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How the Quakers Became Unlikely Economic Innovators by Inventing the Price Tag (aeon.co)
Belying its simplicity and ubiquity, the price tag is a surprisingly recent economic development, Aeon magazine writes. For centuries, haggling was the norm, ultimately developing into a system that required clerks and shopkeepers to train as negotiators. In the mid-19th century, however, Quakers in the US began to believe that charging people different amounts for the same item was immoral, so they started using price tags at their stores to counter the ills of haggling. And, as this short video from NPR's Planet Money explains, by taking a moral stand, the Quakers inadvertently revealed an inefficiency in the old economic system and became improbable pricing pioneers, changing commerce and history with one simple innovation.
Who were those who invented the ".99" marketing gimmick? I don't recall...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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What the Quakers actually said was "my price is the same for any man, be he a pauper or a king".
I was taught that the Quakers started doing this in the early 1700's here (UK). My school was founded in 1703.
I was never convinced about the morality though. I have lived in countries where they still haggle. I bought coffee and milk from the same person nearly every day for six months, and I am pretty sure I never paid the same amount twice. Its not just about how well the customer is, or otherwise - its also about how keen the seller is to get money quick. If you are really poor, you still may get the seller to sell at a loss, rather than carry their wares home after closing time, especially if the goods are perishable. (Also true in London markets today). In the 1700's most people self employed, and were able to control their own destiny more than employees can (if you were an employee, you were not in a good position at all).
But the video is correct, in a big store, fixed prices are definitely an advantage.
And haggling school? well just try taking a taxi in any third world country - you either get it pretty quickly, or you will go broke! However, in the spirit of equality, Uber is bringing the Third world to everyone, everywhere.
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why should hardworking poor people pay a disproportionately higher percentage of their disposable income in taxes to subsidize the luxury consumption of the lazy rich?
On top of that - I have a minimum I am willing to sell my product for. My customer has a maximum they are willing to pay. If we are able to haggle and set a price right in the middle, both of us would benefit and be happy about the result right? Unlike a situation where I as a seller need to go above my minimum, and therefore the benefit of the sale gets split unevenly for my buyers :)
Combine it all the stores will know precisely how much they can charge you, and how much you can be forced to pay.
If Quakers thought it is immoral to charge different people different prices, model corporations think it is their primary mission to charge based on the customers' ability to pay, not based on reasonable profits.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
In the wrong thread on top of that.
#DeleteFacebook
Food, shelter, energy tend to have a fixed cost per person per year. At the very minimum, there should be an income level (aka standard deduction) below which you pay little or no tax. Tax discretionary income, not income needed for necessities.
And then Amazon happened, where prices change depending on who is viewing the item.
#DeleteFacebook
These days, the price on the tag isn't the price. For many buyers, it's a starting point for negotiations because they think that the item in question isn't worth what's written on the tag. Of course, for the seller, it's also become a way for them to basically say that whatever they're selling is worth far more than it really is. But it doesn't stop there. Because there are legions of people who have no ability to create a product let alone a desirable one, they end up joining the ranks of bureaucracy whose mission in life is to extract money out of the flow from the creator to the consumer initially in the form of taxes but increasingly in the form of a laundry list of inscrutable fees which rarely if ever do anything productive and instead just make daily life more expensive.
Ethics and moral and logic do not mix together.
They are different concepts.
But if you believe you can charge a millionaire who happens to stop at your diner $1 one for a bottle of water, because you know he would simply drive off and buy elsewhere if you charge $10 (but you know he would not because he probably would shrug and pay $10) and then again you charge a poor guy who is about to collapse of thirst $100 because you know: he can not go anywhere, you have no ethics and no moral.
Oh, I should have exchanged "water" for "soda" ...
In my country we still honour the old gods, if one is thirsty, you give him water, free of charge.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
One of the Testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends (Friends, to Quakers, but most people call them Quakers) is equality. Another is honesty and others include integrity, truth, and simplicity. Friends believe in doing their best, in other words, not doing shipshod work. If they have an item they have produced for sale, say, for example, a chair, then, as part of their belief in integrity, they will have put their best work and used quality material in making that chair.
With that in mind, at one point, and I don't know if this started with just one Friends' Meeting or how it spread, but the consensus was that if you've worked diligently on a chair and one person comes into your shop and offers you $10 for that chair, but the fair value (considering labor and materials) is $5, then it's being dishonest and acting without integrity to take the additional $5 because that person was not a good negotiator. It's taking advantage of their lack of time or inability to negotiate. On the other hand, if a Friend has put in conscientious work and has to make a choice between selling it for $3 or not selling it, that's not fair to them.
The consensus, for a while, had been on a fair price for a fair amount of work and materials. From there, it wasn't far to go to reach a conclusion that if $5 is a fair price for that chair, then, barring changes in costs for materials (or maybe labor or cost of living), then gaining more or accepting less through dickering is less than fair, to either the shop owner or the customer.
