Yup, Soviet gov't disappeared. Now they just have a former KGB as president of Russia
- if they didn't WAIT for the country to go completely bust and reformed before that happened, allowed real free market capitalism even while maintaining an illusion of the previous communist gov't, they wouldn't be in that situation.
You too dumb, too stupid, you see, to read the comment you are replying to and you are even dumber to understand it.
If US people kicked their gov't in the balls before the country falls over, like USSR did, if US people forced the gov't to return to the Constitution, to the law above the gov't, then the transition would work.
If the country falls, the system falls apart and there is no Constitution, there is no gov't, then anything can happen, anybody can come to power. This is exactly what the US people should NOT wait for.
But again, you are not very bright, too dim to get it.
- very simply because people want to eat and to live better and without the gov't theft and subsidies they would have to work.
1. When China stops subsidising US consumption, the goods that you are now enjoying that are cheap at Walmart will no longer be affordable to you. They are not affordable to Americans today without massive amounts of subsidy by the Chinese and others, who buy US debt, take in US dollars. When China stops subsidising USA, there will no longer be any goods on the shelves of those hypermarkets.
2. Once the goods are gone and few can afford them, there will be no amount of gov't spending of fake dollars that could reverse that, in fact every new dollar created under that system would only cause higher inflation and higher prices.
3. Once the prices are so high, it's because in reality US consumers just can't pay for Chinese labour! Well, they can't pay for Chinese labour today, but they are getting subsidised.
4. Once US consumers can't afford the Chinese labour, they will only have themselves to rely upon or they could lay down and die, and I don't think they are ready to do that. So they'll have to work again and it means there will be opportunities to make money in the new growing productive market. But this will require the gov't to disappear for all practical purposes.
5. Gov't will disappear. Soviet gov't disappeared for the same reason - couldn't afford to exist anymore. Once gov't disappears, the free market will step in and there will be opportunity to make money again, to build businesses, etc.
The problem for the Americans is that if that happens later rather than sooner, they'll have even less savings and capital than now and they'll be starting from a lower level than if they kicked their gov't in the nuts right now, cut it by maybe 99% (well, let's not get crazy, maybe cut it by 98%), then USA could restructure within the next 1.5-3 years and have a growing economy again.
That's not going to happen of-course, they'll wait for total destruction before they start moving.
I've never yet seen a certification that was worth more than a pile of used toilet paper.
- that's because those are trying to pretend to be something they are not. I am not talking about a replacement for the higher education, I am talking about certification of a person as of somebody who knows specific things, who has shown good work ethic. I am talking about certifying a person as somebody who is ready for work (certifying, not preparing them, only testing).
Even once it does- it still won't be 10% as good as a degree.
- you are missing my point, I am not talking about replacing any degree. However you are wrong too, how many people with degrees are serving fries and have mortgages but no house after years of expensive worthless 'education'? Sociology majors with 200,000 in debt, what is their education truly worth? Nothing.
The entire idea of a market solving anythign else shows a complete lack of understanding of economics.
- you are showing amazing lack of understanding of economics. Free market will provide what is lacking, so if it's choice that is lacking and people are interested to pay for choice, then free market provides choice.
If it's lowest price, because otherwise too few are buying, then it's lowest price. iPads are not cheap in the market, yet there is a market for iPads.
But ignoring that, there is no replacement for taking a few years and studying a topic in depth surrounded by fellow students and with extensive resources all around you.
- and I am not talking about teaching anything to anybody, so you are lacking comprehension skills, you supposedly 'taught' something to somebody at some college? I wonder what you could teach if you can't even read.
Khan and similar ideas are great for additional resources for parents, for tutoring, for a bit of adult learning. Its not and never will be a replacement for college.
- and again, I am not talking about 'replacing college', that would be a fruitless exercise in futility, I am talking about certifying that a person is ready for a job and here is what we certify he knows, here is his ethic, because we observed it for a few months.
You can't read, can't comprehend, I wouldn't certify you even if you paid me.
There is money to be made in providing certification of people who want to skip college and institutions and go straight into the work force. If an institution (say Khan academy) set up a certification program that tested the student, maybe a 2-4 months program, which was intensively testing the student's ethic, logic, understanding of different subjects, and then a paper was provided saying: this student is certified by Khan academy to be this this and that.
In fact the future employers could even pay for such certifications, but in any case these certifications shouldn't run more than a few thousand dollars (maybe 2-4K), this would be a huge help to people who either don't have the interest, aptitude or money going into the higher education, but who still can be certified to be proficient in whatever subjects, certified to have good work ethic, etc.
There is money to be made in this, what I mean is that this is probably a viable business opportunity, and it would provide people with a useful paper (whoever the certifier would have his name at stake to provide honest certification) and the wouldn't accrue the insane levels of debt that majority of the students today are only able to get into because the government guarantees the debts.
- my point exactly. Do you want more of that or do you want businesses to start investing in USA again? This is the point, I am not even saying something that is in the future, I am looking at now, in the future there will be more of it, more businesses in USA will fail, more will leave, people will leave. Why should the kids stay in USA to be paying for this debt? This 'social contract' they never voted for or agreed to?
My point is exactly that to reverse this trend the US must act and the way to act is not to grow the government, it's the exact opposite, it's to grow the freedoms of people.
When Obama says 'freedom', he doesn't understand what it is. He doesn't know anything about the Constitution even though he is supposedly a Constitutional lawyer, well, he'd fail every class if I was giving them. He thinks 'freedom' is ability to take away from some in order to subsidise the others. 'Freedom' to have free birth control. Nobody prevents people from having birth control, he wants it to be an entitlement for some and an obligation to others and he wants to call that 'freedom'.
