Yes, I'm an economcis professor, but you don't need to be one to see the utter misunderstanding of capitalism and the market system to see the nonsense here.
>Capitalism is based on the assumption of limited >resources and unlimited demand (driven by >necessity or greed).
No. But this is vaguely a description of the notion of scarcity. *All* economic systems attempt to deal with this, including marx. Furthermore, "limited resources" does not mean "fixed quantity of resources," and unlimited demand has nothing to do with market economics or capitalist thought. The problem is that the quantity available at a price of zero exceeds the quanity demanded at that price.
>In this scenario, the only way to increase your >pie share is at the expense of your >competitor(s).
This is *not* market or capitalist thinking. Facscist, perhaps.
As a matter of fact, this contradicts the very *reason* that theses systems are argued superior: that they are the most efficient at increasing the size of the pie. You *can* gain at the same time as your competitor; market economics *can* be a positive sum game (though this is not guaranteed).
>The theory is that this should lead to a balance >of players, each struggling against >each other and providing the consumers with the >benefits of lower prices/better products >(Smith+).... the reality is that situation is >easily made unstabland results in monopoly >capitalism (Reality).
Reality? It is contradicted by virtually all of the data, at least in the United States. Over the past century, the portion of the economy dominated by monopolized and oligopolized industries has steadily dropped, while those dominated by competitive markets has steadily risen.
the EIC is the only one I know of that's refundable.
However, there are some 100% credits, such as the various ones for tuition and raising children, as well as partial ones (energy saving installations, I think, and the on-again-off-again R&D credit . ..)
which would mean it wouldn't create unique integers.
Aleph-naught is the measure of infinity for the integers and rationals, while Aleph-1 is the measure for the reals. In general, 2^Aleph-n = Aleph n+1
I *think* that in using all patterns for all pseudo-random number generators, you have 2^Aleph-0 possibilities, meaning that you cannot store the result in an integer (or any finite number of integers).
But then, I don't use this math all that often (but we actually had to take such things into account in my dissertation while designing the algorithm [what do I mean, "we"??? I bounced things off of the committte members, but the designe is purely mine . ..]).
Around 1990, a friend of mine got excited about someone he'd met in San Diego who was developing a great new technology to tranfer movies over the phone line. It was supposed to put a full movie in 15 minutes at the same quality as a vcr.
I tried to explain about theoretical limits and the like to my friend (who was just short of brilliant), but he was convinced.
A fem months (couple of years?) later, I read in the Las Vegas paper about the arrest of a con-man in San Diego, who had had a scheme to compress movies and . . .
SO couldn't this guy have come up with something original, instead of somethign that had already sent someone to prison???
hawk, esq., never ceasing to be amazed at the stupidty of criminals
A tax deduction means that you don't pay tax *on that money*, not that you save that ammount.
If you lose $1M and get to deduct it, it saves you taxrate * $1M, not $1M. Even at those silly canadian tax rates, you're *much* better off with the money than with the deduction.
On the othe rhand a tax *credit* is dollar for dollar: a $1 tax credit reduces your taxes by $1, and is essentially the government paying it. However, most tax credits are at less than 100% (but we have some popular 100% ones in the US for the middle and lower classes).
There is a simple and well-known algorithm for compression of any amount of data into a single bit. The bits are added togeteher, repeatedly, until a single bit remains. There is an obvious shortcut, as all possible data combinations, save all 0's, map to 1.
The catch is that there's no known way to decompress (except in the special case of 0 with a known data size:)
Yikes, it just occurred to me that much of the readership wasn't born at this point, but . . .
the bus and processor used to run at the same rate. There were many systems in which the processor plugged into the backplane jsut like any other card. S-100, PDP-11 (and others) behaved this way, as well as other lesser known formats. Others took an approach that was similar: the Apple II exposed everything to the bus, and a processor card could flat-out take over. There were a few hybrid systems that used S-100 for expansion, but had a motherboard with a processor and possibly memory.
Then processors started running fasterthan 4mhz . ..m:)
It's days later, so noone will probably read this, but . . .
b) that's one hell of an excise tax:) However, not repealing the 16th before implementation is a deal-breaker for me; I'm *not* going to trust the government that far . . .
I am a lawyer, but his is not legal adivce. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
That is usually the case (though htere are ethical rules about frivolous actions). However, in a class action, it *is* the lawyers doing the choosing and suing. They have to find a representative agent, but it's really a matter of deciding to file a class action, and then finding someone who can be part of the class to be the named plaintiff.
