Thanks for the followup. I was using a chart that shows basically the same thing, from this site. The one on that site goes a bit further back, so it includes the Republican Harding administration, which broke the chart with a 5.8% growth rate. Of course, he only had two years, which makes the stats a bit more suspect, and both parties have changed drastically since Warren G. Harding was in office.
In 2000, there were 110M jobs and 281M people, so a rough estimate is that you need (on average) one job to support 2.6 people. We've probably gained about 10,000,000 people since Bush started in 2000, which means that about 3.8M jobs needed to be created during his administration, just to keep pace with population growth. Even if there are the same number of jobs as when he took office, he's nearly four million jobs in the hole.
Nor is it just a matter of liberal arts majors not being able to find work. The total job numbers hide the number of underemployed, who are working fewer hours than they would like or working in jobs that don't utilize their skills and training.
During the eight years of the Clinton administration, total jobs increased by about 22M, more than two jobs for every three people added to the population. Historically, the fastest job growth has always occurred when Democrats were in the White House.
The working poor still pay payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. If I understand correctly, that amounts to about 7-10% of every dollar they earn.
"The Guardian" didn't call for the assassination of the President of the United States. In order to properly say that, such a call to action would have to appear as an unattributed editorial on their editorial page, thus representing the views of the editorial staff.
Instead, according to the very article you link to, it was a tasteless joke by one writer, in an article that appeared in the TV listings.
You sound like President Bush is only stonewalling because he knows that doing so will cause better legislation to emerge. Wouldn't it be simpler to just admit the truth: that you and your President have no interest in stopping global warming? If it were just a bad treaty, Bush would be pushing for other measures to reduce emissions. He's not pushing for jack but deregulation.
"Individual responsibility" doesn't work when it comes to the environment. If I buy up a factory, and unilaterally spend the money required to reduce emissions, I can't manufacture competitively, and go broke trying. It has to be done all together. Demanding government action doesn't make us do-nothing whiners: it makes us realists.
Bush supported the Clear Skies Act of 2003, which repeals or reduces air pollution controls. This act reduces caps on toxic chemicals in the air and cuts enforcement of the Clean Air Act, and is opposed by environmentalist groups such as the Sierra Club. Bush has faced heavy criticism over his advocacy for the act, with Henry A. Waxman (D-California) describing its title as "clear propaganda." Among other things, the Clear Skies Act:
* Weakens the current cap on mercury pollution levels from five tons per year to 26 tons.
* Weakens the current cap on nitrogen oxide pollution levels from 1.25 million tons to 2.1 million tons, allowing 68 percent more nitrogen oxide pollution.
* Weakens the current cap on sulphur dioxide pollution levels from two million tons to 4.5 million tons, allowing 225 percent more SO2 pollution.
* Delays enforcement of smog-and-soot pollution standards until 2015.
* Allows industrial buildings undergoing renovation, modernization, or expansion not to install machines that allow the building to come into current environmental standards compliance.
By 2018, the Clear Skies Act would allow 450,000 more tons of nitrogen oxides, one million more tons of SO2, and 9.5 more tons of mercury than what would be allowed by enforcement of the Clean Air Act.
The fact is, if Bush wanted the treaty, I think he could get it through the Senate. He has the political capital, and says he wants to reach out to Democrats. But the fact is, he doesn't want it, but it sounds like you're blaming Congress for the treaty's lack of viability.
Again, according to Wikipedia, George Bush is said to have said:
"The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."
So which is it? Is this a critical issue where America needs to take responsibility? Or something about which we can be petty? If the environment is going to suffer irreparable harm because of our inaction, then we should stop griping about fairness and dig in, doing whatever needs to be done to avert that damage.
Since Bush says he wants the U.S. to be a leader on this issue, tell us what he's done to reduce the CO2 emissions of the U.S.?
One final point: On a per-capita basis, the U.S. puts out ten times the greenhouse gas that China does, and China has reduced its emissions by 17% over the last five years (same Wikipedia article). Now, I think it's perfectly fair to allow looser standards for a developing country that is trying to build up an economy that can provide a decent standard of living for a billion people. China is doing more than the Kyoto Protocol demands, while the U.S. claims to want to be a global leader on this issue yet does nothing.
If Bush said, "I won't sign the treaty because I have a plan for reducing emissions that will be less harmful to my country," and then vigorously pursued that strategy, I would fully respect his effort. As it is, it sounds like he's just using China as an excuse to avoid our very real obligation to do more about global warming.
