I dunno, have you seen the average person, regardless of country? The typical person is pretty damn ugly. Granted, I'd probably say 40% are attractive enough, but I don't have a predefined idea of what makes a girl pretty - I go by "does what they have work for them". That's why I've dated a huge variety of girls. Sadly, I've also realized that all girls are soul-sucking bitches.....which could also lead to why the guy in TFA has a hard time finding a date - maybe he's wanting a girl who's actually not a psychotic evil bitch?
Oh yes, wanting more than just "smart and pretty" is "out of sync with reality". How about some pretty simple things such as "having shared hobbies" and "similar values / religion" or "similar sense of humor". It doesn't take a long list of what you're looking for in a significant other to realize that it's pretty damn hard to find someone you can have a real relationship with.
I skimmed the TFA and saw no mention of what his standards are.
It sounds more like you are a typical nerd and your only standard is "female who will talk to me". People looking for a real relationship have standards, even if it means that they'll end up alone for life - it's better to be single than to end up marrying the wrong person.
You sound like someone who doesn't have much in the way of standards. Sorry, but there are a lot of things (totally side from looks) that make a person totally un-datable and the sad fact of life is, unless you have no standards, the overwhelming majority of people in the world are un-datable - which then leaves only a small group of people for you to date, which then makes it even harder to find "the one".
Face it, even if you spend every minute of your life "relaxing and meeting others", there's still an extremely high chance that you won't find "the one".
I just got this computer from work, so it'll be another year minimum before I can justify trading it in for a Windows 7 box.
Or if your company is switching to Windows 7 and has an Enterprise copy, just install Windows 7 on your current system! I'm sure there will be some bug fixing going on in Vista still, but don't expect them to put much effort into it seeing as how Vista never sold too well and most people are more than eager to switch over to Win 7.
Exactly. Kia is a name and only the first letter is capitalized. I started reading the summary with "Killed In Action" and was thinking "wtf is this doing on slashdot?"
Grad students don't have to reside in North America to do good....get over it.
It has nothing to do with their education and everything to do with taxpayers money being used (in the form of grants) to pay for that education. But apparently you're just one of the many billions who think that the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.
Nevertheless, concerning the comment above, we have changed our constitution as often as you did... almost never so please rollover to beef up your political facts and more.
Being French, you should know a little about your own countries history. France has had 17 different Constitutions since 1791.
If you cared at all (which you don't), you'd look up how the numbers are fabricated by the UN / WHO to push socialism and punish the US for not being socialist enough. I've read multiple accounts and I even have a book with citations for it in this room, but I learned years ago on slashdot that the collectivists such as yourself don't care about facts, so I stopped wasting the time providing links. If you think that my claims are so unbelievable, do some research yourself.
As for "by what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap"? Well we have the shortest times for getting treatment, we have the highest number of hi-tech medical equipment per capita, we have the highest survival rate of premature births, the highest survival rate for cancer patients, we have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments, we have the highest number of doctors per capita - do you want me to continue?
Yes, we pay more, but when it comes to saving your life or the life of a loved one, wouldn't you rather pay more and have them live or pay less and have their odds of survival drastically decrease? There are many things that can be done to improve medical care in our country - but unfortunately, the government won't go near most of them (such as the fact that the government prevents insurance companies from being able to operate in all 50 states, and as a result suppresses competition and artificially raises prices). Is it perfect? No, no system ever could be. But it's a hell of a lot better than what the rest of the world has. Also, if the socialist "free" health care is so wonderful, how come the majority of people in socialist countries pay for private complimentary insurance?
What are the odds in the US of starting out poor and ending up upper-middle-class?
It depends on how hard you work - which is the problem because every year Americans get lazier and lazier. We have politicians saying "You're American, you deserve a good paying job without working for it just because you live in the US!", which only makes the problem worse. However, with just an average amount of effort it's very easy to go from poor to middle class - which is a hell of a lot better off than the typical person in a socialist country. I've personally known dozens of people who grew up in poor homes, some of them even welfare homes, and they went on to put out some effort in school, went to college, and now have good paying jobs and a quality of life they could only dream of as children. The opportunity is there for everyone, it's just a matter of deciding to work to get there. And that's the problem, too many people believe (as you do) that you should be given XYZ just because you're alive and decide to sit on the couch instead of working to improve their life.
