Free trade does make wars more unlikely, but war creates war and the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century has plenty of wars from the Franco-Prussian war to the wars in the Balkans. The powers in Europe had no trust towards each other which led to an arms race which then exploded with violence.
Nuclear bombs have done very little to ensure "world peace" first off it is only by the disobeying of direct orders by heroic USSR and US soldiers that a nuclear war was averted. It was only by pure fortune that the world wasn't destroyed by nuclear weapons.
If you look at the cold war, it was hardly a time of "world peace" unless you were one of the lucky few to live in the US and USSR and managed to avoid being dragged into slavery by the draft into one of the many unnecessary wars (Korea, Vietnam, etc.). For the citizens of the rest of the world it sure wasn't peaceful because both the USSR and USA enjoyed undermining legitimate (if you can call any government legitimate) leaders with their own "communist" or "capitalist" allies.
We live in an era where resources, while scarce, can be better tapped or simply replaced. Ocean water can be desalinated. If oil ever truly becomes scarce, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. power will take over. The thing is, today there is little reason to go "green". Oil is cheap, especially when priced in just about every commodity other than fiat currencies, if you look at how much gas costs per gallon in pre-1964 silver coins, it's about the same as gas was back in the 1960s, inflation just has distorted the prices.
Oh yes, "stealing" non existent property. I forgot about how everything was built independent from each other and technologies never build on one another. Like how if I want to, say, build a computer I need to create an electricity delivery system, re-invent a real-time clock, research the properties of electricity myself, etc.
Technology builds on the existing technology. Literature builds on existing literature. Music builds on existing music. Culture builds on culture. Etc.
Trade benefits both parties, I for one am glad that China has given us a much higher standard of living by reducing regulations allowing for cheaper products for me to buy to improve my standard of living.
I've used Meebo ever since I switched from Windows to Linux full time back in 2006 or so. I still have quite a few people who use MSN messenger regularly but don't use much else. Yes, Pidgin works decently, but Meebo works with all the computers I have or can use with a single login. Use a friend's laptop? I've still got all my accounts without adding extra software. Use a public terminal? Same thing.
I've always liked Meebo and I'm very sad to see it go. The "Meebo Bar" can go die in a fire though, of course its the only thing that's going to continue to live on...
It has, the classroom method for instruction and knowledge is dead. It died when the internet came about. The thing is though, college is not about instruction it is about getting a piece of paper to get hired (or an experience).
Just about every single skill can be learned for free online. Want to know about British history? Identify Roman coins? Learn C#? You can find that for free online. Unless you have a degree though, chances are you aren't going to make it past the first round of screening HR does.
I agree with your title, it seems like every OS has decided its going to try change for the sake of change for no good reason. There was nothing fundamentally broken in Windows 7 UI wise. Similarly, Gnome 2.X was great, 3.X sucks. I don't understand the obsession in trying to fix non-broken things. Metro might be great for a smartphone but sucks for a Desktop when you have something a bit more precision controlled than your fat fingers (mouse and keyboard). Why not work behind the scenes and make Windows more stable, give it a better architecture, make it more secure, but less annoying. Make it more customizable, etc.
...And there are people who will do the exact same thing with phones.
What we simply need to do is hold people responsible for their own actions regardless of what it was that caused them to have an accident unless it was something with no fault of their own (heart attack, stroke, etc.). No one has ever died because of a drunk driver, high driver or distracted driver, they died because of a reckless driver. If someone is driving recklessly that is a problem no matter what the cause. So let's let adults be adults and know their own limitations. There are some people who shouldn't eat or drink soda when they drive, there are others who could probably do college calculus coursework as they were driving and still be safe.
And me (and thousands of others) will work to develop software to prevent the crippling of features.
Have you ever had a car with a built in GPS? Anytime it detects you are moving faster than 2 MPH it shuts off to where you can't do anything with it, set a destination, etc. even if you are a passenger in the car! So anytime the destination has changed (such as needing to go to a gas station rather than your final destination first) you have to come to a complete stop, reset your GPS and then you can go again. It's worse than useless.
Yeah, I forgot all the big companies just doing research for the hell of it not to improve crop yields or get a sustainable advantage or anything like that. About the only thing I'm opposed to is that its publicly funded by theft.
