You seem to have forgotten the Republican Congress.
With a Democratic president. Clinton could have vetoed the bill. If he had vetoed it, it would have been DOA - neither party had the strength needed to pass the bill over his veto. So, yeah - the Democratic president had a lot to do with the DMCA getting passed.
<shrug> It probably wouldn't have made a real difference, anyways. The problem with the current state of politics in the US is that the vast majority of the population thinks that everything is divided on party lines, and that "Democrat" and "Republican" continue to mean something; when in fact, the majority of professional politicians in the US pay attention to monied interests (big business, big media, big unions) and no one else. When you have a Congress that's split 50/50 "Democratic"/Republican" but 80/20 "monied interests"/"we the people", something like the DMCA is going to manage get passed.
The biggest difference from a user perspective between Linux and Cygwin is that almost everything compiles on most flavors of Linux without trouble, and almost nothing compiles on Cygwin without trouble.
Hmm. I'll admit that there are a couple of areas where Cygwin pretty obviously is lacking (IPC, for example). Still, my experience is that the majority of sofware that's been ported to run on more than one *nix platform (BSD and Linux, Solaris & BSD, etc.) tends to compile just fine OOB under Cygwin. In cases where I have run into problems compiling, it's either been because the software depended on kernel-specific capabilities, or because someone made an incorrect assumption about portability.
Most of waht I deal with is straight userland software, though. Where I've run into technical problems getting something to compile under Cygwin, the reason has often had more to do with platform politics than any shortcoming in Cygwin.
Uh, no. Cygwin is a POSIX API for Win32, and a collection of bundled applications.
Well, yah. You're technically correct... but, tell me: what is Linux, really, except a POSIX API (kernel) and a collection of bundled applications? To the vast majority of people, those "bundled applications" are the most important bit. What OS (or application layer or whatever) they're running on top of is a secondary consideration.
I've spent the last two years or so working on both Linux and Windows + Cygwin. Granted, a lot of that is command line work; but you can run XFree86 under Cygwin, you can even run KDE under Cygwin if you so choose. While it's technically not Linux, it's close enough that someone familiar with Cygwin will probably also be comfortable under Linux.
That would be like copyrighting the output of "ls -l".
[sam.robb@santa sam.robb]$./make_limerick
~/limerick ~
~
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 1 There once was an OmniGeek who was almost right -
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 2 He thought the IP in command output was too slight.
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 3 He posted in haste
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 4 So Ill give him a taste
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 5 Of my ls -l - under copyright!
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 6 Copyright 2003 Sam Robb. All rights reserved.
[sam.robb@santa sam.robb]$
Good point - the license violation leads to GPL being revoked, the GPL being revoked means that normal copyright law takes over. Thanks for helping me see this a bit more clearly.
That's what happens with future versions, yes. However past versions that have this code are now, whether they like it or not, GPLed, too. This means that anyone that currently has a version of UnixWare with Linux support can demand the source code for it.
Nope. All this means is that SCO is guilty of a license violation.
IANAL - but I'm betting that you would have to take them to court and convince a judge that the violation was intentional ("Hey, let's use this GPL code!"), willful ("Yah. We can just ignore the license."), and pervasive ("Sure, why not - the VP of development and legal already said that's fine.") Otherwise, SCO can just claim that the inclusion of the GPL'd code was a "misunderstanding" between a long-gone developer and a long-gone manager, neither of whom had the authority to make this kind of decision on behalf of the company.
Even if you got past that hurdle, I expect that you'd have to explicitly request that the code for the past versions be placed under the GPL as part of the settlement, and SCO would probably value the code so highly ("One billion dollars, your honor!") that any order to GPL the code would give SCO a good chance to get that aspect of the ruling either thrown out or reduced on appeal.
More specifically, I find that reading someone else's code gives me insight into their thought process...
<shudder>
Man... there's code I've looked through where I specifically do not want to have any insight into the author's thought process, because it's fairly obvious that they're drooling syphilitic idiots who have unnatural urges that involve unlubricated farm equipment.
</shudder>
Where I'm working right now (TimeSys), I've been involved in contributions to Eclipse and Cygwin. Here's some advice:
ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RELEASE ANYTHING WITHOUT PERMISSION.