How do they compare to other nations? I certainly do not know, but I would bet that those "socialist" countries like Canada or western Europe have better odds than the USA.
Really? You think countries with higher income tax rates (meaning less money), higher unemployment rates (meaning less opportunity to get a job and make money), and more restrictions on pretty much every aspect of their life have a better chance of working to improve their life? You either don't understand how motivation works or you're just willfully ignoring human nature in order to push your agenda.
There are plenty of rags-to-comfortable stories coming out of socialis nations, and there seem to be fewer "rags" stories to start off with - is that such a bad thing?
Yes, it is a bad thing because of how it's done. It's not done by promoting hard work and education, it's not done by providing incentives for people to succeed - it's done by punishing everyone and flat out stealing from those who do work hard to reward those who didn't. Socialism only works by taking money from those who worked for it and giving it to those who didn't. Would you consider robbing a bank or mug
Please research the horrible biases used in most (if not all) of those studies, especially the one about medical care. The information is easily available, with many people who worked for the groups coming up with those numbers admitting that the numbers are horribly manipulated.
As for GDP/GNP per capita, that is not equivalent to "richest country". Yes, their average income may be higher (which it is, I'm well aware of Lichtenstein's position economically), but they do not have anywhere near the percentage of middle class or upper class people of the general population that the US has. The US still (well, for now) allows the poorest person the chance to become a billionaire - there are plenty of rags to riches stories in the US, yet not so many coming from socialist countries....I wonder why that is?
As for the freest economy, did I say we still have a free economy? No, I didn't, because we don't. We used to and that is what made us rich and powerful. Now we have morons like Obama destroying the very thing that made this country great, and it's been slowly happening for 100 years.
If the market "worked", wouldn't it have compensated for the government intervention with mortgages?
That doesn't even make sense. The government forced them to do things that weren't financially sound. That's like you saying that if I was smart I'd have "compensated" for the money the government took from me in taxes.
Yes, sometimes markets fail, but governments always fail. We do use the government for the things that markets can't efficiently produce (roads, military, police, other emergency services) - but even though the government does a better job with those than the market could, the government still does a horribly inefficient job. If you have two options for a car, which one will you go with - the ones that is 90% reliable or the one that's 0% reliable? You're choosing the 0% reliable one, which no sane person would do.
In any case, as I said before, the Minnesota tax on carbon emissions (not on energy!) is an attempt to use the market to solve a problem. The fact that they're using a tax to do things economically, rather than simply passing laws about what you must / may not do, means that they do believe in the "free market" to solve problems and come up with the best solution.
It is a tax on energy because where do you think those emissions come from (other than humans, so it's nice to know that they plan to tax breathing now)? They come from gasoline, diesel, and power plants. Seeing as how only a small percent of our power comes from non-fossil fuel plants, they're taxing energy. If alternative fuels were feasible for providing energy for the entire country right now, then it would be a tax only on certain sources - but we're still decades away from that point.
It is not believing in the market to force people to pay more for all their energy usage, even that which is out of their control (such as the energy used to create the clothing they buy). Believing in the market would mean exactly what I said - when it becomes economically viable to change to non-fossil fuels, people will do it.
Then there's also the tech company Cyberdyne, which was named after the company in Terminator. I don't see anyone complaining about that.
The words "android" and "nexus" are so ingrained in pop culture (well, for sci-fi stuff anyways) that you don't have to have ever read anything by PKD or even know he exists and you'll know the words if you're a nerd / geek. The PKD estate doesn't have an actual case and it's just another sad tale of kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren wanting to sue anyone and everyone to collect money for work that their ancestors did instead of getting a damn job for themselves.
It's not just a matter of being treated poorly, it's also a matter of IT being one of the most unstable industries for people with a degree. Yes, people get laid off in all industries, but for skilled workers, it tends to happen a hell of a lot more than other industries. So it's not just a matter of working conditions, but a matter of job security as well.
