Since WWII, Federal revenue has been 18-19% of GDP, no matter what the tax rates were. This suggests that increasing taxes will not significantly increase the amount of money that the federal government collects. If increasing taxes will not increase the percentage of GDP that the federal government collects in revenue (which historical figures suggest is indeed the case), I do not see how increasing taxes will help reduce the deficit.
You are correct. The 2010 budget was passed in 2009. Where the OP made their mistake was that the fact of the matter is the Democrats did not pass the 2011 budget, which should have been passed in September of 2010. However, the Democrats did not want to have to defend their budget deficit while they were campaigning for re-election, so they did not even create a budget bill in 2010. If the Democrats had done their job when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the WHite House, we would not be in this situation.
The fact of the matter is that last fall, the American voters sent a clear message that they want Congress to reduce the federal budget. The Democrats vastly increased the Federal Budget in 2009 in response to the financial crisis. Now they want to use that "emergency" spending as the baseline for al future budgets.
Historically, since WWII the Federal government has spent around 21% of GDP each year, while collecting 18-19% of GDP in revenue. That is not sustainable. However, in the last several years the Federal government has been spending close to 25% of GDP, that is making the problem much more urgent. Raising taxes is unlikely to increase the % of GDP that the federal government collects, since that has been stable as the tax rates have changed.
You make a very good point. If this law goes into effect, it will either be trivially easy for the authorities to frame someone or impossible for them to use evidence from online activity to convict them. The majority of posters on here have focused on the fact that this makes it easier for hackers to get the information they need to steal someone's identity or other wise steal using someone's log on credetnials. They have overlooked the oportunities this provides for the authorities to impersonate someone.
In other words, it requires them to store the password in a way that makes it easier for identity thieves who get access to thier systems to crack the password.
Sorry, no President in my lifetime comes close to being as bad as James Buchanan. Jimmy Carter was a bad President. It appears at this point that Obama is worse, but that is still subject to what actions he takes before he leaves office and no final judgment can truly be reached until he is out of office for at least ten years. Even so, I do not see either being as bad as Buchanan was (although Obama still has time to make up ground and he has shown a desire to do so).
I'm sorry, how does the Iraq War demonstrate a difference between Republicans and Democrats? The Democrats in Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the President's use of force in Iraq. Unless you are comparing Iraq to Libya, where in the latter case the President did not even inform Congress before he started using force.
The answer would be that if anyone in the Federal government does, it would be Congress. The FCC and the EPA only have the authority to regulate those things that Congress has given them the authority to regulate. The Founding Fathers did not create either the FCC or the EPA and would quite likely question the existence of either one.
However, the EPA is not actually following its mandate for regulating emissions that it finds to be pollutants. The statute calls for it to regulate stationary sources that generate 250 tons per year, but the EPA is planning to (initially) only regulate stationary sources that emit 25,000 tons per year. How does the EPA justify this? Of course the reason that the EPA is setting such a high threshold is that if it regulated any stationary source of 250 tons or more, even someone like you would recognize that the damage it was doing to our economy far outweighed any possible benefit from the regulation.
Great link. A month or so ago, I was told, here on slashdot, that AGW supporting climatologists never claimed that snowfall would no longer happen in Britain. Then, when I produced a similar link, I was told that we just haven't waited long enough yet, there would still be occasional winters with snow, they just meant that there would be fewer winters with snow.
Many forms have cancer are now curable so your idea that cancer has not been cured yet because it is more profitable to treat it is BS. The fact of the matter is if Drug Company A develops a cure for some form of cancer, they will market it. Because if they do not, they risk Drug Company B developing a cure for it and then not only will they no longer be able to profit from treating that form of cancer, they will not profit from curing it. Drug companies understand that if someone else beats them to a cure, they will lose more than they will lose from developing the cure.
You make a very good point. According to several studies, being 5% below your ideal weight results in more health problems than being overweight until one reaches 50% or more above one's ideal weight (what is referred to as being morbidly obese).
As a further complication, currently obesity is defined as having a BMI above 30. The problem is that BMI is a terrible way to determine whether an individual is overweight or not. BMI was developed as a quick and dirty way to evaluate the weight of a general population and determine whether that population is, in general, a healthy weight. For that purpose it is somewhat useful (although it needs to be regularly recalibrated, something which I suspect is not done frequently enough). When one is dealing with individuals, there is enough variation in muscle mass that it becomes much less reliable. Several years ago, someone did a comparison and found that according to BMI standards every player in the NCAA Final Four that year was overweight.
