Re:On an unrelated note: English names are stupid
on
Volcano Erupts In Iceland
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· Score: 3, Informative
I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you, On hiccough, thorough, lough and through? Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird, And dead: it's said like bed, not bead - For goodness sake don't call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother, And here is not a match for there Nor dear and fear for bear and pear, And then there's dose and rose and lose - Just look them up - and goose and choose, And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword, And do and go and thwart and cart - Come, come, I've hardly made a start! A dreadful language? Man alive! I'd mastered it when I was five!
Doctors have to be able to provide for their families and have to feel like the hard work they do is worthwhile.
It is worthwhile: they the satisfaction of complex challenges and saving lives. All the good doctors do it for this.
You can't just wave a magic wand and provide healthcare; someone has to pay.
Tax. Western European healthcare is so much better and cheaper than US healthcare for almost all procedures it's not even funny, and I say that as someone who has enjoyed US, UK and . Of course there are individual specialists who only operate in the US - and others only in the UK - and others only in Greece - and in any moderately developed country, regardless of underlying healthcare system. In each case, a non-resident must pay.
Not sure how better healthcare is any different than a better car or a bigger house.
There's your problem. Are you also not sure how better police protection against Thieves And Rapists[tm] is any different than a better car?
Is it a US thing to teach "political crime" to mean the same thing as "crime of expressing an opinion"?
I guess that's a way for the US to claim that there are no political prisoners in the US, since, hey, the US (sorta mostly) has freedom of speech.
To quote Bierce, advice is the smallest current coin. Activism may begin with speech, but when you have been brought up to think that's where it ends, it's no surprise that nothing changes.
(1) Mugabe and Kim are not my friends - just because I don't cheerlead for the West it doesn't mean I think that DPRK or Zimbabwe are suitable alternatives;
(2) If you take the time to read my post you'll note that I'm concentrating on the supporters of Mugabe and Kim and suggesting that you study what they want rather than what you, Mugabe and Kim want. The fact that you put it in terms of "winning the argument" between A and B suggests that you're here to promote your interests rather than to increase understanding;
(3) One half of my family was brought up in a "police state" - the idea that you get a free ride to express yourself in the West but the slightest peep elsewhere will get you lifetime in a labour camp is jingoistic fantasising. The West is great at hiding to Westerners how it treats its underclass, just as DPRK propaganda hides the full extent of its own behaviour, but it is as bad as anywhere - and recall that US prison population is similar to DPRK;
(4) Free speech is overrated anyway - all your opponent has to do is shout louder, as is the case in the US. I'd rather have the freedom of health than the freedom to shout "Jewish conspiracy!"
Many thieves and drug dealers are political prisoners. "Political prisoner" is just a euphemism for "does something which I think should be permissible but they don't". To a libertarian, anyone jailed for not paying taxes may be a political prisoner; to a militant Irish republican, The Maze was full of political prisoners; to a communist, anyone jailed for taking enough bread to eat is a political prisoner. AI has tried to use the alternative term "prisoner of conscience", but even that definition is dangerous, excepting those who condone "violence" but not really explaining what counts as violence and what counts as condoning it.
As for "I'm a Zimbabwean in the UK", that's how you self-identify. To another Zimbabwean, you might be an exiled ex-occupier. The "incredible loss of perspective" is by the international Western media condemning Mugabe as if he were operating alone, controlling a whole country, while forgetting that every regime can only exist thanks to the support of a significant number of local residents. Some people would rather suffer extreme hardship than live in a country dominated by a few colonial landowners. Similarly, some people would rather live isolated under a military or religious dictatorship than under a US puppet government. Maybe you don't feel this. Maybe you prefer the security of living in the West. Maybe long lifespan, good nutrition and a warm house are to you of primary importance. Maybe you put yourself before some perceived need of your "people", whoever your people may be. But the first mistake anyone in the West makes in this sort of debate is to assume that everyone wants this too.
So, recognising the nastiness Mugabe's men get up to, how about asking yourself: why is it that conditions were so bad in Zimbabwe that Mugabe ended up in power? What could those with power/money/influence have done to compromise? Consider how Britain handled the IRA: in the end, it had to mean listening to their grievances rather than continually dismissing their opinions and their belief in a right to some of your power.
at a large portion of emigration from the US is immigrants returning home.
