1. You cannot say something is right because X people agree.
2. You cannot say something is right because the people that agree have X qualifications.
3. it might be more LIKELY that they are correct, but it does not mean they are correct.
4. As to one thing or another more probably being correct... that is fine... however that doesn't mean you're scientifically correct. It merely means you probably are correct. Science is not merely saying "well this is probably going on in absence of actually knowing what I'm talking about."
And really I have no interest arguing this issue when really what I wanted to talk about is the polarization and factionalization and politicization of the issue.
You want to say that you are justified in being factional, politicized, and polarized because science is "probably" on your side. In effect, you're saying you don't want to be open minded and methodical on the issue because you think your supposed consensus gives you license to politicize the issue.
It doesn't. It never will. That isn't science. That's just politics and political games. And the only people that push this line of reasoning are first and foremost political creatures.
You're not leading by example. you're exporting industry to china which has no net postive impact on global CO2.
The global atmosphere is global. Moving industry to another country doesn't solve your problem. The US is not its own planet. If you want to have any relevance in this issue what so ever then you need to have a global impact by not merely moving CO2 industries from one country to another. They either have to be outright reduced GLOBALLY or they have to be made more efficient globally.
Forcing these industries out of the US did neither thing. What it did was forced them into a less environmentally efficient situation with lower environmental regulations.
You made the situation worse by failing to recognize that the a global problem is global.
Lets forget taxes for a moment because you're frankly irrational on the subject and instead focus on prices.
Lets say there is a store and this store has a monopoly on luxury goods in your town. If you want to buy certain things you don't need you can buy them at that store but no where else.
Okay. Lets say the prices are very low... how likely are you to buy? Very? Okay... now by what percentage would I have to raise the prices to stop you from buying? It depends on what they were before of course but you can see how even a small change in prices could change whether or not you buy at all. And when you do not buy not only is the profit from the new price not made but neither is the old profit from the old price.
Look around at stores throughout your country and ask yourself how much of a price increase you could take for a given good before you'd stop buying it. Lets say milk had its costs increased by 70 percent. Would that impact your decision to buy milk? Probably you would only buy it if you really wanted it and it would be a special purchase.
That is something of what happens when you jack up prices which is effectively what increasing taxes means. It means everyone has to work more and get less which means we're all poorer which means the money we have has to go farther. We cut back on luxuries and generally have a lower standard of living.
Now here you'll likely argue "yes but the government will give you all this great free stuff that will raise your standard of living even higher then it would have been if it didn't tax the hell out you."... well, that is a dubious claim on many points. What are these services that can't be paid for personally but must be paid for collectively? Sure, you could argue that the very poor need wealth redistributed to them to raise their standard of living... but that is coming at the expense of the standard of living of other people. The middle class and of course the rich to some extent.
I don't see any evidence for that argument. And more to the point, I see great danger in that social model because you're basically asking group 1 if they want group 2 to buy them stuff. That doesn't really strike me as democracy.
A much more reasonable political system would be one where people decide what THEY will pay. Now obviously if people are only allowed to vote on what they will pay it will be very hard to raise taxes on people. After all most people don't want to pay taxes. But there in lies the truth of the matter. In seeking to raise taxes, the government and politicians have gone out of their way to exploit flaws in the democratic model to get people that cannot pay or will not pay to vote for increases in taxes.
It is corruption, sir. It is a cancer eating the heart of our civilization out from under us. And in time, we may envy the authoritarian Chinese model if only because by giving all authority to a tight knit oligarchy they are immune to these bread and circuses political campaigns.
In any case this bores me... you think you can sustain 70 percent? That's just so moronic I am left with nothing but contempt for your grasp of the world, business, math, and economics. You're too ignorant or brain washed to have this discussion. And that is fine. You're hardly alone. Whole generations of sad people have been ruined by a systematic campaign of misinformation.
I can't fix you... I wish I could. It is in the hands of providence at this point because none of these fuckwits is clever enough to realize the frog is already boiling.
So you admit the existence of the laffer curve and that raising taxes can reduce revenue.
Okay. Now we have to establish where we are on the laffer curve.
The first thing we have to establish is that the higher you raise taxes the greater incentive the tax payer has to avoid or limit their tax exposure. This means more money spent on tax lawyers, estate planners, accountants, etc to ensure that everyone is paying the lowest tax possible. People that pay a lower rate are not going to go to the same effort to avoid their tax bill. Look at what people spend on these things today in the US and compare that to what we spent 100 years ago. Most people did their own taxes 100 years ago. And today increasingly we rely on professional organizations to prepare our taxes. This is owed in part to an increasingly complex tax code which is simply harder for a lay person to understand.
Which leads us to the next point. The higher the taxes get, the more pressure you put on politicians people to create tax loopholes. If the tax is low, we don't really need tax loopholes or care about them in most cases. But as the tax gets high these loopholes become a matter of survival. Big campaign donations etc will happen and do happen all the time to ensure loopholes stay open or are created. This also helps to corrupt the government by putting citizens in a position where if they do not bribe politicians they will be destroyed.
Then you have the other way you avoid taxes... by not earning money. The higher the tax rate the less reward for work people, businesses, and investments take back to their source. If the reward is lower there will be less investment. That is common sense. The trick with taxes is to keep them low enough that they do not change behavior. Consider a sales tax on a purchase of potato chips. If the tax is 2 to 5 percent of the cost of the chips then the tax will be unlikely to influence the purchase. However, if the tax is 30 or 50 percent then it could very easily make someone not buy the chips. And when they choose not to buy the chips that means the government not only doesn't get the 50 percent they wanted. They also don't get the 5 percent, and the company that would have made income on the sale also will not pay taxes on that income because they didn't make any income.
In this we see that the proper balance of taxation is that it must be low enough that it does not change behavior.
Thus we must then examine current tax law as regards our economy and determine if tax policy changes behavior.
1. Do people not buy things sometimes because of taxes? The answer is yes. Especially in states like california. A ten percent sales tax is high enough that on expensive items especially it is very common for people not to buy things or to buy things outside of california to avoid the tax. you do see this europe all the time. My danish cousins hilariously came to the US with empty suitcases and filled them with crap they bought at local department stores because it was so much cheaper then anything they could buy in Denmark. That means that the VAT and other assorted sales and import taxes in Denmark were at that time and likely still are well over the hump on the laffer curve.