Job satisfaction is at an all time low in the only skilled career where the employees are routinely treated like crap? Who'd have guessed?!
That's why I'm planning on changing careers ASAP and am already sending out resumes. I've only been out of college for a few years, but it's more than enough experience in IT to know that I don't want to do it for the rest of my life.
Is there any way to write data and then 10 years later get that same data back?
Yup, it's called putting it on optical discs, then putting them in a safe, dry location. I use many cd's that are over 10 years old and I've never had a problem.
Well, free markets do something. But saying they "work" is a bit dodgy. What, exactly is it that they do? Are you trying to say that a free market will always give the greatest amount of happiness, over the course of the rest of our species lifetime, to the greatest number of people? I think that's pretty obviously bullshit.
Actually, why do you think the US has the highest standard of living, best medical care, richest country in the world, etc? Could be be that we were the only country to ever use free markets? Nope, couldn't POSSIBLY be because of that!
Morever, markets are well known to fail (meaning, "reach a conclusion we as a society don't like") under certain conditions.
True, but you're ignoring the key words - under certain conditions. As I said, you can have regulation in a free market to prevent those certain conditions. You're arguing against free markets because every once in awhile things go wrong. I think most people would choose "occasionally going wrong" to "always going wrong", which is what happens when the government has insane amounts of laws about everything regarding companies.
Externalities is a classic example, and carbon emissions is an externality. Since carbon-neutral is the only sustainable solution, the actual cost of dumping carbon into the air is either the cost of the damage done to the environment by it for as long as it's in the air (probably several hundred years at least), or the cost of removing it from the atmosphere.
Carbon emissions are not an externality (unless you want to tax people for breathing), they are a fact of life. You can pass regulations against industries that pollute unnecessarily or mandate minimum MPG on cars (though those laws have problems, but that's another story), but taxing ALL energy is just idiotic and harms everyone except the super rich (which conveniently, are the politicians!).
So taxing the externality is really a way of making the market come to the truly optimal solution, taking into account true cost of the externality that is now conveniently free.
What cost are we paying for having cars and electricity? Seems to me that most people are pretty damn happy to have them. It's only the Luddites "technology will destroy the world!" people who think that having these things "harms" society - which is part of the definition of externality; it has to harm people / society.
That's awful lot of faith you're having in people making the right prediction. If, as a whole, people are too optimistic about how long the fossil fuels will last, or about how quickly we'll be able to develop new technologies, we're totally screwed.
You put your faith in benevolent rulers, I'd rather put my faith in people's survival instinct. Looking back at history, the benevolent rulers are the ones with a pretty bad scorecard. If you really think that companies that face not only going out of business but their entire standard of living for the people running them won't make damn sure to have a non-fossil fuel energy system set up, then you completely don't understand the innate desire to succeed (well, for most people).
Almost this exact situation has already happened several times.
Hardly. Technologically primitive societies that don't have entrepreneurship are completely different from the modern world. Not only do we know that eventually, we'll have to stop using fossil fuel, but we have very accurate ways of measuring the amount of fuel we have and are already working (even without government money) on alternatives. The only problem is that the alternatives aren't viable yet - but they're getting there. By the time we run out of fossil fuels, alternative fuels will be up and going just fine.
The only evidence I've seen, including the recent financial crisis, leads me to believe exactly the
All taxes effectively raise prices, either directly (making things more expensive) or indirectly (reducing the amount of income you have to spend on them). Sane tax policy is picking taxes that do the least harm to the economy.
First, I never argued against taxes, I argued against taxing energy. Secondly, taxing energy makes EVERYTHING cost more. At every step of production, transportation, and sales, prices go up. It is the worst kind of tax because EVERYTHING relies on energy at some point in the production / sales chain. Even a book requires energy to get the lumber, transport the lumber, turn the lumber into paper, get the paper to the printing facility, run the printing facility, print the book, transport the book to the book store, and provide electricity at the book store. Then there's also the increased cost of paying employees more to deal with increased energy, as well as the increased cost of driving to the store to buy the book.
