as much of that remaining $70K non-taxable. I fully fund an HSA (Health Savings Account) and that is all pre-tax dollars, etc.

Anyway, not complex, but, it is a bit of paperwork to keep up with. In the long run, though...I get to keep and spend more of my money myself and keep more from uncle sam. All legally. It is sad you have to jump through hoops to do this, but, it works. I'm back on a W2 gig right now, and I hate it....but, I'm still working smaller things on the side, and hope to go back to the self employ in the near future. It is really the ONLY way to keep your hard earned money these days. It is worth the extra paperwork, and a few hours a month on Quickbooks Pro.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[russotto]

Also, you needn't declare that the income is illegal, just that it exists.

Unfortunately, you have to declare the revenue, not the profit; business expenses on illegal income aren't deductible.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad for an economy when an entrepreneur has to first take into consideration the taxes before engaging in a business enterprise or even consider them.

Starting a business is about understanding costs and balancing them against revenues, and using that data to manage investment risk versus return.

90% of all businesses fail within the first year because most people fail to realistically assess the costs versus the expenses of running a their business venture.

  Talk to your accountant and your lawyer, make a solid business plan, and make sure that the numbers add up to a profit rather than a loss. It may sound harsh, but I feel that if you lack the basic foresight to plan for the simplest of operating costs (taxation), your business deserves to fail. There's a lot more to go wrong out there, and frankly, if your business is successful, taxes will be the least of your worries.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Threni]

> I always hated this reasoning simply because it is usually said by people who study or write laws for a living.

Yeah, never forget society is propped up, ultimately, using force. Come any breakdown of society, and the first people killed will be police, judges, lawyers etc. Everyone is supposed to be aware of every single law? The very idea that this principle is taken seriously shows how absurd society has become.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[vertinox]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it

And I don't mean to reply 3 times to your post, but I was bored and actually came across the law in question that gives actually states a good reason to be ignorant of the tax law rather than being away of it.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/7203.html

7203. Willful failure to file return, supply information, or pay tax

Any person required under this title to pay any estimated tax or tax, or required by this title or by regulations made under authority thereof to make a return, keep any records, or supply any information, who willfully fails to pay such estimated tax or tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information, at the time or times required by law or regulations, shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $25,000 ($100,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both, together with the costs of prosecution. In the case of any person with respect to whom there is a failure to pay any estimated tax, this section shall not apply to such person with respect to such failure if there is no addition to tax under section 6654 or 6655 with respect to such failure. In the case of a willful violation of any provision of section 6050I, the first sentence of this section shall be applied by substituting "felony" for "misdemeanor" and "5 years" for "1 year".

It can't be willful unless you knew about the law, now can it? One would rather have 1 year in the block rather than 5 years, no? Even the law itself sometimes admits you cannot always know the law. How else could you willfully evade taxes?

Of course this again is only US law. YMMV

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

First of all, one must consider that there are far to many laws for any person to be aware of them all.

That doesn't quite apply to the context here. As other people have pointed out in this thread, the most basic thing about taxes is that if you receive some income, you're required to at least report it, and very likely to pay some tax on it. So, as soon as you know you're going to receive any income, you should know that unless you will either have to pay taxes on it, or demonstrate that you're not liable for taxes on that portion of income.

Tax law only starts to get complicated after that point. Yet in this thread, we're talking about a failure to grasp precisely that point.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Hognoxious]

you have to claim the income on your taxes

Luckily you can pay the deductions of your declarations.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Hognoxious]

Rubbish. YANAL but YAAFI.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.

So, you know exactly all the links that you aren't suppose to visit/post when you're in Australia, right?

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[jamstar7]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.

Never been audited by the IRS, have you? I got audited 3 times in 2 years, for the same tax year and each time, the auditor came up with a different figure that I 'owed'. Basically, the only 'legal' deduction is one your auditor says is legal. The US income tax code runs over 3000 pages and is a text book example of 'the big print giveth, the fine print taketh away'.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that regard, if a corrupt government made enough laws, they could cherry pick any one of them to arrest someone whom they did not approve of while letting everyone else scott free simply because it would not be practical to arrest everyone who actually did break the law except this particular person who they did not like.

Ah... looked out of the window recently, have we?

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse for violating it.

Total fucking horseshit. That only applies to normal people.

Richard Nixon was a top lawyer working for a top Washington law office. Are you so naive as to believe he didn't know what he was doing and did it all anyway? But it all came off as "We didn't know it was wrong" and generally got blown away -- until it got just too outrageous.

Most of congress (in the Kama Sutra sense of the word) are lawyers. They know what's right and wrong and are always given a pass because "the law in this area is vry complicated, so you really don't kow if you've broken a law." So they're let off because they can attack the meaning of the laws they've written themselves.

Bush personally signed the law providing severe penalties for underage drinking. Yet, when his bitch-spawn got nailed while underage and drunk, I guess she didn't know what she was doing, so she got community service. Unlike the Mexican kid across town whose ass got landed in jail with hefty penalties and lawyer fees.

Then we come to the ultimate -- cops. It doesn't mean jack shit whether they know the law or not -- they'll always get off for "acting in good faith" or for "exercising an abundance of caution".

As an example, I have a friend with an amateur radio license -- an "Amateur Extra" -- the highest class of license. He was stopped, in his car, in a county park, eating his lunch. A ranger and a sheriff's deputy came over to "chat" and see what they could see. The deputy saw my friend's hand-held transceiver sitting on the dash. He jabs a finger at it and hollers, "Is that a scanner??? If it is, I'm confiscating it." My friend handed it to him, explaining it was an amateur radio. (He didn't say it did, in fact, have scanning capability as that is not its primary function. He also, probably wisely, didn't mention that DTMF tones could be sent from the keypad, allowing you to make a phone call, also a secondary function.)

Nor did he, probably wisely, bring up the fact that, in California, it's perfectly legal to use a scanner, even in a moving vehicle, as long as it's not being used in the commission of a crime. Obviously the dickhead of a cop had no idea that he had no grounds to object, even if the radio _had_ been only a scanner.

My friend then took out his FCC-issued radio license, as well as three various government-issued cards: DSW, showing that he had been certified as a qualified Disaster Service Worker, as well as ARES and RACES cards, also certifying him as available, if called upon, to conduct city and county emergency communications in a disaster.

At this point, the fucking deputy's head exploded and he started shrieking about my friend "impersonating a police officer!", then ordered my friend out of his car, claiming that he now had authority, based on the impersonation charge, to search the entire car.

At this point, the ranger apparently suggested to the deputy he should maybe check back with the office. The deputy walks off to call in, then returns, considerably chastened, and tells my friend he could leave. Apology? -- shit, you'll bet on anything, won't you?

Similar, but lesser case: another friend was riding his bicycle through town. He didn't make much of a stop at a stop sign, since he had a clear view in all directions and no one was coming across his path.

A cop was standing some distance away, lecturing a few kids about how they had to have helmets on while riding their bikes. Seeing the non-stop, he hollered my friend over to make an example of him in front of the kids. My friend knew he was wrong and readily and politely accepted the ticket, knowing his behavior was also an example to the kids of taking your licks gracefully.

However, after signing the ticket, he add a line stating that he was on his bicycle, not in his car, when the ticket was issued. He wanted to make sure there was evidence for his insurance company that he had not committed a moving violation in his car.

As soon as

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find the quote right now, but there was a Roman senator who once said, if they made enough laws, they could simply arrest anyone for any reason at anytime.

Dunno about the Romans, but the French Cardinal Richelieu (9 September 1585 - 4 December 1642) said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

>

So you'll be moving to Nevada soon?

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[cheekyboy]

The govt keeps secrets from me, so I have my own secrets, and they are classified.

Im just suprised lots of org crime are stupid enough to 'keep cash', they should convert the majority to gold as it takes less space and is untraceable. "Its my grandmas from ww2"

Organized criminals should also rent and lease cars, so nothing can be 'repossed' and taken as proceeds of crime.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden, tax law explicitly states that income from illegal activities are exempt from tax. (I'm not sure why.)

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold in the quantities serious organized crime would need would be very traceable. Even if not where would one buy tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of gold, such that those much more traceable dollars don't lead the government right to the sale?

Further gold is far less liquid than cash, or even stocks, except when it is the virtual gold of money markets, or precious metal markets. (AIUI in both of those, you normally would never see the gold. It is being held in your name by another party.) But everybody accepts cash, and these days you can convert stocks to cash in bank quite easily in under an hour during business hours on trading days, and get virtually complete face value for it. (Minus brokerage fees).

There is no way to convert gold to nearly complete face value in under an hour, since any buyer would want the purity tested, etc. There are exceptions such as jewelry, but much of the value of jewelry is not from the gold. There are also gold coins, which are fairly tracable, where the purity is known, and so only the mass would need to be confirmed. On the other hand, gold coins are often worth more than just the raw value of the gold.

Re:Do they even know they need to report it?!?

[Tacvek]

In Sweden, tax law explicitly states that income from illegal activities are exempt from tax. (I'm not sure why.)

The theory is that you generally don't own the money you earned illegally. Somebody else is the rightful owner. Since the money could be taken away and returned to its rightful owner at any time, then it is not really income is it? Taxing that money would be unfairly harming the real owner in the event that the criminal is caught and the money is returned.

To be more precise, in Sweden, illegal income through a business is taxable. However it is also deductible because it can be forfeit. Thus illegal income generally has a net taxable value of zero. My understanding is that businesses are required to pay full taxes on that zero net income. I suspect it may be fraud if a business fails to report the illegal income, but it has no net impact on taxes owed.

Non business illegal income is just plain not taxable. I suspect this also means it need not be reported.

IANAL, and I most certainly am not Swedish, nor a taxation expert.

Cue the Slashdot libertards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there's an imminent wave of libertarian-minded folks who are ready to defend some kind of right to not pay taxes, even though the American founding fathers envisioned taxation as a natural part of government, They had only a problem only with taxation without representation, and I think Sweden can be fairly described as a representative democracy (trappings of old monarchy aside).

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[dzfoo]

I believe they also had a problem with a large Federal Government, which is the reason that there wasn't any provision for it to tax the citizens directly.

        -dZ.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[capnchicken]

libertard, huh? ... oh, sorry, I'm supposed to bite (even though this is an article about Sweden).
Here ya go:
U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4

No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[morgan_greywolf]

At the foundation of the United States, taxation == property taxes. Income taxes were never envisioned, and when they were passed after the Civil War to pay for reconstruction of the South, many commentators thought they were unconstitutional. Many people still think they are unconstitutional.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Swedish citizen, I'd like to remind you that Sweden is probably THE most liberal country in the world, and I mean liberal as in the European view, not the American one you have.

And yes, we're a representative democracy, and no, the monarchy have no powers, they are a PR stunt for Sweden internationally.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[RingDev]

Because as we all know, every single one of the founding fathers made decisions in unison with an absolute agreement amongst themselves in a sealed off bubble from which they were only exposed to the true will of the people...

The founding fathers were some amazing thinkers, and we should continue to review their work to learn more about our experiment called Democracy. But they were far from infallible and rarely of one mind.

Lumping them all together in a homogenized "they" really whittles away a lot of the intricacies and strife that they dealt with in coming to compromises that lead to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

-Rick

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[funkatron]

I'm not disagreeing with taxes but I thought I'd point out that the American founding fathers are not automatically right about everything. Isn't using "the American founding fathers said $X" as a reason for $X a bit lazy.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite.

Lincoln instituted an income tax during the Civil War to pay for it. That tax was struck down as unconstitutional.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[dzfoo]

Wow, I really do not know what your comment adds to our discussion. Should I have broken down my comment into a list of those who approved of a large and powerful Federal Government and those who didn't, with names and weighed ratings either way?

Sure, lumping them all into a single "they" oversimplifies their position, but there is ample documented evidence that at least the majority was opposed to a centralized, all-powerful Federal Government, who thought that the power should be instead mostly concentrated on the States.