I can go through every industry one thing after another and at BEST the US is often at the tipping point or already over the edge.
You are going to dispute this but the difference between my argument and yours is that I am giving a means for determining where the tipping point is and you are just going to devolving into vagaries.
You tell me... how do you define the tipping point? Is the only evidence whether you jack the taxes up and see a decline? They've already seen that in England and France quite recently. The French and English tax hikes have been hilarious failures because they actually got less money. And states like California are seeing a general capital flight as people... often well heeled baby boomers leave the state to go to more friendly tax environments. There are many states where
What the current situation is indifferent to actions needed or what they should be is another question.
They are three separate questions.
The third is the only one that is entirely scientific.
That is "whether something is happening and what that thing is"...
As to whether something must be done and what that thing is that must be done... that is political. Not scientific.
Now let us ask a simple question here.
Do you have China and India on board with your little plan here? Are they doing to agree to cap their carbon emissions?
If the answer is no... then... what are we talking about here? Because at best it seems like all this AGW talk is simply exporting CO2 emitting industries to china and india... often where environmental controls are worse... and increasing the amount that has to be shipped which increases carbon emissions... and costs people in the west jobs as we shut down our industries in favor of the chinese and indians doing it.
Do you feel like you're accomplishing something? Because simply exporting your CO2 to china accomplishes NOTHING. US CO2 emissions went down for yet another year... and I think we've been reducing emissions for over a decade. Global emissions are of course higher then ever.
The fact of the matter is that by focusing on the politics and allowing partisian factions to use the environmental issue as a domestic political weapon... you've lost sight on the actual goal. The politicians don't care about CO2. They don't care about AGW. They care about winning elections. And the vast majority of people talking about AGW are utterly blind to the fact that they're being used for a cause that has no net benefit to the environment what so ever. If anything, the environmental movement is hurting the environment these days.
If you want to help the environment... then you need to bring more industry back into the first world where it can have some pollution standards applied to it.
That is going to mean relaxing those same standards. You've heard that you need to spend money to make money? You're going to need to attract dirty industry to reduce dirty industry. And there after you might be able to apply some international import export laws that apply a carbon debt to imports and exports.
Short of that... you keep doing this... we'll just export all our dirty industry to china and you'll have accomplished less then nothing.
If you do not contradict the laffer curve then you are not contradicting my argument. Which means we are either having two completely different discussions or you actually have just been agreeing with me the whole time.
So which is it?
If you are not contradicting the laffer curve then what is your argument? Redefine it again taking pains NOT to contradict the laffer curve. IF you contradict it in your argument then I'll have to conclude that you are contradicting the laffer curve... and your statements to the contrary can be put down to... what? Confusion?
Sure, my side is all about science... it is that other side that isn't scientific!
*yawn*... both sides are massively politicized at this point. The only people that don't know that are the deluded.
Both sides have senators yelling at each other. Both sides are arguing their bullcrap in the united nations. Both sides are throwing little protest marches. Both sides are releasing books and movies and giving people stickers.
This is a media campaign, sport. It stopped being science around the same time Al Gore stood up and decided to make a political cause out if it. On that day... it became politics.
Just like all the other stupid political fights we have in this country... about birth control or schools or the fucking budget. Science isn't on your side or the other side. Science doesn't take fucking sides. Science doesn't have your back. Science is a process. A methodology. A means. It isn't a fucking ideology and it doesn't bless one side or the other like some fucking made up god in some fucking holy war against some fucking evil enemy.
I swear to god... why is my society filled with barbarian fuckwits? I'd very much like to have my peers be men and women of reason and not just another sad collection of tribalistic superstitious fanatics that listen to the mumblings of their various witch doctors, get high on the local boiled weed of choice, paint themselves blue/red, then run naked at the opposing tribe screaming.
And whilst all this is happening... the fucking morons say "but science is on our side."... which doesn't mean what it sounds like... what they mean is "the heavens are with us"... the spirits... the gods... the fucking tooth fairies.
If you actually knew what science was in the first place... and you clearly don't... then you'd know that science is the process evaluation and if you wish to honor that process... you actually have to do it. Not just support a side that says they're with science, paint yourself the tribal color, and attack.
seriously, dude... you want to get scientific? Because its going to involve putting down the pointy stick, washing that shit off your face, and actually talking about this like rational people. Short of that... I have more then enough frothing fanatics to hide behind. I don't need to fight you. Fuck it... I'll make some sandwiches and enjoy the show from the sidelines. I can giggle as you crack each other's skulls open in one pointless clusterfuck after another.
If you want to actually accomplish something. I you want to be more then a pawn in someone else's political game... you need to stop being a tool. The politicians don't care about the environment. They want to win their political fights because they want to win them. Right or wrong. They don't care. They want to win because winning is power. And you are more meat for their shield wall. Nothing more.
I do not say any of this to support one side or the other. They're both contemptible. And until you grasp that you're just going to be a pawn. I refuse to be a pawn. And the only way to do that is to fucking walk off the chess board and do something more useful.
Can you do that? Or are you going to tell me again "but the other side started it" or "they don't follow science but we do."... or other assorted nonsense?
The US economy in real terms is vastly larger then it was during WW2... adjust for inflation and it is also larger... also our per capita GDP is larger... so you're just wrong.
As to WW2 itself, that was hardly a sustainable taxation rate. The US was running up massive debts because it was in the middle of a world war. If you want to claim that we can raise taxes higher because at some point in during a WW2 we had higher taxes... I can only point out you're being unreasonable because that is obviously not sustainable.
As to your claim that raising taxes and cutting spending are the same thing... they're clearly not in the same way that eating more and exercising less are not the same thing.
Your unwillingness to admit obvious points renders your position unreasonable.
You won't admit that because you're unreasonable. You'll say that I'm dismissing you and not taking your unreasonable points seriously which you will claim is unreasonable. However it is not unreasonable to reject unreasonable positions.
If you wish to render your position more reasonable then you can moderate and qualify your positions so that they are subject to reasonable correction.
Short of that... no reasonable person is likely to be able to get a reasonable argument out of you.
