oh, sure, it describe a real thing, a real concept (it's just a variation on price elasticity of demand).
the problem is, a modern economy simply cannot move past the peak into the zone where reducing taxes increases revenue. the economy collapses well before then. no modern economy exists or has existed on that side of the graph.
even when the top marginal tax rate of the US was over 90%, the country was still well to the left of the peak. that's why it's an accurate statement that no reduction in taxes has ever created an increase in tax revenue.
that's why Laffer's curve is a joke, a red herring, a misdirection.
No, it was not an victory for the international left. You fail to remember what you consider liberalism was the majority view point of the western world, both in Europe and the US, and they almost unanimously opposed communism following the victory over the fascist threat. (ah, but that doesn't fit your narrative, does it?)
No, it wasn't just undermined from within in a handful of years, though you try to make it sound like it was an act of sabotage, or outside agitators (ah, but then we must remember your worldview is that only some political actors are legitimate).
But nice try rewriting Chinese history, and ignoring that the Chinese Civil war, the war between Nationalist Kuomintang party and the Communist Chinese Communist party, ran from 1927 to 1950, and was a fight between the countries two main controlling parties.
It wasn't sabotaged, and it wasn't undermined. There's a lot of stuff in this dig into in correcting your ignorance (yet again), but a short version is:
-There was a rebellion against the last dynasty, led by Sun Yat-Sen. It succeeded. Chaos ensued. -Following the fall of the dynasty, warlords popped up, seeking control of their own little fiefdoms (it's a big place). -Sun Yat-Sen tried to get help from the western democracies to gain control over the warlords (though he effectively was one himself) and stabilize the country. -No help came, so he turned to communist Russia. Chiang Kai-shek even went to Russia, where he was trained in military and political matters. -They founded a school in China to share the knowledge they gained. -but the agreement was contingent that Russia would only help the fledgling Kuomintang party (founded by Sun Yat-Sen) if the CCP, also recently founded, was also allowed to attend. -For some time the two parties worked together, had common goals, and their people even comingled between the two. -For some time, both divided the governing of China, in their separate sections, while presenting to the outside world as a single country -Eventually they reached a point where they began squabbling, and questioning the legitimacy of each other's right to political power. -They eventually began an on/off again war against each other (largely carried out farther away from the capital, where they still made nice to each other in public). -eventually the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, and rest is history
The Kuomintang finally lost due to several factors: -the factious CCP came to be united under Mao -the Russians gave captured Japanese hardware to the CCP -the provinces controlled by the Kuomintang were the ones most affected by the Japanese occupation -the Kuomintang came to be ruthless (even brutal) rulers unpopular with many of the China citizenry (the US organized a ceasefire in 1946 largely to stop the Kuomintang's violence), and its leaders antagonized many of the provincial leaders across China who otherwise might have aided them against the CCP -the US supported the Kuomintang, mainly out of opposition to the CCP, but that support was hesitant and ineffective, largely because at this time we hadn't yet hardened ourselves to supporting bad actors in the name of opposing communism. -and most importantly, the economy collapsed in the Kuomintang areas causing hyperinflation, and leading to loss of almost all remaining support they enjoyed from the populace
as to the first, ask yourself, which side is trying to get more people to vote, and which is trying to reduce it.
as to teh second: -I didn't say libertarians are anarchists (though if you pay attention, a good want no government, which means many are). -a spectrum isn't a binary choice, where you're either an anarchist or authoritarian -I said libertarians generally exist on the anarchy side of the spectrum, showing that I apparently have a better grasp of libertarians than you. -I said the spectrum was being mislabeled, and gave its correct name.
and I have since also expounded on how while its true that at 100% control (totalitarian) there is no liberty, te same is also true of 0% government (anarchy), and that 0% governmental control is not the same as 100% liberty.
ie, liberty on such a spectrum is a bell curve, not a linear gradient.
a) anarchy isn't leftist b) see above post concerning basic political theory.
the anarchy/authority axis is not the same as the left-right axis. realistically, even a 2-axis representation isn't enough, as there are other spectrums that can pop it out into 3 and 4 dimensions (though the dimensions you add, the more noisy it gets, and the harder it is to see a pattern among groups.
a) I don't support gigantic government. b) if authoritarianism/totalitarianism, ie 100% governmental control, is one end of the spectrum, you'd have to be really dumb to not be able to label the other end of the spectrum accordingly.
as to the first, ask yourself, which side is trying to get more people to vote, and which is trying to reduce it.
