Slashdot Mirror
In Ukraine, IT Freelancing Under Threat
An anonymous reader writes "According to the new tax law (Google translation; Russian original) that is being developed now and should take effect on January 1, 2011, it will not be possible for a private Ukrainian entrepreneur to provide any services to foreign companies without becoming a full-fledged company with a dedicated bookkeeper. Currently it is possible to perform such services and pay the equivalent of $25 in tax. Instead of raising the tax (which is overall welcomed by the community), the legislators plan to outlaw ISP, e-commerce, and Internet-based services — along with any services provided to foreign entities — for individual entrepreneurs. So starting in 2011, freelancers in Ukraine will have several choices: stop doing freelance work, start working illegally, become a full-fledged company subject to multiple cumbersome rules for taxation, or leave the country."
...individual entrepreneurs need to seek the a tax adviser and foreign or e-commerce based services are outlawed.
So what's the deal ? The situation is then similar to Germany, with the exception that the adviser is not mandatory but practically indispensable (even for freelancers) since the German tax system is the most complicated in the world.
And I can assure you that there are lots of freelancers in Germany.
Let's just apply to freelances the same taxes and rules that apply to companies.
This way you can still be a freelance, the taxes are rised and you don't have to become a company, just follow its rules.
I guess someone did the math on paid tax income vs the risk of more unknown, unregulated, western influenced groups waiting for the next election.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa showed what happens when groups can form.
Best to get them integrated with the state or made illegal.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Guess I was a poet.
Not that I'd know it.
This move by the government seems to reek of monumental levels of fail and dumbness.
Oh well. The Ukraine's loss is someone else's gain.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Well, no surprise here. Governments want to get a piece of the Internet. This will drive up outsourcing prices, which drives up the market value of us programmers here in the U.S., at least a little bit.
Is this really such a big deal?
From my understanding there are many countries in the world that requires a registered commercial organization (and all the required administration that follows) to perform certain kind of jobs.
Perhaps sad for the Ukrainian people that working internationally becomes more cumbersome but I can also understand that the state want to keep track of what business is conducted from the country.
"Whenever there's danger, a man alone."
Harry Tuttle
Dissident Heating Engineer
The Admin and the Engineer
As a ukrainian I can easily guess which option my fellow citizens will choose. And I'm not proud of it...
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I may be off base on this issue as I know very little about the subject, but is there not a similar law in the US? I seem to recall it being a factor in the relatively recent "lunatic flies a plane into IRS building" incident. If so, perhaps some wealthy and influential Ukrainian contracting firms have their fingerprints (and $$) on the change in law. I bet they are giddy at the prospect of offering a subsistence wage to previously self-employed (and better paid) coders.
They will work illegally. No big deal. That's what any intelligent citizen of any country does when their lawmaking weasels start cranking stupid laws like that.
The man is killing the country so he can kiss Putin's ass. Kills me. :(
They are trying to limit their exports as every other country is tempted to limit their imports.
Panama never looked so good.
The US government tried 'policing' Al Capone to little effect. Tax evasion was what brought him down.
Lately Amsterdam has seriously 'cleaned up' its red light district in much the same manner. For a synopsis you can get a pretty good idea by reading the web page of Yab Yum, the 'leading' brothel, back in the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yab_Yum_(brothel), or just google it.
Bottom line is: The city wants to audit your books. Which stands to reason money laundering is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
Anyone doing any kind of legitimate business knows this, and knows the costs and effort required to maintain audit able records. These people expect nothing less of other businesses. It seems a reasonable expectation of anyone doing any kind of legal business, and keeps a level playing field, among the tax base.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
The traditional rights of workers were won with aggressive, sometimes physically dangerous collective bargaining. When you don't do that, management assumes you're a pussy. That's why it's traditional in the US to exempt programmers from every labor law.
But convincing programmers they need a union is like trying to convince cats to knit a sweater. Oh, and you have to use a ball of catnip-laced yarn. You'll get something, but it won't be a sweater! All in all, though, with the cats you'll end up with a better final product and less tooth marks.
Watch.
