Here's an cite (you may need to watch a ad) for this claim. This is % of GDP taken by taxes, thus avoiding the corporate/sales/income tax shell game.
From the article:
The average tax burden throughout the OECD was 37% of GDP in 1998. In the European Union it was 41.3%, whereas in America it was 28.9%. Sweden takes the prize for the highest tax burden in 1999, at 52.1%.
The data's a bit old, but I don't think things have changed that much since the survey.
Governments want full employment, thereby increasing tax revenues and lowering social costs. As for the actual amount of the wages, that's none of the government's business, participants in the market will settle on the right rate. Full employment is not zero unemployment, as there's always new entrants to the market and folks seeking work because of a career switch or staff reduction.
>> all Western countries there is always a steady number of unemployed people Structural unemployment (this is what I think you're referring to) is largely affected by employment costs and regulation. Some contries have very rigid, regulated labor markets (think Germany, Sweeden) and as a result suffer from larger structural unemployment than less regulated markets (Singapore, India). In fact, if you do a bit of digging, you'll find that even if the unemployed number 10%, it's not the _same_ 10% year after year. Furthermore, in heavily-regulated markets, a lot of employment happens off the books to avoid taxes and regulation, so somebody counted as unemployed is actually working for income.
>>Sucks I know. Welcome to the West. Hardly.:-) Wages and benefits, in porportion to prices (notwithstanding some of the isolated, bubblish real-estate markets), are quite high, even once you subtract out the tax burden. This can happen because the capital stock behind EU/US employees is huge, resulting in much higher productivity.
Most home kitchens don't have ranges that cook at high enough heat to cause teflon break down. Commercial kitchens use uncoated pans and plenty of oil (not butter, it would be in flames!) to keep the food from sticking. At high temps, the oil heats up enough to cook the food, acting almost like a deep fryer.
FWIW, getting a _real_ commercial range for your house is hard. Typically, you need to bolster the floors to handle the weight, install a tile backing to protect the wall behind and a high CFM hood to keep the ceiling from burning. Since commercial ranges are not insulated, you needs lots of clearance on the sides too, otherwise your cabinets would warp due to the heat. In most cases, you'd also be voiding your homeowners policy. And I almost forgot, most homes don't have a gas line big enough to supply a high-performance range.
How do I know all of this? I re-did my kitchen and wanted to get a commercial range. After I found that the cost of installing the range was 4x the cost of the unit, I went with the standard equipment.
Dan Bricklin's spreadsheet ran on the Apple first and was the sole reason folks went out and bought an Apple. For a period (think early 80's), Apple owned the desktop computer market, with many more business-oriented applications than creative/educational titles.
Only after they got crushed by IBM machines did they focus on thier current market. I don't think IBM did them in as much as the IBM clone market, which reduced the cost of the hardware to far below Apple's. With a lower price, more people purchased IBM-compatible machines and the demand for software followed.
>> did anybody here pass economics? Ok... how about at least TOOK economics?
In the patched-elbow world of economics, profits mean excess after cost + acceptable return for the investment. Given that line of thought, profits in an competitive market gravitate towards 0, meaning participants earn the acceptable return on investment, but no more.
So, revenue > cost may not generate enough to cover the expected return for the risk involved; I don't know what type of return the industry expects from this sort of activity, so I can't say if Fox earned a profit (in the economic sense) or not.
That said, show-business accounting is nortoriously shady, even productions with revenues far above cost show a loss on the company's books.
I don't think the dollar situation is all that dire. Consider the following:
1- Oil accounts for much less of our trade deficit than in the 70's. 2- Oil consumption accounts for less of our economic output (barrels/gdp lower now than during 70s) cite 3- Our current account deficit is small compared to the size of our economy. 4- Capital markets in the U.S. are quite fair & liquid and the gov's is stable, meaning holding your wealth in U.S. dollar-demoninated assets incurs minimal political risk.
In all, the U.S. Dollar serves as a good place to park your wealth, mostly for reason #4.