as to teh second, I didn't say libertarians are anarchists (though if you pay attention, a good want no government, which means many are). I said the spectrum was being mislabeled, and gave its correct name.
too many people around here with mod points have skipped basic political theory.
the spectrum is anarchy-authority. ie 0%-100% government control.
liberty as a function on such a spectrum resembles a bell curve. even libertarians understand how the 100% side represents very little liberty. but what many of them have trouble understanding is how 0% government has little to no liberty.
in a world with 0% government, you have anarchy. in anarchy, you don't end up with a libertarian's ideal world.
rather you end up with a few powerful people, able to enforce their will through whatever means (economic, military, whatever), who enjoy nearly total personal liberty. everyone else enjoys rather less than that. it's a world of might makes right, where you only enjoy whatever liberty you can create for yourself. the more powerful you are, the more liberty you can create for yourself.
in such a world, there are no societal norms beyond what the HMFIC wants. there no concept of "your liberty to punch me in the nose ends where my nose begins".
the very idea that you don't get to punch me in the nose is a restriction of your liberty. in a society where rules, norms, or laws exist to protect personal freedom, you don't have total liberty, because you're forced to recognize the rights of others.
you're forced to acknowledge this because we create rules or laws against things like assault, or murder, or theft. these rules may come from village elders, the king, or an council of elected representatives some distance away. Either way, its still represents some form of governance of society, ie, a government.
the only way an individual can enjoy total liberty is to a) live outside of society, or b) everyone else enjoys less liberty than that individual. no society made up of 2 or more people can achieve total liberty for every person. there necessarily will be restrictions on behavior, which typically manifest as recognition of personal freedoms, and a stricture against imposing on other individuals freedoms (ie, you lose your right to punch them in the nose).
this isn't difficult stuff. its first year political theory.
Much of it seemingly banal ("health indicators of coral", "water availability"), but that's what basic research is: building blocks. But get enough blocks together, and eventually you've got a skyscraper of discovery and innovation.
Basic science research is an investment. An investment that yields tremendous returns.
Not just in the abstract of knowledge being good and the next someone building on the knowledge we gained today. But also in the form of economic growth, employment, advancing industry, productivity. Not just in our nation, but across the whole world (though of course those who harness it best tend to profit the most).
It's one of the most powerful positive loops in a nation's (or world's) economic engine.
Government investment in science research is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the US's prosperity and leadership following WWII. Air flight, air travel, communications, computers, internet, data storage, cellular phones, transportation, materials science, historical research, biology, nutrition, medicine....
Nearly every scientific advance in every field of science has been positively impacted by government investment in basic research.
Exponential economic growth such as we have experienced comes from positive feedback, where the production of something enables you to produce even more. Economists note that only capital — including human, intellectual, and environmental capital — can fuel exponential growth. Solow and subsequent researchers found that at most half of historical growth could be attributed to known factors. The unexplained part, sometimes estimated to be as large as 85 percent of growth, was termed the “Solow residual.” Subsequent work showed that the bulk of that residual could be explained by positing a new factor in production: technological progress.
Technology produces wealth, and it produces more technological progress, which produces even more growth, thus enabling a virtuous cycle of exponential growth. Technological progress depends on basic research; this is why economists have found that investments in basic research can produce returns between 20 percent and 60 percent per year.
The problem is that those extraordinary returns frequently go not to the investor in basic research but to the entire world. The applied research that follows on basic research does not necessarily take place in the same company or university. Basic research leading to scientific discovery is, therefore, a public good. The purpose of companies is to provide a return on investment, not to provide for the public good per se. However, the public good is the purpose of government, so this national investment must come from the federal government — as it has, in a major way, since 1947.
That last paragraph both perfectly explains why many companies are hesitant to invest in research (because there's guarantee of a return, or that they will be the beneficiary of the return), and why government (re: the public) picking up the tab is in the public interest.
its because they are risk averse, and (especially with today's short sighted next quarter mentality) if they can't see an immediate profit, they don't care.
spoken like someone unfamiliar with: -the track record of government funded science -how basic research is done and the sums involved -actual crony capitalism
the modern world exists because of government funded basic research.
and much the whole stupid "terrorists will hide in the refugees" thing, if getting rich off government funds is your thing, there are far easier, far more lucrative avenues than some piddly research grants.
-not always along fault lines -interplate faults are still bloody huge. -we don't always know where faults are -that doesn't allow for internal stresses of non-faultline rock that can still give and cause a quake
Faults are discontinuities in the rock of a tectonic plate.