Those who support taxing energy may try to claim that it only raises the cost of fuel or running your computer, but in reality it raises the cost of everything you do and everything you buy.
There is no good time to tax energy, because it's a stupid thing to do. All I said was that if you're going to insist on doing something economically damning, don't do it during the second worst economy in the history of the country.
But if we don't start doing it soon, when that source runs out, we won't have the technology or the infrastructure to replace it.
When we actually are in danger of running out, people will start to change over. Why? Well first, because there will be people wanting to make money by being one of the major non-fossil fuel energy sources. Secondly, there will be the natural self-preservation instinct. Thirdly, as basic economics would teach you, as fossil fuels start to become scarce, the prices will go through the roof making the relative cost of non-fossil fuel energy incredibly low.
Believe it or not, free markets actually work - it's been proven. Free markets with no regulation tend to have some issues, but I'm not arguing against regulation - just excessive government controls that actually hamper the very goal the government claims to want to achieve.
Wow, the liberals must have a lot of mod points today when they're not only modding me troll for pointing out that taxing energy dramatically raises the cost of everything, but they're modding you troll for using a direct quote from Obama about the effects of taxing energy!
Its also nice to see individual states take the lead in issues like this.
Yes, it is nice to see individual states taking a lead in dramatically raising energy costs, especially in a recession. It only further proves how utterly incompetent our leaders. While taking energy is stupid in the first place, even if a country or state is dead set on doing it, only a moron would do it DURING A RECESSION when people don't have the money to pay the tax. Taxing energy raises all costs - do you really thing the people of Minnesota can afford to pay more for heat, fuel for cars, food, lighting, clothing, and everything else right now? That's what taxing energy does - it raises the price of everything. This is an epic fail for Minnesota.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, have you seen the average person, regardless of country? The typical person is pretty damn ugly. Granted, I'd probably say 40% are attractive enough, but I don't have a predefined idea of what makes a girl pretty - I go by "does what they have work for them". That's why I've dated a huge variety of girls. Sadly, I've also realized that all girls are soul-sucking bitches.....which could also lead to why the guy in TFA has a hard time finding a date - maybe he's wanting a girl who's actually not a psychotic evil bitch?
Oh yes, wanting more than just "smart and pretty" is "out of sync with reality". How about some pretty simple things such as "having shared hobbies" and "similar values / religion" or "similar sense of humor". It doesn't take a long list of what you're looking for in a significant other to realize that it's pretty damn hard to find someone you can have a real relationship with.
So basically you're telling us what we already know - that it's only American (and possibly Canadian) girls who only want to date morons.
I skimmed the TFA and saw no mention of what his standards are.
It sounds more like you are a typical nerd and your only standard is "female who will talk to me". People looking for a real relationship have standards, even if it means that they'll end up alone for life - it's better to be single than to end up marrying the wrong person.
You sound like someone who doesn't have much in the way of standards. Sorry, but there are a lot of things (totally side from looks) that make a person totally un-datable and the sad fact of life is, unless you have no standards, the overwhelming majority of people in the world are un-datable - which then leaves only a small group of people for you to date, which then makes it even harder to find "the one".
Face it, even if you spend every minute of your life "relaxing and meeting others", there's still an extremely high chance that you won't find "the one".
Punch cards? Damn kids these days! I read my email in binary!
I just got this computer from work, so it'll be another year minimum before I can justify trading it in for a Windows 7 box.
Or if your company is switching to Windows 7 and has an Enterprise copy, just install Windows 7 on your current system! I'm sure there will be some bug fixing going on in Vista still, but don't expect them to put much effort into it seeing as how Vista never sold too well and most people are more than eager to switch over to Win 7.
How can they do that when producing an ARM processor cost only ARMs royalty + costs added on from many producers
I was going to ask, how can they compete when x86 processors cost an ARM and a leg!
Exactly. Kia is a name and only the first letter is capitalized. I started reading the summary with "Killed In Action" and was thinking "wtf is this doing on slashdot?"
Grad students don't have to reside in North America to do good....get over it.