It is *rare* that the class gets anything comparable to what teh attorneys receive. Typically, the attorneys get paid in full as part of the settlement, while the class gets pennies on the dollar for their purported (often silly) claim, or a coupon. The *only* exception I know is about Iomega's failure to pay their rebates (which is also the only class action I can think of offhand that should have been filed in the first place . ..)
btw, if your spanish is usable, read Cortazar's "Axolotl"--it's one of the best short stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, my spanish is no longer up to the task, and the english translation doesn't compare:(
However, I have a fairly strong preference for *bsd. In every case where I've noted a difference between the GNU stuff used in Linux distributions (no, not GNU/Linux. It also includes perl, X, som bsd stuff, and many other things before it's something that would be called Linux. Something that was merely GNU/Linux rather than BSD/Perl/X/GNU/sendmail/.../linux would be useless, but I digress), I've preferered the bsd way/implementation/mindset.
However, my laptop runs linux (an old debian and 2.0 kernel), and my last office machine ran debian (not enough disk/memory to take advantage of the source for bsd). I also keep a small installation of an old debian on my main home machine for repairs, though Tom's has made this kind of redundant . . .
3.5 is an update for those that don't want to change from 3 to 4. Similar releases happened for 2.x after 3.x came out. Come to think of it, I think 2.x stil gets security fixes.
Left to itself, it's that anonymous. However, from the IP they get a certain amount of geography. With big enough databases, they can cross-correllate and come up with matches part of the time to your credit record, etc., by figuring you your interests. Not that, say, doubleclick, would try to do this . .
a) to elaborate further: I've come to oppose payroll witholding for the same reason. There's a *huge* difference in effect between a $1000 pay level which turns into a $750 check, and a $1000 pay, $1000 check, and $250 bill for taxes . . . Even though I'd known what the levels were on an intellectual level, I was stunned when I actually started writing the checks. [And then I gave up my practice to go back to school, and began living on a monthly net check only a few dollars off of my old monthly check to the IRS, but I digress:) ]
b) I'd need to look closer at the bill. It will take an constitutional amendment to impose the tax, as Congress is explicitly forbidden from imposing direct taxes unless in proportion to the populations of the states. The amendment could easily repeal the income tax and ban other payroll-type taxes, but defunding the IRS would be a strange thing to put in an amendment--we've never been *that* detailed before, and I'm leery of the precedent.
c) I'm really not worried much about it, partly for the reasons you give, and partly because the middle class has most of teh wealth, anyway:) Besides, for the rich to avoid taxes, they need to not consume, meaning they invest or lend the money--which will boost economic growth and real wages for the middle class.
d) awwwwe. Maybe we could carefully bait the brits, french, and german, and make them blame one another somehow?:)
more seriously, can you give a pointer to the studies. That's exactly what I'd expect as an economist, but data is always nice. And I'd expect a good portion of those to come from EU countries that complain about Ireland's "predatory low taxes" [their words, not mine].
e) hmm. Now I forget. oh, well; I had another bit of this to bring up . . .
OK, see my other reply below. Basically, leave it to states/locals to do deal with each zip code.
I'll get real fierce about a solution that places any greater burden on merchants than this one, as it will hinder commerce. However, there is the reality ahead that either the playing field needs to be level (same tax for remote/local purchases), or the sales tax it self needs to go (which might be the right solution, but see below (above?) for why I prefer consumption taxes to the other possibilities.
But if you dig deep enough into my background, you find software development and QA. Finding my invention of a new branch of dynamic programming isn't too hard, either (my dissertation can be downloaaded). Finding the hardware design in my background would be tougher (I don't know of any online evidence:)
Nonetheless, you have a good point about rushing to listen to experts in general. I have an, uhh, unusally broad breadth of training and experience, but one little detail (being wrong about zipcode/political maps) could throw a monkey wrench--but I'll still call it trivial by placing the burden on those that want to receive the revenue:)
My state is actually Nevada, but that's anothe rstory:) I just arrived in Pennsylvania . . .
Anyway, the tax isn't on the business, but the consumer. It's just that for in-store sales, the business is required to collect it.
The taxes on sales to refurbish a particular area are a particularly dumb idea, even for governments--they actually discourage people from buying in that area . . .
