You choose a few examples of companies where politics, graft or outright criminal deception threw things off, but you're avoiding the central tenet of the situation. Barring privately held corporations, when has a corporation crashing ever injured the top management? The answer is that it generally doesn't, because the people who pilot the corporation aren't very often the people who get the profits (and losses). They get a salary, just like you and I do (assuming you don't own your own business), and they often get bonuses when times are good, but they don't own the company for the most part, so they don't own the debt. If your company died tomorrow, your salary would disappear, but I doubt they'd try to invade your bank account for money to pay creditors. That's why even bad CEOs don't end up on the dole.
So, the answer is that they always apply in real life. If you have any gripe about how much big company CEOs get paid, it should be addressed to the law that limits personal liability for corporate losses. Of course, that same law protects small business owners from complete loss, so be careful about suggesting sweeping reforms.
You're quite right, but copyright holders are not allowed to prevent fair use entirely under current law. To wit, they need not make it easy, but they're not allowed specifically to make it impossible.
> So how come executives of companies that are making losses still command huge salaries?
Generally there are two reasons. First, the pay for a CEO is commensurate with responsibility. Because they make decisions that guide the entire company, they get paid better, because mistakes are much more costly at this level than down on the shop floor, so companies are willing to pay quite a bit if that's what it takes to get a qualified person in the job. Second, companies don't generally keep CEOs if they feel that the CEO is the reason the company is losing money. So, in the case where a CEO stays on the job while a company racks up red ink, it's usually because (A) the company doesn't directly blame the CEO for the loss (for example, when the economy tanks), or (B) the company is buying the talent to engineer a recovery.
> Or why do civil servants get paid so well when they don't make any profit for anybody?
Civil service isn't a for-profit venture, so the "profit" isn't monetary. In public service, the goal is to maximize service levels within a budget constraint, so a civil servant who can do this well is earning the "profit" of lower costs and better (or more) service.
First, if the LEDs are on the TxD and RxD paths, they'll blink with every bit, not every packet. By the article's terminology, class III LEDs do just that, and most modems (and a few switches) are set up in class III configuration.
Second, take a close look at the light over your head. If you're in the U.S., it's pulsing at 120 Hz (incandescent lights get brighter and dimmer, fluorescent lights actually go dark and light). Can you actually see them flickering? Not likely. Therefore, is it safe to assume that because it looks like the LED is going on and off at 10 bits per second, that each flash is not a series of on/off cycles too fast for your eye to detect? Again, not likely. In reality, class III LEDs do indeed flash out the data stream, and equipment sensitive enough to discern it (which the human eye is not) can read the data stream.
By the way, to close off the two obvious arguments, in modern modems, the UART is a part of the microcontroller, so the LED can indeed be hooked up to Tx/Rx easily, and in the case of data transmission, even cheap LEDs can cycle in the 10-100 nanosecond range, so the light would merely appear to the human eye to be on full time.
Promoting penises escapes me. But Ariel (the little mermaid herself) is underage, as most debutantes debut at age 14, which means a movie about her getting the sailor guy can be labeled as child porn and Fantasia has been labeled by many as Walt's best acid trip.
I'm not sure how socialism enters this. Mundie states, in effect, that the world should have joined with Microsoft instead of developing independent alternatives, and that developing open source software is bad for the commercialization of software. "Marx Mrvelous" states that in academia this notion would have been torpedoed as ludicrous, and Mundie would (and should) lose his credibility for making such statements. Now, since both of Mundie's statements are not supported by any real world evidence, and since everything Mundie says has been more or less a Microsoft advertisement even when it's been proven inaccurate, I agree that he'd be laughed out of academia. Socialism has less to do with it than his simply being wrong.
I never said that Americans don't talk funny, or hear funny, for that matter. Being from the Beantown area myself, I am the first to say that we sound odd to those not in the area, and also to say that writing the Canadian "about" is difficualt to do. "Aboot" is as close as the written word can really come without a footnote.