      -dZ.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[DrgnDancer]

Except you know, they amended the Constitution to make them not unconstitutional. That's why the whole "amendment" procedure was included in the first place. How precisely can something be unconstitutional when a legally passed Amendment to the Constitution explicitly allows it?

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[morgan_greywolf]

You're nitpicking and attacking a rather minor point. The OP stated that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America envisioned a country run by taxes. Since we are talking specificially about income taxes, the OP effectively implied that the Founding Fathers envisioned a country that was run by income taxes. I believe I effectively refuted this by pointing out that the income taxes were never envisioned by the Founding Fathers, especially since they wouldn't be enacted until well after they were all dead.

The fact that they passed an amendment had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Founding Fathers original vision for the country.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[Anonymous Coward]

Only for the same reason an Amendment to the Constitution allowing murder is anathema to the document, so is the taxation amendment.

BTW the Supreme Court ruled the amendment conferred no new taxing authority

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[DrgnDancer]

You had a three sentence post. One of those sentences said "Many people still think they [income taxes] are unconstitutional." I responded to that sentence. How can a three sentence post have a "minor point"? There were only three points:

1) The founding fathers did not envision taxes.
2) They were probably unconstitutional when first implemented.
3) Many people still think they are.

They all received pretty close to the same amount of time. Your first two points are completely valid and largely unarguable. I was curious as to how you justify the third, given the facts. Or if you personally are not one of the people who believe the third; perhaps you know how the people who do believe it justify their belief.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

"At the foundation of the United States, taxation == property taxes. Income taxes were never envisioned,"

Of course, it's not clear if the founders preferred property taxes out of any sort of principle, or because in their day, income taxes were not remotely enforceable.

"when they were passed after the Civil War to pay for reconstruction of the South, many commentators thought they were unconstitutional."

They thought income taxes were a "direct" tax, and would need to be apportioned between the states according to the census, as specified in the Constitution. There was never any doubt that taxing income was in general constitutional.

"Many people still think they are unconstitutional."

Then they are idiots. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived..." isn't exactly vauge.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[Anonymous Coward]

And I, for one, am willing to pay a little to admire their flexibility!

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[jamstar7]

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived..." isn't exactly vauge.

That's the 16th Ammendment, not the original document. It was ratified in 1913. What part of 'ammendment' are you having difficulties understanding?

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

The part you quoted was a direct response to your claim that many people "still" think income taxes are unconstitutional. It is my belief that 1913 is in the past. Thus, I conclude that the 16th amendment, having been ratified in the past, would be in force today. So anyone claiming income taxes were still unconstitutional would have to be claiming they were not constitutional even after ratification of the 16th amendment. So the fact that the 16th amendment explicitly authorizes income taxes would seem at least somewhat relevant, don't ya think?
    The constitutionality of income taxes before 1913 is an interesting, if purely academic, question. The suggestion that income taxes are "still" unconstitutional today is not interesting, it's idiocy.

"What part of 'ammendment' are you having difficulties understanding?"
Besides the extra 'm', I'm having difficulty understanding the part where amendments mysteriously don't count. Maybe you can help me out with that, because I'm pretty sure they do count.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[jamstar7]

The part you quoted was a direct response to your claim that many people "still" think income taxes are unconstitutional. It is my belief that 1913 is in the past. Thus, I conclude that the 16th amendment, having been ratified in the past, would be in force today. So anyone claiming income taxes were still unconstitutional would have to be claiming they were not constitutional even after ratification of the 16th amendment. So the fact that the 16th amendment explicitly authorizes income taxes would seem at least somewhat relevant, don't ya think?

The constitutionality of income taxes before 1913 is an interesting, if purely academic, question. The suggestion that income taxes are "still" unconstitutional today is not interesting, it's idiocy.

Actually, its constitutionality is unquestionable until it gets to SCOTUS. If they rule against the 16th, the 16th goes bye bye. So far, I haven't found a case where the 16th was challenged at the SCOTUS level.

Point I'm making is, until the 16th Amendment, income taxes were unconstitutional. Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them, but I also know there's no way in HELL its constitutionality will ever come before the 9 Old Farts. If it gets repealled or dismissed, a ton of people are going to be wanting their money back, and the Feds just don't have it.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

"Some people doubt the constitutionality of the 16th. I'm one of them..."

You think that part of the constitution is unconstitutional? How would that work? I mean, the point of an amendment is to amend. If an ammendment conflicts with a previously adopted part of the constitution, it's not a problem; it's the point. I'm not sure where you get this idea that SCOTUS might have the power to review the constitutionality of the constitution. Hell, I can't even make it sound reasonable semantically, forget legally.

Never mind the 16th, how could any amendment ever be unconstitutional, no matter what it said? I must be missing something, the idea makes no sense.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[jamstar7]

OK, let me do this in small doses, so you can follow along. Obviously, the Big Picture is a bit much for you.

Just because something is proposed as an amendment doesn't mean that it's constitutional. Example being the 18th Amendment. This one should never have happened. It's a clear stomping on the rights of the citizenry to Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness, among other things. After all, doesn't Roe vs Wade say that the government has zero say about what a citizen can or cannot do to their body once they reach the age of consent/adulthood? Yeah, RvW was decades after the 18th, but timing doesn't trump principles.

Let's take a hypothetical amendment, the 33rd Amendment. Let's write it so that it reverses the 10th Amendment in that it takes from the citizens and gives their rights to the Fed. As such, it's directly contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which states that any right not enumerated in the Constitution is reserved for the citizens (as an individual right, example, privacy) or the States (a plural right, for example, the method of choice of a State's senators or the succession of a Representative to Congress). Constitutional? Not hardly. But possible. And likely to be struck down by the SCOTUS if it ever gets put in front of it. It's the constitutionality of the amendment or law that SCOTUS looks at, not the constitutionality of the entire document. The entire document is the base point of reference.

My problem with the 16th, btw, is that the intent of the Founders was to keep the Fed small and easily controlled, to not let it grab onto every last bit of power with both hands. They intended it to be underfunded on purpose, with the majority of funding coming directly from the States, not the individuals. They certainly didn't want the Fed poking into every area of their lives. Prior to the 16th, an appropriation could be raised proportionate to the population of a State, not from an individual citizen. How the States raised the cash was of course up to the individual State. If they wanted to throw a bake sale, pull a land grab, whatever, the Fed's eyes were blind to all but the color of the money. The other major source of revenue was fees, for instance, postage. Use a Federal service, pay for it on a case by case basis.

As written, Section 9 says:

No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

The 16th reads:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

That part, 'without regard to any census or enumeration', is the kicker. It totally sidesteps the States for cash flow and starts interacting directly with the citizenry. Previously, they'd hand the States their share of the bill and go from there. Now, neither the States nor the Citizenry have any say in how this tax works, just the Fed. It's a direct tax, not a fee charged for a service rendered like a letter delivered. And the precident of the 16th allows Congress to vote itself raises, priviledges, and rights at will, up to the point of being lynched.

I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw. The right of the method of choosing a State's senators should belong to the States, not the Feds. Thanks to the 17th, we've got some serious duds in office. The problem of course is, said duds aren't keeping quiet, they're legislating, and as Will Rogers once said, "Nobody's life, liberty, or property is safe when the Legislature is in session."

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

Got it. You don't understand the difference between amendments and laws. Laws must be consistent with the constitution, if they disagree, the constitution wins. Amendments change the constitution. If they disagree with the constitution as it previously existed, the amendment wins. That's what amendments are for. That's why amendments are harder to ratify than laws are to pass.

Your example makes it clear: if the 33rd amendment reversed the 10th, the 10th would be reversed. SCOTUS would have nothing to say about it. Much like (most obviously) the 21st reversed the 18th. It can happen, does happen, has happened.

I don't know where you get your theory of amendments not being valid if they violate your idea what's good. The actual process for amendment is specified in Article 5. If that process is followed, the amendment counts. Even if you don't like it. For pete's sake, article 5 even makes a specific special rule for exactly the clause you're talking about:
"...no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article."

which sure does seem to imply you could affect that fourth clause after 1808, doesn't it? I mean they could have said you can't amend it ever, but they didn't. 1813 is after 1808, in case that's the part you're having trouble with.

"I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw."
Sorry to hear that, but I'm not sure how it's relevant. My copy of Article 5 seems to be missing the clause that says "Unless jamstar7 has a problem with it." I don't recall seeing that on the original last time I visited the Smithsonian either.

Amendments are real. They amend the Constitution. If you don't believe this, there's not much point arguing. You are incorrect.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[jamstar7]

Yes, I do understand the difference between laws and amendments. And amendments should be harder to ratify, it keeps the legislature from voting themselves bread and circuses.

And I never said they weren't valid, just some are unconstitutional. For instance, (yes, again) the 16th legislating a direct income tax to be an indirect tax so it can be collected without having to consult the states. There was a reason it was written the way it was written. The Founders didn't trust Congress a bit.

I also have problems with the 17th, fwiw.

Sorry to hear that, but I'm not sure how it's relevant. My copy of Article 5 seems to be missing the clause that says "Unless jamstar7 has a problem with it." I don't recall seeing that on the original last time I visited the Smithsonian either.

The intention of Congress was, 1 house of Representatives directly elected by the people, 1 house of Senators appointed by their States in whatever manner that State felt was good and proper. It was not intended as a total democracy, it's supposed to be a republic. Considerable difference. It was set up that way for checks and balances. By getting rid of the 'popularity contest' aspect of the Senate, they were hoping to find some statesmen for a change. The 17th knocked the props out of one of the checks and turned both houses into a popularity contest. The Founders talked a good bit about the 'tyranny of the majority' in The Federalist Papers, btw. The intent was to protect the nation from Congress, with the President & SCOTUS as checks on it. Well, it worked for a while...

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

"And I never said they weren't valid, just some are unconstitutional."

By 'valid' I meant, 'enforceable parts of the constitution'. Amendments modify the constitution such that it says what they say. They might violate the will of the founders, but they cannot be unconstitutional. They are the Constitution. The founders intended the Constitution to be modifiable. They enacted specific provisions for doing so. Amendments generally modify the Constitution so it says something different than what the founders wanted. That doesn't mean SCOTUS (or anyone) can reject them. Contradicting the will of the founders is not a flaw in an amendment, it is a feature; it is the point. It is what the founders themselves expected and provided for in article 5.

According to my dictionary, the only thing 'republic' means that 'democracy' doesn't is that our head of state is not a monarch. Your theory that having state legislatures appoint senators would eliminate the politics of the process I find particularly amusing. But that's all irrelevant to the question of whether
Constitutional Amendments can possibly be unconstitutional. Because Constitutional Amendments (the name is a clue!) amend the Constitution. They are parts of the Constitution that change what it says. I don't see what is complicated here.

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[jamstar7]

Hmmmmmmmm. They had a helluva time enforcing Prohibition. We ended up with an organized crime problem that still echoes and reverberates, 80 years later, as well as problems with the current version of Prohibition. And we didn't learn the lession, "Legislating 'morality' doesn't work."

OK, hypothetically, let's amend the Constitution to confer citizenship and voting rights ONLY to white male Protestant land owners aged 65 or greater who have a 4 year or more military history and at least 10 million in liquid assets. Is this a 'good law'? I don't think so. Is it 'enforceable'? Maybe...

Re:Cue the Slashdot libertards

[2short]

"They had a helluva time enforcing Prohibition."

Irrelevant. The 21st amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The 16th amendment is operative despite directly contradicting the earlier language. It is not, and cannot be, unconstitutional. The fact that you like some amendments better than others has no legal bearing. Properly ratified amendments are operative whether they are good ideas or not, and regardless of who thinks so. Your claim that a particular amendment is 'unconstitutional' is plainly ridiculous. It is not possible for an amendment to be unconstitutional.

Being informed about the rules

[Peter Cooper]

"They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

People are almost never well informed about the rules. When I left school, I didn't get a book of laws that informed me I'd have to pay tax (and how). The only reason I knew what to do was because I took advice from other self employed family members, so I've paid all my taxes throughout the years, no problems.