That's very standard for developed countries: people go there to take advantage of the higher wage even for very basic jobs, allowing them to send home a relative fortune, and kids from richer families get sent West for good education. It's not really immigrating to America for the American dream if you're doing that, and it's not something which America uniquely enjoys.
A close relation was the director of department at a well-known London university and he was always being sent to China to persuade students of the emerging middle class to come over and pay full fees.
Well, the FSF are neither hip nor slick, and I guess politics is at the point where no-one really engages in straight-talking rhetoric - so those who try to "say it like it is" in the style of mainstream politicians even three decades ago are now dismissed as "kind of lunatic". I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but I don't know that being as bad as the rest of them is the solution either.
But certainly a campaign like this needs to illustrate viable alternatives. The FSF has, of course, had a big hand in the "make viable alternative" goal, but in this particular case it does seem to be telling you what's bad rather than what's better.
I know that we're reached a point in humanity where culture, politics and lifestyle have globalised and we're accelerating toward a totalitarian's wildest dreams on groupthink... but I don't think we're at the point that the FSF should be called "extreme fundamentalists".
Examples of extreme fundamentalism: - Obey this book or you go to Hell - since you're ignoring the book, let me help you there! - Science provides the answer to every question - including the unfalsiable ones! - An eye for an eye - so let me burn out your eyes! - All property is good - I kill you if you're starving and you take some of my food store! - All property is bad - I want your hammer to smash stuff up! etc.
Examples of positions probably founded in some ideal which are not extreme fundamentalism, and which may apply to the FSF: - Don't grant anyone the right to do anything its wants with any information it can obtain off you. - Don't grant anyone the privilege to destroy your stuff at will. - Expose people who try to do either of the above in order to spread awareness and modify behaviour. - Oh, while you're here - if it doesn't harm you, how about sharing instead of hoarding?
Pamela Jones was widely considered to be a shill for Linux paid by IBM to secure their Linux-based offerings against Microsoft. Even if she wasn't, well, that's how...
Let's be quite clear: Ofcom knew about the interference. Years ago they commissioned a report on particular BT PLT devices with a reputable testing house and the report confirmed that the devices were non-compliant - but the report was kept under wraps. Every complaint made by shortwave users (BBC, SWLs, hams, etc.) was responded to with the indication that Ofcom had no evidence that the devices were non-compliant. So one guy made a FOIA request that relevant reports were released. Ofcom refused to release them, citing exemptions to the FOIA.
But the Information Commissioner demanded a release. And the report was finally released, confirming that Ofcom were lying, and demonstrating that Ofcom are not, in fact, an impartial regulator at all, but in bed with industry.
It's hard to put a one-line definition on it, just as it's hard to put a clear line on the difference between tax avoidance and reasonable measures to reduce your tax burden...
Hoarding can be viewed as secreting money away: in its most obvious form, you put it in a Swiss bank account and can then channel it at will - but that sort of thing would probably be outlawed entirely (and is gradually getting that way!). Setting up a large trust fund for your children such that they would never have to work would also be hoarding. Putting a lot of money in a savings account which is much more profitable to the bank, therefore you, thanks to the fractional reserve system is hoarding. So in some cases hoarding is a symptom of a problem and wouldn't happen if the underlying fault was fixed.
Perhaps we can think of hoarding in terms of unreasonable copyright terms: just because you produce a good work today, it doesn't mean you get to control the fruits of that labour for decades to come. Indeed, we already have an impediment to hoarding - inflation - but inflation and interest rates tend not to be managed to serve the individual. What if we tried to move to a more honest way of discouraging hoarding: e.g. earnings which become capital are taxed according to age. This isn't scaled to stop a guy saving $200,000 for a house over a couple of decades, nor a firm from saving $100,000,000 to build a new plant over 5 or even 50 years. But it is scaled perhaps to stop a guy who has earnt $10,000,000 in his twenty-fifth year from a bonus to one year of exceptional performance from being able, along with his son, to not have to work again. And it is scaled to stop a business creating a war chest of $25,000,000,000 which it dips into over half a century, being able to crush its competitors merely because it has money to burn.
Money isn't like a car (car analogy!). You can copy it - fractional reserve being the obvious way this is abused - without taking it away from another person, although the perceived value is diluted. Similar to intellectual property. There is no "natural right" (in the sense described by capitalist-philosophers) to fiat money.