No, the problem with this situation is that search providers do not have an easy way to tell if a site is legitimate or not. By your logic (and that of the court) selling VCRs (and other similar devices) should be illegal because they "facilitate" making illegal copies of movies and tv shows. There are many other examples of things that we take for granted that can be used in a crime that this ruling could be applied to.
I would agree that the search engine should have, at most, very limited liability for the results of its searches. I cannot at the moment think of anything that the search provider should have liability for providing as the result of a search, but I would not be surprised if someone could come up with a scenario where I would agree with holding the search provider liable.
No, they are claiming that a strategy which may maximize profits results in the creation of pirate markets. Basically, they are saying that if piracy of your intellectual property* is damaging your profits, it is your because your pricing strategy has failed. Or to state it another way, if a significant number of people are pirating your intellectual property* who would otherwise buy it, you are charging too much for your product.
*I know there are a lot of people who do not like this term, but I am not currently aware of any other term which brings together all of the various products that can be lumped together under "intellectual property".
The best part about your solution is that it sounds like it might be compatible with the licensing that the software Android is based on comes with. Which I do not believe that Google's solution is.
As many others have noted correlation is not causation, but I have noted a correlation that those who want to make Algebra II a requirement should pay attention to. I have noticed that as we as a nation have increased the "requirements" for graduation, the education level of our graduates has diminished. Central planning does not work, not even in education.
When George W. Bush was President the Democrats who ran Congress since January of 2007 increased the Federal deficit by unprecendented amounts. When Obama became President, they made the Federal deficits under George W. Bush look like chump change. So, under which President was Federal spending more like going on a crazy party bender?
That's a great theory, except for the fact that unlike Newscorp, the New York Times Corporation is losing money hand over fist in all of its operations so there is no need to dodge taxes.
cocaine using prostitution beating hedge fund managers who rip off 500 million dollars get mansions and hang out with Bill Clinton
If you are referring to Jeffrey Epstein, he is also legally a pedophile (although I believe that technically the correct term would be pederast). Of course, I am pretty sure the reason that he got off with just a slap on the wrist is because so many influential people probably also had sex with some of his underage "servants" and if Epstein had received the sentence he deserved it is likely that he would have revealed who all made use of the services of those girls.
My observation is that those who use a number which makes a problem look significantly bigger than it is to the casual glance (or significantly smaller) are guilty of using other suspect arguments. It is not that there are not ways you could get such a large number. It is that they chose to take a shortcut that indicates that they have probably taken other shortcuts.
Nice catch. While other people have shown that it reasonable to assume that there are 1 million deaths worldwide from automobile accidents, there are still other problems from using that number that make the reasoning of this analysis. Talking about driverless cars reducing auto related fatalities outside of the EU, the U.S. and a handful of other countries is utopian dreaming and should not play a role in decision making. It will be a long time before the technology for driverless cars penetrates into developing nations to a large enough extent to make a significant difference on their accident statistics. How well would these driverless cars do on a bridge where you have to switch sides on a bridge two or three times on the way across because some of the boards that make up the roadway have fallen into the river (something I have experienced in Latin America)? How about on a three lane highway where the center lane is the passing lane for both directions?
All in all, I believe that using the worldwide automobile death related death rate is an attempt to strengthen a weak case.
And this means that we should expect people to be more comfortable with cars that drive themselves than they are with planes that fly themselves because...?
When did the land belong to the Palestinians? The word palestine is derived from philistine. The Philistines were a greek people. There has never been a time when the Arabs living in Palestine controlled Palestine. Before the British, Palestine was governed by the Ottoman Turks. Before that, Palestine was controlled by various outside forces going back until before the Romans. The only people in history who have ever both lived in Palestine and politically controlled it were the Jews. Until the modern founding of Israel, palestinian Arabs were just Arabs who happened to live in Palestine.
There is no "solution" to this conflict as long as Muslims insist that Palestine (the entire area) must be under Muslim rule (shariah law). This is not something that I expect to change, since it is a tenet of Islam that any land that has once been under Islamic rule, must remain under Islamic rule. This is not to say that the Israelis are in the right. It is just that as things currently exist, there is no peaceful solution possible.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Increase taxes.
