Are you sure he's much of a "gold bug" though? Unabashed gold bugs (like Austrian economist Mark Skousen) would suggest just the opposite.
I suppose it depends upon whether you compare him to most of us, or to other gold bugs:)
His ideals are pretty clearly more libertarian than classical liberal; he once said in an interview in Reason magazine that he'd "like to be a zero-government libertarian" (like his son, David), but when asked why he wasn't one, he noted that it's not feasible.
And recognizing that infeasibility is one of the primary distinctions between classic liberals and libertarians:)
Friedman partly attributes the exacerbation of the Depression
If memory serves, he also made the best observation I've heard about the Great Depression: we have a sample size of 1, it was very strange, and we can't really draw any sound conclusions about it . ..
The ability to control inflation by controlling the money supply is awfully valuable, when it works
Actually, the only factors entering inflation are the size of economy and the supply of money (modified by its velocity). The *only* ways to have inflation are for the effective money supply to increase or the size of the economy to decrease
(though given housing prices lately, I wonder what the *actual* total inflation rate is, rather than the more-often reported CPI of (currently) about 3%).
Somewhat less. We've fixed some of the overstatement in the CPI, but it's still tooo high.
might I also suggest making your blog's presence known on a few other econ. and/or law-related blogs:
Wow. Posner has one? I'm not surprised, he ought to. (He also should be on the SC, but . ..)
I'll look at those. (OK, I have to finish this NSF review before I do anythign else today, but . ..)
I'm really designed more as op-ed columns than blog. Maybe I should give in . ..
Oh, and: (though I often wonder if I should've made it my major when I started university, rather than CS)...)
You would be a *very* desirable candidate for an Econ Ph.D. program.
Seriously.
Your math preparation and analytic ability is *far* more important than prior econ classes to your success in Ph.D. level econ classes. And there is a *severe* shortage of american students in this field.
And if you're single, you can live quite comfortably on the stipend from a good program. Email me if you'd be interested in discussing it.
The thing is, new phones don't give the satisfaction of slamming the phone back on the hook when given bad news.
However, they're no longer built so solidly that you can't tiwst the wretched life out of the damnted thin, making it a warped pile of plastic and wire, suffering forevermore for the anguish it caused you . ..
Also, since it was lyx/latex, I would have done better to use tr so strip everything out of the 32-127 range--I ended up losing my equations and formatting.
I had a discussion a while back with someone who was caught between three states. Two, if memory served, classified him as a resident for the entire year, thus subject to state taxes on all income, for having been in the state for five months. A third state, where he lived and earned money, wanted to tax it for the obvious reasons. . ..
Also, there at least used to be an income range where if you were retired and drawing Social Secuirty, but worked part time, the combined reduction in benefits, federal income tax, and new social security taxes could hit over 100% . ..
They do indeed have to give full faith and credit to the *judgment*. However, states have some leeway on matters that violate their own public policy (for example, enforcement of gambling debts).
An Nevada has taken it much further. California decided that it could tax retirement income of former Calilifornia residents. Nevada responded by adding to its list of exemptions "all property situate within the state of Nevada if the judgment is for state income tax on retirement income," or something similar.
Well, I don't know about *any* tax -- an income tax doesn't explicitly tax the different levels of production as a VAT or sales tax does, for example
It's not direct, but it's still there. The income tax (and others) still pull purchasing power out of the system. A VAT pulls it out during the production process, making production more costly, while an income tax takes away the ability of customers to purchase those products. It's really just different forms of friction.
The advantage of shifting to a consumption tax from income tax is the very fact that individuals *can* shift their taxes into the future by investing and postponing consumption. It increases (not "grows," damnit) the size of the economy. The tradeoff is that it is harder to make a consumption tax "as progressive" as an income tax (but protecting basic food and housing is easily done; FairTax does that well).
why we make a distinction at all between a sales tax and a VAT, to begin with,
The only difference is that the VAT is applied at each stage of production, while the sales tax is applied all at onece. The only real significance of this is that sales taxes are much easier to evade, while VAT's do increase the burden on intermediate stages of production.
Heh, thanks.:) That was an excellent piece, BTW, describing the basic schools of thought as well as any description I've ever seen.