As far as a persistent trade deficit, one can't make a normative statement; it's not good or bad. Consider this: you run a persistent trade deficit with your local grocery store and gas station. Is that "good" or "bad"? And for whom? When the U.S. economy does well, the trade deficit increases because we're consuming resources, and presumably, putting them to better use than the next highest bidder.
I was visited by my local police for a noise complaint about my dog. The cop wanted to cite me and *insisted* on seeing a driver's license, when I told him (nicely) "I'm not driving a car", he got more than a bit testy. Small-town cops are just a step above mall gaurds and I didn't want to deal with him arresting me, so I coughed-up my driver's license. It may not be a formal requirement, but if you're dealing with a person that can cuff you and otherwise ruin your day, it's best to comply.
I found that writing the comments *first* my methods/functions is the way to go. This helps me organize my thoughts and makes finding where I should be refactoring much easier. After writing the comments, I fill in the code. By doing so, my comments focus more on the concepts and less on just restating what the code does.
How about a moderation/meta-moderation scheme for the editors? That way you could filter your front page to contain information from highly rated editors or lower rated editors if you're interested if doing more filtering yourself.
The ratings and filters on the comments make reading./ sane, there's no reason this concept couldn't be extended to the editors as well in place of the current system which, AFAICT, treats all posted stories the same.
Your hands that is. After a stint in an ICU with one of my kids, the first line of defense for infection control is as simple as hand washing. You wash your hands a lot in the ICU:
- When you arrive - Before you touch a patient or equipment - After you touch a patient or equipment - When you leave
The meds in the ICU also follow Universal Precautions to the letter. The keyboards and just about everything else may be dirty, but if you wash before/after touching just about anything along with using gloves and other protection, you'll greatly lower the chances of transmission.
Also, It couldn't hurt to change the keyboards once a month and burn the dirty ones with the other biohazards.
Quicly peeked at the 10-K. The company sold 600M in debentures last year due 2024, plus recorded income of 447M from settling a lawsuit with Microsoft last year. That accounts for a big chunk of the cash on hand.
The cash flows statement looked good, with general operating bringing in 440M in the first quarter, most comming from net income. Unless things take a big turn for the worse, that's plenty to service/retire the debt. I don't have the time to dig deeper, but at first glance, this doesn't look like a company on the ropes.
When you have a wife and family (you *should* be married, two parents getting along is very important to a child!) and you look at your children and think for a second they were ever "parasitic tissue" you need professional help.
It's so nice to be objective, somewhere between hearing heart-beat for the first time, seeing the baby showing, or feeling those kicks (depending on the personality of the kid, they can start moving early), you're in love; you can't wait until the birthday.
Have a kid, you'll understand.:-)
p.s. One's view of abortion isn't a liberal/conservative thing. It's more about how one feels, deep inside, about other people. Defining exactly when life begins is a distracting parlor game.
>> instead of sitting around on slashdot, take your FWIW, I've never sold a stock short. I stick to low-cost index funds, as I don't have enough in the market to properly diversify. I've found investing with a plan has allowed me to make decent money _and_ sleep at night... stock trading is something that doesn't suit my temperment.
Companies that don't do the minimal filings can get trade on the pink sheets market, but that's not very liquid.
IIRC, I don't think a copy can list on the bulletin board unless they do the necessary filings under the 1934 securities act, like the 10-K and other annual reports. Maybe I'm confusing the bulletin board with something else.
Getting a delisting notice is not good, but not the end of the world. Having that "E" on the end of your symbol until you get your paper work in will get you dropped out of a lot of mutual funds who won't hold stocks that don't conform to the market's rules. If you want to make a bet on SCOX, you can try going short if you think they won't make the reporting deadline. Peeking at the short ratio, looks like a lot of people are thinking the same.
Perhaps the gov't wants to collect a little at a time is because an annual bill would be enough for people to get angry. $30/month may slip under the budget radar, but $360/year would get the attention of lots of folks.