Since WWII, Federal revenue has been 18-19% of GDP, no matter what the tax rates were. This suggests that increasing taxes will not significantly increase the amount of money that the federal government collects. If increasing taxes will not increase the percentage of GDP that the federal government collects in revenue (which historical figures suggest is indeed the case), I do not see how increasing taxes will help reduce the deficit.
You are correct. The 2010 budget was passed in 2009. Where the OP made their mistake was that the fact of the matter is the Democrats did not pass the 2011 budget, which should have been passed in September of 2010. However, the Democrats did not want to have to defend their budget deficit while they were campaigning for re-election, so they did not even create a budget bill in 2010. If the Democrats had done their job when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the WHite House, we would not be in this situation.
The fact of the matter is that last fall, the American voters sent a clear message that they want Congress to reduce the federal budget. The Democrats vastly increased the Federal Budget in 2009 in response to the financial crisis. Now they want to use that "emergency" spending as the baseline for al future budgets.
Historically, since WWII the Federal government has spent around 21% of GDP each year, while collecting 18-19% of GDP in revenue. That is not sustainable. However, in the last several years the Federal government has been spending close to 25% of GDP, that is making the problem much more urgent. Raising taxes is unlikely to increase the % of GDP that the federal government collects, since that has been stable as the tax rates have changed.
You make a very good point. If this law goes into effect, it will either be trivially easy for the authorities to frame someone or impossible for them to use evidence from online activity to convict them. The majority of posters on here have focused on the fact that this makes it easier for hackers to get the information they need to steal someone's identity or other wise steal using someone's log on credetnials. They have overlooked the oportunities this provides for the authorities to impersonate someone.
In other words, it requires them to store the password in a way that makes it easier for identity thieves who get access to thier systems to crack the password.
Sorry, no President in my lifetime comes close to being as bad as James Buchanan. Jimmy Carter was a bad President. It appears at this point that Obama is worse, but that is still subject to what actions he takes before he leaves office and no final judgment can truly be reached until he is out of office for at least ten years. Even so, I do not see either being as bad as Buchanan was (although Obama still has time to make up ground and he has shown a desire to do so).
I'm sorry, how does the Iraq War demonstrate a difference between Republicans and Democrats? The Democrats in Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the President's use of force in Iraq. Unless you are comparing Iraq to Libya, where in the latter case the President did not even inform Congress before he started using force.
The answer would be that if anyone in the Federal government does, it would be Congress. The FCC and the EPA only have the authority to regulate those things that Congress has given them the authority to regulate. The Founding Fathers did not create either the FCC or the EPA and would quite likely question the existence of either one.
However, the EPA is not actually following its mandate for regulating emissions that it finds to be pollutants. The statute calls for it to regulate stationary sources that generate 250 tons per year, but the EPA is planning to (initially) only regulate stationary sources that emit 25,000 tons per year. How does the EPA justify this? Of course the reason that the EPA is setting such a high threshold is that if it regulated any stationary source of 250 tons or more, even someone like you would recognize that the damage it was doing to our economy far outweighed any possible benefit from the regulation.
Great link. A month or so ago, I was told, here on slashdot, that AGW supporting climatologists never claimed that snowfall would no longer happen in Britain. Then, when I produced a similar link, I was told that we just haven't waited long enough yet, there would still be occasional winters with snow, they just meant that there would be fewer winters with snow.
Many forms have cancer are now curable so your idea that cancer has not been cured yet because it is more profitable to treat it is BS. The fact of the matter is if Drug Company A develops a cure for some form of cancer, they will market it. Because if they do not, they risk Drug Company B developing a cure for it and then not only will they no longer be able to profit from treating that form of cancer, they will not profit from curing it. Drug companies understand that if someone else beats them to a cure, they will lose more than they will lose from developing the cure.
You make a very good point. According to several studies, being 5% below your ideal weight results in more health problems than being overweight until one reaches 50% or more above one's ideal weight (what is referred to as being morbidly obese).
As a further complication, currently obesity is defined as having a BMI above 30. The problem is that BMI is a terrible way to determine whether an individual is overweight or not. BMI was developed as a quick and dirty way to evaluate the weight of a general population and determine whether that population is, in general, a healthy weight. For that purpose it is somewhat useful (although it needs to be regularly recalibrated, something which I suspect is not done frequently enough). When one is dealing with individuals, there is enough variation in muscle mass that it becomes much less reliable. Several years ago, someone did a comparison and found that according to BMI standards every player in the NCAA Final Four that year was overweight.
You can create a model to simulate any effect you want. That's what's called in technical language "pulling numbers out of your ass".