Thanks. That was actually one of the hardest pieces I've written. The second part should come out this weekend.
I find I pattern my views almost exactly to those of Milton Friedman,
He's one of us, quite definitely. Economists still tend to be, ahh, skeptical of his "gold bug" tendencies. In fact, we'd call anyone else who said the same things a crackpot. However, last time economists dismissed him as crazy he was so damned right that he got the Nobel Prize! (His work in the 60's pretty much said that the stagflation of the 70's was inevitable given the policies that did indeed cause it . ..)
Anyway, I've added your blog to my RSS aggregator, if that tells you anything.:-):)
Now if only I could get a major op-ed syndicator to to that:)
hawk
p.s.
I could really use some seed comments at the website:)
I am an attorney, but this is not legal advise. If you need that, get it from an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
Nearly everything this AC wrote is just plain nonsense.
Curiously, the only debts that aren't presently dischargeable in bankruptcy are fines imposed for crimes, child support awards and...guess what...student loans
No. Those aren't the only ones. Certain taxes (time dependent), fraud, luxury goods or large borrowing within 60 days of filing (presumptively), omitted debts, willfully injury, fiduciary violations, death from dui, and a few others. (see 11 USC 523).
Spam probably falls into the "willful injury" category.
You can thank the GOP for the latter in 1995. No, you made that up, too. They may have been tightened over abuses at that point, but they weren't generally dischargeable until several years after payment was first due. *That* happened due to the MDs leaving med school and filing.
Punitive damages awarded for mass torts are dischargeable in Chapter 11 for the big boys,
No, that's not true, either. Those are nondischargeable. While it would be *possible* to do a Chapter 11 that left those unpaid, it would *require* that the creditors, including the victims, receive at least as much as they would in a liquidation, and would result in the owners/shareholders losing their *entire* stake in the business.
So aside from having the law and facts entirely wrong, I suppose you may have a point.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need that, consult an attorney in your area.
Corporations or any other employer are liabile for the actions of their employees--but so are the employees. Generally, it's not worth going after the employees.
If you commit torts, the fact that you work for a corporation you own isn't going to protect you.
The damage he was doing exceeded the value of his assets. Suing someone under the circumstances has the natural result of driving him in to bankruptcy.
The "driving him into bankrupcty" is to be compared to collecting the money for the damages done, which would have been the preferred outcome.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. Besides, if you're planning your asset for a bankruptcy, you're probably committing fraud, anyway!
The bankruptcy law is the same everywhere, as it's federal. However, state law determines the exemptions (there are default federal exemptions, but states can opt out).
The biggie in Florida is a lack of a value limit on a homestead. (Iowa , too, but . ..)
However, spamming judgments likely fall within the "intentionally caused harm" exception to discharge.
In 1996, I gleefully voted "None of the Above" for President. I'd been planning on a protest vote for a third party, but I was quite happy to be remindced when my ballot arrived that we Nevadans have tha toption (Electors are a statewide office).
In 2000, though, I read that year's Libertarian candidate's statement in the Wall Street Journal--and I could have written every line (save for one where he called for too much government). I happily voted for him.
However, last time I checked, the Libertarian Party still required taking its oath to join--and I have moral objections to it (sometimes first use of force *is* morally required).
BTW, a locally determined minimum wage isn't "sensible", it's just "less senseless" (and less harmful to the poor) than a federal level . ..
I'm troubled by the fact that Dennis Hastert, a BA in Economics and Speaker of the House, actually thinks it's somehow a good idea
I've got a Ph.D. in the field, and I think it's a good idea. Not the solution to all the world's problems that it gets sold as, but:
1) Companies bring various stages of production in-house, to avoid the tax,
Actually, a VAT makes no difference at that level. Assume it's the final producer that sells to the consumer for simplicity's sake (it makes no difference; it's just easier to see). If the product will sell for $100 + $20 VAT, it really makes little (not "no") difference whether the firm buys it for $80 and sells it for $20 and collects an entire $20 in tax ($120 total), or buys it for $80+$16 and sells it for $20. Same net effect either way, with the same incentives to produce (even if it could make that $80 input itself, it would add a $16 VAT to *that* portion). Howevever, it *does* make inventory a bit more expensive.