Interplate faults, ie plate boundaries, are obvious once we got the tectonic plates largely mapped. and they are huge, in length and width.
but that doesn't account for ancient faults or plate borders that we don't know about (such the idea that the North American plate is actually two plates, currently traveling together, with the fault between inactive and largely quiet (some think that the New Madrid fault may be such).
and there's also the possibility of intraplate faults developing, the result of internal stresses that slip and give (other think this is what the New Madrid fault is). Before they go the first time there isn't even a fault there.
the correct name for the side of the spectrum libertarianism is on is "anarchy", not "liberty", as the axis being referred to is more properly seen as the spectrum from anarchism to authoritarianism.
true liberty as a concept is only secured in the middle between the two. anarchy is a false liberty, where only some actually have it, and everyone else is SOL. hence the role of government in securing liberty for all through laws, norms, etc.
Yes. Because Trump actually does mimic Hitler, which any student of history can see, whereas Sanders bears no resemblance to anything Marxist, except in the eyes of fools like you.
and its not a free speech issue. do we really need to discuss the whole "only applies to government" thing again? it didn't go well for you last time.
yes, it is, actually. you're quite right on that point. in fact, the term is really a bit of a misnomer.
what it is is a political system that combines democracy and free trade with a strong welfare state, attempting to achieve the best of both worlds using the best parts of each, while correcting for the inadequacies of each. separately they have strengths and weaknesses. combines, they compensate for each's weakness and makes the whole stronger.
the problem comes from simpletons like you who cannot understand the difference between an economic model and a political model, and the shades of grey between them as no pure -ism can stand in actual practice.
Slashdot Mirror
the Laffer Curve is a joke.
oh, sure, it describe a real thing, a real concept (it's just a variation on price elasticity of demand).
the problem is, a modern economy simply cannot move past the peak into the zone where reducing taxes increases revenue.
the economy collapses well before then. no modern economy exists or has existed on that side of the graph.
even when the top marginal tax rate of the US was over 90%, the country was still well to the left of the peak.
that's why it's an accurate statement that no reduction in taxes has ever created an increase in tax revenue.
that's why Laffer's curve is a joke, a red herring, a misdirection.
at the height of the baby boomers in the workforce, the peak of the curve.
ya, that's not cherry picking or anything.
remember, to his world view, democratic elections are only valid if the right people get elected.
No, it was not an victory for the international left.
You fail to remember what you consider liberalism was the majority view point of the western world, both in Europe and the US, and they almost unanimously opposed communism following the victory over the fascist threat. (ah, but that doesn't fit your narrative, does it?)
No, it wasn't just undermined from within in a handful of years, though you try to make it sound like it was an act of sabotage, or outside agitators (ah, but then we must remember your worldview is that only some political actors are legitimate).
But nice try rewriting Chinese history, and ignoring that the Chinese Civil war, the war between Nationalist Kuomintang party and the Communist Chinese Communist party, ran from 1927 to 1950, and was a fight between the countries two main controlling parties.
It wasn't sabotaged, and it wasn't undermined.
There's a lot of stuff in this dig into in correcting your ignorance (yet again), but a short version is:
-There was a rebellion against the last dynasty, led by Sun Yat-Sen. It succeeded. Chaos ensued.
-Following the fall of the dynasty, warlords popped up, seeking control of their own little fiefdoms (it's a big place).
-Sun Yat-Sen tried to get help from the western democracies to gain control over the warlords (though he effectively was one himself) and stabilize the country.
-No help came, so he turned to communist Russia. Chiang Kai-shek even went to Russia, where he was trained in military and political matters.
-They founded a school in China to share the knowledge they gained.
-but the agreement was contingent that Russia would only help the fledgling Kuomintang party (founded by Sun Yat-Sen) if the CCP, also recently founded, was also allowed to attend.
-For some time the two parties worked together, had common goals, and their people even comingled between the two.
-For some time, both divided the governing of China, in their separate sections, while presenting to the outside world as a single country
-Eventually they reached a point where they began squabbling, and questioning the legitimacy of each other's right to political power.
-They eventually began an on/off again war against each other (largely carried out farther away from the capital, where they still made nice to each other in public).