I'm not proposing slapping a prize on every conceivable idea, just the ones that people/corporations/other government agencies consider worthwhile to fund. I just think it's an interesting idea to have some way of streamlining the process of offering the prizes. It doesn't matter much to me whether it occurs under a new government agency, an extension of an old one like the NIH, or a private foundation. I think I may have gotten things off on the wrong foot by getting the Feds involved.
Run properly, the management would only amount to a few percent of the actual money being disbursed. I know that a properly managed government agency is a huge stretch of the imagination for many people, and not without reason.
I'll see your Nobel Prize-sharing economist and raise you a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Your guy claims "all economists are for free trade," but Joseph Stiglitz would put some enormous caveats on the principle. I read a recent book he wrote called "Globalization and its Discontents," where he documents in case after case how the IMF's pushing of simple-minded free market policies ended up hurting third world economies, and especially the poorest citizens of those countries.
I'm a little confused about why he's bringing up the economic integration of rich countries, when the main focus of outsourcing has been to move jobs out of the rich countries and into poorer countries with lower labor costs. Further explanation would be helpful, but that's the news biz.
Stiglitz also points out various hypocrisies in our pursuit of free trade. For example, the way we use the IMF to pressure poor countries to open their markets to our manufactured goods, while continuing to subsidize our own agriculture to the point that they cannot compete.
Another example is our response to Russia's competitive advantage in producing aluminum (despite the many problems with their economy, they have an abundance of cheap energy): When faced with competition from a country that could simply produce aluminum cheaper than we could, America responded first by threatening to accuse Russia of "dumping", and then to support the formation of an aluminum cartel to keep prices high. Our inefficient aluminum manufacturers got to avoid competition, Russia lost the chance to maximize a competitive advantage, and consumers got higher prices.
The Bush administration, with its love of unrestrained free trade, was the primary mover in the creation of the cartel. Which seems inconsistent, to say the least.
Anyhow, if the money from a tax increase is put to some use that reduces costs in other areas of the economy (improvement of highway and communication infrastructure, improving the health of the population, basic scientific research) then the overall economy can indeed benefit. I'm guessing that even Mr. Prescott would put disclaimers on his off-the-cuff remark. I would also guess he is embarassed about the way your cited story reduces his economic analysis to something you might find on Slashdot.
Is this that thing they call "sarcasm"? I've been on Slashdot so long, it's hard to tell.
Now, despite the fact that the X-prize wasn't nearly enough to cover the research and development costs of even one of the teams, it spurred competition by creating interest and by setting a concrete goal.
You're insistent that "the market" functions better than any prize system could. And yet the X-prize was offered, and suddenly research started moving forward. Why hadn't the market impelled people to work with that sort of single-mindedness before then? Do you think that not having the prize in place would have significantly delayed things?
I'm not sure what the magic formula is that made the X-prize so successful. I certainly don't know if the same technique can be scaled up to bigger projects or down to smaller ones. But I find your dismissive sarcasm somewhat unhelpful.
The X-prize was a very cool idea. Offer cold, hard cash for people who successfully do something new and interesting.
Now NASA is looking for other suggestions for prizes that would have the same effect in other branches of space exploration. More prizes along the same lines could provide incentives for a wide variety of inventions.
So, here's a proposal. Some body (I'm thinking governmental, because I'm an evil liberal) would accept proposals for prizes, accept donations towards specific prizes from governments and private entities. The prizes can be rewards for any sort of accomplishment. For example, if somebody wants to spur leukemia research, they would draw up a request for a new treatment that reduced the mortality rate by 50%. Then they could front as much money towards the prize as they like, and others would be free to donate as well.
The prize organization itself would be in charge of determining whether the requirements of a prize had been fulfilled, and of taking care of the money in the meantime. If a prize went well beyond its expected lifetime--say a prize was offered for something truly impossible, like psychic teleportation, and has simply been sitting around for a decade or two--then the money could be funneled into other prizes.
Other prizes that might be offered:
*An "effectively secure" electronic voting system. *A carbon nanotube with a strength of 150 GPa. *A lightbulb that uses 1% of the energy of incandescent bulbs. *A good Linux driver for WiFi card X. *Gweneth Paltrow's phone number. Okay, maybe not. *A way to make soy taste like meat, without putting it through an animal first.
I figure there should also be some sort of moderation system apart from money, so that good ideas that lack funding can get the attention needed to attract said funding.
Any improvements to be made, or fundamental problems with the idea?
