I am the proud owner of a Lincoln Navigator. It gets 15-18 mpg. I purchased my SUV for several reasons.
1. Family safety. My family is safer in my SUV than in a traditional car. I do not drive at high speeds around turns or in inclement weather, so I am less concerned about roll-overs. 2. I do take the vehicle where 4WD is needed. I live in the American West, very near lots of open land that is extremely pleasurable to explore. 3. I live where it snows and 4WD is much easier than dealing with chains. 4. I coach my son's athletic teams and haul around more stuff than I could fit in a standard car. 5. I have the discretionary income to afford it.
It is also interesting to note that I pay more than my share of taxes to own my SUV. I pay more to register my car. I pay more gas taxes, because I burn more gas. These taxes pay for maintaining the roads, building new ones, and paying for mass transit systems that cannot pay for themselves.
I am all for improving gas mileage, even eliminating gas as a fuel. But be realistic. If you improve the average fuel economy by 20%, then taxes must be increased 20% to create equivalent revenue to support the infrastructure. By the time the MPG on my SUV is doubled, so will the MPG on all the other "standard" cars.
So, whats the solution? Stop complaining about SUV and come up with an equivalent solution that meets the needs of the market. If I had a choice of spending an extra $5k to double my MPG or go Electric, with all the same feature I have, I would have done so in a heartbeat.
Don't waste your time trying to change the dynamics of the marketplace, satisfy them instead!
Answer: Most RAID (SCSI and IDE) place configuration information at the end of the drive in the array. Typically one or more logical cylinders are lopped off the drive size and used to store the config info. As the config info is not part of the drive's "size" when in RAID mode, the info is inaccessible. Also, the info is drive specific, so copying(dd, ghost, etc) won't solve the problem completely. Don't expect anything out of the config info as it is VERY manufacturer specific.
Solution: 1. Backup everything. 2. Copy (dd, ghost) the most current drive to the least current drive. 3. Go into the Highpoint BIOS config and re-declare the drives as a RAID-0. 4. At this point the Highpoint BIOS will probably try to initialize the RAID-0. Since you copied the drives using a sector copy program in step 2, the direction of the Highpoint initialization doesn't matter. 5. If this worked, weverything will boot normally with the RAID-0 config. 6. If this didn't work, the drives are probably irrepairably hosed. Restore from the backup you made in Step 1. You did make a backup in Step 1, right?:-)
Currently, you will not be able to own a flamethrower or a mortar without proper permits. Should you obtain said permits, you would be advised to use extreme caution in using these items.
Remember folks, what started the American Revolution was British sending troops to confiscate cannons, black powder and muskets. These were certainly the highest tech weapons of destruction available at the time. They were being confiscated to prevent their use in armed disagreements with government policy. That is the historical basis for the second ammendment.
So, if you want to own a flamethrower and a mortar, I believe you should have the right. Should you use it improperly you would be branded a criminal, just like the Minutemen were. History has painted them as revolutionary heroes, but at the time they were criminals against the establish (British) government.
Let's get our "impartial" legislators to enact a set of requirements, examns, licensing, etc for all gun owners. This is what has been done with concealed carry permits in most states. To get a CCP, one must formally request the local sherrif, provide documentation that you meet the requirements and provide a reason you deserve the permit. Then a bureaucrat decides whether you get the permit arbtrarily.
This is your future gun ownership scenario being acted out today! And if you disagree with the decision of the bureaucrat you do what?
What if YOU were told that you couldn't: a. Own a gun b. Procreate c. Own property d. Vote
It's easy to limit other people's rights. But when their rights get limited, eventually yours do to.
Yes, I call $2 a gallon expensive. I have traveled and driven extensively in Europe. I realize that compared to the rest of the world we have "cheap" gas.
Isn't it interesting how gasoline (or petrol) is such a fine target to tax. The common argument on our side of the pond is that taxing gas is the best way of making the people who use the transportation infrastructure pay for it personally. Fine, but the car that gets 50 miles per gallon is paying less taxes than the truck getting 10 miles per gallon on a per mile of transportation infrastructure used.