That kind of 'freedom' must stop and real freedom must start again for USA to get back on its feet.
Assange is a political refugee, he needs a hide out because a large and a very powerful organisation (and more than one) are after him for disseminating information that those powerful organisations want to keep quiet.
If Assange falls in the hands of American government, he is going to be made an example of, and it's going to be worse than Vietnam for him, sort of like what they did to Bradley Manning but maybe times 10.
Isn't it amazing, 60 years ago people wouldn't have believed if somebody told them, that America could become this....
This is evil. This is on the level of evil that only a powerful system can cause. This is the same type of evil that puts people to jail for possessing plants or in fact possessing anything, and in fact this is exactly that kind of a situation - possession.
This is the kind of evil that people gloss over and don't think twice about, it's about 'them', not about 'you', right?
Copyrights and patents shouldn't even exist as government laws, just like laws about narcotics, prostitution laws, none of this should be authorised to the government control.
First, you believe all taxes are drains on society?
- yes, under ALL circumstances.
Of-course all gov't is inherently evil but we need to fund minimum of it even under libertarian or minarchist ideology (not anarchist though), so all taxes are a drain on society but we have to live with some minimum amount of waste allocated to the government.
You can't have government without revenue
- obviously.
and anarchy always leads to monarchy
- not true, in Ukraine in the beginning of the 20th century and up to the late twenties there was a very strong anarchist movement. This didn't lead to monarchy, it was a fight against a different type of totalitarian system and that system won, it had more power on its side. If you care you can look up Nestor Makhno.
Some things, like roads and bridges, are best done by governments and paid for by taxes
- that's a false statement. Those things are not 'best' done by gov't, they are done by gov't because gov't takes over that function and pushes the private capital aside.
There are plenty of private roads in USA, the Ambassador Bridge was built privately back in 1929. There is no reason why bridges and roads cannot be built privately (and they are and they were and they will be) because somebody sees an opportunity where money can be made and provides customers with another product.
Why shouldn't there be more private bridges and roads? They are better maintained, they are better and faster constructed (407 in Ontario is owned privately, though it started as a public road, it was sold and it's been a success, it is constantly expanded, lanes are added, people take it rather than 401 and other busy roads.
In fact why should the people be paying taxes so that gov't can build unprofitable bridges and roads with union labour, which is clearly more expensive, takes longer, it's clear that this is not about performance and efficiency with the gov't, gov't isn't in a hurry to do the job well and start generating money, so public roads are closed all the time.
Construction signs. Who likes construction signs? And there are many of them and they never end, it's because it's public, the money never ends, the company makes more money the longer it takes, it's not about profit and it well should be about profit. If there are no profits in roads and bridges, then building them with tax payer money is a waste of resources and growth of gov't.
This is no more a tax than my city mandating that I hire a private waste disposal company to take my garbage.
- and why should the city mandate something like that? What are going to do with your garbage, sit on it? Sure, the neighbourhood can have ordinances - you can't collect garbage on the back yard.
When in Ontario (or was it just Toronto) there was a huge garbage strike a few years back, the city was stinking to high heaven, and if you hired private contractor to pick up the garbage, the police and the striking garbage men would assault the contractors! They attacked their trucks, broke some of them, the police was on the side of the union workers, big surprise. The people liked the private garbage collection. 5 bucks, they picked up ALL garbage, you didn't have to sort anything, and they even swept the sidewalks.
So, you're against murder, rape, and theft laws?
- this has nothing to do with federal gov't, this is a State issue. I would go further, I don't think it's any of gov't business at all. This should be handled privately, private courts, private prisons, private security. The prison time should be paid for with private liability insurance and there shouldn't even be jail time for theft, you should be forced to pay money back, maybe 3 times the amount or whatever. Clearly gov't shouldn't even have a role in any of this and there shouldn't be
Sure, but if US gov't didn't run the wars, spending on NASA could be increased by that 1% of the cost of war and at the same time the gov't spending would decrease overall. If the SS and Medicare were reformed (AFAIC they should be abolished, but let's say reformed), so that there is means testing - you don't get it if you don't need it (even those who are getting it today), then US economy could actually deleverage, stop the deficit spending, start paying back some of the debt. If the gov't size shrunk, the way it was done in 1921 and 1947, then US economy would actually start growing again within a couple of years from deleveraging. How much easier is it to find some money to fund NASA in a growing economy that is not wasting money and is not running wars than in a war type economy, with many times the war size government?
There is enough of gold, it's not a question of absolute quantity, it's the question of valuation in your preferred currency.
Gold used to be at 19 USD per ounce 100 years back, before the Fed was created. US gov't set the rate at 35 for a long time, after it stole the gold from the people. In 1971 the link was broken and price in USD went up to over 800 per ounce until 1981, when Paul Volcker smashed inflation with 21.5% interest rates.
For the last decade gold has been in the 'bull market' in US dollars (and in other currencies) specifically because of inflation.
1615USD per ounce today is the valuation. At 100,000 per ounce the same amount of gold gets many more US dollars.
Slavery is involuntary obligation put on a person to work for whoever the master is.
Taxing person's labour is unfair, this means the person has no ability to avoid giving up his productivity - his work, his life, because he can't stop working or he starves. Taxing transactions is different from taxing work. People don't have to participate in the transactions that are taxed, so people can avoid those taxes and this means they can avoid propping up the government, which is the desired outcome, because in this case the government is just another spending item.
Government is supposed to be just a spending item, it's a luxury spending item and by cutting consumption people should be able to cut on the amount of money they are paying to the government, which would force the government to shrink organically, which is what is needed when the economy cannot afford a larger government.
