And file a US tax return for the rest of my life? You have to be kidding. Any other country if you spend most of the year away you become non-resident for tax purposes, and they leave you alone. One measly vote in 120 million is hardly worth owing Unle Sam a proportion of the fruits of your labour for life. That's naked feudalism in my book
Lots of IT work in London at the moment. If anything there is a shortage. I certainly get a stream of responses for my cv (resume). Also there is a lot of money to be made in Dubai currently, especially in IT - like with Dubai Internet City". Zero tax, massive ecomonic growth, people from all over the world there, safe friendly environment for all westerners, and the best of everything - they are currently building the world's tallest building in Dubai too.
Geezer: I just won £50 of a Nigerian colleague at work on the same basis:) Don't make bets when stoned, and bet on what will happen, not what you want, although I did want Bush to win over Kerry (actually I was supporting Badnarick, but you can't win them all). Should have had the balls to make it a grand really, or at least 500 quid.
Firstly, built a space dock and built your ship in orbit and use SSO type vehicles to get the materialsl up there. Then, once you've got a sufficently established space dock, then use that to spool down the wire for our space elevator.
Sounds reasonable. (Almost as though you have seen one before...):-)
This planets got three moons, we obviously can't move the big one, but we should see aboug maybe hauling one of the smaller ones into the right spot and using it as a ballast!
Which planet did you say you were from again? There's only one moon in these parts:P
I'm not "just spewing theory". There really is a difference between corruption levels found in governments and in private businesses. How things work in the "real world" (as you put it) is that there is much less corruption in businesses. The reason for this really is becuase the payoffs for corruption are different. In a business there is a definable loser, a propriator or shareholders, who doesn't want to be stolen from, as they have to pay for it out of their pocket. A government is under no such constraint, and because the things a government does are not comercially desired, and are usually value-reducing, paying them not do something, or to allow you to do something they would have otherwise prevented, is mutually benifical. It benefits the government official, and it benefits you, and it could even benifit the public sometimes.
I use technical terms like rent-seeker because I am a trained economist, so I know what the words mean, and I want to be precise about it. You can think about the issue for as long as you like, but from an economists point of view these kind of questions were settled decades ago. TBH it is the same problem talking to (some) non-geek profesionals, like doctors - that some people really do know what happens inside a computer, and what they say about buffer overflows and firewalls is still valid, even though they aren't doctors themselves. There is no reason why you should be familier with all these things beforehand, but we have to discuss the issue in precise language if we are going to get anywhere.
Employees of commercial businesses rarely have the same incentives. For one, they are already be paid to produce, not to hold back, so there isn't a huge financial incentive for them to do something very easy so everyone can gain. When they engage in rent-seeking behavior anyway, there is a very noticable loser, their emploer. They tend to find out & put a stop to it, as they have a financial incentive to do so. No one has a financial incentive to stop an obstructive government official from being bribable - if he takes the bribe other people gain. The difference in payoffs (win-win vs. win-lose) is all important.
A government official taking a bribe and a fish canner producing a tin of sardines are both money motivated. However, the producer makes something of use. An official taking a bribe is a rent-seeker - he produces nothing & owns nothing, but seeks to make money by preventing production to some extend. He is attempting to covert his position of power into real-estate. So there is a fundamental ethical difference between them, even though in describing both as money motivated, Marxists attempt to mislead people into thinking the two are the same.
People can be as outraged as they like. It doesn't alter the fact that it is very difficult to tell where food really comes from, who made it, who sold it, etc. These things can be done by branding ("an organization that people recognize and trust"), but such branding is a lot more effective in an environment where the isn't a mandated government label saying mandated government platitudes. Because there isn't really much to stop people from putting whatever the like on the label, only trust, and that trust comes from each stage in the branding process - the importer, the shipper, the labeler, the wholesaler, the retailer and the advertiser. If something that looks like a government label is on it, that just softens people up. Then previous good brands find themselves losing out to lesser brands that take a more liberal approach to labeling. People see a suitable label, & trust that instead of trusting the reputation of the suppliers.
You say "I believe they WILL provide the information that is required of them, and that if they DO lie about it, it will be a bigger deal"
Given that you didn't grow any of the food yourself, and most of it is imported from J Random third world country, then re-labeled, re-badged, shipped about, resold, etc., until it ends up in a a totally unconnected shop, no one has any contact with the people who you think "WILL provide the information". Governement officials can't make it a big deal for them, and even if they did know who they were, probably get a nice bribe not to care. You have to be realistic about it, and the realistic approach is to judge suppliers on reputation and branding.
