Which is why if you were going to do something like that you'd need to make it a spending tax not a consumption tax. Buy groceries, taxed, buy stocks, taxed, buy clothing, taxed, buy plane trips to Aruba, taxed, buy medical care, taxed, buy rental properties, taxed, etc. etc. I still don't think it's a great idea but that at least fixes the regressive part.
Yes this means a new phone will cost more and cars must become more efficient.
The changes would be a lot more significant than that and would probably mean the end of having a middle class, I was just saying that it's technically feasible not that it's desirable.
Actually what he's saying is that the current system is quite burdensome and slow and he's looking for a way to make things more efficient. Of course more efficient for the government isn't necessarily a good thing in this case.
In a fiat monetary system of course we can create more currency however that doesn't increase the total amount of wealth, just the counters we use to represent it.
The underlying problem is a stronger and stronger tendency in society to disregard reality
I don't think that's the issue, for many people the problem is twofold A) Information overload B) Inability to determine trustworthy sources of information. With the amounts of propaganda and marketing spin sent people's way can you really blame them?
QE is just massive levels of money printing (a few trillion a year), with said money being pumped into the various entitlement programs and the stock market.
It doesn't actually work that way. QE is just an asset swap and it doesn't create inflation. It does however force down interest rates and that allows for higher leverage levels which elevate asset prices.
The Demotards and their railroad-owning buddy Warren Buffet, want more railroads.
I think that's giving the Democrats a bit too much credit in this case. More likely they just can't be seen to be supporting tar sands oil without alienating their base, regardless of whether pipelines are safer than trains or not.
Democrats could have enacted a serious climate policy if they had sat down and negotiated.
Seriously? I'm no Democrat but the Republicans have taken all their toys and gone home for quite some time now. They refuse to even work on things that they've previously said they wanted.
1) Yes, we are measuring increases in atmospheric CO2 levels
2) Yes, there is a well demonstrated effect in the lab where higher CO2 levels trap greater amounts of energy
3) It's pretty likely that higher atmospheric CO2 levels are trapping more energy here on Earth and we've seen a variety of signs that seem to back that up
4) However the models still aren't that great and the margins of error are pretty big, it's still possible that it's not happening or something else causing it
5) Even if it is happening there is still quite a bit of legitimate debate over how bad it's going to be (somewhere between slight annoyance and end of species with the likely result being fairly major but not unlivable problem a hundred years from now)
6) Fixing it is going to be expensive and that money has to come from somewhere, there is quite a bit of teeth gnashing about who is going to pay for all of that
We run out of hydrocarbons of all types before this century is out. They become too expensive to be useful long before then. We use up the popular fissionables too. We have some hope of maintaining industrial scale electricity if we start developing thorium generators - like, yesterday. If we don't, you can pretty much kiss industrial civilization at the current scale goodbye before the century is out.
Sure, there are some challenges but you're being way too pessimistic. Even if we had nothing but solar, wind and hydro we could maintain industrial civilization just fine. Sure, we'd have to make some fairly serious changes but it's all quite doable. I'm not recommending that, I'm just saying it's workable.
I used to live in LA Metro, there are definitely some areas that are dense enough for foot patrols. You don't necessarily have to have huge apartment buildings crammed together, just enough houses that walking around you can cover a decent number of them in a reasonable amount of time. Watts or portions of East LA for example.
Seems to me that 20 years or so ago, that was the idea of choice for solving crime - cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat.
Worked where it was tried, but I think it was dropped when the Next Great Idea came along.
Beat cops work great in high density areas, it's expensive though and the high density areas are usually poor which means those programs usually get canceled despite their effectiveness.
The biggest problem with your idea is that the police will find it a lot easier to say "I thought he had a gun" when they shoot people.
Which is one of the reasons why standard patrol officers shouldn't be authorized to use lethal ammo. They should be packing sub-lethal rubber bullets instead. The SWAT guys can have lethal ammo since they deal with different sorts of encounters.
More likely botnet operators will be labeled "job creators" and given tax breaks.
Amusement aside, I'm not opposed to this idea in general but I'd want there to be a strong judicial process around it and some sort of civilian review and oversight of the program long term.
Actually, this is the first thing to come out of Government in a while that actually makes senses... and I generally lean pretty libertarian.
I'm registered Libertarian and I agree. Generally the free market is pretty terrible at provisioning public goods. This decision makes sense for the same reason we don't have 20 different competing water companies. Of course some Libertarians like to argue that there is no such thing as public goods or that if the free market doesn't provide them then we're better off as a society without them but frankly I think they've been drinking a bit too much of the kool-aid.
It's a bit frustrating that they felt they needed 400 pages to describe restrictions that should have been a few short sentences but that's the downside of government intervention even when it's a net positive. I suppose the level of legal efforts that are going to surround this issue and attempts to circumvent this legislation in spirit if not in name required them to be rather more explicit than would really be optimal.
I'm registered Libertarian now, but what you're describing would be on the extreme end of even their spectrum. Draw a triangle between Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians and the middle is probably about where I belong. Sort of an Eisenhower Republican.
Interesting, on the bright side we'll never share a party affiliation because I'm the exact opposite. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative, for which there is also no US party available.
Slashdot Mirror
A consumption tax is inherently regressive.
Which is why if you were going to do something like that you'd need to make it a spending tax not a consumption tax. Buy groceries, taxed, buy stocks, taxed, buy clothing, taxed, buy plane trips to Aruba, taxed, buy medical care, taxed, buy rental properties, taxed, etc. etc. I still don't think it's a great idea but that at least fixes the regressive part.
Browser One
That's actually kind of catchy.