Gov't has authority to raise taxes, direct apportioned taxes, duties, imports, levies, basically uniform excise taxes. As I said, I discuss this at length in the journal linked in my sig.
What's fair? Do you know what 'fair' is? How is it at all fair under any circumstances to tax somebody's income? That means taxing their work, their labour, it means turning them into a slave. Not taxing transactions that they are involved in when they buy or sell things, taxing their labour? You can see my sig for a discussion about income taxes.
I am not in the US, I moved my business out of America to Asia 3 years ago now. And again, this is a personal attack that has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
That's completely unconstitutional, of-course that little fact never stopped government, and one thing is for sure - it's coming. It's already hard to get out of USA if you have anything (huge exit taxes, forcing you to liquidate property, businesses) and even for the people who don't own much - you have to pay now 450 USD for the form to drop the US citizenship. This will eventually be raised higher and higher, who is to say the gov't won't tell you that you can't leave until you pay out your portion of the national debt?
Forget national debt, they can tell you that you can never leave no matter what, USSR had that.
Not based on the freedoms, only based on the fluke that USA had a near monopoly in the labour market. That's why the so called middle class was so affluent, it wasn't middle class, middle class is small/medium size business owners and professionals, it was the working class that was enjoying the unsustainable monopoly on the job market.
So this was a very temporary decade of fake prosperity, not based on the fundamentally strong individual freedoms, but based on the destroyed infrastructure of other nations. You are right, USA probably was in a 'power peak', but that was but a glitch, which was promptly followed by huge gov't expansion that was drunk on all the new revenues that came out of that glitch, which was obviously helped by the Federal reserve policy of easy money, and so all that huge spending that took place in the fifties and sixties led to a huge bust in the seventies. That's when the gold link was broken and real inflation started. Inflation was temporarily stopped by Paul Volcker in 1981, he took interest rates up to 21.5%. USA still had the manufacturing base at the time, though it was already starting to shrink, but imagine if the interest rates went up to 21.5% TODAY, what would it do to the monthly gov't debt payments?:)
That's why I laugh when I hear that the Fed can control this situation right now, the only thing it can do is prolong the inevitable, when the interest rates do go up, not because the Fed will take them there, but because the bond prices will take them there.
the logical dissonance is in your head, the industries that were created to avoid paying taxes are in accounting and law, those are a net negative for the economy, not net positive.
1. The person who is working on avoiding taxes is distracted from his business, whatever it is.
2. The resources are spent to come up with ways to avoid paying taxes rather than having those resources be used productively.
3. The people in those industries were employed to do fight a problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, their labour were misallocated.
4. The individual freedoms are infringed upon by the government when it steals productivity of people via income, payroll, corporate taxes.
Your silly point is that an industry was created to avoid paying taxes, and thus it is 'good for the economy', is that it?
It's as good for the economy as having all those regulators hired by the firms that are forced to hire the regulators by the gov't, it's the same effect on the economy as having people hired to do unproductive work, like digging and then filling in ditches.
Your statement is both illogical and a sad reflection of modern public education system.
however, people certainly didn't pay less taxes then than they do today
- yes they did. They paid lower taxes then than they are paying today. If you measure by the GDP of-course, then you are falling into the gov't trap, it wants you to pay attention to the number, but not to how the number is made up.
GDP is 70% spending, which means it's mostly consumption of foreign made products, which part of that is 'Production'? GDP is also a huge gov't military budget and the fake credit from the Fed that ends up buying the US Treasuries through the money laundering via the banks.
Again, nobody paid 90 whatever % taxes, not in any brackets. You just don't do that, you modify what you earn to avoid paying a single dollar in that bracket.
You appear to have a reading comprehension fail. The claim was that the lower incomes of the rich led to their having less influence over politics because they had less to spend on it.
- yeah, the claim is that there is a causal link between higher marginal tax rates and better economy. That's nonsense.
Your claim is also nonsense. The rich had plenty of influence over politics in that era, FDIC didn't happen out of the blue, the banks made the gov't pass that to save the banks.
Ah, yes, the Gilded Age. A time of robber barons, union busting, company stores, and political corruption.
AFAIC the robber barons are the captains of the industry, created entire industries, the Rockefellers, the Carnegie and such, the people who created entire industries and were successful entrepreneurs. Calling them 'robber barons' in a derogative manner is the liberal way to run the class war, but it is propaganda.
Union busting, etc., there is nothing wrong with it, I don't see a problem with union busting per se, it's private business, people have the right to association.
As to political corruption, what do you think corruption is? Corruption is using the political power to steal individual freedoms in order to sell them to the highest bidder, that's what corruption is, and this is exactly what politics is about, and it's exactly what the Constitution is there to try and prevent.
The US politicians are spitting on the Constitution and the mob is not helping by not paying attention or by supporting this transgression in exchange for a promise of free shit.
Child labour - I addressed these and other fallacies enough times. Child labour always existed, the industrialisation and free market capitalism actually put an end to it by making the parents of these children much more productive than they ever were, this was done with the investment in the tools, facilities, education, and the parents didn't have to send their children to work anymore. No amount of gov't intervention can prevent or stop child labour when the population is poor (as it always was before free market capitalism), it takes the wealth to get rid of that.
USA is on the path of again sending its children to work from earlier and earlier age because it lost its free market capitalism.