But seriously, "greed research"? What kind of company is spending billions on stuff simply for "greed" that isn't going to be used to help feed someone? A corporation's goal is to make money. If I'm producing GM plants, there's a pretty huge marketplace for things that will grow better, have better yields, be resistant to drought, disease, pests, etc. which farmers will buy to get better yields to make more money which means there are more crops in existence, which means lower prices, which means people have to spend less of their income buying food, which means that fewer people go hungry. About the only thing bad in that situation is they will most likely use imaginary "property" to try to "protect" it, but those expire in 20 years or so...
What do you think they are doing with this research Mr. AC if they aren't going to sell it?
Population is not a concern. The only reason why we have hunger is due to corrupt governments not because we can't produce enough food. We throw warehouses of bread out daily in the west. Western "food pantries" and the like are picker with what they will accept and won't accept than I am at the grocery store. Seriously, I volunteered at one and things that I'd have no problem buying at the grocery store they told me to throw away! Things such as pop tarts that had a hole in the box (not the individually wrapped pastries mind you), a gatorade bottle where the label had fallen off (despite the fact the top of the sealed container clearly said gatorade), etc.
The population will naturally decrease over time in the developing world like it has in the developed world, no need to be concerned. The world is a big place.
Devaluing your currency only makes it competitive in the short term. A short lie until people realize that it really is worth less than what it was.
Education can produce wealth, government education merely redistributes the wealth and more times than not ends up in the negative. Government health care may "save" wealth, but at what cost? Of course it might be economically efficient to only have one service provider in the short term, but in the long term it is a net loser because there is a lack of competition and innovation.
Jobs do not create wealth, they just flow money around. If you pay me $20K and I buy a house with that $20K what wealth has been gained? None, assuming you don't get $20K of enjoyment out of watching me sit on the ground all day. It is simply the broken window fallacy. Wealth can be created if I'm productive. Say for instance I'm a farmer and I grow tomatoes. I'm in essence creating wealth because tomatoes are valued products and without the product of my life and my energy, those tomatoes would not be in existence. If I trade those tomatoes in for a chicken and I value the chicken more than the tomatoes and the person values the tomatoes more than the chicken (as would have to happen for trade to occur) wealth has been created. I'm better off with the chicken and the chicken farmer is better off with the tomatoes.
What has happened with the economy is we've put more emphasis on jobs than wealth. In all honesty, the only reason why we have unemployment is that we have a payroll tax and minimum wage and health insurance requirements making unskilled workers often not worth the cost to hire. If the wants of humanity are infinite, so are the number of jobs. The problem is, there's a good chunk of Americans not worth the ~$7.45+ an hour to hire them because they might only make $5 an hour in added revenue.
Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.
So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.
What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.
I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc. Germany and France have thrived mostly because of their previously solid foundation before the adoption of the Euro.
The US spends significantly less as a percentage of GDP on total government spending (and taxation) than anyone else and has a massive deficit which it's paying next to nothing in interest on. It also has higher unemployment than Canada or Germany (by quite a lot) despite a significantly lower tax burden, but lower unemployment than france.
Really? Because when you look at it, the US is quite high. Not as high as Europe of course but a lot higher than the places where people are looking to invest their money in such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, etc. When you look at the US tax burden you also have to look at the fact that the US taxes worldwide income if you are a US citizen which most other countries do not.
If your alternative to a fiat currency is 'real' fake money, like gold, then you end up trapping everyone in a situation like greece. Not that gold, or well... any physical thing doesn't have all sorts of its own problems with inflation, deflation, manipulation etc.
A situation where the government borrows a crap-ton of money on useless stuff? A situation where the voters expect the nanny-welfare state to take care of them all their life? Etc. The things that led Greece to this crisis isn't because they have a currency they can't control, instead they can't get out of the crisis the easy way by hyperinflating their currency (something Greece has enjoyed doing since ancient times!) and instead actually have to cut spending and get their affairs in order with an unwilling public.
But it -does- claim to be backed by something which doesn't exist, at least to millions of Americans. The entire language of the current US dollar (in fact the entire banking system) is meant to deceive. Consider the name "Federal Reserve" in everyday language reserve would mean it is a federal department that held things in reserve, so in the minds of millions of Americans the "Federal Reserve" conjures up images of a huge vault filled with gold. Similarly, a "Federal Reserve Note" has slowly changed over the years. If you pick up an older (series 1950 and before I believe) it said that the Federal Reserve would pay to the bearer on demand fifty dollars (or whatever) and was "Redeemable in lawful money" (which the constitution states should be coined, meaning, no paper money). Later they just changed it to be "Fifty Dollars" (or whatever) and just called it "legal tender". I bet if you ask the average person on the street they'd say the US dollar was still backed up by gold!