One point not mentioned so far is the free speech issue too. If someone owns something, they can put any label they like on it, as it is their thing. If someone else buys it from them, they may choose to relabel it, or they may agree with the seller than they will buy more if it comes with a certain kind of label - perhaps one with a truthful ingredients list, perhaps more for a made up list, perhaps more with a different picture. The point is that logically these things are for the owners, buyers & seller to decide as they see fit. It's wrong for a third party to use use the threat of force or seizure of money to impose their own opinion about how someone elses property should be labeled, as much as it is wrong for them to tell you what colour shirt to wear, or what language your Bible should be in, or if or where you should go to pray, or any of these things. These are matters for people to decide themselves, without third parties getting involved simply on the basis of threats, citing something like "public opinion", as if that has anything to do with it.
Regulation is always a lack of freedom, yet used correctly can actually help the free market
No. (/me thinks of polite way to put this.) You must be thinking about regulated markets or something.
Requiring food manufacturers to be clear on the label about what goes into food helps people make smarter decisions about what they buy, and actually helps keep the free market.
No. Alledegly labelling regulations help consumers ("smarter decisions", above), but it is not a free market if the supplier has no legal choice about how they label their products. Free markets operate with the principle of "caveat emptor", or let the buyer beware. If you don't like unlabeled goods, don't buy from them. If you don't trust the label, get a third party opinion, like from a consumer magazine. All this kind of regulation does is put the scrupulous at a disadvatage, as consumers tend to trust all labels, but the unscrupulous still adjust things to their advantage. In an unregulated market, scrupulous suppliers gain a reputation advantage, as labels in general are less likely to be automatically trusted, so they can gain from being trusted more than their rivals.
This is an exampe of the law of unintended consequences, where bad thing follow from freedom-reducing actions, and good things follow from freedom increasing actions, no matter what the original intention was of either. In this case, consumers have gone from a situation where the good brands had a very strong financial incentive to keep their reputation, to a regulated environment where every brand has an incentive to be slightly dishonest, and to keep within only within the letter of the regulation, to the extent that they might get caught. And the worst brands put anything they like on the label, confusing consumers even more, as they think the label has the force of law behind it.
You are not comparing fairly. You are comparing an adjusted gross US figure for official figures in France and Germany that do not take into account the same things. Over there, huge numbers of people are perpetual students, into their 30s. Huge numbers of people are on paid government "training" schemes (i.e. make-work projects), and have been for years. Without taking all that into account, there countries still manage to show over 12% unemployed. The figures for the US are simply not even close to comprable.
Wherever you go, the higher the "progressive" income taxes, the higher the unemployment rates and slower the economic growth.
It could well be that at this exact moment in time IT jobs are easeir to ge tin England than in the US. My anacdotal evidence says that there are lots of IT jobs available in London currently.
But that is an extremely different thing from that the original comment was claiming, that "progressive" taxes, i.e income taxes where the percentage of the income taxed rises with the gross income, actually make people richer - "works incredibly well and has been all hallmark of the greatest nations on Earth: U.S., England, France, Germany, etc". That is plain wrong - such taxes are a terrible drag on those countries, and it is only because they started from a high living standard that have not been a total disaster. As it is, they have been responsible for economic stagnation.
Like, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Oman, Bahrain, Bemuda - all countries with very high living standards and small "progressive" taxation.
Also, Russia and China may be starting from a lower level, but currently millions there are lifting themselves out of poverty for the first time in history. Russia has an income tax of 13% and hardly any other serious taxation. China similarly has very low taxes. The pattern is that countries without what is laughably called "progressive" taxation perform economic miracles, whereas other countries, whether rich or poor in natural resources, whether starting from high living standards or low, all *stagnate* under "progressive" taxation's ruinious economic burden.
Re:All I know is...
on
The Jobs Crunch
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"Actually, the redistribution of wealth through taxes works incredibly well and has been all hallmark of the greatest nations on Earth: U.S., England, France, Germany, etc."
Eh? EH? I seriously suggest you check out the 10-15% long term unemplyment and microscopic growth rates in France and Germany. That is the price of socilaist distortions like in TFA above. And England is rapidly catching them up under Blairism. In spite of a IT recession in the US (now over), it is still far easier to get an IT job in America than England, and in England far more easily than France or Germany.
Where on earth do you people come up with this kind of stuff? There isn't a lump of jobs out their that can be divvied up between your favourite political groups. Individual people, wherever they are from, create jobs by creating wealth - spending their time to take somethng low value and make it higher value using their abilities. If you go down the socialist road that TFA wants, you will bring ruin to the very people you pretend to be helping.