Japan is not able to grow their way out of a recession, I've addressed this point a number of times, they have all these zombie companies, zombie banks, that should have gone belly up long ago, 20 years ago now, they prop them up. The deflation in Japan would have allowed true restructuring, but it is constantly being fought against with the inflationary policy, they are printing like maniacs, preventing the people in Japan from enjoying their increased purchasing power, preventing the zombie banks and other companies from failing and thus preventing the real economy from reappearing.
Japan has 1 thing going for it - it still has plenty of actual productivity in the country, it still manufactures plenty. Too bad for them that their business elite and their gov't elite are one and the same, so they want the nominal growth on their balance sheets, and so they are dead set on destroying the Yen with the printing press.
Do you know how inflation helps the companies that export? It 'helps' by destroying the value of the currency and thus by making the products cheaper after the currency exchange.
But that means that the Japanese people are suffering lower and lower purchasing power and the companies still are selling cheaper, only not nominally.
If the Japanese people kicked the business elite out of the gov't offices, they could stop the printing presses and then those exporters would have to sell their products cheaper the honest way - by lowering their prices OR sell domestically to the more affluent Japanese, who'd gain purchasing power because the Yen would strengthen.
The investment opportunities in Japan would spike as the old zombie companies would fail, people would bring all kinds of savings capital into Japan, all sorts of new businesses would arise, the people who are coming out of the education system wouldn't be under this insane stress to find jobs with the zombie companies, they could work for the new businesses.
This type of war is when you are trying to inflict the most damage upon your own population, it doesn't help your economy, it hurts. The winner is he, who hurts his own economy the most.
If the rich left the country, it would mean that nice beach-front properties would become more affordable for those who stay.
- you wish.
Those nice properties are going to be bought off by the rich people from around the world, the Chinese and such, they will snatch them up and use them, same with the hospitality industry. USA has plenty of hotels and resorts and restaurants, and as the domestic consumption of these services will dwindle, it will be the foreign consumers who will enjoy these, because domestically nobody will be able to afford it.
It doesn't matter that the top marginal rates were high, people did not pay those taxes at those rates, even the richest people.
People today are doing everything they can to avoid the top marginal rate of what, 35%? Why would anybody work for 6 cents on a dollar?
The claim that the wealthy make, that the high taxes prevent the economy from growing is absolutely correct. Not only the high taxes prevent the economy from growing, they shrink the economy, they take out the savings that otherwise would be available as investments, worse, this money ends up growing the government in all directions and it ends up growing a large dependent class, which will always vote for more taxes on the rich and less taxes on themselves, it's a system that is designed to take away from those who earn and to give welfare to those who don't, it's a system designed around theft.
In fact AFAIC there is no difference between a welfare recipient and a government worker. Just because the government worker has a job to go to, it doesn't change the fact that his job is being paid from the productivity stolen from people who ACTUALLY produce the wealth that ends up as salaries.
A job is not a job is not a job, it's not true that government can spend into prosperity, it's not true that government jobs add to prosperity and to economy, it's not true that spending is what grows the economy.
Spending does not grow the economy, spending only takes out of the economy, economy is grown by the production, the savings and the investments that are used to make profits grow the economy, because that's what creates productivity - production - products, services we want.
Our desire for products and services is unlimited, what is limited is our capacity to pay for them, and in the free market economy this problem is very well addressed by competition, which takes the prices lower and lower, while increasing the productivity of the worker with more investments - tools, better tools, better training, better facilities, better infrastructure to do things faster, better, cheaper.
What happened since the Fed and IRS were introduced - the productivity of the people was stolen from the people by inflation (printing) and income, corporate, payroll taxes (* see my sig, I explain about the fact that the personal income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally in USA *).
As to the tax cuts during the Bush era - the guy cut the rates, but he never cut taxes, what I am saying is that he increased government spending, and the taxes is what you have to pay, whatever the rates are.
The debt is the tax.
The debt is the tax + interest.
The debt is a way to spend now and tax you later (you or your children).
Cutting tax rates without cutting spending does not equal cutting taxes, and that is exactly why the jobs are leaving, because cutting tax rates while growing spending means the situation is getting worse and worse, even if you are not paying right now, look what government is going to do - it's going to raise taxes eventually, and it's constantly taxing you with the inflation anyway.
Think about this: the Fed has this fake dual mandate (stable prices and low unemployment).
Well how did the Fed do with the price stability since 1913 (it's almost 100 years now!)
It did terribly, the prices were going DOWN BEFORE THE FED WAS INTRODUCED. The point of the Fed is not to keep the prices stable, it's the exact opposite, it's to provide certain most connected people to power with unlimited money, but where is the money coming from? It's coming out of YOUR POCKET, it's coming out of your savings, it's destroying your savings, it's the reason that both: there are no legitimate savings and prices are going up.
How about unemployment? Well, how does manipulation of the interest rates curb unemployment? It's very simple, I will explain to the uninitiated: increasing the inflation lowers your hourly wage.
Again: increasing inflation lowers your hourly wage. The Fed is making y
That's right, and a guy who makes 250K or something around that a year, he can't actually hire anybody after paying taxes.
When a person looks for an employment opportunity, is he going to take an offer from a guy who has enough money to cover the salary and expenses of all his employees or is he going to take an offer from somebody who is living paycheck to paycheck himself, somebody who is always 2 months away from bankruptcy if the bills are not paid?
That's again, a non-argument, a personal attack that has nothing to do with the argument. How do you know what my position in life is, what my investments are, what business I run? Stockholm Syndrom? All the people who will be sitting in the dark, hungry, because there will be no jobs except for what you can do personally on a subsistence level.
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Yup, Soviet gov't disappeared. Now they just have a former KGB as president of Russia
- if they didn't WAIT for the country to go completely bust and reformed before that happened, allowed real free market capitalism even while maintaining an illusion of the previous communist gov't, they wouldn't be in that situation.