I don't know how CA works, but in PA, when you get an annual inspection, the car's milage is recorded. Most states have annual inspections. Not sure if the data ever gets anyhere: for example if you record the mileage when selling as 1/2 the amount of the last inspection, does the the govenment notify the new owner something's wrong?
If CA is already collecting milage stats, the mechanism for determining and collecting the tax already exists. The know your VIN, the owner, the milage at the time of sale and the milage at each inspection.
A small child safety seat takes up the width of 1.25 of an adult -- you can't put more than two of these in the back seat at a time. In the state I live, you need to have your child in some kind of restraint until they're about 8 years old, so if you have three young kids, a SUV/Minivan is pretty much the only choice.
We wanted to keep our smallish sedan when we had our third, but the child safety gear just didn't fit. The only sedan large enough for three safety seats was a huge Caddie, and who wants to drive something like that? I think the MPG was worse than a SUV/Minivan.
>> If those people had family, then why didn't they get help from their families instead of social services? Like I said, these cases are few and far between.
>> Since you've assumed all families have the extra resources No I haven't. Giving, like it is today, would be optional. The US gives generously , with an average donation of 3,658 per family per year.
>> I never said that Social Security was a for-profit insurance system. It's not an insurance system. It is a pay as you go system. Read this for a definition of insurance. The military is not insurance, they have no obligation to protect your person or property. In fact, the US military (unlike other countries) is prohibited from performing police operations inside of the US.
>> The Homesteading of the West Let's go one at a time:
1- At the time the US colonized, the formal grants were from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific (I'm guessing throwing out the Indians, French, Spanish and Dutch occupying the middle of the country, was their problem;-). Those tracts of land were held by the states, and not the federal government. Since the newly formed states each contributed separately to the war efforts, in conjunction with the weakly funded federal government, some states compensated war suppliers and vets with land grants. In fact, CT still laid claims to most of North-east Ohio in the late 1700's, selling off a large chunk to settle debts.
2- The Merchants/taxes thing: When you tax a company, the company passes the increased cost along to customers to "pay" the tax. At the time, the US was a classic third-world country, exporting raw materials, importing finished goods; since a large amount of economic activity occurred at ports, collecting taxes there was cheap and easy. Plus, most of the federal debts were owed to countries with a large merchant marine fleets, so I'm sure they understood this business model and that helped reassure them that the country would be able to repay.
3- At the time the constitution was written, "The West" was anything past the Allegheny in the North or the Blue mountains in the South. I doubt the founders of country had considered the mechanics of the dispersing lands they didn't have. It was not until the Louisiana purchase (Jefferson's administration, bailing out French to return the favor from the war) that the federal government held title to substantial tracts of land, and we still needed to chase away those pesky Indians.
At that time, when the federal government held title to land, it owned on behalf of the citizens, so the idea behind Homesteading wasn't that the government was giving something to the people; the land was the people's to begin with, homesteading was a good way to put it back into private hands. In the past 75 years or so, the concept of public land being private property of the federal government (which I think is your point of view) has appeared.
And (sorry for the long post) you haven't answered the question: Which of the founders of the country would have advocated an income transfer system like Social Security?
If you can swing the adapter and a few extra dollars, going with two 17" LCDs is a great way to get extra real estate.
Two of these nec monitors at ~750 USD is a bit cheaper than one 20" display for ~800 and you get a larger viewable area, spread over two screens. Chances are you'll need another dispaly adapter that handles two monitors, that will set you back ~150.
I find the dual monitor set-up very effective, as you could have one with items you're currently working with on one and reference material on another. Of course, if you're doing work where you simply need to see a lot of stuff at once, this isn't the right solution.
>> Have you people really met so few people that you've never met anyone without Few and far between. So few, private charity could easily handle these people. I worked in social services (system for social services billing), so I do have some basis for my opinion.
