I wish them luck, but you are not following me, I am not talking about the majority of Finns, I am wondering about that minority that do not agree with the system. I don't care how much the majority is brainwashed into it, how it is 'ingrained', all that, I am genuinely interested in the other side of it, those who detest, dissent, disagree, do you understand my question? It's likely that you are not the person to answer it, I am posing that question, it's out there, somebody who understands it may leave a comment.
If a lot of the (ha!) "truly productive" check-out and leave Greece it would probably be a net gain for Greece.
- yeah, because the world is full of examples where countries with only poor people became great economic engines, pulling everybody out of dirt (and doing it without actually turning their entire populations into slave labor and the nation into a meat grinder).
Working and generating wealth is different from owning property and making money from it.
- it's called savings and investments. You can save your money, invest it and it works. Yes, the money works and you allowed it to work by collecting it and not spending it, that's why economies need savers - to allow investments to occur and allow businesses to have access to investors.
A token amount is not good enough. There is a reason that in USA the Constitution specified that the taxes that can be collected have to be either direct apportioned or excise. There is a genius behind that decision that very few realize. (and of-course it had to be broken in order to allow the insane growth of government past 1913).
1. Direct apportioned taxes, capitation and other direct apportioned taxes tax (a tax that applies to a person directly but is apportioned to the States). This means that if the federal government wants to raise taxes, it has to say by how much and it has to then use census data and depending on the populations of different States, apportion them their share. So if California has 12% of population, it would be responsible for 12% of this tax increase. Direct apportioned taxes were introduced by the founders this way in order to try and prevent 2 things:
a. Fraud in census data, that's because a State could overstate its population to send more Congressmen, Senators to the Washington.
b. US founders did not like direct taxes, they added that direct taxes had to be apportioned specifically so that poorer States would not always vote for tax increases. If the direct tax is not apportioned, then poorer States would always vote to increase taxes upon richer States, creating wealth redistribution and incentives to increase taxes on the rich (exactly the rhetoric by the government nowadays, that is so much supported by the poorer people). Apportioning direct taxes prevents this problem, because then direct taxes would have to be paid by poorer and wealthier states only depending on the size of their population.
2. Uniform excise taxes. These are indirect, so they can be collected from a person not directly, but through a merchant for example, such as sales taxes. Uniformity requirement means that there should not be special dealings when introducing them, people shouldn't be forced to pay different sales tax depending on their location or religion or race or whatever.
These types of taxes do not discriminate against people, these types of taxes do not make an assumption that the government owns your entire productive output, your income, and then it only makes a decision as to how much to steal from you in income taxes and figuring out these numbers attempting to maximize government profit.
Income taxes are a disaster in every way, they are morally objectionable, you become property of the State, which can levy any income taxes on you and you can't avoid them by not participating in transactions for example. Income taxes reduce savings and investment and so they are disastrous for the economy and income taxes allow the government to be funded based on your productivity rather than your spending, and that's a huge problem, because it changes the status of government, from being a spending item, something that you have to budget for, just like for everything else. This would mean that government could grow or shrink, depending on your spending patterns and this means that in bad times the government would not have an option but to shrink as it must, because gov't is a luxury item, and like all other items you should be able to cut back on it.
By allowing the gov't to tax your income, you give it ability to take away all of your productivity and only leave you with the bare minimum to survive the year with.
Actually the wars that USA fought against monarchy were fought over tiny taxes, 3%? The serfs only had to pay 25% of their earnings to their masters.
If you count all the taxes that people have to pay (in the upper brackets of-course), including the spread between corporate and other earnings (and not counting sale an property taxes), this can get higher than 90%, if you count the death taxes as well.
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No no, a token tax would not do it, it would take a flat rate tax applied equally to everybody to make them appreciate what taxes really are.
You are not shocking me, I am aware of this, it's similar to Sweden in the way they discriminate against people. This is completely lawlessness, discriminating on the level of the judicial system out in the open, not applying the law equally. Thus my question still remains, if any of you, those who are either working outside of the legal structure or left the country because of this collectivist nonsense are reading/., you can post something as AC. It's not a fact that anybody like that is reading or that they will see this comment, but hey, I am just curious.
I am not talking about the brainwashed, I am asking a legitimate question about people who do not agree with any of it, surely, no government in the world was able to brainwash their entire population. I expect a minimum of 5% of Finns to be completely and utterly disgusted with their country of birth because of this rampant collectivism. I am expect that some leave and some do figure out how to work and live outside of the system while pretending to be part of it.
Yeah, Finland is like a prison where you are forced to take shit while everybody is watching. I wonder what happens to the people in Finland who are not brainwashed into this collectivist nightmare, do they leave or do they end up working in some form of underground economy?
I don't know if anybody on/. understands the principle of austerity, but it seems that most of the planet doesn't understand it.
Austerity is reduction of spending by government, reduction of size of government. The checks that governments sends are supposed to be reduced or completely cut, stopped. The government cannot afford payments, the people cannot afford the government.
That's what austerity is or should be.
Instead the politicians have convinced huge number of people that austerity is supposed to be the same government (or even bigger), and the people are supposed to be taxed to pay for it.
What is actually happening is not austerity, it's theft. The banks that made all sorts of loans to governments of Greece want their money back and the political elite of nations is cooperating in this endeavour, raising taxes and selling off various properties to pay the loans. This is done to maintain the fiction that government debt is 'risk free'. It was always fiction, government debt is at the minimum as risky as the rest of the economy, but it's actually worse, because governments never decrease their spending, even when they cannot actually be afforded by their people.
The people who have holdings in foreign companies and banks outside of their countries are obviously those with the most foresight and those who understand that you do not hold all of your eggs in one basket.
Of-course the fact that government is not pursuing people on that list can mean many different things, for example it can mean that there are many politically connected people on that list.
Also there is another angle to this: the money is outside of the country, who says that Greek government has any claim to it at all? This journalist thinks that these people aren't paying taxes in Greece by hiding money elsewhere, but Greece is not USA or Canada, who want to tax your foreign earnings. Most countries of the world don't engage in such practices, only the 'most free' do.