You too dumb, too stupid, you see, to read the comment you are replying to and you are even dumber to understand it.
If US people kicked their gov't in the balls before the country falls over, like USSR did, if US people forced the gov't to return to the Constitution, to the law above the gov't, then the transition would work.
If the country falls, the system falls apart and there is no Constitution, there is no gov't, then anything can happen, anybody can come to power. This is exactly what the US people should NOT wait for.
But again, you are not very bright, too dim to get it.
Why bother?
- very simply because people want to eat and to live better and without the gov't theft and subsidies they would have to work.
1. When China stops subsidising US consumption, the goods that you are now enjoying that are cheap at Walmart will no longer be affordable to you. They are not affordable to Americans today without massive amounts of subsidy by the Chinese and others, who buy US debt, take in US dollars. When China stops subsidising USA, there will no longer be any goods on the shelves of those hypermarkets.
2. Once the goods are gone and few can afford them, there will be no amount of gov't spending of fake dollars that could reverse that, in fact every new dollar created under that system would only cause higher inflation and higher prices.
3. Once the prices are so high, it's because in reality US consumers just can't pay for Chinese labour! Well, they can't pay for Chinese labour today, but they are getting subsidised.
4. Once US consumers can't afford the Chinese labour, they will only have themselves to rely upon or they could lay down and die, and I don't think they are ready to do that. So they'll have to work again and it means there will be opportunities to make money in the new growing productive market. But this will require the gov't to disappear for all practical purposes.
5. Gov't will disappear. Soviet gov't disappeared for the same reason - couldn't afford to exist anymore. Once gov't disappears, the free market will step in and there will be opportunity to make money again, to build businesses, etc.
The problem for the Americans is that if that happens later rather than sooner, they'll have even less savings and capital than now and they'll be starting from a lower level than if they kicked their gov't in the nuts right now, cut it by maybe 99% (well, let's not get crazy, maybe cut it by 98%), then USA could restructure within the next 1.5-3 years and have a growing economy again.
That's not going to happen of-course, they'll wait for total destruction before they start moving.
I've never yet seen a certification that was worth more than a pile of used toilet paper.
- that's because those are trying to pretend to be something they are not. I am not talking about a replacement for the higher education, I am talking about certification of a person as of somebody who knows specific things, who has shown good work ethic. I am talking about certifying a person as somebody who is ready for work (certifying, not preparing them, only testing).
Even once it does- it still won't be 10% as good as a degree.
- you are missing my point, I am not talking about replacing any degree. However you are wrong too, how many people with degrees are serving fries and have mortgages but no house after years of expensive worthless 'education'? Sociology majors with 200,000 in debt, what is their education truly worth? Nothing.
The entire idea of a market solving anythign else shows a complete lack of understanding of economics.
- you are showing amazing lack of understanding of economics. Free market will provide what is lacking, so if it's choice that is lacking and people are interested to pay for choice, then free market provides choice.
If it's lowest price, because otherwise too few are buying, then it's lowest price. iPads are not cheap in the market, yet there is a market for iPads.
But ignoring that, there is no replacement for taking a few years and studying a topic in depth surrounded by fellow students and with extensive resources all around you.
- and I am not talking about teaching anything to anybody, so you are lacking comprehension skills, you supposedly 'taught' something to somebody at some college? I wonder what you could teach if you can't even read.
Khan and similar ideas are great for additional resources for parents, for tutoring, for a bit of adult learning. Its not and never will be a replacement for college.
- and again, I am not talking about 'replacing college', that would be a fruitless exercise in futility, I am talking about certifying that a person is ready for a job and here is what we certify he knows, here is his ethic, because we observed it for a few months.
You can't read, can't comprehend, I wouldn't certify you even if you paid me.
There is money to be made in providing certification of people who want to skip college and institutions and go straight into the work force. If an institution (say Khan academy) set up a certification program that tested the student, maybe a 2-4 months program, which was intensively testing the student's ethic, logic, understanding of different subjects, and then a paper was provided saying: this student is certified by Khan academy to be this this and that.
In fact the future employers could even pay for such certifications, but in any case these certifications shouldn't run more than a few thousand dollars (maybe 2-4K), this would be a huge help to people who either don't have the interest, aptitude or money going into the higher education, but who still can be certified to be proficient in whatever subjects, certified to have good work ethic, etc.
There is money to be made in this, what I mean is that this is probably a viable business opportunity, and it would provide people with a useful paper (whoever the certifier would have his name at stake to provide honest certification) and the wouldn't accrue the insane levels of debt that majority of the students today are only able to get into because the government guarantees the debts.
like it or not, Khan academy is a more useful education resources than most public schools out there (if you care to learn).
Check, check, check, check, and check.
- my point exactly. Do you want more of that or do you want businesses to start investing in USA again? This is the point, I am not even saying something that is in the future, I am looking at now, in the future there will be more of it, more businesses in USA will fail, more will leave, people will leave. Why should the kids stay in USA to be paying for this debt? This 'social contract' they never voted for or agreed to?
My point is exactly that to reverse this trend the US must act and the way to act is not to grow the government, it's the exact opposite, it's to grow the freedoms of people.
When Obama says 'freedom', he doesn't understand what it is. He doesn't know anything about the Constitution even though he is supposedly a Constitutional lawyer, well, he'd fail every class if I was giving them. He thinks 'freedom' is ability to take away from some in order to subsidise the others. 'Freedom' to have free birth control. Nobody prevents people from having birth control, he wants it to be an entitlement for some and an obligation to others and he wants to call that 'freedom'.