Also, Bostoners don't say the word "car". They say the word "cah" and the rest of the nation spells it wrong.8)
I found that there's one other major problem with relocating to Quebec. They seem to be very intolerant of outsiders, especially Americans. Every time I've been to Quebec, I was treated very badly, to the point where I decided never to return (things like hotel personnel who spoke English to each other, but when I approached they would only speak French to me, and waiters who ignored me after they discovered from my accent that I was American). Several colleagues of mine were confronted with the same issues. I had no such problems in Toronto.
Unless you're prepared to defend your assertion with some real data or insights, do not try to participate in the discussion. You're welcome to refute any of my (or the other poster's) points, but simply crying "bullshit" without backing it up just makes you look like a troll. Also, you will notice that we both agreed that we were arguing a small part of a larger topic. Lastly, please don't assume we're gentlemen.
I'll touch three points, and then I'll go away, as it seems we've reached common ground in these points. The first is that I don't wish to imply that I think Reaganomics was completely ineffective, or even bad. I tend to agree with a large percentage of his economic policy, and I also thought Clinton was bad for business (although in slightly different ways than you do). My contention was whether it was his policies alone that did the trick. Since our further discussions reveal that you're not just waving a Reagan banner, I'm satisfied with saying it had a strong influence. Second, while I agree that inflation is hard on the economy because of reduced spending power, I would argue that unemployment tends to be harder, because it packs the one-two punch of idle wage earners and the need for society to support them (in the form of unemployment compensation). Still, without research I can't say for certain, and either of us could likely write a master's thesis arguing one side or the other, so for now we'll have to agree to disagree. Thirdly, I'll concur that economic investment from taxes is not the norm, but since (at least in the beginning) we were discussing absolutes, I differed. If you'll accept that some taxes aren't simply cost/benefit drains on the economy, I'll accept that some are. Of course, this then raises the issue of whether the tax for recycling is the former or the latter, but that's a different argument 8).
Okay, this was meant as a joke, Japan would be more at risk than California if the toxins washed out to sea, and in reality, most of the toxins (lead and most of the heavy metals found in computers) leach into the groundwater, not out to sea. The ugly part is that Chinese people tend to drink water on occasion (and even cook with and bathe in it!) and they tend to have to breathe the air that's full of the smoke that comes from burning circuit boards, and just because they're half way across the world and don't look like me doesn't make it right for me to hand my dead computer to someone who's more interested in making money than protecting the health of everyone near his computer-stripjoint.
> The recovery was totally attributable to Reagan. I like Carter as a person, but he was a terrible president.
Agreed on Mr. Carter, but to attribute the recovery to Reagan (or any one person) is the gross oversimplification to which I referred. And on a related note, inflation is only part of any economic picture, so I don't put nearly as much stock in it as you. How about checking unemployment rates? Seems they were pretty bad until the mid-'90s, which was well after the Reagan/Bush era. And today, inflation is still lower than in 1990, but unemployment is up from two years ago, and would you label that as an indicator that the economy is doing well?
> Ok, you weren't listening to what I said. I didn't say that I'm opposed to all government and all taxes. I said
all fees and taxes tend to put upward pressure on inflation and make the economy less efficient. That is true. However, I also clearly said--and you quoted--"The only question is whether society feels the negative effect of the fee/tax is outweighed by the potential benefit." In the case of the highway system the benefit clearly outweighs the cost.
You're hearing what you said, but not what I said. My point is that you cannot legitimately claim that taxes are universally a drain on economic efficiency just because the benefits of infrastructure happen in the long term. The tax investment in the '50s for roadways translates to a more mobile workforce in the '60s and a better automotive industry in the '80s, and those things make for a net gain in efficiency, so it's not just a matter of cost/benefit analysis. This is true of any investment, not just government spending, which spurred my rebuttal in the first place.
