If they're successful in the UK it's because they have an environment for business that allows for that.
Why are all left-wingers so simple minded? It's just the kind of environment for business and investment (low taxes) that you are saying should be destroyed.
Not only that, but you don't want anyone else to be either.
Why are you expecting me to have a bleeding heart for the rich?
There's a difference between not caring about them and actively wanting to destroy them.
Why are you defending them?
Because many of them are the kind of risk-takers that economies need. It's called entrepreneurship. I also recognise that many of them wouldn't bother investing here if the State decided it knew how to use their money better than they do.
It's understandable if you're rich, if you're not, it's pathetic.
For reasons of simple economic expediency. I recognise their economic value, even if you do not. I work for one after all. He's created 50 or so jobs (mostly exporting high technology equipment, so of net benefit to the country), initially risking his own money to get the business going (around 25 years ago). The kind of attitude you're expressing here is the kind of attitude expressed forcefully by the trade unions in the 1970's. I do believe we ended up cap-in-hand at the IMF for a bailout loan. I would rather cut the state back than experience that kind of national humiliation again.
The truth is I don't know, but I do know that you cannot possibly be arguing an honest point by saying that this particular budget shouldn't be cut. The reason I say that is because when I listen to the radio everyone is saying the same thing about every budget cut. The fact is that we haven't got any money left!
I think your problem here is you're assuming the theory states that cutting taxes always results in increasing tax revenue. That is not what the Laffer curve shows. It shows that there is some rate of taxation that is optimal in terms of revenue, somewhere between 0 and 100%. In the US it may well be the case that it is already at that optimal level given current economic circumstances, so tax cuts will have little or no effect.
Not everyone is quite as impressed, however. JK Galbraith:
To me the Laffer curve is somewhat obvious. It simply states that there's a point somewhere between 0 and 100% where income tax revenues are optimal, all else being equal. We tried taxing the rich to the hilt in the 1970's (here in the UK) and they all buggered off to the US. Michael Caine writes about it in his book. He was to be taxed at 82%! Oh and we ended up cap-in-hand at the IMF for a bailout loan. I can still just about remember the rubbish being piled up high in the streets because everyone was on strike.
But right now we're talking about plans for one of the most savage programmes of cuts in history.
Yes, we're talking about savagely cutting the unbelievably bloated and unaffordable public sector. Forgive me if I don't sympathise. In my view it's preferable to cut it hard and early than to cut more slowly, piling up debt interest payments as your borrowing is so much higher over the period. It's a question of pain now, more to spend later, or some pain now and crippling debt interest payments later. Hmmmmm.
I don't approve of the behaviour of the tobacco industry, either, but if it exists it should be taxed.
Nobody said anything about doing that. But then again, the tax system is so complex (in the UK at least), it is hardly surprising there are many loopholes in the system (perhaps not morally defensible, but certainly legally so).
Read the previous post more carefully (slowly if it helps) - 'Cuts are necessary'. The argument is about the extent, timing, and direction of the cuts, and whether using the national debt as a universal excuse to slash anything the Tories disprove of politically (for the duration of the Five Year Plan) is the best approach to running the country.
They are a new government with a different political outlook. Do you really expect them to continue funding all of the previous government's little fetishes? They consider the UK spends far too much of its GDP in the unproductive public sector and not enough in the private sector. Given the state of the public finances, I hardly think you can disagree with this opinion.
Why not (and I'm just taking a wild stab at it here, i.e. using much the same method as the Chancellor) raise income tax significantly, starting with the higher brackets? And perhaps the cuts could start with vastly expensive nuclear weapons that can never be used, or involve some slight reduction in the number of costly and destructive wars we tend to be involved in?
How much do you think raising taxes on the rich will net you? Have a wild guess. Then take a look at the Laffer curve Trident isn't going to be funded in the next 5 years (the decision has been delayed). The difficult decisions made now concern spending pledges by the previous Labour government (including two Elizabeth class air-craft carriers).
Ah yes, the Markets, those benevolent ad far-seeing forces for good that bear absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for the current economic situation, and can always be relied upon to act in the best interests of the country.
Those same markets comprised ~12% of British GDP during the boom, the taxation of which was spent by the Labour government on innumerable little projects that you insist should not be cut today. You're a friend of the financial markets when it suits you, because presumably you approved of this spending.
Somehow, I don't think a great deal of money was spent on these studies. Of course the specifics of the savage cuts the ConDem coalition has planned for us are likely to be based on an equally superficial reading of the situation, and their extent has as much to do with implementing a particular political agenda (deliberate decimation - in a more than Roman sense - of the public sector) as it has to do with genuine economic necessity.
