1. I already stated that government must never be funded through income taxes because government is a spending item, and as such it must be spent upon in proportion with other spending, otherwise it destroys the economy by not letting it to restructure the debts, savings, production.
2. Consumption is actually the trivial part of economy - the complex part is production. Production should be promoted, consumption happens on its own. Investment is what is economy is about, not consumption.
3. The economy should not be aimed at the lowest common denominator - the poor. Economy of production promotes everybody into higher levels of wealth, even the 'poor'.
4. USA was actually funded through alcohol, excise and vice taxes prior to 1913, the poor should abstain from such activities and then they won't be paying those taxes.
5. When you say - huge refunds to the poor, what is it that you mean precisely? Why should refunds be 'huge'? However it is possible to means test people IF and only IF they wish to get some refund. Certainly there should be ability to disclose your private information to prove you should be excluded from paying most of consumption taxes, but there must not be any such requirement to people who do not require the refund, this would provide the necessary balance between power of the state to get into your business and your ability to pay lower consumption taxes.
Has this ever worked in practice, governments that spend only one billionth of what they spend now?
- yes.
It worked of-course in Argentina, Weimar Republic of Germany, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Taiwan, Danzig, Greece, Hungary, Krajina, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Romania, Yugoslvia, Zaire, Zimbabwe.
This will eventually be done in USA, you won't have to move anywhere to see it.
I already made my point clear - I am against government owning any assets, printing money, borrowing, taxing income, subsidizing any businesses or individuals, regulating any businesses and basically doing anything beyond minimum military and justice system (and I am now convinced they can't do that right either.)
As to having the top rate at over 90% (I believe it was 94% at some point), that does not change this simple fact: the actual effective taxes collected have always staid between 18% and 20%, which indicates that it is the real rate anybody is ever paying, and it's because changes of tax codes cause changes in behavior.
However I was specifically talking about personal income taxes, which in USA are unacceptably high (they should be 0%). But I will reiterate my position: all income taxes and payroll taxes and all corporate income taxes must be 0%, I really hope I am clear on my point. My point is that government must never be allowed to grow based on income but only based on ratio of consumption that the economy is involved in, because during bad times consumption must subside and give place to increases in savings and production.
But yes, I am against all government and corporate ties, there must be none.
Actually when I said 70 trillion I only counted SS, Medicare/Medicaid, this unfortunately does not include the balance that Fed bought off of the banks in 2008 and since, and this does not include all of the FHA and F/F obligations. Also we do not know all the numbers, the numbers could be much higher than 70Trillion, which is again, very unfortunate.
Fun fact: 2003 - gold was USD350/ounce, cotton was USD50/pound
today - gold is over USD1400/ounce, cotton is over USD200/pound
That's a stable 1:7 ratio. Of-course in USD the prices went up 4 times, which shows that USD lost 75% of value, again - very unfortunate.
Look at Europe, even, which is slowly but surely moving functions from individual states into the EU.
- EU will have what is coming to it just as well as USA, do not assume EU is somehow immune to the fiat printing disease. The difference of-course is that USD is 'reserve' and Euro is not and also in Europe separate countries cannot just print money. Europe's books are cooked just as much as US books are, but USA has a bigger military spending problem.
As to the total US federal budget: off the books stuff must be also included. This means Freddie and Fannie holdings, the Fed buying all the bad debt from the banks, the SS and Medicare/Medicaid pyramid schemes and the debt.
So we are talking about 70Trillion.
Divide that by 1,000,000,000 and you get 70 thousand.
Without the Fed and IRS, the government wouldn't be counterfeiting money, so a dollar would be worth about 100 times what it is worth now (if counting from 1913).
7000000 real dollars should be enough to run the federal government for its actual real purpose.
But I am not very rigid on that very specific number, but it's close enough.
My explanation is that you are simply emotionally attached to the idea of money being somehow "really real", which it hasn't been for much longer than you think.
- let's put it this way. I hold real money. You probably hold fiat.
Here is why holding fiat is not as smart as you may believe:
2003: gold is USD350/ounce, cotton is USD50/ounce.
2011: gold is over USD1400/ounce, cotton is over USD200/ounce.
This is a simple example that involves simple math even idiots can easily do.
The gold/cotton ratio was 1/7 in 2003. It is still 1/7 in 2011.
In the same amount of time the amount of gold or cotton that could be bought for USD fell by 75%.
If you think that 3/4 of a price hike is good for people in the economy, then I have to assume it is I, who is talking to an idiot.
Clearly the US government has sponsored the railroad tycoons and robber barons, etc. Again, this does not mean it to be a good thing for the economy, it promotes monopolies and destroys competition and reduces choices while pushing prices up. No question.
As to the point on competing currencies, I have tried submitting a story on this very issue just a little while ago, here it is (it was not deemed worthy of/. front page though, unsurprisingly, few important things are.)
So you are in the camp of arguing with idiots, who you consider to be idiots because they believe that a fiat currency that government can print free of any actual work done for it and without any reserves/backing behind it, will lead to the economic disaster that it did lead to.