Of-course the reality is that people who are truly productive and make plenty of money are always a target for the proletariat and the class war, they should be ready to protect themselves under these circumstances (many should have left Greece some time ago and many did).
What is ridiculous is your contention that a market is free without property rights being protected, with nobility and Kings, that have various rights and the common folks, who have no rights. The idea that the monopoly status that was granted to the East India Company means that the company was operating within Free Market settings is so ludicrous, that it actually amazes me that somebody made it, because it is so incredibly easy to refute.
It can crush competitors that would otherwise out-compete them
- yeah, by consistently delivering a better product at a better price. That's exactly how Standard Oil or Alcoa Aluminum got to the top and that's why they were taken down by the government, not by competitors. Competitors couldn't compete on price and product, they had to buy government to destroy the largest economies of scale, providing the best product at the best price.
Free markets are by definition unregulated, if government regulates markets then they are not free markets by definition, so your statement boils down to: free markets fail.
That's nonsense. Free markets succeed, they succeed so much, that the amount of wealth that they produce gets into the heads of all the people who are not productive but are good at selling themselves as politicians, and so they promise the mob to give them anything and everything for free and to take it from the successful companies.
This is very basic envy and class warfare and politicians are good at playing the crowds and crowds are really not forward looking, in the sense that they don't care that the long term consequences of such policies that are driven by their envy and greed end up destroying the economy. So the crowds vote for the politicians who promise free stuff, it's that simple. That's what destroys the free markets - mobocracy (democracy and politicians using it to destroy freedoms and set up tyranny of the mob via the government proxy).
Once the politicians are in power, who promise all of this, they easily pass various laws and regulations and the former free markets lose the freedoms and the wealth starts flowing from the productive part of the economy to the unproductive, wasteful, corrupt part of it.
That's what ends up destroying the economy and society in the process. Then the system crashes and at some point it has to rebuild itself. Since most people are not very intelligent, educated and mostly lazy, jealous and short-sighted, they can't recognize this process, the vicious circle and they repeat it because they do not learn from history.
There is nothing wrong with trusts, the only problem is corruption of merging private interests with government power.
Oh, and by the way, East India Company existed in the world of Kings and Earls and without any equal protections of PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS of other people.
That company existed in the time of slaves. King granted that company a MONOPOLY status for a few decades and it was ran by nobility. I mean if you are trying to make an example of a company operating in a free market environment, why don't you point at Standard Oil or the metal producers of the 19th century in USA, where in fact private property rights were protected for a change and people were treated equally enough (especially after the Civil War).
If you are going to talk about Free Market and Equality, maybe you shouldn't point at the time of nobility, Kings and monopoly charters.
- obviously. So you can understand that, do you understand that without government interference the way to grow your company is by satisfying customers? And growing your company is what you do to make more profits (absent government intervention). Do I have to spell it out?
As to being 'ethical', no, it's the governments that are unethical. Absent gov't, companies have to ensure that their name, their brand is not tarnished by any unethical behavior, because again, the name is the company. Once the name is tarnished, the profits disappear.
As to monopolies, you are spewing nonsense. Monopolies only exist with the threat of government force and support of government money, government creates and maintains monopolies, it nurtures them with regulations, laws, tax code, and when they fail, governments bail them out.
Any company that is a 'monopoly' in your eyes in the free market is only the best current provider of the product and service, it's not a monopoly because of force of regulations, taxes and subsidies. I do not have a problem with any temporary monopoly that arises in the free market, because I want the best product at the best price, not competition for the sake of competition (which is what the anti-trust laws are there for, to allow un-competitive companies to stay in business by raising prices by destroying the efficient highly competitive companies).
East India Company is an example of a great success story but it is also an example of government corruption.
Want to see something that is absurd today? US government.
At any point in time I prefer a large corporation that is good at what it does to any government monopoly.
There is no such thing as 'regulations' created by central planners. All such regulations are corruption, nothing else. The only true regulations exist in the free market, where companies have to compete with each other for the customers, who are not forced into any participation and only deal with the companies on voluntary basis.
- I am aware of different styles of fucking, but this new 'coding style fucking' intrigues me. So you are coding and she is.... trying to distract you from it with your 'fucking implement'? Or is it about maintaining proper indentation at every point of the fucking perimeter? Do expand on this theme.
Do you realize that for example in case of SS and Medicare, the people who paid the taxes that are supposedly related to those welfare programs were simply paying income taxes, but the early entrants paid almost nothing compared to what they are getting out of those programs, while the later entrants end up paying for the actual benefits of all the early entrants and the current payers (and supposedly those who'll pay in the future) pay much more in all terms, nominal and real, as proportion of their income and as total amounts?
Somebody who paid 30K into Medicare or SS who is now getting those benefits will end up taking out many times (at least 3, but more likely 10 times) the amount they paid?
Do you realize that none of the money that was paid 'into' those programs was invested, there are no funds? There are bonds, but those are not assets, all the money was spent. Every bond has to be sold in order to raise money, but every bond that is sold draws interest and must be bought back.
Thus every dollar that is collected is spent on something else, and then to replace it there is a debt that is created, and just in nominal terms for every dollar that is collected 2 must be paid back in future taxes and in real terms it's much worse than that because of inflation and because the benefits that are paid out are so much bigger than the money that was 'paid in'?
The point is that to have real fair and moral retirement, disability, health care plan a person shouldn't be forced to participate in any government program and instead he should be saving his own money, investing his own money to create his own retirement fund?
Same as with EI, if a person wants to get a pay out in case he is fired, he should be buying private insurance, not be forced to participate in gov't programs. And in order to avoid creating incentives for people to sit on EI until the money train ends, the payout for losing a job from such an insurance product should be done as one payment in bulk.
You have your EI plan and you lost a job after a year or more? You get a check, but only one check, it's a check from insurance, same as would be paid out if you died and had life insurance.
All insurance should be allowed to be insurance and not 'management plans'.