... that have eyes painted on them so they look alert when really they nodded off hours ago.
If you want to get china's attention... you're going to need to apply some sort of export/import tax that relates to carbon debt. Short of that... china shall snooze through your presentation.
First they attack the gamers with the whole gamergate thing. All of which was shown to be a scam by political elements using every dirty trick they could think of to get power... literally sleeping with people to gain influence... extortion... bribery... baiting people to attack them and then playing the victim.
Second, they go after 4chan which while a wretched hive of scum and villainy is hardly worth a national campaign.
I mean seriously... wtf? Who the fuck are these people are do they really want to the nerd culture to respond in kind? Because... if they want to be stalked... we have stalkers... we have people that can trace all their silly little stories back to the roots... keep spreadsheets on all their activities... and cross reference all claims. Do they really want to start a fight with millions of aspi under employed men? It just seems like pissing on a bee hive.
For all google's sins, wouldn't the federal government be a bigger offender on this issue? And since stanford is obviously going to still cash those checks what exactly is the point of not taking google's money? I mean... that's like saying "I won't take money from this street thug but I'll take money from the kingpin."... it is absurd. I mean... snowden was not whistle blowing on google.
All of it what you say is true though the blade cuts both ways.
Are you willing to impale yourself on that blade? I am... the price will be that neither of can say what is going on definitively. Which means more study and examination.
First, we all agree we should cut waste. The problem is that many people view waste as vital. One person's garbage is another person's gold. How many stupid programs and means of doing things are sacred to one faction and anathema to the other? We first must define what is waste and what is not waste.
Second, your plan for the military is too vague. What is decent and what is "never gets used"? Would you go to war with Nazi Germany? I'm just trying to understand what you mean by that because if you mean literally never gets used it will have massive consequences that you have to own when they come due.
Third, why does increasing spending on social programs make sense if we're running a trillion dollars over budget? Look, I don't mind spending money on social programs. But first please ensure that you're not running up the debt to fund what are often meaningless feel good programs that don't do anything but waste money.
Forth, when people say "raise taxes" they almost always mean "raise someone else's taxes to pay for something I want." Which can roughly be simplified to "I believe other people should pay for my stuff."... Which is all well and good but I'd like some justification for that besides "I want stuff and don't care who pays for it."
Look... My attitude on these four points are as follows: 1. Yeah... cut waste. I define waste as any money spent beyond what is needed to achieve the desired goal. So for example, if I can hire half as many people to do the same job just as well... then I believe we should hire half as many people. If it is cheaper to have a private company or a collection of private companies do something rather then the federal government... then I would rather them do it. It is sometimes cheaper. Another idea might be giving certain functions to local authority rather then having them done by the federal government. Lots of things do not need to be done in Washington DC. The locals care more about their part of the country then anyone else... just give them authority and then if they even need money you can look at giving them some of the money the feds would have spent on it. And then you can even look at volunteers. A lot of times people will just do things for free if you empower them to do it which means zero labor expenses. Think of all the things the federal government could get people to do for the price of throwing a pizza party at the end of it all and passing out stickers.
2. The military is actually the primary justification for the US government itself. Consider that without external threats the US would never have united in the first place. The 13 colonies never would have united without an external threat. Social programs are not enough to keep the country together. So if you basically make the military a tiny portion of what the US is doing you are fundamentally undermining the union. Many portions of the country only remain part of the union because of concerns about international threats... be that military, diplomatic, or trade. In a perfectly secure world, there would be no place for super powers. That understood, you should also consider aspects like global security and what you are willing to sacrifice? How many millions of people are you willing to let get literally crucified? That is literally something happening in the middle east right now. They are crucifying people. Now I am not saying you have a responsibility to stop that or that the US does. I am saying that if you make a strategic choice to not engage in such matters you must commit to that policy and have the moral courage to simply sit and watch when it happens. If you can do that, then we can technically back off. The US historically has not be able to do that since WW2. Every time something terrible starts happening we feel obliged to help. And that help requires a robust military able to engage on multiple fronts against determined battle hardened and often ruthless enemies. It is one or the other. What I worry about is that
At zero taxes... you get no money because you've taxed people zero dollars.
At 100 percent taxes you get substantially less then what we'd find the middle because even you annihilate the economy... EVEN YOU... would have to admit that you get LESS at 100 percent then you would at some point in the middle between 0 and 100 percent.
Which means EVEN YOU have no basis to contradict the laffer curve.
Now you can argue WHERE the graph curves. BUT you have ZERO basis to claim that it does not curve at all.
And if it does... then the laffer curve exists and you were wrong to attempt to contradict me.
You're wrong. Obviously and inescapably. You're going to cast out some stupid insult and try to save face... but it fools none but the fools.
Your best bet for salvaging some of your credibility would be to concede my point and then if you still want to fight me argue that the graph doesn't curve until the very end and does so extremely sharply. Which is your BEST option for fighting the laffer curve argument.
Where we go from there would be to examine tax revenues from various countries as they change tax rates. And the point of that will be to try and establish roughly where the laffer curve resides... fyi... that analysis will not back up your position... i've checked. But that will at least draw this out and give you a semblance of credibility. At least until I prove you wrong... but I suspect you're going to chicken out and run away long before anything can be established. I've had this discussion enough times with ideologues on the internet and they always chicken out when their arguments start to crumble.
But maybe you'll be the first not to do so... here is hoping. Really... I do hope you're different.
The most evil, corrupt, and stupid person on earth could say something that was scientifically correct and the most good, honorable, and intelligent person on earth could say something that was scientifically invalid.
Science is not about moral virtue. Saying "the evil oil companies did X" is fucking irrelevant if you're talking about SCIENCE. If you care about POLITICS which is quite clearly your primary concern... then of course the actions of your political rivals is something you need to watch. However, science is not politics. It doesn't matter who says it.
Consider if you will the fucking Nazis... you know them? Killed millions of people... tried to take over the world... terrible taste in mustaches? Yeah, well, they were pretty good scientists and engineers weren't they? So what does that tell you? It tells you that you can be a complete scumbag and be a great scientist at the same time.
Morality, ethics, and politics do not make science good or bad. Science isn't an ideology or a belief system. It is a tool.