That kind of 'freedom' must stop and real freedom must start again for USA to get back on its feet.
Assange is a political refugee, he needs a hide out because a large and a very powerful organisation (and more than one) are after him for disseminating information that those powerful organisations want to keep quiet.
If Assange falls in the hands of American government, he is going to be made an example of, and it's going to be worse than Vietnam for him, sort of like what they did to Bradley Manning but maybe times 10.
Isn't it amazing, 60 years ago people wouldn't have believed if somebody told them, that America could become this....
This is evil. This is on the level of evil that only a powerful system can cause. This is the same type of evil that puts people to jail for possessing plants or in fact possessing anything, and in fact this is exactly that kind of a situation - possession.
This is the kind of evil that people gloss over and don't think twice about, it's about 'them', not about 'you', right?
Copyrights and patents shouldn't even exist as government laws, just like laws about narcotics, prostitution laws, none of this should be authorised to the government control.
First, you believe all taxes are drains on society?
- yes, under ALL circumstances.
Of-course all gov't is inherently evil but we need to fund minimum of it even under libertarian or minarchist ideology (not anarchist though), so all taxes are a drain on society but we have to live with some minimum amount of waste allocated to the government.
You can't have government without revenue
- obviously.
and anarchy always leads to monarchy
- not true, in Ukraine in the beginning of the 20th century and up to the late twenties there was a very strong anarchist movement. This didn't lead to monarchy, it was a fight against a different type of totalitarian system and that system won, it had more power on its side. If you care you can look up Nestor Makhno.
Some things, like roads and bridges, are best done by governments and paid for by taxes
- that's a false statement. Those things are not 'best' done by gov't, they are done by gov't because gov't takes over that function and pushes the private capital aside.
There are plenty of private roads in USA, the Ambassador Bridge was built privately back in 1929. There is no reason why bridges and roads cannot be built privately (and they are and they were and they will be) because somebody sees an opportunity where money can be made and provides customers with another product.
Why shouldn't there be more private bridges and roads? They are better maintained, they are better and faster constructed (407 in Ontario is owned privately, though it started as a public road, it was sold and it's been a success, it is constantly expanded, lanes are added, people take it rather than 401 and other busy roads.
In fact why should the people be paying taxes so that gov't can build unprofitable bridges and roads with union labour, which is clearly more expensive, takes longer, it's clear that this is not about performance and efficiency with the gov't, gov't isn't in a hurry to do the job well and start generating money, so public roads are closed all the time.
Construction signs. Who likes construction signs? And there are many of them and they never end, it's because it's public, the money never ends, the company makes more money the longer it takes, it's not about profit and it well should be about profit. If there are no profits in roads and bridges, then building them with tax payer money is a waste of resources and growth of gov't.
This is no more a tax than my city mandating that I hire a private waste disposal company to take my garbage.
- and why should the city mandate something like that? What are going to do with your garbage, sit on it? Sure, the neighbourhood can have ordinances - you can't collect garbage on the back yard.
When in Ontario (or was it just Toronto) there was a huge garbage strike a few years back, the city was stinking to high heaven, and if you hired private contractor to pick up the garbage, the police and the striking garbage men would assault the contractors! They attacked their trucks, broke some of them, the police was on the side of the union workers, big surprise. The people liked the private garbage collection. 5 bucks, they picked up ALL garbage, you didn't have to sort anything, and they even swept the sidewalks.
So, you're against murder, rape, and theft laws?
- this has nothing to do with federal gov't, this is a State issue. I would go further, I don't think it's any of gov't business at all. This should be handled privately, private courts, private prisons, private security. The prison time should be paid for with private liability insurance and there shouldn't even be jail time for theft, you should be forced to pay money back, maybe 3 times the amount or whatever. Clearly gov't shouldn't even have a role in any of this and there shouldn't be
Sure, but if US gov't didn't run the wars, spending on NASA could be increased by that 1% of the cost of war and at the same time the gov't spending would decrease overall. If the SS and Medicare were reformed (AFAIC they should be abolished, but let's say reformed), so that there is means testing - you don't get it if you don't need it (even those who are getting it today), then US economy could actually deleverage, stop the deficit spending, start paying back some of the debt. If the gov't size shrunk, the way it was done in 1921 and 1947, then US economy would actually start growing again within a couple of years from deleveraging. How much easier is it to find some money to fund NASA in a growing economy that is not wasting money and is not running wars than in a war type economy, with many times the war size government?
Maybe it's because I am tired of beating my wife?
Stop the wars and spend 1% of what is spent on wars on NASA instead.
That's silly.
There is enough of gold, it's not a question of absolute quantity, it's the question of valuation in your preferred currency.
Gold used to be at 19 USD per ounce 100 years back, before the Fed was created. US gov't set the rate at 35 for a long time, after it stole the gold from the people. In 1971 the link was broken and price in USD went up to over 800 per ounce until 1981, when Paul Volcker smashed inflation with 21.5% interest rates.
For the last decade gold has been in the 'bull market' in US dollars (and in other currencies) specifically because of inflation.
1615USD per ounce today is the valuation. At 100,000 per ounce the same amount of gold gets many more US dollars.
Slavery is involuntary obligation put on a person to work for whoever the master is.
Taxing person's labour is unfair, this means the person has no ability to avoid giving up his productivity - his work, his life, because he can't stop working or he starves. Taxing transactions is different from taxing work. People don't have to participate in the transactions that are taxed, so people can avoid those taxes and this means they can avoid propping up the government, which is the desired outcome, because in this case the government is just another spending item.