While I know many will say, "Well, if they don't take all they can get for it, they're idiots!" If your focus is on the accumulation of wealth and possessions, then, from that point of view, that may be true. But if your intent in life is not material, but on personal improvement, growth, and following your spiritual beliefs, than there is much more to be gained from turning down the extra money offered than there is in accepting it. Friends are big on fair gains as opposed to grabbing what you can when you can. (Which is why they don't gamble and generally are quite careful in selecting what stocks they will invest in.)
Remember, this may not seem moral or immoral to you or others. That's okay. For Friends, their concern is in doing what they believe is right.
One key to this innovation is to really try to understand the motivation from a personal level. The existing practice required the Quaker store owner to try to haggle with the customer for every transaction - which consists in some sense of an effort of two parties to deceive each other about what one is willing to pay or accept. And the Quakers greatly emphasized strict personal honesty - so this was a frequent unpleasant experience that they wanted removed.
Additionally in a close knit community different people paying different prices is a source of social tension. Shop owners no doubt experienced customers - people of the community they knew - wanting the same price some other person of the community that they knew received. If this happens very often the temptation to simply set the same price in practice becomes strong. And if you do that why not just write it down and save the owner some time, and halt unwanted attempts to haggle.
Talk of "axioms" is irrelevant (and it should be noted that axioms are by their nature arbitrary). Although such an argument could appeal to a modern urban intellectual individualist, it would have appeared bizarre to an 18th Century close knit community devoted to personal moral improvement.
Interestingly the Quakers were also one the prime originators of the anti-slavery movement. Before the mid-18th century the notion that slavery might be intrinsically immoral was an extreme fringe notion. Slavery was generally accepted socially, legally, and religiously.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Your idea is ridiculous, because of the very premise that rich people work hard and poor people don't. They don't call it a sweatshop for nothing.
You did give me an idea though, maybe there should be a subset of necessities that are cheaper for people of lesser means.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
US Government protects 100 trillion worth of property. It should be paid in proportion to the net worth of people who need that government.
Government expenses should be divided into two categories. Property rights enforcement, to be paid by networth. Individual liberty and rights enforcement. That will be paid by equal dollar amount per person.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Oh there's a number of ways you could arrive at it. You could believe that it's immoral to charge somebody more than an item is "worth", for example.
It actually takes quite a bit of economic sophistication to realize that what an item is "worth" varies from person to person and the exact circumstances the person is in.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Stay on a page at HobbyKing for awhile and they'll pop up a discount. "we see you've been here awhile how about 5% off?..."
The Double Glazing sales industry (in the UK) brought haggling back with vengeance. They insist that can't give you a quote without sending a sales guy into your home because apparently you're unable to take half assed measurements at the same level as that the sales person who does the same and says a surveyor will have to come and measure things precisely anyway. And once in, they pull discounts out of their butts, and if you send them off they'll call you with even more discounts on top of "those are all the discounts available mate" that you got already.
In my specific case, the list price went down from 9K to 3K after all the discounts and a customer retention discount (i.e. I canceled on them shortly after taking their offer). How is that even possible?!
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
"Because I completely do not understand, what is immoral about this..."
That's because you are amoral.
I greatly dislike organized religion (though I find atheism to be equally irrational and presumptive) but damn; Quaker culture impresses me greatly.
"And what if I use paper maps or ask people how to get someplace?"
Ak for directions? What are you doing on Slashdot, Girl?
No it didn't. The free software movement started over a decade before open source and began as an ethics-based social movement which was also apparently economically viable for some including founder Stallman and some businesses such as Red Hat and Cygnus. But free software never framed the issues it addresses around a business-first philosophy.
Later after seeing how software freedom posed a threat to proprietary software control over the user, the open source development methodology was developed as a reaction that would try to reframe the issue away from caring about a user's software freedom and into a means of convincing developers to license their work to allow for nonfree derivatives (or at the least not draw strong distinctions between freedom-preserving "copyleft" licenses and "non-copyleft" licenses that don't try to preserve software freedom, hence the lack of clear distinction between these licenses in the OSI's license list). That focus aims to benefit the open source's primary audience: businesses. This development methodology is a disposable front by which its advocates endorse the idea that following their development methodology will make software more powerful and reliable. But this isn't always true, and some proprietary software is already powerful and reliable leaving "open source" as no real challenge to proprietary control over the user. But it was never meant to be such a challenge, so this philosophy's proponents don't consider this to be a problem.
The GNU Project recognized this reality long ago and wrote about it in a couple of essays (older, newer). Here's a relevant excerpt from the newer essay pointing out how a free software activist and an open source enthusiast react to learning about a powerful, reliable proprietary program:
Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago is an example of the open source enthusiast. He clearly rejects software freedom (read just about anything he says on the topic) and shows his disdain to users of his fork of the Linux kernel as well; that fork of the Linux kernel contains non-free software. The GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel removes non-free software, providing a kernel one can (ironically) distribute in full compliance with the license under which the kernel Linux is distributed—the GNU GPLv2.
Digital Citizen
You don't see what's inherently immoral about treating people differently? (Charging different people different prices is treating individuals differently).
It's either obviously immoral or it isn't. That's kind of the problem with moral truths. And even logical ones.
"Is this really what passes for trolling these days? Sad."
To convince the generic stable genius follower, you need only the 'A' from the 'AI'.