"Won't this just mean businesses hoard gold or something?" Oh, maybe. I'm not certain whether this is a bad thing. So do we tax hoarding of assets in general? Put another way - if we get rid of the idea of an impersonal corporation, so businessmen are responsible for their assets rather than being able to drive smaller creditors into bankruptcy by walking away when things get tough, does buying gold count as capital hoarding (hoarding tax), personal enjoyment (consumption tax), an investment (another sort of consumption tax - ala stamp duty perhaps?) or a business expense (tax free)?
I think you're reading what you want to read. Taxation on hoarding is not the same thing as taking away "everything you have". Nor is hoarding the same thing as saving: hoarding happens in the tens, hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars over decades or generations.
Inheritance tax is ostensibly designed to prevent hoarding over generations but just fucks over the middle classes who do not have sufficient means to set money aside in the right schemes and who cannot afford to take a fairly fixed hit at a fairly fixed time.
Finally, I have less affinity than most for the idea of "saving for retirement". The notion that someone becomes non-productive at some fixed age is outdated and irrational. A man can become permanently and severely disabled by his 30s (some in my family are like this) or he can be fit enough to be productive until his late 80s (others in my family are like this), and the health of older people is gradually improving. It's a painful journey, but basic state, public sector and private sector pension schemes are - often by thoroughly unreasonable means - adjusting for this.
(2) You are missing the point entirely. When a company declares bankruptcy it is because it has gone into debt. That debt is money owed to others, often to other small businesses. What do you think happens to those small businesses if the invoices they issue are not paid because their customers can easily declare bankruptcy? That's right, a significant reason for small business failure is customers not paying their bills. And why do they not pay their bills? Often because the consequences of not doing so, once you've set up a limited liability company, are comparatively minor. How many times do I have to express this before you understand it?
(3) Wow, you really are Victorian. Yes, let's keep people in poverty by keeping the tools of work and education expensive, so all they can do is get by on food and shelter and nothing else. How dare the poor spend money on books! Also, a tax is not a punishment - it is a way of collecting money to fund a functioning society.
(4) The fractional reserve system makes you outright wrong - the average savings account is little better than burying gold in a garden. If you want to invest, go ahead: as you may have noticed, I am suggesting dropping income taxes, so you are welcome to whatever gains you make. But, on the hoarding or disposal of enough capital (just as happens in many countries through stamp duty on investments, including the UK), expect taxation.
(5) What is wrong with impeding inequitable international trade? Put another way, guess what happens to you if you go on an underage sex tourism trip to the East?
...what right is it of yours to tell people that they should have to hand over the sum-total of their possessions...
Sigh, I see I'm confronted with the usual college freshman childish libertarian crap. It's the same right you believe you have for society to fund a functioning police force which stops everyone taking their stuff from you. IOW, civilisation happens by competing interests getting some of what they want and in return making concessions to others.
(i) Yes, but a class of 9 in which everyone cares much less than I did about being educated is no better than a class of 30 in which at least half appreciate and exercise a need to struggle to survive;
(ii) I wish! Most of the kids were boarders;
(iii) This is quite cool, although it's only become more of a problem in recent years as standardisation ever more fucks up the ability for teachers to teach.
(2) Just like an employee doesn't get to compartmentalise his activities: "oh, that's my Star Trek DVD collecting habit - I got into debt there but I get to write that off". It seems you want to capitalise your profit but socialise your loss - who cares about your creditors being ruined because you don't pay the bills? They may run small businesses just like yours, but they're not you, and that's all that matters.
(3) Income can be and is monitored via bank accounts. So, immediately, can expenditure be monitored. VAT with different rates just means the poor get to survive but are stuck in poverty. Give everyone the chance to choose what they need/want, whether that's food or books or software or lessons or gym membership, but tax them more the more they take. "Fuck" your support of the world's useless over-consumption.
(4) Yes, it is absolutely the state's duty to put people through university if they can learn, and to support you in your old age if you cannot support yourself. But hoarding millions is not the same as saving or investing what the average family tries to save or invest.
(5) I see you think it's OK for countries to compete based on how badly they treat their workers (adjusting worker wage for cost of living). Your conclusion speaks for itself. Be fortunate that those more powerful than you in the past have had more compassion than you do, otherwise you'd be a helpless peasant.
Saving a few thousand is not the same as hoarding a few million.
Investing is not necessarily to be classed as hoarding.
Many places already tax on investment itself rather than just the profits on investment: consider stamp duty.
