Your raw data doesnt lead to your conclusions. I did ask how you got to those conclusions I did not ask that you simply repeat that you have them.
You cannot substantiate that GDP cannot grow at 7%. You even claim that China is struggling to maintain 7% GDP growth when in fact they are at 10% real GDP growth (thats inflation adjusted.) So not only have you not justified your conclusion, you are even wrong about basic trivial to find facts.
This growth rate is not keeping up with inflation. Purchasing power of the bottom 95% has dropped consistently since 1988.
Duh. Do you actually have a point anywhere? The GDP growth rate isnt keeping up with inflation. That does not mean that it cannot keep up with inflation. You have jumped from one to the other with no basis for doing so. Its as if you picked the theory first, and now are desperately trying to snooker people into believing it without any justification.
Dont you think that maybe the fact that we have the highest corporate tax rates in the world might have something to do with this? Sure, you can point to some of our industries that pay less than our top corporate tax rates (again, the highest in the world) because of congressionally-given tax breaks, deductions, and incentives.. but thats exactly the problem.. the government is arbitrarily picking winners, and losers. If you arent in one of the chosen industries, you dont get those tax breaks.. instead you get the biggest tax bill this world has to offer.
You claim that we have a labor shortage? really? What the Fuck? Are you really this stupid?
Anything above 3% isn't really practical for an economy our size.
Says why? You got a citation, or is this just some sort of general feeling?
China has a GDP if about (currently) half ours, yet has sustained an average 10% growth for most of the period between 1962 and today. Citation not needed.
The U.S. will never see 7% without huge inflation which would eat most of your double.
uh, what? How precisely is an increase in the supply of goods and services going to cause inflation? It causes the opposite.
Your error is in assuming that because inflation increases the measure of GDP in whatever dollars are current, that anyone gives a shit about GDP in non-constant dollars. Nobody that talks about increasing GDP is using non-constant dollars. They are talking about increasing the real value.
Why are you talking about momentary income when you should be talking about long-term ability to produce income?
I'm not. I'm talking about income, period.
No matter how you slice it, you can only take someones wealth away once. So you've paid for this years budget shortfall. What about next years?
Do you really think that confiscating wealth is a solution to anything? Every time you mention wealth you are being completely stupid. Taxing wealth is fucking stupid. Let me repeat that. Taxing wealth is a fucking stupid idea. Even a 5th grader knows that. Stop being stupid.
Have you ever tried making a budget with income below the poverty line?
Yes. What point were you trying to make given that my answer is 'yes?'
The guy making 20K/year already pays a much lower rate than the guy making 100K/year as it is, yet still you complain, proving that trying to justify the general case with extreme examples is fallacious. We are already using the solution you recommend, but here you are still complaining about it.
The stupid solution is the simple arithmetic solution. Maximize todays tax revenue by fucking with tax rates without regard for future tax revenue.
The smart solution is the differential calculus solution. Maximize future tax revenue without any regard for todays tax revenue.
How exactly do you think people become rich enough to never have to work again? Do you think its by maximizing todays income, or by maximizing tomorrows?
If we maximize GDP growth then it wont be long before a flat 1% tax rate on all transactions (= $150 billion today) would cover all the services that we currently provide. We could provide even more services. Have far more extensive safety nets. Have a greater infrastructure than is even dreamed about today.
Jealousy is the result of people too stupid to think about their future. Jealousy is present-tense idiocy. People caught up in instant gratification make stupid decisions and propose stupid solutions.
I'm talking about wealth because wealth, past a certain quantity of it (that which we call capital) is a reliable way of generating more wealth essentially in perpetuity.
Thats called income, dumbass.
Now let me ask you again. Why are you talking about wealth when you should be talking about income?
The only serious way out involves LOTS of cuts, everywhere.
I beg to differ. Not only is this not the "only" way, its not even a serious way.
The solution to the problem is increasing GDP. It is the fact that we have a large economy that pays for services we desire in the scale that we desire them.
GDP growth is at 1.5% It needs to be above 5% again. At 7% we double the economy in 10 years, and that would completely wipe out the current deficit and provide a very large surplus.
Taxing the rich isnt the answer. Letting the economy grow is the answer.
How about the percentage of the budget shouldered by the top wealth holders vs their share of said wealth?
Why are you talking about wealth when you should be talking about income? You can only confiscate wealth once. The budget shortfalls are annual.. next year there is another one.
The Laffer curve is a tool of an immoral government.
Do you really want to live in the country that MAXIMIZES tax revenue at your expense?
