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Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float
New submitter home-electro.com writes "In the era of total CAD and CAM, is it even possible to come up with a fundamentally flawed design ? Turns out, yes. This a fascinating engineering SNAFU. Spain's newly built submarine is 100 tons too heavy, which means it is unable to float. 'Unfortunately for the Spainards, Quartz reports that they have already sunk the equivalent of $680 million into the Isaac Peral, and a total of $3 billion into the entire quartet of S-80 class submarines. If Spain hopes to salvage its submarines, it must either find some weight that can be trimmed from the current design or lengthen the ship to accommodate the excess weight, The Local notes. Though the latter option is more feasible, it is expected to cost Spain an extra $9.7 million per meter.'"
here in Canada we aren't in extreme debt too, not sure what Spain is doing even building these. Spain is having a rather significant financial crisis the last few years.
You joke but just the other day on TVE (spanish tv) the news anchor mentioned that Spain was the country with the greatest "sunken patrimony" in the world. She seemed rather proud of that fact...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is Canada's current debt: $611,487,921,xxx (over 600 billion dollars) That's from www.debtclock.ca website. The last digits are increasing so fast I can't read them.
If that isn't considered extreme I don't know what is. The interest charges Canadians pay on this debt is staggering and it shows on the amount of taxes that Canadians pay.
There is only 35 million people in Canada and we have 10 million square kilometers of natural wonders and natural resources to create wealth. Why do we have such a huge debt? The incompetence of the government is directly to blame.
You joke but just the other day on TVE (spanish tv) the news anchor mentioned that Spain was the country with the greatest "sunken patrimony" in the world. She seemed rather proud of that fact...
I wouldn't be so proud of the fact(given that most of Spain's "sunken patrimony" is just bullion that they were brutal enough to grind out of the backs of the locals in South America; but not competent enough to ship back to Europe); but it's probably true. The sheer scale of Spain's "Why don't we just ship every last troy ounce of precious metal we can get our hands on in the entire western hemisphere?" project was really pretty nuts. Unfortunately for them, of course, the kind of "wealth" that is shiny and looks good in treasure chests tends to be rather less useful than the mixture of human and technical capital that actual productive economies are built with(a comparison with what the relatively tiny Dutch were doing at the same time the Spanish Empire was considered something of a superpower is instructive)...
There should be 3 lines on your tax forms, how much you make, the percentage of that you have to pay in taxes, and your signature. No more subsidies, loopholes, nothing.
Agreed in principle. In practice what you are proposing is absurd and unworkable. Why? Because defining income is actually rather complicated. (Hint, it's more than just the salary you get from your job) While we could do a lot (and should) to reduce the complexity of taxes by removing a bunch of needless cruft, an income tax will NEVER be anywhere close to as simple as you propose. The problem just isn't that simple.
The government should not be attempting to manipulate private citizens into spending a certain way. Every such program in history has ended in disaster.
The job of the government is to govern. That by definition involves manipulation of private citizens. Tax policy is just a tool. I'd agree it's a clumsy and overused tool but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with judicious use of it. And your hyperbole about every program ending in disaster is demonstrably untrue. You had a fair point up until there.
You pay taxes on what you earn, when you spend, on the roads you drive, the gas you buy, to register your car... that all needs to die. There should be a national sales tax. That's it, nothing else. You should not be charged for earning, saving or investing money.
I think you may not have thought through the consequences of your proposal. Sales taxes are rather volatile forms of taxation by themselves much like income tax. They also are a regressive form of taxation (hurts the poor more than the rich). A diversified set of tax streams is (or at least can be) good policy. As an example, a lot of local municipalities get most of their tax revenue from property taxes and not much else. Works fine until you have a housing bubble burst like in 2008-09. Diversification isn't just for personal stock portfolios. Furthermore is is also good policy to match tax revenues with the expenditures whenever possible. Taxing gasoline to fund road construction makes sense because the two are linked. If we use the roads more taxes will automatically rise to match. Reverse if the roads get used less. Now taxing gas to fund something like schools makes less sense because there is little direct relationship between the two.
We need temporary tax increases until we get out of debt.
Our government has been out of debt precisely once in 230+ years, during the Andrew Jackson's administration if my memory serves. SOME debt is fine and actually is quite useful and not at all harmful to the economy. Essentially all governments have some amount of debt and that is actually a good thing. But just like having a credit card you can have too much debt if you aren't careful.
Then we need to make it illegal for our governments to borrow money except in times of war.
Again, you are proposing something that would actually hurt the economy badly. The ability to control the money supply is critically important. The way we control the money supply is by selling debt or buying it back. Without the ability to borrow we cannot adjust the money supply which makes it very difficult to combat inflation, encourage (or discourage) lending, or deal with volatile tax revenues. SOME borrowing is fine and even beneficial.
Personally I like the idea that Warren Buffet proposed. If we are not in a declared war and the US debt exceeds 10% of GDP then all members of congress and the senate should be ineligible for re-election until such time as the debt is brought back to an appropriate level.