The problem is that the majority of Ukrainian freelancers already work illegally.
Corporate entities have a far higher tax payment rate than individuals, especially in the internet sphere where freelancers don't have physical office space or physical deliverables that can be tracked by authorities. Furthermore, individual entrepreneurs providing internet-based services in Ukraine make it hard for the tax-paying corporate entities to compete.
This has become important because Ukraine is set to receive from $19-20 billion from the IMF in the next two and a half years if they can show that they are making progress in reducing their budget deficits, so there's a lot of incentive to try to push tax payments up.
if you are already doing freelance work, it means you already have connections, resume, and the experience to show for it. leave the country. that will teach them, VERY badly.
Read radical news here
In Soviet Russia, outlaws work for YOU!
It's not a killer and takes zero time on a daily basis. If I was concerned about the 1 hour a month the paperwork takes, I could contract it out - at an exorbitant rate. The benefits this way of working brings is that I have "respectability", my clients feel more comfortable and some accountants get work.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I work in the UK as a freelancer in IT and I need to have my own company, pay taxes and have an accountant.
I used to work in Holland as a freelancer in IT in there I needed to ... you guessed it ... have a company and an accountant.
Even if you don't want to have your own company, there are in fact schemes like "Umbrela Companies" which are in fact accountant managed companies who will temporary "employ" the freelancers and pass them all the income from their contracts minus tax and their part of corporation costs. These are however less tax efficient (you are taxed as an employee and income usually pays more taxes than dividends or capital gains) than just having your own company.
I'm sure Ukraine has some smart accountants who would love to setup some scheme like this.
Somehow I suspect that the real concern here is that freelancers will have to start paying real taxes like everybody else (my hearth weeps) instead of getting their roads, schools and law-enforcement for free.
"So starting in 2011, freelancers in Ukraine will have several choices: stop doing freelance work, start working illegally, become a full-fledged company subject to multiple cumbersome rules for taxation, or leave the country."
Well, call me cynical but as probably 99% of them already do not declare their work and tax its not really going to affect anyone. They will just continue working illegally. (Speaking from experience of living in Russia here close to the Ukraine)
That is unfortunately way oversimplified.
I know many "serious" developers, working for various companies outside the Ukraine, that are all employed under the "freelance" statute. This is going to hurt outsourcing around here quite a bit.
Work illegally and apply for social support.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
extreme altruism
Would be for the freelancers to form a company called "Amalgamated IT" or "Federated Freelancers" or something and share *one* bookkeeper between the lot of them. That will reduce the regulatory burden to the bare minimum on each of them, they all contribute a small amount to the maintenance of the bookkeeper, and basically continue business as usual. Maybe hire another one if the first gets too overwhelmed with the amount of bookkeeping, after all, there are advantages to delegation.
It could be worse, they could have implemented something like IR35.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I may be comparing apples to oranges, but...
The IRS costs apx $12 billion, has 1142 "Forms and Instructions" (most seem to be forms). The law is reported to be 3,387 pages itself accompanied by 13,458 pages of regulation spread across twenty volumes.(http://www.trygve.com/taxcode.html)
And that's just the federal tax code. We also must worry about individual state and local tax codes, many of which are nearly as bizarre and convoluted as the federal ones. Definitions frequently differ between the IRS and state agencies.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
... and so did the rest of the orange revolution people. But instead of changing the country they decided to spend 5 years squabbling with each other. Obviously the electorate had enough and voted in a pro russian government.
Four options. That's one each!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems to me this is a good thing. I've heard a lot of talk lately about how programming isn't regulated in any way, you don't need a degree or certification, etc etc. Any hack can jump on a keyboard and claim to be a programmer. There's no industry-wide way to determine if your new coder is a hack or an artist.
For hacks and newbies, that's a great thing. It lets them land a job. For professionals and companies, it's a pain in the ass.
Now, in the Ukraine, they still don't require any actual certification, but they do require that the person be serious enough to set up a business. It's something, at least.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
They talk of Internet start-ups? Do we need another tweeter or facebook? Internet revolution is over. Everything is there: communication, JPGs, videos, shopping carts, databases, maps, etc.