>> It's a freaking insurance policy, how hard is that concept to grasp? Also did insurance work (3pd party insurance payments system) and have the training to broker insurance (it was a benefit of the job, why not?:) in my state. Social security is not insurance, not at all. It's presented as an annuity, but it isn't that either, as no asset backs the payment stream. The first Social Security check was issued to somebody who paid exactly $0 into the system; try to make an insurance claim with a company where you've paid no premium.
>> You can't imagine, because you haven't studied. Maybe. Can you point me towards a article or two of the time by one of the Constitution's authors supporting the concept of an income transfer system like Social Security?
You'd let your mother/father starve and freeze? It's not the government's responsiblity to care for your family, it's yours.
>> Wealth equals power, the Social Security payments ensure that old people have
Huh? What rights? What wealth? Social security isn't wealth, is a transfer payment from somebody who's working to somebody who isn't (after the gov't takes a slice). It doesn't grant you more "rights." You don't get more rights with your monthly check.
I can't imagine that the founders of the country, who did not even grant the central goverment much right to tax (or for that matter, to track individual citizens), would be in favor of something so intrusive like Social Security. Let alone that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple.
And it makes sense to go after existing iPod (or similar device) users since the market is saturated -- like cellphones -- nearly everyone has one (or two) of these digital music storage/payer devices.
Except they don't.
The market has *so* may people that don't have a digital music player that it seems that easiest customers to acquire, or at least the lake with the most fish, are those who haven't yet made a purchase.
You have it nearly right. A Libertarian understands *some* goverment is necessary: enough to administer courts and provide for a police force maybe some parks; but not much more. Running this type of infastructure isn't that expensive and it could be funded with minimal taxation.
The problem is that the current US gov't has its hands in all sorts of cookie jars it shouldn't: payments to farmers, running a retirement system, bailing out airlines, funding medical care, supporting the secondary mortgage market, and the like. US citizens don't benefit as a whole from these sorts of govenment hand-outs. When the government supplies a service, individual taxpayers could probably do better in terms of price and quality by going to the private sector.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
The data's a bit old, but I don't think things have changed that much since the survey.
Governments want full employment, thereby increasing tax revenues and lowering social costs. As for the actual amount of the wages, that's none of the government's business, participants in the market will settle on the right rate. Full employment is not zero unemployment, as there's always new entrants to the market and folks seeking work because of a career switch or staff reduction.
:-) Wages and benefits, in porportion to prices (notwithstanding some of the isolated, bubblish real-estate markets), are quite high, even once you subtract out the tax burden. This can happen because the capital stock behind EU/US employees is huge, resulting in much higher productivity.
>> all Western countries there is always a steady number of unemployed people
Structural unemployment (this is what I think you're referring to) is largely affected by employment costs and regulation. Some contries have very rigid, regulated labor markets (think Germany, Sweeden) and as a result suffer from larger structural unemployment than less regulated markets (Singapore, India). In fact, if you do a bit of digging, you'll find that even if the unemployed number 10%, it's not the _same_ 10% year after year. Furthermore, in heavily-regulated markets, a lot of employment happens off the books to avoid taxes and regulation, so somebody counted as unemployed is actually working for income.
>>Sucks I know. Welcome to the West.
Hardly.
Most home kitchens don't have ranges that cook at high enough heat to cause teflon break down. Commercial kitchens use uncoated pans and plenty of oil (not butter, it would be in flames!) to keep the food from sticking. At high temps, the oil heats up enough to cook the food, acting almost like a deep fryer.
FWIW, getting a _real_ commercial range for your house is hard. Typically, you need to bolster the floors to handle the weight, install a tile backing to protect the wall behind and a high CFM hood to keep the ceiling from burning. Since commercial ranges are not insulated, you needs lots of clearance on the sides too, otherwise your cabinets would warp due to the heat. In most cases, you'd also be voiding your homeowners policy. And I almost forgot, most homes don't have a gas line big enough to supply a high-performance range.
How do I know all of this? I re-did my kitchen and wanted to get a commercial range. After I found that the cost of installing the range was 4x the cost of the unit, I went with the standard equipment.