But our government wants to get cars built that improve gas mileage to reduce pollution. But if we improve gas mileage by 20%, then the revenues to support the roads will drop by 20%, which will cause lawmakers to increase taxes to bring up revenues. Then the gas prices go up again.
What do the politicians use as the excuse for the gas taxes over there?
I'm sorry you think that I am "throwing numbers out". You're trying to create a Guaranteed Minimum Income" and I am trying to "follow the money" and show you who pays for it.
I suggest your read the following article the following article. It documents how the Swedish model, which your GMI seems to be loosely based upon, has failed. Those who are on the GMI have no incentive to take the "menial jobs", such as McDonalds, janitors, contruction laborers, etc.
The only option to fill those jobs is to increase the wages for the low-skill/no-skill positions to far enough above GMI to attract workers. Also, those who tend to be lazy will not have starvation and homelessness motivating them to find work. They'll just sit on their behinds watching Oprah and WWF all day.
But let's get back to the money. So, you want to institute a "royalty" on the local copper mine. Let's say that the local mining company sells the copper it mines for one dollar a pound.
With your GMI requirements copper prices just shot up to two dollars a pound so that 50% can be put in the GMI fund. Everything that uses copper, electronics, cookware, metal alloys, etc, just had their raw material costs double. They can't absorb that increase in cost without raising the price of their products. This will follow the same model I used in my previous posting, ending with labor costs increasing becuase the cost of living just increased.
You made the point earlier that oil/mining companies "choose" to raise prices, they don't "have" to. Look at the company's financial statements. There is only a certain amount of money received from their customers. They have to pay for their products (the raw material), the people to mine/drill for it, the supervisors and support personell, etc. The left over is profit. Yes, most executives are over-paid, but solving that problem will not double a company's profit. Especially one as big as most oil/mining companies.
If you use my model from above (copper form $1 to $2 per pound), the mining company is left with a problem. They probably ran on 20%-30% gross margin. That means that 30 cents of every dollar paid for overhead and profit, and sevnty cents went for raw material and extraction labor. If you add a $1 royalty, this means that the thei cost of good just went from 70 cents to $1.70. If the company does not raise prices, it will be selling $1.70 copper for $1, but not for long. So, they have no choice but to raise prices. If they raise prices to $2 a pound, their gross margin is cut in half (to 15%), but they have the same number of dollars to spend on overhead, IF they can sell the same number of pounds of copper.
What happens to your scenario if an African or South American nation offers our companies copper at $1.50 a pound, or less. Our companies would either jump at it or the copper lobby would get a tarrif act passed to even the playing field. Then the US companies look at relocating to Mexico or Canada so that they can avoid US tariffs and still access the US market.
If I were King of the World and looking for ways to use royalties from mining, I would rather use them to find new sources of minerals, say in space, rather than in subsidizing lazy people. Limited supplies of raw materials is a VERY good point, but lets solve that problem.
The main reason that Alaska is living proff is that the oil companies actually pass on most of the lease costs to the Japanese. This is die to two main reasons. First, the oil is higher in sulfur than Middle Eastern oil and secondly, Alaska is much closer to Japan, and therefore cheaper to ship to. The same oil companies turn around and buy cheaper Middle eastern oil and ship it to the USA.
Also, contrary to current popular belief, corporations are not inherently evil. People are evil and hide in corporations. They hid in other large organization like government and the church as we have recently found out. I also dispute the statement that oil companies are "rich". While I am not happy paying $2 a gallon for gas, I don't just blame the oil companies. I blame my federal and state government for taxes, as well as the OPEC price-fixing cartel. For example, BP sales are down this year to $80 billion (Q1&Q2). BP will invest $13 billion in exploration. They declared a profit of $3.3 billion of which they returned $2.6 billion to shareholders as dividend. How many other comapanies return most of the profits to shareholders, not Microsoft, nor Cisco, nor Intel.