> We're talking $15 for a 60 mile drive. It's self-funded by the tolls, so don't tell me a highway system requires taxes. I personally prefer free usage of the highway having paid my taxes, but it is definitely NOT the only way to accomplish it.
It's the only way to do it efficiently. And history demonstrates that the only really efficient way to boost infrastructure is to make it a public domain. Private infrastructure works on the small scale, but if you want a telephone in every house (hey, look, I got back to the original subject! Woohoo!) you have to assign the task to government.
> Is the military necessary? Yes. Is it productive? NO. The money spent on the military could be better spent on something else.
The military is quite productive, even above its listed function. It provides jobs and training to many. It performs research that finds its way back to private industry. It provides an infrastructure for huge investment in public works (the much-maligned Army Core of Engineers has put together stuff that private industry would never consider, but that has such effects on economy as disaster prevention/relief and power production). So I must dispute that the military is simply a necessary evil and a money sink.
> But the fact remains all these things--military, free highways, fire stations, police--exact an economic cost on society due to the costs paid to support them.
I think I've proven that long term gains in efficiency rebut this statement. You are right that misappropriated taxes are a waste, and you'd be right in thinking that a not-negligible percentage of taxes are misappropriated, but then that's not what you stated.
> Heh - apparently, irony is completely lost on the/. moderators.
Hey, we're discussing old computers here. There's very little irony in them. It's mostly steely, aluminumy, silicony, coppery, plasticy and leady, with a little goldy and heavy metalsy.
...is that when all of the toxic crap that bleeds out of China into the ocean travels around the Pacific basin, the first people it'll kill are the Californians.
(sarcasm off)
Now shoo until you can learn to think farther ahead than your next meal.
> A much better solution is for Earth friendly groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, etc., to spend 5% of thier budget buying back: [old cars and computers]
Five percent of the operating budgets of every environmental lobby in the world wouldn't put an appreciable dent in the stuff being discarded. Hell, neither would fifty percent.
> They want to whine about pollution but do little other than [produce commercials / soundbites and lobby for larger, more oppressive government]
While I disagree with their methods and often their messages, advertising is an appropriate way to gain popular support and everyone has the right (and responsibility) to lobby their government for changes that they feel are important.
> How about putting your money where your mouth is and actually spending it to buy back the things you so despise in order to remove them from the marketplace?
Because that would be an ineffective way to solve the problem, as they see it, so that would not be putting their money where their mouths are. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with trying to increase awareness of a problem, and since most companies that make these things are for-profit concerns whose first concern (rightly so, for a corporation) is profit, there needs to be a counterbalance in government to prevent rampant profiteering from overriding social responsibility. Although, again, I disagree with hardcore environmental concerns as to the extent of that intervention, I'd be a bit foolish to think it's completely unneccessary.
> Hahah, always funny to see how many environmental-wackos don't understand economics.
Even funnier to see someone who doesn't understand economics lambast someone else for not understanding economics.
> Whether the fee results in an increase in prices (which equals a reduction in sales, period) or a reduction in manufacturer profits (which means a reduction in employment as well as capacity) the net affect of any additional cost on marketing a product is a reduction in efficiency of the economy and also tends to put upward pressure on inflation.
Sorry, but this is only in the case of perfect capitalism, and such a thing doesn't exist in the real world. More importantly, it shouldn't, because of many, many reasons, some of which I'll address presently.
> Every cost is important. The fact that liberals don't understand this is why they are so eager to tax the rich and companies more and more every day as if it were an endless supply of money. It's not. Reagan reduced taxes and we got the longest-growing economy in our country's history. Clinton raised taxes and brought that growth to a stop and turned it around by the end of his eight years in office.
Delightful rhetoric, but it merely demonstrates that you grossly oversimplify to prove your point. If you think that lowering taxes, and only lowering taxes, contributed to the boom of the 1980's, you're deluding yourself. The boom was in no small part a response of a recovering economy that had taken massive beatings in the '70s and was going strong before Mr. Reagan took office. In case you forgot, that means that the start of the boom could by your logic be credited to Jimmy Carter, but I imagine that would be blasphemy too blatant for you to accept.