Dan Bricklin's spreadsheet ran on the Apple first and was the sole reason folks went out and bought an Apple. For a period (think early 80's), Apple owned the desktop computer market, with many more business-oriented applications than creative/educational titles.
Only after they got crushed by IBM machines did they focus on thier current market. I don't think IBM did them in as much as the IBM clone market, which reduced the cost of the hardware to far below Apple's. With a lower price, more people purchased IBM-compatible machines and the demand for software followed.
>> urine is sterile?
Triva fact, from an Army buddy:
If you're stuck some place w/o fresh water, you can drink your urine, but no more than three times; by then the water to waste ratio will be too low.
>> did anybody here pass economics? Ok... how about at least TOOK economics?
In the patched-elbow world of economics, profits mean excess after cost + acceptable return for the investment. Given that line of thought, profits in an competitive market gravitate towards 0, meaning participants earn the acceptable return on investment, but no more.
So, revenue > cost may not generate enough to cover the expected return for the risk involved; I don't know what type of return the industry expects from this sort of activity, so I can't say if Fox earned a profit (in the economic sense) or not.
That said, show-business accounting is nortoriously shady, even productions with revenues far above cost show a loss on the company's books.
I don't think the dollar situation is all that dire. Consider the following:
1- Oil accounts for much less of our trade deficit than in the 70's.
2- Oil consumption accounts for less of our economic output (barrels/gdp lower now than during 70s) cite
3- Our current account deficit is small compared to the size of our economy.
4- Capital markets in the U.S. are quite fair & liquid and the gov's is stable, meaning holding your wealth in U.S. dollar-demoninated assets incurs minimal political risk.
In all, the U.S. Dollar serves as a good place to park your wealth, mostly for reason #4.
As far as a persistent trade deficit, one can't make a normative statement; it's not good or bad. Consider this: you run a persistent trade deficit with your local grocery store and gas station. Is that "good" or "bad"? And for whom? When the U.S. economy does well, the trade deficit increases because we're consuming resources, and presumably, putting them to better use than the next highest bidder.
I was visited by my local police for a noise complaint about my dog. The cop wanted to cite me and *insisted* on seeing a driver's license, when I told him (nicely) "I'm not driving a car", he got more than a bit testy. Small-town cops are just a step above mall gaurds and I didn't want to deal with him arresting me, so I coughed-up my driver's license. It may not be a formal requirement, but if you're dealing with a person that can cuff you and otherwise ruin your day, it's best to comply.
At least I beat the noise complaint in court.
I found that writing the comments *first* my methods/functions is the way to go. This helps me organize my thoughts and makes finding where I should be refactoring much easier. After writing the comments, I fill in the code. By doing so, my comments focus more on the concepts and less on just restating what the code does.
How about a moderation/meta-moderation scheme for the editors? That way you could filter your front page to contain information from highly rated editors or lower rated editors if you're interested if doing more filtering yourself.
./ sane, there's no reason this concept couldn't be extended to the editors as well in place of the current system which, AFAICT, treats all posted stories the same.
The ratings and filters on the comments make reading
Your hands that is. After a stint in an ICU with one of my kids, the first line of defense for infection control is as simple as hand washing. You wash your hands a lot in the ICU:
- When you arrive
- Before you touch a patient or equipment
- After you touch a patient or equipment
- When you leave
The meds in the ICU also follow Universal Precautions to the letter. The keyboards and just about everything else may be dirty, but if you wash before/after touching just about anything along with using gloves and other protection, you'll greatly lower the chances of transmission.
Also, It couldn't hurt to change the keyboards once a month and burn the dirty ones with the other biohazards.
Quicly peeked at the 10-K. The company sold 600M in debentures last year due 2024, plus recorded income of 447M from settling a lawsuit with Microsoft last year. That accounts for a big chunk of the cash on hand.
The cash flows statement looked good, with general operating bringing in 440M in the first quarter, most comming from net income. Unless things take a big turn for the worse, that's plenty to service/retire the debt. I don't have the time to dig deeper, but at first glance, this doesn't look like a company on the ropes.