Besides which, you start off by saying that nobody has any idea which side of the curve we are on, but then immediately declare that "odds are" that we are on the low side!
You end off by declaring that our poor "don't have shit." Tell that to the 600 million people in India that actually dont have shit, you myopic jackass.
VP8 isnt on par with H.264, but even if it were (which again, it is not)...
Both are yesterdays technology.. tomorrows technology is literally just around the corner. H.265 is scheduled for completion this year and is expected to HALVE the bitrate for the same quality.
This is the nail-in-the-coffin problem that dooms standardizing on either H.264 or VP8. While some would like to argue that VP8 is "good enough" compared to H.264, they are ignoring the real problem. "Good enough" when the cherry-picked rival also sucks just doesnt make for a compelling argument.
As for Gapminder (great tool, I love it), it's pretty much useless in this case because there's only a measly six countries that have reported income distribution data,
Learn how to use Gapminder then, because you are wrong again. There are 6 countries that report ANNUAL Gini data, but almost all of them report Gini data.
You claim that the government is the people, yet you will not find many believers here on slashdot. The popular opinion is that the government no longer represents the people. The popular opinion is that the government now represents the corporations. The opinion is so wide-spread that it is you that needs to provide a citation if you are arguing the contrary.
the keyword 'all' only works collectively, if at all, and you are essentially advocating trickle-down economics.
Not at all. The GDP does not care how the money flows or in what direction, only that it does so.
The problem of (first-world) society is one of distribution not of total wealth
Citation needed. You are claiming that its a problem, yet all of our standards of living have greatly risen while living under this "problem." I'm sure if you respond you will use some circular logic (the ol 'there is a disparity, so it is a problem' convolution) but you can't win me over with fallacies.
The only certain problem being discussed is that the federal deficit is far greater than federal revenue. The 2011 numbers are $2.3T in revenue, $3.6T in spending. Thats a $1.3 Trillion deficit. Revenue has to increase by 56.5%.
$1.3T divided evenly by the top 14000 households (the top 1%), thats $92.8M per household, 3 times as much as their entire yearly income. Thats right, even at a 100% tax rate that they cannot avoid they cannot cover the current deficit.
The problem is not income disparity. The problem is not tax rates. The problem is spending more than we take in. The problem is that the government is spending at a rate only justifiable in a larger economy. The solution is a larger economy.
What I am arguing, however, is that smaller changes generally do in fact change revenue in the way you'd expect.
The real pisser is that even if we start a discussion about what the optimal rates would be to maximize federal revenue, you still have to justify that the government should be seeking to maximize revenue.
I claim that a government that seeks to maximize tax revenue at the expense of its citizens is an immoral, tyrannical government. You seem to think otherwise. Do you also support your employer maximizing revenue at your expense? Maybe some mandatory overtime, most of your pay in the form of company store credits, and so forth?
Taxes arent much different than the abusive labor practices of yesteryear. "Take" a big portion of your "labor", and then "give it back" in the form of "services."
You talk about small changes in tax rates having small changes in tax revenue. That means small changes in the deficit. Do you see the problem? We need to make big changes to the deficit.
I propose that we are all better off if we work towards maximizing the growth rate of our GDP. A 10% growth rate isnt unattainable. That could double tax revenue in only 7 years, and make us all twice as rich in the process. We dont have to do anything to either the tax rates or the spending levels to balance the budget. We just need to grow our economy like we used to do.
Last quarter the annual GDP growth rate was announced to be 1.5%. We are fucked if we dont figure out how to ramp that up greatly. The chance that increasing tax rates will increase GDP growth rates without a corresponding increase in new infrastructure spending is exactly 0%. No chance at all. None.
But actually, high income disparity in a society correlates with a number of undesirable outcomes
What does "high income disparity" actually mean? Its a statement without substance."High" is not a number. Its an appeal to emotion.
increased crime and violence, shorter average lifespans, poorer health, etc. And those trends apply to the wealthy in a society as well, it's not just the poor schmucks bringing down the average.
If we are going by the Gini index, then you are flat-out wrong. I wonder where you got this notion, because it sure as hell wasn't from the data. See Gapminder, which contains uncherry-picked data. Raw data from around the world.. every country. You can graph it any way you like, for any year that you like.. can watch the graph change over time in an animated way, and so forth. The graphs show strong correlation to GDP per capita and those things you listed, not the Gini index and those things you listed. The correlation with GDP per capita and those things is so strong that you yourself will admit its futile to try to find a correlation within the random scatter when the Gini index is on one of the axis. Sure, there might be a slight correlation.. but its swamped by GDP.