But at the end of the day, even if we can accept the dollar being paper, it still acts as a measuring stick. We'd call a butcher dishonest if they said a pound contained only 10 ounces, but yet the government can still be honest by devaluing the "measuring stick" of the US dollar?
No. We can employ people sitting on their butt too, but that doesn't produce wealth, government space programs also do not produce wealth when you figure in how much is spent.
the growth in the economy creates good paying jobs and tax revenues for the government, which may well be sufficient to erase the induced deficit (this is what happened with military spending during WW II)
Um... no. You aren't creating tax revenues for the government because everything is taken from tax revenues... from the government. By your logic I should employ myself and write myself checks and make myself a millionaire! The decreased deficit from WWII came because the dollar became more worthless because tyrant-in-chief FDR stole the nation's gold and revalued the dollar (and declared gold clauses illegal) meaning that the amount of money the government had to pay for any contract denominated in dollars (which all domestic contracts had to be because gold clauses were illegal) decreased. The government in essence declared that a pound was not worth 16 ounces but instead only worth 9 ounces.
Of course you wouldn't be able to use the roads unless you'd pay for them, I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I? It's hardly a revolutionary concept to pay for what you use and only what you use. Even in areas where roads are paid for by theft, you still have to pay tolls to use some roads, such could be a way of paying for them without taxation. Commercial vehicles would also be charged and would simply pass on the costs to customers in the form of shipping charges, bus fares, etc. when they used those roads.
The current method of taxation steals from those who provide the most to society in order to pay for those who either produce nothing or produce less. In doing so, it penalizes those who produce and rewards those who do not.
Actually, those things (except for war which is a terrible thing with no benefits) do have commercial value and should be done by private companies. The government's schools are little more than prisons preventing young adults from creating wealth ( look at http://www.khou.com/home/Honor-Student-Jailed-for-Absences-153847275.html ) spewing propaganda and poorly preparing students for basic life. Infrastructure can easily be created by private companies. Anytime there is a resource that needs to be moved, a private company will provide a way to get it out. Consider the following scenario: a logging company purchased a large chunk of land with many trees on it, the only thing is, there are no roads to get the lumber out. If it makes economic sense to buy the land, the company will create the infrastructure needed to move the logs throughout the land and to a location to sell them. Over time, if there is a need for the public to get to and from the logging area, the company will charge the users for maintenance of the infrastructure and improve it and a road is built without the government's involvement.
Borrowing money isn't fraud, but printing money (which is the logical consequence of borrowing more money than a government can pay back) is fraud because it devalues the worth of each currency unit, a bit like deciding to say a pound is 400 grams and not ~453 grams, so everyone thinks they are getting a pound with ~453 grams but instead getting a pound with a lot less weight.
The dictionary defines taxation as "A compulsory contribution to state revenue" the dictionary defines theft as "the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another".
Theft is compulsory, so is taxation. Both theft and taxation happen with a threat of force. Really the only difference is one is a guy in a T-Shirt with a baseball bat and a pistol and the other is a guy with a suit with a book of "laws".
If taxation was not compulsory (as in, you would pay for what you use and nothing more, just like any other service) it would not be theft. But it isn't.
Jobs do not create wealth. If I pay you to sit on your butt all day and do nothing (and call it unemployment benefits or whatever), you have a job, but you are creating no wealth. We could create more jobs if we got rid of ATMs and replaced them with physical tellers, but we'd lose wealth. The government produces no wealth of its own, everything it produces is with stolen revenue, cutting theft does not destroy wealth. Europe has been suicidal since the second world war when it decided it was going to start punishing wealth creators by increasing taxes and support those who produce no wealth of their own. Overtime those who produce wealth naturally moved outside of Europe where they could keep more of their wealth while those who produce no wealth of their own demanded more of the wealth. It is exactly what caused the collapse of the Roman empire: a worthless currency, expensive wars, a mass exodus of wealth producers, a welfare state and a large bureaucracy.