>> Before that, it is a parasitic tissue
:-)
When you have a wife and family (you *should* be married, two parents getting along is very important to a child!) and you look at your children and think for a second they were ever "parasitic tissue" you need professional help.
It's so nice to be objective, somewhere between hearing heart-beat for the first time, seeing the baby showing, or feeling those kicks (depending on the personality of the kid, they can start moving early), you're in love; you can't wait until the birthday.
Have a kid, you'll understand.
p.s. One's view of abortion isn't a liberal/conservative thing. It's more about how one feels, deep inside, about other people. Defining exactly when life begins is a distracting parlor game.
The profiler from that time was excellent as well!
>> instead of sitting around on slashdot, take your
FWIW, I've never sold a stock short. I stick to low-cost index funds, as I don't have enough in the market to properly diversify. I've found investing with a plan has allowed me to make decent money _and_ sleep at night... stock trading is something that doesn't suit my temperment.
Companies that don't do the minimal filings can get trade on the pink sheets market, but that's not very liquid.
IIRC, I don't think a copy can list on the bulletin board unless they do the necessary filings under the 1934 securities act, like the 10-K and other annual reports. Maybe I'm confusing the bulletin board with something else.
Getting a delisting notice is not good, but not the end of the world. Having that "E" on the end of your symbol until you get your paper work in will get you dropped out of a lot of mutual funds who won't hold stocks that don't conform to the market's rules. If you want to make a bet on SCOX, you can try going short if you think they won't make the reporting deadline. Peeking at the short ratio, looks like a lot of people are thinking the same.
Perhaps the gov't wants to collect a little at a time is because an annual bill would be enough for people to get angry. $30/month may slip under the budget radar, but $360/year would get the attention of lots of folks.
I don't know how CA works, but in PA, when you get an annual inspection, the car's milage is recorded. Most states have annual inspections. Not sure if the data ever gets anyhere: for example if you record the mileage when selling as 1/2 the amount of the last inspection, does the the govenment notify the new owner something's wrong?
If CA is already collecting milage stats, the mechanism for determining and collecting the tax already exists. The know your VIN, the owner, the milage at the time of sale and the milage at each inspection.
So you don't have kids, I'm guessing :-)
A small child safety seat takes up the width of 1.25 of an adult -- you can't put more than two of these in the back seat at a time. In the state I live, you need to have your child in some kind of restraint until they're about 8 years old, so if you have three young kids, a SUV/Minivan is pretty much the only choice.
We wanted to keep our smallish sedan when we had our third, but the child safety gear just didn't fit. The only sedan large enough for three safety seats was a huge Caddie, and who wants to drive something like that? I think the MPG was worse than a SUV/Minivan.
>> If those people had family, then why didn't they get help from their families instead of social services?
;-). Those tracts of land were held by the states, and not the federal government. Since the newly formed states each contributed separately to the war efforts, in conjunction with the weakly funded federal government, some states compensated war suppliers and vets with land grants. In fact, CT still laid claims to most of North-east Ohio in the late 1700's, selling off a large chunk to settle debts.
Like I said, these cases are few and far between.
>> Since you've assumed all families have the extra resources
No I haven't. Giving, like it is today, would be optional. The US gives generously , with an average donation of 3,658 per family per year.
>> I never said that Social Security was a for-profit insurance system.
It's not an insurance system. It is a pay as you go system. Read this for a definition of insurance. The military is not insurance, they have no obligation to protect your person or property. In fact, the US military (unlike other countries) is prohibited from performing police operations inside of the US.
>> The Homesteading of the West
Let's go one at a time:
1- At the time the US colonized, the formal grants were from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific (I'm guessing throwing out the Indians, French, Spanish and Dutch occupying the middle of the country, was their problem
2- The Merchants/taxes thing: When you tax a company, the company passes the increased cost along to customers to "pay" the tax. At the time, the US was a classic third-world country, exporting raw materials, importing finished goods; since a large amount of economic activity occurred at ports, collecting taxes there was cheap and easy. Plus, most of the federal debts were owed to countries with a large merchant marine fleets, so I'm sure they understood this business model and that helped reassure them that the country would be able to repay.