Hmm... looks like I started out arguing with you, and finished up by arguing with someone else in the thread, who claimed that we could all fit in an area the size of Texas. I regret my confusion, and apologize for any insult to either your intelligence or your knowledge of classic sci-fi.
I'm curious about the Dutch statistic: Does it mean that one Dutch farmer produced as much as 100 Russian farmers, or (less likely) that the Dutch farmer was able to get 100x the output from the same area of land? The latter may be more relevant to the discussion, because while mechanization can drastically reduce the number of farmers, the output of a given area of land is less certain.
There is also the issue of sustainability. For example, huge gains in productivity came when farmers started using artificial fertilizers, but the fertilizers themselves require petroleum in order to manufacture them. If we start running low on oil, it may be difficult to transition to some other source of fertilizer. So we're effectively burning tomorrow's food in today's engines.
There is also the problem of reliance on irrigation methods that raise the salt content of the land, which could gut future productivity, and the sort of overwatering that leads to lower aquifers.
My biggest concern is that, even if everything you say is true, it may just mean that the techniques of today are sufficient for today's population, and even then only for the immediate future. If our population continues increasing, while our carrying capacity is being reduced, hilarity will not ensue. New techniques would be developed, we might look to outer space for a significant quantity of resources and energy. All these alternatives seem better than bloody wars over scarce resources.
But if we have to clear cut every forest and turn every square inch of land towards food production, in order to feed the next six billion we seem intent on adding to the current population, I don't think it's worth it.
The odd thing is, I voted against Bush and against Utah's gay marriage ban. If asked, I would have said that my vote was compelled by "moral values". I consider it a moral imperative to protect the environment, assist the poor, treat homosexuals like real people with real feelings, and to improve the lot of the average person.
For other people, "values" is a code word for curbing abortion rights and marginalizing gays. People like that confound me, even though I think I'm making an honest effort to understand. I'm left thinking that there are a few very rich, very active people laying out a political strategy whereby they can get public support for policies that steal that public blind for their profit.
Somehow, I don't think telling fifty-eight million people that they're a bunch of dupes is the winning message that will return the Democrats to power in 2008.
Most religious folk aren't like that. At least, they're much more tactful than the people you've run across. The problem is, you've got loud, obnoxious morons in every camp, doing their accidental best to make the group look bad. They'll get up in your face, insult you every way they can, and make sure that their disgust for you tarnishes your view of anyone with a remotely similar viewpoint.
I used to hang out a lot in religious chat rooms, arguing with people. I was quite an obnoxious little atheist. Still am, in fact. But never as bad as some of the people who shared my views. To them, anyone who professed Christianity was an evil monster. The flame wars were impressive, and totally unproductive.
You cannot ask them to change who they are before you'll start looking for common ground again. You have to make the first move. These people are living in fear. Fear of the "liberal agenda" and the "liberal media", fear of the erosion of the value of life, fear of gay marriage, fear of terrorism. So they vote for those who play to those fears. Some are too far gone, and it sounds like you've run into quite a few. Ignore them, and spend your time talking with those people who can discuss things reasonably.
Very interesting. Sounds much easier to administer than the current system. I'm still a little leery of the idea of not taxing business expenditures, because it sounds like you could drive a semi through that loophole.
For example, could a company pay pretty much all its CEO's expenses, and write the CEO's consumption off as contributing to the growth and health of the company?
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's not about providing everyone room to lie down, it's about providing the resources needed for a good quality of life.
Like you, I hold out some hope for space-based solar power. But I'm a little unclear about your analysis of the Earth's core. The "nuclear power" there is generated by the slow decay of radioactive isotopes. It amounts to a--I think the scientific term is--crapload of energy, but it's tricky to harvest, as anyone in the field of geothermal energy would tell you. I don't think mining uranium down there would be a viable option.
I think he was talking about off-world resource mining and power generation, not necessarily colonization. So going on to accuse him of trying to ship the poor to barren wastelands in rickety space coffins is, shall we say, reading too much into it.
There is very little land left that isn't being used somehow. The oceans are being harvested to capacity. Lots of good farmland has been paved over to create suburban tract housing so that people can flee the problems of the cities rather than deal with them. The only land that isn't being used is that way because it's not good for farming.
The other thing you don't seem to grasp is that a person's footprint is much larger than the amount of apartment space they take up. A city is like an organism that requires a constant stream of resources from the outside. The food being grown for the people of New York is done far away from the city, and I would hazard a guess that a chunk of land at least half the size of Ohio is fully dedicated to providing that food. The coal to power the city is mined and burned well away from downtown.
