That's what got this guy in trouble, he was taking profits three to four times higher than his salary every year.
Indeed. Had he learned from the big boys, what he should have done would have been to implement part of his job as an excel macro, then sold that part to an Irish subsidiary which would then charge his company license fees for the use of the macro. Then, to avoid even the Irish bitty corp tax, he should drain the Irish company of profits (again by using intellectual 'property') through another irish company with a Cayman HQ, funnelling the revenue stream through the Netherlands to use further tax loops there. The full double irish with dutch sandwich.
Then he could do what Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Pfizer, etc, do and cry to the IRS that he's not making any money at all so obviously his salary at $1 isn't unreasonable.
Of course, he'd probably get nailed anyway and sent to GITMO for taking on the airs of his betters; doesn't seem like he's got the net worth to be above the law.
Patents... aren't a big problem today for the average citizen
As patents (and other IPR) are effectively a form of taxation they can burden the economy with inefficiency until it becomes incapable of competing with other producers who aren't burdened with the same costs.
The inability that western and other IPR heavy economies show at competing with less crippled economies certainly appears to be a rather significant problem for many average citizens.
Of course, as long as IPR levies are hidden away as 'private' costs, rather than being regarded as parts of the tax burden, the system is unlikely to get corrected as there is no representation for the paying parties in the system or accounting for the actual costs to the economy.
The whole concept of 'security questions' is completely flawed
The whole concept of answering such questions correctly is flawed. Once you're born in Hobbiton and your mothers maiden name is Goose they become quite a bit harder to guess. Such constructed 'alter egos' make the security questions much less dangerous while still maintaining some recovery capacity.
Which means it'd be perfectly acceptable if they offered it as a 20kb/s connection with burst capabilities, which is the actual usable bandwidth you have available over time.
It's simply a matter of honesty; if they aren't offering unlimited use at a specific data transfer rate, then they shouldn't claim they are.
but those low unemployment rates don't seem to have been made better
Fundamentally, employment isn't going to get 'better' over the long term. We're seeing the end of scarcity and demand (as measured by in-demand workers preferring purchases to free time, liquidity or savings) will fail to keep up with production capacity, leading to constantly falling employment rates
There are only a few ways to go from there: A 'services' economy, basically reducing prevalent wages across the board until 'high employment' is basically achieved by slaves as there is no demand for the work at higher cost. A make-work economy, where the productive segments are taxed so heavily that they cannot achieve their desired wealth of free time or savings, funding fake jobs with the proceeds. Or as a final option, significant cuts in standard work hours combined with higher retirement ages to resolve benefits issues.
Unfortunately, the failure of economic 'science' to develop useful metrics or models means we're probably doomed to the most significantly wasteful and painful policies, where GDP is upheld by asset inflation and exchanges while employment is upheld by virtual slavery. Yay.
Not all people like music... should those people be forced to help fund musicians through taxation?
They're not getting out of it today. Even if you disregard the direct levies they're subjected to on recordable media and similar in many countries, IP rights are still equivalent to other widely spread taxation points on the economy.
Even if you avoid paying it in the first degree, you'll pay for it in a general higher cost of living; you'll pay the slightly higher price for a haircut as the hair saloon pays a fee for playing music, etc. And going beyond that, you'll get it baked into cable fees, as generalized cost of living wage demands, etc. The funding is simply extracted at so many points that you can't avoid getting impacted by it.
If we avoid the waste of the current system, a more direct and efficient funding of musicians would burden the economy to less than 10% of what it's costing us today, while directing more money to the creators than they're getting out of the middlemen today. The supposed objectors would find themselves paying less, directly and indirectly than they are today.
As long as health insurance exists, they will have no need to make services affordable.
To get affordable services you need a competitive market. Patents, prescription rights and licensing are the other pillars keeping prices up, capital pools like insurance are merely enabling to a further extent.
Most often it seems you'd be better off with a database and an expert system doing diagnosis, testing and prescribing already. And soon enough you'll be better off with computer controlled surgery.
Once at that point we might start seeing some cost reduction. But that would require overcoming some fairly strong vested interests.
