And that was expensive at the time! IIRC, (and it was a long time ago), the standard before that was $10 or $15 cheaper. Those prices seems to keep up at right about inflation...
For people, yes, but for goods? I dunno about that. If it makes economic sense, it may happen.
It would all depend on the cost of the goods being transported, how long it would take them to get from one trading partner to another, relative to the cost of doing things the "normal way". Sounds pretty unlikely, but it's actually an interesting idea.
I actually was under the impression that due to the low gravity and lack of atmosphere, water was thought to be unstable on places like the moon... obviously, given this report, this is not the case, but I thought that was the old line?
That's fine - and you're right I'm done with this conversation... for your sake I hope you're young. For my sake, I hope I don't end up with kids like you (because I've got at least a few nickels, dude). There are at least a few economic counter arguments to my opinions, but you've deliniated none of them; you've just screamed and whined. You don't have to be a "socialist" to think the way I do. In fact, my opinions were inspired by Warren Buffett (one of the richest men in the world), and when I looked at his opinions, they made sense. Bill Gates also doesn't believe in uber-large inheritances. It would be very difficult to accuse either Bill or Warren as being "socialist"
And here's a (somewhat) friendly hint: estate taxes are already a total bitch - they are taxed at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of inheritable asset value. In many cases, this forces liquidation of hard assets (like real estate and/or businesses), triggering capital gains, which in turn force you to liquidate assets, which trigger capital gains / estate taxes, which in turn trigger more liquidation, etc - if managed incorrectly the 50% inheritance tax turns into a 75% inheritance tax. If managed properly, the 50% tax turns into tax credits (in a way).
Also, tenant in common ownership of any asset among siblings really is unsustainable; any number of case studies show this. It causes severe ruptures in family cohesiveness. **When people are bred from birth to believe they will receive an inheritance which will have them set for life, it breeds fear, resentment towards siblings (and mom and pop toward end of life), and (pertinent to this conversation) a loss of productivity for society - imagine if you hadn't been told you'd receive all this wealth and you could fend for yourself - society would be better off, and you would too...
Have you done *any* work or research in these areas to make sure you are properly positioned, or are you relying on mom and pop???
Anyway, I'm done emoting... We're done with each other... good luck dude... if you "fully expect the farm to pass intact to [your] siblings and [yourself]" and have no idea how you're legally going to accomplish that - you'll need a pretty big dose of luck.
I think you need to reread my post above and depersonalize it. I don't know you, and I don't care if you get your inheritance or not. My point is that 1) Capitalism provides people the opportunity to allocate capital as they see fit and 2) if you allocate/invest your capital wisely, you are rewarded with more capital (IOW, invest well, get a return) 3) There are certain costs associated with running a society (roads, military, etc).
With those items as a given and with the understanding that producers must hand over a portion of their production to maintain a workable society (i.e. taxes), the objective should be to take as little away from the producers as possible. When someone knows how to create value, they will generally spend their money on creating more value, benefiting society at large (not always the case, of course, but generally true). When someone receives an inheritance they have, by definition not created the value that money represents and therefore may not have the skills to further create value.
My point is, why should another business-person working hard to build a business pay higher taxes because people want to leave an inheritance to their kids? From a macro-economic standpoint, this doesn't make sense - let the person creating money keep more of their money and let those that are receiving inheritances benefit from the business contacts and advice received from their parents (as you allude to above).
Your counter argument seems to be "well, it's not fair". But fair doesn't matter - I'm talking in purely economically mathematical terms here.
Well, even though you're an AC, I'll issue a brief response.
You're entirely incorrect. Not only do I enjoy my life and own several businesses, but I also enjoy economic theory. When I think about my businesses, allocation of capital and the need to run a society, I come to the conclusions I've stated above.
Class envy and flamebait? No. I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class. I was writing in a general sense, referencing this specific issue - I guess folks interpreted this as flamebait. Oh well.
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who deserve them (i.e. if you're good at business, you make more money, which you then can put back into your business). But there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place. The most efficient way to collect the needed funds is to keep those that know how to allocate capital with low taxes, so they can go on and efficiently allocate capital (i.e. low taxes for businesses), but society still needs to pay for the items which made this success possible. The most efficient and sensible way to do that, in my view, is to heavily tax inheritance.
I would contend something different. Inheritance is garbage IMNSOH - these kids did nothing to create this work, their father did. Why should they benefit from it? In fact, why should anyone receive many millions in inheritance?