Science is like a gun... or a pencil... or a fork. Any group of people can use it so long as they know how to use it. With the gun... you know that the bullets come out of the tube and generally you want to point it at the people you want to make holes in. And so on.
So really, I don't care who is paying whom. It doesn't matter. There is no logical reason to conclude that the evil oil companies are wrong sans an argument that invalidates their argument scientifically. Now if you have that... then fine. But that argument won't be based on whether the oil companies made the argument or whether they were evil. That is at best ad hominem.
The oil companies you would have to admit are very technically proficient. They do a lot of very impressive things on a regular basis that are the envy of nations and other industries. Some of their deep sea extractions are about as complex space programs. Seriously look at some of it. They have guys in pressurized apartments for weeks. They go below the ocean in what look like space suits... and weld pipes in conditions as hostile as anything you'll find in orbit. And is there any public fan fare over that? No. That's what the petro chemical industry likes to call Tuesday.
These are not stupid people. Now you want to claim they're lying? Fine... prove that. But short of that you're just making political arguments.
I can't say why I have been modded up or down. It is often puzzling why it goes one way or the other.
That said, I would like to think that I was modded up because some people agreed with my statement that this whole AGW issue has been turned into a childish over politicized hissy fit between the two primary political factions.
And as such that it doesn't really have anything to do with science anymore despite the protestations of both factions to the contrary.
I'm not going to get into the misdeeds of one faction or the other because that just causes the partisans to get defensive which turns their brains off. You say X side did Y... and invariably X will say that Y was totally justified even though if the alternative side did Y it would be the worst thing ever.
It is stupid and I'm tired of idiot partisans bringing their mindless "yes he did/no he didn't" bullshit into every discussion.
Are there real issues here that can be scientifically examined? Absolutely. But it became totally impossible to do that the instant BOTH sides politicized the issue. Here some idiot partisan is going to say "but the other side did it first." First... that justifies nothing. And second it doesn't matter at that point. The point is not to be morally superior to your rival. I don't care which of you fuckwits started it. What matters is that it happened and there are consequences. It is like nuking a city... does it matter to the people living in the city who fired the nuke? Not really... they're extra crispy. And that's what happened. This argument has been under constant bombardment for years. And at this point even the partisans are so bored with it that they just reflexively gainsay the opposition without even bothering to listen to anything they have to say on the issue.
That means discourse is officially impossible... until the partisans get given some apple juice boxes and take a nap like good little 4 year olds. Short of that... madness is all you're going to get out of this issue.
There is real science here and I would love to discuss it... but I can't because the political morons pollute every discussion on this issue trying to turn it to their political favor rather then just understand it.
Disagree? Should we just skip right to the bit where we call each other terrible names and move on?
Let me expand this a bit because you seem to think science only applies in some situations.
Lets say something is too complicated for the human brain to understand. Simply beyond us as a species. Then lets say scientists study this thing which is beyond us. Can they make up results or half ass it on the basis that they cannot understand it?
No.
See, if you actually valued science you wouldn't just accept what people say because they're experts. That isn't science. That is just the old "appeal to authority" fallacy followed by the just as old "ad verecundiam" which is basically the fallacy that because someone doesn't have certain qualifications their argument is inherently wrong and therefore should just accept whatever someone else says.
Look, you can spout logical fallacies at me all day and they'll never get traction. I know them all. They're mostly done because people are lazy. They think "if I say this, I win, and I don't have to actually defend my position."... Well, you always have to defend your position. If you're not defending your position you are not defending your position. End of story.
Which is fine. No one says you have to argue about this stuff on the internet. But if you want to argue about it then you have to argue about it. No shortcuts.
Can you morons stop being political fuckpuppets for five seconds and actually grasp what science is at its core?
It is not politics.
It is not gambling.
It is not a popularity contest.
It is not a vote.
It is not your fucking opinion.
Collectively... the education system has apparently failed millions.
And while I'm sure some waste of oxygen is going to say "oh you're just being mean now." I will point out that it didn't start that way.
It started out like this:
1. Everyone needs to drop the silly factions of US vs THEM and just discuss the events, data, and science like rational people.
Then the predictable cavelcade of fucktardry responded:
2. No we should break into hateful factions and turn everything into a flame war.
To which I tried in vain to respond:
3. You're missing my point, by doing that we can't have a discussion and everything is just about insults and pissing on each other.
To which now you are saying:
4. But I think I have more dicks on my side and some of these guys drank a lot of water... so I'm in favor of just unzipping and spraying it all over the place.
Which leads us to where I am here:
5. Resorting to insults mostly because I find it personally cathartic to call a duck a duck... or in your case... a fucking retard.
Happy now? Is this what you want? Because this is all these STUPID environmental discussions will EVER be until people can get over their pathetic ideological rivalries for five seconds and just talk about it. If you can't do that... you have NOTHING to contribute to the discussion. Literally a waste of bandwidth and bandwidth is fucking cheap.
That isn't productive either. You can't just say "well those people did it first"... I don't really care.
Both factions can go fuck themselves. No one can have a rational discussion with those two four year olds poking each other, pulling each other's hair, and calling each other names. Its impossible to have a rational discussion on the issue with either group or possibly ANY group because if they are GROUPS they're not being scientists. They're fighting petty political battles at everyone's expense.
This issue can't be discussed rationally unless you're able to be unbiased for five seconds.
And no... science is not a democracy.
ONE scientist can be right and every single other one on earth can be wrong. Science is not a popularity contest and it is not a democracy. YOU are thinking politically. Science is not politics.
If you can't grasp that then you have no value to any scientific discussion because you don't know what science is in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong.
1. You cannot say something is right because X people agree.
2. You cannot say something is right because the people that agree have X qualifications.
3. it might be more LIKELY that they are correct, but it does not mean they are correct.
4. As to one thing or another more probably being correct... that is fine... however that doesn't mean you're scientifically correct. It merely means you probably are correct. Science is not merely saying "well this is probably going on in absence of actually knowing what I'm talking about."
And really I have no interest arguing this issue when really what I wanted to talk about is the polarization and factionalization and politicization of the issue.
You want to say that you are justified in being factional, politicized, and polarized because science is "probably" on your side. In effect, you're saying you don't want to be open minded and methodical on the issue because you think your supposed consensus gives you license to politicize the issue.