There have been examples of governments engaging in collusion with foreign intelligence services in ways that knowingly violates the countries law because they can't democratic support for those actions. If that isn't a conspiracy to kill democracy I'm not quite sure what would qualify.
And the state-corporate joint venture in attacking wikileaks certainly reeks of fascism; the reaction to the leaks speak worse than the leaks themselves. But at least we're getting the cards on the table so we can see who'd go for the China style governing.
Well, the underground version is already available, built by the Chicago Tunnel Company between 1899 and 1906, and operated until the 1960's.
Seems like one of those things that's nice in theory but extremely difficult to make profitable in competition with trains and other above-ground transport.
Apologies for not responding sooner, I rarely engage in longer conversations with AC's as I don't know if they reciprocate.
Removing FRB simply means most money will not be available any more internally
Depending on how you replace it. Transition to a non-FRB system does not necessarily entail changing the amount of currency available (by various measures) at any specific point in time.
remember, you're talking about removing approximately 95% of money from the economy by requiring it be tied up in redundant collateral.
Over a longer period of time that would shift; as asset bubbles are valued recursively due to availability of capital and artificial interest rates, the price of those assets and the level of capital tied up in them as an aggregate would look very different eventually.
the system is no longer able to fund the production and importation of food and other essential commodities.
The denomination of the currency is not relevant to the ability to produce; the important thing is the ability to have a medium of exchange of value agreed upon by both parties.
with a real economist
Yah, well, that's the problem innit. You'll find Real Economists (tm) agreeing with both of us. It ain't exactly a hard science.
You're saying a loan doesn't have value?
When backed by assets that are themselves valued depending on the availability of capital and interest rates? Try the mental experiment of doing what you suggest I suggested; remove 95% of all currency, and see what you'll get on a mark-to-market basis when you sell a house or a stock, or some other asset backing loans.
Loans themselves have a value as time preference shifted investments, but allowing them to be further pledged will automatically dilute the value of the collateral. You get a systemic insolvency as you cannot liquidate the systems collateral at par. Each failed liquidation further recursively affects asset values, just as the excessive funding did during expansion.
There are other ways of preventing recursive valuations that might be alternatives to outright banning FRB that would at least mitigate the problem, like setting collateral values as a function of the asset price over historical running time of the loan. It might mitigate asset bubbles, but I suspect it would be papering over a fundamentally unsound system.
And no, personally I don't subscribe to the notion of gold as a universal medium either; it has advantages, but using a single commodity as a universal store of value isn't practical or necessarily efficient either.
economies grow when you can loan money, they shrink when the money supply is tightened
Economies grow when more experienced value is produced for less experienced effort. Nominal growth in any specific medium used for exchanges at a specific frequency interval may or may not coincide. Such growth is not dependent on the arbitrary blowing of bubbles; in fact, overly easy availability of capital may create a disincentive for minimizing effort and decrease productivity growth, as the funding is available at a cost to others (defaulting/inflating), not the producing entities.
Actual measurement of wealth is, of course, at the root of the problem of producing sane hard science models for economic growth or money in itself. FRB itself destroys some unmeasured values of wealth (time preference value, experienced security in value stores, etc). The concept of maximizing employment, also usually tied to FRB theories, ignores the value of free time to the extent of forcing people to work to fund other peoples undesired work (Keynsian money burying/digging), ie, disguised redistribution that actually destroys the value inherent in free time and decreases aggregate unmeasured but actual wealth.
To be fair, parts of Scandinavia look good because their housing bubbles haven't burst yet. When they do, their banks will get wiped out as well, and probably backstopped by the taxpayers.
Asset bubbles and living on borrowed money seems so nice on paper. It's just when you can't actually pay it back it becomes such a bitch. Unfortunately they're inherent to low interest fractional banking systems, but hey, as long as the bankers are kept whole, we can live with being unable to plan for our future, invest rationally or trust our jobs aren't just artefacts of the latest bubble distortion.
As far as I can tell, the Nationmaster link is public+private debt. You're probably thinking about Swedish public debt only.
As governments today backstop private debt with taxpayers, it's becoming more and more appropriate to include private debt as public liabilities either way.
The actual corporate tax rate isn't the most significant problem anyway, the problem is the holes that make the rate 2-3%. And those holes do not provide jobs; running a tax scam isn't exactly labour intensive. There hasn't been much said about whether or not those holes will be closed.