The government produces no wealth of its own, everything it spends must either be created by the means of fraud (fiat currency) or force/theft (taxation). The problem with Europe is that Europeans have put blind faith in their governments to take care of them and elected politicians to steal from those actually producing wealth to give to those who produce no wealth of their own. Because of the sky high tax rates, most people producing wealth have moved most their operations offshore. This has dried up the income of the governments so they have to keep borrowing to keep their promises, of course debt is unsustainable so eventually it collapses like we are seeing today. Mix this with a (fiat) currency union with both strong economies like Germany and France, and weak economies like Italy and Spain and you have a recipe for disaster.
But that's the difference between knowledge and experience. College is poor for the knowledge part of things, but can be great for the experience part of things. The problem is, there are 3 major viewpoints regarding college and all 3 have their flaws:
A) College is about knowledge. This used to be the case when a good chunk of information could only be found in academic libraries, but today a simple Google search can find you the information for all but the most specialized of areas.
B) College is about qualifications. This is the main viewpoint today since we've dumbed high school down to the point where everyone can pass, people need another qualification for most professions that qualification is college.
C) College is about the experience. This is true and the viewpoint I tend to take, but at the same time, there are a lot of cheaper ways to get even better experiences than college, especially if you know what you want to do.
The root problem is we've dumbed high school down to the point where everyone pretty much has to graduate high school to get a job. When everyone has a high school diploma people need to distinguish themselves even more so they go for a bachelor's degree, we're slowly dumbing that down to the point where people are going to need to distinguish themselves even more and get a master's degree... and so on and so on.
It isn't about the knowledge. Let's face it, on-the-job training tells you 99% of what you need to do in most jobs, Google can tell you just about every fact you'd ever want to know. As much fun as it is for history buffs to memorize dates, for English buffs to memorize poetry, for science buffs to memorize obscure equations, and for math buffs to memorize 1000 digits of pi, its really not all that useful when you have a smart phone that can look any of that up in 5 seconds.
The thing is though, each individual employee is different and each employee should really be paid according to their individual actions. It doesn't make sense to pay all people who's title is X, $Y if their abilities and talents differ. Some people are much more skilled and can get a lot more work done, or much higher quality of work done in an hour so of course they should be paid higher than those who do less, even if the job description is the same.
Its completely stupid to base pay on things such as experience and degrees rather than who actually gets the stuff done. As an employer I'd much rather pay $15 an hour to someone who provides me with $25 an hour of revenue who might not have that degree or that much experience rather than pay $20 an hour to someone who only makes me $23 an hour of revenue with a masters degree and 15 years of experience. Of course I'm going to keep that same employee because they are still making me money, but I'd much rather reward the first employee with higher pay because he's giving me much more benefit than the second employee.
Of course it is possible to get a world class education for $100 or less, but education isn't why people go to college. The real reasons to get a college degree go beyond simple knowledge:
A) Get a worthless piece of paper to distinguish yourself. Sure, it isn't good, it isn't a positive trend, but in many fields unless you have a bachelor's or master's degree your application won't even be looked at.
B) Provides opportunities for networking with like minded students and employers. In high school most people couldn't meet with very many like minded students, especially if they were into computer science. There is a reason many start-ups happen in college, you can get all the "right" type of people, you get the people with vision, you get the code monkeys skilled with every programming language under the sun, you get the hardware people and you have thousands of potential customers right at your university.
C) It provides a chance to go out and see the world. Being a student you usually don't have much of anything tying you down to a single country. I mean, sure, you've got family, but spending a year in France, six months in Singapore, a few weeks in Andorra isn't anything major.
D) It provides a lot of "hobby time" to work on pet projects and research, especially at graduate level. When you are employed for a company, everything needs to be justified in terms of profit. In college you can just do things for the heck of it.
Every "book knowledge" thing you can learn in college can be learned for free online. In the rare case it can't be found online, it can be found in the textbook which you can buy without registering for the class. Yes, you do have a handful of really good professors, but the best thing they provide isn't book knowledge, it is guidance.
Yep, nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas are the only 4 cost-effective methods of large-scale power generation, especially in a crowded region such as Japan. Solar panels are not yet cheap enough and wind requires such a large area (so do solar panels but they could be mounted on roofs).
So in other words Japan will make nuclear power taboo so there will be little research/upkeep on the remaining reactors making another Fukishima more likely. Wonderful!