2) Companies become less-prone to developing new goods/services, as they become taxed more with each successive level of complexity
This applies to *any* tax; it really has nothing to do with the VAT.
Probably the worst aspect of a VAT, however, is that it is a tax which is invisible to the end-consumer;
This is a serious problem--but it's no worse than payroll withholding (it's the same thing, actually)>
Contrast this with a sales tax, which slaps the consumer in the face every time he/she buys something;
Err, VAT and sales tax are the same thing, with the only difference being that sales taax is collected only at the final stage, while it's collected a bit at a time along the way. The salses tax is easier to evade (can be done at a single point), while the VAT causes some extra capital burdens along the way. For the "hiding," the solution is simply to have the VAT appear on the sales tag the same way sales tax does.
It's not that VATs are good for the economy; no tax is--but we can't get by without them. It's that they would do less damage.
I was asked to sign the FairTax letter, and ended up instead writing a couple of columns about why I didn't. The first actually extolled the virtues o f the plan, and is at http://dochawk.org/column.050204.html
Imagine if somebody took that scene from STNG where a dude got his face burned off by a phaser, then went on a anti-violence campaign against Paramount.
Slashdot Mirror
hawk
That's OK; it was really an article from yesterday.
hawk
Are you sure he's much of a "gold bug" though? Unabashed gold bugs (like Austrian economist Mark Skousen) would suggest just the opposite.
:)
:)
.
.)
.)
.
I suppose it depends upon whether you compare him to most of us, or to other gold bugs
His ideals are pretty clearly more libertarian than classical liberal; he once said in an interview in Reason magazine that he'd "like to be a zero-government libertarian" (like his son, David), but when asked why he wasn't one, he noted that it's not feasible.
And recognizing that infeasibility is one of the primary distinctions between classic liberals and libertarians
Friedman partly attributes the exacerbation of the Depression
If memory serves, he also made the best observation I've heard about the Great Depression: we have a sample size of 1, it was very strange, and we can't really draw any sound conclusions about it . .
The ability to control inflation by controlling the money supply is awfully valuable, when it works
Actually, the only factors entering inflation are the size of economy and the supply of money (modified by its velocity). The *only* ways to have inflation are for the effective money supply to increase or the size of the economy to decrease
(though given housing prices lately, I wonder what the *actual* total inflation rate is, rather than the more-often reported CPI of (currently) about 3%).
Somewhat less. We've fixed some of the overstatement in the CPI, but it's still tooo high.
might I also suggest making your blog's presence known on a few other econ. and/or law-related blogs:
Wow. Posner has one? I'm not surprised, he ought to. (He also should be on the SC, but . .
I'll look at those. (OK, I have to finish this NSF review before I do anythign else today, but . .
I'm really designed more as op-ed columns than blog. Maybe I should give in . .
Oh, and:
(though I often wonder if I should've made it my major when I started university, rather than CS)...)
You would be a *very* desirable candidate for an Econ Ph.D. program.
Seriously.
Your math preparation and analytic ability is *far* more important than prior econ classes to your success in Ph.D. level econ classes. And there is a *severe* shortage of american students in this field.
And if you're single, you can live quite comfortably on the stipend from a good program. Email me if you'd be interested in discussing it.
hawk
The thing is, new phones don't give the satisfaction of slamming the phone back on the hook when given bad news.
.
However, they're no longer built so solidly that you can't tiwst the wretched life out of the damnted thin, making it a warped pile of plastic and wire, suffering forevermore for the anguish it caused you . .
hawk
If I do something stupid (real-life example: rm -rf /mnt/floppy/ * when the CWD is ~): Hands into face. Scream or cry.
/recovery; dd if=/dev/da0s1 | strings |split -b 10M - caught
:)
cd
Not that I've ever been in that situation
Also, since it was lyx/latex, I would have done better to use tr so strip everything out of the 32-127 range--I ended up losing my equations and formatting.
hawk
Quite obviously, this is why people *phone* you to give you bad news . . .
hawk
hawk
Actually, that's possible.
.
.
I had a discussion a while back with someone who was caught between three states. Two, if memory served, classified him as a resident for the entire year, thus subject to state taxes on all income, for having been in the state for five months. A third state, where he lived and earned money, wanted to tax it for the obvious reasons. . .