On the other hand, on the more labour intensive business a 15% or 25% corporate tax rate isn't going to be that significant a factor compared to prevailing wages, availability of appropriate labour force, etc. If it were going to be moved to a low cost country the Irish 60% wage growth between 1999 and 2008 would be a rather more compelling reason to move such business.
Personally I think the Irish have been rather whipped by the multinationals; first paying to save other countries banks from taking a hit on bad loans, then caving to whines about corporate taxes. Maybe some Irish politicians could ask Pfizer for the development of spine growth hormones in exchange for their low taxes.
Who would ever lend insolvent banks money again? It's not Ireland that went bust, it's Irelands banks. The Irish government just got suckered into backing them.
The answer is, of course, the next sucker. Which we have a financial system full of, as if anyone loses their money lending to bums, the taxpayers will get to pay for it...
But really, would you feel safer lending money to someone who will probably default in the near future as they carry unmaintainable debt than you would lending money to someone who'd restructured their debt to manageable levels? Neither would be very palatable in a sane system, but that's not what we have, and you as a taxpayer will not get a say in whether to lend or not.
No bombs in your bag, you mean. Did you use to have them?
As there are, as has been demonstrated, a whole lot of other ways they can get onto the plane, if you enjoy worrying about risks less frequent than accidental bathtub deaths, you should probably go right on worrying.
Or do the scanners do some harm?
As far as I'm concerned they're probably not worse than asbestos. Sure, there are some indications that ionizing radiation may be harmful, but hey, the parties who profit from the scanners claim it's safe...
the chance of someone having a weapon is pretty small!
Anything can become weapon. For a reasonably inventive attacker, chances are you won't even recognize what they're planning to use until they're at it.
Personally I mostly object to the pointless waste and the annoying inconvenience. The useless security theatre has wasted more compound lifetimes than all attacks in history put together; the chance that you're going to get subjected to an attack is near non existent, while the chance that you're going to get your trip made even more unpleasant and annoying than necessary is near certain.
And of course, I'd opt for the groping rather than the xrays. And if you want to abuse the the poor TSA sods right back/incentivise quick processing, there are no hygiene rules yet...
Only in countries that have made the mistake of using an externally controlled currency.
An internally controlled currency will merely allow you to default on your loans in a different way. You're still not paying back your creditors the value they lent you.
If you want to completely bankrupt a country,
A country without FRB, where savings match loans, would have a very hard time to go bankrupt, as an aggregate.
make sure banks can only loan money they can't treat as an asset once owed
Tell that to Ireland... or any other country whose banks lending is supported by junk.
The problem is, if you allow pledging encumbered assets against new loans (ie, frb) you create a recursive valuation of the assets themselves. This will mean automatic inflation of asset price without any actual value added, until the point where value, price, risk and leverage are so out of sync that you get a recursive deflation instead.
It's a stupid idea
A, yes, convincing argument. Certainly the level of intellectual rigour one can expect from FRB supporters.
If the banks can't touch the money in savings accounts,
The banks can't touch the money in bond funds or similar savings vehicles today, yet they do have them. Usually the management of the actual fund entails a fee.
The net saver who agrees to lend his money for longer terms by depositing his funds into such vehicles would get better interest as demand for loans rose, not because the central bank feels like it, but because borrowers would have to pay market rate to be the one actually getting to borrow the money.
On plain transaction/zero maturity accounts you wouldn't get any interest, but then again, most of us already pay for the privilege of having such accounts anyway, despite the fact that the bank usually uses the money as it wishes. High-interest 'savings accounts' wouldn't be possible, but their function, except the part of 'taxpayer guaranteed' would still be possible as explicit investments instead.
The bank itself wouldn't lend money; the banks customers would explicitly need to deposit money into bond funds (if they wanted any returns). It's not that far from what's done today, the difference in function is mainly in what guarantees are made, what time frames on withdrawals you have, and who gets to eat the losses.
The systemic difference would be more significant however. As money supply would no longer expand to accommodate asset bubbles, the interest rate a saver would get would rise as demand rose for money (for example, for investment in the bubble) and the bubbles would get cooled off/liquidated much faster and in a far earlier phase.