If there's no clear policy already in place, ask. You probably don't have the authority to act as an agent of the company with regard to making decisions about IP. (If you don't know for sure whether you have that authority or not, you should assume not until someone tells you otherwise.) Keep pushing the suggestions/requests up the chain of command until you reach someone who has the authority to say "yea". They may still tell you "nay", but at least you'll be getting a decision on the matter instead of an "I can't make this decision, I don't want to bother my boss, so I'll just say no" response.
START WITH SOMETHING SMALL.
In my case, it was getting permission to submit patches to correct bugs - very small, very simple, very non-threatening things. The argument was that we could submit the patches, or go through the pain of developing the same patches again with each new release of the software we were using. That's a good way to get the foot in the door: show that there's a benefit to submitting patches that outweighs any perceived risk. If you can show that you spend X days out of every release cycle generating the same ol' patches again and again, it's an even more convincing argument.
DON'T PUSH TOO HARD.
For some companies, this is a big step to take. Let the folks who make the decisions think about the idea, answer their questions honestly, and be persistent without harassing them every day about the issue. You don't want to have them tell you "no" just so you'll quit bugging them.
BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU GET.
I don't mean that when you get the first "no", you should give up. You need to be reasonable in your expectations - IMHO, submitting patches for bug fixes is fairly minor, and the reaction to that request should give you an idea of how receptive your maangement might be towards the idea of more substantial work & contributions.
My employer lets us submit bug fix patches freely for one project, at the developer's discretion. Minor feature additions in the same project require approval, which is generally easy to get. Other projects require management approval for all patches, no matter waht. Some projects that require copyright assignments are still in the "we're considering it" phase, and may never be approved. We've contributed at least one large chunk of original code to a project, and are considering doing it for a couple of others, as well, because while we want the software to have feature X, we don't want to have to maintain feature X. That's a pretty good argument to try if you're trying to get approval to submit a patch that adds a feature or functionality to an existing project:-)
What you miss (and I failed to make clear) is the the Linux kernel is not licensed under the GPL. It is licensed under the GPL with a specific exception for kernel modules.
You're right, of course - that's easy to forget. Thanks for reminding me.
Hmm... interesting. Is this type of behavior allowable under the GPL? It seems to be an additional restriction on how the software can be used. At first glance, I would think there's no difference between saying "You may not use this kernel module with non-GPL code" and "You may not use this kernel module unless you are a customer of company X".
Nevermind that, if a kernel module is under the GPL, there's nothing preventing me from modifying it to run without these restrictions, and then distributing the new binaries and code in accordance with the GPL. If this is primarily a method of making a statement, then it's a weak one at best.
Additionally, some developers of kernel loadable module code, such as for device drivers, believe that by packaging their code as a loadable module it need not be released under the GPL.
Hmm? I thought that this type of construct was specifically allowed. There are many companies who release proprietary code as loadable kernel modules - video drivers, for example. A quick Google shows that binary-only lkm's are permissible, though apparently there is some effort being made to clearly define what "permissible" means in this case.
You say that when Bush 43 is basing his appointments to advisory posts based primarily on political stance...
Yeah! You said it! No president prior to Bush has ever let anything as trivial as political ideology influence his appointments to the Supreme Court! How dare he allow his political convictions to influence his actions while in office!
It's a shame we don't have someone as apolitical as Clinton in there. Now, there was a president who never let his poltical opinions influence his thinking!
(Obligatory note for the perception impaired: yes, the above post is sarcasm.)
India and Mexico are unlikely to have the purchasing power and Internet infrastructure to present a market comparable to the US, Canada, EU, or Japan.
OK, I'll grant you Mexico - but India is a huge country. From what I've seen and heard, it's in pretty much the same situation as the US w/regard to broadband - there are areas of excellent connectivity, and other areas where even a dialup connection is hard to get. Even if you scale down music prices to accomidate the relative cost of living in India, I suspect there's a large enough market there that it would be worthwhile pursuing.
Apple has what, < 5% of the desktop market share? If these figure hold steady, then the Windows release of iTunes could generate close to a billion (1000 million) dollars.
That's what's impressive. Not that they have a service that could generate $50 million/year, but they have a potential US market (not a world market, but a US market) that is 20x larger to expand into. Start adding in Canada, Mexico, the EU, India, Japan... and there's a amazingly huge amount of money to be made by Apple.