> EVERY FEE AND TAX LEVIED ON PERSONS OR COMPANIES IS BAD FOR OUR ECONOMY. The only question is whether society feels the negative effect of the fee/tax is outweighed by the potential benefit.
Again, this is a gross oversimplification. To take an obvious example, let's consider the interstate highway system. Are you able to present any rational argument that this system could have been put together by private industry? Nobody in the '40s could either, and so it was delegated to the government. Next, could you rationally argue that the taxes thus spent did not help the U.S. economy by providing a functional infrastructure for travel? The auto manufacturers of seven countries would argue that it did. So would a multitude of construction contractors and workers who were and are currently employed building houses and such in suburbs that would be inaccessible to business centers without public roadways. I could go on, but my point is obvious by now. Now, extend that to the military, or police or fire departments, or a host of other public systems like utilities or the phone system that would, without government regulation, never have developed the way they did.
It is very true that the controls of government break down in many places, and they are subject to abuse. However, to say that the loss of profit is a net negative effect is to take a ridiculously short-term view of how economics works. J. M. Keynes's statment aside, in the long run our children will still be around.
Slashdot Mirror
You choose a few examples of companies where politics, graft or outright criminal deception threw things off, but you're avoiding the central tenet of the situation. Barring privately held corporations, when has a corporation crashing ever injured the top management? The answer is that it generally doesn't, because the people who pilot the corporation aren't very often the people who get the profits (and losses). They get a salary, just like you and I do (assuming you don't own your own business), and they often get bonuses when times are good, but they don't own the company for the most part, so they don't own the debt. If your company died tomorrow, your salary would disappear, but I doubt they'd try to invade your bank account for money to pay creditors. That's why even bad CEOs don't end up on the dole.
So, the answer is that they always apply in real life. If you have any gripe about how much big company CEOs get paid, it should be addressed to the law that limits personal liability for corporate losses. Of course, that same law protects small business owners from complete loss, so be careful about suggesting sweeping reforms.
Virg
You're quite right, but copyright holders are not allowed to prevent fair use entirely under current law. To wit, they need not make it easy, but they're not allowed specifically to make it impossible.
Virg
> So how come executives of companies that are making losses still command huge salaries?
Generally there are two reasons. First, the pay for a CEO is commensurate with responsibility. Because they make decisions that guide the entire company, they get paid better, because mistakes are much more costly at this level than down on the shop floor, so companies are willing to pay quite a bit if that's what it takes to get a qualified person in the job. Second, companies don't generally keep CEOs if they feel that the CEO is the reason the company is losing money. So, in the case where a CEO stays on the job while a company racks up red ink, it's usually because (A) the company doesn't directly blame the CEO for the loss (for example, when the economy tanks), or (B) the company is buying the talent to engineer a recovery.
> Or why do civil servants get paid so well when they don't make any profit for anybody?
Civil service isn't a for-profit venture, so the "profit" isn't monetary. In public service, the goal is to maximize service levels within a budget constraint, so a civil servant who can do this well is earning the "profit" of lower costs and better (or more) service.
Virg
First, if the LEDs are on the TxD and RxD paths, they'll blink with every bit, not every packet. By the article's terminology, class III LEDs do just that, and most modems (and a few switches) are set up in class III configuration.
Second, take a close look at the light over your head. If you're in the U.S., it's pulsing at 120 Hz (incandescent lights get brighter and dimmer, fluorescent lights actually go dark and light). Can you actually see them flickering? Not likely. Therefore, is it safe to assume that because it looks like the LED is going on and off at 10 bits per second, that each flash is not a series of on/off cycles too fast for your eye to detect? Again, not likely. In reality, class III LEDs do indeed flash out the data stream, and equipment sensitive enough to discern it (which the human eye is not) can read the data stream.