There are potential drawbacks, of course, like the higher interest rates in general (that reflect the actual value of risk and liquidity preference) and the requirement that the economy as a whole carry balanced loans and savings, but compared to the drawbacks of bubble/implosion economics, it's a whole lot fairer as someone has to pay either way. There'd also be the issue of deflation, as prices would fall as production improves, but that's already true across vast segments of the economy, indicating that the theory that inflation (as measured in wage-related prices) is necessary or even desirable may be deeply flawed.
No, the problem with Ireland getting hit so hard isn't because of tax breaks
Actually, the problem with Ireland getting hit so hard is because they have an external debt of over 1300% of GDP. See, contrary to what some believe there's no actual difference between private debt and government debt these days, when government steps in to guarantee any private debt.
If your private sector is running with a huge deficit, borrowing to finance itself, your government is going to be on hock for that. For the purpose of economic prediction you might as well count that deficit as part of the actual deficit. And in the case of Ireland, it's been running on such a very high deficit.
The last couple of decades, the systematic privatization of many government functions appears to have included the accumulation of unpayable debt and fiscal irresponsibility, cheered on, if not enforced, by the central banks.
What will solve it is getting inflation under control and making sure the banks in Ireland are solvent
Banks aren't going to get solvent (on a real mark-to-market basis) until fractional reserves are forbidden. The only actual fix to these problems would be to have market set rates and full reserves, in which case you'd get automatic rate adjustment as demand for loans increases/availability of capital decreases, preventing and/or rapidly liquidating gross malinvestments.
Of course, such an adjustment into a sustainable economy would be painful for the profligate, which means we'll get taxed instead by inflated fiat currencies to erode the debt of the irresponsible and the savings of the thrifty.
You might want to explain that to the academics of the central banks who are of the opinion that the amount of money in existence has nothing to do with inflation.
The trick, of course, is convincing people to invest in something which isn't measured by the flawed inflation measures, ie, asset bubbles. Compost mulch would be appropriate in the case of leaves. When people then have put their leaves into the bank accounts, and the banks subsequently 'invested' the money in mulch speculators or mulch producers, you'll get the funny result that the banks can't pay back the leaves that somehow seem to have become mulch. In which case the government confiscates the taxpayers trees and gives them to the banks so they can pay back their creditors.
Compared with fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking you might even get a lower rate of currency creation with leaves; at least they have a limit on the rate of production, which is not the case with central banks.
but i don't want their lack of understanding the subject to get others hurt.
On the other hand, what's more worrying in pharmacology, people passing tests by cheating or tests designed so that cheaters can easily pass? Personally I'd find the latter at least as worrying, if it's an indication of testing methodology in actual pharmacological research.
There are usually far better ways to design something than to require 0.01% accuracy of the machinist.
I wonder if the contract specified the temperature on delivery; the thermal expansion of most materials would vary beyond that required accuracy within normal room temperature variations.
Personally I find most branches of maths to be mind numbingly boring and utterly irrelevant. Until the times I need them to solve an actual problem. In which case they suddenly become interesting and useful, and a whole lot easier to grasp beyond rote learning for a test.
Integrating the necessary maths into the disciplines that actually need them might perhaps take some more time, but I think it'd be less of a waste of time than the current situation and probably yield easier learning of the maths useful in those disciplines.
Oracle would be overkill for a typical MySQL project, and MySQL wouldn't be up to the task of replacing a typical Oracle installation.
Even if Oracle is overkill it's not that uncommon to have enterprise situations where you're 'standardized' on oracle, in which case you get a lot of databases forced onto the overkill system. The competition between Oracle and MySQL would be the chance that enterprises used both a mysql farm _and_ an oracle farm, using the oracle farm only for the applications that needed it, thus cutting down on the number of (wasted) oracle licenses.
From completely anecdotal experience I'd say about 90% of the databases I've seen running on oracle could just as well have been running on MySQL (heck, about a third of those could have managed with a flat file, for that matter).
Slashdot Mirror
That's what got this guy in trouble, he was taking profits three to four times higher than his salary every year.