Besides, why are offshore investments bad? Aren't we living in a global economy now?
It's great if you're rich, but it sucks otherwise.
That was menat semi-sarcastically - sorry if that didn't quite come through:-/
The top 20% get about 63% of the tax cut, and propmtly bank it...
...and the bank lends it out to people, and they make their money by charging interest on the loan.
Those top 20% putting their money into savings will make an additional $200B available for the banks to loan out. They have to do that - otherwise, they can't make the money to pay the interest on that $200B deposited with them. So, banks will do their best to see that they get that money out of their hands and into the hands of someone who can start paying them interest on a loan. That will almost certainly mean lower interest rates - for credit cards, for personal loans, for home loans. Low interest rates spur consumer spending more than a simple cash return, because it encourages folks to get out and make purchases of large, durable goods that were previously perceived as "too expensive".
Our GDP is $10T, so $74B isn't much.
By that argument, $274B isn't much, either - same order of magnitude. So, again, your argument defeats itself. If $74B isn't enought to be an agent for "economic stimulus", then even four times that amount probably won't have a significant effect, either. If a tax cut isn't going to have a significant effect, then you have three choices:
Give more money back to the rich
Give more money back to the poor
Ignore economic status and treat everybody identically
Well, I take that back: there's a fourth option - eliminate all taxes on the first $25,000 of income. That would keep about 40% of the population from paying any taxes at all, without even causing a blip in the tax revenue collected by the IRS. I'd support this in a heartbeat, and I'm nowhere near being able to benefit from this kind of simplified tax scheme.
But you know what? You'll never see this happen. Do you know why? Folks like you would fight it tooth and nail - because while it provides a tremendous benefit to the lower income earners, it also provides a benefit to the upper income earners. It also means that the government suddenly looses a significant bit of control over a large portion of the population. Can't go after them for tax evasion, can't pass tax laws to encourage or discourage certain behaviors, etc.
Nope, can't have that. Taxes were about funding the government, long ago... now, they are about control. Which segment of society do we want to reward? Which do we want to punish? Do we want to encourage people to invest, or to spend? To pay for higher education, or go straight into the workforce? To contribute to political parties, or charitable organizations? This is why flat-tax proposals, modified tax proposals, and national sales tax proposals are all vigorously opposed (primarily by the left, but also by the moderate right) - anything that takes away the ability to make exceptions to the tax code as a reward or punishment takes power away from the government.
A rich person is less likely to buy another car because he's got slightly more money - he'll bank it or invest in some offshore opportunity. A poor person, on the other hand, will pay off some debt and buy the new sofa he's been looking at for 6 months.
Does it occur to you that you're making a pretty broad assumption about how people deal with their money? There are "rich" people who prefer to invest locally and would never think of offshore investments [1]. There are "poor" people who would take a tax refund and would never even think of using it to reduce their debts.
You're assuming that all people in a certain economic class will behave in exactly the same way; in addition, you're assuming that their behavior happen to be exactly the type of behavior that benefits your argument.
In any case, even if we follow your logic, you're wrong. Assume that every "rich" person takes their tax refund and dumps it into foreign investments. Assume that every "poor" person takes their tax refund and uses it to pay of debts and buy new goods. In this situation, you would still get the desired effect - an economic stimulus. It may not be as large a stimulus as possible, but it will be there.
[1] Besides, why are offshore investments bad? Aren't we living in a global economy now? Isn't it an ecomonic advantage to have healthy international trade partners? I've noticed that the same people who are pro-NAFTA and pro-globalism also make these same arguments about how bad it is to let the "rich" invest their money in other countries. Doublespeak plusgood.
Then explain how the bulk of the tax cut goes to the very rich.
Maybe because the "rich" - the top 20% of the individual earners in the country - pay over 65% of the income taxes collected each year?
If everyone has their taxes reduced by 10%, well, that means that someone who pays more taxes than you do will get more money back. If you compare the percentages, it's a fair deal. If you compare the scalar quantities that result from those percentages and start talking about "the rich" and "the poor", you've stopped talking about the math, and started trying to manipulate people's emotions.