I dunno about sin taxes--I like taxing other people's vices. So better beer (Sam Adams is my lower limit), single malt whiskey (not just scotch; the best single malt in my collection is actually Irish [Bushmill, I think; no, not their regular whiskey]), and heavy red california wine should not be taxed. Swill-grade beer (coors, bud, miller and down [*shudder*]), french and eastern wine, vodka, marijauna, and prostitution should have a tax rate that maximizes revenue:)
I've moved to a permanent job. I was a visiting professor at UNI, but now I'm regular faculty at Penn State. A couple of days on the road, a few more unpacking, and then fighting the dark side on my machine. Now that I have FreeBSD installed, the world is right again (or will be once I figure out why it won't give me libXpm when I install X, blocking me from running fvwm and building lyx . ..:)
I'll be in and out all summer, probably only coming in a couple of days a week. I'm long overdue for some time off and a lot of playtime with the kids . . . and I'm going to build them the mother of all playhouses:) 8x8, half a second floor, and maybe attachable walls for the winter (windows will go from about 3 feet up to the roof during summer).
Speaking as an economist and not a lawyer at this point, a few notes:
a) I'd strongly support swapping a well-designed federal VAT for the income tax. Consumption taxes still distort behavior and lower output, but not as much as income taxes.
b) Only if it's a complete switch. Adding a VAT would be a worse mess than now. Also, the constitutional ammendment should have a limit--a 10% limit was proposed for the income tax, and the Senator was laughed off the floor . . .
c) as someone below notes, there is a regressive problem for this type of tax. It's easily solved for the poor, but the middle class will bear a lot of this tax. Sorry folks, but that's reality: in the U.S., tghe middle class has most of the income, and this is becoming more (rather than less) of the case as retirement funds become fully funded and IRA's, 401k's, and the like become more common.
d) The point that is often overlooked is that companies with VAT's have an edge under current rules of international trade. The collected VAT is refunded upon export, while corporate income taxes are not--and trying to give a rebate for that tax becomes a prohibitted export subsidy. A VAT would take away this artificial edge currently enjoyed by some other nations [the corporate tax is a bad idea anyway, but that's a side issue for another day.]
I've always assumed that zip codes never crossed city/township lines, but I have no really sound basis for that . . .
Nonetheless, requiring the entities sharing any five-digit zip to work out the taxes for that zip is an easy pre-condition that they'll rush to meet in order to collect the taxes:)
My system would require a table of 5digit=>rate, and the merchants would send a monthly (quarterly, whatever) printout tith total sales per zip and a *single* check (or electronic transfer) to an intermediary who collects such checks and redistributes tehm.
It would be allowed a fee as a percentage of revenue collected (so states get 7.92% rather than 8%, or whatever the rate is. They'll still jump on board . ..).
Prefereably, there would be multiple intermediearies with which merchants subscribe.
Only the reports/dealings with the intermediatry would be auditable, and only by a single authority (to avoid being audited by 12 states a week . ..), preferably some private (and competing) entitity other than the intermediary.
I'm really not willing to put any heavier burden on the merchants than this--a single lookup table and a single check). Any state/local that doesn't want to participate can stay with the current system and try to deal with the 90+% non-compliance . . .
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact a lawyer nlicensed in your jurisdiction.
There's nothing new here; you've generally been liable under use taxes for new property purchased from out of state. Mail order purchase have never been tax free, either; it's just that most people dodge the tax.
Mail order vendors do not collect taxes for other states not because it isn't owed, but because, at the time it was litigated, it would have been horrendously complicated for a firm to fill out forms for 50 states on a regular basis, not to mention the political subdivisions (states, counties) with their own taxes. At the time, the Supreme Court did not rule that it was illegal, but that if the taxes were to be directly collected on such interstate transaction, it was up to Congress to find a way to do it.
Today it would be close to trivial to implement such a system--the lookup table by zip code for the tax to be collected would be easy. Extensions to existing software would be minor.
I'm puzzled by the very notion that buying on the internet should somehow circumvent existing tax laws. Your owns state has sales and use taxes to pay for the services provided in your area. As a sidenote, as an economist I'd rather replace all income taxes with consumption taxes anyway [*replace*, not supplement. No VAT without income tax repeal!]. The local government's claim to tax the purchase is exactly the same as their claim to tax whatever you buy at the local store; it's a way to allocate taxes, charging more to those who purchase more.
