There are two things to note here. First, this also punishes anyone who does add value to a transaction. 3% is a large tax for stock market transactions.
Second, it's not government's job to care if there are valueless transactions out there or not. As another poster noted, why aren't they banning American Idol?
Right now, looking at google, I see a spread of 16 cents on a $1000/share stock. If I invest in that stock, I'd probably consider anything under 1% in gains a wash
Ok, a collective 1% gain on your investment each time you buy and later sell a stock. That's significant right there even if you call it a "wash".
Umm, bullshit. The exchange is supposed to match up buyers and sellers. That's what exchanges are FOR. If there is a buyer but no seller, then the market maker steps in and sells at a higher price. If there is no buyer, the market maker buys at a lower price. This is how price movements happen. HFT is a middleman. If there is no buyer or seller, then HFT wouldn't go in on the trade at all. If there is a buyer and a seller, HFT does not need to exist, since the exchange is supposed to match up the two parties already.
What's bullshit about it? Market makers by definition are middlemen. This semantics drama is ridiculous. And the buyer and seller need not be on the same market at the same time. There are a number of associated markets with each stock market and some of the HFT trade is arbitrage between these markets.
Please, I just pray nobody justifies this obvious non-productive activity by explaining it lends necessary liquidity to the markets.
Contrary to your fervent prayers, providing liquidity is a productive feature of this "obvious non-productive" activity. At least, you're getting the arguments right.
The markets were liquid enough for me back when telegraphs were used to send messages to human traders.
Because you're the only person on the planet who matters, amirite?
Kind of explains the flaws in "trickle down", doesn't it? We'll assign the wealth to whoever we want and you'll like it because some of it will trickle down to you. I must admit I'd rather be a trickler in this situation than a trickle-ee.
You might want to start following your own advice. You are after all the one wishing harm on another merely because they disagree with you.
A lot of countries throughout the world have poorly controlled entitlement systems. I think a fundamental requirement should be that a system helps more than it harms. For example, the US has Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid which is a similar problem for many other countries (such as the UK) which have similar problems with public pensions and health care), public subsidies (such as Japan's postal savings accounts or petroleum subsidies for some oil producing countries), and other poorly thought out entitlements with unintended consequences.
What sort of perspective is going to make that harm go away without introducing blindness and ignorance?
Social Security and Medicare isn't just "taking care" of the elderly. They're huge wealth transfers from poorer, younger people to wealthier older people.
Quite a few people trust them. For example, entitlement advocates do since the government is the ones writing the checks and accessing the information needed to comply with the conditions of the entitlement.
No, it means we look at evidence. For example, Snowden's release of information forced the powers that be to change their story. That's evidence not merely taking the words of someone as "gospel".
Now suppose you paid to find out about this condition twenty years from now rather than today and there was no repercussions for the delay in test results except perhaps a slight reshuffling of priorities? Even if the test doesn't change in price, that's still a substantial time value benefit from kicking that can 20 years down the road.
The ACA is a Republican plan and has been for decades. No, don't bother with that link showing the Heritage Foundation disavowing their own policy proposal from the nineties, since they were just fine with Romneycare years before Obama made it national.
Two things to note here. Individual mandate is not part of the Republican plan nor are the many side issues. Obamacare is much more than the core legislation. Second, Romneycare is a state thing. States constitutionally are granted more power in this area than the federal government is. So it is quite constitutional for Massachusetts to have Obamacare, but not the federal government because of this separation of powers.
Welcome to the health care hamster wheel. No matter how much you fund it, it will always be underfunded. That's the nature of demand for health care. It is truly bottomless.
Enjoy your life? I sure don't hope you do if you really think that's a good idea.
This is a remarkably childish, selfish argument. "I sure hope you never prosper from the application of reason and common sense. For it'd be terrible if you did."
What do you expect people to do if their services are stopped and they're without a job, without a home, without food, without money, without medical services without... you name it and they don't have it?
I expect them to turn their life around and get a job.
As a building estimator contract administrator, do you estimate the costs of your contracts at completion of the contract? "Build this thing and then we'll haggle price." Or perhaps you order out of the catalog? I'm thinking of all the money US President FDR could have saved by shopping for the best Lake Mead dam rather than build his own.