Since taxes are always computed as percentages of income, falling back to talking about relative scalar quantities for a tax cut or tax increase is a pretty good sign of someone who wants to muddy the issue.
The solution to this is to allow paid-for copyright extensions. Set a default, "free" copyright of N years - in this example, N == 20. Before the initial 20 year term expires, you have the option of paying a fee - say, $10,000 - to extend your copyright for another 10 years. Each additional 10 year extension doubles the fee.
With this type of structure, a "poor writer" would get his default 20 year copyright. If he profited from his work, he would have the ability to extend his copyright.
You should be more educated about how the US government takes away your wealth...
Believe me, I am. It's not that I disagree with you; but I have a problem with your statements of fact...
Taking up your challenge, the last two mentions of government subsidies I could find for the USPS were in 1983 and 1991. In that search, I found a recent document that is highly critical of the USPS for a number of reasons, but somehow fails to mention the subsidies you insist are paid to it.
However, for practical purposes, the other "benefits" as you call them which the USPS receives, are, for practical purposes, subsidies.
Please, please, please - I understand your point, and I might even agree with you, if it weren't for your insistance on using a term with a well-defined meaning improperly. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it 9 billion dollars is a subsidy. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it a new fleet of planes is a subsidy. If they instead chose to help the airline industry in a different way - by changing legislation to reduce the tax burden for an airline, for example - that is not a subsidy. You could refer to it as a tax break, a tax credit, an amazing hornswoggle, or any number of different things; but calling it a subsidy is about as accurate as calling it a monkey.
Quite frankly, your insistance that the term "subsidy" means something other than what is commonly accepted is a red flag to me. Redefinition of terms is a common tactic used to greater or lesser extent by groups who expect to profit by confusing the issue under discussion.
Those things that you mentioned are definitely benefits that the USPS receives, but THEY ARE NOT SUBSIDIES
That will not change no matter how many times you call them subsidies, OK? The word "subsidy" has a definite meaning. It does not extend to cover eminent domain, antitrust laws, or the various other things you mentioned.
Yes, these are special benefits extended to the USPS for the benefit of the taxpayers. The government, long ago, decided that having a a reliable, cheap postal service capable of serving the nation was important enough that they granted the USPS a special status that came along with certain benefits that are not generally enjoyed by other organizations.
It is the government that collects taxes. It is the government that doles out taxes collected. It is the government that is resposible for determining how to provide postal service to the US. Do you see what I'm getting at? The government could subsidise the USPS, but they don't. They provide it with other benefits, benefits which allow the USPS to do it's job.
Ironic that this is one of the few things that the goverment is supposed to be doing, and you're complaining about it.
None of the definitions of "subsidy" include the idea of "not taking money from someone". A subsidy is not the same thing as a tax exemption, which is what the USPS has. Saying that the government subsidises the USPS is no more true than saying that the government subsidises the Catholic Church.
Slashdot Mirror
Or a Democrat, for that matter.
With a Democratic president. Clinton could have vetoed the bill. If he had vetoed it, it would have been DOA - neither party had the strength needed to pass the bill over his veto. So, yeah - the Democratic president had a lot to do with the DMCA getting passed.
<shrug> It probably wouldn't have made a real difference, anyways. The problem with the current state of politics in the US is that the vast majority of the population thinks that everything is divided on party lines, and that "Democrat" and "Republican" continue to mean something; when in fact, the majority of professional politicians in the US pay attention to monied interests (big business, big media, big unions) and no one else. When you have a Congress that's split 50/50 "Democratic"/Republican" but 80/20 "monied interests"/"we the people", something like the DMCA is going to manage get passed.
Hmm. I'll admit that there are a couple of areas where Cygwin pretty obviously is lacking (IPC, for example). Still, my experience is that the majority of sofware that's been ported to run on more than one *nix platform (BSD and Linux, Solaris & BSD, etc.) tends to compile just fine OOB under Cygwin. In cases where I have run into problems compiling, it's either been because the software depended on kernel-specific capabilities, or because someone made an incorrect assumption about portability.
Most of waht I deal with is straight userland software, though. Where I've run into technical problems getting something to compile under Cygwin, the reason has often had more to do with platform politics than any shortcoming in Cygwin.