No, without compulsory state education, and without artifical laws resticting employement to those over a certain age, those wishing to leave formal education would be able to take paid employment at an age where their minds were still agile enough to learn the trade. With no minimum wage such teenagers would be able to be paid a small amount & continue living at home during this period. It would be a lot more useful than school.
There is no reason to think that with restrictions on employment gone, children not wishing to be in school would "end up as bands of roving thugs".
I would have greatly benefited from being able to go to work at a computer company for a very very small wage at the age of 11.
Yes, there are 2^128 IPv6 addresses, which accoring to bc is 340282366920938463463374607431768211456. But estimates are that there are on 6+ billion people on earth, and if they are to have 10 addresses each, that is still only 2^36
I gave up reading the artical at that point. The author has obviously no idea what he is talking about.
You're missing the point. Economics use terms like "in a perfect world" to set the model out. They then show how the real world differs in the particular example. If you didn't work backwards from assuming a perfect world, you would not be able to think & write about thise kind of ideas very easily. Staring with a hypothetically perfect example and adding in faults to make it more real, lets you see get some idea of the effect of those real world factors, and hopefully get a handle on the problem - so you can make more sensible predictions than plain guesses.
Yeah, I don't think "writted" is a real word:)
I still thought incast wrote a nice tight little piece of descriptive economics there, which is pleasing, like a neat little bit of code.
I am not American, but I am very wary of the stuff Micheal Moore comes up with. Particualrly its factual basis. If you look at his films, there is a huge amount of plain assertion and fitting his own theories around the facts - and making plenty of them up too.
The fact is, things like how long it took for US fighters to both scramble, and be ready to shootdown civilian airlines (something unprecedented) is hardly surprising. It was in peace time after all. And if they had been up there in time to shoot them down, they may well have refused orders to gun down a plane full of civilians - stranger things have happened. But for Moore this becomes "proof" of an absurd consipracy theory, where the US government is made out to be somehow behind the attack - essentially a blood libel.
The fact is, had Micheal Moore been on the political right instead of the left, someone with his views would be rightly accused of having neo-Nazi sympahies. But becuase all this conspiracy stuff comes from a left wing journallist, people seem to things he must have a point.
Why? What is the point?
on
Listen to the Sky
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· Score: 1, Insightful
What is the point of this? Presumably they will just hear a few wind noises as it blows past the microphones?
Just out of interest, who is putting up the money for this? They sound like they are spending other people's money with no comeback
Does it occure to you that Mel Gibson might have been just as innaccurate in Bravehart and The Patriot, as he was in The Passion of Christ? Its just he's found a different group of people to be innaccurate about this time. For one thing, he has his soldiers speaking Latin, when that part of the Roman Empire was Greek speaking. 5 minutes reading the introduction to Mark's Gospel Pocket Edition (let alone checking his facts with a real historian) would have told him that.
I had a job interview with these people earlier this year. Actually they are all fine and very friendly - contrary to their public perception (in the opinion of the guy who interviewed me). And I thought so business stratergy was basically sound - to have a less featureful open source product, and to have a licenced extra-feature product aimed at the commercial and managed-system customer.
Anyway, I didn't get the job with them, although I did find another *nix job much to my relief. I wouldn't use this myself though - IMO an experienced admin should take a minimal install of his favorite generic Linux/BSD distro, and build from there. Smoothwall is good for the less experienced though, who need an out of the box solution right now, not after 6 months googleing:-)
It's not that good. Petrol prices are insane, the road system is rubbish, the the NHS this article thinks is so great is in fact causing huge problems with multi-drug resistant infections (MRSA) - typically 25% now, including my 80 year old (American) grandmother. There is nothing impressive about dying becasue your government run hospital negrects basic santiary measures like dusting and handwashing, even if they systems di run Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
And file a US tax return for the rest of my life? You have to be kidding. Any other country if you spend most of the year away you become non-resident for tax purposes, and they leave you alone. One measly vote in 120 million is hardly worth owing Unle Sam a proportion of the fruits of your labour for life. That's naked feudalism in my book
Lots of IT work in London at the moment. If anything there is a shortage. I certainly get a stream of responses for my cv (resume). Also there is a lot of money to be made in Dubai currently, especially in IT - like with Dubai Internet City". Zero tax, massive ecomonic growth, people from all over the world there, safe friendly environment for all westerners, and the best of everything - they are currently building the world's tallest building in Dubai too.