An excellent idea. At the same time, we can get rid of usury.
Perhaps it's because the rich most often obtain their wealth not from hard work but through pricing differences on stocks and the borrowing of money to others? It's precisely because as a society we want these things, we allow these things to exist to improve liquidity--to avoid the wealth to merely horde their assets or see where their wealth could be used to move goods and profit from the price difference. It's also precisely we realize that that's where most of the extreme wealth comes from that we were, for a long time, willing to charge at a much higher tax rate on that wealth precisely because the earnings were not at all in proportion to the effort.
In fact, it's rarely in proportion to the economic good or social good either, but that's the problem with using taxes as a means of trying to maintain social justice. There exists no perfect tax code because it's impossible to adequately tax people fairly. A flat amount is unfair because wages for the same work vary by region; it's also unlikely to be payable by many. A flat proportional amount is unfair because nothing about proportionality is fair because neither wages nor costs are proportional by work or region. Nor is progressive or regressive taxation fair. In fact, it's basically impossible to have a fair tax rate let alone one that provide sufficient revenue to any government.
Beyond the fact that, no, let the left doesn't want to tax people at over 90%, I'm unaware of anyone who in the long-term has a negative tax rate even with tax credits--maybe some corporations?--without committing tax evasion. People pay a lot more than income tax and while there are some tax credits that can grant people negative tax rates for a few years, they're not a permanent thing and the accumulation of all taxes is positive.
But you are right in one respect: those who are disabled or are mentally challenged do receive benefits in excess of what they contribute. Generally over the population, there's certainly individuals who have received a tax paid education for which they will never contribute enough in taxes or other economic benefit to overcome their cost. That's basically a universal truth of taxes: revenue is not equally collected and dispersed. In fact, if that's all taxes were, then there'd be no point in taxes. Taxes are inherently a form of wealth redistribution--I'm sure you're a big fan of the prisons and the poorhouses.
You can argue overall that certain people receive too much benefit. either because the class of benefit is unwarranted or the individual is undeserving, but with all the hand waving you're doing, I don't honestly think you even recognize where your tax dollars go or how this "theft" actual plays out. If you really want to avoid "theft", go somewhere without a government or any people.
It sounds to me like the Quakers inspired Bill and Ted's famous catchphrase; "Be excellent to each other."
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
aka price negotiation. It simply moves it between sellers, instead of within a seller. That is, each buyer gets the same price from a particular seller, but different sellers can have different prices. Thus the market requirement for price negotiation is preserved.
It's worth noting that the equivalent of haggling is also creeping back into online stores, where merchants will charge different prices to different customers to help them better gauge how close they are to the true market price. Contrary to popular opinion, this isn't pure price gouging. Profit is maximized at the market price. If your prices are lower than market price, your sales are increased but the lower profit per item results in a net profit decrease. But if your prices are higher than market price, the effect of reduced sales outweighs the higher profit margin, resulting in a decrease in your overall profit. So a merchant exploring demand at different prices this way can actually end up concluding that lowering their regular price for everyone is better. Increasing prices result in increased profit all the time only if your product is a necessity or almost a necessity, and you have a monopoly so buyers can't get the product from another seller.
"Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
As an Ex-Quaker for whom the whole God thing didn't really add up, the second part really did. I think Jesus erred in the ordering. But, then, I guess for a lot of people, they need a God as a reason to love thy neighbor and only through it could they accept the second commandment. I think the whole idea of being a humanist is realizing you shouldn't and don't need a belief in God or gods to be that way.
Oh, and to take the point further, Quakers are also a group dedicated to the protection of animals and would possibly be one of the first Christian sects to recognize sufficiently intelligent animals as equal in rights to humans. Certainly, it's hard to argue that it's moral to harm one and yet not another. Anyways, Quakers do like to be at the forefront of recognizing the immorality of the day and trying to firmly follow what their Inner Light tells them is correct, without committing harm to others.
I greatly dislike organized religion (though I find atheism to be equally irrational and presumptive) but damn; Quaker culture impresses me greatly.
Yeah, Friends don't aren't really an organized religion in the conventional sense. For unprogrammed meetings, you don't even have a minister telling you what to believe or think. All can speak out in Meeting for Worship equally.
Maybe I'm being self-serving thinking this, but it seems to be RSF has frequently been at the forefront of Christian organizations or sects in believing in or standing up for fair and/or equal treatment in many situations. (Like slavery or racial rights, women's issues, and so on.)
Not a Quaker myself, but I just wanted to say thank you for your thoughtful, patient and clear answer. I found it moving.
You're quite welcome!
Some people need to live in Santa Barbara, while other people only need to live in Rapid City.
You're thinking from your point of view, not the point of view of most Friends.
Regarding paying extra for a rush, remember this was in the 1700s. Yes, it's possible that someone could say, "I need a chair now and I'll pay $10." If they had a chair in stock, it would be the same to the shop owner as someone who was not in a hurry to get it. If they said, "I need a chair by tomorrow and I'll pay extra," likely the response (in that era) would be something like, "Friend, I wouldst be glad to make a chair for the as soon as I can, but I would not be able to complete it by tomorrow." On the other hand, if he could do it and it was something he could do easily, he would still do it without an extra charge. It's not likely he would stay up, for example an extra several hours, to get a chair done for a "rush" order.