-eventually the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan, and rest is history
The Kuomintang finally lost due to several factors:
-the factious CCP came to be united under Mao
-the Russians gave captured Japanese hardware to the CCP
-the provinces controlled by the Kuomintang were the ones most affected by the Japanese occupation
-the Kuomintang came to be ruthless (even brutal) rulers unpopular with many of the China citizenry (the US organized a ceasefire in 1946 largely to stop the Kuomintang's violence), and its leaders antagonized many of the provincial leaders across China who otherwise might have aided them against the CCP
-the US supported the Kuomintang, mainly out of opposition to the CCP, but that support was hesitant and ineffective, largely because at this time we hadn't yet hardened ourselves to supporting bad actors in the name of opposing communism.
-and most importantly, the economy collapsed in the Kuomintang areas causing hyperinflation, and leading to loss of almost all remaining support they enjoyed from the populace
btw, no, we don't consider Venezuela or Cuba success stories, but thanks for putting words in ours mouths.
im sure you don't mind if I return the favor and state that you consider the imploding economies of Kansas or Oklahoma success stories too?
the ignorance and fear is strong with this one
(need an edit button)
as to the first, ask yourself, which side is trying to get more people to vote, and which is trying to reduce it.
as to teh second:
-I didn't say libertarians are anarchists (though if you pay attention, a good want no government, which means many are).
-a spectrum isn't a binary choice, where you're either an anarchist or authoritarian
-I said libertarians generally exist on the anarchy side of the spectrum, showing that I apparently have a better grasp of libertarians than you.
-I said the spectrum was being mislabeled, and gave its correct name.
and I have since also expounded on how while its true that at 100% control (totalitarian) there is no liberty, te same is also true of 0% government (anarchy), and that 0% governmental control is not the same as 100% liberty.
ie, liberty on such a spectrum is a bell curve, not a linear gradient.
a) anarchy isn't leftist
b) see above post concerning basic political theory.
the anarchy/authority axis is not the same as the left-right axis.
realistically, even a 2-axis representation isn't enough, as there are other spectrums that can pop it out into 3 and 4 dimensions (though the dimensions you add, the more noisy it gets, and the harder it is to see a pattern among groups.
a) I don't support gigantic government.
b) if authoritarianism/totalitarianism, ie 100% governmental control, is one end of the spectrum, you'd have to be really dumb to not be able to label the other end of the spectrum accordingly.
as to the first, ask yourself, which side is trying to get more people to vote, and which is trying to reduce it.
as to teh second, I didn't say libertarians are anarchists (though if you pay attention, a good want no government, which means many are).
I said the spectrum was being mislabeled, and gave its correct name.
too many people around here with mod points have skipped basic political theory.
the spectrum is anarchy-authority.
ie 0%-100% government control.
liberty as a function on such a spectrum resembles a bell curve.
even libertarians understand how the 100% side represents very little liberty.
but what many of them have trouble understanding is how 0% government has little to no liberty.
in a world with 0% government, you have anarchy.
in anarchy, you don't end up with a libertarian's ideal world.
rather you end up with a few powerful people, able to enforce their will through whatever means (economic, military, whatever), who enjoy nearly total personal liberty. everyone else enjoys rather less than that. it's a world of might makes right, where you only enjoy whatever liberty you can create for yourself. the more powerful you are, the more liberty you can create for yourself.
in such a world, there are no societal norms beyond what the HMFIC wants.
there no concept of "your liberty to punch me in the nose ends where my nose begins".
the very idea that you don't get to punch me in the nose is a restriction of your liberty. in a society where rules, norms, or laws exist to protect personal freedom, you don't have total liberty, because you're forced to recognize the rights of others.
you're forced to acknowledge this because we create rules or laws against things like assault, or murder, or theft. these rules may come from village elders, the king, or an council of elected representatives some distance away. Either way, its still represents some form of governance of society, ie, a government.
the only way an individual can enjoy total liberty is to a) live outside of society, or b) everyone else enjoys less liberty than that individual.
no society made up of 2 or more people can achieve total liberty for every person. there necessarily will be restrictions on behavior, which typically manifest as recognition of personal freedoms, and a stricture against imposing on other individuals freedoms (ie, you lose your right to punch them in the nose).
this isn't difficult stuff.
its first year political theory.
"Short" (1176 articles), and incomplete list of science performed with NSF funding:
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries...
Much of it seemingly banal ("health indicators of coral", "water availability"), but that's what basic research is: building blocks.
But get enough blocks together, and eventually you've got a skyscraper of discovery and innovation.
"coincidentally", nearly half of research grants in this country come out of the defense budget.
We should pay.
And gladly.
Basic science research is an investment.
An investment that yields tremendous returns.
Not just in the abstract of knowledge being good and the next someone building on the knowledge we gained today.
