The market price for content that will fill the twenty-something's free time with entertainment is 20 bucks
Market price? Stop kidding yourself. You can't have market prices on IP products. You know the whole supply & demand thingy. It only works if there is an actual limited amount of supply.
You can have a market price on the first copy of any specific work of art. But beyond that, it is a complete and utterly regulated non free market.
Copyright is the idiotic idea of trying to increase the number of works of arts produced by deliberatly decreasing the total amounts of copies produced.
It is a total loss for society, anyway you look at it. Who care if more works of art are produced when the total spread of all works of art combined is decreased. Oh, don't bother answering the question. I know who. And I have no respect for any of you.
And don't try to take the moral highground. If you don't want people to copy stuff, DON'T FUCKING PRODUCE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I don't care how much skill and talent you have. If you can't make money on something without resorting to threating people with guns (a.k.a. law enforcement), then you should go and do something more productive. We don't care if work of art XXX don't get produced, because without the threat of goverment on us, we have access to far more art than we have in a capitalistic society where you get nickle and dimed. And as for those producers who remain, they get rewarded as there is less competition from monopoly exploiting assholes.
Step 3 is illegal. It violates the GPL license. You are not allowed to distribute GPL licensed code (the improvements the GPL guys did) under a non GPL license.
That is the whole point of the grandparent saying that the GPL is a black hole. Because it really is. It is the leecher license of open source licenses, wanting other licenses to be one-way "compatible" with it so that it can leech code from them, but not wanting to give anything in return.
Last I checked GPL3 was compatible with the licenses that make up the vast majority of open source projects.
GPL is the Windows of open source licenses. Whereas Windows is marketing based, GPL is ideology based. They both rely on product lock in. And the world would be better of if their market positions were smaller.
Trust the GPL for a second and it will come in a rip you apart. Just like it did with BSD, taking everything of value while giving nothing back. All in the name of open source fundamentalism.
Am I a bit harsh? Propbably. But you can't deny (well, you can if you are a gpl fundamentalist) that the similarities are there.
Apache, gpl and bsd.
Neither the original apache nor bsd license were gpl compatible originally.
"...and the fact that you need it to pay sales, payroll, customs duties, corporation tax and personal income taxes in the United States, which together account for a significant fraction of the GDP of the largest economy in the world."
And don't forget about the debt. You need dollar to pay debt written in dollar.
Just one thing in the above. Don't rely too much on the GDP. It is an incredibly poor measure of wealth production as it has too many false indicators (such as being directly inflated by bad debt).
"But you're right - REAL money is backed by a metal of limited industrial uses, fluctuating supply and oooh look! Shiny."
True. Gold is a currency and not a goods. It has very little intrinsic value just like fiat currencies. The only difference between it and fiat currencies is the inherent difficulties in creating (finding) more of it. Which of course isn't a small difference. It does make gold useful to hedge against fiat currency devaluation. But so is other goods. And more so as such goods have real every day usefulness.
No, the real reason to own gold is to hedge on fear. Nothing more, nothing less.
I like memory manufacturers. They usually give me more memory than I am buying. For example, last time I bought 1GB (10^9) memory I got a 7% bonus. Very nice of them.
Most operating systems seems to have bugs in them though that count memory incorrectly. I hear that it has something to do with some wierd fundamentalist cult.
"Are you honestly telling me that you have downloaded music or movies e.t.c. and actually believe you deserve it because it's there?"
Yes.
I don't recognize artificial monopolies that limit the spread of wealth. Copyright and patents as they are currently being used is nothing more than information slavery. Copying is a good thing, enriching the world by allowing common people to experience more. Laws that try to prevent that are inherently immoral.
The so called purpose of copyright is contradictory in itself. Encouraging the creation of more...What is the point of that when people can't afford to view and/or use the creations? It only makes sense in the eye of those who want to earn more at the expense of the rest of the population.
"if you really do, I think you need a slap."
No. It is you who need an ass spanking. Trying to make the world a worse place to live by preventing the not so rich people from having access to the knowledge of mankind.
If you want the goverment to do something, get them to support creators in a more direct way. While still inefficent, it is far more efficent than artifically limiting information spread which is the case with copyright and patents. And you can't claim that you are against goverment interference, as you already are supporting the goverment implementing the far inferior copyright laws.