Well, as I said - it simply reflects on you. Of-course participating in the thread as an AC has no bearing on that reflection at all, but it doesn't change the principle of the matter.
I am telling you that auto-roads were not as profitable as rail and air travel, otherwise they would have been built all privately at the time.
Are the roads profitable today? Sure, now that there is a huge network of massively subsidized roads, it is possible to build fully private profitable auto-roads. This point could have been achieved with time without gov't subsidies into auto-roads also, but the government wanted to ensure its political power, so it did what I have already described a couple of times here.
When you say: people LOVE to do something, I have no disagreements on SOME people loving it (I disagree that all people love it). But loving it and PAYING for it are different things altogether.
Would 'the people' be loving and paying for it if they didn't have the subsidies and had to pay real user fees? I suspect that over time that could be established and possibly created, but it would have been actually profitable to do so and wouldn't have required government subsidies.
People LOVE using things that are FREE of charge, I can't argue that point. But the road infrastructure was not actually free of charge. It destroyed a real useful profitable private rail system, it caused air lines to be in such financial distress that they also started requiring massive public funding to continue function, it created huge problems in energy and pollution and sub-urban sprawl and other problems, including health and loss of life problems due to car proliferation.
I don't think this is a fair way to look at it.
- this is the only way to build infrastructure without mis-allocation and destruction of actual wealth and without government usurping powers that do not belong to it and thus without an eventual economic catastrophe.
But throughout all that drivel you wrote there, you posed a specific question:
Did you ever asked yourself why you live in such a rich country?
.
I have a very specific answer.
In the 19 century the economy moved from agriculture to industrial in USA, in the process it createdï the middle class - small business owners as well as professionals.
The economy's wealth rose dramatically - it's not money, it's things that were created and provided to the consumers in USA:
indoor plumbing, cheap/safe food (refrigeration), cheap clothing, washing/sewing machines, cars, electrical energy, radios, telephones, telegraphs, trains, cheap medical attention, etc.
- The reason why USA used to be a wealthy country (wealthy, as in a wealthy producing nation), was because USA had a strong currency, which was appreciating in value, because it was real money - gold and because USA did not have government intervening in that economy much, except for support of some, who became tycoons/robber barons, but the economy was about production.
Production creates wealth. Wealth is production. Producers create wealth and then they can consume it. Wealth is not money, money is just an investment vehicle, wealth is goods and services produced through investment in the presence of strong competitive forces.
The reason that the USA used to be a wealthy country was because it did not have government intervening in private people's businesses, and that is my reply, I know you consider this to be idiotic, you are welcome to continue your drivel now.
So what you are saying is that we killed infrastructure by building infrastructure?
- I am saying that FDR's programs killed real infrastructure, which was profitable on its own merits, without subsidies. This was done by taxing airlines, the rail was actually taken down. Existing rail was removed. This was done to ensure political power of the federal government first of all. The entire interstate trade idea is enforced through the money that is allocated to the infrastructure that the publicly subsidized roads are.
When you say: people prefer - how the hell do you know that? Apparently you are wrong, because what the people preferred was rail and air travel for mass transport, otherwise the roads would have existed on the merits of being a profitable investment in the market place, just like rail and air were.
This had nothing to do with 'the people', it had to do with government usurping the power, using its ability to tax income and to print legal tender. It did create a system that cannot exist if the subsidies stop, and they will stop eventually. The created system is unsustainable on every level - from energy perspective, to infrastructure scale and population density, to pollution levels, to time that people spend on the road between home and business and shopping, etc.
Also the road system created another huge problem - insane dependance on cheap oil, which in turn caused many wars and other economic disasters past the thirties of 20th century.
-- Of-course we must not forget that the reason that what FDR did was even possible was due to the federal government usurping the power in 1913 to tax income and print money via treasury+Fed, which basically resulted in all the inflation and asset bubbles, the great depression, and all recessions past 1965 as well, and the current depression and the incoming monetary collapse of the USA.
Are parents evil because the inflict "hurt" upon their children in order to teach or establish order?
- government is not our parent, that is not just a bad analogy, but it is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the government. You are not a child of your government, no matter what they tell you, understand?
I just do not see evil in structure or government, I do see it in individuals.
- really? This is strange indeed. I see governments as the ultimate evil, at the same level as basic murderers and thieves and liars, nothing more or less than that. Perhaps me being born in the former USSR has created this imprint on the personality but I am surprised to find out about people who do not see it for what it is ultimately.
I'll not bother replying in anything more than just links to a bunch of my older comments, they address all of your points in no particular order, but being an idiot gives me an excuse from sorting through my old comments thoughtfully enough to carefully craft a well written response, you surely deserve, for having identified me so precisely. However you cared to write an answer to my comment, so I at least have to acknowledge your presence with some form of a response.
Obviously you don't have to read any of it, but again, you read my first comment in this thread and even were compelled enough by it to write your very insightful response, so who knows, maybe there is something in it for you there...