Many countries already have schemes to encourage saving and investment by allowing some amount per year to be saved/invested tax free. Instead of just saying "you get to save/invest $x per year and after that we have the same rate of tax for everyone", you slide so that there's always benefit in investing/saving but you're going to personally gain less the more you have.
IME as a private school graduate, they don't give you a better education anyway. What you get: (i) How to talk the talk, i.e. say what people want to hear - most of life's tests aren't about properly understanding stuff, just about giving the impression that you do; (ii) The right friends - they will help you out whenever you need it; (iii) A sense of self-importance which gives you just enough tenacity and lack of empathy to overcome any adversary^H^H^Hity.
Curriculum? Read good books and talk to smart, keen people.
Rather than taxing productivity, how about we tax enjoyment?
(1) Scrap all taxes;
(2) Scrap the notion of limited companies, so a businessman becomes responsible for his own affairs and doesn't get to personify a non-person with all of the rights and none of the responsibilities;
(3) Introduce a personal consumption tax, which slides like income tax so the first $x is tax-free, up to say 90% consumption tax for people who spend more than $y/year on their own enjoyment. So someone who is just getting by on modest food and housing pays no consumption tax, while someone with a large house and a yacht for himself pays out a huge amount;
(4) Introduce a hoarding tax, again sliding, being a proportion taken from assets which are not being put to work.
(5) Finally, ensure that all work in foreign countries is taxed as if the work was done in this country. IOW, if you pay a Chinese company X to build Y, you are charged an amount equal to the tax X would pay if it were in your own country, plus any fines for not complying with worker regulations which would exist in your own country.
The goals are: (i) to ensure that people gain fully from only productivity; (ii) to prevent tax avoidance.
It could be a lament that, despite the advance of technology, most people are having to work more rather than fewer hours.
The West has enough that everyone should be able to get by on a four day week at most, leaving the rest for education, voluntary work and leisure. Work such as this.
Unfortunately, only a few privileged positions - such as those of sufficiently advanced academics - get so much time to focus their mind on what they want. The world should be more like academia in this respect.
Slashdot Mirror
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!
(author unknown)
For extra credit, look up Gerard Nolst Trenité.
+: cool with gays.
-: volcanoes; no sense of humour.
I'll still with England. We suck but we sure know how to laugh at ourselves.
Doctors have to be able to provide for their families and have to feel like the hard work they do is worthwhile.
It is worthwhile: they the satisfaction of complex challenges and saving lives. All the good doctors do it for this.
You can't just wave a magic wand and provide healthcare; someone has to pay.
Tax. Western European healthcare is so much better and cheaper than US healthcare for almost all procedures it's not even funny, and I say that as someone who has enjoyed US, UK and . Of course there are individual specialists who only operate in the US - and others only in the UK - and others only in Greece - and in any moderately developed country, regardless of underlying healthcare system. In each case, a non-resident must pay.
Not sure how better healthcare is any different than a better car or a bigger house.
There's your problem. Are you also not sure how better police protection against Thieves And Rapists[tm] is any different than a better car?
Is it a US thing to teach "political crime" to mean the same thing as "crime of expressing an opinion"?
I guess that's a way for the US to claim that there are no political prisoners in the US, since, hey, the US (sorta mostly) has freedom of speech.
To quote Bierce, advice is the smallest current coin. Activism may begin with speech, but when you have been brought up to think that's where it ends, it's no surprise that nothing changes.
just be even moderately successful at your job and have fantastic healthcare. [...] it has nothing to do with availability or quality.
The rich have fantastic healthcare almost everywhere, regardless of underlying regime.
(1) Mugabe and Kim are not my friends - just because I don't cheerlead for the West it doesn't mean I think that DPRK or Zimbabwe are suitable alternatives;
(2) If you take the time to read my post you'll note that I'm concentrating on the supporters of Mugabe and Kim and suggesting that you study what they want rather than what you, Mugabe and Kim want. The fact that you put it in terms of "winning the argument" between A and B suggests that you're here to promote your interests rather than to increase understanding;
(3) One half of my family was brought up in a "police state" - the idea that you get a free ride to express yourself in the West but the slightest peep elsewhere will get you lifetime in a labour camp is jingoistic fantasising. The West is great at hiding to Westerners how it treats its underclass, just as DPRK propaganda hides the full extent of its own behaviour, but it is as bad as anywhere - and recall that US prison population is similar to DPRK;
(4) Free speech is overrated anyway - all your opponent has to do is shout louder, as is the case in the US. I'd rather have the freedom of health than the freedom to shout "Jewish conspiracy!"