As a side not, the federal government does *not* have the power to stop states from imposing taxes on their own citizens (not that this will stop Congress; the last limits of the Consititution have not been restored since FDR trampled upon them). There is *some* ability to regulate what happens when the goods are shipped interstate, but if the state taxes the good, rather than the sale, it's a stretch for the feds to be involved at all.
Quest marketed a "stringy floppy" which sounds like the same thing for hte version of the Elf. It wasn't all that much less than the floppies of the time, though, iirc.
I want to say that there were a couple of similar things, but I can't think of them offhand.
Think back 20 years. $500 was the price of a 100K floppy . . . controller not included; add another $100 for that.
Disks to feed that drive were $5@, though small discounts were available.
A couple of years later, a 5mb drive became available for micros. I think it started at about $5k, tumbling to $1500 after a couple of years. They were awkward under CPM, which had no directories (although user numbers let you do a tiny bit of organization). The apple II divided it into something like 35 deparate 143k drives.
Oh, and it was about $50 to align those floppy drives. If you moved thi machine a lot, this was a regular occurrenc e . . .
There seem to be two versions of it out there. When I first got it, there were a few points where it had "***" to indicate missing pages of manuscript--the author's suicide prevented completion. When I bought a used copy a couple of years ago, that had apparently been cleaned up.
[Hmm. I *think* that was this book. Or was it _The Unteleported Man_?]
_Gladiator at Law_ (Pohl Anderson?) is another one that's been changed. I read it maybe 20 years ago, and bought a copy (after years of looking). In the process of updating it (after 20 years?), it lost a lot of its bite . . .
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm an economcis professor, but you don't need to be one to see the utter misunderstanding of capitalism and the market system to see the nonsense here.
>Capitalism is based on the assumption of limited
>resources and unlimited demand (driven by
>necessity or greed).
No. But this is vaguely a description of the notion of scarcity. *All* economic systems attempt to deal with this, including marx. Furthermore, "limited resources" does not mean "fixed quantity of resources," and unlimited demand has nothing to do with market economics or capitalist thought. The problem is that the quantity available at a price of zero exceeds the quanity demanded at that price.
>In this scenario, the only way to increase your
>pie share is at the expense of your >competitor(s).
This is *not* market or capitalist thinking. Facscist, perhaps.
As a matter of fact, this contradicts the very *reason* that theses systems are argued superior: that they are the most efficient at increasing the size of the pie. You *can* gain at the same time as your competitor; market economics *can* be a positive sum game (though this is not guaranteed).
>The theory is that this should lead to a balance
>of players, each struggling against
>each other and providing the consumers with the
>benefits of lower prices/better products
>(Smith+).... the reality is that situation is
>easily made unstabland results in monopoly
>capitalism (Reality).
Reality? It is contradicted by virtually all of the data, at least in the United States. Over the past century, the portion of the economy dominated by monopolized and oligopolized industries has steadily dropped, while those dominated by competitive markets has steadily risen.
hawk, professor of economics
the EIC is the only one I know of that's refundable.
.)
However, there are some 100% credits, such as the various ones for tuition and raising children, as well as partial ones (energy saving installations, I think, and the on-again-off-again R&D credit . .
which would mean it wouldn't create unique integers.
.]).
Aleph-naught is the measure of infinity for the integers and rationals, while Aleph-1 is the measure for the reals. In general, 2^Aleph-n = Aleph n+1
I *think* that in using all patterns for all pseudo-random number generators, you have 2^Aleph-0 possibilities, meaning that you cannot store the result in an integer (or any finite number of integers).
But then, I don't use this math all that often (but we actually had to take such things into account in my dissertation while designing the algorithm [what do I mean, "we"??? I bounced things off of the committte members, but the designe is purely mine . .
hawk
Around 1990, a friend of mine got excited about someone he'd met in San Diego who was developing a great new technology to tranfer movies over the phone line. It was supposed to put a full movie in 15 minutes at the same quality as a vcr.
I tried to explain about theoretical limits and the like to my friend (who was just short of brilliant), but he was convinced.
A fem months (couple of years?) later, I read in the Las Vegas paper about the arrest of a con-man in San Diego, who had had a scheme to compress movies and . . .
SO couldn't this guy have come up with something original, instead of somethign that had already sent someone to prison???
hawk, esq., never ceasing to be amazed at the stupidty of criminals
A tax deduction means that you don't pay tax *on that money*, not that you save that ammount.