Well, yah. You're technically correct... but, tell me: what is Linux, really, except a POSIX API (kernel) and a collection of bundled applications? To the vast majority of people, those "bundled applications" are the most important bit. What OS (or application layer or whatever) they're running on top of is a secondary consideration.
I've spent the last two years or so working on both Linux and Windows + Cygwin. Granted, a lot of that is command line work; but you can run XFree86 under Cygwin, you can even run KDE under Cygwin if you so choose. While it's technically not Linux, it's close enough that someone familiar with Cygwin will probably also be comfortable under Linux.
[sam.robb@santa sam.robb]$ ./make_limerick
~/limerick ~
~
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 1 There once was an OmniGeek who was almost right -
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 2 He thought the IP in command output was too slight.
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 3 He posted in haste
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 4 So Ill give him a taste
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 5 Of my ls -l - under copyright!
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sam.robb sam.robb 0 Jun 18 13:40 6 Copyright 2003 Sam Robb. All rights reserved.
[sam.robb@santa sam.robb]$
Good point - the license violation leads to GPL being revoked, the GPL being revoked means that normal copyright law takes over. Thanks for helping me see this a bit more clearly.
Nope. All this means is that SCO is guilty of a license violation.
IANAL - but I'm betting that you would have to take them to court and convince a judge that the violation was intentional ("Hey, let's use this GPL code!"), willful ("Yah. We can just ignore the license."), and pervasive ("Sure, why not - the VP of development and legal already said that's fine.") Otherwise, SCO can just claim that the inclusion of the GPL'd code was a "misunderstanding" between a long-gone developer and a long-gone manager, neither of whom had the authority to make this kind of decision on behalf of the company.
Even if you got past that hurdle, I expect that you'd have to explicitly request that the code for the past versions be placed under the GPL as part of the settlement, and SCO would probably value the code so highly ("One billion dollars, your honor!") that any order to GPL the code would give SCO a good chance to get that aspect of the ruling either thrown out or reduced on appeal.
<shudder>
Man... there's code I've looked through where I specifically do not want to have any insight into the author's thought process, because it's fairly obvious that they're drooling syphilitic idiots who have unnatural urges that involve unlubricated farm equipment.
</shudder>
Where I'm working right now (TimeSys), I've been involved in contributions to Eclipse and Cygwin. Here's some advice:
ASSUME THAT YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RELEASE ANYTHING WITHOUT PERMISSION.
If there's no clear policy already in place, ask. You probably don't have the authority to act as an agent of the company with regard to making decisions about IP. (If you don't know for sure whether you have that authority or not, you should assume not until someone tells you otherwise.) Keep pushing the suggestions/requests up the chain of command until you reach someone who has the authority to say "yea". They may still tell you "nay", but at least you'll be getting a decision on the matter instead of an "I can't make this decision, I don't want to bother my boss, so I'll just say no" response.
START WITH SOMETHING SMALL.
In my case, it was getting permission to submit patches to correct bugs - very small, very simple, very non-threatening things. The argument was that we could submit the patches, or go through the pain of developing the same patches again with each new release of the software we were using. That's a good way to get the foot in the door: show that there's a benefit to submitting patches that outweighs any perceived risk. If you can show that you spend X days out of every release cycle generating the same ol' patches again and again, it's an even more convincing argument.
DON'T PUSH TOO HARD.
For some companies, this is a big step to take. Let the folks who make the decisions think about the idea, answer their questions honestly, and be persistent without harassing them every day about the issue. You don't want to have them tell you "no" just so you'll quit bugging them.
BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU GET.
I don't mean that when you get the first "no", you should give up. You need to be reasonable in your expectations - IMHO, submitting patches for bug fixes is fairly minor, and the reaction to that request should give you an idea of how receptive your maangement might be towards the idea of more substantial work & contributions.
My employer lets us submit bug fix patches freely for one project, at the developer's discretion. Minor feature additions in the same project require approval, which is generally easy to get. Other projects require management approval for all patches, no matter waht. Some projects that require copyright assignments are still in the "we're considering it" phase, and may never be approved. We've contributed at least one large chunk of original code to a project, and are considering doing it for a couple of others, as well, because while we want the software to have feature X, we don't want to have to maintain feature X. That's a pretty good argument to try if you're trying to get approval to submit a patch that adds a feature or functionality to an existing project :-)
You're right, of course - that's easy to forget. Thanks for reminding me.