Same with health care and everything else. You are saying that you paid more into SS by age of 26 than others paid over their life times, you are right. If you are a young person you are getting screwed by the old folks.
SS, Medicare, all this stuff is a transfer of wealth from the young and poor people to the old and rich people, the old rich people have their savings, investments and they paid much less proportion of their income (and absolute numbers as well) into those programs over their life times than you would over a decade. By the time somebody who is relatively young and is paying 'into' those programs today gets to collect, he'll collect nothing compared to those, who he paid his entire life.
The ratio of payouts will be reduced, the years you'd have to work will be increased, most importantly the purchasing power of money is destroyed.
The real wages fell since about 1970 by 98% because of inflation, and that's NOT even counting all the increases in taxes.
That's why a high school drop out in 1960s could work at a factory and make enough money to maintain a family without debt, to own a house (and maybe another property) a couple of cars, save for the rainy day and for his kids education, he'd also pay for most of his health care out of pocket and high deductible insurance would be so cheap, that it would be no more than 2 bucks per person per month to cover 2.5 times yearly expenses for hospital stay with the worst health condition.
The government has absolutely annihilated people's productivity and purchasing power with inflation, regulations and taxes.
There is nothing wrong with 'trusts', that's gov't propaganda, because gov't sees all organizations as competition for resources.
Monopolies are only created by governments, free market does not create monopolies in the true sense of the word: as in businesses that are protected from competition by anything rather than market forces.
There is no virtue in competition for the sake of competition, all competitors need to give something to the customers that would justify their existence, so a company that is best (at the moment) at providing whatever good and service may enjoy temporary monopoly, it can be an economy of scale. The only reason it enjoys that status in a free market is because it provides the best product and nobody can beat the offer. That should be everybody's goal - to have the best product and service, not to legislate inefficient competition for the sake of competition (and really, for the sake of political contributions).
WalMart has great reputation of a a successful business, serving tens of millions of customers who visit the stores because the find them to be the best at prices and choices.
BP's problem is not a 'rating agency', it's the government that on one hand creates regulations that prevent BP (and others) from buying land and drilling for oil, etc., where it is most convenient and on the other hand the gov't stands there with public money, offering limited liability to drill in places that are very dangerous to work in.
Standard Oil was the best competitor, providing the cheapest product out of all of them for decades, based on that it became a very wealthy and independent company, that's why government broke it up (and oil NEVER went down in price again). In 1869 SO had 3% of market share and refined oil was over 30 cents per gallon. By 1899 SO brought prices down to under 6 cents per gallon, they did it with re-investment, technological innovations, better management decisions, etc. By 1911 SO had 150 competitors and prices for gas were falling. Once SO was broken, the gov't destroyed the most innovative and competitive business in the industry, basically destroyed the company that created the industry and prices for refined oil never went down again. This was not done for the sake of the market or consumers, it was done for the sake of the politicians, getting bribes from the much less successful competitors who needed prices to go up in order to be able to acquire more of the market and for that they needed to stop and destroy the economy of scale that SO was.
Whores are working people as opposed to collectivists.
All forms of collectivists (socialists, fascists, progressives, etc.) these are thieves. They sell their votes, their freedoms for a promise of a guaranteed daily access to the trough.
People who run their own businesses sell their productivity. Whores sell a service, many work for themselves, thus they are running a very limited business (if they are only selling their own time, rather than hiring others and selling their time).
I don't have a problem with whores, but you clearly don't believe that being whores is worse than being thieves, I disagree.
'Stupid'? Did I talk about anything else but business? In business you act in your own self-interest, the rest of your life is not under discussion here.
I just explained to somebody in another story how FDA stands in the way of people getting help they need, and here is another silly comment that I am replying to.
For profit health care is the solution to the problem.
The problem is government in health care, preventing all people who want to make a profit in it from participating in the market.
The problem is government intervention into health care, the FDA and all other regulations. Anybody with an EE degree (and even those without, but who learned on their own) should be able at least to try and provide a solution to this problem of expensive hearing aids, and they certainly should be doing it in an attempt to achieve profit, which would only indicate that they are on the right track (and here is another comment explaining why the profit motive is the only moral motive that we know works).
Any high schooler with an interest in electronics and with a pair of hands should be able to attempt and build a device that would help a person with bad hearing, but very few high school students have the money and connections needed to take on the government machine, that stands on his way, protecting the monopolies and oligopolies that government prefers.
Of-course governments prefer monopolies, that is how governments can ensure huge potential monetary sources to run election campaigns and pad politicians' bank accounts.
The for-profit motive is not the problem with the industry, the for-profit motive is the problem with the government.
The only one private rating agency that took US credit rating down twice, even when faced with SEC legal challenge is the one that is paid by the buyers of the bonds, not by the sellers.
That's the point, they have their name on the line and they want repeat business and they are getting paid by the consumers of the product.
That's all it takes to have an incentive to make profit in the future. What would be the business model if the rating agency didn't have a name and screwed its customers exactly, while asking them to pay some extra money to have the rating on the bottle?
And that rating agency, Egan-Jones Ratings Co., is now facing SEC attack because they are providing their customers with the advice that their customers are paying to get.
FDA is exactly like SEC, paid by the gov't and the large corporations, keeping the high barrier to entry to all the potential competitors.
None of which requires government. Not even police, never mind 'primary education'. What the hell? Primary education?
Roads, water, power, gas, fire department, none of it has anything to do with government and only leads to more corruption and destruction of individual rights, when government is allowed to get involved in it.
No, you are confusing cause and effect. I do not attribute morality to intentions, only to consequences. Intentions are irrelevant, what matters are the consequences, and intentions are dependent on situation, culture and other factors, they are arbitrary. Concept of morality changes depending on who and when and why is spewing it.
Now look at profit motive. There are no intentions but to make a profit but given free market the consequences are based on the combined voluntary cooperation of market actors, participants, individuals.