Take your medication. We have a structural deficit of £80,000,000,000 and a national debt that's approaching £1,200,000,000,000. What do you think the Government should do? Borrow some more? Do you realise we're paying close to £120,000,000 per day on debt interest. More than the entire education budget. Just imagine how much we could spend on Science if we didn't have such a huge debt to service.
there's a very serious risk of creating a new, greatly extended recession,
That's an economic or political point of view and nothing to do with science. The markets happen to disagree.
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in [the IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line--suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a "correction factor," which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow --I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project
Interview
You're right but as I've said before, it's rather arrogant to assume there isn't any waste in the Science budget. To me this sounds like just another interest group complaining that they are special and shouldn't have any cuts at all (i.e. pointing at someone else and saying cut him instead). If I had £1 for every such group I'd heard on the radio last week, I would probably have a tenner. The fact of the matter is that this country doesn't have any money left. Well actually it's worse than that, it's got a structural deficit of around £80,000,000,000 per year and a full-on debt of around £1,200,000,000,000!
Not to mention the fact that the rich are mobile and able to move to wherever taxes are lowest. Besides it's a daft argument, because tax is a percentage the rich will automatically pay more, assuming they haven't already moved their wealth offshore (which they will do when the tax % goes over a certain level of course). If you want to raise more money from the rich, you should tax them less, not more.
How does it affect the long-term health of the country? Are you saying that not £0.01p of the budget is wasted? Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.
Indeed that is true. But still, it's bollocks, isn't it? Hasn't Lindzen already shown a correlation between outgoing radiation and temperature? Isn't the mid-troposphere "hot spot" missing? Haven't all of the model predictions been wrong? Isn't sea level rising at its historical trend? Aren't current temperatures inside the bounds of natural variation? Isn't the hurricane count at a 30 year low? What the fuck are we arguing about?
CHAIRMAN BARTON. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions [about the
Mann papers] or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their
criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our
report.
DR. BLOOMFIELD [statistician to the NAS Panel]. Our committee reviewed
the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that
some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same
misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length
by Dr. Wegman.
WALLACE: The two reports were complementary, and to
the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite
consistent.
My mistake, I was quoting Wegman. But as you see from the above, I don't think it makes much difference as the NAS agreed with Wegman!
If you're referring to dissonance, that is true whichever side of the debate you stand. To quote Tolstoy:
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
In our view it is not currently possible to perform a quantitative evaluation of recent warmth relative to the past 1,000 years that includes all of the inherent uncertainties associated with reconstructing surface temperatures from proxy data.
If you want to engage in selective quotations, I'm up for it.
If the phrase, "address the divergence problem" had been used, it wouldn't have been particularly controversial. The fact that the term "hide the decline" was used shines a completely different light on the matter. Notwithstanding the fact that splicing instrumental temperatures with (or rather, using them to pad) dendro proxy temperatures has no statistical validity, it's interesting to me that there was a need to do this at all. I can't believe you don't find it at least somewhat suspect. I interpret it as deliberate fraud - or rather at least an intention to deceive.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha. Quote of the week.
Indeed this is quite right. Also, another thing we've learned from this is that it probably isn't a good idea to do science by press release.
Why are all left-wingers so simple minded? It's just the kind of environment for business and investment (low taxes) that you are saying should be destroyed.
Not only that, but you don't want anyone else to be either.
There's a difference between not caring about them and actively wanting to destroy them.
Because many of them are the kind of risk-takers that economies need. It's called entrepreneurship. I also recognise that many of them wouldn't bother investing here if the State decided it knew how to use their money better than they do.
For reasons of simple economic expediency. I recognise their economic value, even if you do not. I work for one after all. He's created 50 or so jobs (mostly exporting high technology equipment, so of net benefit to the country), initially risking his own money to get the business going (around 25 years ago). The kind of attitude you're expressing here is the kind of attitude expressed forcefully by the trade unions in the 1970's. I do believe we ended up cap-in-hand at the IMF for a bailout loan. I would rather cut the state back than experience that kind of national humiliation again.
The truth is I don't know, but I do know that you cannot possibly be arguing an honest point by saying that this particular budget shouldn't be cut. The reason I say that is because when I listen to the radio everyone is saying the same thing about every budget cut. The fact is that we haven't got any money left!
I think your problem here is you're assuming the theory states that cutting taxes always results in increasing tax revenue. That is not what the Laffer curve shows. It shows that there is some rate of taxation that is optimal in terms of revenue, somewhere between 0 and 100%. In the US it may well be the case that it is already at that optimal level given current economic circumstances, so tax cuts will have little or no effect.