But.. a lot of people sell things at casual sales, barter services, and do things online without paying tax. It's wrong, but I have a little sympathy for them, because this stuff just isn't taught in schools and the authorities don't go to any lengths to inform people about taxation issues. I mean, how many regular folks who barter things pay the tax on those transactions? Most people I know wouldn't even realize they have to!

Re:Being informed about the rules

[bjourne]

When I started my business I didn't know the rules either. So I went to some seminars arranged by Skatteverket (the tax department in Sweden) which explained a lot of things about taxes. I also went to their website www.skatteverket.se and phoned their toll-free help line and asked lots of stupid questions which they were more than happy to answer. I'm still making mistakes of course because the tax forms are damn hard to understand.

But the "I'm to stupid to know the rules" defense really doesn't hold, considering the wealth of information that is available out there. If you are smart enough to know how to get men to pay you for getting naked on a web cam, then you are also smart enough to know that, duh, you have to pay tax for it.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[lazarusdishwasher]

I mean, how many regular folks who barter things pay the tax on those transactions?

Most taxes I have seen are based on percentages, and People that barter with me usually want to trade food for computer help. In situations like this do I send the IRS the leftovers?

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, other than having an entire agency of the government set up to help people learn the rules?
http://www.sba.gov/
Oh look, my state has one, too:
http://www.calbusiness.ca.gov/

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Deagol]

"But.. a lot of people sell things at casual sales, barter services, and do things online without paying tax. It's wrong..."

Yeah, it's *illegal* in the strictest sense, but wrong?!? Taxing barter particularly chaps my hide, as actual currency isn't exchanged. It's not like people who don't pay sales/income taxes for sales of this nature aren't contributing to taxes via sales/VAT taxes further down stream. Sure, the feds won't see any of it, except maybe on gas taxes (at least here in the U.S.), but then again, money spent at retail gets taxed by the feds anyway (taxes of employees and the corporation itself).

In reality, the money made "under the table" by these women (or any other "underground economy" transaction) always gets taxed downstream anyway. I truly don't see what the big deal is.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Pollardito]

I bet a lot of these girls have day jobs where they've grown accustomed to the idea of paying income tax on the money they make. Even if they don't, the idea of paying income tax on the money you earn is not nearly as obscure as collecting sales tax on bartered goods would be.

A better comparison would be with people who get paid by a neighbor to watch their kids for the night (or some other odd job) and who then don't declare that income. But the regularity of the work and the level of income that the people in this situation are getting seems like it'd be pretty different from the sorts of odd jobs that slip under most people's radar

Re:Being informed about the rules

[dwye]

In the USA, you only have to pay taxes on barter if you barter what you would otherwise be paid to do. Thus, trading food for computer help given by a carpenter is tax free, as is carpentry by a user consultant.

If you do computer help for a living, price the meal, and declare it on the tax forms.

I am not a tax attorney, of course, but I knew people who had to declare these, a few years ago. Rules may have changed. Your mileage may vary. Past performance is no guarantee of future earnings. Etc.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[capnchicken]

If you are smart enough to know how to get men to pay you for getting naked on a web cam, then you are also smart enough to know that, duh, you have to pay tax for it.

I'm pretty sure you don't have to be too smart to be a prostitute. Even lesser mammals can figure it out.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Frigga's Ring]

Good point. I was never taught all these tax rules I need to follow, either. However, when it comes to tax time, there are several sections on the form where I'm supposed to declare any income or purchases that were not taxed: out-of-state purchases or services like plowing my neighbor's driveways, etc.

Assuming there's something like that on the Sweden tax forms, then these girls should be listing their untaxed income from their "web services".

Of course, I don't know too many people who actually declares their out-of-state purchases and untaxed income, but that's a whole other discussion.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[maxume]

Or you could phrase it like most people think about it "you only have to pay taxes on barter if you barter what you would otherwise be paid to do and you think the IRS will be able to find out about it and prove a substantial amount of barter".

Re:Being informed about the rules

[furby076]

In the US when you buy a product from an online merchant who is from another state then where it is being shipped to there are no taxes assessed. Technically you, the purchaser, are supposed to pay the taxes at year end. The reason they do not force the seller to assess the taxes is because it would be so convoluted and impractical (technology wise) plus paying it at the end of the quarter would be so painstaking the gov't was nice and made it the responsibility of the purchaser.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Zironic]

What the heck do you think currency is?

Re:Being informed about the rules

[Moridin42]

Don't see the big deal?! My god, man! Obviously, two bites at the tax revenue apple is far more tasty than merely one. No one cares that the money will be taxed downstream with a probability nearing 1. We want our revenue now. If you want to understand government, think of it as Veruca Salt. Only.. the bugger just won't jump into the incinerator chute.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[HiThere]

I've never heard of that before, and I live in California. Obviously they need to do a better job of publicizing it.

Having a government department devoted to offering information doesn't do any good if nobody knows about it.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[pcolaman]

I wonder if there are any stats on the percentage of people who actually pay taxes on internet purchases at years end. I know I'm not one of those who do. Oh, I hear a knock on the door, be right ba...

Re:Being informed about the rules

[plague3106]

No, you pay tax on the value of the food you were given. Seriously. I barter like this as well, so the value of the service I would have paid for is the amount of income I've earned.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[MBGMorden]

I don't either, but from what I've heard you have to make some serious purchases to draw the attention of the state. The only case where I have heard of it was people buying airplane kits (which can range in price from $5k to $100k). You have to have some government involvement to get the finished airplane certified anyways, and I had heard of a few people being fined for not having paid the use tax on the kits/components used to build it.

Re:Being informed about the rules

[pcolaman]

Didn't really think of that, but yeah, I could see a $100,000 purchase online drawing some attention, considering that the company has to report the revenue. I would guess that while legally speaking, buying a $1000 laptop online would require you to pay taxes, how hard is the government really going to scrutinize such a small purchase.

Actual, direct quote from TFA

[CopaceticOpus]

"When we investigated the sites manually it worked better," he added.

I'll bet it did.

Re:

[born2rock4life]

Hey now, what better way to jump start the global economy than busting tax-evading strippers... This could bring in billions... Wait... MILLIONS!

losses, ha?

[roman_mir]

They estimate that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law, resulting in a tax loss of about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually.

- same kinds of losses that RIAA and MPAA and some software firms are complaining about when they are talking about potential sales that were lost.

I am always against taxes, these taxes are some of the more ridiculous ones.

Re:losses, ha?

[CRCulver]

I am always against taxes, these taxes are some of the more ridiculous ones.

How do you propose paying for the high standard of living (among the highest in the world) in the Nordic countries? When I moved to Finland, I expected to feel a little irked upon seeing 40% of my income taken in taxes, but one I realized just how good we have it here, I say they could take a little more if they needed. While you personally may disagree with high taxation and wish to remain in the US (or even move somewhere cheaper), the strippers who are making loads of money without paying taxes are probably nonetheless enjoying the fruits of the welfare state, which is hypocritical.

Re:losses, ha?

[KarlIsNotMyName]

Ridiculous how? I really don't see it. They have an income, they pay taxes, like everyone else. Now for some actually ridiculous taxes; I'm surprised I didn't see this story on Slashdot today; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7746094.stm Taxing virtual currency. Though maybe it was already here, think I've heard about it somewhere before.

Re:losses, ha?

[MBGMorden]

Not just a high standard of living, but if the GP is ALWAYS against taxes, how does he expect to pay for the most basic of public infrastructure? Police, the military, schools, etc. Even in the most basic of governments you have to get income from somewhere.

Re:losses, ha?

[roman_mir]

I do not propose anything for the masses, fact is I don't care about masses, only people who can make their own ends meet. Thus I don't much care about general standard of living, whatever that means for you. I only care about the standard of living I set up for myself. I lived in a few places in the world, right now I am somewhere where corporate taxes are low, my income is all corporate through my own firm and I make sure that expenses are high, so that even the taxes that need to be paid are paid on a small amount. I hope I am making myself clear - anywhere in the world there is a way to minimize taxes paid to the government and as individuals it is our own debt to ourselves to make sure that we are self-sustained and are well off, so that we do not even think about relying on any form of government to support us.

Government must be kept starving, this way it will not have ability to create waste.

Re:losses, ha?

[roman_mir]

Infrastructure if it is indeed necessary, must be paid for by the interested parties, so if some corporations and private individuals are willing to put together bonds that could be sold off and money raised, and if someone trusted these bonds and bought them for long term profit, these money then could be used to build the necessary infrastructure.

This would be the only way to maintain infrastructure at the edge of efficiency, if the actual owners of the infrastructure were also the investors and interested in maintaining it in the long term and making profit off of it.

I am always for user fees and I am always against government sponsored programs, thus I am always against taxes, especially income taxes.

Of-course any other businesses/private individuals who are benefiting from the infrastructure would have to pay user fees per use. This is my main point - I am only willing to pay for something if I am intending to use it.

If this means that in order to have the fire-brigade I have to pay user-fees (subscriptions) then I will. Obviously for such things as fire this could be a bylaw set up by the owners of this particular infrastructure.

This in principal is the best system for myself, this way I would expect actual competition to arise specifically as long as the owners of one particular infrastructure system do not become owners of everything - which is what government is. Government monopoly on all infrastructure and government taxation - this is the main reason I will always be against paying taxes and will make sure to pay as little as possible and will go a long way to do so.

Wait a second...

[downix]

Tax agents get to do what?  **preps a resume for the IRS**

All for only $15 a month...

[Ranhert]

Times a few million divided by number of skin dealers

Two Possibilities

[Comatose51]

Either Slashdot is 9 days behind on its calendar or we've just discovered the best job in the world. If the latter, how do I sign up to work as an investigator for the Swedish government?

Re:Two Possibilities

[johnny cashed]

I was about to say something similar. April fools day was nine days ago.

Re:Two Possibilities

[IdleTime]

One simple requirement!
You must be able to pronounce, flawlessly the following word: "minoritetsladningsbærerdiffusjonskoeffisientmålingsapparatur"

he said manually

[Is0m0rph]

"When we investigated the sites manually it worked better," he added. --------------- Unfortunately efficiency went out the window with only the most hormonal investigators able to handle more then 3 or 4 strip shows a day.

alt

[Anonymous Coward]

where's the alt tag for this story's photo?

Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[rumcho]

There you have it folks: your government acting as the racketeer that they are (again?? lol). And what does the government provide, again, that will entitle them to their "fair share"? The webcams? The business model? The internet connectivity? The "office building"? The wires the stream goes through? The security (pathetic arrogant police)? WHAT EXACTLY? Swedes are taxed to death already in order to get some pathetic healthcare and free education. Now, don't tell me their healthcare is good, please! But this is the result of a mindless brain-dead swedish public who cannot fend for themselves and need the nanny-state to lead them on every step. How pathetic is that! However, this piece of news just proves how the state has been allowed to stick its arrogant snively nose everywhere, even people's pants. Swedish government, you are disgusting! BACK OFF!

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CRCulver]

Look at the Nordic countries before the introduction of the welfare state: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the introduction of the welfare state: economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how?

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr... You've got an issue, we DO have excellent healthcare, the only minus is the "queues", but that'll be fixed soon enough when we let some private healthcare enter the market.

And if it's an income, you'll have to pay, regardless of what it is, and the Swedish government provides the following in this case;

Cheap internet access and the availability of internet connections.

The government most often pays for around 20% of what almost any building in Sweden costs.

The government most certainly HAVE paid for the wires the stream goes trough.

What does police got to do with this?

And by taxed to death, you mean "One of the best standards of living in the world despite paying effectively 53% of our salaries"

The Swedish government fears it's people, more than I could say for the American government, and it's not disgusting, we Swedes complain a lot, but really, our problems are just nuisances compared to the US problems.

Really, educate yourself before saying anything.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[TheLink]

Well, in the USA how much of the income is left after the average US resident pays for taxes and medical insurance?