Now we have to put products and services online in earnest, it means hard tedious work at the existing physical businesses.
But the new revolution is commencing in robotics. Computers are getting sensors (web-cams, mikes, etc.) and begin to move.
I recently started learn to to program a Parallax's educational robot. This thing is already robust. However programming a moving physical object, moving in the real (not game) world, is quite different form screen programming. One has to learn new things: servos, chips, sensors, etc.
That is where start-ups are needed. Not making funny buttons on the screen or another type of e-mail, but stepping out into the real world.
All these comments, and all I see is how people want to be an island, It's really easy. form a cooperative that meets the laws freelance under the cooperative profit
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I am curious as to why such legislation would get proposed.
Is there massive tax evasion by freelance IT workers, that is far an about other industries?
Are the problems of quality or fraud that would lead the government to want to discourage freelance IT work?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Why shouldn't they pay taxes and be subject to their nation's regulations?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
which derive their income in ways that do not touch only one class of taxes. like income tax, or sales tax, or any other tax: the only fair tax is one which taxes all sort of revenue flows
the only FAIR tax system is a COMPLEX tax system, simply because society itself is complex, and always will be complex, in a rich society
if you simplify the tax code like you want, you basically let entire classes of employment in this country get away paying no taxes. is this fair in your mind?
obviously the tax code can be simplified, but you don't want it to be just simplified, you want it made over in a brutal fundamentalist way. not because you understand anything better than anyone else, but because you have a very crude oversimplistic hamfisted way of looking at the problem in front of you
in other words, for all of the abuses you complain about under the current tax code, the way you want to run things has far far worse abuses
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can't you combine with your fellow freelancers to form a corporation, and hire a bookkeeper? Added complexity, yes, but it's viable.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
It's early, and I get the fact that many are leaving California (I was one of them 6 years ago). But the first part of the sentence - Huh?
Two 20 oz cups of coffee don't seem to help.
Spare me. My IQ etc., your normal mode of operation does not usually include patronizing anybody, circletimes.
I am not an anarchist, I am a realist. Everybody who matters today is not paying income taxes, do you understand that?
Income taxes cause destruction of society in the long run by destroying ability of the middle class to save enough to be able to run their own small/medium size businesses and this is the cause of collapse of the economy. Government makes sure that some businesses become monopolies by preferential treatment, by giving out free money, by creating income tax loopholes and by setting regulations that kill competition.
All of this while following the Keynesian ideas of trying to manipulate economy through supply of debt and creating incentives not to save, but to live on debt, which also kills ability to create small business. Governments create monopolies, who then move production to the cheapest bidders. Government destroy small/medium size businesses, which kills the trade balance. Government creates inflation and debt - the only product of their work.
I am against all income taxes, however since I am not an anarchist in principle, I support government functions that actually help society rather than destroy it, so this includes the justice system and the punishment of the guilty in transgressions against individuals or the environment, which is public and shared property and responsibility.
I am against privatizing gain while socializing damage, but almost everything governments do creates that type of environment, the moral hazards, this includes regulations, taxes, FDIC, FDA, MMS, Military spending for the sake of enriching some individuals, you name it. All of this is done so that politicians can have their share of the pie.
I am for sales taxes, some argue that this is an 'unfair' tax against the poor. Well, those people who want something from the government, they should give something back. You want to get help? Here is how: disclose your income information and if you qualify, you get back the money you paid through the sales taxes over the year. If you don't want any sales taxes to be returned to you - you don't even have to file anything.
I am against being government property, thus I organize my affairs throughout the world - bank accounts in some countries where it suits me best, business in countries where it is the most profitable, spending money in countries where I get the best bang for the buck and keeping it real - gold, not fiat paper.
My position is not a defensive one against you, you are a troll and will attack me on that principle alone, your response will surely be something impolite at best and most likely it will be an attempt at insulting me, but I don't care. I just want to be clear on what I mean and that is why I respond.
You can't handle the truth.
There's a high level of retardedness in your post, but this sentence sums it up well.