It's easy to point the finger at rich corporations. I encourage you to "look under the hood" at their financials. Tell me how many companies can take a 50% tax on their revenues and not either pass it on or significantly restucture (i.e. layoff) or both. I know of none, not even Bill Gates, Inc.
You proposal ends up with a nasty feedback loop, for example:
1. Raise/Institute fees on mining and oil drilling (most environmentalist want to curtail/eliminate these anyway, but that's anther thread...) 2. The cost of raw materials(copper, iron, silver, gold, oil, coal, etc) increases because the mining/oil companies need to raise revenue to pay for the leases/fees. 3. The cost of refined materials (steel, wire, photo film, electronic components, etc) increases due to the increase in raw material prices. 4. The cost of energy increases because fuel costs increase. 5. The cost of consumer goods and machinery goes up because the cost of refined material and energy increases. 6. The cost of food increases because the cost of machinery and fuel increases. 7. The poverty level increases because food, energy and good prices increased. 8. The cost of labor increases because it costs more to live which then feedback on 3-7 also. 8. Goto 1 (i.e. raise fees again). Loop until the economy is destroyed.
The current US population (2000 census) is upwards of 280 million people. The poverty level (according to HHS) is $10,000 for a single person and $15,000 for a family of three. If you award $10,000 per individual, then you reward people for having children, much the way AFDC used to do.
This creates a burden of somewhere between $1.4 and $2.8 trillion dollar annually. The total proposed federal budget for 2002 is only $4 trillion. Some of what you want MAY be duplicated in the current budget, but you want to increase the revenue to governement by 33% to 66%.
If you are not planning to raise income taxes, then you are putting the burden for the majority of this income squarely on the people you want to give the money back to. Raising money through taxing business just gets passed onto the consumer. A rich person can only eat a certain amount, even if it is French cuisine at a 4-star restaurant. They can only drive one car at a time, just like me. This means that Bill Gates will not pay an abnormally larger share of this burden than me, even though there is a HUGE disparity in our wealth.
I just don't see how raising the money will not create a horrible feedback loop, such as the one I described above. This is one of the main reasons that people push for tax cuts. When taxes are cut, the price of goods and services drop because they are paying less taxes. The average Joe and Jane have more money to spend on cheaper goods. Tax cuts led to the prosperity we have enjoyed for the last few decades. Increasing taxes, rather than cutting spending, starting with George H. W. Bush tax increase, has contributed to our current economic meltdown. Don't give people money, let them keep it in the first place.
How is my family harmed? Because I am forced to pay.....
Currently, I pay part of Alaska's $1,000 per citizen every time I pull into a gas station. I did not vote for this, I did not volunteer it, I did not give it to charity, it was taken from me. If the oil company did not have to pay it, gas prices would be lower.
Wealth, i.e. money, must come from somewhere. In the end it comes from a consumer buying something, from taxes collected, or from money invested or given voluntarily.
For your guaranteed income at poverty level to work, you must collect significantly more in tax revenue. Why more, well gotta run the government as well as pay the citizens. Since 95% of the income taxes are paid by the top 10% (or maybe its top 20%) of wage earners, these would be the most affected.
You end up with three possible outcomes, you dis-incent people from becoming high-wage earners, you make lawyers and CPAs rich finding loopholes, or people flee. Why was there a huge influx of high-paid actors and musicians from England, because their social welfare system wanted 98% of their income. They ran.
In principle, your idea sounds good, but it doesn't work. Follow the money. As Alexander Tyler said, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury." How does your proposal not fall into the category of largesse out of the public treasury?
**** Feel free to ignore upcoming political tirade ****
ARE YOU NUTS!!
Exactly why should I pay you to sit around doing whatever you want to do while I stuck in a cubicle busting my hump. Maybe I didn't get "lucky" enough to get laid-off and put on the Federal Guaranteed Income.
Have you ever seen what welfare does to people! I have. Not from the outside, from the inside. I grew up poor. I mean dirt poor. My father died when I was twelve, my mom had three part time jobs, and I worked to help make ends meet. But there were the Welfare folks. Calling us and asking us to go on Welfare. "You can have more time for your kids", etc. My mom refused. She showed us that hard work can be rewarded if you set a goal. She decided to get a teaching credential and got her BS at the age of 54. The other poor kids I knew on welfare are still dirt poor. The system won't let you win, the system is designed to perpetuate the system.