As to the "true value," yes, that depends on what people are willing to pay for it, but Friends would have been making products that people can use. Furniture, tools, maybe simple toys, but not something like a fancy high end chair with extra features. A shopkeeper or tradesman would know what the value of his product or labor was. They'd know what was going on in the market and whether people were paying $5 for a chair or not. This was at a time when people weren't dealing with newer models or new features and products that were unknown quantities that are riskier to sell. These shops and businesses would generally be shy of taking risks, so they'd be staying with a proven market.
While this led to the idea of set prices (and price tags), yes, a lot has happened since this practice started and much of it has nothing to do with Friendly views or values, but with greed or profit.
(And it's worth noting that while accumulation of material wealth was not a Friend's goal, that many Friends did well in commerce because they had a reputation for fairness, quality, and integrity. Much of their income would often be saved up because of their simple lifestyle.)
Nixon was a Quaker.
That was a very long post just to do s/open source s/Free S/
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Just wait until your rich customers realize they can get a better price by playing poor. Likely already happened, but wait until they all figure it out.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Rapid City is great if you can get a job there. "Cheap" areas are often cheap due to lack of opportunity.
Wasn't open source the default back in the day when the money was in selling hardware and the software was just thrown in?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That makes it too easy for the bastards to hide a high tax rate.
We should just continue to teach math, er maths.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How's this for you: tax everyone at the same rate, but also give everyone a fixed tax credit (equal to that rate times the mean income). It's morally fair, but mathematically has the result of a progressive tax rate that goes negative below the mean, providing cash welfare for the poor.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Didn't say it was owned by them, I said it was named after them.
See, government enforces property rights, that is how rich people get to keep their riches. Poor people dont benefit by enforcement of property rights. They would rather the government breaks down in chaos so that they go with pitchforks and whack the nearest rich person and take whatever he had.
Looking at what generally happens, they seem to tend to be rather too lazy to actually bother finding a rich person--and the result tends to be that poor neighborhoods end up having to spend more to get basics, because it turns out that things like grocery stores don't bother sticking around in neighborhoods where they get robbed, even the ones that are small businesses completely owned by somebody who isn't that much richer than their neighbors.
Poor people tend to be more likely to be the victims of property crimes than rich people when you count by incidence and not value--a lot of criminals are really lazy and would rather rob a guy nearby for $2 than go to the trouble of trying to find somebody who has more money.
Tying enforcement of property rights--which is actually one of the original three natural rights--to net worth is just screwing the poor over worse.
For inexpensive or necessary things there are price tags. No one wants to haggle over the 5c gum. .. or it is a leisure item haggling is back on the radar, or dynamic pricing ... clearly the NPR person just has someone else do the shopping for them ... or believes that appliances have price tags
However, once the price goes up
That includes:
Travel (Airfare, cruises, hotels)
Cars (fixed price hahahahhaha)
Houses (never saw a price tag affixed to a house)
Jewelry (not at Target)
Appliances
and the list goes on
I guess that is the irony that the price tag was introduced to even the field, and now is used to separate the suckers from the hagglers.
Found another Marxist (even if you think you aren't, your ideas are borrowed directly from concepts created by Marx, which makes you one by definition, if not by your own identity.)
Perhaps it's because the rich most often obtain their wealth not from hard work but through pricing differences on stocks and the borrowing of money to others
Ah yes, it's another "I know how to become rich, it's easy, just do X. I just don't do it because it's immoral!"
If trading stocks makes you rich, then go do it, and then tell me how it works out for you. (Pro tip: Even the best actively managed funds underperform compared to index funds because their fund managers aren't oracles, and day traders are rarely rich, so keep that in mind before you toss your savings away once the trading bell rings tomorrow.) Even if you do the smart thing and go long on investments, your chances of being rich aren't that great either, unless you've already got a lot of knowledge behind you that you can use to tell you whether something is a good investment or a horrible one (pro tip: Most are horrible, even the ones that look really promising tend to be bad.)
If the lending money makes you rich, then I have to ask: Where on earth do you obtain this money that you can lend out? Furthermore, how do you know whether the borrower will pay you back? If the borrower refuses to pay, then how do you recover your losses (and yes, it WILL be a loss for you, even if you manage to get all the principal amount back from them.) And given you're supposed to get rich form this, then how long does it take for that to happen, and with what amount of money are you starting?
Don't bother answering though: Becoming rich is actually a property of the individual (hence why people who win hundreds of millions in the lottery typically end up poor within a decade) so people don't get rich this way. If they do, there's a lot more that has to occur well before then.
to avoid the wealth to merely horde their assets
And this is why you don't understand anything about what makes a rich person, and that what you're saying is just a collection of regurgitated talking points. If you don't understand what I mean by this, then consider my point proven.
because the earnings were not at all in proportion to the effort.