How rich do you need to be in order to pay for your own national defence? If any other person is richer than you, they can attack you on superior terms.
Well, if you earn another $100,000 and pay $59,000 of that in taxes, you still have $41,000 to spend as you please. Spending some of it on basic mathematics classes might be a good idea.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
And it has been so for a long time so, unfortunately, there isn't much of a freelance IT industry around here.
The problem people from countries such as the US and the UK don't seem to understand is that setting up an actual company in Brazil (and I imagine Ukraine to be similar) is that it's a HUGE hassle. By that I mean it's a 2-3 month process, involving more than 10 different government institutions you need to visit in person. You need to get a proper "commercial address", which can't be your home (unless you re-register it as a commercial building, which is another hassle and pays much higher property taxes).
When I worked as a freelancer, I did the math and I would pay about 25% of my earnings in fees and accounting. Then, I would pay income tax (progressive scale which tops at 27.5%) on the remaining 75%. Also, as a freelancer, I would need to pay 20% to social security instead of the regular 11%.
In short, I would end up with roughly ~50% of what I earned. Then I would proceed to buy goods which were already taxed to hell and my purchasing power would be effectively cut in half again (the cheapest Honda Civic here costs US$37K).
I just restricted to working only to foreign companies. The pay was better *and* I wouldn't need to register myself as a company to do that, as the tax code has general provisions for "money from foreign countries". The consequence is that it was very difficult to prove my income whenever needed (home financing, etc), as everything here requires a "regular" proof of earnings.
From my personal experience, I can say that, yes, this is bad news for Ukrainians.
And I am half German too. (No idea what the relevance is to anything, but apparently there is some)
It's a pre-emptive strike against being called a bigot for daring to criticize the policies of a government or country to which you are not native. People get that a lot, hence the poster's reflexive flinch and disclaimner. I've experienced that in the UK for daring to point out the obvious, because, despite being a dual citizen, my accent is North American. My wife (who is English) gets the same shit when she criticizes an obvious flaw in America. These are classic cases of territorial identity and nationalism trumping critical thought, and the GP obviously wanted to avoid that. Which he by and large did, but not without the cost of this tangent. :-)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
How rich do you need to be in order to pay for your own national defence? If any other person is richer than you, they can attack you on superior terms.
That doesn't mean he'll be successful. It is perfectly possible that defenses are cheaper than offenses (i.e. to get an attack power of 9000 you may need to spend $9000, but to defend against an attack power of 9000 it may only cost $8000). Additionally, the simple addition of a group of people who will band together if any are attacked can thwart this to some degree (assuming everyone is honest and cooperates as planned).
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
Ukraine has retarded, corrupted and disfunctional government lead by criminal president, there is no wonder they do this....
so companys will have hire people as employee now?
How many people there are freelancing but they work like full time for 1 company? and the company does that just to get out of the taxes that with a employee they have to pay?
In the US I want to see a crack down in that part as some of the 1099 / temps are like that full time for a company but they just don't want to make them employee so the company gets out of having to pay tax.
And next thing you know, they'll have formed a government. After all, they can defend more effectively if they have a fighter jet that no single one of them can afford. So they can all kick in to pay for it. And there's upkeep for the jet, so that means annual contributions. And someone has to keep track of all the payments and labor and equipment. So there's your civil servants.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
From the perspective of a parasite someone who doesn't let his blood be sucked "isn't doing his part"; and from the perspective of a corporation the only community is one where everyone has been taken in by their confidence game. Your ethical idea of a "community" doesn't exist in a world run by thieves.
new the health law does that!
Well that was quite a useless comment, nothing of any value to the topic.
You can't handle the truth.
You have no wisdom, you are a useful idiot who believes that a government can be in principle, anything more than a slave owning power grabbing, money stealing machine.
I am against governments' involvement into everything with 3 exceptions: Justice system. Punishment system. Minimum required military to keep the enemies where they are.
You believe it is possible to reform a government in its form, where it controls economy and sets moral standards, I do not.
You can't handle the truth.