If you lose $1M and get to deduct it, it saves you taxrate * $1M, not $1M. Even at those silly canadian tax rates, you're *much* better off with the money than with the deduction.
On the othe rhand a tax *credit* is dollar for dollar: a $1 tax credit reduces your taxes by $1, and is essentially the government paying it. However, most tax credits are at less than 100% (but we have some popular 100% ones in the US for the middle and lower classes).
hawk
There is a simple and well-known algorithm for compression of any amount of data into a single bit. The bits are added togeteher, repeatedly, until a single bit remains. There is an obvious shortcut, as all possible data combinations, save all 0's, map to 1.
:)
The catch is that there's no known way to decompress (except in the special case of 0 with a known data size
Yikes, it just occurred to me that much of the readership wasn't born at this point, but . . .
.m :)
the bus and processor used to run at the same rate. There were many systems in which the processor plugged into the backplane jsut like any other card. S-100, PDP-11 (and others) behaved this way, as well as other lesser known formats. Others took an approach that was similar: the Apple II exposed everything to the bus, and a processor card could flat-out take over. There were a few hybrid systems that used S-100 for expansion, but had a motherboard with a processor and possibly memory.
Then processors started running fasterthan 4mhz . .
That was a poor choice of words on my part :)
I used "current" as in, "the version that is generally installed today," which was a particularly poor choice given the meaning of "CURRENT" . . . .
It's days later, so noone will probably read this, but . . .
:) However, not repealing the 16th before implementation is a deal-breaker for me; I'm *not* going to trust the government that far . . .
b) that's one hell of an excise tax
d) intriguing.
hawk
I am a lawyer, but his is not legal adivce. If you need legal advice, consult an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
.)
That is usually the case (though htere are ethical rules about frivolous actions). However, in a class action, it *is* the lawyers doing the choosing and suing. They have to find a representative agent, but it's really a matter of deciding to file a class action, and then finding someone who can be part of the class to be the named plaintiff.
It is *rare* that the class gets anything comparable to what teh attorneys receive. Typically, the attorneys get paid in full as part of the settlement, while the class gets pennies on the dollar for their purported (often silly) claim, or a coupon. The *only* exception I know is about Iomega's failure to pay their rebates (which is also the only class action I can think of offhand that should have been filed in the first place . .
hawk, esq.
Damned soul-stealing fish. :)
:(
btw, if your spanish is usable, read Cortazar's "Axolotl"--it's one of the best short stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, my spanish is no longer up to the task, and the english translation doesn't compare
However, I have a fairly strong preference for *bsd. In every case where I've noted a difference between the GNU stuff used in Linux distributions (no, not GNU/Linux. It also includes perl, X, som bsd stuff, and many other things before it's something that would be called Linux. Something that was merely GNU/Linux rather than BSD/Perl/X/GNU/sendmail/.../linux would be useless, but I digress), I've preferered the bsd way/implementation/mindset.
However, my laptop runs linux (an old debian and 2.0 kernel), and my last office machine ran debian (not enough disk/memory to take advantage of the source for bsd). I also keep a small installation of an old debian on my main home machine for repairs, though Tom's has made this kind of redundant . . .
hawk
5x won't be released for quite some time.
4 is the current version
3.5 is an update for those that don't want to change from 3 to 4. Similar releases happened for 2.x after 3.x came out. Come to think of it, I think 2.x stil gets security fixes.
Left to itself, it's that anonymous. However, from the IP they get a certain amount of geography. With big enough databases, they can cross-correllate and come up with matches part of the time to your credit record, etc., by figuring you your interests. Not that, say, doubleclick, would try to do this . .
continueing the stream of letters . . .
:) ]
:) Besides, for the rich to avoid taxes, they need to not consume, meaning they invest or lend the money--which will boost economic growth and real wages for the middle class.