Geezer: I just won £50 of a Nigerian colleague at work on the same basis :) Don't make bets when stoned, and bet on what will happen, not what you want, although I did want Bush to win over Kerry (actually I was supporting Badnarick, but you can't win them all). Should have had the balls to make it a grand really, or at least 500 quid.
I stand corrected!
Sounds reasonable. (Almost as though you have seen one before...) :-)
This planets got three moons, we obviously can't move the big one, but we should see aboug maybe hauling one of the smaller ones into the right spot and using it as a ballast!
Which planet did you say you were from again? There's only one moon in these parts :P
I use technical terms like rent-seeker because I am a trained economist, so I know what the words mean, and I want to be precise about it. You can think about the issue for as long as you like, but from an economists point of view these kind of questions were settled decades ago. TBH it is the same problem talking to (some) non-geek profesionals, like doctors - that some people really do know what happens inside a computer, and what they say about buffer overflows and firewalls is still valid, even though they aren't doctors themselves. There is no reason why you should be familier with all these things beforehand, but we have to discuss the issue in precise language if we are going to get anywhere.
Employees of commercial businesses rarely have the same incentives. For one, they are already be paid to produce, not to hold back, so there isn't a huge financial incentive for them to do something very easy so everyone can gain. When they engage in rent-seeking behavior anyway, there is a very noticable loser, their emploer. They tend to find out & put a stop to it, as they have a financial incentive to do so. No one has a financial incentive to stop an obstructive government official from being bribable - if he takes the bribe other people gain. The difference in payoffs (win-win vs. win-lose) is all important.
A government official taking a bribe and a fish canner producing a tin of sardines are both money motivated. However, the producer makes something of use. An official taking a bribe is a rent-seeker - he produces nothing & owns nothing, but seeks to make money by preventing production to some extend. He is attempting to covert his position of power into real-estate. So there is a fundamental ethical difference between them, even though in describing both as money motivated, Marxists attempt to mislead people into thinking the two are the same.
You say "I believe they WILL provide the information that is required of them, and that if they DO lie about it, it will be a bigger deal"
Given that you didn't grow any of the food yourself, and most of it is imported from J Random third world country, then re-labeled, re-badged, shipped about, resold, etc., until it ends up in a a totally unconnected shop, no one has any contact with the people who you think "WILL provide the information". Governement officials can't make it a big deal for them, and even if they did know who they were, probably get a nice bribe not to care. You have to be realistic about it, and the realistic approach is to judge suppliers on reputation and branding.
One point not mentioned so far is the free speech issue too. If someone owns something, they can put any label they like on it, as it is their thing. If someone else buys it from them, they may choose to relabel it, or they may agree with the seller than they will buy more if it comes with a certain kind of label - perhaps one with a truthful ingredients list, perhaps more for a made up list, perhaps more with a different picture. The point is that logically these things are for the owners, buyers & seller to decide as they see fit. It's wrong for a third party to use use the threat of force or seizure of money to impose their own opinion about how someone elses property should be labeled, as much as it is wrong for them to tell you what colour shirt to wear, or what language your Bible should be in, or if or where you should go to pray, or any of these things. These are matters for people to decide themselves, without third parties getting involved simply on the basis of threats, citing something like "public opinion", as if that has anything to do with it.
No. (/me thinks of polite way to put this.) You must be thinking about regulated markets or something.
Requiring food manufacturers to be clear on the label about what goes into food helps people make smarter decisions about what they buy, and actually helps keep the free market.
No. Alledegly labelling regulations help consumers ("smarter decisions", above), but it is not a free market if the supplier has no legal choice about how they label their products. Free markets operate with the principle of "caveat emptor", or let the buyer beware. If you don't like unlabeled goods, don't buy from them. If you don't trust the label, get a third party opinion, like from a consumer magazine. All this kind of regulation does is put the scrupulous at a disadvatage, as consumers tend to trust all labels, but the unscrupulous still adjust things to their advantage. In an unregulated market, scrupulous suppliers gain a reputation advantage, as labels in general are less likely to be automatically trusted, so they can gain from being trusted more than their rivals.
This is an exampe of the law of unintended consequences, where bad thing follow from freedom-reducing actions, and good things follow from freedom increasing actions, no matter what the original intention was of either. In this case, consumers have gone from a situation where the good brands had a very strong financial incentive to keep their reputation, to a regulated environment where every brand has an incentive to be slightly dishonest, and to keep within only within the letter of the regulation, to the extent that they might get caught. And the worst brands put anything they like on the label, confusing consumers even more, as they think the label has the force of law behind it.