It has nothing to do with their education and everything to do with taxpayers money being used (in the form of grants) to pay for that education. But apparently you're just one of the many billions who think that the US exists solely to be the global sugar daddy.
Nevertheless, concerning the comment above, we have changed our constitution as often as you did... almost never so please rollover to beef up your political facts and more.
Being French, you should know a little about your own countries history. France has had 17 different Constitutions since 1791.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_France#Past_constitutions
Given how many times France has changed their Constitution, I wouldn't be surprised if they just wrote a new one making all of the measures legal.
If you cared at all (which you don't), you'd look up how the numbers are fabricated by the UN / WHO to push socialism and punish the US for not being socialist enough. I've read multiple accounts and I even have a book with citations for it in this room, but I learned years ago on slashdot that the collectivists such as yourself don't care about facts, so I stopped wasting the time providing links. If you think that my claims are so unbelievable, do some research yourself.
As for "by what measure is the US at the top of the health care heap"? Well we have the shortest times for getting treatment, we have the highest number of hi-tech medical equipment per capita, we have the highest survival rate of premature births, the highest survival rate for cancer patients, we have access to the most advanced medicines and treatments, we have the highest number of doctors per capita - do you want me to continue?
Yes, we pay more, but when it comes to saving your life or the life of a loved one, wouldn't you rather pay more and have them live or pay less and have their odds of survival drastically decrease? There are many things that can be done to improve medical care in our country - but unfortunately, the government won't go near most of them (such as the fact that the government prevents insurance companies from being able to operate in all 50 states, and as a result suppresses competition and artificially raises prices). Is it perfect? No, no system ever could be. But it's a hell of a lot better than what the rest of the world has. Also, if the socialist "free" health care is so wonderful, how come the majority of people in socialist countries pay for private complimentary insurance?
What are the odds in the US of starting out poor and ending up upper-middle-class?
It depends on how hard you work - which is the problem because every year Americans get lazier and lazier. We have politicians saying "You're American, you deserve a good paying job without working for it just because you live in the US!", which only makes the problem worse. However, with just an average amount of effort it's very easy to go from poor to middle class - which is a hell of a lot better off than the typical person in a socialist country. I've personally known dozens of people who grew up in poor homes, some of them even welfare homes, and they went on to put out some effort in school, went to college, and now have good paying jobs and a quality of life they could only dream of as children. The opportunity is there for everyone, it's just a matter of deciding to work to get there. And that's the problem, too many people believe (as you do) that you should be given XYZ just because you're alive and decide to sit on the couch instead of working to improve their life.
How do they compare to other nations? I certainly do not know, but I would bet that those "socialist" countries like Canada or western Europe have better odds than the USA.
Really? You think countries with higher income tax rates (meaning less money), higher unemployment rates (meaning less opportunity to get a job and make money), and more restrictions on pretty much every aspect of their life have a better chance of working to improve their life? You either don't understand how motivation works or you're just willfully ignoring human nature in order to push your agenda.
There are plenty of rags-to-comfortable stories coming out of socialis nations, and there seem to be fewer "rags" stories to start off with - is that such a bad thing?
Yes, it is a bad thing because of how it's done. It's not done by promoting hard work and education, it's not done by providing incentives for people to succeed - it's done by punishing everyone and flat out stealing from those who do work hard to reward those who didn't. Socialism only works by taking money from those who worked for it and giving it to those who didn't. Would you consider robbing a bank or mug
Please research the horrible biases used in most (if not all) of those studies, especially the one about medical care. The information is easily available, with many people who worked for the groups coming up with those numbers admitting that the numbers are horribly manipulated.
As for GDP/GNP per capita, that is not equivalent to "richest country". Yes, their average income may be higher (which it is, I'm well aware of Lichtenstein's position economically), but they do not have anywhere near the percentage of middle class or upper class people of the general population that the US has. The US still (well, for now) allows the poorest person the chance to become a billionaire - there are plenty of rags to riches stories in the US, yet not so many coming from socialist countries....I wonder why that is?