Also note that all the latest US bond sales have been going this way: 70% of bonds are bought by foreign national banks, 30% are bought by US Fed.
So only national banks are buying, who do not care about profits. Private companies are selling, this is pushing long term interest rates up. Eventually the interest rates will go very high, this will push US into another huge round of recession, so the Fed is likely to do more and more QE. Next QE will be bailing out municipalities, then the states and then more private companies. I fully expect the Fed to buy back the US bonds by printing more and more fiat to keep interest rates down but increasing inflation with every new printed dollar. I also fully expect the prices in USA to rise dramatically very soon on everything that matters: food and energy and clothing and other perishable goods. This is likely to cause major trade partners to stop buying US debt and thus stop selling cheap goods to US consumers and since USA has no hot stand by production capacity, it will suffer in terms of quality of life dramatically, as people will not be able not only to pay for goods, but actually to get the goods they want even if they have US dollars.
Somalia immediately jumps to your mind, because you have no mind, your mind has been replaced by a knee jerk reaction engine, put their by the gov't you are protecting. Somalia is a country in a civil war, has nothing to do with 'free market', etc. USA is much closer to Zimbabwe - watch your wheelbarrow while moving your piles of cash around, somebody may grab the barrow.
As to myself, I did find suitable accommodations, thank you for your interest.
Please, enlighten the world, what in your estimation constitutes a 'reasonable amount'? Please.
Should it be percentage of their total wealth? Should it be percentage of their earnings?
Is, say, 49% good enough? Is it supposed to be 79%? Is it 99%?
Do you know how much you pay today if you earn more than 500Kin Connecticut today? With 35% federal, 6.5% state (and the governor wants to push it up by a few points), FICA is really irrelevant then, because it's capped at first 100K, but 2.9% Medicare tax is applied on the ENTIRE amount. This is only the income taxes, can you do the addition?
Add to this the existing gas and other consumption taxes, levies and excise taxes, import and property taxes, you get to over 50%. The serfs of the past paid 25% to their lords. Why are people today being treated worse than serfs? Why do people today have to have their taxes cut in half at least to get to the level of serfs?
What is fair? Why should anybody pay any taxes based on income rather than on consumption? After all, money that is earned but not spent is reinvested, shouldn't investment be rewarded rather than consumption? Of-course it should, but not in an economy based on government subsidized spending through borrowed and printed money, gov't doesn't want savings - it wants spending, thus it subsidizes spending in various asset classes and creates bubbles in them, all this while printing money so that it doesn't have to pay its debts back in real money but in printed funny money (and this adds an additional inflation tax on your entire US dollar denominated holdings).
Real question is: who in their right mind is still paying taxes in USA and why should they do that at all? I think everybody should stop paying income taxes yesterday.
I don't particularly care about your comment, it started with an ad-hominem from the get-go, but I stand by my assertion that government is inherently and by the very definition and nature of itself an evil instrument, as it completely depends on its ability to HURT an individual in more ways than one through basically physical threat.
If the entire existence of a system is based on a threat that there will be physical violence (be it fines, jail or death), then I get to call that system evil on the very fact of its existence.
Regardless of you trying to make it personal, where it clearly does not belong, because I am not in North America anymore, haven't been in about 1.5 years, you are completely avoiding the point that I made, that the public roads built with tax money should never have existed, as they are unprofitable, they are a subsidy to industries, they are unmaintainable without constant public subsidy (which is not going to last), they are causing massive unmaintainable suburban sprawl, they killed the profitable industry of public transportation, which could work efficiently if there was no huge sprawl in much more densely populated area. This also means that travel to work would have taken much less time, would have been much more efficient and would not cause nearly as much pollution as the current preferred (and the only real) method of transportation in US.
As to your last sentence - where exactly did you find that argument in the grandparent post? In any case, it is irrelevant how many people are rich and what it is that they own - the question really was: why would people not vote to take away somebody else's money to give it to themselves. I answered it: not everybody is a thief, do you not understand the concept? Regardless of what you think of the rich, many of who became rich because of their ties to the government and special connections they have there (bail outs, stimulus money, subsidies), vast majority of people who own their businesses are working to improve the wealth of the population by providing goods/services population needs. This alone means they pay more than their 'fair share' (whatever that is), for the betterment of the society.
--
As to me paying 'rent' to some road tycoon - tycoons and robber barons actually existed because they had special connections in government, even in times when government was much much smaller in USA.
Would I rather pay road tolls or taxes? ROAD TOLLS OF-COURSE!
Of-course I would rather pay user fees and would rather buy services I need than paying through all the things that government decides I must pay for through taxes. It would be MUCH CHEAPER for me. Much cheaper. And the quality would be better, while the services would actually make more sense economically speaking.
It is very simple - the system is about bread and circuses and it is ran by government departments, including department of education and all of this is set up to promote the kind of thinking that leads to the comments left by the owner of the thread.