It might be lower than 53%, but I think what the US people get for their money is inferior in many ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[blahplusplus]

"There you have it folks: your government acting as the racketeer that they are (again?? lol)"

Yeah a racketeer that pays for things like roads, telecommunications and lets not forget government bailouts (Citi, AIG) when the free market fails because of stupid people like yourself who don't have any clue about human nature. The fact that it's NOT about ideology, it's that bad people will always exist to fuck up any system, the free market fuckups that almost trashed the global economy were hardly not ardent supporters of deregulation with all their "free market" lobbyists in Washington. It was their own greed that lead to all this mess that now have implications for everyone else. Government isn't perfect but at the end of the day a world without government is a world of economic totalitarianism, quite those "Racketeers" can take on the other free market crimelords (no offense to honest free market supporters).

Lets face it, ideology is not a solution. It's a scapegoat. In any system the it's the people that make the decisions and fuck up. No ideology is going to force people to make good decisions, no matter what you believe.

Humans have been fucking up for centuries and anyone who thinks we just need more ideology along "more free market, a little less government" is completely naive and unread in history.

Take any system and people will find a way to fuck it up. The real world is a lot more complex and messy then hardcore ideologues make it out to be.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation, causation, blah, blah, blah.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in spite of the welfare state you twinkie.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, the last point you mention may eventually prove quite problematic. ;/

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's SOCIALISM, you America-hating anti-American. Don't you see? Do you know how close the word SOCIALISM is to TERRORISTS? Do you? I mean, I sure as hell don't, since, due to my education system, I can't count that many letters, but rich white people in suits screaming at me on the TV told me so, so it must be pretty close! You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Nordic countries before the introduction of the welfare state: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the introduction of the welfare state: economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how?

That is a really dumb argument. There was lots of emigration from OTHER countries to deserted parts of North America (and highly populated parts of North America).

The end of massive emigration was brought about by industrialization, economic growth, birth control/smaller families and many other factors leading to a much higher standard of living.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CodeBuster]

And this is a bad thing how?

Perhaps they overpaid for what they got? Even if your health care is excellent, basic needs are taken care of, and living standard is decent it is still possible to look at a 90%+ income tax bill and wonder if the same or similar package of things could not have been had elsewhere for less than 90%+ of one's income. Even the average people in the nordic countries pay the highest taxes in Europe which is why it is not uncommon to see ambitious Swedish, Norwegian, and Finish youth (EU citizens can live in any member country) living in say Germany where the social safety net, health care, and other European societal elements are similar and can be had for about 1/2 the tax burden.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CRCulver]

The welfare state isn't just health care and unemployment. It's also free university education, excellent public libraries, excellent support for the arts (e.g. internationally famous orchestras and cheaper tickets to see them).

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

And so your solution is: give government more power? Are people in government magically immune from your "bad people that will fuck up any system"?

I work for the government. I will tell you: no.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Nordic countries before the exploitation of the oil and steel reserves: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the expanded exploitation of the resources(*): economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how? (*) als lots of hydroenery, for aluminium production etc.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Industrialization was what created greater productivity and more welfare overall - this also created the opportunity to create the welfare state. The socialists often forget the first part of this process.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

90%+ income tax bill? I'm a Swede and I would very much like to know where you got that little figure?
The commune (local authority) tax on income is about 30% (it varies from commune to commune). On income above 328,596 SEK (about $40,000), there is a 20% state tax, and on income above 488,592 (about $60,000), there is an additional state tax of 5%.
If you earned 1 million SEK ($121,000) to give an example of a very well payed individual, you would pay:
1,000,000*0.3 + (1,000,000-328,596)*0.2 + (1,000,000-488,592)*0.05=459851.20 SEK, or about 46%.
The actual amount would actually be somewhat lower because only income above a certain limit is taxable, and I'm sure there are other details I completely missed. I'm not an accountant, I'm a computer geek.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say the government is afraid of us really. Just look at what the alliance government in cooperation with the social democrats are doing to this country with unpopular orwellian laws such as FRA, IPRED, data retention, ACTA, and so on.

Vote for the Pirate Party in the European Parliament elections on the 7th of June.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Akzo]

Well they don't seem to be handling the recession particularly well.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dig a little deeper you will find out why this "lovely" way of living isn't as great as you all may think. Sure, we do have all of those things mentioned in the parent post, but we pay for it... a lot more than most of you know. Taxes are extreme and progressive, often starting at 60 % (when everything is included in the calculation).

TANSTAAFL...

The result of our welfare state is that lots of people are actually rather poor in pecuniary terms (compared to people in many other countries) and are forced to stay that way without any reasonable way of working towards a better situation. Unless winning at lottery is introduced to the equation of course. This is the case in Sweden.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[drsquare]

German taxes aren't much lower than those in Scandanavia. I suggest you actually look up some numbers before making a fool of yourself.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[rumcho]

Mister, please read http://mises.org/books/fed.pdf Murray Rothbard's THe case against the Fed and then come back and try to make a reasonable argument on this forum. You're embarassing yourself by saying that free markets do not work. The United States has not had free markets since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created. THe Federal reserve has the power to turn us into dirt-poor overnight with the push of a button. This is not free markets - this is managed markets by the government. THe reason we are in this mess right now is due to easy credit by the Federal Reserve - they lowered the interest rate to unreasonably low levels and this triggered the home-buying mania that then jacked up prices due to high demand and easy money. This is the main reason for the housing bubble. All I am saying here has nothing to do with stupid ideology - it has all to do with simple common sense and understanding of how the current economy works. Do you know what would happen if we had free markets? AIG, Citi, Wachovia, and the other rascals would be out of business immediately. THere would be no government bailouts, nada, nilch! Income taxes would be really low (like 2-3%), there would be no Federal REserve and money would be backed by a commodity. THere would be no fractional reserve banking which would prevent bubbles, speculations and boom and bust cycles. You probably have no idea what causes boom and bust cycles. YOu probably have no idea what inflation is. You probably have no idea that money to trade is like scales to ice cream stand. YOu probably have no idea that inflation is hidden tax on savers - the very same people who generate capital in order to invest in projects and grow economies. You probably have no idea what is the difference between capital and credit. You probably have no idea about how many things are wrong with the US and world economies. You should read up on this stuff to help you understand. And please do not tell us that the government can spend my money more efficiently than I would spend my money - this is just utter nonsense.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[rumcho]

buddy! stop saying the government pays for stuff. the government pays nothing - it produces nothing. all it does is fleece people (key word: by force) and then does what it wants with the money. yeah, i know you'll say what i just said is not true, but how can I trust you when all your education you received from that same government - surely they wouldn't teach you how inefficient they are and how government bureaucracy wastes money left and right. on the contrary, they'll teach you how great government is. see, they call that propaganda. so right there you already lose credibility. and how exactly does the swedish government fear its people? because the swedish people are armed and if government does not listen they will stand up and fight? lol. oh, i forgot that the freedom of owning a gun in sweden is forsaken for the safety that the govamint provides. i mean, look, I don't need to go to sweden to know that anything that government does is pretty screwed up. it's sort of like "i don't need to kill a man to know that murder is bad", ok? it is just simple common sense that people will handle their own money a lot better than the government would for them. the government might care for people as genuinely as they can try, and still individuals will make better choices than their government. and I never said the USA had something better than Sweden. USA certainly has some very good things, like the Consitution and the American tradition of free markets and liberty. These have been forsaken lately here in the USA but that again proves my point: when you have government managing the economy you get a disaster (look up Federal Reserve, lobbyists, Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution). USA has bad healthcare not because of free markets but because of legislation signed by Nixon in the 70's that created these HMO monsters. This has nothing to do with free markets. If we had free markets in healthcare we wouldn't have a limited number of schools offering medical degrees (you need accreditation from a central government body to teach medicine), we wouldn't have government-mandated medical programs with strict guidelines. The market would determine what is needed and what not - not some bureaucrats in Washington who have no clue. Not until we get back to the solid principles of free markets, that is, money backed by gold and silver, no Federal Reserve, no fractional reserve banking will we understand that free markets and freedom is at the center peace and prosperity.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[rumcho]

dude, i'm not comparing sweden with the USA. stop being defensive. The USA doesn't have it good. income taxes are too high. They should be more like 2-3% and we should cut the empire. it's a waste of money, human lives, and poverty and it does not serve american interests. America has been overtaken by criminals in government and congress: lobbyists, the military industrial complex, the banking industrial complex (federal reserve), the medical industrial complex, the list goes on and on. These criminals will destroy this country. Then everybody will say: "see, free markets do not work, capitalism does not work". We need socialism. And socialism, fellas, is tyranny with a nice suit. Then we are doomed! One thing we certainly learn from history is that we don't learn from history. Good luck to all the socialists on this board. You have deprived yourselves of the ability to recognize common sense and apply it to your lives.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CodeBuster]

Are income taxes the only taxes that Swedes pay or are there others? It is important to look at how monies remaining after the income tax is paid are spent and how that spending is taxed. What about excise taxes, property taxes, value-added tax, and other miscellaneous taxes. What I meant to talk about was total tax burden on the typical Nordic lifestyle (so I should have just said "taxes" instead of "income taxes" and I stand corrected on that point). I have often heard about the excellent health care, generous pensions, and other stated benefits of the nordic systems, but I have never heard it said that nordic (which would include Swedish) taxes are low compared to other countries and even other European countries where similar social safety features are made available to the citizenry. Does the average nordic EU citizen believe that they are getting good value for their tax money? It's a good question, but clearly some young Swedes have voted with their feet in recent years.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CodeBuster]

They could just as well move to other EU countries where taxes are even lower, Estonia for example (where an individual's income is taxable, as at 2008, at the rate of 22%). Germany was just used as an example of an EU country with somewhat lower taxes than say Sweden. The tax table on Worldwide-tax indicates that Germany is 15-45% while Sweden, for example, is 0-57%. However VAT in Germany is 19% whereas in Sweden it is 25% and as the poor tend to spend more of their after tax income simply living than do the rich the effective tax rate can seem much higher in a country like Sweden where goods and services are more expensive (+6% more in the case of Germany vs Sweden). It probably wouldn't work out to half as much, so I was wrong about that, but it probably would be fairly noticeable and particularly so to young professional people who may have higher incomes, higher personal spending rates, and may not yet have children to support.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Celc]

You won't find any Sweeds living in tent cities, people dropping out of college because they can't afford tuition or people not getting healthcare because they couldn't afford to pay their health insurance because they lost their jobs either. The recession is hitting the world hard but we take care of the ones who are down on their luck.

I for one don't mind high taxes even if that mean I might not be as rich as I could have been in another country if it means I wouldn't have to be as poor as I could have been when my luck is down.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Swedes don't pay 90% tax on their income. It's around 30% for most people. Yes, it is still the highest income tax in Europe, perhaps even the world. But we also have the lowest levels of child poverty, child neglect et.c. + all the stuff that CRCulver already mentioned. I don't feel mindless or brain-dead at all... I feel comfortable knowing that even if I lose my job I'll be able to see the doctor if I get sick.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[blahplusplus]

You're embarassing yourself by not having any clue of economic history, booms and busts are as old as finance itself. Government or no government there are bad people that will create institution you don't like to rule you regardless of what your ideology is. This is what I hate about ideologues like yourself like Murry, Mises, Et al, a bunch of clueless people in regards to history.

Money is not a neutral store of value, and it has systemic effects on everyone else, the market is an abstraction and can't do anything - it's the people that make dumb decisions that effect the rest of us and we need authorities in ANY system to deal with that. My problem with people who are hardcore anti-government pro free market, is that they don't realize by getting rid of government other institions will have to exist in their place and they will do EXACTLY everything the government does.

You'll have PMC (private military corporations) to protect x citizens in are Y from citizens in area Z. You'll never get rid of the fundamental problem in the equation: The stupid ass bad people that indirectly effect our lives due to their dumb shit because the monetary systems of the world connect us all.

Getting rid of government and 'letting it be' is just relabelling of institutions, instead of government and taxes, it will be corporations and PRIVATE TAXATION of corporates on the rest of us. Every act of profit or trade is an act of private taxation.