Any Federal Guaranteed Income program would be set up by bureaucrats, run by bureaucrats, and designed to perpetuate and create jobs for more bureaucrats.
You also assume that everyone is basically honorable and will not take advantage of a system. They're not. Look around, that's what a lot of people spend all their time doing. What do we need lawyers and CPAs for if not to find out how to take advantange of THE SYSTEM.
Summary: Good intentions. Bad idea. **** End Rant ****
To answer the original question: 1. I'd spend more time with my kids 2. I'd continue to work at what I love, if only as an example to my kids 3. I'd continue to try to improve myself as a person, cause this is my only shot at this life. 4. I'd teach/coach others to learn the values I hold dear.
Cheers, Ed
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
After my first job as a programmer went bankrupt (in 1980), my fellow programmers and I toyed with starting a business. We sounded a lot like you. It was hard to get a job, so we would just start a company. Can't be that hard, right. We'd do a better job than the boneheads that put our last company out of business, right. We were programmers, by god, we could do anything if we set our minds to it!
Twenty plus years later I am glad I decided to get another job. I've learned a few things I'll share with you for free that I paid dearly for:
1. You don't know everything when you are 25. Or 35. Or 45..... 2. It is more important to be a businessman than an engineer if you want to be successful. 3. Learn how to write a business plan and execute what's in it. 4. Learn what all those funky financial reports mean, how to create them, and why you're business life (and personal life) depends on them. 5. Become a marketeer. If you don't know how to get a message across to someone, or how to figure out what to charge, or who your competitors are, or what the barriers to entry for you company are you will fail. 6. Become a salesman. Not necessarily work in sales, but be able to sell your idea to investors, to partners, to employees, and to customers. 7. Learn to take responsibility. If you are a procrasinator, you will fail as a entrepeneur. In a startup you are the boss, even if there are five or ten of you. You have no support organization, no secretaries. If you don't do it, it may not get done. Remember, you will have employees, and they will depend on you for their livelihood. What you do and do not do will affect and possibly destroy people's lives. If you are not up to that level of responsbility, get some more experience until you are. 8. Learn to learn quickly. As I mentioned above, you will be doing many different things, some of which you have never done before (and may not want to do again). Figuring out what to do quickly will give you more time to do the important stuff. 9. Management is important. Learn scheduling, people management, budgeting, and espcially how to help others deal with change. 10. Figure out a way to buy a business that is profitable already rather than build one from scratch. It's always easier to make more money and get more financial backing if you are profitable. After twenty years that's what I am doing right now, buying an existing profitable business.
If you are dead-set on going ahead, remember one thing. The successful super-geek programmers were the ones that team up with solid, smart business people, i.e. Gates-Ballmer, Joy-McNealy, Andresson-Clark, etc. Who's your partner going to be and do you trust them absolutely with your life.
I got my Computer Software degree from Excelsior (then Regents College) in 1996. The process took me longer than you want (five years), but most of that was me wasting time.
I got this degree without taking a single class. I used CLEP tests I had taken in the Navy and the schools I went to in the Navy to form a credit base. Then I took the CS GRE graduate exam. This provided about 32 units (2 semesters) of CS credits. Then I found other tests through Excelsior to complete my degree. I finished it off in the fall of 1995 by taking the CLEP English 1A exam.
My philosphy was to take tests because I didn't want to go to class, I didn't want to study, and I figured I was smart enough. My plan was to take a test once, if I passed, great, if I failed I would know what to study to try again. If I failed twice, then I MIGHT consider taking a class. I NEVER failed an exam.
Then I started the process I had 10 years experience, mostly in systems software (operating systems, etc) and management. Give them a look. If you have any questions, contact me @ excelsior@pugtechnology.com.
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I am the proud owner of a Lincoln Navigator. It gets 15-18 mpg. I purchased my SUV for several reasons.