This is the true morality, it doesn't have a technocrat or an authoritarian regime telling us what we must do to be moral, instead everybody does their own thing and the combined actions of all lead to the most efficient distribution of productive output that we have ever observed.
Here is the thing: what you find moral, I do not. What I may find moral, you will not. However this does not mean that acting in our own self-interest (without hurting each other, that's one of the basic rule that must be followed that is fair to all participants and without discrimination based on any association with any group) will not produce the results that we find satisfactory.
That's the true morality - not being coerced into anything but cooperating through the rational search for better life, that's what they called 'pursuit of happiness'.
Mitt Romney is a socialist, who wouldn't touch Medicare and SS, he is also a corporatist who wouldn't touch military spending and wars. Wait, did I describe Romney or Obama? I don't see the difference.
My vote would be with Ron Paul and now Gary Johnson.
I am much more liberal than Obama on all social issues, government doesn't have any authority or moral right to tell you how to live your life, what to eat, drink, who and when to fuck, what life is and when it starts, etc.
I am much more conservative on money and economics than Romney, everything that government does that is not explicitly allowed by the Constitution is illegal for government to do. Gov't shouldn't be running trade deficits, especially not ones financed with fake money and other borrowing, it shouldn't be taxing income, it shouldn't be creating dependency programs like SS and Medicare it shouldn't be running illegal wars (all wars since 1947 AFAIC). Obviously all gov't actions for about 100 years now I consider to be illegal.
I don't believe that you understand what business is, have you ever tried running one? Try it.
Business is not about creating jobs, it's about making money for yourself. Ask yourself a question: why would I start a business?
The answer is: if you believe that by working for yourself you'll make more money than by working for somebody else's business, then you may want to start a business. Maybe you think you have a good idea and people will buy your product and service, if that is true, then you WILL make more money with your own business than if you keep working for somebody else.
But nowhere in there should you be concerned with 'creating jobs'. If you create jobs while running your business, you are not doing it to create jobs, you are doing it because that's the best way to maximize your own performance.
A business is a machine that you are building, the machine makes something and you are building it out of blocks. You are building it out of tools, processes, people, supply chain connections, sales, management of it all. That's the machine that you are creating as a business owner that makes YOU as a business owner much more productive than if you were still working for somebody else.
If the machine that you are building is good at producing products and services that the market wants and pays for, and you are able to cover all the costs and make some profit, then you know you are on the right track.
Like that story about 17000 dollar ultra high definition TV. LG doesn't know that the TV is a good product that will sell, but if there are early adopters and they'll buy enough of those TVs to allow LG to take that money and re-invest it into the production line, streamlining it, making it more efficient, then LG will eventually lower the price to get a wider market, so when the price goes down (if there are enough sales at 17K and there is a competitive force) to a lower price, then more people will buy the TV, LG will make more money by selling to more people. That's what companies do to make money - try to get more customers and to get more customers they bring prices down.
That's why it's not gov't with AT&T monopoly, but relatively free market of cellular phones that allowed almost everybody on the planet (even the poorest) to have a mobile phone.
But this means that in order to get the widest possible market reach, the company must find the most efficiencies in the market and ensure lowest possible costs of all the components and processes that go into manufacturing and selling the product. If this means moving jobs to markets where governments are not dead set on destroying private property rights, where governments are not taxing through the nose and are not inflating like maniacs, so that there are actual savings and investment pools available in the system to build entire supply chains, that's where the manufacturing and production will go.
Profit motive is the most moral engine of economic progress because it doesn't discriminate on anything but ability to pay for the product. Profit motive in fact pushes companies to find solutions to make product more and more affordable. Profit motive is the economic engine and it's the most moral engine, because it is based on voluntary participation of all the actors.
Government protectionism reduces profits, it raises prices, it makes things LESS affordable for the majority of the people, not more affordable. Anything that gov't purports it wants to provide 'for free' to the poor ends up being unaffordable by the majority because government money and regulations create monopolies and push prices up by making end clients price insensitive and promotes the idea of entitlement not based on productivity.
'Relaxing lending regulations' make things worse by creating a temporary boost and inflating some bubbles in the economy, which mis-allocate resources, create businesses that would not exist in the normal free market, create larger and larger governments and skew trade balance. Eventually the
- I know I am right, but you are wrong. Without gov't interference BP wouldn't be able to drill offshore if they couldn't buy enough insurance to cover the possible liability to all the private property owners around them.
They should be free to sell thalidomide to pregnant women
- yes, anybody should be free to SELL anything they want. Including poisons, drugs, anything.
People who BUY need to do their research. You can't delegate your responsibility to somebody, call them gov't, give them guns and expect them to do what you want rather what they want.
If people in the free market would pay for a rating agency doing the job of FDA, rating drugs, then there would be a competitive environment. Some drug manufacturers would not participate, some would. Some rating agencies would take money from the industry and some would make their name by adding to the cost of the final product and thus take their money from the consumers. There would be actual competition. People would see the competition and lower prices and more different types of products in the market, because there wouldn't be FDA blocking people without hundreds of millions of dollars that need to be thrown at all the nonsense FDA requires, but they would be able to come out with more products on the market than just erectile dysfunction, which is all that the companies are trying to fight nowadays, because it's an easy enough sell and because of patent created and government protected monopolies.
Your comment is tripe, but it is funny to take apart for what it is.
I didn't mean to say that this product is good or that it's bad, I am just pointing out that the price (which is mentioned in the story and in the headline) is not something bad or weird, it's basically a question. The question is as you are asking: is the product good or not? It will be answered by the market. If people buy it, then it's good, the company will be able to expand production, find efficiencies, enter other markets with more customers in them (people with less purchasing power) and eventually everybody will have a TV like that.
If it's not a good product, the company will eat a loss. The good thing about it is that it's not a bank, so the loss in a free market situation is limited to the investors.
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I wish them luck, but you are not following me, I am not talking about the majority of Finns, I am wondering about that minority that do not agree with the system. I don't care how much the majority is brainwashed into it, how it is 'ingrained', all that, I am genuinely interested in the other side of it, those who detest, dissent, disagree, do you understand my question? It's likely that you are not the person to answer it, I am posing that question, it's out there, somebody who understands it may leave a comment.