So, what? It isn't like we don't have enough people on the planet already. Life potential is an incredibly bad excuse with 6 billion humans, unless you again are talking on religious grounds.
You have a legal right, but that is about it. You sound like the slave owner who asks "What gives you the right to force me to release my slaves?" and thinks he has the best argument in the world.
Another simple question, what incentive remains for me to create anything
If you can't make money on it, stop creating and go do something else. The benefits to society for not having copyright/patent laws is huge.
* Workers move to sectors where their work is valued enough that they get paid without having to rely on monopoly protections. * People can build on previous knowledge without getting sued. * Everyone in society can access all knowledge that has ever been produced at little to no cost.
Sure, the production in some areas may go down and some types of production may even die, but that isn't a bad thing. If supply decreases because content producers move to other sectors, demand for new works will go up and people will find new ways to make it work. It just won't be ways that rely on restricting the copying of zeros and ones.
the banks unsure of what their holdings are really valued
Only because the goverment is "bailing them out". Otherwise it is really simply. Holdings should always be priced at market value, nothing more, nothing less. If the market doesn't think it is worth what the books says, it is the books that are wrong.
And don't think for a second that all banks are involved in this crisis. There are many smaller banks that have made sound loans (including subprime ones) and are dealing pretty well with this crisis. Of course, if the unemployment rises even further even sound banks will have problems, but it doesn't really matter.
What is needed is bankruptcies. A lot of them. Bankruptcy isn't a bad thing in a market economy. It clears away bad obligations made, while distributing the real assets of value to the remainder of the market.
Due to that unwillingness to loan, many businesses are struggling to obtain the money
There isn't unwillingness to loan. There is unwillingness to loan at low rates and without a decent security behind it. If you can show that you are making profit and have a good future plan that deals with a continuing low demand, you should have no trouble getting a loan.
However, if you are trying to loan to pay salaries while your companies is in the red, then you have a big problem.
but businesses rely on credit to at the very least even out the financial bumps in the road so they can pay their workers a steady paycheck.
Only bad businesses. If you havn't accumulated enough profit and savings in good times to ride out the bad times, you deserve to fail. Loaning is for investments. Loaning to pay salaries isn't an investment, it is life support.
I am not even a right wing person. I have no problem with a decent sized goverment. Nor have I a problem with taxing the rich more to redistribute wealth as long as the redistributed money is spent on goverment services including social welfare for the poor (preferably in terms of low end wealth creation jobs). In fact, I think that wealth redistribution is a must for a healthy economy to maintain a balanced wealth distribution. But denying the fundamental market processes is the kind of thing that caused the soviet union to fail.
Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much?
Cherrypicking statistics is easy. Let's put those numbers in perspective
Total goverment employment growth 1997-2007: 12.3% Total population growth 1997-2007: 12.7% (Using 267,000,000 and 301,000,000)
Sure, the goverment is employing more people now. Oh, dear I wonder why. Could it be because there are more people in the country than there used to be.
We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.
Ah damn. Another one who thinks that the goverment doesn't produce wealth. I guess you are now thinking about claiming that the goverment doesn't earn money, it just taxes the private sector. That is the standard propaganda used. The statement is literally true, but is a simple deception.
Using that incorrect reasoning, no private business makes any money either. Because every single one has to get their money from other companies in the private sector. One company getting more money means that the remaining companies gets less. A wealth transfer as some like to call it. And no, taxing is no different than private companies charging for services. It is just that anyone living in a country has a life long contract with the Goverment business. It sucks to be in such a contract. But that is the price for not having your own private army.
All of this of course have nothing to do with wealth creation. Wealth is created by workers who do productive work, farmers, factory workers, miners, teachers, policemen, road workers. Some work in the public sector, and some in the private sector. There are of course also many mostly unproductive or even contraproductive jobs in both sectors.
So we have this big slow down, with many private sector jobs lost, yet government keeps growing
That one is simple to understand. Firing someone costs a private company nothing, but it costs the goverment in a loss of production that can no longer be taxed. By employing the citizen instead of letting him go unemployed the goverment creates work that can be taxed.
As long as the value of the work created is greater than the surrounding expenses of employing, it is a win for the goverment. This of course only applies as long as the person in question don't have a large chance of getting employed in the private sector, because in that case you have to start comparing the relative worths of the private and public sector jobs.