This smacks of a straw man argument. The original poster was modded down "troll", and for good reason. Even the founders saw the need for a federal government to provide for the "common defence".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You are full of shit. I pay sales taxes and I pay property taxes in a few places, which is what the communities need to function on a local level.
I completely am against me paying any income taxes and you should be against you paying income taxes just as well. Income tax is a way of slave ownership, you are a slave if you play by those rules.
And as to the currencies - gold is my currency. I have almost not fiat presence.
You can't handle the truth.
Or, I can do just enough to get by (because nearly every western government has PROGRESSIVE taxation now) and keep a greater portion of my income. Heck, I may even get money BACK from the treasury.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You don't have to leave Ukraina. You're not working, your apache/roxen/lighttpd with php/ruby-on-something/mason does. So, let them go somewhere, like nearby Poland or even no-so-nearby Caribean. Your ssh still does wonders and you don't have to earn at Ukraina. You can still sit there and register your company somewhere else, who cares?
In Greece, almost no one paid taxes. And just look at what a prosperous utopia that country has turned into.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sure, you can earn $2 a year and keep it all. The fact remains that the more you work, the more you earn, even in heavily progressive tax regimes. I'd rather have $150,000 than $100,000, even if it means I had to work 20 or 30% harder for that last $50,000.
The curve definining the level of correspondence between the two is complex and in some ways arbitrary, and tax levels are just one component of that.
The idea that $1000 in your pre-tax earnings should equal $1000 in your pocket is a fiction to start with. Pre-tax earnings is a figure that depends on the regulatory environment and the economic conditions that it creates. You need to widen your view if you want to have a rational perspective.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I am quite certain, that you have answered to somebody who was not me.
I also totally do not care about your opinion, you continue doing what you are doing, I'll keep my part.
The community is not what it used to be, I am part of an Internet community more than of any physical one, after all, here we are, talking.
As to being an asshole, I really wish more people were assholes in that particular way, society would have been better off.
You can't handle the truth.
1. Government is wasteful. (When the choice is private companies competing or government. Government will always cost more.
2. Sometime you have to waste. (Just because private companies are cheaper dose not mean they are always the right choice. (Tax collection, Defense, Infrastructure.)
3. Most countries have way too much government. (I live in the US. We have government that buys art, pays farmers to not grow, pays people to not work, pays people to have children they can not afford, pays a draft board when the is no draft, can go on forever.)
SO. Government should be small but should be used where needed and feared everywhere else.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
My gross income increased, but my taxes (both in dollars and as a percentage) increased too, despite the fact that my consumption of public resources didn't increase any.
Please, log in and join the big parade. But anyway: you benefited more from those public resources, because you had more to lose. It's reasonable that you should pay more. Remember, without the protection of some entity larger than yourself, you would be subject to depredation by entities larger than yourself. And... everyone has to sleep sometime.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In my mind's voice, I also hear "The Ukraine", possibly because I am a North American of age to remember the Cold War, where most everything in Eastern Europe was a dragon-infested wasteland, excusing the need to name nations individually. Ukraine didn't become independent again until 1991, and I seem to remember popular media throwing "The" in front of Ukraine for years.
Every government health care system on earth is considerably cheaper and more efficient than the US's private system.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
1: No absolutely not. My experience working for some rather large companies is that they are not really more effective then the government in general. One big problem the government have is that they can't hide their fault from the public the same way that a corporation can. And that the public care much more.
So when a large shipping company has to drop(And then redo all development) of their internal shipping system costing them >100 million dollors, all the publicity they get is an interesting article about prototype based development(Including a few things not to do).
When the government fuck up an computer project in the same size, they get multiple newspaper frontpages and often long and very public investigations about the cause. (Something good companies also do, but they keep it internal).
2: That is true. My rule of thumb is that very large organisations(Including the gov) have a rather large overhead but are still relative effective because their size allow them to access to the right(Or at least not total wrong) people to lead a project. Small companies can be really effective because of their much lower overhead, but they often relay on very few people doing the right thing to work. So sometimes they do really stupid things(Se: Thedailywtf.com) because they don't have access to any internal people who know anything about the subject.