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Free trade does make wars more unlikely, but war creates war and the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century has plenty of wars from the Franco-Prussian war to the wars in the Balkans. The powers in Europe had no trust towards each other which led to an arms race which then exploded with violence.
Nuclear bombs have done very little to ensure "world peace" first off it is only by the disobeying of direct orders by heroic USSR and US soldiers that a nuclear war was averted. It was only by pure fortune that the world wasn't destroyed by nuclear weapons.
If you look at the cold war, it was hardly a time of "world peace" unless you were one of the lucky few to live in the US and USSR and managed to avoid being dragged into slavery by the draft into one of the many unnecessary wars (Korea, Vietnam, etc.). For the citizens of the rest of the world it sure wasn't peaceful because both the USSR and USA enjoyed undermining legitimate (if you can call any government legitimate) leaders with their own "communist" or "capitalist" allies.
We live in an era where resources, while scarce, can be better tapped or simply replaced. Ocean water can be desalinated. If oil ever truly becomes scarce, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. power will take over. The thing is, today there is little reason to go "green". Oil is cheap, especially when priced in just about every commodity other than fiat currencies, if you look at how much gas costs per gallon in pre-1964 silver coins, it's about the same as gas was back in the 1960s, inflation just has distorted the prices.
Oh yes, "stealing" non existent property. I forgot about how everything was built independent from each other and technologies never build on one another. Like how if I want to, say, build a computer I need to create an electricity delivery system, re-invent a real-time clock, research the properties of electricity myself, etc.
Technology builds on the existing technology. Literature builds on existing literature. Music builds on existing music. Culture builds on culture. Etc.
Trade benefits both parties, I for one am glad that China has given us a much higher standard of living by reducing regulations allowing for cheaper products for me to buy to improve my standard of living.
I've used Meebo ever since I switched from Windows to Linux full time back in 2006 or so. I still have quite a few people who use MSN messenger regularly but don't use much else. Yes, Pidgin works decently, but Meebo works with all the computers I have or can use with a single login. Use a friend's laptop? I've still got all my accounts without adding extra software. Use a public terminal? Same thing.
I've always liked Meebo and I'm very sad to see it go. The "Meebo Bar" can go die in a fire though, of course its the only thing that's going to continue to live on...
It has, the classroom method for instruction and knowledge is dead. It died when the internet came about. The thing is though, college is not about instruction it is about getting a piece of paper to get hired (or an experience).
Just about every single skill can be learned for free online. Want to know about British history? Identify Roman coins? Learn C#? You can find that for free online. Unless you have a degree though, chances are you aren't going to make it past the first round of screening HR does.
I agree with your title, it seems like every OS has decided its going to try change for the sake of change for no good reason. There was nothing fundamentally broken in Windows 7 UI wise. Similarly, Gnome 2.X was great, 3.X sucks. I don't understand the obsession in trying to fix non-broken things. Metro might be great for a smartphone but sucks for a Desktop when you have something a bit more precision controlled than your fat fingers (mouse and keyboard). Why not work behind the scenes and make Windows more stable, give it a better architecture, make it more secure, but less annoying. Make it more customizable, etc.
...And there are people who will do the exact same thing with phones.
What we simply need to do is hold people responsible for their own actions regardless of what it was that caused them to have an accident unless it was something with no fault of their own (heart attack, stroke, etc.). No one has ever died because of a drunk driver, high driver or distracted driver, they died because of a reckless driver. If someone is driving recklessly that is a problem no matter what the cause. So let's let adults be adults and know their own limitations. There are some people who shouldn't eat or drink soda when they drive, there are others who could probably do college calculus coursework as they were driving and still be safe.
And me (and thousands of others) will work to develop software to prevent the crippling of features.
Have you ever had a car with a built in GPS? Anytime it detects you are moving faster than 2 MPH it shuts off to where you can't do anything with it, set a destination, etc. even if you are a passenger in the car! So anytime the destination has changed (such as needing to go to a gas station rather than your final destination first) you have to come to a complete stop, reset your GPS and then you can go again. It's worse than useless.
That works only if you regularly get people texting you and not automatic texts from market updates or sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Yeah, I forgot all the big companies just doing research for the hell of it not to improve crop yields or get a sustainable advantage or anything like that. About the only thing I'm opposed to is that its publicly funded by theft.