Wherever you go, the higher the "progressive" income taxes, the higher the unemployment rates and slower the economic growth.
But that is an extremely different thing from that the original comment was claiming, that "progressive" taxes, i.e income taxes where the percentage of the income taxed rises with the gross income, actually make people richer - "works incredibly well and has been all hallmark of the greatest nations on Earth: U.S., England, France, Germany, etc". That is plain wrong - such taxes are a terrible drag on those countries, and it is only because they started from a high living standard that have not been a total disaster. As it is, they have been responsible for economic stagnation.
Also, Russia and China may be starting from a lower level, but currently millions there are lifting themselves out of poverty for the first time in history. Russia has an income tax of 13% and hardly any other serious taxation. China similarly has very low taxes. The pattern is that countries without what is laughably called "progressive" taxation perform economic miracles, whereas other countries, whether rich or poor in natural resources, whether starting from high living standards or low, all *stagnate* under "progressive" taxation's ruinious economic burden.
Eh? EH? I seriously suggest you check out the 10-15% long term unemplyment and microscopic growth rates in France and Germany. That is the price of socilaist distortions like in TFA above. And England is rapidly catching them up under Blairism. In spite of a IT recession in the US (now over), it is still far easier to get an IT job in America than England, and in England far more easily than France or Germany.
Where on earth do you people come up with this kind of stuff? There isn't a lump of jobs out their that can be divvied up between your favourite political groups. Individual people, wherever they are from, create jobs by creating wealth - spending their time to take somethng low value and make it higher value using their abilities. If you go down the socialist road that TFA wants, you will bring ruin to the very people you pretend to be helping.
There is no reason to think that with restrictions on employment gone, children not wishing to be in school would "end up as bands of roving thugs".
I would have greatly benefited from being able to go to work at a computer company for a very very small wage at the age of 11.
I gave up reading the artical at that point. The author has obviously no idea what he is talking about.
You're missing the point. Economics use terms like "in a perfect world" to set the model out. They then show how the real world differs in the particular example. If you didn't work backwards from assuming a perfect world, you would not be able to think & write about thise kind of ideas very easily. Staring with a hypothetically perfect example and adding in faults to make it more real, lets you see get some idea of the effect of those real world factors, and hopefully get a handle on the problem - so you can make more sensible predictions than plain guesses.
I still thought incast wrote a nice tight little piece of descriptive economics there, which is pleasing, like a neat little bit of code.
Excellent little bit of economics there incast. Short, accurate & to the point. I'd have liked to have writted that :)
The fact is, things like how long it took for US fighters to both scramble, and be ready to shootdown civilian airlines (something unprecedented) is hardly surprising. It was in peace time after all. And if they had been up there in time to shoot them down, they may well have refused orders to gun down a plane full of civilians - stranger things have happened. But for Moore this becomes "proof" of an absurd consipracy theory, where the US government is made out to be somehow behind the attack - essentially a blood libel.
The fact is, had Micheal Moore been on the political right instead of the left, someone with his views would be rightly accused of having neo-Nazi sympahies. But becuase all this conspiracy stuff comes from a left wing journallist, people seem to things he must have a point.
Just out of interest, who is putting up the money for this? They sound like they are spending other people's money with no comeback
Does it occure to you that Mel Gibson might have been just as innaccurate in Bravehart and The Patriot, as he was in The Passion of Christ? Its just he's found a different group of people to be innaccurate about this time. For one thing, he has his soldiers speaking Latin, when that part of the Roman Empire was Greek speaking. 5 minutes reading the introduction to Mark's Gospel Pocket Edition (let alone checking his facts with a real historian) would have told him that.
Anyway, I didn't get the job with them, although I did find another *nix job much to my relief. I wouldn't use this myself though - IMO an experienced admin should take a minimal install of his favorite generic Linux/BSD distro, and build from there. Smoothwall is good for the less experienced though, who need an out of the box solution right now, not after 6 months googleing :-)
I suppose renewing it is totally out of the question? Where I went to uni you couldn't graduate if you still had library fines outstanding.
It's not that good. Petrol prices are insane, the road system is rubbish, the the NHS this article thinks is so great is in fact causing huge problems with multi-drug resistant infections (MRSA) - typically 25% now, including my 80 year old (American) grandmother. There is nothing impressive about dying becasue your government run hospital negrects basic santiary measures like dusting and handwashing, even if they systems di run Linux.