You hardcore free marketeers just don't get it, money by it's nature is aggregate, someone somewhere else in the trade system when they go bust can topple the economy because in the real world, money, market theory is NOT the economy...

The real economy is stuff (food, machines, goods, etc), the technologies and means to make, produce transport and service things is constantly in upheaval and will leave large swaths of the population out in the cold because don't own the means of production.

What happens is the richest group of people end up ruling those who don't own societies most valuable assets and you're not changing anything going to a free market, since corporations will become governments in and of themselves in the place of government and your back to square one.

Lastly money and it's effects, effect everybody indirectly. So the whole indivdualisitic "the economy can not be measured in teh aggregate" bla bla bla of the austrians wishy washnyess of those free market fuckups are seriously clueless.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Nordic countries before the introduction of the welfare state: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the introduction of the welfare state: economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how?

Look at the Nordic countries before the introduction of the welfare state: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the introduction of the welfare state: economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how?

I just want to add that the growth rate in GDP in the nordic countries has dropped in inverse proportion to the increased total tax pressure.

So why is the nordic countries relatively rich? First, they are not relatively near as rich as they used to be. Second, Denmark and Norway have oil reserves (limited resource). Third, the nordic counties where just about the only countries in europe that was not mostly destroyed during 2nd world war.

A major problem here in Denmark is that smart people simply leave. Pretty much like in Atlas Shrugged. I'll do that same when my PhD-program ends. Combine that with huge generations preparing for state-financed retirement and small generations of half the size entering the employment market.

Check your premises... If you're a productive and earnest person you don't want to go here.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you realize that you don't qualify for German social services unless you're a German citizen, which a large proportion of people living in Germany are not, even though they pay taxes, right?

And, of course, your 90% figure was pulled out of where?

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the US is fairly low on the standard of living scale, like #20 or something. Below Sweden. Speaking of educating yourself... you might want to look into that.

webcam strippers

[burris]

I believe the technical term is "cam whore."

Yummy.....

[Roskolnikov]

wow, I suddenly want a job at the Swedish Tax office doing *cough* research.

taxes can be good

[Kashell]

...in societies with a large, non-diverse population.

The best form of government is indeed the smallest possible, but even then there are things that the government does much better than individuals.

Taxes and government control works even better in democratic societies with group-think, such as Nordic societies and oriental societies.

All you have to do to see the benefits are to look at life expectancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_United_Nations_.28average_for_the_2005-2010_period.29

Another interesting point about this list: Notice that democratic countries *without* group think are significantly lower than those *with* group think.

Re:taxes can be good

[giorgiofr]

but even then there are things that the government does much better than individuals.

Such as?

Re:taxes can be good

[Kashell]

Enforcement of property law is the essential purpose of government. Since every individual (even in group-think societies) may have a different opinion on how something should be done, it is necessary to create a concise definition of the agreement. This is the social contract that is so often referred to in works like Leviathan.

Capitalism is a wonderful idea that drives our society, but it is flawed because it assumes that the people who are able to make the most money are also those who act in the best interest of everyone. Government can change the rules of the game so that capitalism truly is for everyone's benefit.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs asserts that the most important thing to the human race is survival. If that is true, then humans must act collectively in the best interests of all to survive.

Without government, businesses would selfishly pollute the environment, and work only in the interest of pleasing the few powerful without providing additional means for human survival on this planet (or on other planets).

Of course, I have choice words for the extreme level of corruption in our American government that breaks just about every good thing that we originally gave them power to do, but non-corrupt governments elsewhere in the world do a whole lotta good.

Re:taxes can be good

[Captain Centropyge]

And like...

Such as?

...the Iraq..?

Re:taxes can be good

[xous]

Taking 40% of your income and making it disappear.

NOBODY is better at stupidity than governments.

Re:taxes can be good

[xous]

Government can change the rules of the game so that capitalism truly is for everyone's benefit.

Yeah, because a politician wouldn't take money or gifts to do something against the best interest of the whole.

An ideal government government would be a good thing. Anything less than ideal degenerates into a corrupt monstrosity. In other places just need time to become as visible as they are in the US.

The very idea that a group of people can work together toward a common good without self-interest is absurd. A very few might delude themselves into doing such a thing but betrayal would be inevitable.

Taxes

[slowgreenturtle]

You know if there wasn't any income taxes, we wouldn't have to pay more taxes to have government officials chasing down women trying to make a living.

Re:taxes

[hankwang]

Education and schools should be paid for with property tax as should the fire department and police. A sales tax can help. Before paying for the military, first reduce its size. Then have sales tax. The only things I believe should pay an income tax are corporations,

How is someone supposed to pay a high property tax (think 5% of the asset value) if they temporarily don't have income? Sell their house? Setting up the tax system as you propose will invoke massive changes in people's behavior. High property taxes will make people want to spend all their income as soon as possible since saving it for later will cost more than the interest, or they will simply keep it as cash. If people spend 50% of their income after 25% taxes on taxable purchases, it means that you need to add roughly 65% sales tax to compensate for removing the income tax. That will lead to an unbelievable black market... Moving income tax to corporations means that they will invent accounting methods that will funnel profits to offshore companies or herds of "freelancers".

Re:taxes

[roman_mir]

How is someone supposed to pay a high property tax (think 5% of the asset value) if they temporarily don't have income? Sell their house?

- really, ask this question in Canada or US. Property taxes there is a form of legal extortion by the local governments. It is impossible to buy a property without having to pay taxes on it every year and practically every year the taxes get reevaluated and they always go up. It is impossible for someone to live in a personal property without actually working and making money somehow to pay for the taxes.

Governments there force people to work always or get off their property, so you don't really own anything there.

Re:taxes

[MBGMorden]

practically every year the taxes get reevaluated and they always go up. It is impossible for someone to live in a personal property without actually working and making money somehow to pay for the taxes.

Actually, as someone who specifically works with property taxes, this is false. Laws can vary by individual state, but in almost all areas property taxes are only reevaluated every few years (here it's every 5 years - with the option for the municipality to delay an additional 2 years if they wish, which they often do) during a reassessment. Except for a reassessment a property's tax value can only change if it is sold (which constitutes an assessable transfer of interests).

Also, property taxes do NOT universally go up unless the property values go up. Any appraisals used to generate a tax value must be legally defensible in court, and if the property values of an area drop (which they do) then the corresponding property values will go down too. Trust me, with the housing downturn we've had a LOT of areas drop in value and they'll be getting lower tax bills this year as a result.

And as said, we provide the police force for the area. We provide the schools. We provide road maintenance. Public libraries. Public mapping services. The local airport. Several local wildlife parks. There is some level of government provided services that the vast majority of us have agreed is in the best interest of the public. The only real alternative is anarchy, which you're not going to get public support for.

Re:taxes

[falconwolf]

How is someone supposed to pay a high property tax (think 5% of the asset value) if they temporarily don't have income?

High taxes? Why should taxes be high? In the US the first income tax was to fund the Civil War. For those making more than $10,000 the tax was 5%. From $600 to just below $10,000 it was 3%. People were upset but accepted it when the tax was raised to 5% for income between $600 and $5,000, and 5% "on the excess" over $5,000.

Simply by reducing the size of the federal government, so it's within the limits put on it by the Constitution of the USA, and having a sales or consumption tax the federal income tax can be eliminated. Then states could raise their own taxes. Let each state experiment to find what works for them.

High property taxes will make people want to spend all their income as soon as possible since saving it for later will cost more than the interest, or they will simply keep it as cash.

How in the fucking world do you come up with that?

Falcon

Re:taxes

[roman_mir]

Actually, as someone who specifically works with property taxes, this is false. Laws can vary by individual state, but in almost all areas property taxes are only reevaluated every few years (here it's every 5 years - with the option for the municipality to delay an additional 2 years if they wish, which they often do) during a reassessment. Except for a reassessment a property's tax value can only change if it is sold (which constitutes an assessable transfer of interests).

- this is just a technicality.

In principal it doesn't matter when exactly taxes are reevaluated, I would average the total taxes paid over the total years lived in the house and that would be basically what the government is forcing the 'owner' to make in order to keep the property.

This is obviously not how it is done in most of the rest of the world (India, US, Canada, Netherlands and Australia I think are rather exceptions than the rule).

Property taxes may only be justified in my view if the property is actually really MAKING money, for example rental property or property leased or used for manufacturing. Then this really becomes income tax tied to a property rather than just a tax because some building or land is just sitting there.

---

Note that I am always against income taxes also. I explained here how I would handle financial necessities of maintaining infrastructure in a community.

And as said, we provide the police force for the area. We provide the schools. We provide road maintenance. Public libraries. Public mapping services. The local airport. Several local wildlife parks. There is some level of government provided services that the vast majority of us have agreed is in the best interest of the public. The only real alternative is anarchy, which you're not going to get public support for.

- I don't believe that any of these services should be government owned. Such services are only needed in the interests of public willing to invest into any particular property and only if the investors deem these services to be needed and then user fees should be collected for using the services unless the service is somehow mandatory based on a local private bylaw. Such mandatory distinctions would make a perfect case for competition around maintaining different types of property investment. So if someone needs a school, they could move into a community that supports schools as a matter of a private bylaw and the newly entering entity is required to make some sort of an initial payment and then user fees are collected per service.

Property taxes are collected in bulk, this is a huge problem, user fees need to be collected separately for clear stated purpose, this would allow community to demand efficiencies.

Re:taxes

[MBGMorden]

I don't believe that any of these services should be government owned. Such services are only needed in the interests of public willing to invest into any particular property and only if the investors deem these services to be needed and then user fees should be collected for using the services unless the service is somehow mandatory based on a local private bylaw. Such mandatory distinctions would make a perfect case for competition around maintaining different types of property investment. So if someone needs a school, they could move into a community that supports schools as a matter of a private bylaw and the newly entering entity is required to make some sort of an initial payment and then user fees are collected per service.

Not everyone can afford to pay for such things on a use basis, nor is it wise to view things in such a way. School systems for example. We've long established that having a populace with at least some rudimentary level of education is a benefit to society. Mock public schools all you want, but 150 years ago you average American likely couldn't read or write. We've come a long ways.

Police forces: you don't have time to stop and contract the police forces if your house is broken into, or if somebody comes in and takes your family hostage. In cases where certain privileges are needed (ie, search warrants or the ability to enter a building when needed - ie they hear a woman screaming "Please don't kill me!!!" inside), you simply can't grant those privileges to a non-government entity. The same really applies to fire departments. In the early days of fire brigades there WERE private fire departments, and it was a holy mess. You don't want to fire department having to check a billing history before they respond to a call, or worse, fighting in the street with rival departments hoping so that the prevalent one can collect the fee for dousing the fire.

The absence of ALL government services IS flat out anarchy. You're free to wish that, but the VAST majority of the population doesn't want that (many disagree on the LEVELS of government service that should be provided, but 99% of the time even the most strict conservatives still want a publicly funded military and police force), and being a democracy, you're kinda stuck in a majority rule situation.

Re:taxes

[roman_mir]

You probably didn't pay attention to my previous comment. As I said it would be up to the community to set up bylaws that could for example make it mandatory for any resident of that community to pay user fees that a clearly for the local PD or for firefighters, whatever. This means that the firefighters/PD do not have to check whether you paid your bill, they would have to do their work anyway, but you would be on a hook for the user fees. Of-course as long as you pay them, there will be no collection calls and noone would kick you out of their community.

In fact this is not different from currently existing condominium corporations, where the services required to maintain the building and the property are paid for through maintenance fees and that allows local board of directors to be elected and reelected every couple of years and where yearly financial statements are provided as a legal requirement.

If you do not like a particular condominium, it is possible for you to move. It is also possible to get elected based on financial deficiencies and a promise to maximize efficiencies. It is easier for a local community to deal with its own efficiencies than for a large government to be efficient.