As for the freest economy, did I say we still have a free economy? No, I didn't, because we don't. We used to and that is what made us rich and powerful. Now we have morons like Obama destroying the very thing that made this country great, and it's been slowly happening for 100 years.
If the market "worked", wouldn't it have compensated for the government intervention with mortgages?
That doesn't even make sense. The government forced them to do things that weren't financially sound. That's like you saying that if I was smart I'd have "compensated" for the money the government took from me in taxes.
Yes, sometimes markets fail, but governments always fail. We do use the government for the things that markets can't efficiently produce (roads, military, police, other emergency services) - but even though the government does a better job with those than the market could, the government still does a horribly inefficient job. If you have two options for a car, which one will you go with - the ones that is 90% reliable or the one that's 0% reliable? You're choosing the 0% reliable one, which no sane person would do.
In any case, as I said before, the Minnesota tax on carbon emissions (not on energy!) is an attempt to use the market to solve a problem. The fact that they're using a tax to do things economically, rather than simply passing laws about what you must / may not do, means that they do believe in the "free market" to solve problems and come up with the best solution.
It is a tax on energy because where do you think those emissions come from (other than humans, so it's nice to know that they plan to tax breathing now)? They come from gasoline, diesel, and power plants. Seeing as how only a small percent of our power comes from non-fossil fuel plants, they're taxing energy. If alternative fuels were feasible for providing energy for the entire country right now, then it would be a tax only on certain sources - but we're still decades away from that point.
It is not believing in the market to force people to pay more for all their energy usage, even that which is out of their control (such as the energy used to create the clothing they buy). Believing in the market would mean exactly what I said - when it becomes economically viable to change to non-fossil fuels, people will do it.
Then there's also the tech company Cyberdyne, which was named after the company in Terminator. I don't see anyone complaining about that.
The words "android" and "nexus" are so ingrained in pop culture (well, for sci-fi stuff anyways) that you don't have to have ever read anything by PKD or even know he exists and you'll know the words if you're a nerd / geek. The PKD estate doesn't have an actual case and it's just another sad tale of kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren wanting to sue anyone and everyone to collect money for work that their ancestors did instead of getting a damn job for themselves.
It's not just a matter of being treated poorly, it's also a matter of IT being one of the most unstable industries for people with a degree. Yes, people get laid off in all industries, but for skilled workers, it tends to happen a hell of a lot more than other industries. So it's not just a matter of working conditions, but a matter of job security as well.
Job satisfaction is at an all time low in the only skilled career where the employees are routinely treated like crap? Who'd have guessed?!
That's why I'm planning on changing careers ASAP and am already sending out resumes. I've only been out of college for a few years, but it's more than enough experience in IT to know that I don't want to do it for the rest of my life.
That's the very question we should all be asking our government officials....
Is there any way to write data and then 10 years later get that same data back?
Yup, it's called putting it on optical discs, then putting them in a safe, dry location. I use many cd's that are over 10 years old and I've never had a problem.
Well, free markets do something. But saying they "work" is a bit dodgy. What, exactly is it that they do? Are you trying to say that a free market will always give the greatest amount of happiness, over the course of the rest of our species lifetime, to the greatest number of people? I think that's pretty obviously bullshit.
Actually, why do you think the US has the highest standard of living, best medical care, richest country in the world, etc? Could be be that we were the only country to ever use free markets? Nope, couldn't POSSIBLY be because of that!
Morever, markets are well known to fail (meaning, "reach a conclusion we as a society don't like") under certain conditions.
True, but you're ignoring the key words - under certain conditions. As I said, you can have regulation in a free market to prevent those certain conditions. You're arguing against free markets because every once in awhile things go wrong. I think most people would choose "occasionally going wrong" to "always going wrong", which is what happens when the government has insane amounts of laws about everything regarding companies.
Externalities is a classic example, and carbon emissions is an externality. Since carbon-neutral is the only sustainable solution, the actual cost of dumping carbon into the air is either the cost of the damage done to the environment by it for as long as it's in the air (probably several hundred years at least), or the cost of removing it from the atmosphere.