This is perhaps the most bullshit concept of our time. Why do I say this? Because people (yourself included) espouse this all the time, and yet wouldn't ever dare follow it (and yes, that includes you as well.) This is derived from Marx's labor theory of value, which is that all labor is worth exactly the same, no matter what it is for. So this means that performing brain surgery is worth the same hourly wage as digging a ditch with a pickax. Another interesting property is that Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei is worth far less than Mein Kampf if Marxists applied that theory objectively.
In fact, it's rarely in proportion to the economic good or social good either
...according to some rules you just made up...
I'm unaware of anyone who in the long-term has a negative tax rate even with tax credits
Actually this is pretty easy to do; your effective income just has to be at or below the lowest 35% of income earners, and your net tax burden is less than zero in pretty much every circumstance. If you don't know anybody who has been this way their whole life, then you've only seen and known affluence.
With the true value of anything being the amount, people are willing to pay for it, if you apply the Quakers' approach to pricing, you would not know (or not as well), if the customers want this kind of chair or that, or none at all.
No it'd be easier as the customers would order/pick what would have the most value because they'd get the extra surplus. Trade happens when there's a positive trade value but doesn't say how it's distributed, modern supply and demand theory says this is an adversarial system where the seller tries to gouge the buyer while the buyer tries to get it cheaper through competition. Basically you want the deal to be just barely good enough, so you pocket the most money.
The Quaker philosophy is essentially a honest cost-plus system, I will charge you what it cost me plus a reasonable wage for my time and that's it. There's no incentive to do price discrimination or cut corners or up-sell the customer to a product he doesn't need or any other profit-maximizing trick. If the customer wants a different chair that's better for him but it's the same work for you then it's the same price, there's no incentive to goad the customer into a deal that's better for you and worse for him.
I would assume that fair here is from the seller's perspective, what's fair for an apprentice is not the same as what's fair for a master. If you have to work all night it's fair to ask more than a regular day. But you're doing it from a sense of what's fair compensation for you, not whether the customer has deep pockets or not. It's basically every salary negotiation in any reasonably sized company, is this a fair wage for my skill. Whether the company is making or losing money is not that relevant.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's also worth noting that Friends/Quakers would not put someone ahead in the queue.
However should that person want that chair, immediately, and there is another chair that has not been queued for a customer, they would probably let that chair go if they didn't need it themselves.
But it's not fair to paint everyone with the same brush here.
If I owned a store, and I made all the products myself. I would put a price on each item for the minimum I would accept as fair for each item. If a certain item keeps selling, then I would know THAT item is the one to produce more of until it stops selling. Not to raise the price the next time.
With supply-side economics, especially that in video game economies, you often do not get that ability to negotiate a fair price, rather you are either forced into an auction (haggling) or a fixed-price list of people selling the EXACT same item, even if it was crafted by 42 different people. You set the price that you're willing to accept for it, even if it's at a technical loss. If it were possible to personalize items in specific ways inside a MMORPG for example, custom fitting and tailoring a dress so it fits that one person, that would be something certainly worth paying more for than a mass-produced version of the same dress that is available only in one color for one gender/race in the game.
Hence what MMORPG's teach players is how a world with unlimited/oversupply of resources operates. Supply and Demand are the same, but supply of items that there is an infinite supply of, is subject to ones ability to find time to do it. Which is reflective of the "hiring mexicans to pick crops" kind of situation in the US. That job is beneath thee, but that guy is willing to do it, and be paid a fraction of what they should be.
I've love to play a game that actually took resource scarcity into account. But alas such a game would flip things towards demand-side, and would be ruled by robber-barons.
Read it again, that’s not what I said.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
It is not morally fair. It is a moral hazard. If everyone received the mean wage - regardless of effort - what point is there to work?
They're getting the tax credited, not the income. Say the goal income is $20,000 a year and the tax rate is 10%. Everyone gets a $2,000 tax credit. If you get a job paying $1,000 a year, you pay $100 in taxes on that amount, offset by the $2,000 credit, for a net income of $2,900. If you earn $5,000 in a year, your net income is $7,500. Earn $10,000, your net income is $11,000. No matter what your wages are, you earn more by working than by sitting on your ass taking just the tax credit. The principle is simple enough; the complicated part is setting the tax rate and goal income so that even working part time gets someone a noticeable increase in living quality over just sitting on their ass.
That makes it too easy for the bastards to hide a high tax rate.
The shelf tags in the supermarkets I shop at have the price in large numbers, and smaller text arrayed around the central price sort of like the ancillary values in a periodic table entry, giving data like package size, cost per ounce, etc.; it would be simple enough to require that the tags have total price in the largest font, but also list base price and tax amount in smaller text for the computationally challenged.
Where X is "be born rich and inherit a lot of wealth"
Which is why the wise wealthy have a diversified portfolio in things like index funds. It's not about making you rich. It's about keeping you rich because inflation.
From mommy and daddy. You know the story of Trump, right, the self-made man who got a $1 million loan? That and sufficient training on lending and investing (another type of lending) won't guarantee you a life-time of wealth, but it's certain a massive leg up to the rest of us.