If a lot of the (ha!) "truly productive" check-out and leave Greece it would probably be a net gain for Greece.
- yeah, because the world is full of examples where countries with only poor people became great economic engines, pulling everybody out of dirt (and doing it without actually turning their entire populations into slave labor and the nation into a meat grinder).
Working and generating wealth is different from owning property and making money from it.
- it's called savings and investments. You can save your money, invest it and it works. Yes, the money works and you allowed it to work by collecting it and not spending it, that's why economies need savers - to allow investments to occur and allow businesses to have access to investors.
A token amount is not good enough. There is a reason that in USA the Constitution specified that the taxes that can be collected have to be either direct apportioned or excise. There is a genius behind that decision that very few realize. (and of-course it had to be broken in order to allow the insane growth of government past 1913).
1. Direct apportioned taxes, capitation and other direct apportioned taxes tax (a tax that applies to a person directly but is apportioned to the States). This means that if the federal government wants to raise taxes, it has to say by how much and it has to then use census data and depending on the populations of different States, apportion them their share. So if California has 12% of population, it would be responsible for 12% of this tax increase. Direct apportioned taxes were introduced by the founders this way in order to try and prevent 2 things:
a. Fraud in census data, that's because a State could overstate its population to send more Congressmen, Senators to the Washington.
b. US founders did not like direct taxes, they added that direct taxes had to be apportioned specifically so that poorer States would not always vote for tax increases. If the direct tax is not apportioned, then poorer States would always vote to increase taxes upon richer States, creating wealth redistribution and incentives to increase taxes on the rich (exactly the rhetoric by the government nowadays, that is so much supported by the poorer people). Apportioning direct taxes prevents this problem, because then direct taxes would have to be paid by poorer and wealthier states only depending on the size of their population.
2. Uniform excise taxes. These are indirect, so they can be collected from a person not directly, but through a merchant for example, such as sales taxes. Uniformity requirement means that there should not be special dealings when introducing them, people shouldn't be forced to pay different sales tax depending on their location or religion or race or whatever.
These types of taxes do not discriminate against people, these types of taxes do not make an assumption that the government owns your entire productive output, your income, and then it only makes a decision as to how much to steal from you in income taxes and figuring out these numbers attempting to maximize government profit.
Income taxes are a disaster in every way, they are morally objectionable, you become property of the State, which can levy any income taxes on you and you can't avoid them by not participating in transactions for example. Income taxes reduce savings and investment and so they are disastrous for the economy and income taxes allow the government to be funded based on your productivity rather than your spending, and that's a huge problem, because it changes the status of government, from being a spending item, something that you have to budget for, just like for everything else. This would mean that government could grow or shrink, depending on your spending patterns and this means that in bad times the government would not have an option but to shrink as it must, because gov't is a luxury item, and like all other items you should be able to cut back on it.
By allowing the gov't to tax your income, you give it ability to take away all of your productivity and only leave you with the bare minimum to survive the year with.
Actually the wars that USA fought against monarchy were fought over tiny taxes, 3%? The serfs only had to pay 25% of their earnings to their masters.
If you count all the taxes that people have to pay (in the upper brackets of-course), including the spread between corporate and other earnings (and not counting sale an property taxes), this can get higher than 90%, if you count the death taxes as well.
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No no, a token tax would not do it, it would take a flat rate tax applied equally to everybody to make them appreciate what taxes really are.
You are not shocking me, I am aware of this, it's similar to Sweden in the way they discriminate against people. This is completely lawlessness, discriminating on the level of the judicial system out in the open, not applying the law equally. Thus my question still remains, if any of you, those who are either working outside of the legal structure or left the country because of this collectivist nonsense are reading /., you can post something as AC. It's not a fact that anybody like that is reading or that they will see this comment, but hey, I am just curious.
I am not talking about the brainwashed, I am asking a legitimate question about people who do not agree with any of it, surely, no government in the world was able to brainwash their entire population. I expect a minimum of 5% of Finns to be completely and utterly disgusted with their country of birth because of this rampant collectivism. I am expect that some leave and some do figure out how to work and live outside of the system while pretending to be part of it.
Yeah, Finland is like a prison where you are forced to take shit while everybody is watching. I wonder what happens to the people in Finland who are not brainwashed into this collectivist nightmare, do they leave or do they end up working in some form of underground economy?
I don't know if anybody on /. understands the principle of austerity, but it seems that most of the planet doesn't understand it.
Austerity is reduction of spending by government, reduction of size of government. The checks that governments sends are supposed to be reduced or completely cut, stopped. The government cannot afford payments, the people cannot afford the government.
That's what austerity is or should be.
Instead the politicians have convinced huge number of people that austerity is supposed to be the same government (or even bigger), and the people are supposed to be taxed to pay for it.
What is actually happening is not austerity, it's theft. The banks that made all sorts of loans to governments of Greece want their money back and the political elite of nations is cooperating in this endeavour, raising taxes and selling off various properties to pay the loans. This is done to maintain the fiction that government debt is 'risk free'. It was always fiction, government debt is at the minimum as risky as the rest of the economy, but it's actually worse, because governments never decrease their spending, even when they cannot actually be afforded by their people.
The people who have holdings in foreign companies and banks outside of their countries are obviously those with the most foresight and those who understand that you do not hold all of your eggs in one basket.
Of-course the fact that government is not pursuing people on that list can mean many different things, for example it can mean that there are many politically connected people on that list.
Also there is another angle to this: the money is outside of the country, who says that Greek government has any claim to it at all? This journalist thinks that these people aren't paying taxes in Greece by hiding money elsewhere, but Greece is not USA or Canada, who want to tax your foreign earnings. Most countries of the world don't engage in such practices, only the 'most free' do.
Of-course the reality is that people who are truly productive and make plenty of money are always a target for the proletariat and the class war, they should be ready to protect themselves under these circumstances (many should have left Greece some time ago and many did).