Yes this means a new phone will cost more and cars must become more efficient.
The changes would be a lot more significant than that and would probably mean the end of having a middle class, I was just saying that it's technically feasible not that it's desirable.
Actually what he's saying is that the current system is quite burdensome and slow and he's looking for a way to make things more efficient. Of course more efficient for the government isn't necessarily a good thing in this case.
That would be a faulty assumption.
Money e.g. can simply be made.
In a fiat monetary system of course we can create more currency however that doesn't increase the total amount of wealth, just the counters we use to represent it.
The underlying problem is a stronger and stronger tendency in society to disregard reality
I don't think that's the issue, for many people the problem is twofold A) Information overload B) Inability to determine trustworthy sources of information. With the amounts of propaganda and marketing spin sent people's way can you really blame them?
QE is just massive levels of money printing (a few trillion a year), with said money being pumped into the various entitlement programs and the stock market.
It doesn't actually work that way. QE is just an asset swap and it doesn't create inflation. It does however force down interest rates and that allows for higher leverage levels which elevate asset prices.
The Demotards and their railroad-owning buddy Warren Buffet, want more railroads.
I think that's giving the Democrats a bit too much credit in this case. More likely they just can't be seen to be supporting tar sands oil without alienating their base, regardless of whether pipelines are safer than trains or not.
Democrats could have enacted a serious climate policy if they had sat down and negotiated.
Seriously? I'm no Democrat but the Republicans have taken all their toys and gone home for quite some time now. They refuse to even work on things that they've previously said they wanted.
AGW is proven since centuries.
Well...it's not quite that straightforward.
1) Yes, we are measuring increases in atmospheric CO2 levels
2) Yes, there is a well demonstrated effect in the lab where higher CO2 levels trap greater amounts of energy
3) It's pretty likely that higher atmospheric CO2 levels are trapping more energy here on Earth and we've seen a variety of signs that seem to back that up
4) However the models still aren't that great and the margins of error are pretty big, it's still possible that it's not happening or something else causing it
5) Even if it is happening there is still quite a bit of legitimate debate over how bad it's going to be (somewhere between slight annoyance and end of species with the likely result being fairly major but not unlivable problem a hundred years from now)
6) Fixing it is going to be expensive and that money has to come from somewhere, there is quite a bit of teeth gnashing about who is going to pay for all of that
Well the terrible infant mortality and lack of a dental plan wasn't so attractive.
Fusion creates felectrical energy by boing water into steam and driving turbines, which is bad for the wildlife in the water, for one thing.
Seriously, that's your main complaint with fusion power?
We run out of hydrocarbons of all types before this century is out. They become too expensive to be useful long before then. We use up the popular fissionables too. We have some hope of maintaining industrial scale electricity if we start developing thorium generators - like, yesterday. If we don't, you can pretty much kiss industrial civilization at the current scale goodbye before the century is out.
Sure, there are some challenges but you're being way too pessimistic. Even if we had nothing but solar, wind and hydro we could maintain industrial civilization just fine. Sure, we'd have to make some fairly serious changes but it's all quite doable. I'm not recommending that, I'm just saying it's workable.
Stop dreaming about Space Elevators
Nuclear thermal rockets would be a lot more practical in the short term.
I used to live in LA Metro, there are definitely some areas that are dense enough for foot patrols. You don't necessarily have to have huge apartment buildings crammed together, just enough houses that walking around you can cover a decent number of them in a reasonable amount of time. Watts or portions of East LA for example.
We don't have time for rational solutions!
Seems to me that 20 years or so ago, that was the idea of choice for solving crime - cops walking (note that walking and driving are NOT the same) a beat.
Worked where it was tried, but I think it was dropped when the Next Great Idea came along.
Beat cops work great in high density areas, it's expensive though and the high density areas are usually poor which means those programs usually get canceled despite their effectiveness.
The biggest problem with your idea is that the police will find it a lot easier to say "I thought he had a gun" when they shoot people.
Which is one of the reasons why standard patrol officers shouldn't be authorized to use lethal ammo. They should be packing sub-lethal rubber bullets instead. The SWAT guys can have lethal ammo since they deal with different sorts of encounters.
More likely botnet operators will be labeled "job creators" and given tax breaks. Amusement aside, I'm not opposed to this idea in general but I'd want there to be a strong judicial process around it and some sort of civilian review and oversight of the program long term.
Actually, this is the first thing to come out of Government in a while that actually makes senses ... and I generally lean pretty libertarian.
I'm registered Libertarian and I agree. Generally the free market is pretty terrible at provisioning public goods. This decision makes sense for the same reason we don't have 20 different competing water companies. Of course some Libertarians like to argue that there is no such thing as public goods or that if the free market doesn't provide them then we're better off as a society without them but frankly I think they've been drinking a bit too much of the kool-aid.
It's a bit frustrating that they felt they needed 400 pages to describe restrictions that should have been a few short sentences but that's the downside of government intervention even when it's a net positive. I suppose the level of legal efforts that are going to surround this issue and attempts to circumvent this legislation in spirit if not in name required them to be rather more explicit than would really be optimal.
Everyone else in the world has already acknowledged the science as valid.
Perhaps, and yet places like Germany are moving from Nuclear back to Coal. Apparently the rest of the world has their own share of irrational people.
Which is exactly why I'm there instead of with the Republicans who have essentially given up their small government roots for social activism.
I'm registered Libertarian now, but what you're describing would be on the extreme end of even their spectrum. Draw a triangle between Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians and the middle is probably about where I belong. Sort of an Eisenhower Republican.
Interesting, on the bright side we'll never share a party affiliation because I'm the exact opposite. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative, for which there is also no US party available.