Government is supposed to be just a spending item, it's a luxury spending item and by cutting consumption people should be able to cut on the amount of money they are paying to the government, which would force the government to shrink organically, which is what is needed when the economy cannot afford a larger government.
Gov't has authority to raise taxes, direct apportioned taxes, duties, imports, levies, basically uniform excise taxes. As I said, I discuss this at length in the journal linked in my sig.
What's fair? Do you know what 'fair' is? How is it at all fair under any circumstances to tax somebody's income? That means taxing their work, their labour, it means turning them into a slave. Not taxing transactions that they are involved in when they buy or sell things, taxing their labour? You can see my sig for a discussion about income taxes.
I am not in the US, I moved my business out of America to Asia 3 years ago now. And again, this is a personal attack that has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
That's completely unconstitutional, of-course that little fact never stopped government, and one thing is for sure - it's coming. It's already hard to get out of USA if you have anything (huge exit taxes, forcing you to liquidate property, businesses) and even for the people who don't own much - you have to pay now 450 USD for the form to drop the US citizenship. This will eventually be raised higher and higher, who is to say the gov't won't tell you that you can't leave until you pay out your portion of the national debt?
Forget national debt, they can tell you that you can never leave no matter what, USSR had that.
Not based on the freedoms, only based on the fluke that USA had a near monopoly in the labour market. That's why the so called middle class was so affluent, it wasn't middle class, middle class is small/medium size business owners and professionals, it was the working class that was enjoying the unsustainable monopoly on the job market.
So this was a very temporary decade of fake prosperity, not based on the fundamentally strong individual freedoms, but based on the destroyed infrastructure of other nations. You are right, USA probably was in a 'power peak', but that was but a glitch, which was promptly followed by huge gov't expansion that was drunk on all the new revenues that came out of that glitch, which was obviously helped by the Federal reserve policy of easy money, and so all that huge spending that took place in the fifties and sixties led to a huge bust in the seventies. That's when the gold link was broken and real inflation started. Inflation was temporarily stopped by Paul Volcker in 1981, he took interest rates up to 21.5%. USA still had the manufacturing base at the time, though it was already starting to shrink, but imagine if the interest rates went up to 21.5% TODAY, what would it do to the monthly gov't debt payments? :)
That's why I laugh when I hear that the Fed can control this situation right now, the only thing it can do is prolong the inevitable, when the interest rates do go up, not because the Fed will take them there, but because the bond prices will take them there.
the logical dissonance is in your head, the industries that were created to avoid paying taxes are in accounting and law, those are a net negative for the economy, not net positive.
1. The person who is working on avoiding taxes is distracted from his business, whatever it is.
2. The resources are spent to come up with ways to avoid paying taxes rather than having those resources be used productively.
3. The people in those industries were employed to do fight a problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, their labour were misallocated.
4. The individual freedoms are infringed upon by the government when it steals productivity of people via income, payroll, corporate taxes.
Your silly point is that an industry was created to avoid paying taxes, and thus it is 'good for the economy', is that it?
It's as good for the economy as having all those regulators hired by the firms that are forced to hire the regulators by the gov't, it's the same effect on the economy as having people hired to do unproductive work, like digging and then filling in ditches.
Your statement is both illogical and a sad reflection of modern public education system.
however, people certainly didn't pay less taxes then than they do today
- yes they did. They paid lower taxes then than they are paying today. If you measure by the GDP of-course, then you are falling into the gov't trap, it wants you to pay attention to the number, but not to how the number is made up.
GDP is 70% spending, which means it's mostly consumption of foreign made products, which part of that is 'Production'? GDP is also a huge gov't military budget and the fake credit from the Fed that ends up buying the US Treasuries through the money laundering via the banks.
Again, nobody paid 90 whatever % taxes, not in any brackets. You just don't do that, you modify what you earn to avoid paying a single dollar in that bracket.
You appear to have a reading comprehension fail. The claim was that the lower incomes of the rich led to their having less influence over politics because they had less to spend on it.
- yeah, the claim is that there is a causal link between higher marginal tax rates and better economy. That's nonsense.
Your claim is also nonsense. The rich had plenty of influence over politics in that era, FDIC didn't happen out of the blue, the banks made the gov't pass that to save the banks.
Here is a number of ways the gov't printed money throughout the depression to help out 'the rich'.
Ah, yes, the Gilded Age. A time of robber barons, union busting, company stores, and political corruption.
AFAIC the robber barons are the captains of the industry, created entire industries, the Rockefellers, the Carnegie and such, the people who created entire industries and were successful entrepreneurs. Calling them 'robber barons' in a derogative manner is the liberal way to run the class war, but it is propaganda.
Union busting, etc., there is nothing wrong with it, I don't see a problem with union busting per se, it's private business, people have the right to association.
As to political corruption, what do you think corruption is? Corruption is using the political power to steal individual freedoms in order to sell them to the highest bidder, that's what corruption is, and this is exactly what politics is about, and it's exactly what the Constitution is there to try and prevent.
The US politicians are spitting on the Constitution and the mob is not helping by not paying attention or by supporting this transgression in exchange for a promise of free shit.
Child labour - I addressed these and other fallacies enough times. Child labour always existed, the industrialisation and free market capitalism actually put an end to it by making the parents of these children much more productive than they ever were, this was done with the investment in the tools, facilities, education, and the parents didn't have to send their children to work anymore. No amount of gov't intervention can prevent or stop child labour when the population is poor (as it always was before free market capitalism), it takes the wealth to get rid of that.
USA is on the path of again sending its children to work from earlier and earlier age because it lost its free market capitalism.