3- At the time the constitution was written, "The West" was anything past the Allegheny in the North or the Blue mountains in the South. I doubt the founders of country had considered the mechanics of the dispersing lands they didn't have. It was not until the Louisiana purchase (Jefferson's administration, bailing out French to return the favor from the war) that the federal government held title to substantial tracts of land, and we still needed to chase away those pesky Indians.
At that time, when the federal government held title to land, it owned on behalf of the citizens, so the idea behind Homesteading wasn't that the government was giving something to the people; the land was the people's to begin with, homesteading was a good way to put it back into private hands. In the past 75 years or so, the concept of public land being private property of the federal government (which I think is your point of view) has appeared.
And (sorry for the long post) you haven't answered the question: Which of the founders of the country would have advocated an income transfer system like Social Security?
If you can swing the adapter and a few extra dollars, going with two 17" LCDs is a great way to get extra real estate.
Two of these nec monitors at ~750 USD is a bit cheaper than one 20" display for ~800 and you get a larger viewable area, spread over two screens. Chances are you'll need another dispaly adapter that handles two monitors, that will set you back ~150.
I find the dual monitor set-up very effective, as you could have one with items you're currently working with on one and reference material on another. Of course, if you're doing work where you simply need to see a lot of stuff at once, this isn't the right solution.
Field Trip
Where victims are consumed by plants after comming in contact with hallucinetic mushroom spores.
Runner-up is the Christmas Ghosts.
>> Have you people really met so few people that you've never met anyone without
:) in my state. Social security is not insurance, not at all. It's presented as an annuity, but it isn't that either, as no asset backs the payment stream. The first Social Security check was issued to somebody who paid exactly $0 into the system; try to make an insurance claim with a company where you've paid no premium.
Few and far between. So few, private charity could easily handle these people. I worked in social services (system for social services billing), so I do have some basis for my opinion.
>> It's a freaking insurance policy, how hard is that concept to grasp?
Also did insurance work (3pd party insurance payments system) and have the training to broker insurance (it was a benefit of the job, why not?
>> You can't imagine, because you haven't studied.
Maybe. Can you point me towards a article or two of the time by one of the Constitution's authors supporting the concept of an income transfer system like Social Security?
>> old people starve and freeze in the streets
You'd let your mother/father starve and freeze? It's not the government's responsiblity to care for your family, it's yours.
>> Wealth equals power, the Social Security payments ensure that old people have
Huh? What rights? What wealth? Social security isn't wealth, is a transfer payment from somebody who's working to somebody who isn't (after the gov't takes a slice). It doesn't grant you more "rights." You don't get more rights with your monthly check.
I can't imagine that the founders of the country, who did not even grant the central goverment much right to tax (or for that matter, to track individual citizens), would be in favor of something so intrusive like Social Security. Let alone that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, plain and simple.
And it makes sense to go after existing iPod (or similar device) users since the market is saturated -- like cellphones -- nearly everyone has one (or two) of these digital music storage/payer devices.
Except they don't.
The market has *so* may people that don't have a digital music player that it seems that easiest customers to acquire, or at least the lake with the most fish, are those who haven't yet made a purchase.
You have it nearly right. A Libertarian understands *some* goverment is necessary: enough to administer courts and provide for a police force maybe some parks; but not much more. Running this type of infastructure isn't that expensive and it could be funded with minimal taxation.
The problem is that the current US gov't has its hands in all sorts of cookie jars it shouldn't: payments to farmers, running a retirement system, bailing out airlines, funding medical care, supporting the secondary mortgage market, and the like. US citizens don't benefit as a whole from these sorts of govenment hand-outs. When the government supplies a service, individual taxpayers could probably do better in terms of price and quality by going to the private sector.