:)
a) to elaborate further: I've come to oppose payroll witholding for the same reason. There's a *huge* difference in effect between a $1000 pay level which turns into a $750 check, and a $1000 pay, $1000 check, and $250 bill for taxes . . . Even though I'd known what the levels were on an intellectual level, I was stunned when I actually started writing the checks. [And then I gave up my practice to go back to school, and began living on a monthly net check only a few dollars off of my old monthly check to the IRS, but I digress
b) I'd need to look closer at the bill. It will take an constitutional amendment to impose the tax, as Congress is explicitly forbidden from imposing direct taxes unless in proportion to the populations of the states. The amendment could easily repeal the income tax and ban other payroll-type taxes, but defunding the IRS would be a strange thing to put in an amendment--we've never been *that* detailed before, and I'm leery of the precedent.
c) I'm really not worried much about it, partly for the reasons you give, and partly because the middle class has most of teh wealth, anyway
d) awwwwe. Maybe we could carefully bait the brits, french, and german, and make them blame one another somehow?
more seriously, can you give a pointer to the studies. That's exactly what I'd expect as an economist, but data is always nice. And I'd expect a good portion of those to come from EU countries that complain about Ireland's "predatory low taxes" [their words, not mine].
e) hmm. Now I forget. oh, well; I had another bit of this to bring up . . .
OK, see my other reply below. Basically, leave it to states/locals to do deal with each zip code.
:)
:)
I'll get real fierce about a solution that places any greater burden on merchants than this one, as it will hinder commerce. However, there is the reality ahead that either the playing field needs to be level (same tax for remote/local purchases), or the sales tax it self needs to go (which might be the right solution, but see below (above?) for why I prefer consumption taxes to the other possibilities.
But if you dig deep enough into my background, you find software development and QA. Finding my invention of a new branch of dynamic programming isn't too hard, either (my dissertation can be downloaaded). Finding the hardware design in my background would be tougher (I don't know of any online evidence
Nonetheless, you have a good point about rushing to listen to experts in general. I have an, uhh, unusally broad breadth of training and experience, but one little detail (being wrong about zipcode/political maps) could throw a monkey wrench--but I'll still call it trivial by placing the burden on those that want to receive the revenue
hawk of many hats
My oldest prefers FreeBSD to Windows--quite astute for an eight year old (when the preference formed :)
:)
.)
:)
.)
When she's old enough, I'll show her slashdot
(she needs something to do before she's allowed to date at 30 . .
I do recognize the surrealism of a getting a phone call at work from an eight year old in tears because she's having trouble booting unix . . .
hawk
p.s. she's nine now, and still prefers unix . . .
p.p.s. I skewed the playing field by onlyt allowing FreeBSD and not Windows to access the ionternet . . . (for security reasons . . . honestly . .
My state is actually Nevada, but that's anothe rstory :) I just arrived in Pennsylvania . . .
:)
Anyway, the tax isn't on the business, but the consumer. It's just that for in-store sales, the business is required to collect it.
The taxes on sales to refurbish a particular area
are a particularly dumb idea, even for governments--they actually discourage people from buying in that area . . .
I dunno about sin taxes--I like taxing other people's vices. So better beer (Sam Adams is my lower limit), single malt whiskey (not just scotch; the best single malt in my collection is actually Irish [Bushmill, I think; no, not their regular whiskey]), and heavy red california wine should not be taxed. Swill-grade beer (coors, bud, miller and down [*shudder*]), french and eastern wine, vodka, marijauna, and prostitution should have a tax rate that maximizes revenue
hawk
I've moved to a permanent job. I was a visiting professor at UNI, but now I'm regular faculty at Penn State. A couple of days on the road, a few more unpacking, and then fighting the dark side on my machine. Now that I have FreeBSD installed, the world is right again (or will be once I figure out why it won't give me libXpm when I install X, blocking me from running fvwm and building lyx . . .:)
:) 8x8, half a second floor, and maybe attachable walls for the winter (windows will go from about 3 feet up to the roof during summer).
I'll be in and out all summer, probably only coming in a couple of days a week. I'm long overdue for some time off and a lot of playtime with the kids . . . and I'm going to build them the mother of all playhouses
hawk, a daddy, too
Speaking as an economist and not a lawyer at this point, a few notes:
a) I'd strongly support swapping a well-designed federal VAT for the income tax. Consumption taxes still distort behavior and lower output, but not as much as income taxes.
b) Only if it's a complete switch. Adding a VAT would be a worse mess than now. Also, the constitutional ammendment should have a limit--a 10% limit was proposed for the income tax, and the Senator was laughed off the floor . . .
c) as someone below notes, there is a regressive problem for this type of tax. It's easily solved for the poor, but the middle class will bear a lot of this tax. Sorry folks, but that's reality: in the U.S., tghe middle class has most of the income, and this is becoming more (rather than less) of the case as retirement funds become fully funded and IRA's, 401k's, and the like become more common.
d) The point that is often overlooked is that companies with VAT's have an edge under current rules of international trade. The collected VAT is refunded upon export, while corporate income taxes are not--and trying to give a rebate for that tax becomes a prohibitted export subsidy. A VAT would take away this artificial edge currently enjoyed by some other nations [the corporate tax is a bad idea anyway, but that's a side issue for another day.]
hawk
I've always assumed that zip codes never crossed city/township lines, but I have no really sound basis for that . . .