But seriously, "greed research"? What kind of company is spending billions on stuff simply for "greed" that isn't going to be used to help feed someone? A corporation's goal is to make money. If I'm producing GM plants, there's a pretty huge marketplace for things that will grow better, have better yields, be resistant to drought, disease, pests, etc. which farmers will buy to get better yields to make more money which means there are more crops in existence, which means lower prices, which means people have to spend less of their income buying food, which means that fewer people go hungry. About the only thing bad in that situation is they will most likely use imaginary "property" to try to "protect" it, but those expire in 20 years or so...
What do you think they are doing with this research Mr. AC if they aren't going to sell it?
Population is not a concern. The only reason why we have hunger is due to corrupt governments not because we can't produce enough food. We throw warehouses of bread out daily in the west. Western "food pantries" and the like are picker with what they will accept and won't accept than I am at the grocery store. Seriously, I volunteered at one and things that I'd have no problem buying at the grocery store they told me to throw away! Things such as pop tarts that had a hole in the box (not the individually wrapped pastries mind you), a gatorade bottle where the label had fallen off (despite the fact the top of the sealed container clearly said gatorade), etc.
The population will naturally decrease over time in the developing world like it has in the developed world, no need to be concerned. The world is a big place.
Devaluing your currency only makes it competitive in the short term. A short lie until people realize that it really is worth less than what it was.
Education can produce wealth, government education merely redistributes the wealth and more times than not ends up in the negative. Government health care may "save" wealth, but at what cost? Of course it might be economically efficient to only have one service provider in the short term, but in the long term it is a net loser because there is a lack of competition and innovation.
Jobs do not create wealth, they just flow money around. If you pay me $20K and I buy a house with that $20K what wealth has been gained? None, assuming you don't get $20K of enjoyment out of watching me sit on the ground all day. It is simply the broken window fallacy. Wealth can be created if I'm productive. Say for instance I'm a farmer and I grow tomatoes. I'm in essence creating wealth because tomatoes are valued products and without the product of my life and my energy, those tomatoes would not be in existence. If I trade those tomatoes in for a chicken and I value the chicken more than the tomatoes and the person values the tomatoes more than the chicken (as would have to happen for trade to occur) wealth has been created. I'm better off with the chicken and the chicken farmer is better off with the tomatoes.
What has happened with the economy is we've put more emphasis on jobs than wealth. In all honesty, the only reason why we have unemployment is that we have a payroll tax and minimum wage and health insurance requirements making unskilled workers often not worth the cost to hire. If the wants of humanity are infinite, so are the number of jobs. The problem is, there's a good chunk of Americans not worth the ~$7.45+ an hour to hire them because they might only make $5 an hour in added revenue.
Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.
So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.
What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.
I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc. Germany and France have thrived mostly because of their previously solid foundation before the adoption of the Euro.
The US spends significantly less as a percentage of GDP on total government spending (and taxation) than anyone else and has a massive deficit which it's paying next to nothing in interest on. It also has higher unemployment than Canada or Germany (by quite a lot) despite a significantly lower tax burden, but lower unemployment than france.
Really? Because when you look at it, the US is quite high. Not as high as Europe of course but a lot higher than the places where people are looking to invest their money in such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, etc. When you look at the US tax burden you also have to look at the fact that the US taxes worldwide income if you are a US citizen which most other countries do not.
If your alternative to a fiat currency is 'real' fake money, like gold, then you end up trapping everyone in a situation like greece. Not that gold, or well... any physical thing doesn't have all sorts of its own problems with inflation, deflation, manipulation etc.
A situation where the government borrows a crap-ton of money on useless stuff? A situation where the voters expect the nanny-welfare state to take care of them all their life? Etc. The things that led Greece to this crisis isn't because they have a currency they can't control, instead they can't get out of the crisis the easy way by hyperinflating their currency (something Greece has enjoyed doing since ancient times!) and instead actually have to cut spending and get their affairs in order with an unwilling public.
But it -does- claim to be backed by something which doesn't exist, at least to millions of Americans. The entire language of the current US dollar (in fact the entire banking system) is meant to deceive. Consider the name "Federal Reserve" in everyday language reserve would mean it is a federal department that held things in reserve, so in the minds of millions of Americans the "Federal Reserve" conjures up images of a huge vault filled with gold. Similarly, a "Federal Reserve Note" has slowly changed over the years. If you pick up an older (series 1950 and before I believe) it said that the Federal Reserve would pay to the bearer on demand fifty dollars (or whatever) and was "Redeemable in lawful money" (which the constitution states should be coined, meaning, no paper money). Later they just changed it to be "Fifty Dollars" (or whatever) and just called it "legal tender". I bet if you ask the average person on the street they'd say the US dollar was still backed up by gold!