Communities could pull resources together to get larger projects built if people desired so, but it would be totally possible for real bidding to take place unlike what often happens. One example is Howard Moscoe, a Toronto counselor, who would rather have Toronto pay over hundred million dollars more for some streetcars by buying them from a Canadian company rather than allowing proper bidding with other firms like Siemens participating.

It is obviously not business of city of Toronto, Ontario to pay more property taxes to 'save canadian jobs' in city of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

This new story from /. is yet another example of how governments waste money, this time on http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/hayes">corporate welfare

Also if some communities decide they need school, it would be up to them to pull money together to have the schools built, otherwise private schools would be sufficient. I would not want to live in a community that would have a bylaw that would require me to pay 'user fees' for something I don't actually use or intend to use. I don't believe in public schools, as you rightfully mentioned, they used to provide some service - most people can read, it's true. But what the public schools have shown themselves to be, is not something I believe in from point of view of education anyway.

Another point is cops and prisons. One community might have cops as part of its system. Another may require the participants to train in usage of guns, to own guns and to defend themselves. Of-course this community would have to provide a meaningful justice system based on the citizens' participation and some professional investigation unit. Those, found in violation of bylaws or criminal laws would be moved to prison facilities. This is probably something that a number of communities would outsource and share the cost.

cheers.

I want a full report!

[Un pobre guey]

I need a full report immediately. URLs, logins and passwords used for research, all imagery from the sites that will be in the corpus of evidence including videos, names, phone numbers, price structures, everything!

Re:I want a full report!

[spartacus_prime]

And don't forget those cover sheets on the reports.

Yeah, right.

[PPH]

The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes.

We have a slightly different enforcement issue in the Seattle area. Illegal activity in a few strip clubs. The police department spends quite a bit of time and money sending undercover officers to buy lap dances from the women looking for violations. With public funds, of course.

OK guys, what about the activity in the gay clubs? Any volunteers for undercover duty?
[Sound of crickets.]

Re:Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I see, it's funny because there aren't any gay police officers.

You only have to pay tax if you get caught

[Colin Smith]

Didn't you know? Ask Timothy Geithner he'll tell you.

 

justified government work

[Anonymous Coward]

All that work for 3.3M in lost revenue? Sounds like a government employee who is trying to justify why he's watching all that porn at work.

The numbers are a bit to big

[narooze]

A Swedish source (Google translation) says that there where a tax loss of 3.6 million SEK and the total income amounted to 40 million SEK, not that the tax loss was of 40 million SEK. The Swedish source also says nothing of these numbers being annually.

Started my own site years ago...

[RemoWilliams84]

and still haven't had to pay a dime in taxes. I guess when you operate at a loss they nothing to tax.

Why do these young girls make so much money, while I (the hairy assed nerd), make nothing?

Re:Started my own site years ago...

[shutdown -p now]

Why do these young girls make so much money, while I (the hairy assed nerd), make nothing?

You need to change your business model, and find some way to make them pay for the privilege of not looking at you.

The line on this is so thin.

[Maxo-Texas]

If you have a relationship with a girl and she takes her clothes off and you give her thousands of dollars a year, it's not taxable.
Even if you were in a multiple spouse household, it would still be true (multiple guys supporting her).

Without the "relationship" (one date? you don't have to be living together in the same house), it's taxable.

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[KarlIsNotMyName]

They do the stripping for the money. If you're saying that they should be treated the same, as those who are with someone only for money, I agree. Tax them all.

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[pcolaman]

If you have a relationship with a girl and she takes her clothes off and you give her thousands of dollars a year, it's not taxable. Even if you were in a multiple spouse household, it would still be true (multiple guys supporting her).

Without the "relationship" (one date? you don't have to be living together in the same house), it's taxable.

Depends on how many thousands of dollars we're talking about here. FAQ on Gift Taxes is a nice summary from the IRS on tax laws pertaining to monetary gifts. According to the FAQ, anything over $13,000 for 2009 for one person would not be taxed as it does not exceed the annual exclusion. So if you gave your strip...err...lady friend under 13k, then yes, you are right. More than that, and you'd have to pay taxes on it (according to the IRS website, gift taxes are generally paid by the donor, not the donee).

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[cerberusss]

Aw come on... I've read a lot of your smart posts. It's not a thin line at all. You either have a relationship or you don't. Doesn't seem that thin to me.

And no, one date is not a relationship. The IRS in my small European country will ask whether you share a sustained household -- that is the base question. One date is not a sustained household.

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[ffflala]

I don't believe that's correct, at least for US federal taxes. All of your examples would be taxable gifts (unless she's your spouse). The recipient is obligated to report gifts.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=108139,00.html#2

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[Maxo-Texas]

wow. someone actually recognizes me and thinks I write smart posts.

Thank you.

I'll have to think about how to illuminate my post later-- off to a craw fish party right now.

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[Maxo-Texas]

There are a lot of executives who have college age to thirty year old girl (and boy) friends (often mistresses).

These executives pay way over $13,000 a year to these girls but the IRS has no issue with them. I'm pretty sure it is now happening between rich females and their boy (/girl) friends.

Housing, free cars, jewelry, free trips, lavish meals and even large amounts of direct cash. But no one tries to tax those relationships.

I'm not sure you could legally define the reason why the IRS tags the stripper girls but like "art", they know a problem when they see it.

Key parts seem to be that they get a lot of money (probably 6 figures), they don't ever actually go on dates with the guys, and that there are a lot of guys- not just one or two guys. Plus the stripping is presented as a service.

You could probably get the lavish meals, and have the guys directly pay the landlord for rent and the car payment but since the money goes into the girl's hands it crosses some kind of line.

Re:The line on this is so thin.

[pcolaman]

Keep in mind that the IRS is only specific about cash gifts. This has nothing to do with non-cash gifts, and is not categorized the same way. You already pay sales tax (at least you are supposed to, this doesn't happen most of the time on internet purchases) on the goods generally.

Oblig Porky's Line

[dwye]

We examined every frame of this disgusting film. Twice!

Is this worth it?

[TerranFury]

They estimate the lost tax revenue at 3.3 million British pounds, which, according to Google, is 4.82724 million U.S. dollars. Let's round to 5 million USD.

Assuming that 5 police officers are paid the equivalent of 60,000 USD a year to do this, and that the investigation takes a year, this will cost Sweden the equivalent of 300,000 USD.

Shucks. So this would be worth it; they'd get a 16x to 17x return on investment... I guess investigating webcam strippers actually does make financial sense for Sweden.

(This of course assumes that their own estimates are accurate, and that mine are reasonable.)

Re:Is this worth it?

[KokorHekkus]

I'm guessing it will be worth it mostly because I think your basic assumption of how they're going to do it is incorrect.

I think they will apply the same methods as when they did decide to crack down on large scale internet auction sellers. Basically they identified people selling a large quantities of identical stuff (anything from electronics to beauty products). Some of them were indeed brick and mortar merchant doing at bit of unreported side trading or just people running an unregistered online business. So I think it goes: identify persons behind the business (in this case stripping), audit those people and if necessary take them to court. If you work as an online stripper with unexplained cash you'll probably need a pretty good explanation where the money came from if you want to avoid backtaxes.

I doubt they will spend more than 1 man-year on this projekt. And the people doing the work will be Tax Office agents so I think they'll be more effective than police officers in this case.

File this under..

[bradgoodman]

File this one under "Lonely Swedish" ;-)

Hate Strippers

[Baldrson]

Clearly these strippers are an example of Aryan Supremacists attempting to bilk hapless men from around the world out of their money and outsource jobs that should rightfully go to other girls. Can't the European Union do something to stop these Hate Strippers?

What's the pay?

[Mr. Foogle]

What's the rate for the job of 'scanning the internet for Swedish strippers'? $8.00 an hour? Heck, if that's all I have to pay ...

What must be done

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should teach these girls to behave. They've being very naughty.

Where do I sign up?

[ddusza]

I can easily be a disheveled official, checking out Swedish pr0n....:D

Queue Idiocracy

[Rurik]

"You see, a pimp's love is very different from that of a square."

Did anyone else picture the opening military scene when reading this summary?

Re:Queue Idiocracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Thw word you're looking for is "cue".

Re:Queue Idiocracy

[xerxesVII]

The word you're looking for is "The".

Re:Seriously? Pumping through pimping...

[davidsyes]

Why don't they get sweet and do deep pack-it inspection, stripping off headers and tails layer by layer? If they seductively conjugate (the details) better, they might get better symmetries. If they adjust the TTL to give better throughput, they might have a lasting, enjoyable union of data sexts... Maybe they should start sexting each other...

OT: but related...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of relationships... Why is polygamy illegal?

In this day and age when "shacking up" is tolerated, and there are lots of out-of-wedlock children, "palimony", etc. What interest does the State have in even having bigamy laws on the books?

Re:OT: but related...

[Anonymous Coward]

Among other things the government confers certain rights on married couples (the most relevant probably being shared filing of taxes). There is nothing the government is going to do to someone for "marrying" multiple people, just the government isn't going to recognize more than one of them. It is a bit odd, but it does not seem like that big a deal. Personally, I think the whole idea of government recognized marriage seems a bit silly.

File your return and declare your illegal income

[BenEnglishAtHome]

If the activity is illegal, claming it on your taxes is among the least of your problems.

Take it from someone who has witnessed co-workers receiving suitcases full of cash with "John Doe" tax returns attached: When your illegal activity results in your prosecution and your illegal income is about to be revealed to the whole world, you'll sleep a lot better knowing that the IRS will not be in line to take a chunk out of your hide.

What's Next.....?

[IHC Navistar]

What's next? A tax on my greenhouse gas emissions after eating a big bowl of Pedro's Atomic Chile Con Carne?!

My guess is that those Swedish tax officials are just angry because strippers just aren't that interested in beancounters.

Slightly Disheveled?

[highfidelitychris]

This was totally not in the article...

Penny Arcade

[booyabazooka]

Some days, I don't even take a lunch.

Heard in the IRS office

[Anonymous Coward]

Boss: Jenkins whats your report on the webcam girls.

Jenkins: They are definitely being very naughty sir ... so, very, naughty.

Boss: Whats your recommendation.

Jenkins: Spankings!!!

You get tax credits

[Anonymous Coward]

for eating them beforehand, though. All that carbon being taken out of the system.

At least temporarily.

Oddly enough, the tax credit is about the tax burden.

We call it "the carbon cycle".

Unfortunately, unless your car exudes petrol, there's no tax credit for that.

Not a tax loss

[Xenious]

This isn't a tax loss it's a tax opportunity loss. Just like lost sales due to "piracy" aren't lost sales they are lost sales opportunity. I hate it when people calculate these things like that. Just because someone pirated something does not mean they would have bought it. Thus it is not a lost sale and should not be counted as such. It drives the wrong behaviors and perspective.

Welfare in the hood?

[ClosedSource]

Given the pitiful percentage we pay for a social safety net in the US compared to most other industrialized democracies, it barely qualifies as a Welfare Hood let alone a Welfare State.

Re: income disparity

[macraig]

That is one of the best layman's explanations of income disparity I've ever read. Awesome! Blog that. :-)

I tell you, you people....

[Samschnooks]

Let me explain something to you and everyone else.

Every woman who enters the sex industry is a head case. They have virtually NO self esteem and they use. Ask yourself, why does a woman do that? Many of them are actually pretty sharp, too. Some of them make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they blow it. Some of it they blow up their noses.

Secondly, I see time and time again, men who give those people their hard earned money thinking that person "likes" them; hence why those women think men are losers and suckers. I'm not saying why I know this.

Comparing a stripper to a tech support engineer?!?! What?!?

God! I have to draw a picture every fucking time I post here! Jesus Fucking Christ!

Oh no..

[anonymousNR]

There are no video links in the article.

The Taj M' Hood?

[tjstork]

Given the pitiful percentage we pay for a social safety net in the US compared to most other industrialized democracies, it barely qualifies as a Welfare Hood let alone a Welfare State

I would hardly call nearly 1.5 trillion a pitiful percentage. If anything, social programs are ruining the federal budget.