Japan is not able to grow their way out of a recession, I've addressed this point a number of times, they have all these zombie companies, zombie banks, that should have gone belly up long ago, 20 years ago now, they prop them up. The deflation in Japan would have allowed true restructuring, but it is constantly being fought against with the inflationary policy, they are printing like maniacs, preventing the people in Japan from enjoying their increased purchasing power, preventing the zombie banks and other companies from failing and thus preventing the real economy from reappearing.
Japan has 1 thing going for it - it still has plenty of actual productivity in the country, it still manufactures plenty. Too bad for them that their business elite and their gov't elite are one and the same, so they want the nominal growth on their balance sheets, and so they are dead set on destroying the Yen with the printing press.
Do you know how inflation helps the companies that export? It 'helps' by destroying the value of the currency and thus by making the products cheaper after the currency exchange.
But that means that the Japanese people are suffering lower and lower purchasing power and the companies still are selling cheaper, only not nominally.
If the Japanese people kicked the business elite out of the gov't offices, they could stop the printing presses and then those exporters would have to sell their products cheaper the honest way - by lowering their prices OR sell domestically to the more affluent Japanese, who'd gain purchasing power because the Yen would strengthen.
The investment opportunities in Japan would spike as the old zombie companies would fail, people would bring all kinds of savings capital into Japan, all sorts of new businesses would arise, the people who are coming out of the education system wouldn't be under this insane stress to find jobs with the zombie companies, they could work for the new businesses.
This type of war is when you are trying to inflict the most damage upon your own population, it doesn't help your economy, it hurts. The winner is he, who hurts his own economy the most.
If the rich left the country, it would mean that nice beach-front properties would become more affordable for those who stay.
- you wish.
Those nice properties are going to be bought off by the rich people from around the world, the Chinese and such, they will snatch them up and use them, same with the hospitality industry. USA has plenty of hotels and resorts and restaurants, and as the domestic consumption of these services will dwindle, it will be the foreign consumers who will enjoy these, because domestically nobody will be able to afford it.
It doesn't matter that the top marginal rates were high, people did not pay those taxes at those rates, even the richest people.
People today are doing everything they can to avoid the top marginal rate of what, 35%? Why would anybody work for 6 cents on a dollar?
The claim that the wealthy make, that the high taxes prevent the economy from growing is absolutely correct. Not only the high taxes prevent the economy from growing, they shrink the economy, they take out the savings that otherwise would be available as investments, worse, this money ends up growing the government in all directions and it ends up growing a large dependent class, which will always vote for more taxes on the rich and less taxes on themselves, it's a system that is designed to take away from those who earn and to give welfare to those who don't, it's a system designed around theft.
In fact AFAIC there is no difference between a welfare recipient and a government worker. Just because the government worker has a job to go to, it doesn't change the fact that his job is being paid from the productivity stolen from people who ACTUALLY produce the wealth that ends up as salaries.
A job is not a job is not a job, it's not true that government can spend into prosperity, it's not true that government jobs add to prosperity and to economy, it's not true that spending is what grows the economy.
Spending does not grow the economy, spending only takes out of the economy, economy is grown by the production, the savings and the investments that are used to make profits grow the economy, because that's what creates productivity - production - products, services we want.
Our desire for products and services is unlimited, what is limited is our capacity to pay for them, and in the free market economy this problem is very well addressed by competition, which takes the prices lower and lower, while increasing the productivity of the worker with more investments - tools, better tools, better training, better facilities, better infrastructure to do things faster, better, cheaper.
What happened since the Fed and IRS were introduced - the productivity of the people was stolen from the people by inflation (printing) and income, corporate, payroll taxes (* see my sig, I explain about the fact that the personal income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally in USA *).
As to the tax cuts during the Bush era - the guy cut the rates, but he never cut taxes, what I am saying is that he increased government spending, and the taxes is what you have to pay, whatever the rates are.
The debt is the tax.
The debt is the tax + interest.
The debt is a way to spend now and tax you later (you or your children).
Cutting tax rates without cutting spending does not equal cutting taxes, and that is exactly why the jobs are leaving, because cutting tax rates while growing spending means the situation is getting worse and worse, even if you are not paying right now, look what government is going to do - it's going to raise taxes eventually, and it's constantly taxing you with the inflation anyway.
Think about this: the Fed has this fake dual mandate (stable prices and low unemployment).
Well how did the Fed do with the price stability since 1913 (it's almost 100 years now!)
It did terribly, the prices were going DOWN BEFORE THE FED WAS INTRODUCED. The point of the Fed is not to keep the prices stable, it's the exact opposite, it's to provide certain most connected people to power with unlimited money, but where is the money coming from? It's coming out of YOUR POCKET, it's coming out of your savings, it's destroying your savings, it's the reason that both: there are no legitimate savings and prices are going up.
How about unemployment? Well, how does manipulation of the interest rates curb unemployment? It's very simple, I will explain to the uninitiated: increasing the inflation lowers your hourly wage.
Again: increasing inflation lowers your hourly wage. The Fed is making y
That's right, and a guy who makes 250K or something around that a year, he can't actually hire anybody after paying taxes.
When a person looks for an employment opportunity, is he going to take an offer from a guy who has enough money to cover the salary and expenses of all his employees or is he going to take an offer from somebody who is living paycheck to paycheck himself, somebody who is always 2 months away from bankruptcy if the bills are not paid?
That's again, a non-argument, a personal attack that has nothing to do with the argument. How do you know what my position in life is, what my investments are, what business I run? Stockholm Syndrom? All the people who will be sitting in the dark, hungry, because there will be no jobs except for what you can do personally on a subsistence level.