Many thieves and drug dealers are political prisoners. "Political prisoner" is just a euphemism for "does something which I think should be permissible but they don't". To a libertarian, anyone jailed for not paying taxes may be a political prisoner; to a militant Irish republican, The Maze was full of political prisoners; to a communist, anyone jailed for taking enough bread to eat is a political prisoner. AI has tried to use the alternative term "prisoner of conscience", but even that definition is dangerous, excepting those who condone "violence" but not really explaining what counts as violence and what counts as condoning it.
As for "I'm a Zimbabwean in the UK", that's how you self-identify. To another Zimbabwean, you might be an exiled ex-occupier. The "incredible loss of perspective" is by the international Western media condemning Mugabe as if he were operating alone, controlling a whole country, while forgetting that every regime can only exist thanks to the support of a significant number of local residents. Some people would rather suffer extreme hardship than live in a country dominated by a few colonial landowners. Similarly, some people would rather live isolated under a military or religious dictatorship than under a US puppet government. Maybe you don't feel this. Maybe you prefer the security of living in the West. Maybe long lifespan, good nutrition and a warm house are to you of primary importance. Maybe you put yourself before some perceived need of your "people", whoever your people may be. But the first mistake anyone in the West makes in this sort of debate is to assume that everyone wants this too.
So, recognising the nastiness Mugabe's men get up to, how about asking yourself: why is it that conditions were so bad in Zimbabwe that Mugabe ended up in power? What could those with power/money/influence have done to compromise? Consider how Britain handled the IRA: in the end, it had to mean listening to their grievances rather than continually dismissing their opinions and their belief in a right to some of your power.
And if you think the US treats its guilty badly, you'll be reassured to know that it treats those not found guilty no better.
at a large portion of emigration from the US is immigrants returning home.
That's very standard for developed countries: people go there to take advantage of the higher wage even for very basic jobs, allowing them to send home a relative fortune, and kids from richer families get sent West for good education. It's not really immigrating to America for the American dream if you're doing that, and it's not something which America uniquely enjoys.
A close relation was the director of department at a well-known London university and he was always being sent to China to persuade students of the emerging middle class to come over and pay full fees.
Well, the FSF are neither hip nor slick, and I guess politics is at the point where no-one really engages in straight-talking rhetoric - so those who try to "say it like it is" in the style of mainstream politicians even three decades ago are now dismissed as "kind of lunatic". I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but I don't know that being as bad as the rest of them is the solution either.
But certainly a campaign like this needs to illustrate viable alternatives. The FSF has, of course, had a big hand in the "make viable alternative" goal, but
in this particular case it does seem to be telling you what's bad rather than what's better.
extreme fundamentalist decisions
I know that we're reached a point in humanity where culture, politics and lifestyle have globalised and we're accelerating toward a totalitarian's wildest dreams on groupthink... but I don't think we're at the point that the FSF should be called "extreme fundamentalists".
Examples of extreme fundamentalism:
- Obey this book or you go to Hell - since you're ignoring the book, let me help you there!
- Science provides the answer to every question - including the unfalsiable ones!
- An eye for an eye - so let me burn out your eyes!
- All property is good - I kill you if you're starving and you take some of my food store!
- All property is bad - I want your hammer to smash stuff up!
etc.
Examples of positions probably founded in some ideal which are not extreme fundamentalism, and which may apply to the FSF:
- Don't grant anyone the right to do anything its wants with any information it can obtain off you.
- Don't grant anyone the privilege to destroy your stuff at will.
- Expose people who try to do either of the above in order to spread awareness and modify behaviour.
- Oh, while you're here - if it doesn't harm you, how about sharing instead of hoarding?
Pamela Jones was widely considered to be a shill for Linux paid by IBM to secure their Linux-based offerings against Microsoft. Even if she wasn't, well, that's how...
Let's be quite clear: Ofcom knew about the interference. Years ago they commissioned a report on particular BT PLT devices with a reputable testing house and the report confirmed that the devices were non-compliant - but the report was kept under wraps. Every complaint made by shortwave users (BBC, SWLs, hams, etc.) was responded to with the indication that Ofcom had no evidence that the devices were non-compliant. So one guy made a FOIA request that relevant reports were released. Ofcom refused to release them, citing exemptions to the FOIA.