What is ridiculous is your contention that a market is free without property rights being protected, with nobility and Kings, that have various rights and the common folks, who have no rights. The idea that the monopoly status that was granted to the East India Company means that the company was operating within Free Market settings is so ludicrous, that it actually amazes me that somebody made it, because it is so incredibly easy to refute.
It can crush competitors that would otherwise out-compete them
- yeah, by consistently delivering a better product at a better price. That's exactly how Standard Oil or Alcoa Aluminum got to the top and that's why they were taken down by the government, not by competitors. Competitors couldn't compete on price and product, they had to buy government to destroy the largest economies of scale, providing the best product at the best price.
Free markets are by definition unregulated, if government regulates markets then they are not free markets by definition, so your statement boils down to: free markets fail.
That's nonsense. Free markets succeed, they succeed so much, that the amount of wealth that they produce gets into the heads of all the people who are not productive but are good at selling themselves as politicians, and so they promise the mob to give them anything and everything for free and to take it from the successful companies.
This is very basic envy and class warfare and politicians are good at playing the crowds and crowds are really not forward looking, in the sense that they don't care that the long term consequences of such policies that are driven by their envy and greed end up destroying the economy. So the crowds vote for the politicians who promise free stuff, it's that simple. That's what destroys the free markets - mobocracy (democracy and politicians using it to destroy freedoms and set up tyranny of the mob via the government proxy).
Once the politicians are in power, who promise all of this, they easily pass various laws and regulations and the former free markets lose the freedoms and the wealth starts flowing from the productive part of the economy to the unproductive, wasteful, corrupt part of it.
That's what ends up destroying the economy and society in the process. Then the system crashes and at some point it has to rebuild itself. Since most people are not very intelligent, educated and mostly lazy, jealous and short-sighted, they can't recognize this process, the vicious circle and they repeat it because they do not learn from history.
There is nothing wrong with trusts, the only problem is corruption of merging private interests with government power.
Oh, and by the way, East India Company existed in the world of Kings and Earls and without any equal protections of PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS of other people.
That company existed in the time of slaves. King granted that company a MONOPOLY status for a few decades and it was ran by nobility. I mean if you are trying to make an example of a company operating in a free market environment, why don't you point at Standard Oil or the metal producers of the 19th century in USA, where in fact private property rights were protected for a change and people were treated equally enough (especially after the Civil War).
If you are going to talk about Free Market and Equality, maybe you shouldn't point at the time of nobility, Kings and monopoly charters.
The goal is the only to make the most profit.
- obviously. So you can understand that, do you understand that without government interference the way to grow your company is by satisfying customers? And growing your company is what you do to make more profits (absent government intervention). Do I have to spell it out?
As to being 'ethical', no, it's the governments that are unethical. Absent gov't, companies have to ensure that their name, their brand is not tarnished by any unethical behavior, because again, the name is the company. Once the name is tarnished, the profits disappear.
As to monopolies, you are spewing nonsense. Monopolies only exist with the threat of government force and support of government money, government creates and maintains monopolies, it nurtures them with regulations, laws, tax code, and when they fail, governments bail them out.
Any company that is a 'monopoly' in your eyes in the free market is only the best current provider of the product and service, it's not a monopoly because of force of regulations, taxes and subsidies. I do not have a problem with any temporary monopoly that arises in the free market, because I want the best product at the best price, not competition for the sake of competition (which is what the anti-trust laws are there for, to allow un-competitive companies to stay in business by raising prices by destroying the efficient highly competitive companies).
East India Company is an example of a great success story but it is also an example of government corruption.
Want to see something that is absurd today? US government.
At any point in time I prefer a large corporation that is good at what it does to any government monopoly.
There is no such thing as 'regulations' created by central planners. All such regulations are corruption, nothing else. The only true regulations exist in the free market, where companies have to compete with each other for the customers, who are not forced into any participation and only deal with the companies on voluntary basis.
coding style fucking
- I am aware of different styles of fucking, but this new 'coding style fucking' intrigues me. So you are coding and she is .... trying to distract you from it with your 'fucking implement'? Or is it about maintaining proper indentation at every point of the fucking perimeter? Do expand on this theme.
Do you realize that for example in case of SS and Medicare, the people who paid the taxes that are supposedly related to those welfare programs were simply paying income taxes, but the early entrants paid almost nothing compared to what they are getting out of those programs, while the later entrants end up paying for the actual benefits of all the early entrants and the current payers (and supposedly those who'll pay in the future) pay much more in all terms, nominal and real, as proportion of their income and as total amounts?
Somebody who paid 30K into Medicare or SS who is now getting those benefits will end up taking out many times (at least 3, but more likely 10 times) the amount they paid?
Do you realize that none of the money that was paid 'into' those programs was invested, there are no funds? There are bonds, but those are not assets, all the money was spent. Every bond has to be sold in order to raise money, but every bond that is sold draws interest and must be bought back.
Thus every dollar that is collected is spent on something else, and then to replace it there is a debt that is created, and just in nominal terms for every dollar that is collected 2 must be paid back in future taxes and in real terms it's much worse than that because of inflation and because the benefits that are paid out are so much bigger than the money that was 'paid in'?
The point is that to have real fair and moral retirement, disability, health care plan a person shouldn't be forced to participate in any government program and instead he should be saving his own money, investing his own money to create his own retirement fund?
Same as with EI, if a person wants to get a pay out in case he is fired, he should be buying private insurance, not be forced to participate in gov't programs. And in order to avoid creating incentives for people to sit on EI until the money train ends, the payout for losing a job from such an insurance product should be done as one payment in bulk.
You have your EI plan and you lost a job after a year or more? You get a check, but only one check, it's a check from insurance, same as would be paid out if you died and had life insurance.
All insurance should be allowed to be insurance and not 'management plans'.
Same with health care and everything else. You are saying that you paid more into SS by age of 26 than others paid over their life times, you are right. If you are a young person you are getting screwed by the old folks.