1. Family safety. My family is safer in my SUV than in a traditional car. I do not drive at high speeds around turns or in inclement weather, so I am less concerned about roll-overs.
2. I do take the vehicle where 4WD is needed. I live in the American West, very near lots of open land that is extremely pleasurable to explore.
3. I live where it snows and 4WD is much easier than dealing with chains.
4. I coach my son's athletic teams and haul around more stuff than I could fit in a standard car.
5. I have the discretionary income to afford it.
It is also interesting to note that I pay more than my share of taxes to own my SUV. I pay more to register my car. I pay more gas taxes, because I burn more gas. These taxes pay for maintaining the roads, building new ones, and paying for mass transit systems that cannot pay for themselves.
I am all for improving gas mileage, even eliminating gas as a fuel. But be realistic. If you improve the average fuel economy by 20%, then taxes must be increased 20% to create equivalent revenue to support the infrastructure. By the time the MPG on my SUV is doubled, so will the MPG on all the other "standard" cars.
So, whats the solution? Stop complaining about SUV and come up with an equivalent solution that meets the needs of the market. If I had a choice of spending an extra $5k to double my MPG or go Electric, with all the same feature I have, I would have done so in a heartbeat.
Don't waste your time trying to change the dynamics of the marketplace, satisfy them instead!
Cheers,
Spending $50 to fill my gas tank for YOU
Answer: Most RAID (SCSI and IDE) place configuration information at the end of the drive in the array. Typically one or more logical cylinders are lopped off the drive size and used to store the config info. As the config info is not part of the drive's "size" when in RAID mode, the info is inaccessible. Also, the info is drive specific, so copying(dd, ghost, etc) won't solve the problem completely. Don't expect anything out of the config info as it is VERY manufacturer specific.
:-)
Solution:
1. Backup everything.
2. Copy (dd, ghost) the most current drive to the least current drive.
3. Go into the Highpoint BIOS config and re-declare the drives as a RAID-0.
4. At this point the Highpoint BIOS will probably try to initialize the RAID-0. Since you copied the drives using a sector copy program in step 2, the direction of the Highpoint initialization doesn't matter.
5. If this worked, weverything will boot normally with the RAID-0 config.
6. If this didn't work, the drives are probably irrepairably hosed. Restore from the backup you made in Step 1. You did make a backup in Step 1, right?
Good Luck,
Ed
Currently, you will not be able to own a flamethrower or a mortar without proper permits. Should you obtain said permits, you would be advised to use extreme caution in using these items.
Remember folks, what started the American Revolution was British sending troops to confiscate cannons, black powder and muskets. These were certainly the highest tech weapons of destruction available at the time. They were being confiscated to prevent their use in armed disagreements with government policy. That is the historical basis for the second ammendment.
So, if you want to own a flamethrower and a mortar, I believe you should have the right. Should you use it improperly you would be branded a criminal, just like the Minutemen were. History has painted them as revolutionary heroes, but at the time they were criminals against the establish (British) government.
Great!
Let's get our "impartial" legislators to enact a set of requirements, examns, licensing, etc for all gun owners. This is what has been done with concealed carry permits in most states. To get a CCP, one must formally request the local sherrif, provide documentation that you meet the requirements and provide a reason you deserve the permit. Then a bureaucrat decides whether you get the permit arbtrarily.
This is your future gun ownership scenario being acted out today! And if you disagree with the decision of the bureaucrat you do what?
What if YOU were told that you couldn't:
a. Own a gun
b. Procreate
c. Own property
d. Vote
It's easy to limit other people's rights. But when their rights get limited, eventually yours do to.
Yes, I call $2 a gallon expensive. I have traveled and driven extensively in Europe. I realize that compared to the rest of the world we have "cheap" gas.
Isn't it interesting how gasoline (or petrol) is such a fine target to tax. The common argument on our side of the pond is that taxing gas is the best way of making the people who use the transportation infrastructure pay for it personally. Fine, but the car that gets 50 miles per gallon is paying less taxes than the truck getting 10 miles per gallon on a per mile of transportation infrastructure used.