But at the end of the day, even if we can accept the dollar being paper, it still acts as a measuring stick. We'd call a butcher dishonest if they said a pound contained only 10 ounces, but yet the government can still be honest by devaluing the "measuring stick" of the US dollar?
the growth in the economy creates good paying jobs and tax revenues for the government, which may well be sufficient to erase the induced deficit (this is what happened with military spending during WW II)
Um... no. You aren't creating tax revenues for the government because everything is taken from tax revenues... from the government. By your logic I should employ myself and write myself checks and make myself a millionaire! The decreased deficit from WWII came because the dollar became more worthless because tyrant-in-chief FDR stole the nation's gold and revalued the dollar (and declared gold clauses illegal) meaning that the amount of money the government had to pay for any contract denominated in dollars (which all domestic contracts had to be because gold clauses were illegal) decreased. The government in essence declared that a pound was not worth 16 ounces but instead only worth 9 ounces.
Of course you wouldn't be able to use the roads unless you'd pay for them, I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I? It's hardly a revolutionary concept to pay for what you use and only what you use. Even in areas where roads are paid for by theft, you still have to pay tolls to use some roads, such could be a way of paying for them without taxation. Commercial vehicles would also be charged and would simply pass on the costs to customers in the form of shipping charges, bus fares, etc. when they used those roads.
The current method of taxation steals from those who provide the most to society in order to pay for those who either produce nothing or produce less. In doing so, it penalizes those who produce and rewards those who do not.
Actually, those things (except for war which is a terrible thing with no benefits) do have commercial value and should be done by private companies. The government's schools are little more than prisons preventing young adults from creating wealth ( look at http://www.khou.com/home/Honor-Student-Jailed-for-Absences-153847275.html ) spewing propaganda and poorly preparing students for basic life. Infrastructure can easily be created by private companies. Anytime there is a resource that needs to be moved, a private company will provide a way to get it out. Consider the following scenario: a logging company purchased a large chunk of land with many trees on it, the only thing is, there are no roads to get the lumber out. If it makes economic sense to buy the land, the company will create the infrastructure needed to move the logs throughout the land and to a location to sell them. Over time, if there is a need for the public to get to and from the logging area, the company will charge the users for maintenance of the infrastructure and improve it and a road is built without the government's involvement.
Borrowing money isn't fraud, but printing money (which is the logical consequence of borrowing more money than a government can pay back) is fraud because it devalues the worth of each currency unit, a bit like deciding to say a pound is 400 grams and not ~453 grams, so everyone thinks they are getting a pound with ~453 grams but instead getting a pound with a lot less weight.
The dictionary defines taxation as "A compulsory contribution to state revenue" the dictionary defines theft as "the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another".
Theft is compulsory, so is taxation. Both theft and taxation happen with a threat of force. Really the only difference is one is a guy in a T-Shirt with a baseball bat and a pistol and the other is a guy with a suit with a book of "laws".
If taxation was not compulsory (as in, you would pay for what you use and nothing more, just like any other service) it would not be theft. But it isn't.
Jobs do not create wealth. If I pay you to sit on your butt all day and do nothing (and call it unemployment benefits or whatever), you have a job, but you are creating no wealth. We could create more jobs if we got rid of ATMs and replaced them with physical tellers, but we'd lose wealth. The government produces no wealth of its own, everything it produces is with stolen revenue, cutting theft does not destroy wealth. Europe has been suicidal since the second world war when it decided it was going to start punishing wealth creators by increasing taxes and support those who produce no wealth of their own. Overtime those who produce wealth naturally moved outside of Europe where they could keep more of their wealth while those who produce no wealth of their own demanded more of the wealth. It is exactly what caused the collapse of the Roman empire: a worthless currency, expensive wars, a mass exodus of wealth producers, a welfare state and a large bureaucracy.