In other words, you're familiar with projects that have to be arranged ahead of time. So why does a free market in health care require you to negotiate only from the hospital bed?
Why is the care in the US 2.5x as expensive as the "too expensive" NHS (per person per PPP normalized GDP/capita) if the free market system works so well?
Because there isn't a free market system in the US for health care. I don't know why people keep insisting otherwise. Do you even know what a free market system is?
Go and break/twist something whilst skiing in Austria, I had to ski off a glacier with a broken rib due to certain circumstance but if you have the option of forking out for a ski-do lift off you will, or worse if you need a helicopter out of there you can forget "choices".
You choose to do something which didn't have a market for it and there were consequences? Do tell!
The problem with this viewpoint is that you can pick health care providers ahead of time. There's no reason that multiple hospitals or ambulance providers couldn't be competing for your service. It's not like water or electricity where it's hard to have multiple services in the same area.
Math brings its own problems. Just to consider your example, it's easy to test ideas with a solid mathematical description and hard to test ideas that don't lend themselves to mathematical description. A lot of important phenomena is thus ignored because it can't be easily tested.
Re:And nobody is concerned with theoretical scienc
on
How Science Goes Wrong
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· Score: 1
You know, the field that verifies theories without experiments?
No, I don't know this field.
Photons that split into alternate dimensions (carrying energy with them) and also send messages backwards in time, it's all on paper and considered fact, but no experiments have been done to prove it... does that now sound like craziness to anyone but me?
No, because these aren't accepted as established fact without evidence to back them up, contrary to your assertion, and because they were created in the first place to explain observed phenomena.
The 1999-2000 budget came within a billion dollars of break even by this metric. Given that GDP grows at a significant rate, just coming close like this on a regular basis would improve the US's fiscal outlook.
The shutdown wasn't really a big deal, sure, but if the US had defaulted on its debt, that would have been catastrophic.
Anyone who cared sold off their US debt some time ago. They aren't going to care that much about some retarded political bickering that doesn't actually change debt payments past a few weeks out.
Goodbye, Medicare. Goodbye, Social Security. Goodbye, foodstamps and welfare and section 8. Hello, social upheaval. Hello, desperation-induced crime wave. Hello, Great Depression.
You mean we'd get rid of the two biggest spending burdens the US has? That's a pretty big silver lining for that cloud.
Slashdot Mirror
There are two things to note here. First, this also punishes anyone who does add value to a transaction. 3% is a large tax for stock market transactions.
Second, it's not government's job to care if there are valueless transactions out there or not. As another poster noted, why aren't they banning American Idol?
Have you already forgotten the "flash crash"?
So what were the "real consequences" of the "flash crash"? More hand wringing on the internet?
Right now, looking at google, I see a spread of 16 cents on a $1000/share stock. If I invest in that stock, I'd probably consider anything under 1% in gains a wash
Ok, a collective 1% gain on your investment each time you buy and later sell a stock. That's significant right there even if you call it a "wash".
Umm, bullshit. The exchange is supposed to match up buyers and sellers. That's what exchanges are FOR. If there is a buyer but no seller, then the market maker steps in and sells at a higher price. If there is no buyer, the market maker buys at a lower price. This is how price movements happen. HFT is a middleman. If there is no buyer or seller, then HFT wouldn't go in on the trade at all. If there is a buyer and a seller, HFT does not need to exist, since the exchange is supposed to match up the two parties already.
What's bullshit about it? Market makers by definition are middlemen. This semantics drama is ridiculous. And the buyer and seller need not be on the same market at the same time. There are a number of associated markets with each stock market and some of the HFT trade is arbitrage between these markets.
Please, I just pray nobody justifies this obvious non-productive activity by explaining it lends necessary liquidity to the markets.
Contrary to your fervent prayers, providing liquidity is a productive feature of this "obvious non-productive" activity. At least, you're getting the arguments right.
The markets were liquid enough for me back when telegraphs were used to send messages to human traders.
Because you're the only person on the planet who matters, amirite?