So basically you want to say that low taxes lead to economy growth and less tax evasion?
Well, Ukraine is the best counterexample. Flat 17% income tax, but pretty much nobody pays it and the economy is in ruins.
And all that despite Ukraine having great premises for agriculture, lots of natural resources and also despite it has inherited an enormous chunk of the Soviet industry.
You see, most corporations and many people will try to evade taxes no matter how low they are.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Why do we always forget the Evil Overlord option? You could enact your plan for World Domination, starting locally, of course. Then replace the government officials with sock-puppets, and do as you please. No need to leave the country.
I do not think you have as wide a consensus as you might think.
Your first item - "government will ALWAYS cost more" is demonstratively wrong. There are numerous counter-examples (health care is a big one). It is true that governmental systems have a variety of forces that tend to promote certain types of inefficiencies, but competing companies also have forces that promote inefficiencies - some of these forces are the same for the two types, and some are different. The costs associated with advertising for example could (and in some cases do) lead to competing companies costing more than a government monopoly operation. There are design and regulatory systems that can work towards countering these tendencies in both cases, and I would think that everyone would be able to agree that it is worthwhile to implement such systems - but I would of course be wrong. There are a large number of people who cannot seem to accept that all government programs are not inherently evil, and probably a similar number of people who could never accept that all companies are not inherently evil.
A bit of a shame really.
Let's look at the countries going bankrupt now... Greece? Socialist. Portugal? Socialist. Spain? Socialist. UK? Not quite bankrupt yet, but socialist. United States of America? Socialist, and racing towards bankruptcy as fast as congress can carry it. Are any of those countries following Ronald Reagan's model? No! They are, as usual, following the Marxist liberal elitist model, and we have a century of empirical evidence, from the Soviet Union to North Korea to Cuba to Venezuela to Greece to East Germany (the list goes on and on) that flat out proves your Marxist ideas don't work.
So that said, what about the competing capitalist model (which Ronald Reagan generally believed in)? We have centuries worth of empirical evidence that that model DOES work. The most obvious proof was the 18th and 19th century United States of America, which with a very tiny, unobtrusive government went from undeveloped continent to world superpower faster than any nation in the history of the world (and it also saw much improvement during the 1980s when we switched from Carter socialism to Reagan capitalism). But besides that, there are a number of other countries the tilt towards the free market end of the spectrum that have also done well, such as Australia, Hong Kong, and now even China, which has jettisoned much of its communism and socialism in favor of capitalism, because capitalism grows their economy at a rate of more than 8% (similar to what the US used to be capable of doing).
So yeah, the evidence is in. The more capitalist you are, the more wealthy and economically advanced your country is. The more Marxist you are, the quicker it will be that your country goes into bankruptcy (at which point you get riots and/or the government collapses).
Capitalism lifts all boats. Capitalism provides jobs for everyone. And if you look at America, which up until Obama was by and large the best example of capitalism, you will find that even our poor are in the top 10% worldwide, and maybe even in the top 5%. Even most low income families here have their own washing machine and dryer, unlike many nations in Europe. Even low income people here tend to have more space than the tiny flats common in Europe. Even the poor here tend to have one (or often two) cars. They may not be very nice cars, but in most countries in the world you are lucky to have a bicycle. Most of our poor also find some way to get a TV (usually a pretty nice one) and cable TV service, as well as enough food to live on. And a lot of lower income people have cell phones and even luxuries like alcohol and cigarettes, which cost quite a bit. So let's be honest... being poor in a capitalist society may mean you don't have a boat, a luxury car or a second house by the lake, but it still lifts their boat WAY higher than the rest of the world. Go look at Africa, Venezuela or even Europe and then come try to tell me that the poor in capitalist America aren't way better off than the poor, and even the middle class, in a lot of these socialist countries.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Now if India and China get on board with the idea I'll be able to get some work.
"How rich do you need to be in order to pay for your own national defence?"
Here in the US we don't pay for national defense any more - we mostly just attack at will.
Are you going to blame the government too next time gold prices plummet and wipe out your savings?