By the way, to close off the two obvious arguments, in modern modems, the UART is a part of the microcontroller, so the LED can indeed be hooked up to Tx/Rx easily, and in the case of data transmission, even cheap LEDs can cycle in the 10-100 nanosecond range, so the light would merely appear to the human eye to be on full time.
Virg
Um, "fuck" isn't an adjective. It's a verb or a noun.
And, isn't the UART inside the microcontroller in "most modern modems"? Doesn't that make Tx and Rx "IO pins on the microcontroller"?
Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I think there's more to the article than BS.
Virg
Take note that the statement was that double integrals were the best way to find said area. It works, but it's hard to argue that it's the best way.
Virg
Promoting penises escapes me. But Ariel (the little mermaid herself) is underage, as most debutantes debut at age 14, which means a movie about her getting the sailor guy can be labeled as child porn and Fantasia has been labeled by many as Walt's best acid trip.
Virg
I'm not sure how socialism enters this. Mundie states, in effect, that the world should have joined with Microsoft instead of developing independent alternatives, and that developing open source software is bad for the commercialization of software. "Marx Mrvelous" states that in academia this notion would have been torpedoed as ludicrous, and Mundie would (and should) lose his credibility for making such statements. Now, since both of Mundie's statements are not supported by any real world evidence, and since everything Mundie says has been more or less a Microsoft advertisement even when it's been proven inaccurate, I agree that he'd be laughed out of academia. Socialism has less to do with it than his simply being wrong.
Virg
I think his analogy was the Revolutionary War, not the occupation of North America. As such, it was a good one.
Virg
I never said that Americans don't talk funny, or hear funny, for that matter. Being from the Beantown area myself, I am the first to say that we sound odd to those not in the area, and also to say that writing the Canadian "about" is difficualt to do. "Aboot" is as close as the written word can really come without a footnote.
Also, Bostoners don't say the word "car". They say the word "cah" and the rest of the nation spells it wrong.8)
Virg
I found that there's one other major problem with relocating to Quebec. They seem to be very intolerant of outsiders, especially Americans. Every time I've been to Quebec, I was treated very badly, to the point where I decided never to return (things like hotel personnel who spoke English to each other, but when I approached they would only speak French to me, and waiters who ignored me after they discovered from my accent that I was American). Several colleagues of mine were confronted with the same issues. I had no such problems in Toronto.
Virg
> The east says "eh", the west sounds just like Seattle.
Okay, then, let's get this straight:
East: "Sure, whatever, eh?"
West: "Sure, whatever, Seattle?"
I think I like it the Eastern way better, eh?
Virg
Oh, man, I can't believe you missed this.
"Canada: it's not just aboot doughnuts anymore, eh?"
Virg
Unless you're prepared to defend your assertion with some real data or insights, do not try to participate in the discussion. You're welcome to refute any of my (or the other poster's) points, but simply crying "bullshit" without backing it up just makes you look like a troll. Also, you will notice that we both agreed that we were arguing a small part of a larger topic. Lastly, please don't assume we're gentlemen.
Virg
We use command line because we can. We use ugly beige because we must. But, we use amber because green is for plebians.
Virg
Odd, that's what someone once said when Steve Jobs and Woz were burning the midnight oil in their garage...
Perhaps this guy can start making a living building and selling them. One never knows, so one shouldn't be so quick to judge.
Virg
Well, okay, but I can't get the satellite feed working again until I come down...
Virg
I'll touch three points, and then I'll go away, as it seems we've reached common ground in these points. The first is that I don't wish to imply that I think Reaganomics was completely ineffective, or even bad. I tend to agree with a large percentage of his economic policy, and I also thought Clinton was bad for business (although in slightly different ways than you do). My contention was whether it was his policies alone that did the trick. Since our further discussions reveal that you're not just waving a Reagan banner, I'm satisfied with saying it had a strong influence. Second, while I agree that inflation is hard on the economy because of reduced spending power, I would argue that unemployment tends to be harder, because it packs the one-two punch of idle wage earners and the need for society to support them (in the form of unemployment compensation). Still, without research I can't say for certain, and either of us could likely write a master's thesis arguing one side or the other, so for now we'll have to agree to disagree. Thirdly, I'll concur that economic investment from taxes is not the norm, but since (at least in the beginning) we were discussing absolutes, I differed. If you'll accept that some taxes aren't simply cost/benefit drains on the economy, I'll accept that some are. Of course, this then raises the issue of whether the tax for recycling is the former or the latter, but that's a different argument 8).