If it were just a matter of giving everyone enough room to keep from tripping over each other, it would be simple to just build more and taller skyscrapers. But it isn't. You also have to set aside land elsewhere to provide for their needs.
I'm interested in how a consumption tax would work, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm curious, if the government converted to a flat tax, but exempted some of the consumption (say, vouchers that would exempt $1000/year in transportation and food costs, or the first $2000 in housing) would you call that system more or less fair than a straight consumption tax? I would side with more fair, since there is a certain minimum level of consumption that needs to be done in order to survive. I don't believe that necessities ought to be taxed.
I guess the point I'm trying to get across isn't that government bureaucrats should be looking over your shoulder every time you make a purchase to decide how much you really needed something. Instead, I'm saying that the poor generally spend all their money on necessities, and even have to forego things that people even a little better off would consider necessities.
I think my message gets a bit garbled when I drag in the law of diminishing returns, but I think Scott Adams summed it up brilliantly with the following equation (paraphrased):
H(x) = Happiness obtained by having x
( H(owning a BMW) - H(owning a Lexus) ) < ( H(not being eaten by a coyote) - H(being eaten by a coyote) )
While I cannot say what constitutes hardship for you, I can be pretty sure that the hardship that someone would incur by having to drive a semi-luxury car rather than a luxury car is significantly less than would be incurred by depriving someone else of something they needed to survive. That's the purpose of a graduated income tax. I don't think it's anything like demanding equal outcomes. I figure that, even if you eliminate the taxes on the poorest Americans and shift the burden onto the wealthy, the wealthy are still far, far better off than the untaxed poor.
This is a surprisingly civil discussion we're having. I hope the editors don't try to squelch it before the idea catches on.
Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that it is proper for the U.S. Government to levy taxes in order to fund programs that promote the general welfare. Let's also set aside what the nature of those programs are, and whether broad categories of programs like military spending, welfare, humanitarian aid, environmental regulation, transportation infrastructure, etc., actually live up to the ideal of "promoting the general welfare."
Now, what's your beef with a progressive tax code?
Say the government decides to get the money it requires by taxing everyone at 20%. A person making $10,000 a year pays $2000, while a person making $200,000 a year pays $40,000. Sounds perfectly fair, right?
But it isn't. Taking $40K from the rich guy causes relatively little hardship, while taking $2K from the poor guy causes a great deal of hardship.
Why? It's the very basic economic law of diminishing returns. It's rather straightforward economics to say that people spend their finite reserves of money in such a way as they believe will maximize their own happiness. So each additional dollar you earn will be spent on something that will do less to add to your own happiness than the dollar before it.
In practice, this means that the rich guy might have to buy a new car less frequently in order to pay his $40K tax burden, or go out to eat less often, or live in a somewhat smaller house. Meanwhile, the guy who is scraping by, in order to pay his measly tax burden of $2K, has to decide whether to turn off the heat to his apartment, or walk three miles to work instead of renewing his bus pass.
Taking the "shiny-car money" from the rich guy does far less to hurt the overall happiness of the rich guy than taking "bus pass money" from twenty poor guys.
Those who argue against a progressive tax system are basically arguing that it is somehow "more fair" to take more from those who are most hurt by the taking. Meanwhile, those who are more able to pay more without a significant impact to their quality of life are relieved of even that minor sacrifice.
I don't get it. I mean, when people call for a repeal of all welfare programs, it makes a twisted sort of sense because they believe that the recipients are just leeches on the system. But calling for a return to a simple flat tax is nothing more than asking the government to make the hard-working poor give up necessities so that the rich can have incrementally more luxuries.
You're asking how we should change the tallying of the final score. That's not all there is to the game.
My suggestions:
* Reverse the current trend of media consolidation. * Some form of runoff voting to give third party candidates half a chance. * Standardized nationwide rules for voter eligibility. * Much harsher punishments for voter fraud. I sympathize with someone elsewhere who suggested that election-rigging be treated as an attempt to overthrow the government, though I think it would be going too far. * It's time to start pushing for some *real* campaign finance reform. Given that this was the most expensive election in history, McCain-Feingold doesn't appear to be working.
"It takes money to make money?" The continued concentration of wealth in the hands of a few powerful individuals corrupts our society, hurts everyone, and in the form of media consolidation it is shaping into one of the most serious threats to democracy we've ever faced. We need more than glib chatter about "it takes money to make money."