It doesn't. It never will. That isn't science. That's just politics and political games. And the only people that push this line of reasoning are first and foremost political creatures.
You're not leading by example. you're exporting industry to china which has no net postive impact on global CO2.
The global atmosphere is global. Moving industry to another country doesn't solve your problem. The US is not its own planet. If you want to have any relevance in this issue what so ever then you need to have a global impact by not merely moving CO2 industries from one country to another. They either have to be outright reduced GLOBALLY or they have to be made more efficient globally.
Forcing these industries out of the US did neither thing. What it did was forced them into a less environmentally efficient situation with lower environmental regulations.
You made the situation worse by failing to recognize that the a global problem is global.
End of line.
Backing people into a corner sometimes ends with the people doing it getting their faces ripped off. ;)
It is a good point... it is a kind of cowardice to go after the nerds on the internet rather then carry the cause of feminism internationally.
Lets forget taxes for a moment because you're frankly irrational on the subject and instead focus on prices.
Lets say there is a store and this store has a monopoly on luxury goods in your town. If you want to buy certain things you don't need you can buy them at that store but no where else.
Okay. Lets say the prices are very low... how likely are you to buy? Very? Okay... now by what percentage would I have to raise the prices to stop you from buying? It depends on what they were before of course but you can see how even a small change in prices could change whether or not you buy at all. And when you do not buy not only is the profit from the new price not made but neither is the old profit from the old price.
Look around at stores throughout your country and ask yourself how much of a price increase you could take for a given good before you'd stop buying it. Lets say milk had its costs increased by 70 percent. Would that impact your decision to buy milk? Probably you would only buy it if you really wanted it and it would be a special purchase.
That is something of what happens when you jack up prices which is effectively what increasing taxes means. It means everyone has to work more and get less which means we're all poorer which means the money we have has to go farther. We cut back on luxuries and generally have a lower standard of living.
Now here you'll likely argue "yes but the government will give you all this great free stuff that will raise your standard of living even higher then it would have been if it didn't tax the hell out you."... well, that is a dubious claim on many points. What are these services that can't be paid for personally but must be paid for collectively? Sure, you could argue that the very poor need wealth redistributed to them to raise their standard of living... but that is coming at the expense of the standard of living of other people. The middle class and of course the rich to some extent.
I don't see any evidence for that argument. And more to the point, I see great danger in that social model because you're basically asking group 1 if they want group 2 to buy them stuff. That doesn't really strike me as democracy.
A much more reasonable political system would be one where people decide what THEY will pay. Now obviously if people are only allowed to vote on what they will pay it will be very hard to raise taxes on people. After all most people don't want to pay taxes. But there in lies the truth of the matter. In seeking to raise taxes, the government and politicians have gone out of their way to exploit flaws in the democratic model to get people that cannot pay or will not pay to vote for increases in taxes.
It is corruption, sir. It is a cancer eating the heart of our civilization out from under us. And in time, we may envy the authoritarian Chinese model if only because by giving all authority to a tight knit oligarchy they are immune to these bread and circuses political campaigns.
In any case this bores me... you think you can sustain 70 percent? That's just so moronic I am left with nothing but contempt for your grasp of the world, business, math, and economics. You're too ignorant or brain washed to have this discussion. And that is fine. You're hardly alone. Whole generations of sad people have been ruined by a systematic campaign of misinformation.
I can't fix you... I wish I could. It is in the hands of providence at this point because none of these fuckwits is clever enough to realize the frog is already boiling.
So you admit the existence of the laffer curve and that raising taxes can reduce revenue.
Okay. Now we have to establish where we are on the laffer curve.
The first thing we have to establish is that the higher you raise taxes the greater incentive the tax payer has to avoid or limit their tax exposure. This means more money spent on tax lawyers, estate planners, accountants, etc to ensure that everyone is paying the lowest tax possible. People that pay a lower rate are not going to go to the same effort to avoid their tax bill. Look at what people spend on these things today in the US and compare that to what we spent 100 years ago. Most people did their own taxes 100 years ago. And today increasingly we rely on professional organizations to prepare our taxes. This is owed in part to an increasingly complex tax code which is simply harder for a lay person to understand.
Which leads us to the next point. The higher the taxes get, the more pressure you put on politicians people to create tax loopholes. If the tax is low, we don't really need tax loopholes or care about them in most cases. But as the tax gets high these loopholes become a matter of survival. Big campaign donations etc will happen and do happen all the time to ensure loopholes stay open or are created. This also helps to corrupt the government by putting citizens in a position where if they do not bribe politicians they will be destroyed.
Then you have the other way you avoid taxes... by not earning money. The higher the tax rate the less reward for work people, businesses, and investments take back to their source. If the reward is lower there will be less investment. That is common sense. The trick with taxes is to keep them low enough that they do not change behavior. Consider a sales tax on a purchase of potato chips. If the tax is 2 to 5 percent of the cost of the chips then the tax will be unlikely to influence the purchase. However, if the tax is 30 or 50 percent then it could very easily make someone not buy the chips. And when they choose not to buy the chips that means the government not only doesn't get the 50 percent they wanted. They also don't get the 5 percent, and the company that would have made income on the sale also will not pay taxes on that income because they didn't make any income.
In this we see that the proper balance of taxation is that it must be low enough that it does not change behavior.
Thus we must then examine current tax law as regards our economy and determine if tax policy changes behavior.
1. Do people not buy things sometimes because of taxes? The answer is yes. Especially in states like california. A ten percent sales tax is high enough that on expensive items especially it is very common for people not to buy things or to buy things outside of california to avoid the tax. you do see this europe all the time. My danish cousins hilariously came to the US with empty suitcases and filled them with crap they bought at local department stores because it was so much cheaper then anything they could buy in Denmark. That means that the VAT and other assorted sales and import taxes in Denmark were at that time and likely still are well over the hump on the laffer curve.
I can go through every industry one thing after another and at BEST the US is often at the tipping point or already over the edge.
You are going to dispute this but the difference between my argument and yours is that I am giving a means for determining where the tipping point is and you are just going to devolving into vagaries.