BTW, he started his comment with a preamble how his comment will be extremely unpopular, but this is just posturing. In reality his thought processes are very common and prevailing in the bread and circuses society that has been cultivated since the ultimate blow was delivered to the principles, upon which the US was built. 1913 - the establishment of the Fed and IRS, which started the decline by allowing government to tax and regulate business activity while also allowing it to counterfeit money.
It is not HIS comments that will be unpopular, it is as always will be comments of people who express points of view similar to the one found in my reply to his comment. It's very easy to understand this by following the moderation history on/., and it really is indicative of the processes that are taking place IRL society in general.
FDR taxed the airlines in order to build the unprofitable and inefficient system of roads while taking apart the existing system of privately owned profitable and efficient rail. This was a massive subsidy to the auto-industry, it caused massive sub-urban sprawl, which is unmaintainable without huge subsidies. It cause much more pollution that rail ever could. It caused much more traffic and waste of peoples' lives than if cities were much less spread around and instead had more population density in smaller area. It killed the industry for profitable public transport (well, it was part of the kill, there are many other parts, all have government hands in it).
Of-course today Obama wants to build rail. Of-course USA has no money for it, but they figure they'll print it/borrow from Chinese. It will be massively expensive and inefficient, because the plan is to use all USA parts, which don't actually exist, so it can't be profitable without huge subsidies because nobody would be able to buy the tickets without huge subsidies. I don't think Obama actually will do this, USA is literally out of investment capital and credit, but that was the plan anyway.
Taxes buy culture.
- so without taxes there is no culture? You are talking about education for some reason there, but education is a function of the market, which requires education if it is a productive market. USA used to be a productive market in 19 century, beginning of the 20 century and past WWII, when it had a monopoly on production. It was the industrialization and manufacturing that pushed for more education, not gov't in any way. Education was efficient and it made sense as an investment. It was also quite cheap. All until government money poured in, made the system very expensive and inefficient and destroyed quality in the process. Now the market in USA does not require anywhere near as much education as there are dollars allocated for all the government subsidized schools and programs and loans, there is a huge bubble in education prices, there is a huge drop in quality, and all this is bought with more money than any other country spends per capita (same as with gov't ran health care in USA, same problems - huge costs and low quality, all thanks to government money in it.)
As to 'culture', the only 'culture' that taxes buy is culture of people who are unwilling to do anything and instead expect to be taken care of by the government - this is bread and circuses culture.
From tools, to access to shared resources, to even the ability to shape the system you live in - taxes buy a lot more than a simple minarchy would allow.
- all of this assumes that there is a need for any of those things and that by taxing income the government does not displace other types of investment that people would have made with their money, that wouldn't have given them more of what they actually needed, rather than something, government believes they need. This point has no value at all.
Taxes are the resources of the people paying for the shared needs of the people.
- yet when the USA was agreed upon by the separate States, the agreement was on a very very very tiny federal government that would do very very very little, would only take care of minimum military for protection and a justice system. What are the "shared needs" of people in New York and in Alaska exactly? How is a government bureaucratic system deciding these?
Also gov't is terrible at owning 'shared resources'. It really should not own any assets. It's terrible at being an 'owner', because as a collective, it has no sense of ownership.
That's why it's so terrible at actually protecting the 'shared resources'. The Guelph of Mexico is a good example - oil is spilled constantly, yet the gov't is a system that allowed 10 million dollar cap on the liability of the companies on d
First of all - US gov't getting into education causes huge price increases but destroys quality.
Secondly not everybody needs a 'well rounded' education.
Thirdly innovation and education are a function of a productive economy - if the market needs more innovation and higher education levels, without gov't there to prevent these things from happening, the market will get what it needs.
-- When you say ' consider the cost of ignorance', realize that ignorance is only a symptom of a stagnating economy. The cause of it is not low budget for education (it's not even low in USA), the cause of it is an economy that does not require the education.
In the West the economies are not requiring the education, because people are not expected to produce anything, but instead they themselves expect to be taken care of regardless of whether they produce anything or not.
This is the own doing of the people, who expect something for nothing and enact a socialist system upon their economy through political and economic means. From the creation of the Fed to IRS to FDIC to FDR programs to Nixon's gold shock and 1965 public health plans and SS and minimum wage and business regulations and money printing and US bond printing, and 'too big to fail' and all the corporate subsidies (not tax cuts, actual subsidies), to wars and growth of gov't - all of this and more, it's all the gov't that is causing the US economy to collapse (and the same applies to other western nations.)
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly.
For USA's inability to get large cargo into space now, that Shuttles are done for.
Of-course cotton is not measured in ounces, but instead in pounds.
Should have been USD50/pound and USD200/pound respectively for cotton.
1. I already stated that government must never be funded through income taxes because government is a spending item, and as such it must be spent upon in proportion with other spending, otherwise it destroys the economy by not letting it to restructure the debts, savings, production.
2. Consumption is actually the trivial part of economy - the complex part is production. Production should be promoted, consumption happens on its own. Investment is what is economy is about, not consumption.
3. The economy should not be aimed at the lowest common denominator - the poor. Economy of production promotes everybody into higher levels of wealth, even the 'poor'.