We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them.
And yet the republicans cried when the jobs the stimulus package created temporary jobs. That of course was the whole point. Creating temporary jobs in a recession to avoid having labor go unused while not creating permanent jobs that are difficult to make away with.
If you want to yell at wastage, yell at the bailouts (bank, auto industry, mortage). Those are about throwing money at bad investments which is almost always a bad idea.
Government taking from the rich may not necessarily do immediate harm, depending on how they spend it. However, it will never create a net surplus of employment and history has clearly shown us that government is extremely inefficient with money on the whole.
Oh god, shut the fuck up. That is just pure bullshit. High margin taxes has historically meant higher growth and decreasing unemployment. And no, the goverment isn't especially inefficent with money. Most of the successful economies in the world has large goverments for a reason.
If anything, it is the private sector that is inefficent with capital. Creating a financial sector that employs huge amounts of people to basically just gamble with money and even more people to convince other people to buy overpriced products of questionable quality and lots of people to convince people to take loans that they can't afford in the long run.
This is not saying that the private sector doesn't have its advantages. It is especially successful in allowing for small innovative companies to prosper and innovate which is good for the economy. The goverment is far more static in its behavior which makes it poor to adept. But the kind of anti goverment bullshit that is going is just sickening.
I would go so far as to say that pretty much no country subscribe to Keynesian economics. If you want to prove me wrong, please point me to the countries that raise taxes, lower goverment spending and pay back debts when the times are good.
I see Austrian economists screaming that this crisis is the fault of Keynesian policies, but I have yet to see any evidence of actual Keynesian economies in US politics for a long long time. Calling the stimulus build Keynesian is like calling a mass murderer humanitarian because he donates to the red cross.
education - Free flow of information and culture will make for a better educated society.
economy - Free flow of information ensures that you get the highest value out of the IP sector.
social and welfare reforms - By ensuring free flow of information, important things such as medicine, technology and other information will be more availible to the poor.
employment, taxation - No opinions on these. Most other parties like to focus on these so why add yet another opinion. Most mainstream parties mainly move on the economic line of politics (right-left) while the pirate party has a focus that lies more towards the liberty line (up-down). This is very much needed in a society that is quickly moving towards authoritarian rule.
if that's how little you value your vote
It is the mainstream voters who don't value their votes. They vote for parties that compromise away 80% of their so called policies. Like the the party leader for the current leading party in Sweden who before the last election said some like "We shouldn't criminalize a whole generation". And guess what. Now they are criminalizing a whole generation.
The fact is that you can only put so much focus into issues. And if you have too many of them on your agenda, then none of them will be followed. Or the party will follow a couple that it finds "important" while ignoring the rest. If voting for such hypocrites is what you call value your vote, then I will never value my vote.
A vote for a party that actually cares for a few issues that I find is important is far better than a vote for a party that claims to care for a hundred issues that I find important, but in reality only care about the few issues that I didn't agree with the party on.
What does TPB have to do with the pirate party? Well, except that the pirate party does advocate law changes which would make sure that there aren't any illegal stuff on TPB by simply making it legal, ensuring that a large part of the Swedish population remains law abiding and free.
As with many popular sayings, it doesn't make any sense. But you are not supposed to actually notice that. Catchphrases and sayings rely on being heard repeatedly, preferably from more than one source to gain credibility, until the listener believes it with all his might and starts repeating it himself. And so you create "truth" from nothing but words.
To further help your case. The 25% numbers are an exaggeration in themselves. They don't include some people who actually was working. Basically, the 25% figure is propaganda that doesn't include new deal employees.
Reminds me of the GOP leader who recently said that work and job is two different things. The exact same bullshit repeated today. Propaganda from an especially dangerous set of right wing fundamentalists.
Their reasoning is as follows. If Ralph build roads and Sally needs a road to her house, wealth and jobs is created only if Sally directly pay Ralph to build the road. But if the goverment taxes several individuals and pay Ralph to build the road there is no longer any wealth or jobs created, no matter how many individuals later on use the road.