You tell me... how do you define the tipping point? Is the only evidence whether you jack the taxes up and see a decline? They've already seen that in England and France quite recently. The French and English tax hikes have been hilarious failures because they actually got less money. And states like California are seeing a general capital flight as people... often well heeled baby boomers leave the state to go to more friendly tax environments. There are many states where
Whether or not action is needed is one question.
What that action should be is another question.
What the current situation is indifferent to actions needed or what they should be is another question.
They are three separate questions.
The third is the only one that is entirely scientific.
That is "whether something is happening and what that thing is"...
As to whether something must be done and what that thing is that must be done... that is political. Not scientific.
Now let us ask a simple question here.
Do you have China and India on board with your little plan here? Are they doing to agree to cap their carbon emissions?
If the answer is no... then... what are we talking about here? Because at best it seems like all this AGW talk is simply exporting CO2 emitting industries to china and india... often where environmental controls are worse... and increasing the amount that has to be shipped which increases carbon emissions... and costs people in the west jobs as we shut down our industries in favor of the chinese and indians doing it.
Do you feel like you're accomplishing something? Because simply exporting your CO2 to china accomplishes NOTHING. US CO2 emissions went down for yet another year... and I think we've been reducing emissions for over a decade. Global emissions are of course higher then ever.
The fact of the matter is that by focusing on the politics and allowing partisian factions to use the environmental issue as a domestic political weapon... you've lost sight on the actual goal. The politicians don't care about CO2. They don't care about AGW. They care about winning elections. And the vast majority of people talking about AGW are utterly blind to the fact that they're being used for a cause that has no net benefit to the environment what so ever. If anything, the environmental movement is hurting the environment these days.
If you want to help the environment... then you need to bring more industry back into the first world where it can have some pollution standards applied to it.
That is going to mean relaxing those same standards. You've heard that you need to spend money to make money? You're going to need to attract dirty industry to reduce dirty industry. And there after you might be able to apply some international import export laws that apply a carbon debt to imports and exports.
Short of that... you keep doing this... we'll just export all our dirty industry to china and you'll have accomplished less then nothing.
Open your mind and think.
What a complete fucking lie that is, sir.
Does google data mine? Sure. But claiming that google was the source of the whole thing is fucking asinine.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
If you do not contradict the laffer curve then you are not contradicting my argument. Which means we are either having two completely different discussions or you actually have just been agreeing with me the whole time.
So which is it?
If you are not contradicting the laffer curve then what is your argument? Redefine it again taking pains NOT to contradict the laffer curve. IF you contradict it in your argument then I'll have to conclude that you are contradicting the laffer curve... and your statements to the contrary can be put down to... what? Confusion?
Sure, my side is all about science... it is that other side that isn't scientific!
*yawn*... both sides are massively politicized at this point. The only people that don't know that are the deluded.
Both sides have senators yelling at each other. Both sides are arguing their bullcrap in the united nations. Both sides are throwing little protest marches. Both sides are releasing books and movies and giving people stickers.
This is a media campaign, sport. It stopped being science around the same time Al Gore stood up and decided to make a political cause out if it. On that day... it became politics.
Just like all the other stupid political fights we have in this country... about birth control or schools or the fucking budget. Science isn't on your side or the other side. Science doesn't take fucking sides. Science doesn't have your back. Science is a process. A methodology. A means. It isn't a fucking ideology and it doesn't bless one side or the other like some fucking made up god in some fucking holy war against some fucking evil enemy.
I swear to god... why is my society filled with barbarian fuckwits? I'd very much like to have my peers be men and women of reason and not just another sad collection of tribalistic superstitious fanatics that listen to the mumblings of their various witch doctors, get high on the local boiled weed of choice, paint themselves blue/red, then run naked at the opposing tribe screaming.
And whilst all this is happening... the fucking morons say "but science is on our side."... which doesn't mean what it sounds like... what they mean is "the heavens are with us"... the spirits... the gods... the fucking tooth fairies.
If you actually knew what science was in the first place... and you clearly don't... then you'd know that science is the process evaluation and if you wish to honor that process... you actually have to do it. Not just support a side that says they're with science, paint yourself the tribal color, and attack.
seriously, dude... you want to get scientific? Because its going to involve putting down the pointy stick, washing that shit off your face, and actually talking about this like rational people. Short of that... I have more then enough frothing fanatics to hide behind. I don't need to fight you. Fuck it... I'll make some sandwiches and enjoy the show from the sidelines. I can giggle as you crack each other's skulls open in one pointless clusterfuck after another.
If you want to actually accomplish something. I you want to be more then a pawn in someone else's political game... you need to stop being a tool. The politicians don't care about the environment. They want to win their political fights because they want to win them. Right or wrong. They don't care. They want to win because winning is power. And you are more meat for their shield wall. Nothing more.
I do not say any of this to support one side or the other. They're both contemptible. And until you grasp that you're just going to be a pawn. I refuse to be a pawn. And the only way to do that is to fucking walk off the chess board and do something more useful.
Can you do that? Or are you going to tell me again "but the other side started it" or "they don't follow science but we do."... or other assorted nonsense?
Not at all.
The US economy in real terms is vastly larger then it was during WW2... adjust for inflation and it is also larger... also our per capita GDP is larger... so you're just wrong.
As to WW2 itself, that was hardly a sustainable taxation rate. The US was running up massive debts because it was in the middle of a world war. If you want to claim that we can raise taxes higher because at some point in during a WW2 we had higher taxes... I can only point out you're being unreasonable because that is obviously not sustainable.
As to your claim that raising taxes and cutting spending are the same thing... they're clearly not in the same way that eating more and exercising less are not the same thing.
Your unwillingness to admit obvious points renders your position unreasonable.
You won't admit that because you're unreasonable. You'll say that I'm dismissing you and not taking your unreasonable points seriously which you will claim is unreasonable. However it is not unreasonable to reject unreasonable positions.
If you wish to render your position more reasonable then you can moderate and qualify your positions so that they are subject to reasonable correction.
Short of that... no reasonable person is likely to be able to get a reasonable argument out of you.
Which is only reasonable.
... that have eyes painted on them so they look alert when really they nodded off hours ago.
If you want to get china's attention... you're going to need to apply some sort of export/import tax that relates to carbon debt. Short of that... china shall snooze through your presentation.