Improve GDP and everyone is better off. Every time. Every country. Every year.
The problem, it seems, is that you believe other peoples interpretations of the data rather than actual graphs of all of the data. You forgot that what matters most actually has to matter most.
which is a desirable thing if you're trying to limit income disparity.
Why are you trying to do this? It is more reasonable to raise the standard of living of everyone instead of throwing a gaussian on income levels.
The collectivists dont want to talk about the goal of making everyone better off. They want to talk about the method of making everyone more equal. The method is taxation. Their goal doesnt make us better off.
All Americans are rich because we have traditionally had high levels of GDP growth. The fact that it wasn't distributed "evenly" wasn't an issue. The poorest Americans are still well above the global average because of that growth. Even our poor are well within the rich side of the bell curve.
You can talk all day about income disparity. It sounds good.. like you might actually give a shit. When you are done trying to convince me and everyone else that you care.. would you like to now tell us your plan for making us all better?
Because quite frankly, I don't give a fuck if you care or not. I give a fuck about a sound plan to make us all better off, and taxation isnt fucking it.
Lets get that GDP ball rolling again. Its at what, 1.5% annual as of last quarter? Sure, lets distribute that evenly...
The GDP should be north of 5% (doubling every 14.5 years or faster), not at 1.5% (doubling every 46.5 years.) What a difference a few percent makes to you and your children's futures.. meanwhile you talk about wealth redistribution.. I guess you care.. just not enough to know what matters.
Slashdot Mirror
You cannot substantiate that GDP cannot grow at 7%. You even claim that China is struggling to maintain 7% GDP growth when in fact they are at 10% real GDP growth (thats inflation adjusted.) So not only have you not justified your conclusion, you are even wrong about basic trivial to find facts.
This growth rate is not keeping up with inflation. Purchasing power of the bottom 95% has dropped consistently since 1988.
Duh. Do you actually have a point anywhere? The GDP growth rate isnt keeping up with inflation. That does not mean that it cannot keep up with inflation. You have jumped from one to the other with no basis for doing so. Its as if you picked the theory first, and now are desperately trying to snooker people into believing it without any justification.
Dont you think that maybe the fact that we have the highest corporate tax rates in the world might have something to do with this? Sure, you can point to some of our industries that pay less than our top corporate tax rates (again, the highest in the world) because of congressionally-given tax breaks, deductions, and incentives.. but thats exactly the problem.. the government is arbitrarily picking winners, and losers. If you arent in one of the chosen industries, you dont get those tax breaks.. instead you get the biggest tax bill this world has to offer.
You claim that we have a labor shortage? really? What the Fuck? Are you really this stupid?
You can deal with this by simply applying a tarriff on products from countries that don't implement reasonable carbon controls.
Very regressive. Consumers pay those taxes.
Anything above 3% isn't really practical for an economy our size.
Says why? You got a citation, or is this just some sort of general feeling?
China has a GDP if about (currently) half ours, yet has sustained an average 10% growth for most of the period between 1962 and today. Citation not needed.
Their current GDP is what ours was in 1994.
The U.S. will never see 7% without huge inflation which would eat most of your double.
uh, what? How precisely is an increase in the supply of goods and services going to cause inflation? It causes the opposite.
Your error is in assuming that because inflation increases the measure of GDP in whatever dollars are current, that anyone gives a shit about GDP in non-constant dollars. Nobody that talks about increasing GDP is using non-constant dollars. They are talking about increasing the real value.
Why are you talking about momentary income when you should be talking about long-term ability to produce income?
I'm not. I'm talking about income, period.
No matter how you slice it, you can only take someones wealth away once. So you've paid for this years budget shortfall. What about next years?
Do you really think that confiscating wealth is a solution to anything? Every time you mention wealth you are being completely stupid. Taxing wealth is fucking stupid. Let me repeat that. Taxing wealth is a fucking stupid idea. Even a 5th grader knows that. Stop being stupid.
Have you ever tried making a budget with income below the poverty line?
Yes. What point were you trying to make given that my answer is 'yes?'
The guy making 20K/year already pays a much lower rate than the guy making 100K/year as it is, yet still you complain, proving that trying to justify the general case with extreme examples is fallacious. We are already using the solution you recommend, but here you are still complaining about it.
The stupid solution is the simple arithmetic solution. Maximize todays tax revenue by fucking with tax rates without regard for future tax revenue.