This is of course idiocy, but fundamentalists can't be argued with. You know "trickle down" economics? As in reducing margin taxes to stimulate the economy. There is not a single ounce of truth in it. Historically, high margin taxes actually seems to stimulate growth. Of course, don't expect me to explain why. It is a little unintuitive even for me. But that is their tactics. They use slogans and catchphrases that sound intuitive and simple on the surface but actually are false when you look beneath.
Finally, don't take this as an approval of the goverment. There is a lot wrong with the goverment. I just hate the deliberate vilification of the goverment that is taking place.
Now, tax cuts - in a normal economic environment - do stimulate the economy
Oh, for god sake. Show me some proof. Not some theoretical bullshit, but actual historical proof. Oh, never mind. You won't find any. There is no real correlation between lower taxes and improved economy.
In fact, many of the things you take as "obvious" is probably not true. Did you know that there is a positive correlation between higher marginal taxes and greater GDP growth. Which goes directly against the main principle that the republican party seems to be run on, which is lower taxes for the rich.
Grow up.
I would ask you to grow up. But you are obviously so brainwashed that it doesn't matter anyway.
If you reduce taxation, more job creation and more spending happens
Incorrect. Stop repeating that bullshit. There is no historical evidence at all for it. There simple is no correlation between lower taxation and job creation.
This is simple math
No, it isn't. It is very advanced math and psychology that speaks against you. Tax cuts are very bad for stimulation as they don't increase income security and as such only lead to increased savings/debt repayment.
To increase spending (and as such production/job creation) you have to increase income security which is only done by making sure that there are a good amount of jobs availible. Those jobs can only be supplied by the goverment, as private institutions aren't interested in hiring in a recession/depression.
. For the love of all things holy, its common......fucking.......sense
You'd be suprised how little common sense economy has as it is based on the reactions of irrational individuals. Also, what is good for an individual is often bad for society as a whole.
You can ALWAYS count on stimulating an economy of the US's size by reducing taxation
NO, YOU CAN'T. Get it through your thick head. Reducing taxation is a lousy way to stimulate the economy. It is voodoo economy, with no backing in reality.
Reduced taxation=more money=less foreclosures and less debt.
And the economy grows to a halt as people are doing nothing but paying off debts, more people lose their jobs and don't benefit from the tax breaks and have to forfeit on their loans in the end anyway.
And if you still care about the national debt, the answer is simple. Tax the ones who have money but aren't spending it. That means wealth taxes, higher margin taxes (rich people spend a lesser percentage of their income) and lower sales taxes.
The whole idea of tax cuts stimulating the economy is based on a lie. Yes, there are times when it is true. Mostly when you have overtaxed poor workers. However, the US hasn't been in that situation for a long time, if ever. In fact, if you look at historical unemployment graphs you will find it impossible to guess when taxes were cut or raised. There simply is no correlation.
Yeah, you will be when your utility companies start raising rates because they aren't making enough money due to conversation and energy efficient hardware.
Actually, when that happens his cost savings from efficency increases will be even greater. If you don't understand why, do the math.
Add to that, that because of his lesser energy usage, he could far more easily move off the grid completly with solar cells. Especially if the power company tries to overcharge him.
You go ahead and keep thinking that you're saving the world and your wallet from the high cost of energy when the cocksuckers are raking you over the coals so they can continue to turn a profit. I love having exactly ONE option (mandated by the local municipality)
Well, if you live in soviet russia or another similar location, I can't help you.
That's the same problem solar has. Unfortunately because most alternative energy sources are not continuous a base load is needed, until massive storage is developed.
Are you talking about pumped storage or simply using a traditional power plant to cover the difference. Both of which are viable options today. Especially for windpower that really doesn't have that big of a variation over larger areas. Solar is more difficult because of the whole "night" thingy.
The US would have been far better off with a real leftist in the presidential office. Instead you got the usual corrupt and/or incompetent centrist that has to pay back favors to the financial interests that bought him.
Well, I could be wrong, but the first few weeks hasn't been very promising in the regard of "change". Expect Obushma to become a far more common term in the months to come.
Slashdot Mirror
The market price for content that will fill the twenty-something's free time with entertainment is 20 bucks
Market price? Stop kidding yourself. You can't have market prices on IP products. You know the whole supply & demand thingy. It only works if there is an actual limited amount of supply.
You can have a market price on the first copy of any specific work of art. But beyond that, it is a complete and utterly regulated non free market.
Insightful my ass.