Indeed. Had he learned from the big boys, what he should have done would have been to implement part of his job as an excel macro, then sold that part to an Irish subsidiary which would then charge his company license fees for the use of the macro. Then, to avoid even the Irish bitty corp tax, he should drain the Irish company of profits (again by using intellectual 'property') through another irish company with a Cayman HQ, funnelling the revenue stream through the Netherlands to use further tax loops there. The full double irish with dutch sandwich.
Then he could do what Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Pfizer, etc, do and cry to the IRS that he's not making any money at all so obviously his salary at $1 isn't unreasonable.
Of course, he'd probably get nailed anyway and sent to GITMO for taking on the airs of his betters; doesn't seem like he's got the net worth to be above the law.
Patents... aren't a big problem today for the average citizen
As patents (and other IPR) are effectively a form of taxation they can burden the economy with inefficiency until it becomes incapable of competing with other producers who aren't burdened with the same costs.
The inability that western and other IPR heavy economies show at competing with less crippled economies certainly appears to be a rather significant problem for many average citizens.
Of course, as long as IPR levies are hidden away as 'private' costs, rather than being regarded as parts of the tax burden, the system is unlikely to get corrected as there is no representation for the paying parties in the system or accounting for the actual costs to the economy.
The whole concept of 'security questions' is completely flawed
The whole concept of answering such questions correctly is flawed. Once you're born in Hobbiton and your mothers maiden name is Goose they become quite a bit harder to guess. Such constructed 'alter egos' make the security questions much less dangerous while still maintaining some recovery capacity.
Which means it'd be perfectly acceptable if they offered it as a 20kb/s connection with burst capabilities, which is the actual usable bandwidth you have available over time.
It's simply a matter of honesty; if they aren't offering unlimited use at a specific data transfer rate, then they shouldn't claim they are.
but those low unemployment rates don't seem to have been made better
Fundamentally, employment isn't going to get 'better' over the long term. We're seeing the end of scarcity and demand (as measured by in-demand workers preferring purchases to free time, liquidity or savings) will fail to keep up with production capacity, leading to constantly falling employment rates
There are only a few ways to go from there: A 'services' economy, basically reducing prevalent wages across the board until 'high employment' is basically achieved by slaves as there is no demand for the work at higher cost. A make-work economy, where the productive segments are taxed so heavily that they cannot achieve their desired wealth of free time or savings, funding fake jobs with the proceeds. Or as a final option, significant cuts in standard work hours combined with higher retirement ages to resolve benefits issues.
Unfortunately, the failure of economic 'science' to develop useful metrics or models means we're probably doomed to the most significantly wasteful and painful policies, where GDP is upheld by asset inflation and exchanges while employment is upheld by virtual slavery. Yay.
Not all people like music... should those people be forced to help fund musicians through taxation?
They're not getting out of it today. Even if you disregard the direct levies they're subjected to on recordable media and similar in many countries, IP rights are still equivalent to other widely spread taxation points on the economy.
Even if you avoid paying it in the first degree, you'll pay for it in a general higher cost of living; you'll pay the slightly higher price for a haircut as the hair saloon pays a fee for playing music, etc. And going beyond that, you'll get it baked into cable fees, as generalized cost of living wage demands, etc. The funding is simply extracted at so many points that you can't avoid getting impacted by it.
If we avoid the waste of the current system, a more direct and efficient funding of musicians would burden the economy to less than 10% of what it's costing us today, while directing more money to the creators than they're getting out of the middlemen today. The supposed objectors would find themselves paying less, directly and indirectly than they are today.
As long as health insurance exists, they will have no need to make services affordable.
To get affordable services you need a competitive market. Patents, prescription rights and licensing are the other pillars keeping prices up, capital pools like insurance are merely enabling to a further extent.
Most often it seems you'd be better off with a database and an expert system doing diagnosis, testing and prescribing already. And soon enough you'll be better off with computer controlled surgery.
Once at that point we might start seeing some cost reduction. But that would require overcoming some fairly strong vested interests.
fascist conspiracy to kill democracy
There have been examples of governments engaging in collusion with foreign intelligence services in ways that knowingly violates the countries law because they can't democratic support for those actions. If that isn't a conspiracy to kill democracy I'm not quite sure what would qualify.