The government produces no wealth of its own, everything it spends must either be created by the means of fraud (fiat currency) or force/theft (taxation). The problem with Europe is that Europeans have put blind faith in their governments to take care of them and elected politicians to steal from those actually producing wealth to give to those who produce no wealth of their own. Because of the sky high tax rates, most people producing wealth have moved most their operations offshore. This has dried up the income of the governments so they have to keep borrowing to keep their promises, of course debt is unsustainable so eventually it collapses like we are seeing today. Mix this with a (fiat) currency union with both strong economies like Germany and France, and weak economies like Italy and Spain and you have a recipe for disaster.
Exactly, and that wealth either has to be created by fraud (printing money) or by theft of those people creating real wealth (taxation).
We need to focus less on "jobs" and more on producing wealth. Creating jobs means nothing, we need to focus on creating true wealth.
But that's the difference between knowledge and experience. College is poor for the knowledge part of things, but can be great for the experience part of things. The problem is, there are 3 major viewpoints regarding college and all 3 have their flaws:
A) College is about knowledge. This used to be the case when a good chunk of information could only be found in academic libraries, but today a simple Google search can find you the information for all but the most specialized of areas.
B) College is about qualifications. This is the main viewpoint today since we've dumbed high school down to the point where everyone can pass, people need another qualification for most professions that qualification is college.
C) College is about the experience. This is true and the viewpoint I tend to take, but at the same time, there are a lot of cheaper ways to get even better experiences than college, especially if you know what you want to do.
The root problem is we've dumbed high school down to the point where everyone pretty much has to graduate high school to get a job. When everyone has a high school diploma people need to distinguish themselves even more so they go for a bachelor's degree, we're slowly dumbing that down to the point where people are going to need to distinguish themselves even more and get a master's degree... and so on and so on.
It isn't about the knowledge. Let's face it, on-the-job training tells you 99% of what you need to do in most jobs, Google can tell you just about every fact you'd ever want to know. As much fun as it is for history buffs to memorize dates, for English buffs to memorize poetry, for science buffs to memorize obscure equations, and for math buffs to memorize 1000 digits of pi, its really not all that useful when you have a smart phone that can look any of that up in 5 seconds.
The thing is though, each individual employee is different and each employee should really be paid according to their individual actions. It doesn't make sense to pay all people who's title is X, $Y if their abilities and talents differ. Some people are much more skilled and can get a lot more work done, or much higher quality of work done in an hour so of course they should be paid higher than those who do less, even if the job description is the same.
Its completely stupid to base pay on things such as experience and degrees rather than who actually gets the stuff done. As an employer I'd much rather pay $15 an hour to someone who provides me with $25 an hour of revenue who might not have that degree or that much experience rather than pay $20 an hour to someone who only makes me $23 an hour of revenue with a masters degree and 15 years of experience. Of course I'm going to keep that same employee because they are still making me money, but I'd much rather reward the first employee with higher pay because he's giving me much more benefit than the second employee.
Of course it is possible to get a world class education for $100 or less, but education isn't why people go to college. The real reasons to get a college degree go beyond simple knowledge:
A) Get a worthless piece of paper to distinguish yourself. Sure, it isn't good, it isn't a positive trend, but in many fields unless you have a bachelor's or master's degree your application won't even be looked at.
B) Provides opportunities for networking with like minded students and employers. In high school most people couldn't meet with very many like minded students, especially if they were into computer science. There is a reason many start-ups happen in college, you can get all the "right" type of people, you get the people with vision, you get the code monkeys skilled with every programming language under the sun, you get the hardware people and you have thousands of potential customers right at your university.
C) It provides a chance to go out and see the world. Being a student you usually don't have much of anything tying you down to a single country. I mean, sure, you've got family, but spending a year in France, six months in Singapore, a few weeks in Andorra isn't anything major.
D) It provides a lot of "hobby time" to work on pet projects and research, especially at graduate level. When you are employed for a company, everything needs to be justified in terms of profit. In college you can just do things for the heck of it.
Every "book knowledge" thing you can learn in college can be learned for free online. In the rare case it can't be found online, it can be found in the textbook which you can buy without registering for the class. Yes, you do have a handful of really good professors, but the best thing they provide isn't book knowledge, it is guidance.
Yep, nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas are the only 4 cost-effective methods of large-scale power generation, especially in a crowded region such as Japan. Solar panels are not yet cheap enough and wind requires such a large area (so do solar panels but they could be mounted on roofs).
So in other words Japan will make nuclear power taboo so there will be little research/upkeep on the remaining reactors making another Fukishima more likely. Wonderful!