Copyright is the idiotic idea of trying to increase the number of works of arts produced by deliberatly decreasing the total amounts of copies produced.
It is a total loss for society, anyway you look at it. Who care if more works of art are produced when the total spread of all works of art combined is decreased. Oh, don't bother answering the question. I know who. And I have no respect for any of you.
And don't try to take the moral highground. If you don't want people to copy stuff, DON'T FUCKING PRODUCE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I don't care how much skill and talent you have. If you can't make money on something without resorting to threating people with guns (a.k.a. law enforcement), then you should go and do something more productive. We don't care if work of art XXX don't get produced, because without the threat of goverment on us, we have access to far more art than we have in a capitalistic society where you get nickle and dimed. And as for those producers who remain, they get rewarded as there is less competition from monopoly exploiting assholes.
3) BSD guys merge changes back into their code.
Step 3 is illegal. It violates the GPL license. You are not allowed to distribute GPL licensed code (the improvements the GPL guys did) under a non GPL license.
That is the whole point of the grandparent saying that the GPL is a black hole. Because it really is. It is the leecher license of open source licenses, wanting other licenses to be one-way "compatible" with it so that it can leech code from them, but not wanting to give anything in return.
Last I checked GPL3 was compatible with the licenses that make up the vast majority of open source projects.
GPL is the Windows of open source licenses. Whereas Windows is marketing based, GPL is ideology based. They both rely on product lock in. And the world would be better of if their market positions were smaller.
Trust the GPL for a second and it will come in a rip you apart. Just like it did with BSD, taking everything of value while giving nothing back. All in the name of open source fundamentalism.
Am I a bit harsh? Propbably. But you can't deny (well, you can if you are a gpl fundamentalist) that the similarities are there.
Apache, gpl and bsd.
Neither the original apache nor bsd license were gpl compatible originally.
"...and the fact that you need it to pay sales, payroll, customs duties, corporation tax and personal income taxes in the United States, which together account for a significant fraction of the GDP of the largest economy in the world."
And don't forget about the debt. You need dollar to pay debt written in dollar.
Just one thing in the above. Don't rely too much on the GDP. It is an incredibly poor measure of wealth production as it has too many false indicators (such as being directly inflated by bad debt).
"But you're right - REAL money is backed by a metal of limited industrial uses, fluctuating supply and oooh look! Shiny."
True. Gold is a currency and not a goods. It has very little intrinsic value just like fiat currencies. The only difference between it and fiat currencies is the inherent difficulties in creating (finding) more of it. Which of course isn't a small difference. It does make gold useful to hedge against fiat currency devaluation. But so is other goods. And more so as such goods have real every day usefulness.
No, the real reason to own gold is to hedge on fear. Nothing more, nothing less.
I like memory manufacturers. They usually give me more memory than I am buying. For example, last time I bought 1GB (10^9) memory I got a 7% bonus. Very nice of them.
Most operating systems seems to have bugs in them though that count memory incorrectly. I hear that it has something to do with some wierd fundamentalist cult.
"Are you honestly telling me that you have downloaded music or movies e.t.c. and actually believe you deserve it because it's there?"
Yes.
I don't recognize artificial monopolies that limit the spread of wealth. Copyright and patents as they are currently being used is nothing more than information slavery. Copying is a good thing, enriching the world by allowing common people to experience more. Laws that try to prevent that are inherently immoral.
The so called purpose of copyright is contradictory in itself. Encouraging the creation of more...What is the point of that when people can't afford to view and/or use the creations? It only makes sense in the eye of those who want to earn more at the expense of the rest of the population.
"if you really do, I think you need a slap."
No. It is you who need an ass spanking. Trying to make the world a worse place to live by preventing the not so rich people from having access to the knowledge of mankind.
If you want the goverment to do something, get them to support creators in a more direct way. While still inefficent, it is far more efficent than artifically limiting information spread which is the case with copyright and patents. And you can't claim that you are against goverment interference, as you already are supporting the goverment implementing the far inferior copyright laws.
"They do not have any life potential"
So, what? It isn't like we don't have enough people on the planet already. Life potential is an incredibly bad excuse with 6 billion humans, unless you again are talking on religious grounds.
"1. Target shooting (it's a hobby for me)"
No need for a real gun except if what you really want is a penis extender.