And the state-corporate joint venture in attacking wikileaks certainly reeks of fascism; the reaction to the leaks speak worse than the leaks themselves. But at least we're getting the cards on the table so we can see who'd go for the China style governing.
Well, the underground version is already available, built by the Chicago Tunnel Company between 1899 and 1906, and operated until the 1960's.
Seems like one of those things that's nice in theory but extremely difficult to make profitable in competition with trains and other above-ground transport.
Apologies for not responding sooner, I rarely engage in longer conversations with AC's as I don't know if they reciprocate.
Removing FRB simply means most money will not be available any more internally
Depending on how you replace it. Transition to a non-FRB system does not necessarily entail changing the amount of currency available (by various measures) at any specific point in time.
remember, you're talking about removing approximately 95% of money from the economy by requiring it be tied up in redundant collateral.
Over a longer period of time that would shift; as asset bubbles are valued recursively due to availability of capital and artificial interest rates, the price of those assets and the level of capital tied up in them as an aggregate would look very different eventually.
the system is no longer able to fund the production and importation of food and other essential commodities.
The denomination of the currency is not relevant to the ability to produce; the important thing is the ability to have a medium of exchange of value agreed upon by both parties.
with a real economist
Yah, well, that's the problem innit. You'll find Real Economists (tm) agreeing with both of us. It ain't exactly a hard science.
You're saying a loan doesn't have value?
When backed by assets that are themselves valued depending on the availability of capital and interest rates? Try the mental experiment of doing what you suggest I suggested; remove 95% of all currency, and see what you'll get on a mark-to-market basis when you sell a house or a stock, or some other asset backing loans.
Loans themselves have a value as time preference shifted investments, but allowing them to be further pledged will automatically dilute the value of the collateral. You get a systemic insolvency as you cannot liquidate the systems collateral at par. Each failed liquidation further recursively affects asset values, just as the excessive funding did during expansion.
There are other ways of preventing recursive valuations that might be alternatives to outright banning FRB that would at least mitigate the problem, like setting collateral values as a function of the asset price over historical running time of the loan. It might mitigate asset bubbles, but I suspect it would be papering over a fundamentally unsound system.
And no, personally I don't subscribe to the notion of gold as a universal medium either; it has advantages, but using a single commodity as a universal store of value isn't practical or necessarily efficient either.
economies grow when you can loan money, they shrink when the money supply is tightened
Economies grow when more experienced value is produced for less experienced effort. Nominal growth in any specific medium used for exchanges at a specific frequency interval may or may not coincide. Such growth is not dependent on the arbitrary blowing of bubbles; in fact, overly easy availability of capital may create a disincentive for minimizing effort and decrease productivity growth, as the funding is available at a cost to others (defaulting/inflating), not the producing entities.
Actual measurement of wealth is, of course, at the root of the problem of producing sane hard science models for economic growth or money in itself. FRB itself destroys some unmeasured values of wealth (time preference value, experienced security in value stores, etc). The concept of maximizing employment, also usually tied to FRB theories, ignores the value of free time to the extent of forcing people to work to fund other peoples undesired work (Keynsian money burying/digging), ie, disguised redistribution that actually destroys the value inherent in free time and decreases aggregate unmeasured but actual wealth.
Then take a look at fx Scandinavia.
To be fair, parts of Scandinavia look good because their housing bubbles haven't burst yet. When they do, their banks will get wiped out as well, and probably backstopped by the taxpayers.
Asset bubbles and living on borrowed money seems so nice on paper. It's just when you can't actually pay it back it becomes such a bitch. Unfortunately they're inherent to low interest fractional banking systems, but hey, as long as the bankers are kept whole, we can live with being unable to plan for our future, invest rationally or trust our jobs aren't just artefacts of the latest bubble distortion.
As far as I can tell, the Nationmaster link is public+private debt. You're probably thinking about Swedish public debt only.
As governments today backstop private debt with taxpayers, it's becoming more and more appropriate to include private debt as public liabilities either way.
The actual corporate tax rate isn't the most significant problem anyway, the problem is the holes that make the rate 2-3%. And those holes do not provide jobs; running a tax scam isn't exactly labour intensive. There hasn't been much said about whether or not those holes will be closed.