4. USA was actually funded through alcohol, excise and vice taxes prior to 1913, the poor should abstain from such activities and then they won't be paying those taxes.
5. When you say - huge refunds to the poor, what is it that you mean precisely? Why should refunds be 'huge'? However it is possible to means test people IF and only IF they wish to get some refund. Certainly there should be ability to disclose your private information to prove you should be excluded from paying most of consumption taxes, but there must not be any such requirement to people who do not require the refund, this would provide the necessary balance between power of the state to get into your business and your ability to pay lower consumption taxes.
Has this ever worked in practice, governments that spend only one billionth of what they spend now?
- yes.
It worked of-course in Argentina, Weimar Republic of Germany, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Taiwan, Danzig, Greece, Hungary, Krajina, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Romania, Yugoslvia, Zaire, Zimbabwe.
This will eventually be done in USA, you won't have to move anywhere to see it.
I know, thinking is a crime. DHS must be on its way.
GE, as in 'Government Electric'? :)
I already made my point clear - I am against government owning any assets, printing money, borrowing, taxing income, subsidizing any businesses or individuals, regulating any businesses and basically doing anything beyond minimum military and justice system (and I am now convinced they can't do that right either.)
As to having the top rate at over 90% (I believe it was 94% at some point), that does not change this simple fact: the actual effective taxes collected have always staid between 18% and 20%, which indicates that it is the real rate anybody is ever paying, and it's because changes of tax codes cause changes in behavior.
However I was specifically talking about personal income taxes, which in USA are unacceptably high (they should be 0%). But I will reiterate my position: all income taxes and payroll taxes and all corporate income taxes must be 0%, I really hope I am clear on my point. My point is that government must never be allowed to grow based on income but only based on ratio of consumption that the economy is involved in, because during bad times consumption must subside and give place to increases in savings and production.
But yes, I am against all government and corporate ties, there must be none.
Actually when I said 70 trillion I only counted SS, Medicare/Medicaid, this unfortunately does not include the balance that Fed bought off of the banks in 2008 and since, and this does not include all of the FHA and F/F obligations. Also we do not know all the numbers, the numbers could be much higher than 70Trillion, which is again, very unfortunate.
Fun fact:
2003 - gold was USD350/ounce, cotton was USD50/pound
today - gold is over USD1400/ounce, cotton is over USD200/pound
That's a stable 1:7 ratio. Of-course in USD the prices went up 4 times, which shows that USD lost 75% of value, again - very unfortunate.
Look at Europe, even, which is slowly but surely moving functions from individual states into the EU.
- EU will have what is coming to it just as well as USA, do not assume EU is somehow immune to the fiat printing disease. The difference of-course is that USD is 'reserve' and Euro is not and also in Europe separate countries cannot just print money. Europe's books are cooked just as much as US books are, but USA has a bigger military spending problem.
As to the total US federal budget: off the books stuff must be also included. This means Freddie and Fannie holdings, the Fed buying all the bad debt from the banks, the SS and Medicare/Medicaid pyramid schemes and the debt.
So we are talking about 70Trillion.
Divide that by 1,000,000,000 and you get 70 thousand.
Without the Fed and IRS, the government wouldn't be counterfeiting money, so a dollar would be worth about 100 times what it is worth now (if counting from 1913).
7000000 real dollars should be enough to run the federal government for its actual real purpose.
But I am not very rigid on that very specific number, but it's close enough.
My explanation is that you are simply emotionally attached to the idea of money being somehow "really real", which it hasn't been for much longer than you think.
- let's put it this way. I hold real money. You probably hold fiat.
Here is why holding fiat is not as smart as you may believe:
2003: gold is USD350/ounce, cotton is USD50/ounce.
2011: gold is over USD1400/ounce, cotton is over USD200/ounce.
This is a simple example that involves simple math even idiots can easily do.
The gold/cotton ratio was 1/7 in 2003. It is still 1/7 in 2011.
In the same amount of time the amount of gold or cotton that could be bought for USD fell by 75%.
If you think that 3/4 of a price hike is good for people in the economy, then I have to assume it is I, who is talking to an idiot.
Cheers.
Clearly the US government has sponsored the railroad tycoons and robber barons, etc. Again, this does not mean it to be a good thing for the economy, it promotes monopolies and destroys competition and reduces choices while pushing prices up. No question.
As to the point on competing currencies, I have tried submitting a story on this very issue just a little while ago, here it is (it was not deemed worthy of /. front page though, unsurprisingly, few important things are.)
So you are in the camp of arguing with idiots, who you consider to be idiots because they believe that a fiat currency that government can print free of any actual work done for it and without any reserves/backing behind it, will lead to the economic disaster that it did lead to.
Well, as I said - it simply reflects on you. Of-course participating in the thread as an AC has no bearing on that reflection at all, but it doesn't change the principle of the matter.
Because it's true. People like freedom.
- you are not following my question.
I am telling you that auto-roads were not as profitable as rail and air travel, otherwise they would have been built all privately at the time.