:)
.).
.), preferably some private (and competing) entitity other than the intermediary.
Nonetheless, requiring the entities sharing any five-digit zip to work out the taxes for that zip is an easy pre-condition that they'll rush to meet in order to collect the taxes
My system would require a table of 5digit=>rate, and the merchants would send a monthly (quarterly, whatever) printout tith total sales per zip and a *single* check (or electronic transfer) to an intermediary who collects such checks and redistributes tehm.
It would be allowed a fee as a percentage of revenue collected (so states get 7.92% rather than 8%, or whatever the rate is. They'll still jump on board . .
Prefereably, there would be multiple intermediearies with which merchants subscribe.
Only the reports/dealings with the intermediatry would be auditable, and only by a single authority (to avoid being audited by 12 states a week . .
I'm really not willing to put any heavier burden on the merchants than this--a single lookup table and a single check). Any state/local that doesn't want to participate can stay with the current system and try to deal with the 90+% non-compliance . . .
hawk, esq.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact a lawyer nlicensed in your jurisdiction.
There's nothing new here; you've generally been liable under use taxes for new property purchased from out of state. Mail order purchase have never been tax free, either; it's just that most people dodge the tax.
Mail order vendors do not collect taxes for other states not because it isn't owed, but because, at the time it was litigated, it would have been horrendously complicated for a firm to fill out forms for 50 states on a regular basis, not to mention the political subdivisions (states, counties) with their own taxes. At the time, the Supreme Court did not rule that it was illegal, but that if the taxes were to be directly collected on such interstate transaction, it was up to Congress to find a way to do it.
Today it would be close to trivial to implement such a system--the lookup table by zip code for the tax to be collected would be easy. Extensions to existing software would be minor.
I'm puzzled by the very notion that buying on the internet should somehow circumvent existing tax laws. Your owns state has sales and use taxes to pay for the services provided in your area. As a sidenote, as an economist I'd rather replace all income taxes with consumption taxes anyway [*replace*, not supplement. No VAT without income tax repeal!]. The local government's claim to tax the purchase is exactly the same as their claim to tax whatever you buy at the local store; it's a way to allocate taxes, charging more to those who purchase more.
As a side not, the federal government does *not* have the power to stop states from imposing taxes on their own citizens (not that this will stop Congress; the last limits of the Consititution have not been restored since FDR trampled upon them). There is *some* ability to regulate what happens when the goods are shipped interstate, but if the state taxes the good, rather than the sale, it's a stretch for the feds to be involved at all.
hawk, esq., and professor of economics
Quest marketed a "stringy floppy" which sounds like the same thing for hte version of the Elf. It wasn't all that much less than the floppies of the time, though, iirc.
I want to say that there were a couple of similar things, but I can't think of them offhand.
Think back 20 years. $500 was the price of a 100K floppy . . . controller not included; add another $100 for that.
Disks to feed that drive were $5@, though small discounts were available.
A couple of years later, a 5mb drive became available for micros. I think it started at about $5k, tumbling to $1500 after a couple of years. They were awkward under CPM, which had no directories (although user numbers let you do a tiny bit of organization). The apple II divided it into something like 35 deparate 143k drives.
Oh, and it was about $50 to align those floppy drives. If you moved thi machine a lot, this was a regular occurrenc e . . .
It was the basis for the movie Bladerunner.
There seem to be two versions of it out there. When I first got it, there were a few points where it had "***" to indicate missing pages of manuscript--the author's suicide prevented completion. When I bought a used copy a couple of years ago, that had apparently been cleaned up.
[Hmm. I *think* that was this book. Or was it _The Unteleported Man_?]
_Gladiator at Law_ (Pohl Anderson?) is another one that's been changed. I read it maybe 20 years ago, and bought a copy (after years of looking). In the process of updating it (after 20 years?), it lost a lot of its bite . . .