On the other hand, on the more labour intensive business a 15% or 25% corporate tax rate isn't going to be that significant a factor compared to prevailing wages, availability of appropriate labour force, etc. If it were going to be moved to a low cost country the Irish 60% wage growth between 1999 and 2008 would be a rather more compelling reason to move such business.
Personally I think the Irish have been rather whipped by the multinationals; first paying to save other countries banks from taking a hit on bad loans, then caving to whines about corporate taxes. Maybe some Irish politicians could ask Pfizer for the development of spine growth hormones in exchange for their low taxes.
Who would ever lend Ireland money ever again?
Who would ever lend insolvent banks money again? It's not Ireland that went bust, it's Irelands banks. The Irish government just got suckered into backing them.
The answer is, of course, the next sucker. Which we have a financial system full of, as if anyone loses their money lending to bums, the taxpayers will get to pay for it...
But really, would you feel safer lending money to someone who will probably default in the near future as they carry unmaintainable debt than you would lending money to someone who'd restructured their debt to manageable levels? Neither would be very palatable in a sane system, but that's not what we have, and you as a taxpayer will not get a say in whether to lend or not.
No bombs on that plane!
No bombs in your bag, you mean. Did you use to have them?
As there are, as has been demonstrated, a whole lot of other ways they can get onto the plane, if you enjoy worrying about risks less frequent than accidental bathtub deaths, you should probably go right on worrying.
Or do the scanners do some harm?
As far as I'm concerned they're probably not worse than asbestos. Sure, there are some indications that ionizing radiation may be harmful, but hey, the parties who profit from the scanners claim it's safe...
the chance of someone having a weapon is pretty small!
Anything can become weapon. For a reasonably inventive attacker, chances are you won't even recognize what they're planning to use until they're at it.
Personally I mostly object to the pointless waste and the annoying inconvenience. The useless security theatre has wasted more compound lifetimes than all attacks in history put together; the chance that you're going to get subjected to an attack is near non existent, while the chance that you're going to get your trip made even more unpleasant and annoying than necessary is near certain.
And of course, I'd opt for the groping rather than the xrays. And if you want to abuse the the poor TSA sods right back/incentivise quick processing, there are no hygiene rules yet...
Only in countries that have made the mistake of using an externally controlled currency.
An internally controlled currency will merely allow you to default on your loans in a different way. You're still not paying back your creditors the value they lent you.
If you want to completely bankrupt a country,
A country without FRB, where savings match loans, would have a very hard time to go bankrupt, as an aggregate.
make sure banks can only loan money they can't treat as an asset once owed
Tell that to Ireland... or any other country whose banks lending is supported by junk.
The problem is, if you allow pledging encumbered assets against new loans (ie, frb) you create a recursive valuation of the assets themselves. This will mean automatic inflation of asset price without any actual value added, until the point where value, price, risk and leverage are so out of sync that you get a recursive deflation instead.
It's a stupid idea
A, yes, convincing argument. Certainly the level of intellectual rigour one can expect from FRB supporters.
If the banks can't touch the money in savings accounts,
The banks can't touch the money in bond funds or similar savings vehicles today, yet they do have them. Usually the management of the actual fund entails a fee.
The net saver who agrees to lend his money for longer terms by depositing his funds into such vehicles would get better interest as demand for loans rose, not because the central bank feels like it, but because borrowers would have to pay market rate to be the one actually getting to borrow the money.
On plain transaction/zero maturity accounts you wouldn't get any interest, but then again, most of us already pay for the privilege of having such accounts anyway, despite the fact that the bank usually uses the money as it wishes. High-interest 'savings accounts' wouldn't be possible, but their function, except the part of 'taxpayer guaranteed' would still be possible as explicit investments instead.
The bank itself wouldn't lend money; the banks customers would explicitly need to deposit money into bond funds (if they wanted any returns). It's not that far from what's done today, the difference in function is mainly in what guarantees are made, what time frames on withdrawals you have, and who gets to eat the losses.
The systemic difference would be more significant however. As money supply would no longer expand to accommodate asset bubbles, the interest rate a saver would get would rise as demand rose for money (for example, for investment in the bubble) and the bubbles would get cooled off/liquidated much faster and in a far earlier phase.