It wasn't always "a fiction" and there's no necessary requirement for it being so, today. In a pure consumption tax state you would have that $1000 until you bought something with it.
Rethinking it, I suppose there is one requirement that keeps it fiction: keeping the populace from being able to vote for your insane tax hikes with their pocketbooks.
And what about government corruption, which can also be viewed as a tax.
A quite progressive tax at that, since the more money you make the more corrupt officials you have trying to milk from it.
Or maybe it's regressive, since by following the same argument for calling a consumption tax regressive, a larger percentage of a poor person's income goes to paying bribes than does a wealthier person's.
Occasionally private companies are extremely inefficient (to sustain the inefficiency requires a market with high barriers to entry... often maintained by the government -- consider the health care payment system in the US), and occasionally governments do a job well. That government will be less efficient is certainly the way to bet.
Undoubtedly true, but it's a double-whammy in the third world, because governments tend to be corrupt and ineffective, which makes even otherwise honest people unwilling to pay taxes.
You could, but don't you think that's cutting your nose off to spite your face?
Unless you've reached the point where you've got enough money and you'd like to have more time to enjoy it, but that's another issue entirely.
Get serious. Would you become a bum and live in the gutter and go "har har eevuhl gubmint, you'll not get a penny from me, the noo" all the whole day long? Oh yeah, that's really stickin' it to the man.
[rolls eyes; walks away shaking head; fade]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ukrainian tax dodgers forced to pay for the services they consume on a daily basis like everyone else in that country.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
...no true Scotsman would do such a thing.
More to the point, larg organizations are wasteful. It's a matter of bad communication and insufficiently well defined division of labour. It's not really even real stupidity, as the people involved can be quite intelligent; they are all just pulling in different directions.
No, most countries have too little regulation at places and insane level of regulation at others. Various forms of social security, for example, are usually regulated to the point where any attempt to get back on your feet is actively punished, while big business can do pretty much what it damn well pleases.
Unfortunately, you cannot run a modern economy with a small government, and as this latest financial debacle once again shows, you simply cannot trust economy to run itself.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
why would I blame the government? The reason for gold prices to go down would be a good working economy and the government is doing everything to destroy a good working economy, should I be thanking them for destroying economy so that fiat money would become as useful as paper they are printed on?
I don't blame governments, dude, I just can't stand people who do not understand economics of the long term (like a bit longer than 20 years; let's start with at least 150 year economic lessons?)
Gold going down in price would mean that investments could be made into something else, like a business, what you are suggesting is some sort of a fall by 90% or such in a very short term, do I understand you correctly? If that was to happen, we would all benefit, including me, from some sort of a economic miracle.
Ron Paul holds 50% of his savings in gold and he is a libertarian and he works in the government like nobody else does - to his own detriment. If he succeeds in fixing economy through sane government policies, then he loses his investments in gold. The reason why he still holds that gold is because he knows how little the chances of him succeeding are.
You can't handle the truth.
Actually the only likely things that would bring the price of goal down would involve a population crash. To bring it down a lot would require a severe population crash.
There's one class of alternatives: If one of the approaches yielded energy combined with other technologies that made it cheap to extract gold from the sea, or from the mantel (HAH!), Or if mining asteroids became cheap, and some of them contained separated bodies of gold ore.
So holding onto a resource which has been almost totally mined out, and which can't reasonably be manufactured, is a reasonable strategy. But it's not one that many people could follow. I think one would need to be quite wealthy to even begin.
(OTOH, the analysis which indicted this gold-bug as a parasite is accurate. He's not counting the extent to which he uses various socially subsidized services, from those of the police to those of the airport. And clearly, even from his self description, many others. [And no, not even local governments support themselves solely on sales tax. Or at least in no place that I have heard of.])
That said, I, too, have severe qualms about fiat money. Personally I favor monocrystalline silicon. Large fault-free wafers. And the purity of the reserve is proven by it's continual recycling as input to a chip foundary. (OTOH, that's subject to technological obsolescence...so it's got problems too.)