Virg
Okay, this was meant as a joke, Japan would be more at risk than California if the toxins washed out to sea, and in reality, most of the toxins (lead and most of the heavy metals found in computers) leach into the groundwater, not out to sea. The ugly part is that Chinese people tend to drink water on occasion (and even cook with and bathe in it!) and they tend to have to breathe the air that's full of the smoke that comes from burning circuit boards, and just because they're half way across the world and don't look like me doesn't make it right for me to hand my dead computer to someone who's more interested in making money than protecting the health of everyone near his computer-stripjoint.
Virg
> The recovery was totally attributable to Reagan. I like Carter as a person, but he was a terrible president.
Agreed on Mr. Carter, but to attribute the recovery to Reagan (or any one person) is the gross oversimplification to which I referred. And on a related note, inflation is only part of any economic picture, so I don't put nearly as much stock in it as you. How about checking unemployment rates? Seems they were pretty bad until the mid-'90s, which was well after the Reagan/Bush era. And today, inflation is still lower than in 1990, but unemployment is up from two years ago, and would you label that as an indicator that the economy is doing well?
> Ok, you weren't listening to what I said. I didn't say that I'm opposed to all government and all taxes. I said all fees and taxes tend to put upward pressure on inflation and make the economy less efficient. That is true. However, I also clearly said--and you quoted--"The only question is whether society feels the negative effect of the fee/tax is outweighed by the potential benefit." In the case of the highway system the benefit clearly outweighs the cost.
You're hearing what you said, but not what I said. My point is that you cannot legitimately claim that taxes are universally a drain on economic efficiency just because the benefits of infrastructure happen in the long term. The tax investment in the '50s for roadways translates to a more mobile workforce in the '60s and a better automotive industry in the '80s, and those things make for a net gain in efficiency, so it's not just a matter of cost/benefit analysis. This is true of any investment, not just government spending, which spurred my rebuttal in the first place.
> We're talking $15 for a 60 mile drive. It's self-funded by the tolls, so don't tell me a highway system requires taxes. I personally prefer free usage of the highway having paid my taxes, but it is definitely NOT the only way to accomplish it.
It's the only way to do it efficiently. And history demonstrates that the only really efficient way to boost infrastructure is to make it a public domain. Private infrastructure works on the small scale, but if you want a telephone in every house (hey, look, I got back to the original subject! Woohoo!) you have to assign the task to government.
> Is the military necessary? Yes. Is it productive? NO. The money spent on the military could be better spent on something else.
The military is quite productive, even above its listed function. It provides jobs and training to many. It performs research that finds its way back to private industry. It provides an infrastructure for huge investment in public works (the much-maligned Army Core of Engineers has put together stuff that private industry would never consider, but that has such effects on economy as disaster prevention/relief and power production). So I must dispute that the military is simply a necessary evil and a money sink.
> But the fact remains all these things--military, free highways, fire stations, police--exact an economic cost on society due to the costs paid to support them.
I think I've proven that long term gains in efficiency rebut this statement. You are right that misappropriated taxes are a waste, and you'd be right in thinking that a not-negligible percentage of taxes are misappropriated, but then that's not what you stated.
Virg
> Heh - apparently, irony is completely lost on the /. moderators.
Hey, we're discussing old computers here. There's very little irony in them. It's mostly steely, aluminumy, silicony, coppery, plasticy and leady, with a little goldy and heavy metalsy.