There are potential drawbacks, of course, like the higher interest rates in general (that reflect the actual value of risk and liquidity preference) and the requirement that the economy as a whole carry balanced loans and savings, but compared to the drawbacks of bubble/implosion economics, it's a whole lot fairer as someone has to pay either way. There'd also be the issue of deflation, as prices would fall as production improves, but that's already true across vast segments of the economy, indicating that the theory that inflation (as measured in wage-related prices) is necessary or even desirable may be deeply flawed.
No, the problem with Ireland getting hit so hard isn't because of tax breaks
Actually, the problem with Ireland getting hit so hard is because they have an external debt of over 1300% of GDP. See, contrary to what some believe there's no actual difference between private debt and government debt these days, when government steps in to guarantee any private debt.
If your private sector is running with a huge deficit, borrowing to finance itself, your government is going to be on hock for that. For the purpose of economic prediction you might as well count that deficit as part of the actual deficit. And in the case of Ireland, it's been running on such a very high deficit.
The last couple of decades, the systematic privatization of many government functions appears to have included the accumulation of unpayable debt and fiscal irresponsibility, cheered on, if not enforced, by the central banks.
What will solve it is getting inflation under control and making sure the banks in Ireland are solvent
Banks aren't going to get solvent (on a real mark-to-market basis) until fractional reserves are forbidden. The only actual fix to these problems would be to have market set rates and full reserves, in which case you'd get automatic rate adjustment as demand for loans increases/availability of capital decreases, preventing and/or rapidly liquidating gross malinvestments.
Of course, such an adjustment into a sustainable economy would be painful for the profligate, which means we'll get taxed instead by inflated fiat currencies to erode the debt of the irresponsible and the savings of the thrifty.
You might want to explain that to the academics of the central banks who are of the opinion that the amount of money in existence has nothing to do with inflation.
The trick, of course, is convincing people to invest in something which isn't measured by the flawed inflation measures, ie, asset bubbles. Compost mulch would be appropriate in the case of leaves. When people then have put their leaves into the bank accounts, and the banks subsequently 'invested' the money in mulch speculators or mulch producers, you'll get the funny result that the banks can't pay back the leaves that somehow seem to have become mulch. In which case the government confiscates the taxpayers trees and gives them to the banks so they can pay back their creditors.
Compared with fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking you might even get a lower rate of currency creation with leaves; at least they have a limit on the rate of production, which is not the case with central banks.
but i don't want their lack of understanding the subject to get others hurt.
On the other hand, what's more worrying in pharmacology, people passing tests by cheating or tests designed so that cheaters can easily pass? Personally I'd find the latter at least as worrying, if it's an indication of testing methodology in actual pharmacological research.
The Nokia N900 is fairly safe as well; apt repositories usually don't perform actions the user doesn't request.
There are usually far better ways to design something than to require 0.01% accuracy of the machinist.
I wonder if the contract specified the temperature on delivery; the thermal expansion of most materials would vary beyond that required accuracy within normal room temperature variations.
I can't think of a better way to do it
Teach it to them when they do need it.
Personally I find most branches of maths to be mind numbingly boring and utterly irrelevant. Until the times I need them to solve an actual problem. In which case they suddenly become interesting and useful, and a whole lot easier to grasp beyond rote learning for a test.
Integrating the necessary maths into the disciplines that actually need them might perhaps take some more time, but I think it'd be less of a waste of time than the current situation and probably yield easier learning of the maths useful in those disciplines.
Oracle would be overkill for a typical MySQL project, and MySQL wouldn't be up to the task of replacing a typical Oracle installation.
Even if Oracle is overkill it's not that uncommon to have enterprise situations where you're 'standardized' on oracle, in which case you get a lot of databases forced onto the overkill system. The competition between Oracle and MySQL would be the chance that enterprises used both a mysql farm _and_ an oracle farm, using the oracle farm only for the applications that needed it, thus cutting down on the number of (wasted) oracle licenses.
From completely anecdotal experience I'd say about 90% of the databases I've seen running on oracle could just as well have been running on MySQL (heck, about a third of those could have managed with a flat file, for that matter).