It's one thing to allow those with money to pursue business ventures that will reap further profits. It's another thing to allow them to buy up news outlets by the hundreds, and use that power to support the candidates that will pass legislation friendly to their business interests.
In short, "It takes money to make money" is fine, but "It takes money to buy the media coverage and the legislation and the politicians to make money" is corrupting.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the followup. I was using a chart that shows basically the same thing, from this site. The one on that site goes a bit further back, so it includes the Republican Harding administration, which broke the chart with a 5.8% growth rate. Of course, he only had two years, which makes the stats a bit more suspect, and both parties have changed drastically since Warren G. Harding was in office.
This one? It's a hoax.
I dispute the "minor job loss" claim.
In 2000, there were 110M jobs and 281M people, so a rough estimate is that you need (on average) one job to support 2.6 people. We've probably gained about 10,000,000 people since Bush started in 2000, which means that about 3.8M jobs needed to be created during his administration, just to keep pace with population growth. Even if there are the same number of jobs as when he took office, he's nearly four million jobs in the hole.
Nor is it just a matter of liberal arts majors not being able to find work. The total job numbers hide the number of underemployed, who are working fewer hours than they would like or working in jobs that don't utilize their skills and training.
During the eight years of the Clinton administration, total jobs increased by about 22M, more than two jobs for every three people added to the population. Historically, the fastest job growth has always occurred when Democrats were in the White House.
The working poor still pay payroll taxes for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. If I understand correctly, that amounts to about 7-10% of every dollar they earn.
"The Guardian" didn't call for the assassination of the President of the United States. In order to properly say that, such a call to action would have to appear as an unattributed editorial on their editorial page, thus representing the views of the editorial staff.
Instead, according to the very article you link to, it was a tasteless joke by one writer, in an article that appeared in the TV listings.
This is like saying that the National Review called on the United States to invade Arab countries, kill their leaders, and convert them all to Christianity. Allowing something to be printed in a publication isn't the same thing as endorsing it.
You sound like President Bush is only stonewalling because he knows that doing so will cause better legislation to emerge. Wouldn't it be simpler to just admit the truth: that you and your President have no interest in stopping global warming? If it were just a bad treaty, Bush would be pushing for other measures to reduce emissions. He's not pushing for jack but deregulation.
"Individual responsibility" doesn't work when it comes to the environment. If I buy up a factory, and unilaterally spend the money required to reduce emissions, I can't manufacture competitively, and go broke trying. It has to be done all together. Demanding government action doesn't make us do-nothing whiners: it makes us realists.
The fact is, if Bush wanted the treaty, I think he could get it through the Senate. He has the political capital, and says he wants to reach out to Democrats. But the fact is, he doesn't want it, but it sounds like you're blaming Congress for the treaty's lack of viability.
Again, according to Wikipedia, George Bush is said to have said:
So which is it? Is this a critical issue where America needs to take responsibility? Or something about which we can be petty? If the environment is going to suffer irreparable harm because of our inaction, then we should stop griping about fairness and dig in, doing whatever needs to be done to avert that damage.
Since Bush says he wants the U.S. to be a leader on this issue, tell us what he's done to reduce the CO2 emissions of the U.S.?
One final point: On a per-capita basis, the U.S. puts out ten times the greenhouse gas that China does, and China has reduced its emissions by 17% over the last five years (same Wikipedia article). Now, I think it's perfectly fair to allow looser standards for a developing country that is trying to build up an economy that can provide a decent standard of living for a billion people. China is doing more than the Kyoto Protocol demands, while the U.S. claims to want to be a global leader on this issue yet does nothing.
If Bush said, "I won't sign the treaty because I have a plan for reducing emissions that will be less harmful to my country," and then vigorously pursued that strategy, I would fully respect his effort. As it is, it sounds like he's just using China as an excuse to avoid our very real obligation to do more about global warming.
I'm not proposing slapping a prize on every conceivable idea, just the ones that people/corporations/other government agencies consider worthwhile to fund. I just think it's an interesting idea to have some way of streamlining the process of offering the prizes. It doesn't matter much to me whether it occurs under a new government agency, an extension of an old one like the NIH, or a private foundation. I think I may have gotten things off on the wrong foot by getting the Feds involved.
Run properly, the management would only amount to a few percent of the actual money being disbursed. I know that a properly managed government agency is a huge stretch of the imagination for many people, and not without reason.