But also in the form of economic growth, employment, advancing industry, productivity.
Not just in our nation, but across the whole world (though of course those who harness it best tend to profit the most).
It's one of the most powerful positive loops in a nation's (or world's) economic engine.
Government investment in science research is one of the fundamental underpinnings of the US's prosperity and leadership following WWII. Air flight, air travel, communications, computers, internet, data storage, cellular phones, transportation, materials science, historical research, biology, nutrition, medicine....
Nearly every scientific advance in every field of science has been positively impacted by government investment in basic research.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Exponential economic growth such as we have experienced comes from positive feedback, where the production of something enables you to produce even more. Economists note that only capital — including human, intellectual, and environmental capital — can fuel exponential growth. Solow and subsequent researchers found that at most half of historical growth could be attributed to known factors. The unexplained part, sometimes estimated to be as large as 85 percent of growth, was termed the “Solow residual.” Subsequent work showed that the bulk of that residual could be explained by positing a new factor in production: technological progress.
Technology produces wealth, and it produces more technological progress, which produces even more growth, thus enabling a virtuous cycle of exponential growth. Technological progress depends on basic research; this is why economists have found that investments in basic research can produce returns between 20 percent and 60 percent per year.
The problem is that those extraordinary returns frequently go not to the investor in basic research but to the entire world. The applied research that follows on basic research does not necessarily take place in the same company or university. Basic research leading to scientific discovery is, therefore, a public good. The purpose of companies is to provide a return on investment, not to provide for the public good per se. However, the public good is the purpose of government, so this national investment must come from the federal government — as it has, in a major way, since 1947.
That last paragraph both perfectly explains why many companies are hesitant to invest in research (because there's guarantee of a return, or that they will be the beneficiary of the return), and why government (re: the public) picking up the tab is in the public interest.
its because they are risk averse, and (especially with today's short sighted next quarter mentality) if they can't see an immediate profit, they don't care.
spoken like someone unfamiliar with:
-the track record of government funded science
-how basic research is done and the sums involved
-actual crony capitalism
the modern world exists because of government funded basic research.
and much the whole stupid "terrorists will hide in the refugees" thing, if getting rich off government funds is your thing, there are far easier, far more lucrative avenues than some piddly research grants.
-not always along fault lines
-interplate faults are still bloody huge.
-we don't always know where faults are
-that doesn't allow for internal stresses of non-faultline rock that can still give and cause a quake
Faults are discontinuities in the rock of a tectonic plate.
Interplate faults, ie plate boundaries, are obvious once we got the tectonic plates largely mapped. and they are huge, in length and width.
but that doesn't account for ancient faults or plate borders that we don't know about (such the idea that the North American plate is actually two plates, currently traveling together, with the fault between inactive and largely quiet (some think that the New Madrid fault may be such).
and there's also the possibility of intraplate faults developing, the result of internal stresses that slip and give (other think this is what the New Madrid fault is). Before they go the first time there isn't even a fault there.
the danger of FODing out a turbine engine is very well established, and not at all presumed.
that slashdotter was a fool anyway.
the moral wasn't against technology, but exploitation.
first learn the difference between greed and wealth.
the correct name for the side of the spectrum libertarianism is on is "anarchy", not "liberty", as the axis being referred to is more properly seen as the spectrum from anarchism to authoritarianism.
true liberty as a concept is only secured in the middle between the two.
anarchy is a false liberty, where only some actually have it, and everyone else is SOL.
hence the role of government in securing liberty for all through laws, norms, etc.
Yes.
Because Trump actually does mimic Hitler, which any student of history can see, whereas Sanders bears no resemblance to anything Marxist, except in the eyes of fools like you.
and its not a free speech issue.
do we really need to discuss the whole "only applies to government" thing again?
it didn't go well for you last time.
yes, it is, actually.
you're quite right on that point.
in fact, the term is really a bit of a misnomer.
what it is is a political system that combines democracy and free trade with a strong welfare state, attempting to achieve the best of both worlds using the best parts of each, while correcting for the inadequacies of each. separately they have strengths and weaknesses. combines, they compensate for each's weakness and makes the whole stronger.
the problem comes from simpletons like you who cannot understand the difference between an economic model and a political model, and the shades of grey between them as no pure -ism can stand in actual practice.
i was going to say somehting similar.
in lay man's terms: because there is a fuck ton of rock in the crust
well since you dont believe in the process at all, what do you suggest? a sky fairy? a crystal ball?
begone idiot.