Mandatory Spending, at $1.412 trillion in FY 2006, is over half of the U.S. Federal Budget. The largest mandatory spending programs are Social Security and Medicare, as follows:
Social Security - $544 billion
Medicare - $325 billion
Medicaid - $186 billion
All other mandatory programs - $357 billion. These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition, Child Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the blind and disabled, Student Loans, and Retirement / Disability programs for Civil Servants, the Coast Guard and the Militar

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[tjstork]

Proper attribution. The text from "Mandatory Spending" through the end of the post was taken from an article in Ask.com.

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[ClosedSource]

So, other than helping citizens of the country, what pray tell, should the government do with its money? Spend it on dropping bombs on civilians in other countries? Foreign aid for dictatorships that favor American corporations?

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[jonfr]

Wait, U.S has food stamps ? What is that, the 1950's or something.

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[Lost Engineer]

It's not a stamp any more (in some, most? states) it's similar to a credit card. I believe you can spend it on anything at the grocery store but booze, but I could be wrong about that.

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[cayenne8]

"So, other than helping citizens of the country, what pray tell, should the government do with its money? "

First...it is NOT the governments money. It is the taxpayers money. If the government has an excess of it, then the taxpayers should be able to keep more of their own money. Let the people decide what to do with that money, rather than a bunch of politicians spreading it around to do nothing more than try to get reelected by pandering to corporations for more funding, or to special interest groups that by far do not represent what the total electorate wants.

Pretty simple really.

Re:The Taj M' Hood?

[ClosedSource]

As I'm sure you are aware the "governments money" is short for the money collected in taxes. The fact that the money once belonged to taxpayers is obvious, but isn't relevant to the issue being discussed - how that money is spent.

Without taxes it's true that nobody would be on welfare, but it would also be true that you'd have nobody to call if somebody was trying to break into your house or if your bank walked away with your money.

Not what you think

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Many years ago, back when the internet was only recently become a consumer-level, money-making prospect, I spent several months surfing porn for the IRS. I got my untraceable "investigative workstation" complete with exhaustive logging. The actual online work was done in a higher-level secure room. We had full discretion to begin our own investigations with required emphasis in just a couple of areas.

I'm sure the investigations continue to this day; soon after I started the job, the function that did the work moved to a different city and I chose not to follow the work. But in the few months I worked it, we were finding a few interesting things. First, the big porn companies were making too much money to want to deal with us; they were paying their taxes. Second, there were lots of small porn operators doing strip shows, live sex shows, and making custom niche market videos (mostly bestiality) whose compliance was middling to poor; they got forwarded for audit. Third, there were obscenity purveyors (mostly child porn) that were probably making a lot of money but we simply couldn't figure out who they were; most were offshore, anyway.

Finally, the first group of big crooks we managed to profile in some detail were rogue CPAs who were selling bogus tax advice for high prices. In those days, you could do outrageously stupid things with tax shelters that were obviously illegal but *if* you had relied on the advice of a "competent authority" to make those investment decisions then you could avoid expensive penalties when you finally got caught. Lots of CPAs just decided to drop out of doing real accountancy work and threw up web sites where they sold, typically, single-page letters for USD$5000 that informed you that whatever stupid tax dodge you were about to invest in was perfectly legal. When you got caught (if you got caught), you'd produce the letter and claim that you were an innocent victim who had relied on an accountant for advice. At that point, the Revenue Agents job got a lot harder; the RA would have to not only prove you did a bogus tax dodge but that you and some third party in another state knew it was bogus beforehand. Lots of RAs just threw up their hands and let people skate on some penalties. ALL those crooked CPAs, though, advertised on the internet and I'm proud to say that the project I worked on was instrumental in getting a bunch of them barred from practice.

My point? Getting paid to surf porn isn't so cool. The time always comes when you have to actually get some work done and the real work tends to be nowhere near as much fun as you might think.

Monetary "Success" != Benefit of Society

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the "success" tax implies some truth. Success is ill defined especially if you're referring to monetary "success" which does not care if you're "good" or "bad". Taxing profit is merely a tax on top of a tax - that is to say that the profit generated by provided a service should be proportional to the amount of good it brings to a society, not to how efficiently you can undermine society in general.

This is why non-profits aren't taxed and why high earners are usually targeted for higher taxes- they often abuse the flaws of paper money(financial services) and buyout competition(Microsoft for instance), lobby for extremely unfair laws (telecoms, RIAA/MPAA) at extreme cost to society. There is a tipping point where monetary success (as with any sort of power metric) becomes social liability (too few people with too much power). Some of them are incredibly smart, but intelligence doesn't make one more likely to do good or the right thing. In many cases it's the opposite - they see opportunity where others see only a wall to prevent damage to society. The entire goal of capitalism is to trick these people into helping each other instead of robbing everyone blind.

your arg is flawed

[cheekyboy]

But if everyone can earn their money and pay little or no tax then they have NO REASON to steal.

The protection I get for a $200k house, is the same as a 2m house. I dont see mansions with police patrol every 2 mins and armed guards?

The richer you get, the more you can afford to hire your own protection via technology and guards.

Own a 1m house, you can afford 10 cameras and 2 dogs. Own a 15m house, you can afford 24hr security guards.

Re:your arg is flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

But if everyone can earn their money and pay little or no tax then they have NO REASON to steal.

On the contrary, if I can steal money from you - by force or fraud - then I have no reason to earn it. Unless he has some larger goal, it runs contrary to everything natural about man to want to do more work where he could do less. And wanting to comply with some sophomoric Libertarian ideal is not one of my larger goals. So, you let me know when we have your minimal, toothless government and I'll be first in there to swipe a few million to found the mathematics academy I've always dreamed of.

The protection I get for a $200k house, is the same as a 2m house. I dont see mansions with police patrol every 2 mins and armed guards?

No, you have a huge police and military infrastructure which serves to scare off rabbles of malcontent poor and most potential professional thieves. So, the physical and intellectual properties of your business empire and the dollars in your investments are fairly safe. Also I hear the banking system isn't collapsing and you're not losing all the savings that allow you to maintain this 2m house - guess which entity was responsible for that? If you judge what you have by what you see physically in front of you then you're an idiot.

The richer you get, the more you can afford to hire your own protection via technology and guards.

Good luck being able to avoid the assault of a richer looter, or a gaggle of professional Robin Hoods, or a revolution. Why is it that the self-sufficiency hicks always assume so much about the 300 hundred million living within their borders that they conclude half a dozen men with guns is all they need to save them from armageddon?

Off to Easter fun - bye.

doesnt all income tax go straight to debt payments

[cheekyboy]

All federal taxes go in one column, govt debts in another, both cancel out.

Therefore zero taxes pay for services and military, its all due to corporate taxes and 'fees'.

To govt could default on debt, and then say, ok we have no income tax, everyones happy. If you lost 10000s in govt bonds, bad luck, you get to live now tax free.

Webcam Strippers

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when people strip the webcams off my computer!

taxes

[falconwolf]

So, other than helping citizens of the country, what pray tell, should the government do with its money?

It's not the governments's, yes plural, money. It money people work to earn. If people didn't have to pay income taxes they could both invest and spend more thus create more jobs.

Falcon

Great Depression

[falconwolf]

Read Galbraith's book, "The Great Crash", where he analyises the 1929 stock market crash.

Read how UCLA professors Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian's study concluded "FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years. Others believe protectionism like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression worse. After the US raised tariffs on imports other nations retaliated by raising their own tariffs against US goods. With US employers not able to sell goods internationally they could not pay employees.

Falcon

Re:Great Depression

[Wildclaw]

So now FDR was responsible for the stock market crash? This is just getting better and better.

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years

I have read the god damn essay, and nowhere in it is there a mention of this so called 7 year prolonging. Of course, I don't expect you to have read the essay. Reading the sensationalist headline was probably enough. Interestingly enough, most people who link to that article, use it to critize the Obama stimulus package, even though the essay in question never said anything about the FDR stimulus being bad. The essay mainly focused on wagefixing combined with private trusts/monopolies being bad.

The essay does have a good point in that FDR allowed trusts to be formed resulting in monopolic behavior. It is one of the bigger criticisms of his policies, something which he in hindsight also came to see.

But I would still be heavily wary of trusting the theoretical model of Cole and Ohanian too much. Especially the exact numbers of their model that would make 1933-1936 the most golden years in US history in terms of GDP growth.

When FDR came to office in 1933, the unemployment was very high. Without some radical changes, you could have looked at something far worse. FDR tried several things. Some of which worked well, and some of which worked less well. In hindsight, he should of course only have choosen the things that worked well like stimulus, social security and high top bracket margin taxes.

Re:Great Depression

[hawk]

>So now FDR was responsible for the stock market crash?

He must be! Don't you remember how the now vice-president explained that FDR went on national television to reassure the country after the crash?

(For those outside the US, or suffering from a public school education, the crash was before he even ran for office, and before television . . . but FDR was known for his *radio* "Fire side chats.")

Having Biden around is like Quayle and Reagan combined, but with even better teflon than Reagan's . . . :)

hawk, firmly convinced that politicians were put on this earth to entertain us

Re:Great Depression

[falconwolf]

So now FDR was responsible for the stock market crash?

What? Do you really think stocks can remain high when businesses can't make sales, or have their sales cut? If you think that you really don't know anything about economics.

I have read the god damn essay, and nowhere in it is there a mention of this so called 7 year prolonging. Of course, I don't expect you to have read the essay.

Another /. mindreader. Where do they all come from? And as usually this one's wrong. I did read it when I first heard of it last year or the year before.

Interestingly enough, most people who link to that article, use it to critize the Obama stimulus package

At least you didn't say I did. I don't support Obama's plan, or the bank bailout under Bush. But not because I think they lengthen to tyme before the economy improves. I don't support them because I believe in personal responsibility and don't believe tax payers who didn't make bad financial decisions should be bailing out those who did. There were banks that didn't go out on a limb and made bad loans If bad banks had been allowed or forced to declare bankruptcy those banks that made good decisions would still be around.

The essay mainly focused on wagefixing combined with private trusts/monopolies being bad.

You say the essay didn't say anything about FDR's stimulus being bad. Well the above is what was bad. Price and wage fixing, you left out price fixing, and trusts/monopolies. FDR pushed for these.

But I would still be heavily wary of trusting the theoretical model of Cole and Ohanian too much.

And I'd be wary of what Galbraith says. No, I prefer science, specifically in this case peer reviews. Cole and Ohanian wrote a study other economists can review. Galbraith wrote a book. While it can be reviewed what's the reviewer going to write, another book?

When FDR came to office in 1933, the unemployment was very high.

Unemployment peaked, er troughed, in 1933 too. Even then though it only got to 20% (which is something that bothers me about what people are saying today, that the economy and unemployment is as bad or close to as bad, as it was during the Great Depression. We're nowhere near as bad.)

In hindsight, he should of course only have choosen the things that worked well like stimulus, social security and high top bracket margin taxes.

I agree and disagree. Like with Social Security. It was meant to be a safety net, and during the depression worked somewhat. However now people don't bother to save and invest enough for retirement, "Why should I, I'll just collect Social Security." Too many people live paycheck to paycheck. They say those who go to church should give a tithe of 10% of their income to the chruch, well I basically say the same for saving and investing, people should try to put 10% of their income aside. After putting about 12 months living expenses in savings accounts, CDs, and money market accounts they should put the rest in longer term investments. Depending on age they can invest of growth, income, value, or a combination of these stocks.

Falcon

high pay

[falconwolf]

Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics.

So, a ditch digger should get paid more than an IT worker?

Falcon

Corporations

[falconwolf]

Remember, the whole point of corporations is to avoid personal responsibility while enhancing the owners wealth.

No the point of corporations is to serve the common or public good. See this.

Falcon

who pays more in taxes?

[falconwolf]

Actually, in the US, your fair share doesn't actually track your income. The middle-class carries the greatest tax burden. That's why the economy is so screwed--the middle class has been decimated.