Enough inheritance to go to a great school, start a business, get married, etc, etc - sure. But to recover enough to never have to work a day in your life? I don't think so. This work should be in the public domain because the author is dead. As a capitalist, I believe the most productive members of society deserve to be rich (i.e. those that can make the money, can keep it, so they can efficiently create the businesses that employ people), but once they're dead, it goes back to the society that enabled them to become rich, and helps set the stage for a new generation of entrepreneurs.
To paraphrase Buffett, the children of the rich deserve to be rich as much as the children of Olympic athletes deserve to be gold medalists.
Way to level a completely incorrect "fact" without citation...
Zulus are definitely mostly Christian, dude. I know that for a fact. Of course, there's plenty of syncratic tendencies as there are with any Christian conversion. You may be referencing the "traditional" Zulu culture based on animistic beliefs, where they mostly believed a kind of aether was ever present around them. However, even here the dead do not partake of the "breath" (hopefully the link works - it's Google books). Yes, the umufi has not fully returned to the earth, but he is certainly still not stuck in his body...
I am fairly certain the Aztecs are similarly animistic. I can think of no religion in which the "soul" in the Judeo-Christian sense (i.e. I have MY soul, you have YOUR soul) stay with the body as GP implied. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm just saying I've never heard of it...
Did you have any basis for that claim, or were you just making shit up?
Wouldn't the soul have already left the body upon death, using any number of different religious beliefs? I don't think many beliefs think it sticks around tied to the body after it's dead - kind of defeats the purpose of religion:)
The thing that weirds me out - call me unscientific - is that upon organ donation, they just do a simple EEG (or is it EKG?) to look for nervous system / brain activity. If you've got minimal brain activity (i.e. "brain dead"), they'll still harvest you. Might be that old tales from the crypt episode I watched when I was 13, but... freak me out. That's why I'm not signed up to donate organs. I want to make damn sure I can't perceive ANYTHING before they take my organs out of my body.
If someone wants to correct me (I hope I'm wrong), please point me to a credible reference that shows I'm wrong (i.e. they do more than a simple "yeah, he seems pretty dead to me"). Dismiss it if you'd like, but really, why aren't people more concerned about this?
Curious. What would you (or anyone that happens to read this) want to code?
I'm not much of a coder, but I've written code for fun before (because it is fun). But honestly, I get 80% of the way there encounter a few interesting problems, overcome them, get 90% of the way there, encounter some pain in the ass problem and stop. After all, the code technically DOES most of the interesting things I want it to do, just not without a small manual tweak here and there. Am I the only one that gets bored like this? Seems that coding at work, pain in the ass that it is, provides me the only real incentive to complete projects.
I haven't been able to complete a full project ever. I just get bored, think of something new and move on to that...
Sigh... When I think of all the old, ruined or completely disappeared places on this earth, if I could magically choose to have one come back in a more whole form, I'd choose the Roman forum. Such a place of importance to Western history and there's barely anything left of it today - mostly grass.
That's an interesting anecdote btw, never heard that before.
True dat - I still keep my paper statements too. But after many hours of filing one day, I did start to wonder how much power I'd have if I really got in a dispute with the folks I do business with. Or if someone has ever just decided to get a few hundred $$$ out of a company with their "paper" statements.
I guess society just relies on the fact that those that would have the smarts or ability to do something like that don't do it out of conscience and a fear of being caught.
While I don't necessarily disagree with you - how hard is it to mimic a printing process to create nearly perfect replicas of paper bills from any company? I could probably spend a few hours creating a template, go down to Kinko's and have a T-mobile bill in my hand saying whatever I wanted it to say.
Best response to this article I could think of. I haven't (and won't) take the time to read the study, but when I see "conclusions" like this, I'm quite skeptical. Maybe it's true, but the whole idea seems rooted in sexism.
Personally, I F$#%@! hate bugs, and I'm a dude. My wife doesn't mind so much. I grew up in the city, she grew up in the country... see a correlation there???
Slashdot Mirror
And that was expensive at the time! IIRC, (and it was a long time ago), the standard before that was $10 or $15 cheaper. Those prices seems to keep up at right about inflation...
Proof you can't reason with the unreasonable...
For people, yes, but for goods? I dunno about that. If it makes economic sense, it may happen.
It would all depend on the cost of the goods being transported, how long it would take them to get from one trading partner to another, relative to the cost of doing things the "normal way". Sounds pretty unlikely, but it's actually an interesting idea.