First they attack the gamers with the whole gamergate thing. All of which was shown to be a scam by political elements using every dirty trick they could think of to get power... literally sleeping with people to gain influence... extortion... bribery... baiting people to attack them and then playing the victim.
Second, they go after 4chan which while a wretched hive of scum and villainy is hardly worth a national campaign.
I mean seriously... wtf? Who the fuck are these people are do they really want to the nerd culture to respond in kind? Because... if they want to be stalked... we have stalkers... we have people that can trace all their silly little stories back to the roots... keep spreadsheets on all their activities... and cross reference all claims. Do they really want to start a fight with millions of aspi under employed men? It just seems like pissing on a bee hive.
For all google's sins, wouldn't the federal government be a bigger offender on this issue? And since stanford is obviously going to still cash those checks what exactly is the point of not taking google's money? I mean... that's like saying "I won't take money from this street thug but I'll take money from the kingpin."... it is absurd. I mean... snowden was not whistle blowing on google.
All of it what you say is true though the blade cuts both ways.
Are you willing to impale yourself on that blade? I am... the price will be that neither of can say what is going on definitively. Which means more study and examination.
Which from my stand point is fine.
Checkmate. *yawns and walks away*
Why is that the most reasonable thing to do?
First, we all agree we should cut waste. The problem is that many people view waste as vital. One person's garbage is another person's gold. How many stupid programs and means of doing things are sacred to one faction and anathema to the other? We first must define what is waste and what is not waste.
Second, your plan for the military is too vague. What is decent and what is "never gets used"? Would you go to war with Nazi Germany? I'm just trying to understand what you mean by that because if you mean literally never gets used it will have massive consequences that you have to own when they come due.
Third, why does increasing spending on social programs make sense if we're running a trillion dollars over budget? Look, I don't mind spending money on social programs. But first please ensure that you're not running up the debt to fund what are often meaningless feel good programs that don't do anything but waste money.
Forth, when people say "raise taxes" they almost always mean "raise someone else's taxes to pay for something I want." Which can roughly be simplified to "I believe other people should pay for my stuff."... Which is all well and good but I'd like some justification for that besides "I want stuff and don't care who pays for it."
Look... My attitude on these four points are as follows:
1. Yeah... cut waste. I define waste as any money spent beyond what is needed to achieve the desired goal. So for example, if I can hire half as many people to do the same job just as well... then I believe we should hire half as many people. If it is cheaper to have a private company or a collection of private companies do something rather then the federal government... then I would rather them do it. It is sometimes cheaper. Another idea might be giving certain functions to local authority rather then having them done by the federal government. Lots of things do not need to be done in Washington DC. The locals care more about their part of the country then anyone else... just give them authority and then if they even need money you can look at giving them some of the money the feds would have spent on it. And then you can even look at volunteers. A lot of times people will just do things for free if you empower them to do it which means zero labor expenses. Think of all the things the federal government could get people to do for the price of throwing a pizza party at the end of it all and passing out stickers.
2. The military is actually the primary justification for the US government itself. Consider that without external threats the US would never have united in the first place. The 13 colonies never would have united without an external threat. Social programs are not enough to keep the country together. So if you basically make the military a tiny portion of what the US is doing you are fundamentally undermining the union. Many portions of the country only remain part of the union because of concerns about international threats... be that military, diplomatic, or trade. In a perfectly secure world, there would be no place for super powers. That understood, you should also consider aspects like global security and what you are willing to sacrifice? How many millions of people are you willing to let get literally crucified? That is literally something happening in the middle east right now. They are crucifying people. Now I am not saying you have a responsibility to stop that or that the US does. I am saying that if you make a strategic choice to not engage in such matters you must commit to that policy and have the moral courage to simply sit and watch when it happens. If you can do that, then we can technically back off. The US historically has not be able to do that since WW2. Every time something terrible starts happening we feel obliged to help. And that help requires a robust military able to engage on multiple fronts against determined battle hardened and often ruthless enemies. It is one or the other. What I worry about is that
Okay.
At zero taxes... you get no money because you've taxed people zero dollars.
At 100 percent taxes you get substantially less then what we'd find the middle because even you annihilate the economy... EVEN YOU... would have to admit that you get LESS at 100 percent then you would at some point in the middle between 0 and 100 percent.
Which means EVEN YOU have no basis to contradict the laffer curve.
Now you can argue WHERE the graph curves. BUT you have ZERO basis to claim that it does not curve at all.
And if it does... then the laffer curve exists and you were wrong to attempt to contradict me.
You're wrong. Obviously and inescapably. You're going to cast out some stupid insult and try to save face... but it fools none but the fools.
Your best bet for salvaging some of your credibility would be to concede my point and then if you still want to fight me argue that the graph doesn't curve until the very end and does so extremely sharply. Which is your BEST option for fighting the laffer curve argument.
Where we go from there would be to examine tax revenues from various countries as they change tax rates. And the point of that will be to try and establish roughly where the laffer curve resides... fyi... that analysis will not back up your position... i've checked. But that will at least draw this out and give you a semblance of credibility. At least until I prove you wrong... but I suspect you're going to chicken out and run away long before anything can be established. I've had this discussion enough times with ideologues on the internet and they always chicken out when their arguments start to crumble.
But maybe you'll be the first not to do so... here is hoping. Really... I do hope you're different.
It doesn't matter who is spending money either.
The most evil, corrupt, and stupid person on earth could say something that was scientifically correct and the most good, honorable, and intelligent person on earth could say something that was scientifically invalid.
Science is not about moral virtue. Saying "the evil oil companies did X" is fucking irrelevant if you're talking about SCIENCE. If you care about POLITICS which is quite clearly your primary concern... then of course the actions of your political rivals is something you need to watch. However, science is not politics. It doesn't matter who says it.
Consider if you will the fucking Nazis... you know them? Killed millions of people... tried to take over the world... terrible taste in mustaches? Yeah, well, they were pretty good scientists and engineers weren't they? So what does that tell you? It tells you that you can be a complete scumbag and be a great scientist at the same time.
Morality, ethics, and politics do not make science good or bad. Science isn't an ideology or a belief system. It is a tool.