Good thing I cleared that up.
Virg
...is that when all of the toxic crap that bleeds out of China into the ocean travels around the Pacific basin, the first people it'll kill are the Californians.
(sarcasm off)
Now shoo until you can learn to think farther ahead than your next meal.
Virg
> A much better solution is for Earth friendly groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, etc., to spend 5% of thier budget buying back: [old cars and computers]
Five percent of the operating budgets of every environmental lobby in the world wouldn't put an appreciable dent in the stuff being discarded. Hell, neither would fifty percent.
> They want to whine about pollution but do little other than [produce commercials / soundbites and lobby for larger, more oppressive government]
While I disagree with their methods and often their messages, advertising is an appropriate way to gain popular support and everyone has the right (and responsibility) to lobby their government for changes that they feel are important.
> How about putting your money where your mouth is and actually spending it to buy back the things you so despise in order to remove them from the marketplace?
Because that would be an ineffective way to solve the problem, as they see it, so that would not be putting their money where their mouths are. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with trying to increase awareness of a problem, and since most companies that make these things are for-profit concerns whose first concern (rightly so, for a corporation) is profit, there needs to be a counterbalance in government to prevent rampant profiteering from overriding social responsibility. Although, again, I disagree with hardcore environmental concerns as to the extent of that intervention, I'd be a bit foolish to think it's completely unneccessary.
Virg
> Hahah, always funny to see how many environmental-wackos don't understand economics.
Even funnier to see someone who doesn't understand economics lambast someone else for not understanding economics.
> Whether the fee results in an increase in prices (which equals a reduction in sales, period) or a reduction in manufacturer profits (which means a reduction in employment as well as capacity) the net affect of any additional cost on marketing a product is a reduction in efficiency of the economy and also tends to put upward pressure on inflation.
Sorry, but this is only in the case of perfect capitalism, and such a thing doesn't exist in the real world. More importantly, it shouldn't, because of many, many reasons, some of which I'll address presently.
> Every cost is important. The fact that liberals don't understand this is why they are so eager to tax the rich and companies more and more every day as if it were an endless supply of money. It's not. Reagan reduced taxes and we got the longest-growing economy in our country's history. Clinton raised taxes and brought that growth to a stop and turned it around by the end of his eight years in office.
Delightful rhetoric, but it merely demonstrates that you grossly oversimplify to prove your point. If you think that lowering taxes, and only lowering taxes, contributed to the boom of the 1980's, you're deluding yourself. The boom was in no small part a response of a recovering economy that had taken massive beatings in the '70s and was going strong before Mr. Reagan took office. In case you forgot, that means that the start of the boom could by your logic be credited to Jimmy Carter, but I imagine that would be blasphemy too blatant for you to accept.
> EVERY FEE AND TAX LEVIED ON PERSONS OR COMPANIES IS BAD FOR OUR ECONOMY. The only question is whether society feels the negative effect of the fee/tax is outweighed by the potential benefit.
Again, this is a gross oversimplification. To take an obvious example, let's consider the interstate highway system. Are you able to present any rational argument that this system could have been put together by private industry? Nobody in the '40s could either, and so it was delegated to the government. Next, could you rationally argue that the taxes thus spent did not help the U.S. economy by providing a functional infrastructure for travel? The auto manufacturers of seven countries would argue that it did. So would a multitude of construction contractors and workers who were and are currently employed building houses and such in suburbs that would be inaccessible to business centers without public roadways. I could go on, but my point is obvious by now. Now, extend that to the military, or police or fire departments, or a host of other public systems like utilities or the phone system that would, without government regulation, never have developed the way they did.
It is very true that the controls of government break down in many places, and they are subject to abuse. However, to say that the loss of profit is a net negative effect is to take a ridiculously short-term view of how economics works. J. M. Keynes's statment aside, in the long run our children will still be around.
Virg
I'm sorry, but you just got a (-1, Too Sensible for Slashdot).
Virg