According to FactCheck.org "The top 1 percent of all households got 18 percent of all personal income and paid nearly 28 percent of all federal taxes in 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The top 1 percent now pay a significantly larger share of taxes than before President Bush's tax cuts, and also have a larger share of income."

Where did you get your data from?

Falcon

Re:who pays more in taxes?

[toddestan]

You might want to consider that there is more to taxes than just the Federal Income Tax. For example, most of the very rich get most of their income from capital gains, which is currently taxed at 15%. That's how Warren Buffet's effective tax rate is less than his secretary's.

Re:who pays more in taxes?

[falconwolf]

You might want to consider that there is more to taxes than just the Federal Income Tax. For example, most of the very rich get most of their income from capital gains, which is currently taxed at 15%.

Capital gains, long term, are 15%, for the "individuals in the lowest two income tax brackets".

That's how Warren Buffet's effective tax rate is less than his secretary's.

By investing Warren Buffet creates jobs, does his secretary? If s/he invests too, yes and then she pays the same tax on capital gains. However, I'll point out I have previously said I'd abolish the person income at the federal level, people should not be taxed for what they work to earn. At the federal level the only income tax I'd have is on corporations. If they want limited liability, which is what corporate charters do, then they have to pay for it.

Falcon

economy

[falconwolf]

If the ROI > 1, then there is a (debunkable) case for having the government do it - to debunk that case you need merely to establish that private industry can deliver a better return to society (Not to it's shareholders) than the Government.

Okay, the Soviet Union. Government did it all, and ran the union into the ground. Now some people are enjoying their economic and political freedom. Meanwhile the nation with the most economic freedom, the US, is also the biggest economy. Until China and India pass the US, however they are both moving to economic freedom as well.

Falcon

The Swedish ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

Most interesting thing here seems to be missed in the argument about whether big or small state is better, and whether stripping is a good job in an economic, ergonomic or moral sense. The tax man said:

We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules

That's the true horror of Swedish society for people from countries as various as France, England and the US. There is no official conception that anyone could dispute, or wish to avoid, "the rules".

Beneath the blood-curdling threats of retribution for breaking the law, and the moralitarian suggestion that everyone engaged in the trade is actually a sex-slave that you'd get in Anglophone countries, there's a tacit concession that (even if they like public spending) nobody really likes being taxed and would prefer just to be left alone. In France, Spain and Italy it is less tacit: nobody is assumed to be following all the rules, even through fear.

Germany is more like Sweden, though. Is it a Lutheran thing?

Why do you consider taxation as penalization?

[falconwolf]

Not all taxes, just income tax. By forcing people who work to pay tax on what they make you're penalizing them.

many things must be done for the general population.

Like what? Building and maintaining roads? Then tax miles driven. Schools and education? Property taxes should pay for that. As it should for the fire department and police. Now while I oppose federal income taxes for individuals I would tax corporations. If you want limited liability then you pay for it. This could then be used to pay for a reduced military, NASA, and research.

Falcon

Re:Why do you consider taxation as penalization?

[Wildclaw]

Not all taxes, just income tax. By forcing people who work to pay tax on what they make you're penalizing them.

Umm, and who would you tax? Those who doesn't have work? I think I can see a small problem with that idea.

The main thing the state should tax is productivity, because that is the only thing that really is worth shit. And income is a good measure of productivity. As a bonus, you can also do it progressivly (with 80-90% at the top margin bracket) to ensures that all efficency increases benefits society as a whole, and not only the one inventing the efficency increase. History shows that high top bracket margin taxes aren't bad for the economy and instead generally seems to be positive. (probably because to much of a wealth inequality is bad, but I am only speculating on that one)

To complement income taxes you should also have some lower property taxes. Enough to punish those who don't use existing capital and resources productivly, but not so high that owning capital becomes burdensome and subject to frequent liquidity problems.

I have yet to see a real good reason for sales taxes except from the usual bullshitters. Sales taxes are messy, regressive and attacks the weakest link in the economy, which is that production doesn't work unless you have buyers.

Every woman who enters the sex industry is a head

[falconwolf]

case. They have virtually NO self esteem and they use.

Citation needed!

I asked for citations so I'll provide one myself:

"The mental and physical health of female sex workers: a comparative study"
"Results: There were no differences in mental health on the GHQ-28 or in self-esteem (measured by an item on the Present State Examination) between the two groups. Neither were there any differences in their assessment of their physical health or the quality of their social networks. Sex workers were less likely to be married and had been exposed to more adult physical and sexual abuse than the comparison group. They were more likely to smoke and to drink heavily when they drank. One-third said that their general practitioner was not aware of their work. A subgroup not working with regular clients or in a massage parlour had higher GHQ-28 scores and may be an at-risk group. Narrative information about the work, particularly its intermittent nature, is presented."

"Conclusions: No evidence was found that sex work and increased adult psychiatric morbidity are inevitably associated, although there may be subgroups of workers with particular problems. The illegal and stigmatized nature of sex work are likely to make usual public health strategies more difficult to apply, considerations which should give concern from a preventive health standpoint."

Falcon

starting a business

[falconwolf]

First thing to do...incorporate yourself.

Or form a limited liability company.

Falcon

Re:starting a business

[cayenne8]

The trouble with the LLC is, you have to pay SS and medicare on 100% of your income I do believe.

There are definite advantages of incorporating. Do look into it before making a decision.

How is that difficult?

[falconwolf]

Taxes are a necessity for a society, but when they become a burden and retard entrepreneurial activity, then its tax structure needs to be examined.

Either your employer withholds tax and pays it for you, or the responsibility is on your head. (Well actually it's always on your head, ultimately)

It's difficult when you have to hire an accountant to figure out how much you owe in taxes.

Falcon

taxes

[falconwolf]

if the GP is ALWAYS against taxes, how does he expect to pay for the most basic of public infrastructure? Police, the military, schools, etc.

I can't answer for the GGP but I'm not against paying taxes, just against paying income taxes. Why should I be forced at the point of a gun to pay tax on what I work to earn? It's easy to pay for some of what you list though. I not sure what public infrastructure is but if it's roads then tax miles driven. Education and schools should be paid for with property tax as should the fire department and police. A sales tax can help. Before paying for the military, first reduce it's size. Then have sales tax. The only things I believe should pay an income tax are corporations, that's because they have limited liability. If you want limited liability you pay for it.

Falcon

Stuff that matters

[Mateo_LeFou]

Geez, the article headline has the words "Swedish" *and "strippers" in it, and you guys are spending the whole thread talking about government bonds.

Heresy ! Sin ! Blasphemy !!

[unity100]

inconveniencing any swedish woman is one of the biggest social blasphemies in my eyes. what the world is coming to !

stimulate the economy - bullshit

[unity100]

as one's wealth increases, his/her will/need to spend decreases proportionally. for, the things one strives, craves, needs increases as you become richer, for you acquire them, and in addition there are not much to be done with increasing amount of wealth.

its basic. you want a fast car, you got it. you want a million dollar apartment, you got it. you want a 10 million dollar house on the hill ? you got it. a private plane ? you got it.

the only ways one can keep spending are :

a) become extravagant and spend exorbitant amounts on overpriced goods, like $100k champagne bottles or handmade cars or houses made of glass - which is not only ridiculous, but also inflationist - there is no way inflation can stop. some designer can claim that his/her designs are 'art' and attempt to sell a dress which numerous similar examples have been created throughout history for $10 m. you may go buy the 'name' and the 'hype' on it. but actually you bought zit.

c) invest and continually increase your wealth. actually this is the promise of unlimited capitalism, but it fails. grandly. for, just as any other human being, a wealthy investor is an individual. s/he has a certain brain power to keep track of things, calculate risks, manage assets, process returns. you know, the regular wear & tear & weight of managing anything. it doesnt change with corporations - a corporation's capacity is proportional to the efficiency of the sum of all the individuals capacities' combined synergy and the methodology it uses to manage. so, a corporation is like an individual from outside - it has its limits.

therefore, after some point, just like individuals, corporations stop investing in hard, real investments to generate more wealth - its not worth the effort after a point. and they all get inclined to invest in tools that will generate effortless returns with no effort - financial tools.

so the world has come to a point that the wealth that was supposed to be invested as per capitalism are being played in financial tools and accruing more wealth without actually doing anything tangible or rendering any solid service. hedge funds & accompanying investment flop that put the world into crisis is a stellar example - money making money over SO derived tools that they dont actually come into play to generate reliable loans even.

therefore stop with the bullshit of 'stimulating the economy'. the MORE you have, the LESS you will invest & spend. and your wealth will increasingly take the route that countless trillions took, going into investment banks or financial tools without doing any solid good for economy.

what government is doing, is putting back some of that wealth into the economy, so your world will not crumble under you.

And the best news is...

[onceuponatime]

You can do this job one handed he said.

Umm, and who would you tax?

[falconwolf]

Those who consume, use, and pollute.

The main thing the state should tax is productivity

By taxing productivity you penalize productivity and make it more expensive to create jobs.

As a bonus, you can also do it progressivly (with 80-90% at the top margin bracket)

And discourage job creation by taxing those who create jobs.

History shows that high top bracket margin taxes aren't bad for the economy and instead generally seems to be positive.

Citation needed.

To complement income taxes you should also have some lower property taxes.

You've got it backwards. Those who own property create the need for infrastructure and protection so they should pay for it. On the other hand by taxing income you're penalizing those who work for a living.

I have yet to see a real good reason for sales taxes except from the usual bullshitters. Sales taxes are messy, regressive and attacks the weakest link in the economy, which is that production doesn't work unless you have buyers.

Sales taxes are regressive and attack the weakest links? It's those who have high income that will pay more in sales taxes than those who are low income when only nonessential items are taxed. Other than clothing, food, medicine, and shelter; which should be sales tax free, what do the poor need? On the other hand higher income earners will be buying new stuff to fill their McMansions and will pay more in tax. That or they will invest and create more jobs.

Falcon

Links please

[nnnneedles]

The blurb linked to the wrong sites. It's almost insulting.

there's actually little empirical evidence of that

[Trepidity]

Privately held companies, where the owner is actually making pay decisions, actually don't tend to pay hugely inflated salaries very often. The biggest salaries come from public corporations, which have diffuse ownership (thousands of shareholders) and are in practice run by the Board of Directors and the executives themselves.

That is, it's a collectivist organizational structure: a bunch of "owners" pool their ownership and then elect someone else to run their collectively owned business. In theory the owners still exercise indirect control, because they can vote out the directors or propose shareholder resolutions. But that's also true of state-owned firms: all citizens are indirectly "owners" of a government-owned company, and can effect change by voting out the government, or in some countries and states directly passing ballot initiatives. But in practice both of these forms of control are fairly weak and ineffective, which is why state-owned and large publicly traded corporations do not much resemble owner-operated entities in practice.

OT: Fibonacci sequence IS exponential

[kumanopuusan]

For the sake of numeracy, I thought I should point out that the fibonacci sequence is the sum of an increasing exponential function and a decreasing exponential function.  Its asymptotic behaviour is the same as an exponential function.

f(x)=ab^x
f(x+2)=f(x+1)+f(x)
b^2=b+1
b0=(1+sqrt(5))/2
b1=(1-sqrt(5))/2
f(x)=a0b0^x+a1b1^x
f(0)=a0+a1=1
f(1)=a0b0+a1b1=1
a0(b0-b1)=1-b1
a0=(1-b1)/sqrt(5)
a1(b0-b1)=b0-1
a1=(b0-1)/sqrt(5)

The absolute value of the a1b1^x term is always less than 1/2 for positive x, so the a0b0^x term (which is an exponential function) has an error of less than .5 when approximating the xth term of the fibonacci sequence.

The trouble with the LLC is

[falconwolf]

you have to pay SS and medicare on 100% of your income I do believe.

I'd have to check with my sister, she's a CPA and started her own accounting firm with some friends of hers. I don't know how the business was setup but she has also bought some rental properties she then transfers ownership to LLCs she also setups up for each property.

At one tyme I did want to start a business and incorporate it, but I think it would be easier to use an LLC.

Falcon