Science is like a gun... or a pencil... or a fork. Any group of people can use it so long as they know how to use it. With the gun... you know that the bullets come out of the tube and generally you want to point it at the people you want to make holes in. And so on.
So really, I don't care who is paying whom. It doesn't matter. There is no logical reason to conclude that the evil oil companies are wrong sans an argument that invalidates their argument scientifically. Now if you have that... then fine. But that argument won't be based on whether the oil companies made the argument or whether they were evil. That is at best ad hominem.
The oil companies you would have to admit are very technically proficient. They do a lot of very impressive things on a regular basis that are the envy of nations and other industries. Some of their deep sea extractions are about as complex space programs. Seriously look at some of it. They have guys in pressurized apartments for weeks. They go below the ocean in what look like space suits... and weld pipes in conditions as hostile as anything you'll find in orbit. And is there any public fan fare over that? No. That's what the petro chemical industry likes to call Tuesday.
These are not stupid people. Now you want to claim they're lying? Fine... prove that. But short of that you're just making political arguments.
I can't say why I have been modded up or down. It is often puzzling why it goes one way or the other.
That said, I would like to think that I was modded up because some people agreed with my statement that this whole AGW issue has been turned into a childish over politicized hissy fit between the two primary political factions.
And as such that it doesn't really have anything to do with science anymore despite the protestations of both factions to the contrary.
I'm not going to get into the misdeeds of one faction or the other because that just causes the partisans to get defensive which turns their brains off. You say X side did Y... and invariably X will say that Y was totally justified even though if the alternative side did Y it would be the worst thing ever.
It is stupid and I'm tired of idiot partisans bringing their mindless "yes he did/no he didn't" bullshit into every discussion.
Are there real issues here that can be scientifically examined? Absolutely. But it became totally impossible to do that the instant BOTH sides politicized the issue. Here some idiot partisan is going to say "but the other side did it first." First... that justifies nothing. And second it doesn't matter at that point. The point is not to be morally superior to your rival. I don't care which of you fuckwits started it. What matters is that it happened and there are consequences. It is like nuking a city... does it matter to the people living in the city who fired the nuke? Not really... they're extra crispy. And that's what happened. This argument has been under constant bombardment for years. And at this point even the partisans are so bored with it that they just reflexively gainsay the opposition without even bothering to listen to anything they have to say on the issue.
That means discourse is officially impossible... until the partisans get given some apple juice boxes and take a nap like good little 4 year olds. Short of that... madness is all you're going to get out of this issue.
There is real science here and I would love to discuss it... but I can't because the political morons pollute every discussion on this issue trying to turn it to their political favor rather then just understand it.
Disagree? Should we just skip right to the bit where we call each other terrible names and move on?
Being unreasonable isn't a rebuttal... it is just being unreasonable.
Clearly you don't know how science works.
Let me expand this a bit because you seem to think science only applies in some situations.
Lets say something is too complicated for the human brain to understand. Simply beyond us as a species. Then lets say scientists study this thing which is beyond us. Can they make up results or half ass it on the basis that they cannot understand it?
No.
See, if you actually valued science you wouldn't just accept what people say because they're experts. That isn't science. That is just the old "appeal to authority" fallacy followed by the just as old "ad verecundiam" which is basically the fallacy that because someone doesn't have certain qualifications their argument is inherently wrong and therefore should just accept whatever someone else says.
Look, you can spout logical fallacies at me all day and they'll never get traction. I know them all. They're mostly done because people are lazy. They think "if I say this, I win, and I don't have to actually defend my position."... Well, you always have to defend your position. If you're not defending your position you are not defending your position. End of story.
Which is fine. No one says you have to argue about this stuff on the internet. But if you want to argue about it then you have to argue about it. No shortcuts.
Science isn't gambling either.
Can you morons stop being political fuckpuppets for five seconds and actually grasp what science is at its core?
It is not politics.
It is not gambling.
It is not a popularity contest.
It is not a vote.
It is not your fucking opinion.
Collectively... the education system has apparently failed millions.
And while I'm sure some waste of oxygen is going to say "oh you're just being mean now." I will point out that it didn't start that way.
It started out like this:
1. Everyone needs to drop the silly factions of US vs THEM and just discuss the events, data, and science like rational people.
Then the predictable cavelcade of fucktardry responded:
2. No we should break into hateful factions and turn everything into a flame war.
To which I tried in vain to respond:
3. You're missing my point, by doing that we can't have a discussion and everything is just about insults and pissing on each other.
To which now you are saying:
4. But I think I have more dicks on my side and some of these guys drank a lot of water... so I'm in favor of just unzipping and spraying it all over the place.
Which leads us to where I am here:
5. Resorting to insults mostly because I find it personally cathartic to call a duck a duck... or in your case... a fucking retard.
Happy now? Is this what you want? Because this is all these STUPID environmental discussions will EVER be until people can get over their pathetic ideological rivalries for five seconds and just talk about it. If you can't do that... you have NOTHING to contribute to the discussion. Literally a waste of bandwidth and bandwidth is fucking cheap.
That isn't productive either. You can't just say "well those people did it first"... I don't really care.
Both factions can go fuck themselves. No one can have a rational discussion with those two four year olds poking each other, pulling each other's hair, and calling each other names. Its impossible to have a rational discussion on the issue with either group or possibly ANY group because if they are GROUPS they're not being scientists. They're fighting petty political battles at everyone's expense.
No. The rational argument was above where I cited the laffer curve.
I continued that with an explanation of it and why its simply an obvious fact.
The insults are not my argument.
I am not saying that I am right because you are stupid. I am saying that I am right for these reasons and you don't understand because you are stupid.
The reasons and arguments are actually my point. The insult is my conclusion.
This obvious rhetorical fact is easily overlooked... if you're a fucking asshat.
Nothing productive can be had in this discussion. You're too willfully ignorant to participate in anything sensible.
You're just proving my point.
This issue can't be discussed rationally unless you're able to be unbiased for five seconds.
And no... science is not a democracy.
ONE scientist can be right and every single other one on earth can be wrong. Science is not a popularity contest and it is not a democracy. YOU are thinking politically. Science is not politics.
If you can't grasp that then you have no value to any scientific discussion because you don't know what science is in the first place.