I actually was under the impression that due to the low gravity and lack of atmosphere, water was thought to be unstable on places like the moon... obviously, given this report, this is not the case, but I thought that was the old line?
That's fine - and you're right I'm done with this conversation... for your sake I hope you're young. For my sake, I hope I don't end up with kids like you (because I've got at least a few nickels, dude). There are at least a few economic counter arguments to my opinions, but you've deliniated none of them; you've just screamed and whined. You don't have to be a "socialist" to think the way I do. In fact, my opinions were inspired by Warren Buffett (one of the richest men in the world), and when I looked at his opinions, they made sense. Bill Gates also doesn't believe in uber-large inheritances. It would be very difficult to accuse either Bill or Warren as being "socialist"
And here's a (somewhat) friendly hint: estate taxes are already a total bitch - they are taxed at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of inheritable asset value. In many cases, this forces liquidation of hard assets (like real estate and/or businesses), triggering capital gains, which in turn force you to liquidate assets, which trigger capital gains / estate taxes, which in turn trigger more liquidation, etc - if managed incorrectly the 50% inheritance tax turns into a 75% inheritance tax. If managed properly, the 50% tax turns into tax credits (in a way).
Also, tenant in common ownership of any asset among siblings really is unsustainable; any number of case studies show this. It causes severe ruptures in family cohesiveness. **When people are bred from birth to believe they will receive an inheritance which will have them set for life, it breeds fear, resentment towards siblings (and mom and pop toward end of life), and (pertinent to this conversation) a loss of productivity for society - imagine if you hadn't been told you'd receive all this wealth and you could fend for yourself - society would be better off, and you would too...
Have you done *any* work or research in these areas to make sure you are properly positioned, or are you relying on mom and pop???
Anyway, I'm done emoting... We're done with each other... good luck dude... if you "fully expect the farm to pass intact to [your] siblings and [yourself]" and have no idea how you're legally going to accomplish that - you'll need a pretty big dose of luck.
I think you need to reread my post above and depersonalize it. I don't know you, and I don't care if you get your inheritance or not. My point is that 1) Capitalism provides people the opportunity to allocate capital as they see fit and 2) if you allocate/invest your capital wisely, you are rewarded with more capital (IOW, invest well, get a return) 3) There are certain costs associated with running a society (roads, military, etc).
With those items as a given and with the understanding that producers must hand over a portion of their production to maintain a workable society (i.e. taxes), the objective should be to take as little away from the producers as possible. When someone knows how to create value, they will generally spend their money on creating more value, benefiting society at large (not always the case, of course, but generally true). When someone receives an inheritance they have, by definition not created the value that money represents and therefore may not have the skills to further create value.
My point is, why should another business-person working hard to build a business pay higher taxes because people want to leave an inheritance to their kids? From a macro-economic standpoint, this doesn't make sense - let the person creating money keep more of their money and let those that are receiving inheritances benefit from the business contacts and advice received from their parents (as you allude to above).
Your counter argument seems to be "well, it's not fair". But fair doesn't matter - I'm talking in purely economically mathematical terms here.
Well, even though you're an AC, I'll issue a brief response.
You're entirely incorrect. Not only do I enjoy my life and own several businesses, but I also enjoy economic theory. When I think about my businesses, allocation of capital and the need to run a society, I come to the conclusions I've stated above.
Class envy and flamebait? No. I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class. I was writing in a general sense, referencing this specific issue - I guess folks interpreted this as flamebait. Oh well.
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who deserve them (i.e. if you're good at business, you make more money, which you then can put back into your business). But there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place. The most efficient way to collect the needed funds is to keep those that know how to allocate capital with low taxes, so they can go on and efficiently allocate capital (i.e. low taxes for businesses), but society still needs to pay for the items which made this success possible. The most efficient and sensible way to do that, in my view, is to heavily tax inheritance.
I would contend something different. Inheritance is garbage IMNSOH - these kids did nothing to create this work, their father did. Why should they benefit from it? In fact, why should anyone receive many millions in inheritance?
Enough inheritance to go to a great school, start a business, get married, etc, etc - sure. But to recover enough to never have to work a day in your life? I don't think so. This work should be in the public domain because the author is dead. As a capitalist, I believe the most productive members of society deserve to be rich (i.e. those that can make the money, can keep it, so they can efficiently create the businesses that employ people), but once they're dead, it goes back to the society that enabled them to become rich, and helps set the stage for a new generation of entrepreneurs.