But our government wants to get cars built that improve gas mileage to reduce pollution. But if we improve gas mileage by 20%, then the revenues to support the roads will drop by 20%, which will cause lawmakers to increase taxes to bring up revenues. Then the gas prices go up again.
What do the politicians use as the excuse for the gas taxes over there?
I'm sorry you think that I am "throwing numbers out". You're trying to create a Guaranteed Minimum Income" and I am trying to "follow the money" and show you who pays for it.
I suggest your read the following article the following article. It documents how the Swedish model, which your GMI seems to be loosely based upon, has failed. Those who are on the GMI have no incentive to take the "menial jobs", such as McDonalds, janitors, contruction laborers, etc.
The only option to fill those jobs is to increase the wages for the low-skill/no-skill positions to far enough above GMI to attract workers. Also, those who tend to be lazy will not have starvation and homelessness motivating them to find work. They'll just sit on their behinds watching Oprah and WWF all day.
But let's get back to the money. So, you want to institute a "royalty" on the local copper mine. Let's say that the local mining company sells the copper it mines for one dollar a pound.
With your GMI requirements copper prices just shot up to two dollars a pound so that 50% can be put in the GMI fund. Everything that uses copper, electronics, cookware, metal alloys, etc, just had their raw material costs double. They can't absorb that increase in cost without raising the price of their products. This will follow the same model I used in my previous posting, ending with labor costs increasing becuase the cost of living just increased.
You made the point earlier that oil/mining companies "choose" to raise prices, they don't "have" to. Look at the company's financial statements. There is only a certain amount of money received from their customers. They have to pay for their products (the raw material), the people to mine/drill for it, the supervisors and support personell, etc. The left over is profit. Yes, most executives are over-paid, but solving that problem will not double a company's profit. Especially one as big as most oil/mining companies.
If you use my model from above (copper form $1 to $2 per pound), the mining company is left with a problem. They probably ran on 20%-30% gross margin. That means that 30 cents of every dollar paid for overhead and profit, and sevnty cents went for raw material and extraction labor. If you add a $1 royalty, this means that the thei cost of good just went from 70 cents to $1.70. If the company does not raise prices, it will be selling $1.70 copper for $1, but not for long. So, they have no choice but to raise prices. If they raise prices to $2 a pound, their gross margin is cut in half (to 15%), but they have the same number of dollars to spend on overhead, IF they can sell the same number of pounds of copper.
What happens to your scenario if an African or South American nation offers our companies copper at $1.50 a pound, or less. Our companies would either jump at it or the copper lobby would get a tarrif act passed to even the playing field. Then the US companies look at relocating to Mexico or Canada so that they can avoid US tariffs and still access the US market.
If I were King of the World and looking for ways to use royalties from mining, I would rather use them to find new sources of minerals, say in space, rather than in subsidizing lazy people. Limited supplies of raw materials is a VERY good point, but lets solve that problem.
The main reason that Alaska is living proff is that the oil companies actually pass on most of the lease costs to the Japanese. This is die to two main reasons. First, the oil is higher in sulfur than Middle Eastern oil and secondly, Alaska is much closer to Japan, and therefore cheaper to ship to. The same oil companies turn around and buy cheaper Middle eastern oil and ship it to the USA.
Also, contrary to current popular belief, corporations are not inherently evil. People are evil and hide in corporations. They hid in other large organization like government and the church as we have recently found out. I also dispute the statement that oil companies are "rich". While I am not happy paying $2 a gallon for gas, I don't just blame the oil companies. I blame my federal and state government for taxes, as well as the OPEC price-fixing cartel. For example, BP sales are down this year to $80 billion (Q1&Q2). BP will invest $13 billion in exploration. They declared a profit of $3.3 billion of which they returned $2.6 billion to shareholders as dividend. How many other comapanies return most of the profits to shareholders, not Microsoft, nor Cisco, nor Intel.