But the Information Commissioner demanded a release. And the report was finally released, confirming that Ofcom were lying, and demonstrating that Ofcom are not, in fact, an impartial regulator at all, but in bed with industry.
The RSGB's latest press release on the matter.
To summarise: Ofcom are a bunch of corrupt bastards.
It's hard to put a one-line definition on it, just as it's hard to put a clear line on the difference between tax avoidance and reasonable measures to reduce your tax burden...
Hoarding can be viewed as secreting money away: in its most obvious form, you put it in a Swiss bank account and can then channel it at will - but that sort of thing would probably be outlawed entirely (and is gradually getting that way!). Setting up a large trust fund for your children such that they would never have to work would also be hoarding. Putting a lot of money in a savings account which is much more profitable to the bank, therefore you, thanks to the fractional reserve system is hoarding. So in some cases hoarding is a symptom of a problem and wouldn't happen if the underlying fault was fixed.
Perhaps we can think of hoarding in terms of unreasonable copyright terms: just because you produce a good work today, it doesn't mean you get to control the fruits of that labour for decades to come. Indeed, we already have an impediment to hoarding - inflation - but inflation and interest rates tend not to be managed to serve the individual. What if we tried to move to a more honest way of discouraging hoarding: e.g. earnings which become capital are taxed according to age. This isn't scaled to stop a guy saving $200,000 for a house over a couple of decades, nor a firm from saving $100,000,000 to build a new plant over 5 or even 50 years. But it is scaled perhaps to stop a guy who has earnt $10,000,000 in his twenty-fifth year from a bonus to one year of exceptional performance from being able, along with his son, to not have to work again. And it is scaled to stop a business creating a war chest of $25,000,000,000 which it dips into over half a century, being able to crush its competitors merely because it has money to burn.
Money isn't like a car (car analogy!). You can copy it - fractional reserve being the obvious way this is abused - without taking it away from another person, although the perceived value is diluted. Similar to intellectual property. There is no "natural right" (in the sense described by capitalist-philosophers) to fiat money.
"Won't this just mean businesses hoard gold or something?" Oh, maybe. I'm not certain whether this is a bad thing. So do we tax hoarding of assets in general? Put another way - if we get rid of the idea of an impersonal corporation, so businessmen are responsible for their assets rather than being able to drive smaller creditors into bankruptcy by walking away when things get tough, does buying gold count as capital hoarding (hoarding tax), personal enjoyment (consumption tax), an investment (another sort of consumption tax - ala stamp duty perhaps?) or a business expense (tax free)?
I think you're reading what you want to read. Taxation on hoarding is not the same thing as taking away "everything you have". Nor is hoarding the same thing as saving: hoarding happens in the tens, hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars over decades or generations.
Inheritance tax is ostensibly designed to prevent hoarding over generations but just fucks over the middle classes who do not have sufficient means to set money aside in the right schemes and who cannot afford to take a fairly fixed hit at a fairly fixed time.
Finally, I have less affinity than most for the idea of "saving for retirement". The notion that someone becomes non-productive at some fixed age is outdated and irrational. A man can become permanently and severely disabled by his 30s (some in my family are like this) or he can be fit enough to be productive until his late 80s (others in my family are like this), and the health of older people is gradually improving. It's a painful journey, but basic state, public sector and private sector pension schemes are - often by thoroughly unreasonable means - adjusting for this.
(2) You are missing the point entirely. When a company declares bankruptcy it is because it has gone into debt. That debt is money owed to others, often to other small businesses. What do you think happens to those small businesses if the invoices they issue are not paid because their customers can easily declare bankruptcy? That's right, a significant reason for small business failure is customers not paying their bills. And why do they not pay their bills? Often because the consequences of not doing so, once you've set up a limited liability company, are comparatively minor. How many times do I have to express this before you understand it?
(3) Wow, you really are Victorian. Yes, let's keep people in poverty by keeping the tools of work and education expensive, so all they can do is get by on food and shelter and nothing else. How dare the poor spend money on books! Also, a tax is not a punishment - it is a way of collecting money to fund a functioning society.
(4) The fractional reserve system makes you outright wrong - the average savings account is little better than burying gold in a garden. If you want to invest, go ahead: as you may have noticed, I am suggesting dropping income taxes, so you are welcome to whatever gains you make. But, on the hoarding or disposal of enough capital (just as happens in many countries through stamp duty on investments, including the UK), expect taxation.