SS, Medicare, all this stuff is a transfer of wealth from the young and poor people to the old and rich people, the old rich people have their savings, investments and they paid much less proportion of their income (and absolute numbers as well) into those programs over their life times than you would over a decade. By the time somebody who is relatively young and is paying 'into' those programs today gets to collect, he'll collect nothing compared to those, who he paid his entire life.
The ratio of payouts will be reduced, the years you'd have to work will be increased, most importantly the purchasing power of money is destroyed.
The real wages fell since about 1970 by 98% because of inflation, and that's NOT even counting all the increases in taxes.
That's why a high school drop out in 1960s could work at a factory and make enough money to maintain a family without debt, to own a house (and maybe another property) a couple of cars, save for the rainy day and for his kids education, he'd also pay for most of his health care out of pocket and high deductible insurance would be so cheap, that it would be no more than 2 bucks per person per month to cover 2.5 times yearly expenses for hospital stay with the worst health condition.
The government has absolutely annihilated people's productivity and purchasing power with inflation, regulations and taxes.
There is nothing wrong with 'trusts', that's gov't propaganda, because gov't sees all organizations as competition for resources.
Monopolies are only created by governments, free market does not create monopolies in the true sense of the word: as in businesses that are protected from competition by anything rather than market forces.
There is no virtue in competition for the sake of competition, all competitors need to give something to the customers that would justify their existence, so a company that is best (at the moment) at providing whatever good and service may enjoy temporary monopoly, it can be an economy of scale. The only reason it enjoys that status in a free market is because it provides the best product and nobody can beat the offer. That should be everybody's goal - to have the best product and service, not to legislate inefficient competition for the sake of competition (and really, for the sake of political contributions).
WalMart has great reputation of a a successful business, serving tens of millions of customers who visit the stores because the find them to be the best at prices and choices.
BP's problem is not a 'rating agency', it's the government that on one hand creates regulations that prevent BP (and others) from buying land and drilling for oil, etc., where it is most convenient and on the other hand the gov't stands there with public money, offering limited liability to drill in places that are very dangerous to work in.
Standard Oil was the best competitor, providing the cheapest product out of all of them for decades, based on that it became a very wealthy and independent company, that's why government broke it up (and oil NEVER went down in price again). In 1869 SO had 3% of market share and refined oil was over 30 cents per gallon. By 1899 SO brought prices down to under 6 cents per gallon, they did it with re-investment, technological innovations, better management decisions, etc. By 1911 SO had 150 competitors and prices for gas were falling. Once SO was broken, the gov't destroyed the most innovative and competitive business in the industry, basically destroyed the company that created the industry and prices for refined oil never went down again. This was not done for the sake of the market or consumers, it was done for the sake of the politicians, getting bribes from the much less successful competitors who needed prices to go up in order to be able to acquire more of the market and for that they needed to stop and destroy the economy of scale that SO was.
Whores are working people as opposed to collectivists.
All forms of collectivists (socialists, fascists, progressives, etc.) these are thieves. They sell their votes, their freedoms for a promise of a guaranteed daily access to the trough.
People who run their own businesses sell their productivity. Whores sell a service, many work for themselves, thus they are running a very limited business (if they are only selling their own time, rather than hiring others and selling their time).
I don't have a problem with whores, but you clearly don't believe that being whores is worse than being thieves, I disagree.
'Stupid'? Did I talk about anything else but business? In business you act in your own self-interest, the rest of your life is not under discussion here.
I just explained to somebody in another story how FDA stands in the way of people getting help they need, and here is another silly comment that I am replying to.
For profit health care is the solution to the problem.
The problem is government in health care, preventing all people who want to make a profit in it from participating in the market.
The problem is government intervention into health care, the FDA and all other regulations. Anybody with an EE degree (and even those without, but who learned on their own) should be able at least to try and provide a solution to this problem of expensive hearing aids, and they certainly should be doing it in an attempt to achieve profit, which would only indicate that they are on the right track (and here is another comment explaining why the profit motive is the only moral motive that we know works).
Any high schooler with an interest in electronics and with a pair of hands should be able to attempt and build a device that would help a person with bad hearing, but very few high school students have the money and connections needed to take on the government machine, that stands on his way, protecting the monopolies and oligopolies that government prefers.
Of-course governments prefer monopolies, that is how governments can ensure huge potential monetary sources to run election campaigns and pad politicians' bank accounts.
The for-profit motive is not the problem with the industry, the for-profit motive is the problem with the government.
I am never relying on people to pass 'moral' judgment, but I rely on people to act in their own self interest, which means to make more money.
I replied to a comment similar to yours a week or so ago and the same reply applies here.
Here is why.
The only one private rating agency that took US credit rating down twice, even when faced with SEC legal challenge is the one that is paid by the buyers of the bonds, not by the sellers.
That's the point, they have their name on the line and they want repeat business and they are getting paid by the consumers of the product.
That's all it takes to have an incentive to make profit in the future. What would be the business model if the rating agency didn't have a name and screwed its customers exactly, while asking them to pay some extra money to have the rating on the bottle?
And that rating agency, Egan-Jones Ratings Co., is now facing SEC attack because they are providing their customers with the advice that their customers are paying to get.
FDA is exactly like SEC, paid by the gov't and the large corporations, keeping the high barrier to entry to all the potential competitors.
And people ask silly questions: like 'why can't industry design an affordable hearing aid'. It's obvious why, it's lack of competition ensured by the government.
None of which requires government. Not even police, never mind 'primary education'. What the hell? Primary education?
Roads, water, power, gas, fire department, none of it has anything to do with government and only leads to more corruption and destruction of individual rights, when government is allowed to get involved in it.
No, you are confusing cause and effect. I do not attribute morality to intentions, only to consequences. Intentions are irrelevant, what matters are the consequences, and intentions are dependent on situation, culture and other factors, they are arbitrary. Concept of morality changes depending on who and when and why is spewing it.
Now look at profit motive. There are no intentions but to make a profit but given free market the consequences are based on the combined voluntary cooperation of market actors, participants, individuals.