It's easy to point the finger at rich corporations. I encourage you to "look under the hood" at their financials. Tell me how many companies can take a 50% tax on their revenues and not either pass it on or significantly restucture (i.e. layoff) or both. I know of none, not even Bill Gates, Inc.
You proposal ends up with a nasty feedback loop, for example:
1. Raise/Institute fees on mining and oil drilling (most environmentalist want to curtail/eliminate these anyway, but that's anther thread...)
2. The cost of raw materials(copper, iron, silver, gold, oil, coal, etc) increases because the mining/oil companies need to raise revenue to pay for the leases/fees.
3. The cost of refined materials (steel, wire, photo film, electronic components, etc) increases due to the increase in raw material prices.
4. The cost of energy increases because fuel costs increase.
5. The cost of consumer goods and machinery goes up because the cost of refined material and energy increases.
6. The cost of food increases because the cost of machinery and fuel increases.
7. The poverty level increases because food, energy and good prices increased.
8. The cost of labor increases because it costs more to live which then feedback on 3-7 also.
8. Goto 1 (i.e. raise fees again). Loop until the economy is destroyed.
The current US population (2000 census) is upwards of 280 million people. The poverty level (according to HHS) is $10,000 for a single person and $15,000 for a family of three. If you award $10,000 per individual, then you reward people for having children, much the way AFDC used to do.
This creates a burden of somewhere between $1.4 and $2.8 trillion dollar annually. The total proposed federal budget for 2002 is only $4 trillion. Some of what you want MAY be duplicated in the current budget, but you want to increase the revenue to governement by 33% to 66%.
If you are not planning to raise income taxes, then you are putting the burden for the majority of this income squarely on the people you want to give the money back to. Raising money through taxing business just gets passed onto the consumer. A rich person can only eat a certain amount, even if it is French cuisine at a 4-star restaurant. They can only drive one car at a time, just like me. This means that Bill Gates will not pay an abnormally larger share of this burden than me, even though there is a HUGE disparity in our wealth.
I just don't see how raising the money will not create a horrible feedback loop, such as the one I described above. This is one of the main reasons that people push for tax cuts. When taxes are cut, the price of goods and services drop because they are paying less taxes. The average Joe and Jane have more money to spend on cheaper goods. Tax cuts led to the prosperity we have enjoyed for the last few decades. Increasing taxes, rather than cutting spending, starting with George H. W. Bush tax increase, has contributed to our current economic meltdown. Don't give people money, let them keep it in the first place.
How is my family harmed? Because I am forced to pay.....
Currently, I pay part of Alaska's $1,000 per citizen every time I pull into a gas station. I did not vote for this, I did not volunteer it, I did not give it to charity, it was taken from me. If the oil company did not have to pay it, gas prices would be lower.
Wealth, i.e. money, must come from somewhere. In the end it comes from a consumer buying something, from taxes collected, or from money invested or given voluntarily.
For your guaranteed income at poverty level to work, you must collect significantly more in tax revenue. Why more, well gotta run the government as well as pay the citizens. Since 95% of the income taxes are paid by the top 10% (or maybe its top 20%) of wage earners, these would be the most affected.
You end up with three possible outcomes, you dis-incent people from becoming high-wage earners, you make lawyers and CPAs rich finding loopholes, or people flee. Why was there a huge influx of high-paid actors and musicians from England, because their social welfare system wanted 98% of their income. They ran.
In principle, your idea sounds good, but it doesn't work. Follow the money. As Alexander Tyler said, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury." How does your proposal not fall into the category of largesse out of the public treasury?
Cheers!
**** Feel free to ignore upcoming political tirade ****
ARE YOU NUTS!!
Exactly why should I pay you to sit around doing whatever you want to do while I stuck in a cubicle busting my hump. Maybe I didn't get "lucky" enough to get laid-off and put on the Federal Guaranteed Income.
Have you ever seen what welfare does to people!