Even those with wealth who win the lottery--those running $15 million businesses--can suffer because those around them expect to partake in that wealth. Relatives come out of the woodwork and sue. Contract killers are hired. Honestly, this is a substantial part of the reason the very wealthy have lawyers and homes built more like mini-fortresses. But, yes, if you merely give a random person a large amount of money, you wouldn't expect them to do anything but squander it. All the people around them will try to leach the money for themselves. Those born in wealth are at least generally taught these things, so such is less common directly.
Which is why you don't understand the inflation is an intentional act by the Federal Reserve to fight off deflation because while there's plenty of wealthy people who would, by pure greed or a thirst of the challenge of proving themselves, continue to invest heavily even in deflationary periods, the vast majority of the wealthy want to maintain their wealthy by taking the least risky steps necessary. This often means buying large amounts of real estate because real estate tends to fluctuate well with the value of currency. The same with gold/silver--as relatively few large gold mines exist--and other rare minerals.
But, yes, obviously I'm just regurgitating talking points.
Actually, you're only partly right. The comment was made in part sarcastically because the notion of "hard work" == "income" is absurd. Like you say, the brain surgeon does work worth more than the day laborer. The problem is that this truth is an equivocation to justify why the CEO or the banker should make 1000x more than the day laborer. To argue that 1000x or more value was created through their efforts is undoubtedly true. That they personally then are deserve of 10
If an item costs X to make, is it immoral to charge X+N to make a profit but then charge X-M to someone you know cannot afford full price? Is a charitable discount immoral to you?
Food, shelter, energy tend to have a fixed cost per person per year. At the very minimum, there should be an income level (aka standard deduction) below which you pay little or no tax. Tax discretionary income, not income needed for necessities.
Not sure where you live but that is standard where I live. Your first $18000 income is tax free.
What I'd also like to see is a standard fixed fee for electricity, say $1/day per household up to a standard amount of usage (eg 20kwh/day). Along with food stamps and public housing you create a stable environment for those less fortunate to manage their cost of living.
That and any corporate tax breaks should be tied to either increasing local workforce numbers (direct hire - no outsourcing or immigrant labour), or wage increases for existing staff. Cutting taxes doesn't work if the companies invest that extra cash overseas
I find atheism to be equally irrational and presumptive
That probably says more about you than atheism. To butcher a quote, atheism is like not collecting stamps. there is nothing rational or irrational, nor presumptive or non-presumptive about not following a hobby just because other people do.
if I were ever to become a church-going man, I do believe I'd have to be a Quaker.
From being probably the first church to oppose slavery, embrace modesty and humility as core tenets of their faith, giving equal voices to women, praying at the funeral of the mass-murderer who targeted their church and killed many kids (I could NEVER be that good, though I do yearn to be...) they have demonstrated what I consider to the "best of faith".
A far cry from the Televangelist assholes who seem to dominate here in America. Sad!!(TM)
Go and read up on Quaker theology? Though I'm not sure axioms and logic are always the driving force of religious beliefs.
People are equal -> People should pay the same price for the same thing, doesn't seem like a huge stretch.
1. Lying is wrong
2. Encouraging others to do wrong is wrong.
3. Haggling encourages people to lie in order to get a better price.
therefore, haggling with customers is wrong.
Also seems like not a huge stretch.
Actualy slavery was considered immoral by many even before that. In the 13th century germany it was considered immoral enough to be put in the law. In 14th century it was abolished by law in france, and that include serfdom. And i pass many other. Where did you get this bullshit about slavery being seen as ok before the 18th ? I am guessing you are taking an US centric view, or you are not well aware that by the 18th century slavery was already in its way to be extinguished.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Unreal Tournament is for pussies.
It makes sense to give discounts to non-profit organizations, and it usually improves your karma.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I second this. After skimming through articles and online resources on Quakers and Quaker culture, I realize that I have lived most of my adult life adhering to many of their every-day practices without consciously knowing about it. And having just scraped on the surface, the concept of Nontheist Quakers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheist_Quakers) is more appealing to me than atheism (I don't belive to have proof of the non-existence of a god/gods, and think that I don't need to to be able to live a good life).
Standard deduction for single no dependents is $6,350. Give a wage of $26,350 (to make the math simple and readily within the 35 percentile) gives a taxable income of $20,000. Of that, 10% is in the lowest income bracket for $932.50 + 15% for the rest for $204.00, or $1,136.50 Federal income tax. Add 10% State income tax, 3% local income tax, and your mentioned 7.5% Social Security/Medicare, and you've got a tax rate of ~21.6%.
No, they're motivated by greed--because it doesn't take $250,000 to support a family--and the competitiveness of being best--or at least fucking over everyone else they're competing against.
Does it necessarily take 80 hours a week to become rich? No. Does becoming rich necessarily mean being willing to work 80 hours a week? Yes. Unless you've got a shit definition of "rich".
Okay but how do you explain Quaker Oats???
Seriously though, thanks. I even learned a new word: dickering.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Individual liberty and rights enforcement. That will be paid by equal dollar amount per person.
Then only people with wealth will have rights, and the rest will be in jail for not paying their taxes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ah yes, it's another "I know how to become rich, it's easy, just do X. I just don't do it because it's immoral!"