Carbon emissions are not an externality (unless you want to tax people for breathing), they are a fact of life. You can pass regulations against industries that pollute unnecessarily or mandate minimum MPG on cars (though those laws have problems, but that's another story), but taxing ALL energy is just idiotic and harms everyone except the super rich (which conveniently, are the politicians!).
So taxing the externality is really a way of making the market come to the truly optimal solution, taking into account true cost of the externality that is now conveniently free.
What cost are we paying for having cars and electricity? Seems to me that most people are pretty damn happy to have them. It's only the Luddites "technology will destroy the world!" people who think that having these things "harms" society - which is part of the definition of externality; it has to harm people / society.
That's awful lot of faith you're having in people making the right prediction. If, as a whole, people are too optimistic about how long the fossil fuels will last, or about how quickly we'll be able to develop new technologies, we're totally screwed.
You put your faith in benevolent rulers, I'd rather put my faith in people's survival instinct. Looking back at history, the benevolent rulers are the ones with a pretty bad scorecard. If you really think that companies that face not only going out of business but their entire standard of living for the people running them won't make damn sure to have a non-fossil fuel energy system set up, then you completely don't understand the innate desire to succeed (well, for most people).
Almost this exact situation has already happened several times.
Hardly. Technologically primitive societies that don't have entrepreneurship are completely different from the modern world. Not only do we know that eventually, we'll have to stop using fossil fuel, but we have very accurate ways of measuring the amount of fuel we have and are already working (even without government money) on alternatives. The only problem is that the alternatives aren't viable yet - but they're getting there. By the time we run out of fossil fuels, alternative fuels will be up and going just fine.
The only evidence I've seen, including the recent financial crisis, leads me to believe exactly the
All taxes effectively raise prices, either directly (making things more expensive) or indirectly (reducing the amount of income you have to spend on them). Sane tax policy is picking taxes that do the least harm to the economy.
First, I never argued against taxes, I argued against taxing energy. Secondly, taxing energy makes EVERYTHING cost more. At every step of production, transportation, and sales, prices go up. It is the worst kind of tax because EVERYTHING relies on energy at some point in the production / sales chain. Even a book requires energy to get the lumber, transport the lumber, turn the lumber into paper, get the paper to the printing facility, run the printing facility, print the book, transport the book to the book store, and provide electricity at the book store. Then there's also the increased cost of paying employees more to deal with increased energy, as well as the increased cost of driving to the store to buy the book.
Those who support taxing energy may try to claim that it only raises the cost of fuel or running your computer, but in reality it raises the cost of everything you do and everything you buy.
There is no good time to tax energy, because it's a stupid thing to do. All I said was that if you're going to insist on doing something economically damning, don't do it during the second worst economy in the history of the country.
But if we don't start doing it soon, when that source runs out, we won't have the technology or the infrastructure to replace it.
When we actually are in danger of running out, people will start to change over. Why? Well first, because there will be people wanting to make money by being one of the major non-fossil fuel energy sources. Secondly, there will be the natural self-preservation instinct. Thirdly, as basic economics would teach you, as fossil fuels start to become scarce, the prices will go through the roof making the relative cost of non-fossil fuel energy incredibly low.
Believe it or not, free markets actually work - it's been proven. Free markets with no regulation tend to have some issues, but I'm not arguing against regulation - just excessive government controls that actually hamper the very goal the government claims to want to achieve.
Wow, the liberals must have a lot of mod points today when they're not only modding me troll for pointing out that taxing energy dramatically raises the cost of everything, but they're modding you troll for using a direct quote from Obama about the effects of taxing energy!
Its also nice to see individual states take the lead in issues like this.
Yes, it is nice to see individual states taking a lead in dramatically raising energy costs, especially in a recession. It only further proves how utterly incompetent our leaders. While taking energy is stupid in the first place, even if a country or state is dead set on doing it, only a moron would do it DURING A RECESSION when people don't have the money to pay the tax. Taxing energy raises all costs - do you really thing the people of Minnesota can afford to pay more for heat, fuel for cars, food, lighting, clothing, and everything else right now? That's what taxing energy does - it raises the price of everything. This is an epic fail for Minnesota.