This is the true morality, it doesn't have a technocrat or an authoritarian regime telling us what we must do to be moral, instead everybody does their own thing and the combined actions of all lead to the most efficient distribution of productive output that we have ever observed.
Here is the thing: what you find moral, I do not. What I may find moral, you will not. However this does not mean that acting in our own self-interest (without hurting each other, that's one of the basic rule that must be followed that is fair to all participants and without discrimination based on any association with any group) will not produce the results that we find satisfactory.
That's the true morality - not being coerced into anything but cooperating through the rational search for better life, that's what they called 'pursuit of happiness'.
I don't see where your comment intersects with mine at all, so you are clearly barking at your own strawman there.
Mitt Romney is a socialist, who wouldn't touch Medicare and SS, he is also a corporatist who wouldn't touch military spending and wars. Wait, did I describe Romney or Obama? I don't see the difference.
My vote would be with Ron Paul and now Gary Johnson.
I am much more liberal than Obama on all social issues, government doesn't have any authority or moral right to tell you how to live your life, what to eat, drink, who and when to fuck, what life is and when it starts, etc.
I am much more conservative on money and economics than Romney, everything that government does that is not explicitly allowed by the Constitution is illegal for government to do. Gov't shouldn't be running trade deficits, especially not ones financed with fake money and other borrowing, it shouldn't be taxing income, it shouldn't be creating dependency programs like SS and Medicare it shouldn't be running illegal wars (all wars since 1947 AFAIC). Obviously all gov't actions for about 100 years now I consider to be illegal.
I don't believe that you understand what business is, have you ever tried running one? Try it.
Business is not about creating jobs, it's about making money for yourself. Ask yourself a question: why would I start a business?
The answer is: if you believe that by working for yourself you'll make more money than by working for somebody else's business, then you may want to start a business. Maybe you think you have a good idea and people will buy your product and service, if that is true, then you WILL make more money with your own business than if you keep working for somebody else.
But nowhere in there should you be concerned with 'creating jobs'. If you create jobs while running your business, you are not doing it to create jobs, you are doing it because that's the best way to maximize your own performance.
A business is a machine that you are building, the machine makes something and you are building it out of blocks. You are building it out of tools, processes, people, supply chain connections, sales, management of it all. That's the machine that you are creating as a business owner that makes YOU as a business owner much more productive than if you were still working for somebody else.
If the machine that you are building is good at producing products and services that the market wants and pays for, and you are able to cover all the costs and make some profit, then you know you are on the right track.
Like that story about 17000 dollar ultra high definition TV. LG doesn't know that the TV is a good product that will sell, but if there are early adopters and they'll buy enough of those TVs to allow LG to take that money and re-invest it into the production line, streamlining it, making it more efficient, then LG will eventually lower the price to get a wider market, so when the price goes down (if there are enough sales at 17K and there is a competitive force) to a lower price, then more people will buy the TV, LG will make more money by selling to more people. That's what companies do to make money - try to get more customers and to get more customers they bring prices down.
That's why it's not gov't with AT&T monopoly, but relatively free market of cellular phones that allowed almost everybody on the planet (even the poorest) to have a mobile phone.
But this means that in order to get the widest possible market reach, the company must find the most efficiencies in the market and ensure lowest possible costs of all the components and processes that go into manufacturing and selling the product. If this means moving jobs to markets where governments are not dead set on destroying private property rights, where governments are not taxing through the nose and are not inflating like maniacs, so that there are actual savings and investment pools available in the system to build entire supply chains, that's where the manufacturing and production will go.
Profit motive is the most moral engine of economic progress because it doesn't discriminate on anything but ability to pay for the product. Profit motive in fact pushes companies to find solutions to make product more and more affordable. Profit motive is the economic engine and it's the most moral engine, because it is based on voluntary participation of all the actors.
Government protectionism reduces profits, it raises prices, it makes things LESS affordable for the majority of the people, not more affordable. Anything that gov't purports it wants to provide 'for free' to the poor ends up being unaffordable by the majority because government money and regulations create monopolies and push prices up by making end clients price insensitive and promotes the idea of entitlement not based on productivity.
'Relaxing lending regulations' make things worse by creating a temporary boost and inflating some bubbles in the economy, which mis-allocate resources, create businesses that would not exist in the normal free market, create larger and larger governments and skew trade balance. Eventually the
You're right.
- I know I am right, but you are wrong. Without gov't interference BP wouldn't be able to drill offshore if they couldn't buy enough insurance to cover the possible liability to all the private property owners around them.
They should be free to sell thalidomide to pregnant women
- yes, anybody should be free to SELL anything they want. Including poisons, drugs, anything.
People who BUY need to do their research. You can't delegate your responsibility to somebody, call them gov't, give them guns and expect them to do what you want rather what they want.
If people in the free market would pay for a rating agency doing the job of FDA, rating drugs, then there would be a competitive environment. Some drug manufacturers would not participate, some would. Some rating agencies would take money from the industry and some would make their name by adding to the cost of the final product and thus take their money from the consumers. There would be actual competition. People would see the competition and lower prices and more different types of products in the market, because there wouldn't be FDA blocking people without hundreds of millions of dollars that need to be thrown at all the nonsense FDA requires, but they would be able to come out with more products on the market than just erectile dysfunction, which is all that the companies are trying to fight nowadays, because it's an easy enough sell and because of patent created and government protected monopolies.
Your comment is tripe, but it is funny to take apart for what it is.
I didn't mean to say that this product is good or that it's bad, I am just pointing out that the price (which is mentioned in the story and in the headline) is not something bad or weird, it's basically a question. The question is as you are asking: is the product good or not? It will be answered by the market. If people buy it, then it's good, the company will be able to expand production, find efficiencies, enter other markets with more customers in them (people with less purchasing power) and eventually everybody will have a TV like that.
If it's not a good product, the company will eat a loss. The good thing about it is that it's not a bank, so the loss in a free market situation is limited to the investors.