Not because it is immoral, because it requires significant capital to invest. Once you have a few million cash you can basically live well forever on just the return from relatively safe investments, with minimal effort.
That was Marx's point. If you own the factory it is relatively easy to sit back and watch the profits roll in while others do the hard labour, and someone without a factory can't just start sewing their own clothes and hope to compete with that. Owning the only means to generate wealth pretty much ensures that no-one else can get wealthy.
It works in practice too, e.g. companies that encourage employees to own stocks so they have a stake in its future.
Becoming rich is actually a property of the individual
That's a vague and unconvincing statement. The children of rich people clearly have a lot more opportunities in life - better education and health, low cost loans from their parents when no sane bank would lend to them etc. Many of them end up failing repeatedly, but they have that family wealth buffer to protect them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
a lot of criminals are really lazy and would rather rob a guy nearby for $2 than go to the trouble of trying to find somebody who has more money.
I doubt it's laziness in most cases, but rather a risk calculation. Given the choice to rob Mr Moneybags or Johnny Crackhead, who ya gonna rob? The one who lives in a neighbourhood where you automatically stand out as a sketchy individual, who will be taken seriously by the police, and who is going to be believed by a judge? Or the one who nobody cares about and who probably has some culturally-enforced aversion to "being a rat"?
Just imagine the absence of police and you need to protect your home and property with your puny glocks and private security force. Then you would realize how low the taxes are and what a bargain police force paid by your taxes is.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Poor people tend to be more likely to be the victims of property crimes than rich people when you count by incidence and not value--a lot of criminals are really lazy and would rather rob a guy nearby for $2 than go to the trouble of trying to find somebody who has more money.
Tying enforcement of property rights--which is actually one of the original three natural rights--to net worth is just screwing the poor over worse.
It's pretty amazing, isn't it?
Even as a kid, I remember wondering why burglars and such seemingly couldn't figure out how to go over a bridge. Um, the nice houses are over here ...
Overall, I haven't known many Friends to object to the company being called "Quaker." In many ways their products are what Friends might produce: Simple and plain cereals, for the most part. There has been frustration, at times, with people thinking the man on the Quaker Oats logo is what Friends would look like today. (Actually, the logo is a kind of update of their original logo, which was an image of William Penn, the Quaker Pennsylvania is named after.)
There have been a few times (two that I'm aware of) where modern Friends have had issues with the Quaker Oats company. Both were when they had promotions on their cereal boxes that represented or tied in with characters known for violence. One was Popeye and the other was the Power Rangers.
And, just as a bit of something extra, here's an amusing Quaker/Quaker Oats story:
After my divorce, when I was teaching and having trouble making ends meet, I did market survey work. Usually that involved going into stores and recording shelf space amounts or product counts or price tag checks. I was doing an isotonic drink study, where we had to list all the isotonic drinks and count the number of items facing on the front of the shelf. At the time Quaker Oats owned Gatorade. I was there, with my clipboard and another man is at the other end of the isotonic section, probably doing about the same thing.
He saw me and said, "Are you Quaker?"
I didn't know Quaker Oats owned Gatorade and wondered if he recognized me from our Meeting or something. I was guarded but answered, "Yes. How did you know?" And he said, "Well, you seemed to focused on the Gatorade products," or something like that. It took me a second or two to figure out what he meant, then I started laughing, realizing he was asking if I was with Quaker Oats and not asking about religious affiliation.
Sorry, but I do not see, how this knowledge changes anything. Suppose, for a second, a genius Quaker invents some new way of making the same chairs faster (or with less wastage of materials). He offers to share the invention, but, as so often happens, other craftsmen are set in their ways... Or, maybe, he can just work much faster — the way Michael Phelps can swim faster — and there is nothing for him to share?
Will it be wrong of him to charge customers the same price that other, less efficient shops have to charge to survive — earning a higher profit? Or will it be wrong of him to undercut those other shops, because of his ingenuity and/or skill? I think, this dilemma alone shows the inherent flaw in the nice-on-the-surface approach... Indeed, because many a man would choose to stick to the old (less efficient) ways of doing things just to avoid this nasty choice, the approach is, in fact, a bad one.
That said, I'm delighted to see the high moderations both of your Christian-themed posts have attained, while the two of mine, which question it, have been penalized :-)
Yes, yes. People of (almost any) Faith are, generally, more pleasant to deal with and have around — as long as they aren't in a position to compel you to follow their rules. The role of America's First Amendment in this regard is often underappreciated...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No, it was not.
You got the source code and could fix and recompile it. But you could not sell it as a product.
There was actually usually not even a 'license' atached. It was obvious that the source ccode was for personal usage only. If you fixed something and liked to share it, you posted a diff/patch in a newsgroup or sent it to the vendor.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Federal and State income taxes are only part of the taxes being levied on people. The lower your income the larger the portion of your money that goes to those other taxes. Where I live for example there is a flat 10% sales tax that is levied on everything, even groceries. Where I grew up only food items that were considered a luxury were taxed, things like soda and prepared food.
If you do not fit into a neighborhood, you do not fit in. And that means there are all kinds of risks that are hard to calculate when you wander across that bridge. Some of that is police profiling, which can be unsavory at times. But the criminals know that it is harder to have a BS story that will hold up for even 60 seconds when you are not a local.