I'll see your Nobel Prize-sharing economist and raise you a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Your guy claims "all economists are for free trade," but Joseph Stiglitz would put some enormous caveats on the principle. I read a recent book he wrote called "Globalization and its Discontents," where he documents in case after case how the IMF's pushing of simple-minded free market policies ended up hurting third world economies, and especially the poorest citizens of those countries.
I'm a little confused about why he's bringing up the economic integration of rich countries, when the main focus of outsourcing has been to move jobs out of the rich countries and into poorer countries with lower labor costs. Further explanation would be helpful, but that's the news biz.
Stiglitz also points out various hypocrisies in our pursuit of free trade. For example, the way we use the IMF to pressure poor countries to open their markets to our manufactured goods, while continuing to subsidize our own agriculture to the point that they cannot compete.
Another example is our response to Russia's competitive advantage in producing aluminum (despite the many problems with their economy, they have an abundance of cheap energy): When faced with competition from a country that could simply produce aluminum cheaper than we could, America responded first by threatening to accuse Russia of "dumping", and then to support the formation of an aluminum cartel to keep prices high. Our inefficient aluminum manufacturers got to avoid competition, Russia lost the chance to maximize a competitive advantage, and consumers got higher prices.
The Bush administration, with its love of unrestrained free trade, was the primary mover in the creation of the cartel. Which seems inconsistent, to say the least.
Anyhow, if the money from a tax increase is put to some use that reduces costs in other areas of the economy (improvement of highway and communication infrastructure, improving the health of the population, basic scientific research) then the overall economy can indeed benefit. I'm guessing that even Mr. Prescott would put disclaimers on his off-the-cuff remark. I would also guess he is embarassed about the way your cited story reduces his economic analysis to something you might find on Slashdot.
Is this that thing they call "sarcasm"? I've been on Slashdot so long, it's hard to tell.
Now, despite the fact that the X-prize wasn't nearly enough to cover the research and development costs of even one of the teams, it spurred competition by creating interest and by setting a concrete goal.
You're insistent that "the market" functions better than any prize system could. And yet the X-prize was offered, and suddenly research started moving forward. Why hadn't the market impelled people to work with that sort of single-mindedness before then? Do you think that not having the prize in place would have significantly delayed things?
I'm not sure what the magic formula is that made the X-prize so successful. I certainly don't know if the same technique can be scaled up to bigger projects or down to smaller ones. But I find your dismissive sarcasm somewhat unhelpful.
This is true, and my writeup does overlook the other motivations you mention. Nevertheless, those motivations would still be in play.
I found an interesting website that acts kind of like what I had in mind. WhyNot?
The X-prize was a very cool idea. Offer cold, hard cash for people who successfully do something new and interesting.
Now NASA is looking for other suggestions for prizes that would have the same effect in other branches of space exploration. More prizes along the same lines could provide incentives for a wide variety of inventions.
So, here's a proposal. Some body (I'm thinking governmental, because I'm an evil liberal) would accept proposals for prizes, accept donations towards specific prizes from governments and private entities. The prizes can be rewards for any sort of accomplishment. For example, if somebody wants to spur leukemia research, they would draw up a request for a new treatment that reduced the mortality rate by 50%. Then they could front as much money towards the prize as they like, and others would be free to donate as well.
The prize organization itself would be in charge of determining whether the requirements of a prize had been fulfilled, and of taking care of the money in the meantime. If a prize went well beyond its expected lifetime--say a prize was offered for something truly impossible, like psychic teleportation, and has simply been sitting around for a decade or two--then the money could be funneled into other prizes.
Other prizes that might be offered:
*An "effectively secure" electronic voting system.
*A carbon nanotube with a strength of 150 GPa.
*A lightbulb that uses 1% of the energy of incandescent bulbs.
*A good Linux driver for WiFi card X.
*Gweneth Paltrow's phone number. Okay, maybe not.
*A way to make soy taste like meat, without putting it through an animal first.
I figure there should also be some sort of moderation system apart from money, so that good ideas that lack funding can get the attention needed to attract said funding.
Any improvements to be made, or fundamental problems with the idea?
Hmm... looks like I started out arguing with you, and finished up by arguing with someone else in the thread, who claimed that we could all fit in an area the size of Texas. I regret my confusion, and apologize for any insult to either your intelligence or your knowledge of classic sci-fi.
I'm curious about the Dutch statistic: Does it mean that one Dutch farmer produced as much as 100 Russian farmers, or (less likely) that the Dutch farmer was able to get 100x the output from the same area of land? The latter may be more relevant to the discussion, because while mechanization can drastically reduce the number of farmers, the output of a given area of land is less certain.