Hmm... interesting. Is this type of behavior allowable under the GPL? It seems to be an additional restriction on how the software can be used. At first glance, I would think there's no difference between saying "You may not use this kernel module with non-GPL code" and "You may not use this kernel module unless you are a customer of company X".
Nevermind that, if a kernel module is under the GPL, there's nothing preventing me from modifying it to run without these restrictions, and then distributing the new binaries and code in accordance with the GPL. If this is primarily a method of making a statement, then it's a weak one at best.
Hmm? I thought that this type of construct was specifically allowed. There are many companies who release proprietary code as loadable kernel modules - video drivers, for example. A quick Google shows that binary-only lkm's are permissible, though apparently there is some effort being made to clearly define what "permissible" means in this case.
Yeah! You said it! No president prior to Bush has ever let anything as trivial as political ideology influence his appointments to the Supreme Court! How dare he allow his political convictions to influence his actions while in office!
It's a shame we don't have someone as apolitical as Clinton in there. Now, there was a president who never let his poltical opinions influence his thinking!
(Obligatory note for the perception impaired: yes, the above post is sarcasm.)
Thank you, Corporal Carrot.
OK, I'll grant you Mexico - but India is a huge country. From what I've seen and heard, it's in pretty much the same situation as the US w/regard to broadband - there are areas of excellent connectivity, and other areas where even a dialup connection is hard to get. Even if you scale down music prices to accomidate the relative cost of living in India, I suspect there's a large enough market there that it would be worthwhile pursuing.
Apple has what, < 5% of the desktop market share? If these figure hold steady, then the Windows release of iTunes could generate close to a billion (1000 million) dollars.
That's what's impressive. Not that they have a service that could generate $50 million/year, but they have a potential US market (not a world market, but a US market) that is 20x larger to expand into. Start adding in Canada, Mexico, the EU, India, Japan... and there's a amazingly huge amount of money to be made by Apple.
A short story by Orson Scott Card, available in "Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories".
That was menat semi-sarcastically - sorry if that didn't quite come through :-/
...and the bank lends it out to people, and they make their money by charging interest on the loan.
Those top 20% putting their money into savings will make an additional $200B available for the banks to loan out. They have to do that - otherwise, they can't make the money to pay the interest on that $200B deposited with them. So, banks will do their best to see that they get that money out of their hands and into the hands of someone who can start paying them interest on a loan. That will almost certainly mean lower interest rates - for credit cards, for personal loans, for home loans. Low interest rates spur consumer spending more than a simple cash return, because it encourages folks to get out and make purchases of large, durable goods that were previously perceived as "too expensive".
By that argument, $274B isn't much, either - same order of magnitude. So, again, your argument defeats itself. If $74B isn't enought to be an agent for "economic stimulus", then even four times that amount probably won't have a significant effect, either. If a tax cut isn't going to have a significant effect, then you have three choices:
Well, I take that back: there's a fourth option - eliminate all taxes on the first $25,000 of income. That would keep about 40% of the population from paying any taxes at all, without even causing a blip in the tax revenue collected by the IRS. I'd support this in a heartbeat, and I'm nowhere near being able to benefit from this kind of simplified tax scheme.
But you know what? You'll never see this happen. Do you know why? Folks like you would fight it tooth and nail - because while it provides a tremendous benefit to the lower income earners, it also provides a benefit to the upper income earners. It also means that the government suddenly looses a significant bit of control over a large portion of the population. Can't go after them for tax evasion, can't pass tax laws to encourage or discourage certain behaviors, etc.
Nope, can't have that. Taxes were about funding the government, long ago... now, they are about control. Which segment of society do we want to reward? Which do we want to punish? Do we want to encourage people to invest, or to spend? To pay for higher education, or go straight into the workforce? To contribute to political parties, or charitable organizations? This is why flat-tax proposals, modified tax proposals, and national sales tax proposals are all vigorously opposed (primarily by the left, but also by the moderate right) - anything that takes away the ability to make exceptions to the tax code as a reward or punishment takes power away from the government.