"2. Hunting"
Maiming and killing
"3. Self defense"
Maiming and killing
"4. Annoy the crap out of GFWs (Gun Fearing Wussies)"
Looks like I was right in number 1.
what gives you the right to something I create?
You have a legal right, but that is about it. You sound like the slave owner who asks "What gives you the right to force me to release my slaves?" and thinks he has the best argument in the world.
Another simple question, what incentive remains for me to create anything
If you can't make money on it, stop creating and go do something else. The benefits to society for not having copyright/patent laws is huge.
* Workers move to sectors where their work is valued enough that they get paid without having to rely on monopoly protections.
* People can build on previous knowledge without getting sued.
* Everyone in society can access all knowledge that has ever been produced at little to no cost.
Sure, the production in some areas may go down and some types of production may even die, but that isn't a bad thing. If supply decreases because content producers move to other sectors, demand for new works will go up and people will find new ways to make it work. It just won't be ways that rely on restricting the copying of zeros and ones.
the banks unsure of what their holdings are really valued
Only because the goverment is "bailing them out". Otherwise it is really simply. Holdings should always be priced at market value, nothing more, nothing less. If the market doesn't think it is worth what the books says, it is the books that are wrong.
And don't think for a second that all banks are involved in this crisis. There are many smaller banks that have made sound loans (including subprime ones) and are dealing pretty well with this crisis. Of course, if the unemployment rises even further even sound banks will have problems, but it doesn't really matter.
What is needed is bankruptcies. A lot of them. Bankruptcy isn't a bad thing in a market economy. It clears away bad obligations made, while distributing the real assets of value to the remainder of the market.
Due to that unwillingness to loan, many businesses are struggling to obtain the money
There isn't unwillingness to loan. There is unwillingness to loan at low rates and without a decent security behind it. If you can show that you are making profit and have a good future plan that deals with a continuing low demand, you should have no trouble getting a loan.
However, if you are trying to loan to pay salaries while your companies is in the red, then you have a big problem.
but businesses rely on credit to at the very least even out the financial bumps in the road so they can pay their workers a steady paycheck.
Only bad businesses. If you havn't accumulated enough profit and savings in good times to ride out the bad times, you deserve to fail. Loaning is for investments. Loaning to pay salaries isn't an investment, it is life support.
I am not even a right wing person. I have no problem with a decent sized goverment. Nor have I a problem with taxing the rich more to redistribute wealth as long as the redistributed money is spent on goverment services including social welfare for the poor (preferably in terms of low end wealth creation jobs). In fact, I think that wealth redistribution is a must for a healthy economy to maintain a balanced wealth distribution. But denying the fundamental market processes is the kind of thing that caused the soviet union to fail.
Now, explain how we can keep adding so many government jobs and not expect the burden to become too much?
Cherrypicking statistics is easy. Let's put those numbers in perspective
Total goverment employment growth 1997-2007: 12.3%
Total population growth 1997-2007: 12.7% (Using 267,000,000 and 301,000,000)
Sure, the goverment is employing more people now. Oh, dear I wonder why. Could it be because there are more people in the country than there used to be.
We are creating more non wealth producing jobs than wealth producing jobs.
Ah damn. Another one who thinks that the goverment doesn't produce wealth. I guess you are now thinking about claiming that the goverment doesn't earn money, it just taxes the private sector. That is the standard propaganda used. The statement is literally true, but is a simple deception.
Using that incorrect reasoning, no private business makes any money either. Because every single one has to get their money from other companies in the private sector. One company getting more money means that the remaining companies gets less. A wealth transfer as some like to call it. And no, taxing is no different than private companies charging for services. It is just that anyone living in a country has a life long contract with the Goverment business. It sucks to be in such a contract. But that is the price for not having your own private army.
All of this of course have nothing to do with wealth creation. Wealth is created by workers who do productive work, farmers, factory workers, miners, teachers, policemen, road workers. Some work in the public sector, and some in the private sector. There are of course also many mostly unproductive or even contraproductive jobs in both sectors.
So we have this big slow down, with many private sector jobs lost, yet government keeps growing
That one is simple to understand. Firing someone costs a private company nothing, but it costs the goverment in a loss of production that can no longer be taxed. By employing the citizen instead of letting him go unemployed the goverment creates work that can be taxed.