I have. Not from the outside, from the inside. I grew up poor. I mean dirt poor. My father died when I was twelve, my mom had three part time jobs, and I worked to help make ends meet. But there were the Welfare folks. Calling us and asking us to go on Welfare. "You can have more time for your kids", etc. My mom refused. She showed us that hard work can be rewarded if you set a goal. She decided to get a teaching credential and got her BS at the age of 54. The other poor kids I knew on welfare are still dirt poor. The system won't let you win, the system is designed to perpetuate the system.
Any Federal Guaranteed Income program would be set up by bureaucrats, run by bureaucrats, and designed to perpetuate and create jobs for more bureaucrats.
You also assume that everyone is basically honorable and will not take advantage of a system. They're not. Look around, that's what a lot of people spend all their time doing. What do we need lawyers and CPAs for if not to find out how to take advantange of THE SYSTEM.
Summary: Good intentions. Bad idea.
**** End Rant ****
To answer the original question:
1. I'd spend more time with my kids
2. I'd continue to work at what I love, if only as an example to my kids
3. I'd continue to try to improve myself as a person, cause this is my only shot at this life.
4. I'd teach/coach others to learn the values I hold dear.
Cheers,
Ed
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day,
Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
After my first job as a programmer went bankrupt (in 1980), my fellow programmers and I toyed with starting a business. We sounded a lot like you. It was hard to get a job, so we would just start a company. Can't be that hard, right. We'd do a better job than the boneheads that put our last company out of business, right. We were programmers, by god, we could do anything if we set our minds to it!
Twenty plus years later I am glad I decided to get another job. I've learned a few things I'll share with you for free that I paid dearly for:
1. You don't know everything when you are 25. Or 35. Or 45.....
2. It is more important to be a businessman than an engineer if you want to be successful.
3. Learn how to write a business plan and execute what's in it.
4. Learn what all those funky financial reports mean, how to create them, and why you're business life (and personal life) depends on them.
5. Become a marketeer. If you don't know how to get a message across to someone, or how to figure out what to charge, or who your competitors are, or what the barriers to entry for you company are you will fail.
6. Become a salesman. Not necessarily work in sales, but be able to sell your idea to investors, to partners, to employees, and to customers.
7. Learn to take responsibility. If you are a procrasinator, you will fail as a entrepeneur. In a startup you are the boss, even if there are five or ten of you. You have no support organization, no secretaries. If you don't do it, it may not get done. Remember, you will have employees, and they will depend on you for their livelihood. What you do and do not do will affect and possibly destroy people's lives. If you are not up to that level of responsbility, get some more experience until you are.
8. Learn to learn quickly. As I mentioned above, you will be doing many different things, some of which you have never done before (and may not want to do again). Figuring out what to do quickly will give you more time to do the important stuff.
9. Management is important. Learn scheduling, people management, budgeting, and espcially how to help others deal with change.
10. Figure out a way to buy a business that is profitable already rather than build one from scratch. It's always easier to make more money and get more financial backing if you are profitable. After twenty years that's what I am doing right now, buying an existing profitable business.
If you are dead-set on going ahead, remember one thing. The successful super-geek programmers were the ones that team up with solid, smart business people, i.e. Gates-Ballmer, Joy-McNealy, Andresson-Clark, etc. Who's your partner going to be and do you trust them absolutely with your life.
I got my Computer Software degree from Excelsior (then Regents College) in 1996. The process took me longer than you want (five years), but most of that was me wasting time.
I got this degree without taking a single class. I used CLEP tests I had taken in the Navy and the schools I went to in the Navy to form a credit base. Then I took the CS GRE graduate exam. This provided about 32 units (2 semesters) of CS credits. Then I found other tests through Excelsior to complete my degree. I finished it off in the fall of 1995 by taking the CLEP English 1A exam.
My philosphy was to take tests because I didn't want to go to class, I didn't want to study, and I figured I was smart enough. My plan was to take a test once, if I passed, great, if I failed I would know what to study to try again. If I failed twice, then I MIGHT consider taking a class. I NEVER failed an exam.
Then I started the process I had 10 years experience, mostly in systems software (operating systems, etc) and management. Give them a look. If you have any questions, contact me @ excelsior@pugtechnology.com.