The smart solution is the differential calculus solution. Maximize future tax revenue without any regard for todays tax revenue.
How exactly do you think people become rich enough to never have to work again? Do you think its by maximizing todays income, or by maximizing tomorrows?
If we maximize GDP growth then it wont be long before a flat 1% tax rate on all transactions (= $150 billion today) would cover all the services that we currently provide. We could provide even more services. Have far more extensive safety nets. Have a greater infrastructure than is even dreamed about today.
Jealousy is the result of people too stupid to think about their future. Jealousy is present-tense idiocy. People caught up in instant gratification make stupid decisions and propose stupid solutions.
I'm talking about wealth because wealth, past a certain quantity of it (that which we call capital) is a reliable way of generating more wealth essentially in perpetuity.
Thats called income, dumbass.
Now let me ask you again. Why are you talking about wealth when you should be talking about income?
The only serious way out involves LOTS of cuts, everywhere.
I beg to differ. Not only is this not the "only" way, its not even a serious way.
The solution to the problem is increasing GDP. It is the fact that we have a large economy that pays for services we desire in the scale that we desire them.
GDP growth is at 1.5% It needs to be above 5% again. At 7% we double the economy in 10 years, and that would completely wipe out the current deficit and provide a very large surplus.
Taxing the rich isnt the answer. Letting the economy grow is the answer.
10% from someone making $10,000/year is felt far, far more than 10% from someone making $100k/year
Sure, because how it "feels" should be an important factor to consider.
How about the percentage of the budget shouldered by the top wealth holders vs their share of said wealth?
Why are you talking about wealth when you should be talking about income? You can only confiscate wealth once. The budget shortfalls are annual.. next year there is another one.
The Laffer curve is a tool of an immoral government.
Do you really want to live in the country that MAXIMIZES tax revenue at your expense?
Besides which, you start off by saying that nobody has any idea which side of the curve we are on, but then immediately declare that "odds are" that we are on the low side!
You end off by declaring that our poor "don't have shit." Tell that to the 600 million people in India that actually dont have shit, you myopic jackass.
Please quite whining, go get a sound editor and edit it out. It's easy and that's exactly what a big label would do.
I dont have to go get a sound editor. I have the best one open source provides:
Audacity.
Now you tell me which magic filter I need to use, eh? The one labeled The Great and Awesome Love of the Rainbow Unicorn?
Translation: Don't be an ignorant twit.
Yet none of those care, because for maybe one of the first times, there are actual, recent recordings in the public domains. But coughing? Seriously?
Seriously.. 1st movement, after playing begins.. a cough...
Apparently its someones recital.. sounds like a tape player is used to record it.. where you can even hear the noise of the spinning tape...
I might be persuaded to donate if there wasnt coughing and other noise in moonlight sonata
Sounds like an all-life integrity. Hell, he might even be intellectually honest.
Maybe she just doesnt have any tolerance for stupidity. I doint think she would tolerate you for missing it.
VP8 isnt on par with H.264, but even if it were (which again, it is not) ...
Both are yesterdays technology.. tomorrows technology is literally just around the corner. H.265 is scheduled for completion this year and is expected to HALVE the bitrate for the same quality.
This is the nail-in-the-coffin problem that dooms standardizing on either H.264 or VP8. While some would like to argue that VP8 is "good enough" compared to H.264, they are ignoring the real problem. "Good enough" when the cherry-picked rival also sucks just doesnt make for a compelling argument.
As for Gapminder (great tool, I love it), it's pretty much useless in this case because there's only a measly six countries that have reported income distribution data,
Learn how to use Gapminder then, because you are wrong again. There are 6 countries that report ANNUAL Gini data, but almost all of them report Gini data.
You claim that the government is the people, yet you will not find many believers here on slashdot. The popular opinion is that the government no longer represents the people. The popular opinion is that the government now represents the corporations. The opinion is so wide-spread that it is you that needs to provide a citation if you are arguing the contrary.
the keyword 'all' only works collectively, if at all, and you are essentially advocating trickle-down economics.
Not at all. The GDP does not care how the money flows or in what direction, only that it does so.
The problem of (first-world) society is one of distribution not of total wealth
Citation needed. You are claiming that its a problem, yet all of our standards of living have greatly risen while living under this "problem." I'm sure if you respond you will use some circular logic (the ol 'there is a disparity, so it is a problem' convolution) but you can't win me over with fallacies.