As long as the value of the work created is greater than the surrounding expenses of employing, it is a win for the goverment. This of course only applies as long as the person in question don't have a large chance of getting employed in the private sector, because in that case you have to start comparing the relative worths of the private and public sector jobs.
We are simply running amok. The real problem with government paid jobs is that are nearly impossible to do away with them.
And yet the republicans cried when the jobs the stimulus package created temporary jobs. That of course was the whole point. Creating temporary jobs in a recession to avoid having labor go unused while not creating permanent jobs that are difficult to make away with.
If you want to yell at wastage, yell at the bailouts (bank, auto industry, mortage). Those are about throwing money at bad investments which is almost always a bad idea.
Government taking from the rich may not necessarily do immediate harm, depending on how they spend it. However, it will never create a net surplus of employment and history has clearly shown us that government is extremely inefficient with money on the whole.
Oh god, shut the fuck up. That is just pure bullshit. High margin taxes has historically meant higher growth and decreasing unemployment. And no, the goverment isn't especially inefficent with money. Most of the successful economies in the world has large goverments for a reason.
If anything, it is the private sector that is inefficent with capital. Creating a financial sector that employs huge amounts of people to basically just gamble with money and even more people to convince other people to buy overpriced products of questionable quality and lots of people to convince people to take loans that they can't afford in the long run.
This is not saying that the private sector doesn't have its advantages. It is especially successful in allowing for small innovative companies to prosper and innovate which is good for the economy. The goverment is far more static in its behavior which makes it poor to adept. But the kind of anti goverment bullshit that is going is just sickening.
I would go so far as to say that pretty much no country subscribe to Keynesian economics. If you want to prove me wrong, please point me to the countries that raise taxes, lower goverment spending and pay back debts when the times are good.
I see Austrian economists screaming that this crisis is the fault of Keynesian policies, but I have yet to see any evidence of actual Keynesian economies in US politics for a long long time. Calling the stimulus build Keynesian is like calling a mass murderer humanitarian because he donates to the red cross.
Most of those aren't trackers. They are torrent indexes.
education - Free flow of information and culture will make for a better educated society.
economy - Free flow of information ensures that you get the highest value out of the IP sector.
social and welfare reforms - By ensuring free flow of information, important things such as medicine, technology and other information will be more availible to the poor.
employment, taxation - No opinions on these. Most other parties like to focus on these so why add yet another opinion. Most mainstream parties mainly move on the economic line of politics (right-left) while the pirate party has a focus that lies more towards the liberty line (up-down). This is very much needed in a society that is quickly moving towards authoritarian rule.
if that's how little you value your vote
It is the mainstream voters who don't value their votes. They vote for parties that compromise away 80% of their so called policies. Like the the party leader for the current leading party in Sweden who before the last election said some like "We shouldn't criminalize a whole generation". And guess what. Now they are criminalizing a whole generation.
The fact is that you can only put so much focus into issues. And if you have too many of them on your agenda, then none of them will be followed. Or the party will follow a couple that it finds "important" while ignoring the rest. If voting for such hypocrites is what you call value your vote, then I will never value my vote.
A vote for a party that actually cares for a few issues that I find is important is far better than a vote for a party that claims to care for a hundred issues that I find important, but in reality only care about the few issues that I didn't agree with the party on.
What does TPB have to do with the pirate party? Well, except that the pirate party does advocate law changes which would make sure that there aren't any illegal stuff on TPB by simply making it legal, ensuring that a large part of the Swedish population remains law abiding and free.
As with many popular sayings, it doesn't make any sense. But you are not supposed to actually notice that. Catchphrases and sayings rely on being heard repeatedly, preferably from more than one source to gain credibility, until the listener believes it with all his might and starts repeating it himself. And so you create "truth" from nothing but words.
To further help your case. The 25% numbers are an exaggeration in themselves. They don't include some people who actually was working. Basically, the 25% figure is propaganda that doesn't include new deal employees.
Reminds me of the GOP leader who recently said that work and job is two different things. The exact same bullshit repeated today. Propaganda from an especially dangerous set of right wing fundamentalists.