(5) What is wrong with impeding inequitable international trade? Put another way, guess what happens to you if you go on an underage sex tourism trip to the East?
...what right is it of yours to tell people that they should have to hand over the sum-total of their possessions...
Sigh, I see I'm confronted with the usual college freshman childish libertarian crap. It's the same right you believe you have for society to fund a functioning police force which stops everyone taking their stuff from you. IOW, civilisation happens by competing interests getting some of what they want and in return making concessions to others.
(i) Yes, but a class of 9 in which everyone cares much less than I did about being educated is no better than a class of 30 in which at least half appreciate and exercise a need to struggle to survive;
(ii) I wish! Most of the kids were boarders;
(iii) This is quite cool, although it's only become more of a problem in recent years as standardisation ever more fucks up the ability for teachers to teach.
(2) Just like an employee doesn't get to compartmentalise his activities: "oh, that's my Star Trek DVD collecting habit - I got into debt there but I get to write that off". It seems you want to capitalise your profit but socialise your loss - who cares about your creditors being ruined because you don't pay the bills? They may run small businesses just like yours, but they're not you, and that's all that matters.
(3) Income can be and is monitored via bank accounts. So, immediately, can expenditure be monitored. VAT with different rates just means the poor get to survive but are stuck in poverty. Give everyone the chance to choose what they need/want, whether that's food or books or software or lessons or gym membership, but tax them more the more they take. "Fuck" your support of the world's useless over-consumption.
(4) Yes, it is absolutely the state's duty to put people through university if they can learn, and to support you in your old age if you cannot support yourself. But hoarding millions is not the same as saving or investing what the average family tries to save or invest.
(5) I see you think it's OK for countries to compete based on how badly they treat their workers (adjusting worker wage for cost of living). Your conclusion speaks for itself. Be fortunate that those more powerful than you in the past have had more compassion than you do, otherwise you'd be a helpless peasant.
Saving a few thousand is not the same as hoarding a few million.
Investing is not necessarily to be classed as hoarding.
Many places already tax on investment itself rather than just the profits on investment: consider stamp duty.
Many countries already have schemes to encourage saving and investment by allowing some amount per year to be saved/invested tax free. Instead of just saying "you get to save/invest $x per year and after that we have the same rate of tax for everyone", you slide so that there's always benefit in investing/saving but you're going to personally gain less the more you have.
At a distance it'll be even harder to tell that you're wearing a fake fingerprint skin.
IME as a private school graduate, they don't give you a better education anyway. What you get:
(i) How to talk the talk, i.e. say what people want to hear - most of life's tests aren't about properly understanding stuff, just about giving the impression that you do;
(ii) The right friends - they will help you out whenever you need it;
(iii) A sense of self-importance which gives you just enough tenacity and lack of empathy to overcome any adversary^H^H^Hity.
Curriculum? Read good books and talk to smart, keen people.
Erm, then people will just give their stuff to their kids before their death. Which they do anyway.
VAT is fine... as long as it's progressive.
Rather than taxing productivity, how about we tax enjoyment?
(1) Scrap all taxes;
(2) Scrap the notion of limited companies, so a businessman becomes responsible for his own affairs and doesn't get to personify a non-person with all of the rights and none of the responsibilities;
(3) Introduce a personal consumption tax, which slides like income tax so the first $x is tax-free, up to say 90% consumption tax for people who spend more than $y/year on their own enjoyment. So someone who is just getting by on modest food and housing pays no consumption tax, while someone with a large house and a yacht for himself pays out a huge amount;
(4) Introduce a hoarding tax, again sliding, being a proportion taken from assets which are not being put to work.
(5) Finally, ensure that all work in foreign countries is taxed as if the work was done in this country. IOW, if you pay a Chinese company X to build Y, you are charged an amount equal to the tax X would pay if it were in your own country, plus any fines for not complying with worker regulations which would exist in your own country.
The goals are:
(i) to ensure that people gain fully from only productivity;
(ii) to prevent tax avoidance.
It could be a lament that, despite the advance of technology, most people are having to work more rather than fewer hours.
The West has enough that everyone should be able to get by on a four day week at most, leaving the rest for education, voluntary work and leisure. Work such as this.
Unfortunately, only a few privileged positions - such as those of sufficiently advanced academics - get so much time to focus their mind on what they want. The world should be more like academia in this respect.
FF4 is hopeless over RDP. FF3 is reasonably pleasant. What's the bug?