Also, there at least used to be an income range where if you were retired and drawing Social Secuirty, but worked part time, the combined reduction in benefits, federal income tax, and new social security taxes could hit over 100% . .
hawk
They do indeed have to give full faith and credit to the *judgment*. However, states have some leeway on matters that violate their own public policy (for example, enforcement of gambling debts).
An Nevada has taken it much further. California decided that it could tax retirement income of former Calilifornia residents. Nevada responded by adding to its list of exemptions "all property situate within the state of Nevada if the judgment is for state income tax on retirement income," or something similar.
hawk
They were a major factor.
.
And if you read the old complaints, you find that these taxes could be "as high as one part in a hundred of a man's earnings".
See, it turns out that taxation *with* representation ain't so hot, either . .
hawk
There are apparently some emitted radiation issues to go with it.
By having that switching power supply be a separate unit and the laptop run on DC, they apparently save some testing/clearance/certification issues.
hawk, who wishes he could remember more
See, their going the wrong direction.
.
Instead of batteries in cars, we need internal combustion engines in laptops . .
hawk, who'd probably get stuck with diesel
Well, I don't know about *any* tax -- an income tax doesn't explicitly tax the different levels of production as a VAT or sales tax does, for example
:) That was an excellent piece, BTW, describing the basic schools of thought as well as any description I've ever seen.
.)
:-) :)
:)
:)
It's not direct, but it's still there. The income tax (and others) still pull purchasing power out of the system. A VAT pulls it out during the production process, making production more costly, while an income tax takes away the ability of customers to purchase those products. It's really just different forms of friction.
The advantage of shifting to a consumption tax from income tax is the very fact that individuals *can* shift their taxes into the future by investing and postponing consumption. It increases (not "grows," damnit) the size of the economy. The tradeoff is that it is harder to make a consumption tax "as progressive" as an income tax (but protecting basic food and housing is easily done; FairTax does that well).
why we make a distinction at all between a sales tax and a VAT, to begin with,
The only difference is that the VAT is applied at each stage of production, while the sales tax is applied all at onece. The only real significance of this is that sales taxes are much easier to evade, while VAT's do increase the burden on intermediate stages of production.
Heh, thanks.
Thanks. That was actually one of the hardest pieces I've written. The second part should come out this weekend.
I find I pattern my views almost exactly to those of Milton Friedman,
He's one of us, quite definitely. Economists still tend to be, ahh, skeptical of his "gold bug" tendencies. In fact, we'd call anyone else who said the same things a crackpot. However, last time economists dismissed him as crazy he was so damned right that he got the Nobel Prize! (His work in the 60's pretty much said that the stagflation of the 70's was inevitable given the policies that did indeed cause it . .
Anyway, I've added your blog to my RSS aggregator, if that tells you anything.
Now if only I could get a major op-ed syndicator to to that
hawk
p.s.
I could really use some seed comments at the website
The man is showing assets of about $10M. He can afford to defend himself . . .
hawk
That's not just technically correct, but correct in substance, too :)
.
It's all about government intrusion . .
hawk
I am an attorney, but this is not legal advise. If you need that, get it from an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
Nearly everything this AC wrote is just plain nonsense.
Curiously, the only debts that aren't presently dischargeable in bankruptcy are fines imposed for crimes, child support awards and...guess what...student loans
No. Those aren't the only ones. Certain taxes (time dependent), fraud, luxury goods or large borrowing within 60 days of filing (presumptively), omitted debts, willfully injury, fiduciary violations, death from dui, and a few others. (see 11 USC 523).
Spam probably falls into the "willful injury" category.
You can thank the GOP for the latter in 1995.
No, you made that up, too. They may have been tightened over abuses at that point, but they weren't generally dischargeable until several years after payment was first due. *That* happened due to the MDs leaving med school and filing.
Punitive damages awarded for mass torts are dischargeable in Chapter 11 for the big boys,
No, that's not true, either. Those are nondischargeable. While it would be *possible* to do a Chapter 11 that left those unpaid, it would *require* that the creditors, including the victims, receive at least as much as they would in a liquidation, and would result in the owners/shareholders losing their *entire* stake in the business.
So aside from having the law and facts entirely wrong, I suppose you may have a point.
hawk, esq.