Does it occur to you that you're making a pretty broad assumption about how people deal with their money? There are "rich" people who prefer to invest locally and would never think of offshore investments [1]. There are "poor" people who would take a tax refund and would never even think of using it to reduce their debts.
You're assuming that all people in a certain economic class will behave in exactly the same way; in addition, you're assuming that their behavior happen to be exactly the type of behavior that benefits your argument.
In any case, even if we follow your logic, you're wrong. Assume that every "rich" person takes their tax refund and dumps it into foreign investments. Assume that every "poor" person takes their tax refund and uses it to pay of debts and buy new goods. In this situation, you would still get the desired effect - an economic stimulus. It may not be as large a stimulus as possible, but it will be there.
[1] Besides, why are offshore investments bad? Aren't we living in a global economy now? Isn't it an ecomonic advantage to have healthy international trade partners? I've noticed that the same people who are pro-NAFTA and pro-globalism also make these same arguments about how bad it is to let the "rich" invest their money in other countries. Doublespeak plusgood.
Maybe because the "rich" - the top 20% of the individual earners in the country - pay over 65% of the income taxes collected each year?
If everyone has their taxes reduced by 10%, well, that means that someone who pays more taxes than you do will get more money back. If you compare the percentages, it's a fair deal. If you compare the scalar quantities that result from those percentages and start talking about "the rich" and "the poor", you've stopped talking about the math, and started trying to manipulate people's emotions.
Since taxes are always computed as percentages of income, falling back to talking about relative scalar quantities for a tax cut or tax increase is a pretty good sign of someone who wants to muddy the issue.
The solution to this is to allow paid-for copyright extensions. Set a default, "free" copyright of N years - in this example, N == 20. Before the initial 20 year term expires, you have the option of paying a fee - say, $10,000 - to extend your copyright for another 10 years. Each additional 10 year extension doubles the fee.
With this type of structure, a "poor writer" would get his default 20 year copyright. If he profited from his work, he would have the ability to extend his copyright.
Good gravy, man, I laughed so hard I nearly snarfed coffee out my nose. Funniest thing I've seen in a long time.
Believe me, I am. It's not that I disagree with you; but I have a problem with your statements of fact...
Taking up your challenge, the last two mentions of government subsidies I could find for the USPS were in 1983 and 1991. In that search, I found a recent document that is highly critical of the USPS for a number of reasons, but somehow fails to mention the subsidies you insist are paid to it.
Please, please, please - I understand your point, and I might even agree with you, if it weren't for your insistance on using a term with a well-defined meaning improperly. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it 9 billion dollars is a subsidy. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it a new fleet of planes is a subsidy. If they instead chose to help the airline industry in a different way - by changing legislation to reduce the tax burden for an airline, for example - that is not a subsidy. You could refer to it as a tax break, a tax credit, an amazing hornswoggle, or any number of different things; but calling it a subsidy is about as accurate as calling it a monkey.
Quite frankly, your insistance that the term "subsidy" means something other than what is commonly accepted is a red flag to me. Redefinition of terms is a common tactic used to greater or lesser extent by groups who expect to profit by confusing the issue under discussion.
Please listen to me this time.
Those things that you mentioned are definitely benefits that the USPS receives, but THEY ARE NOT SUBSIDIES
That will not change no matter how many times you call them subsidies, OK? The word "subsidy" has a definite meaning. It does not extend to cover eminent domain, antitrust laws, or the various other things you mentioned.
Yes, these are special benefits extended to the USPS for the benefit of the taxpayers. The government, long ago, decided that having a a reliable, cheap postal service capable of serving the nation was important enough that they granted the USPS a special status that came along with certain benefits that are not generally enjoyed by other organizations.
It is the government that collects taxes. It is the government that doles out taxes collected. It is the government that is resposible for determining how to provide postal service to the US. Do you see what I'm getting at? The government could subsidise the USPS, but they don't. They provide it with other benefits, benefits which allow the USPS to do it's job.
Ironic that this is one of the few things that the goverment is supposed to be doing, and you're complaining about it.
None of the definitions of "subsidy" include the idea of "not taking money from someone". A subsidy is not the same thing as a tax exemption, which is what the USPS has. Saying that the government subsidises the USPS is no more true than saying that the government subsidises the Catholic Church.