There is also the issue of sustainability. For example, huge gains in productivity came when farmers started using artificial fertilizers, but the fertilizers themselves require petroleum in order to manufacture them. If we start running low on oil, it may be difficult to transition to some other source of fertilizer. So we're effectively burning tomorrow's food in today's engines.
There is also the problem of reliance on irrigation methods that raise the salt content of the land, which could gut future productivity, and the sort of overwatering that leads to lower aquifers.
My biggest concern is that, even if everything you say is true, it may just mean that the techniques of today are sufficient for today's population, and even then only for the immediate future. If our population continues increasing, while our carrying capacity is being reduced, hilarity will not ensue. New techniques would be developed, we might look to outer space for a significant quantity of resources and energy. All these alternatives seem better than bloody wars over scarce resources.
But if we have to clear cut every forest and turn every square inch of land towards food production, in order to feed the next six billion we seem intent on adding to the current population, I don't think it's worth it.
The odd thing is, I voted against Bush and against Utah's gay marriage ban. If asked, I would have said that my vote was compelled by "moral values". I consider it a moral imperative to protect the environment, assist the poor, treat homosexuals like real people with real feelings, and to improve the lot of the average person.
For other people, "values" is a code word for curbing abortion rights and marginalizing gays. People like that confound me, even though I think I'm making an honest effort to understand. I'm left thinking that there are a few very rich, very active people laying out a political strategy whereby they can get public support for policies that steal that public blind for their profit.
Somehow, I don't think telling fifty-eight million people that they're a bunch of dupes is the winning message that will return the Democrats to power in 2008.
Most religious folk aren't like that. At least, they're much more tactful than the people you've run across. The problem is, you've got loud, obnoxious morons in every camp, doing their accidental best to make the group look bad. They'll get up in your face, insult you every way they can, and make sure that their disgust for you tarnishes your view of anyone with a remotely similar viewpoint.
I used to hang out a lot in religious chat rooms, arguing with people. I was quite an obnoxious little atheist. Still am, in fact. But never as bad as some of the people who shared my views. To them, anyone who professed Christianity was an evil monster. The flame wars were impressive, and totally unproductive.
You cannot ask them to change who they are before you'll start looking for common ground again. You have to make the first move. These people are living in fear. Fear of the "liberal agenda" and the "liberal media", fear of the erosion of the value of life, fear of gay marriage, fear of terrorism. So they vote for those who play to those fears. Some are too far gone, and it sounds like you've run into quite a few. Ignore them, and spend your time talking with those people who can discuss things reasonably.
Very interesting. Sounds much easier to administer than the current system. I'm still a little leery of the idea of not taxing business expenditures, because it sounds like you could drive a semi through that loophole.
For example, could a company pay pretty much all its CEO's expenses, and write the CEO's consumption off as contributing to the growth and health of the company?
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's not about providing everyone room to lie down, it's about providing the resources needed for a good quality of life.
Like you, I hold out some hope for space-based solar power. But I'm a little unclear about your analysis of the Earth's core. The "nuclear power" there is generated by the slow decay of radioactive isotopes. It amounts to a--I think the scientific term is--crapload of energy, but it's tricky to harvest, as anyone in the field of geothermal energy would tell you. I don't think mining uranium down there would be a viable option.
I think he was talking about off-world resource mining and power generation, not necessarily colonization. So going on to accuse him of trying to ship the poor to barren wastelands in rickety space coffins is, shall we say, reading too much into it.
There is very little land left that isn't being used somehow. The oceans are being harvested to capacity. Lots of good farmland has been paved over to create suburban tract housing so that people can flee the problems of the cities rather than deal with them. The only land that isn't being used is that way because it's not good for farming.
The other thing you don't seem to grasp is that a person's footprint is much larger than the amount of apartment space they take up. A city is like an organism that requires a constant stream of resources from the outside. The food being grown for the people of New York is done far away from the city, and I would hazard a guess that a chunk of land at least half the size of Ohio is fully dedicated to providing that food. The coal to power the city is mined and burned well away from downtown.
If it were just a matter of giving everyone enough room to keep from tripping over each other, it would be simple to just build more and taller skyscrapers. But it isn't. You also have to set aside land elsewhere to provide for their needs.