To paraphrase Buffett, the children of the rich deserve to be rich as much as the children of Olympic athletes deserve to be gold medalists.
Hmm, well if that's the case - that's pretty cool. Still not right about the Zulus / Aztecs though! Oh well, whatever works I guess
Way to level a completely incorrect "fact" without citation...
Zulus are definitely mostly Christian, dude. I know that for a fact. Of course, there's plenty of syncratic tendencies as there are with any Christian conversion. You may be referencing the "traditional" Zulu culture based on animistic beliefs, where they mostly believed a kind of aether was ever present around them. However, even here the dead do not partake of the "breath" (hopefully the link works - it's Google books). Yes, the umufi has not fully returned to the earth, but he is certainly still not stuck in his body...
I am fairly certain the Aztecs are similarly animistic. I can think of no religion in which the "soul" in the Judeo-Christian sense (i.e. I have MY soul, you have YOUR soul) stay with the body as GP implied. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm just saying I've never heard of it...
Did you have any basis for that claim, or were you just making shit up?
Wouldn't the soul have already left the body upon death, using any number of different religious beliefs? I don't think many beliefs think it sticks around tied to the body after it's dead - kind of defeats the purpose of religion :)
The thing that weirds me out - call me unscientific - is that upon organ donation, they just do a simple EEG (or is it EKG?) to look for nervous system / brain activity. If you've got minimal brain activity (i.e. "brain dead"), they'll still harvest you. Might be that old tales from the crypt episode I watched when I was 13, but... freak me out. That's why I'm not signed up to donate organs. I want to make damn sure I can't perceive ANYTHING before they take my organs out of my body.
If someone wants to correct me (I hope I'm wrong), please point me to a credible reference that shows I'm wrong (i.e. they do more than a simple "yeah, he seems pretty dead to me"). Dismiss it if you'd like, but really, why aren't people more concerned about this?
Curious. What would you (or anyone that happens to read this) want to code?
I'm not much of a coder, but I've written code for fun before (because it is fun). But honestly, I get 80% of the way there encounter a few interesting problems, overcome them, get 90% of the way there, encounter some pain in the ass problem and stop. After all, the code technically DOES most of the interesting things I want it to do, just not without a small manual tweak here and there. Am I the only one that gets bored like this? Seems that coding at work, pain in the ass that it is, provides me the only real incentive to complete projects.
I haven't been able to complete a full project ever. I just get bored, think of something new and move on to that...
(paraphrasing) "Leave kids enough money to do anything; just not enough to do nothing"
Warren E. Buffett
Based on context, I assume you were a defense attorney... how do you even begin to try to defend something like that? Impossible!
Sigh... When I think of all the old, ruined or completely disappeared places on this earth, if I could magically choose to have one come back in a more whole form, I'd choose the Roman forum. Such a place of importance to Western history and there's barely anything left of it today - mostly grass.
That's an interesting anecdote btw, never heard that before.
True dat - I still keep my paper statements too. But after many hours of filing one day, I did start to wonder how much power I'd have if I really got in a dispute with the folks I do business with. Or if someone has ever just decided to get a few hundred $$$ out of a company with their "paper" statements.
I guess society just relies on the fact that those that would have the smarts or ability to do something like that don't do it out of conscience and a fear of being caught.
While I don't necessarily disagree with you - how hard is it to mimic a printing process to create nearly perfect replicas of paper bills from any company? I could probably spend a few hours creating a template, go down to Kinko's and have a T-mobile bill in my hand saying whatever I wanted it to say.
Best response to this article I could think of. I haven't (and won't) take the time to read the study, but when I see "conclusions" like this, I'm quite skeptical. Maybe it's true, but the whole idea seems rooted in sexism.
Personally, I F$#%@! hate bugs, and I'm a dude. My wife doesn't mind so much. I grew up in the city, she grew up in the country... see a correlation there???
Interface looks cool enough (minus obvious gorilla arm), but the app looks boooooring, like any old web page put on a wall.
I for one welcome our recursively redundant links! (or would that be redundantly recursive?)
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1365497&cid=29392291
I come here for the slight tweaks that make a stale old joke taste new again... Ah, there it is
Hmm, first xkcd roll I've ever seen... it's an xkcdroll troll!
I wouldn't even know where to *find* a leatherbound book, I thought that was something they stopped making in the 1800s. Sounds really cool though.
How the hell can a first post be redundant?