The only certain problem being discussed is that the federal deficit is far greater than federal revenue. The 2011 numbers are $2.3T in revenue, $3.6T in spending. Thats a $1.3 Trillion deficit. Revenue has to increase by 56.5%.
$1.3T divided evenly by the top 14000 households (the top 1%), thats $92.8M per household, 3 times as much as their entire yearly income. Thats right, even at a 100% tax rate that they cannot avoid they cannot cover the current deficit.
The problem is not income disparity. The problem is not tax rates. The problem is spending more than we take in. The problem is that the government is spending at a rate only justifiable in a larger economy. The solution is a larger economy.
Perhaps you should learn what 'maximize' means.
What I am arguing, however, is that smaller changes generally do in fact change revenue in the way you'd expect.
The real pisser is that even if we start a discussion about what the optimal rates would be to maximize federal revenue, you still have to justify that the government should be seeking to maximize revenue.
I claim that a government that seeks to maximize tax revenue at the expense of its citizens is an immoral, tyrannical government. You seem to think otherwise. Do you also support your employer maximizing revenue at your expense? Maybe some mandatory overtime, most of your pay in the form of company store credits, and so forth?
Taxes arent much different than the abusive labor practices of yesteryear. "Take" a big portion of your "labor", and then "give it back" in the form of "services."
You talk about small changes in tax rates having small changes in tax revenue. That means small changes in the deficit. Do you see the problem? We need to make big changes to the deficit.
I propose that we are all better off if we work towards maximizing the growth rate of our GDP. A 10% growth rate isnt unattainable. That could double tax revenue in only 7 years, and make us all twice as rich in the process. We dont have to do anything to either the tax rates or the spending levels to balance the budget. We just need to grow our economy like we used to do.
Last quarter the annual GDP growth rate was announced to be 1.5%. We are fucked if we dont figure out how to ramp that up greatly. The chance that increasing tax rates will increase GDP growth rates without a corresponding increase in new infrastructure spending is exactly 0%. No chance at all. None.
But actually, high income disparity in a society correlates with a number of undesirable outcomes
What does "high income disparity" actually mean? Its a statement without substance."High" is not a number. Its an appeal to emotion.
increased crime and violence, shorter average lifespans, poorer health, etc. And those trends apply to the wealthy in a society as well, it's not just the poor schmucks bringing down the average.
If we are going by the Gini index, then you are flat-out wrong. I wonder where you got this notion, because it sure as hell wasn't from the data. See Gapminder, which contains uncherry-picked data. Raw data from around the world.. every country. You can graph it any way you like, for any year that you like.. can watch the graph change over time in an animated way, and so forth. The graphs show strong correlation to GDP per capita and those things you listed, not the Gini index and those things you listed. The correlation with GDP per capita and those things is so strong that you yourself will admit its futile to try to find a correlation within the random scatter when the Gini index is on one of the axis. Sure, there might be a slight correlation.. but its swamped by GDP.
Improve GDP and everyone is better off. Every time. Every country. Every year.
The problem, it seems, is that you believe other peoples interpretations of the data rather than actual graphs of all of the data. You forgot that what matters most actually has to matter most.
Allowing any codec has consequences
Yes, like doubling the effective bandwidth of the entire internet (which is mostly video these days.)
which is a desirable thing if you're trying to limit income disparity.
Why are you trying to do this? It is more reasonable to raise the standard of living of everyone instead of throwing a gaussian on income levels.
The collectivists dont want to talk about the goal of making everyone better off. They want to talk about the method of making everyone more equal. The method is taxation. Their goal doesnt make us better off.
All Americans are rich because we have traditionally had high levels of GDP growth. The fact that it wasn't distributed "evenly" wasn't an issue. The poorest Americans are still well above the global average because of that growth. Even our poor are well within the rich side of the bell curve.
You can talk all day about income disparity. It sounds good.. like you might actually give a shit. When you are done trying to convince me and everyone else that you care.. would you like to now tell us your plan for making us all better?
Because quite frankly, I don't give a fuck if you care or not. I give a fuck about a sound plan to make us all better off, and taxation isnt fucking it.
Lets get that GDP ball rolling again. Its at what, 1.5% annual as of last quarter? Sure, lets distribute that evenly...
The GDP should be north of 5% (doubling every 14.5 years or faster), not at 1.5% (doubling every 46.5 years.) What a difference a few percent makes to you and your children's futures.. meanwhile you talk about wealth redistribution.. I guess you care.. just not enough to know what matters.
You would have a point if it didnt come with a keyboard and trackpad that is always with the device. In other words, you have no point.