Are the roads profitable today? Sure, now that there is a huge network of massively subsidized roads, it is possible to build fully private profitable auto-roads. This point could have been achieved with time without gov't subsidies into auto-roads also, but the government wanted to ensure its political power, so it did what I have already described a couple of times here.
When you say: people LOVE to do something, I have no disagreements on SOME people loving it (I disagree that all people love it). But loving it and PAYING for it are different things altogether.
Would 'the people' be loving and paying for it if they didn't have the subsidies and had to pay real user fees? I suspect that over time that could be established and possibly created, but it would have been actually profitable to do so and wouldn't have required government subsidies.
People LOVE using things that are FREE of charge, I can't argue that point. But the road infrastructure was not actually free of charge. It destroyed a real useful profitable private rail system, it caused air lines to be in such financial distress that they also started requiring massive public funding to continue function, it created huge problems in energy and pollution and sub-urban sprawl and other problems, including health and loss of life problems due to car proliferation.
I don't think this is a fair way to look at it.
- this is the only way to build infrastructure without mis-allocation and destruction of actual wealth and without government usurping powers that do not belong to it and thus without an eventual economic catastrophe.
Your comments are still idiotic.
- gotcha. I guess you like arguing with people you consider idiots. What does that imply about you though? Just saying.
You should have read this.
But throughout all that drivel you wrote there, you posed a specific question:
Did you ever asked yourself why you live in such a rich country?
.
I have a very specific answer.
In the 19 century the economy moved from agriculture to industrial in USA, in the process it createdï the middle class - small business owners as well as professionals.
The economy's wealth rose dramatically - it's not money, it's things that were created and provided to the consumers in USA:
indoor plumbing, cheap/safe food (refrigeration), cheap clothing, washing/sewing machines, cars, electrical energy, radios, telephones, telegraphs, trains, cheap medical attention, etc.
-
The reason why USA used to be a wealthy country (wealthy, as in a wealthy producing nation), was because USA had a strong currency, which was appreciating in value, because it was real money - gold and because USA did not have government intervening in that economy much, except for support of some, who became tycoons/robber barons, but the economy was about production.
Production creates wealth.
Wealth is production.
Producers create wealth and then they can consume it.
Wealth is not money, money is just an investment vehicle, wealth is goods and services produced through investment in the presence of strong competitive forces.
The reason that the USA used to be a wealthy country was because it did not have government intervening in private people's businesses, and that is my reply, I know you consider this to be idiotic, you are welcome to continue your drivel now.
Cheers.
Seriously.
More seriously - I am against all income taxes, now that's for sure, did you read my comment?
So what you are saying is that we killed infrastructure by building infrastructure?
- I am saying that FDR's programs killed real infrastructure, which was profitable on its own merits, without subsidies. This was done by taxing airlines, the rail was actually taken down. Existing rail was removed. This was done to ensure political power of the federal government first of all. The entire interstate trade idea is enforced through the money that is allocated to the infrastructure that the publicly subsidized roads are.
When you say: people prefer - how the hell do you know that? Apparently you are wrong, because what the people preferred was rail and air travel for mass transport, otherwise the roads would have existed on the merits of being a profitable investment in the market place, just like rail and air were.
This had nothing to do with 'the people', it had to do with government usurping the power, using its ability to tax income and to print legal tender. It did create a system that cannot exist if the subsidies stop, and they will stop eventually. The created system is unsustainable on every level - from energy perspective, to infrastructure scale and population density, to pollution levels, to time that people spend on the road between home and business and shopping, etc.
Also the road system created another huge problem - insane dependance on cheap oil, which in turn caused many wars and other economic disasters past the thirties of 20th century.
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Of-course we must not forget that the reason that what FDR did was even possible was due to the federal government usurping the power in 1913 to tax income and print money via treasury+Fed, which basically resulted in all the inflation and asset bubbles, the great depression, and all recessions past 1965 as well, and the current depression and the incoming monetary collapse of the USA.
Are parents evil because the inflict "hurt" upon their children in order to teach or establish order?
- government is not our parent, that is not just a bad analogy, but it is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the government. You are not a child of your government, no matter what they tell you, understand?
I just do not see evil in structure or government, I do see it in individuals.
- really? This is strange indeed. I see governments as the ultimate evil, at the same level as basic murderers and thieves and liars, nothing more or less than that. Perhaps me being born in the former USSR has created this imprint on the personality but I am surprised to find out about people who do not see it for what it is ultimately.
You Sir are just an idiot.
I think you made your point.
I'll not bother replying in anything more than just links to a bunch of my older comments, they address all of your points in no particular order, but being an idiot gives me an excuse from sorting through my old comments thoughtfully enough to carefully craft a well written response, you surely deserve, for having identified me so precisely. However you cared to write an answer to my comment, so I at least have to acknowledge your presence with some form of a response.
Enjoy.
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Obviously you don't have to read any of it, but again, you read my first comment in this thread and even were compelled enough by it to write your very insightful response, so who knows, maybe there is something in it for you there...