It's not my fault you fail at understanding the effects of fiscal policy on tax revenue.
Moronic.
My point is that businesses and entrepreneurs are less likely to want to stay in the UK if they are taxed to the hilt as punishment for their success.
To me the Laffer curve is somewhat obvious. It simply states that there's a point somewhere between 0 and 100% where income tax revenues are optimal, all else being equal. We tried taxing the rich to the hilt in the 1970's (here in the UK) and they all buggered off to the US. Michael Caine writes about it in his book. He was to be taxed at 82%! Oh and we ended up cap-in-hand at the IMF for a bailout loan. I can still just about remember the rubbish being piled up high in the streets because everyone was on strike.
Yes, we're talking about savagely cutting the unbelievably bloated and unaffordable public sector. Forgive me if I don't sympathise. In my view it's preferable to cut it hard and early than to cut more slowly, piling up debt interest payments as your borrowing is so much higher over the period. It's a question of pain now, more to spend later, or some pain now and crippling debt interest payments later. Hmmmmm.
A morally ambiguous position.
Nobody said anything about doing that. But then again, the tax system is so complex (in the UK at least), it is hardly surprising there are many loopholes in the system (perhaps not morally defensible, but certainly legally so).
They are a new government with a different political outlook. Do you really expect them to continue funding all of the previous government's little fetishes? They consider the UK spends far too much of its GDP in the unproductive public sector and not enough in the private sector. Given the state of the public finances, I hardly think you can disagree with this opinion.
How much do you think raising taxes on the rich will net you? Have a wild guess. Then take a look at the Laffer curve Trident isn't going to be funded in the next 5 years (the decision has been delayed). The difficult decisions made now concern spending pledges by the previous Labour government (including two Elizabeth class air-craft carriers).
Those same markets comprised ~12% of British GDP during the boom, the taxation of which was spent by the Labour government on innumerable little projects that you insist should not be cut today. You're a friend of the financial markets when it suits you, because presumably you approved of this spending.
Am I evading Irish taxes by living, working and having my bank accounts in the UK?
People are free to move their wealth wherever they like, or are you suggesting exchange controls and other such things to prevent them from doing so?
Take your medication. We have a structural deficit of £80,000,000,000 and a national debt that's approaching £1,200,000,000,000. What do you think the Government should do? Borrow some more? Do you realise we're paying close to £120,000,000 per day on debt interest. More than the entire education budget. Just imagine how much we could spend on Science if we didn't have such a huge debt to service.
That's an economic or political point of view and nothing to do with science. The markets happen to disagree.
John Cook: Answers to his points
Hotspot?
On sea level rise:
Ahh, the good old correction factor.
Please take your medication.
You're right but as I've said before, it's rather arrogant to assume there isn't any waste in the Science budget. To me this sounds like just another interest group complaining that they are special and shouldn't have any cuts at all (i.e. pointing at someone else and saying cut him instead). If I had £1 for every such group I'd heard on the radio last week, I would probably have a tenner. The fact of the matter is that this country doesn't have any money left. Well actually it's worse than that, it's got a structural deficit of around £80,000,000,000 per year and a full-on debt of around £1,200,000,000,000!
Not to mention the fact that the rich are mobile and able to move to wherever taxes are lowest. Besides it's a daft argument, because tax is a percentage the rich will automatically pay more, assuming they haven't already moved their wealth offshore (which they will do when the tax % goes over a certain level of course). If you want to raise more money from the rich, you should tax them less, not more.
How does it affect the long-term health of the country? Are you saying that not £0.01p of the budget is wasted? Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.
Indeed that is true. But still, it's bollocks, isn't it? Hasn't Lindzen already shown a correlation between outgoing radiation and temperature? Isn't the mid-troposphere "hot spot" missing? Haven't all of the model predictions been wrong? Isn't sea level rising at its historical trend? Aren't current temperatures inside the bounds of natural variation? Isn't the hurricane count at a 30 year low? What the fuck are we arguing about?
My mistake, I was quoting Wegman. But as you see from the above, I don't think it makes much difference as the NAS agreed with Wegman!
You've been reciprocating. I think our relationship will blossom.
If you want to engage in selective quotations, I'm up for it.
I'm quoting the NAS, not Wegman!
If the phrase, "address the divergence problem" had been used, it wouldn't have been particularly controversial. The fact that the term "hide the decline" was used shines a completely different light on the matter. Notwithstanding the fact that splicing instrumental temperatures with (or rather, using them to pad) dendro proxy temperatures has no statistical validity, it's interesting to me that there was a need to do this at all. I can't believe you don't find it at least somewhat suspect. I interpret it as deliberate fraud - or rather at least an intention to deceive.