I take it you are a "global warming denier"?
No, the problem with this situation is that search providers do not have an easy way to tell if a site is legitimate or not. By your logic (and that of the court) selling VCRs (and other similar devices) should be illegal because they "facilitate" making illegal copies of movies and tv shows. There are many other examples of things that we take for granted that can be used in a crime that this ruling could be applied to.
I would agree that the search engine should have, at most, very limited liability for the results of its searches. I cannot at the moment think of anything that the search provider should have liability for providing as the result of a search, but I would not be surprised if someone could come up with a scenario where I would agree with holding the search provider liable.
No, they are claiming that a strategy which may maximize profits results in the creation of pirate markets. Basically, they are saying that if piracy of your intellectual property* is damaging your profits, it is your because your pricing strategy has failed. Or to state it another way, if a significant number of people are pirating your intellectual property* who would otherwise buy it, you are charging too much for your product.
*I know there are a lot of people who do not like this term, but I am not currently aware of any other term which brings together all of the various products that can be lumped together under "intellectual property".
The best part about your solution is that it sounds like it might be compatible with the licensing that the software Android is based on comes with. Which I do not believe that Google's solution is.
As many others have noted correlation is not causation, but I have noted a correlation that those who want to make Algebra II a requirement should pay attention to. I have noticed that as we as a nation have increased the "requirements" for graduation, the education level of our graduates has diminished. Central planning does not work, not even in education.
When George W. Bush was President the Democrats who ran Congress since January of 2007 increased the Federal deficit by unprecendented amounts. When Obama became President, they made the Federal deficits under George W. Bush look like chump change. So, under which President was Federal spending more like going on a crazy party bender?
That's a great theory, except for the fact that unlike Newscorp, the New York Times Corporation is losing money hand over fist in all of its operations so there is no need to dodge taxes.
What, you mean the fact that when a fiscal conservative is in charge, the U.S. economy does much better than when a fiscal liberal is in charge?
cocaine using prostitution beating hedge fund managers who rip off 500 million dollars get mansions and hang out with Bill Clinton
If you are referring to Jeffrey Epstein, he is also legally a pedophile (although I believe that technically the correct term would be pederast). Of course, I am pretty sure the reason that he got off with just a slap on the wrist is because so many influential people probably also had sex with some of his underage "servants" and if Epstein had received the sentence he deserved it is likely that he would have revealed who all made use of the services of those girls.
My observation is that those who use a number which makes a problem look significantly bigger than it is to the casual glance (or significantly smaller) are guilty of using other suspect arguments. It is not that there are not ways you could get such a large number. It is that they chose to take a shortcut that indicates that they have probably taken other shortcuts.
Nice catch. While other people have shown that it reasonable to assume that there are 1 million deaths worldwide from automobile accidents, there are still other problems from using that number that make the reasoning of this analysis. Talking about driverless cars reducing auto related fatalities outside of the EU, the U.S. and a handful of other countries is utopian dreaming and should not play a role in decision making. It will be a long time before the technology for driverless cars penetrates into developing nations to a large enough extent to make a significant difference on their accident statistics. How well would these driverless cars do on a bridge where you have to switch sides on a bridge two or three times on the way across because some of the boards that make up the roadway have fallen into the river (something I have experienced in Latin America)? How about on a three lane highway where the center lane is the passing lane for both directions?
All in all, I believe that using the worldwide automobile death related death rate is an attempt to strengthen a weak case.
And this means that we should expect people to be more comfortable with cars that drive themselves than they are with planes that fly themselves because...?
When did the land belong to the Palestinians? The word palestine is derived from philistine. The Philistines were a greek people. There has never been a time when the Arabs living in Palestine controlled Palestine. Before the British, Palestine was governed by the Ottoman Turks. Before that, Palestine was controlled by various outside forces going back until before the Romans. The only people in history who have ever both lived in Palestine and politically controlled it were the Jews. Until the modern founding of Israel, palestinian Arabs were just Arabs who happened to live in Palestine.
There is no "solution" to this conflict as long as Muslims insist that Palestine (the entire area) must be under Muslim rule (shariah law). This is not something that I expect to change, since it is a tenet of Islam that any land that has once been under Islamic rule, must remain under Islamic rule. This is not to say that the Israelis are in the right. It is just that as things currently exist, there is no peaceful solution possible.
MUFON has ceased being a reliable organization since a long while.
You mean, when they were founded?