Wrong. I'll quote wiki on this:As of January 2011, foreigners owned $4.45 trillion of U.S. debt, or approximately 47% of the debt held by the public of $9.49 trillion and 32% of the total debt of $14.1 trillion. The largest holders were the central banks of China ($1.1 trillion) and Japan ($885 billion).[28][29] The share held by foreign governments has grown over time, rising from 25% of the public debt in 2007[30] and 13% in 1988.[31]
Also note that all the latest US bond sales have been going this way: 70% of bonds are bought by foreign national banks, 30% are bought by US Fed.
So only national banks are buying, who do not care about profits. Private companies are selling, this is pushing long term interest rates up. Eventually the interest rates will go very high, this will push US into another huge round of recession, so the Fed is likely to do more and more QE. Next QE will be bailing out municipalities, then the states and then more private companies. I fully expect the Fed to buy back the US bonds by printing more and more fiat to keep interest rates down but increasing inflation with every new printed dollar. I also fully expect the prices in USA to rise dramatically very soon on everything that matters: food and energy and clothing and other perishable goods. This is likely to cause major trade partners to stop buying US debt and thus stop selling cheap goods to US consumers and since USA has no hot stand by production capacity, it will suffer in terms of quality of life dramatically, as people will not be able not only to pay for goods, but actually to get the goods they want even if they have US dollars.
Somalia immediately jumps to your mind, because you have no mind, your mind has been replaced by a knee jerk reaction engine, put their by the gov't you are protecting. Somalia is a country in a civil war, has nothing to do with 'free market', etc. USA is much closer to Zimbabwe - watch your wheelbarrow while moving your piles of cash around, somebody may grab the barrow.
As to myself, I did find suitable accommodations, thank you for your interest.
Please, enlighten the world, what in your estimation constitutes a 'reasonable amount'? Please.
Should it be percentage of their total wealth?
Should it be percentage of their earnings?
Is, say, 49% good enough?
Is it supposed to be 79%?
Is it 99%?
Do you know how much you pay today if you earn more than 500Kin Connecticut today? With 35% federal, 6.5% state (and the governor wants to push it up by a few points), FICA is really irrelevant then, because it's capped at first 100K, but 2.9% Medicare tax is applied on the ENTIRE amount. This is only the income taxes, can you do the addition?
Add to this the existing gas and other consumption taxes, levies and excise taxes, import and property taxes, you get to over 50%. The serfs of the past paid 25% to their lords. Why are people today being treated worse than serfs? Why do people today have to have their taxes cut in half at least to get to the level of serfs?
What is fair? Why should anybody pay any taxes based on income rather than on consumption? After all, money that is earned but not spent is reinvested, shouldn't investment be rewarded rather than consumption? Of-course it should, but not in an economy based on government subsidized spending through borrowed and printed money, gov't doesn't want savings - it wants spending, thus it subsidizes spending in various asset classes and creates bubbles in them, all this while printing money so that it doesn't have to pay its debts back in real money but in printed funny money (and this adds an additional inflation tax on your entire US dollar denominated holdings).
Real question is: who in their right mind is still paying taxes in USA and why should they do that at all? I think everybody should stop paying income taxes yesterday.
I don't particularly care about your comment, it started with an ad-hominem from the get-go, but I stand by my assertion that government is inherently and by the very definition and nature of itself an evil instrument, as it completely depends on its ability to HURT an individual in more ways than one through basically physical threat.
If the entire existence of a system is based on a threat that there will be physical violence (be it fines, jail or death), then I get to call that system evil on the very fact of its existence.
Regardless of you trying to make it personal, where it clearly does not belong, because I am not in North America anymore, haven't been in about 1.5 years, you are completely avoiding the point that I made, that the public roads built with tax money should never have existed, as they are unprofitable, they are a subsidy to industries, they are unmaintainable without constant public subsidy (which is not going to last), they are causing massive unmaintainable suburban sprawl, they killed the profitable industry of public transportation, which could work efficiently if there was no huge sprawl in much more densely populated area. This also means that travel to work would have taken much less time, would have been much more efficient and would not cause nearly as much pollution as the current preferred (and the only real) method of transportation in US.
As to your last sentence - where exactly did you find that argument in the grandparent post? In any case, it is irrelevant how many people are rich and what it is that they own - the question really was: why would people not vote to take away somebody else's money to give it to themselves. I answered it: not everybody is a thief, do you not understand the concept? Regardless of what you think of the rich, many of who became rich because of their ties to the government and special connections they have there (bail outs, stimulus money, subsidies), vast majority of people who own their businesses are working to improve the wealth of the population by providing goods/services population needs. This alone means they pay more than their 'fair share' (whatever that is), for the betterment of the society.
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As to me paying 'rent' to some road tycoon - tycoons and robber barons actually existed because they had special connections in government, even in times when government was much much smaller in USA.
Would I rather pay road tolls or taxes? ROAD TOLLS OF-COURSE!
Of-course I would rather pay user fees and would rather buy services I need than paying through all the things that government decides I must pay for through taxes. It would be MUCH CHEAPER for me. Much cheaper. And the quality would be better, while the services would actually make more sense economically speaking.