Their reasoning is as follows. If Ralph build roads and Sally needs a road to her house, wealth and jobs is created only if Sally directly pay Ralph to build the road. But if the goverment taxes several individuals and pay Ralph to build the road there is no longer any wealth or jobs created, no matter how many individuals later on use the road.
This is of course idiocy, but fundamentalists can't be argued with. You know "trickle down" economics? As in reducing margin taxes to stimulate the economy. There is not a single ounce of truth in it. Historically, high margin taxes actually seems to stimulate growth. Of course, don't expect me to explain why. It is a little unintuitive even for me. But that is their tactics. They use slogans and catchphrases that sound intuitive and simple on the surface but actually are false when you look beneath.
Finally, don't take this as an approval of the goverment. There is a lot wrong with the goverment. I just hate the deliberate vilification of the goverment that is taking place.
Now, tax cuts - in a normal economic environment - do stimulate the economy
Oh, for god sake. Show me some proof. Not some theoretical bullshit, but actual historical proof. Oh, never mind. You won't find any. There is no real correlation between lower taxes and improved economy.
In fact, many of the things you take as "obvious" is probably not true. Did you know that there is a positive correlation between higher marginal taxes and greater GDP growth. Which goes directly against the main principle that the republican party seems to be run on, which is lower taxes for the rich.
Grow up.
I would ask you to grow up. But you are obviously so brainwashed that it doesn't matter anyway.
If you reduce taxation, more job creation and more spending happens
Incorrect. Stop repeating that bullshit. There is no historical evidence at all for it. There simple is no correlation between lower taxation and job creation.
This is simple math
No, it isn't. It is very advanced math and psychology that speaks against you. Tax cuts are very bad for stimulation as they don't increase income security and as such only lead to increased savings/debt repayment.
To increase spending (and as such production/job creation) you have to increase income security which is only done by making sure that there are a good amount of jobs availible. Those jobs can only be supplied by the goverment, as private institutions aren't interested in hiring in a recession/depression.
. For the love of all things holy, its common......fucking.......sense
You'd be suprised how little common sense economy has as it is based on the reactions of irrational individuals. Also, what is good for an individual is often bad for society as a whole.
You can ALWAYS count on stimulating an economy of the US's size by reducing taxation
NO, YOU CAN'T. Get it through your thick head. Reducing taxation is a lousy way to stimulate the economy. It is voodoo economy, with no backing in reality.
Reduced taxation=more money=less foreclosures and less debt.
And the economy grows to a halt as people are doing nothing but paying off debts, more people lose their jobs and don't benefit from the tax breaks and have to forfeit on their loans in the end anyway.
But- But- what about our national debt?
Fuck it.
And if you still care about the national debt, the answer is simple. Tax the ones who have money but aren't spending it. That means wealth taxes, higher margin taxes (rich people spend a lesser percentage of their income) and lower sales taxes.
The whole idea of tax cuts stimulating the economy is based on a lie. Yes, there are times when it is true. Mostly when you have overtaxed poor workers. However, the US hasn't been in that situation for a long time, if ever. In fact, if you look at historical unemployment graphs you will find it impossible to guess when taxes were cut or raised. There simply is no correlation.
Yeah, you will be when your utility companies start raising rates because they aren't making enough money due to conversation and energy efficient hardware.
Actually, when that happens his cost savings from efficency increases will be even greater. If you don't understand why, do the math.
Add to that, that because of his lesser energy usage, he could far more easily move off the grid completly with solar cells. Especially if the power company tries to overcharge him.
You go ahead and keep thinking that you're saving the world and your wallet from the high cost of energy when the cocksuckers are raking you over the coals so they can continue to turn a profit. I love having exactly ONE option (mandated by the local municipality)
Well, if you live in soviet russia or another similar location, I can't help you.
That's the same problem solar has. Unfortunately because most alternative energy sources are not continuous a base load is needed, until massive storage is developed.
Are you talking about pumped storage or simply using a traditional power plant to cover the difference. Both of which are viable options today. Especially for windpower that really doesn't have that big of a variation over larger areas. Solar is more difficult because of the whole "night" thingy.
The US would have been far better off with a real leftist in the presidential office. Instead you got the usual corrupt and/or incompetent centrist that has to pay back favors to the financial interests that bought him.
Well, I could be wrong, but the first few weeks hasn't been very promising in the regard of "change". Expect Obushma to become a far more common term in the months to come.