I'm interested in how a consumption tax would work, but it doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm curious, if the government converted to a flat tax, but exempted some of the consumption (say, vouchers that would exempt $1000/year in transportation and food costs, or the first $2000 in housing) would you call that system more or less fair than a straight consumption tax? I would side with more fair, since there is a certain minimum level of consumption that needs to be done in order to survive. I don't believe that necessities ought to be taxed.
I guess the point I'm trying to get across isn't that government bureaucrats should be looking over your shoulder every time you make a purchase to decide how much you really needed something. Instead, I'm saying that the poor generally spend all their money on necessities, and even have to forego things that people even a little better off would consider necessities.
I think my message gets a bit garbled when I drag in the law of diminishing returns, but I think Scott Adams summed it up brilliantly with the following equation (paraphrased):
H(x) = Happiness obtained by having x
( H(owning a BMW) - H(owning a Lexus) ) < ( H(not being eaten by a coyote) - H(being eaten by a coyote) )
While I cannot say what constitutes hardship for you, I can be pretty sure that the hardship that someone would incur by having to drive a semi-luxury car rather than a luxury car is significantly less than would be incurred by depriving someone else of something they needed to survive. That's the purpose of a graduated income tax. I don't think it's anything like demanding equal outcomes. I figure that, even if you eliminate the taxes on the poorest Americans and shift the burden onto the wealthy, the wealthy are still far, far better off than the untaxed poor.
This is a surprisingly civil discussion we're having. I hope the editors don't try to squelch it before the idea catches on.
Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that it is proper for the U.S. Government to levy taxes in order to fund programs that promote the general welfare. Let's also set aside what the nature of those programs are, and whether broad categories of programs like military spending, welfare, humanitarian aid, environmental regulation, transportation infrastructure, etc., actually live up to the ideal of "promoting the general welfare."
Now, what's your beef with a progressive tax code?
Say the government decides to get the money it requires by taxing everyone at 20%. A person making $10,000 a year pays $2000, while a person making $200,000 a year pays $40,000. Sounds perfectly fair, right?
But it isn't. Taking $40K from the rich guy causes relatively little hardship, while taking $2K from the poor guy causes a great deal of hardship.
Why? It's the very basic economic law of diminishing returns. It's rather straightforward economics to say that people spend their finite reserves of money in such a way as they believe will maximize their own happiness. So each additional dollar you earn will be spent on something that will do less to add to your own happiness than the dollar before it.
In practice, this means that the rich guy might have to buy a new car less frequently in order to pay his $40K tax burden, or go out to eat less often, or live in a somewhat smaller house. Meanwhile, the guy who is scraping by, in order to pay his measly tax burden of $2K, has to decide whether to turn off the heat to his apartment, or walk three miles to work instead of renewing his bus pass.
Taking the "shiny-car money" from the rich guy does far less to hurt the overall happiness of the rich guy than taking "bus pass money" from twenty poor guys.
Those who argue against a progressive tax system are basically arguing that it is somehow "more fair" to take more from those who are most hurt by the taking. Meanwhile, those who are more able to pay more without a significant impact to their quality of life are relieved of even that minor sacrifice.
I don't get it. I mean, when people call for a repeal of all welfare programs, it makes a twisted sort of sense because they believe that the recipients are just leeches on the system. But calling for a return to a simple flat tax is nothing more than asking the government to make the hard-working poor give up necessities so that the rich can have incrementally more luxuries.
You're asking how we should change the tallying of the final score. That's not all there is to the game.
My suggestions:
* Reverse the current trend of media consolidation.
* Some form of runoff voting to give third party candidates half a chance.
* Standardized nationwide rules for voter eligibility.
* Much harsher punishments for voter fraud. I sympathize with someone elsewhere who suggested that election-rigging be treated as an attempt to overthrow the government, though I think it would be going too far.
* It's time to start pushing for some *real* campaign finance reform. Given that this was the most expensive election in history, McCain-Feingold doesn't appear to be working.
"It takes money to make money?" The continued concentration of wealth in the hands of a few powerful individuals corrupts our society, hurts everyone, and in the form of media consolidation it is shaping into one of the most serious threats to democracy we've ever faced. We need more than glib chatter about "it takes money to make money."
It's one thing to allow those with money to pursue business ventures that will reap further profits. It's another thing to allow them to buy up news outlets by the hundreds, and use that power to support the candidates that will pass legislation friendly to their business interests.
In short, "It takes money to make money" is fine, but "It takes money to buy the media coverage and the legislation and the politicians to make money" is corrupting.
But Bush has ties to Australia, and as we both know Australia is populated by criminals, so I clearly cannot choose the candidate in front of you!