In terms of a one-off crime, yeah, you probably do better by kicking in the door of a random wealthier domicile. But as a lifestyle, robbing people who are underprotected by the police is "safer", even if you do not get a lot of money for it for an individual crime.
Isn't this the case now in the US? If you are not considered "Highly Compensated" (100k+) then you tax burden is usually next to nothing. Highly compensated individuals pay most of the taxes in America.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
"See, government enforces property rights, that is how rich people get to keep their riches. Poor people dont benefit by enforcement of property rights."
I think that succinctly defines the roles and the reason why government works they way it does.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
That...and you should see the response between the two neighborhoods by the police force when there are a string of burglaries. If really nice houses ($500K-1MM) are getting robbed, like two times in a month, the local police will launch an investigation whereby they comb the area constantly harassing anyone who "fits the description." In regular neighborhoods they pretty much sit on their ass and cite the Constitution for the reasons they can't approach the people everyone already knows are responsible.
I used to live in an apartment complex that was considered "run down" by the well to do in a very nice area. In Cincinnati you will often have "regular" houses next to $600k - $1MM monstrosities. Anyway, the apartment complex was in no way run down or unpleasant. It was mostly hard-working professionals or aspiring professionals and was kept very nice. I came home one day and had my friend with me while the detectives (yes, detectives) were combing the apartment complex. My friend had longish hair so they pounced on him before we could get out of the car and proceeded to dress him down with 20 questions. Just the way shit works.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
We are always talking about tax burden.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
My karma is already excellent. No need for any more good deeds.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
My family used to run a retail store. We were known for giving discounts if you asked for them. People who didn't know us would often pay full price but those who stopped to get to know us or who had the courage or presence of mind to barter would get a better price. The attitude was that we bartered for everything so we appreciated when others did the same.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Which sorts of atheism? There's all sorts around, including "I don't believe in God", "Death to theists!", "I wish Christians would stop picking on me", and many more.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Probably because that's not what I corrected, that's not the only thing that needed explanation, because glib quips are not informative or prone to mature discussion, and because the name of the social movement is free software not free source.
Digital Citizen
Do some reading about how poor people fared with no property rights in the USSR pre-1980.
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I've found that if a person is obviously "a person of faith", he's quite unpleasant to have around. If he isn't haranguing you to accept his faith, he's going on ad nauseum about his good deeds and the details of his religion.
A person of faith who's quiet about his beliefs can be pleasant, but unless I ask (I don't) it may be a long time before his convictions become apparent, so there's no way to draw a quick conclusion.
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That's a clever misuse of words; your conclusion does not follow from your premises.
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It is not lying to say "I'm not going to pay that much."
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You don't have to talk to these people, if you don't like the "haranguing". You don't even have to say "Hello" in the morning (though you should).
But the bicycle you leave on your porch is less likely to be stolen, and you don't have to worry as much about your daughter walking home after dark... That's the sort of benefits I was talking about.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Our history contains several examples of societies who have outlawed shitty behavior and have imposed stiff punishment for breaking those rules. The ancient Chinese had quite an extensive list of societal norms that were enforced by law. They were not at all backwards but seemed to address general bad behavior that people would engage in to foment problems with others or cause them to behave negatively in return. If you turned in a relative for breaking the law it was mandated that you be whipped in public even as the relative was being punished for the infringements you ratted them out for. This is just one example of many where they sought to preserve peace among the population. They enumerated various forms of harassment and again levied stiff punishment for stuff that is now perfectly legal in our society. We have laws that exist to protect people from hostile work environments but the laws only apply to certain classes of individuals (gay, black, female, men over 44).
One of the main offenses was starting fights between two other parties. This has totally run out of control in our society and is not viewed as illegal--though people are revolted by the behavior.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
While it's possible you might see that kind of invention from a Friend, you're more likely to see them finding a way to simplify the process than in creating a new one.
But as to the question of whether they would drop the price or not, you also make a good point: Yes, they'd likely share the process with others, rather than keep it secret. Few people in any craft are going to turn down a simpler way to do something or a method that saves them money and time. Some may stick with the older way, but I wouldn't think that would be many.
I'm not sure just what the Friendly way of dealing with a situation would be, but that entire situation seems to be purely hypothetical.
But I'd like to stress that this is from your point of view, not from the point of view of a person who has the priorities of living according to the Testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends. While this would be a factor to many Friends today, I doubt it would have been a factor in the 1700s, in a simpler market without mass production or machines that would help in production.
The plus side is buyer and seller don't spend a lot of time and effort haggling (and developing and maintaining their haggling skills), making buying and selling less costly.
The downside is that people get the peculiar notion that every product and service has a "true price", and from that flows the silly-ass notion that charging anything other than that "one true price" is somehow wrong.
Which if the summary is to be believed, is where the Quakers were coming from in the first place.
And from that silly-ass notion flow all manner of silly-ass laws and court rulings. And the neo-medievalism that was Marxism. (I use the past tense, even though there are still a few backwards places where the word hasn't gotten, like Cuba and academia.)
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.