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need that, consult an attorney in your area.
Corporations or any other employer are liabile for the actions of their employees--but so are the employees. Generally, it's not worth going after the employees.
If you commit torts, the fact that you work for a corporation you own isn't going to protect you.
hawk, esq
those legal fees are nothing compared to the size of the judgments that result when you somehow keep your lawyers and still lose . . .
hawk
No, it's not like that at all.
The damage he was doing exceeded the value of his assets. Suing someone under the circumstances has the natural result of driving him in to bankruptcy.
The "driving him into bankrupcty" is to be compared to collecting the money for the damages done, which would have been the preferred outcome.
hawk
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. Besides, if you're planning your asset for a bankruptcy, you're probably committing fraud, anyway!
.)
The bankruptcy law is the same everywhere, as it's federal. However, state law determines the exemptions (there are default federal exemptions, but states can opt out).
The biggie in Florida is a lack of a value limit on a homestead. (Iowa , too, but . .
However, spamming judgments likely fall within the "intentionally caused harm" exception to discharge.
hwk, esq.
>I wouldn't say they can ignore the first amendment,
They can.
Really.
It only applies to the federal gvoernment (and to the states through the XIVth).
hawk
Gosh, anything with Macaulay Culkin in it always did that for me :)
hawk, who rooted for the burglers in Home Alone
I've considered it on and off for years.
.
I have a problem with the oath.
In 1996, I gleefully voted "None of the Above" for President. I'd been planning on a protest vote for a third party, but I was quite happy to be remindced when my ballot arrived that we Nevadans have tha toption (Electors are a statewide office).
In 2000, though, I read that year's Libertarian candidate's statement in the Wall Street Journal--and I could have written every line (save for one where he called for too much government). I happily voted for him.
However, last time I checked, the Libertarian Party still required taking its oath to join--and I have moral objections to it (sometimes first use of force *is* morally required).
BTW, a locally determined minimum wage isn't "sensible", it's just "less senseless" (and less harmful to the poor) than a federal level . .
hawk, classic liberal
I'm troubled by the fact that Dennis Hastert, a BA in Economics and Speaker of the House, actually thinks it's somehow a good idea
:)
I've got a Ph.D. in the field, and I think it's a good idea. Not the solution to all the world's problems that it gets sold as, but:
1) Companies bring various stages of production in-house, to avoid the tax,
Actually, a VAT makes no difference at that level. Assume it's the final producer that sells to the consumer for simplicity's sake (it makes no difference; it's just easier to see). If the product will sell for $100 + $20 VAT, it really makes little (not "no") difference whether the firm buys it for $80 and sells it for $20 and collects an entire $20 in tax ($120 total), or buys it for $80+$16 and sells it for $20. Same net effect either way, with the same incentives to produce (even if it could make that $80 input itself, it would add a $16 VAT to *that* portion). Howevever, it *does* make inventory a bit more expensive.
2) Companies become less-prone to developing new goods/services, as they become taxed more with each successive level of complexity
This applies to *any* tax; it really has nothing to do with the VAT.
Probably the worst aspect of a VAT, however, is that it is a tax which is invisible to the end-consumer;
This is a serious problem--but it's no worse than payroll withholding (it's the same thing, actually)>
Contrast this with a sales tax, which slaps the consumer in the face every time he/she buys something;
Err, VAT and sales tax are the same thing, with the only difference being that sales taax is collected only at the final stage, while it's collected a bit at a time along the way. The salses tax is easier to evade (can be done at a single point), while the VAT causes some extra capital burdens along the way. For the "hiding," the solution is simply to have the VAT appear on the sales tag the same way sales tax does.
It's not that VATs are good for the economy; no tax is--but we can't get by without them. It's that they would do less damage.
I was asked to sign the FairTax letter, and ended up instead writing a couple of columns about why I didn't. The first actually extolled the virtues o f the plan, and is at http://dochawk.org/column.050204.html
You also might like http://dochawk.org/column.050324.html about classic liberals--you sound like one of us
hawk
Imagine if somebody took that scene from STNG where a dude got his face burned off by a phaser, then went on a anti-violence campaign against Paramount.
.
Quick! Ban phasers . .
hawk