It is very simple - the system is about bread and circuses and it is ran by government departments, including department of education and all of this is set up to promote the kind of thinking that leads to the comments left by the owner of the thread.
BTW, he started his comment with a preamble how his comment will be extremely unpopular, but this is just posturing. In reality his thought processes are very common and prevailing in the bread and circuses society that has been cultivated since the ultimate blow was delivered to the principles, upon which the US was built. 1913 - the establishment of the Fed and IRS, which started the decline by allowing government to tax and regulate business activity while also allowing it to counterfeit money.
It is not HIS comments that will be unpopular, it is as always will be comments of people who express points of view similar to the one found in my reply to his comment. It's very easy to understand this by following the moderation history on /., and it really is indicative of the processes that are taking place IRL society in general.
Taxes buy infrastructure.
- taxes kill infrastructure.
FDR taxed the airlines in order to build the unprofitable and inefficient system of roads while taking apart the existing system of privately owned profitable and efficient rail. This was a massive subsidy to the auto-industry, it caused massive sub-urban sprawl, which is unmaintainable without huge subsidies. It cause much more pollution that rail ever could. It caused much more traffic and waste of peoples' lives than if cities were much less spread around and instead had more population density in smaller area. It killed the industry for profitable public transport (well, it was part of the kill, there are many other parts, all have government hands in it).
Of-course today Obama wants to build rail. Of-course USA has no money for it, but they figure they'll print it/borrow from Chinese. It will be massively expensive and inefficient, because the plan is to use all USA parts, which don't actually exist, so it can't be profitable without huge subsidies because nobody would be able to buy the tickets without huge subsidies. I don't think Obama actually will do this, USA is literally out of investment capital and credit, but that was the plan anyway.
Taxes buy culture.
- so without taxes there is no culture? You are talking about education for some reason there, but education is a function of the market, which requires education if it is a productive market. USA used to be a productive market in 19 century, beginning of the 20 century and past WWII, when it had a monopoly on production. It was the industrialization and manufacturing that pushed for more education, not gov't in any way. Education was efficient and it made sense as an investment. It was also quite cheap. All until government money poured in, made the system very expensive and inefficient and destroyed quality in the process. Now the market in USA does not require anywhere near as much education as there are dollars allocated for all the government subsidized schools and programs and loans, there is a huge bubble in education prices, there is a huge drop in quality, and all this is bought with more money than any other country spends per capita (same as with gov't ran health care in USA, same problems - huge costs and low quality, all thanks to government money in it.)
As to 'culture', the only 'culture' that taxes buy is culture of people who are unwilling to do anything and instead expect to be taken care of by the government - this is bread and circuses culture.
From tools, to access to shared resources, to even the ability to shape the system you live in - taxes buy a lot more than a simple minarchy would allow.
- all of this assumes that there is a need for any of those things and that by taxing income the government does not displace other types of investment that people would have made with their money, that wouldn't have given them more of what they actually needed, rather than something, government believes they need. This point has no value at all.
Taxes are the resources of the people paying for the shared needs of the people.
- yet when the USA was agreed upon by the separate States, the agreement was on a very very very tiny federal government that would do very very very little, would only take care of minimum military for protection and a justice system. What are the "shared needs" of people in New York and in Alaska exactly? How is a government bureaucratic system deciding these?
Also gov't is terrible at owning 'shared resources'. It really should not own any assets. It's terrible at being an 'owner', because as a collective, it has no sense of ownership.
That's why it's so terrible at actually protecting the 'shared resources'. The Guelph of Mexico is a good example - oil is spilled constantly, yet the gov't is a system that allowed 10 million dollar cap on the liability of the companies on d
You are correct on one thing - innovation and discovery do come from people with inquisitive minds.
However you are wrong about 'well rounded education system' and 'drastic cutbacks in public education'.
I left a couple of comments on this here.
First of all - US gov't getting into education causes huge price increases but destroys quality.
Secondly not everybody needs a 'well rounded' education.
Thirdly innovation and education are a function of a productive economy - if the market needs more innovation and higher education levels, without gov't there to prevent these things from happening, the market will get what it needs.
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When you say ' consider the cost of ignorance', realize that ignorance is only a symptom of a stagnating economy. The cause of it is not low budget for education (it's not even low in USA), the cause of it is an economy that does not require the education.
In the West the economies are not requiring the education, because people are not expected to produce anything, but instead they themselves expect to be taken care of regardless of whether they produce anything or not.
This is the own doing of the people, who expect something for nothing and enact a socialist system upon their economy through political and economic means. From the creation of the Fed to IRS to FDIC to FDR programs to Nixon's gold shock and 1965 public health plans and SS and minimum wage and business regulations and money printing and US bond printing, and 'too big to fail' and all the corporate subsidies (not tax cuts, actual subsidies), to wars and growth of gov't - all of this and more, it's all the gov't that is causing the US economy to collapse (and the same applies to other western nations.)