That said, the real value of money is that the government will accept it as payment when they say you owe them a debt. And the real value of the money depends on how big a debt they claim you owe. When they claim a larger debt, the value of each monetary unit decreases.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sales taxes was quite enough to sustain the US federal government before income tax was implemented, that's first. Secondly, if it wasn't for the government intervention into economies of the world, there would be no need for any 'airport security'. Thirdly, all of that security is just a theater, it's not real.
Gold can come down in price if inflationary policies of government will stop, good luck with that.
Lastly, the only measure of value of fiat money is price of items that you want to buy, and this has nothing to do with government buying back debt, which they WILL do by printing more money.
You can't handle the truth.
The reason for gold prices to go down would be a good working economy and the government is doing everything to destroy a good working economy
No, that's not the only reason gold prices could go down; let's take an extreme example, if someone figures out how to turn cheaper metals into gold, that could drop gold prices down to a thousandth of what they are now. A slightly more likely scenario: a mining company finds a huge new gold mine, and supply is increased dramatically. Another likelier scenario: an investing trend where investors just decide other commodities are safer, and try unloading their gold supplies. Look at the historical trends in gold prices, they have a tendency to rise and fall dramatically.
go live in the 3rd world for a while. I am an American (USA) who lived the in Caribbean for 19 years before moving back. Taxes were low, because collection was virtually non-existent, but government services were equally invisible. You had to bribe people to get work and residence permits, the police never came when you called them and it took forever to get a telephone, a driver's license or a post office box. Everyone hand delivered their utility payments for electricity and water because if you didn't, you could not prove you had paid your bill and would be disconnected.
Life without government is even more fun after a Cat 5 hurricane and the looters and robbers come out to prey on the weak - because at that point, it's the government that everyone is looking to for salvation.
Yes, America, land of opportunity and privatized... prisons. We've been knocking government since Ronald Reagan (who was a government employee for a significant portion of his career) but the truth is, when you let the private sector run government services for profit, most people suffer. If you want roads on which the police can drive to you when you call, guess what? That costs money. We have some of that "hire your own government services" crap over here, and it mostly sucks for most people, while benefiting the wealthy few.
I respect the career civil servants who are actively trying to make a positive difference (and the majority of government employees ARE) while being bashed and slandered by media, politicians and taxpaying whiners. Is it perfect? No. But if you want low taxes, move to Somalia and carry your RPG into Starbucks anywhere you like. Oh, there's no Starbucks? Maybe because there's no stable government....
Ask Me About... The 80's!
At least they can leave the country legally, and without threat of death. It's Ukraine. They didn't always have that option.
For that matter, they didn't always have the right to own a business or to work for whichever business they liked.
In Soviet Ukraine, the politicians told you where to go.
Sorry, but Soviet jokes actually make sense in response to this summary.
You have demonstrated nothing. healthcare costs more because states have laws that prohibit competition in that marketplace. Remove the government and you will see huge improvements. Also maybe the government should get out of the business of telling insurance companies what they must cover in MY insurance. I am capable of that thank you. An insurance company that dose not allow me to haggle on price and coverage wont be around for long.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Actually in the US I think that FDIC insurance is a PROBLEM. I know that I have no clue what my bank is doing with my money. Why? Because I don't have to. I am insured. If there was no FDIC I bet that most people would know what is going on with their banks. Banks that are conservative and keep your money safe while making a little on the side will have huge deposits. Banks playing fast and loose may get some but I don't give a shit about people who lose money cause they were careless with it.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The counter example was actually medicare vs private insurance. Midicare costs something like 3% for overhead, private insurance costs something like 12%.
There are a variety of reasons for this disparity, but none of them have to do with laws prohibiting competition in that field. In this case, "the government" system is cheaper than the "competing companies" system.
If one is going to say ALWAYS, then a single counter-example is sufficient.
If you meant "always except when it isn't", then you should be careful to state that.
If you want to go on talking about what the government should or should not be involved in you should probably be aware that it is unlikely that you will be able to find ANY position that "most thinking people will agree" upon - even without going outside of the USA for those people.