Kind of explains the flaws in "trickle down", doesn't it? We'll assign the wealth to whoever we want and you'll like it because some of it will trickle down to you. I must admit I'd rather be a trickler in this situation than a trickle-ee.
You might want to get off that high horse.
You might want to start following your own advice. You are after all the one wishing harm on another merely because they disagree with you.
A lot of countries throughout the world have poorly controlled entitlement systems. I think a fundamental requirement should be that a system helps more than it harms. For example, the US has Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid which is a similar problem for many other countries (such as the UK) which have similar problems with public pensions and health care), public subsidies (such as Japan's postal savings accounts or petroleum subsidies for some oil producing countries), and other poorly thought out entitlements with unintended consequences.
What sort of perspective is going to make that harm go away without introducing blindness and ignorance?
Yes, taking care of the elderly is a burden.
Social Security and Medicare isn't just "taking care" of the elderly. They're huge wealth transfers from poorer, younger people to wealthier older people.
Quite a few people trust them. For example, entitlement advocates do since the government is the ones writing the checks and accessing the information needed to comply with the conditions of the entitlement.
No, it means we look at evidence. For example, Snowden's release of information forced the powers that be to change their story. That's evidence not merely taking the words of someone as "gospel".
However, if I had a condition
Now suppose you paid to find out about this condition twenty years from now rather than today and there was no repercussions for the delay in test results except perhaps a slight reshuffling of priorities? Even if the test doesn't change in price, that's still a substantial time value benefit from kicking that can 20 years down the road.
The ACA is a Republican plan and has been for decades. No, don't bother with that link showing the Heritage Foundation disavowing their own policy proposal from the nineties, since they were just fine with Romneycare years before Obama made it national.
Two things to note here. Individual mandate is not part of the Republican plan nor are the many side issues. Obamacare is much more than the core legislation. Second, Romneycare is a state thing. States constitutionally are granted more power in this area than the federal government is. So it is quite constitutional for Massachusetts to have Obamacare, but not the federal government because of this separation of powers.
The NHS is currently underfunded
Welcome to the health care hamster wheel. No matter how much you fund it, it will always be underfunded. That's the nature of demand for health care. It is truly bottomless.
Enjoy your life? I sure don't hope you do if you really think that's a good idea.
This is a remarkably childish, selfish argument. "I sure hope you never prosper from the application of reason and common sense. For it'd be terrible if you did."
What do you expect people to do if their services are stopped and they're without a job, without a home, without food, without money, without medical services without ... you name it and they don't have it?
I expect them to turn their life around and get a job.
As a building estimator contract administrator, do you estimate the costs of your contracts at completion of the contract? "Build this thing and then we'll haggle price." Or perhaps you order out of the catalog? I'm thinking of all the money US President FDR could have saved by shopping for the best Lake Mead dam rather than build his own.
In other words, you're familiar with projects that have to be arranged ahead of time. So why does a free market in health care require you to negotiate only from the hospital bed?
You clearly haven't been lying on an emergency ward bed on the verge of dying of respitory failure before.
I guess you should have negotiated earlier then when you had the opportunity to.
Why is the care in the US 2.5x as expensive as the "too expensive" NHS (per person per PPP normalized GDP/capita) if the free market system works so well?
Because there isn't a free market system in the US for health care. I don't know why people keep insisting otherwise. Do you even know what a free market system is?
There are also private fire brigades and police forces in the US though they aren't called that.
Go and break/twist something whilst skiing in Austria, I had to ski off a glacier with a broken rib due to certain circumstance but if you have the option of forking out for a ski-do lift off you will, or worse if you need a helicopter out of there you can forget "choices".
You choose to do something which didn't have a market for it and there were consequences? Do tell!
The problem with this viewpoint is that you can pick health care providers ahead of time. There's no reason that multiple hospitals or ambulance providers couldn't be competing for your service. It's not like water or electricity where it's hard to have multiple services in the same area.
Math brings its own problems. Just to consider your example, it's easy to test ideas with a solid mathematical description and hard to test ideas that don't lend themselves to mathematical description. A lot of important phenomena is thus ignored because it can't be easily tested.
You know, the field that verifies theories without experiments?
No, I don't know this field.
Photons that split into alternate dimensions (carrying energy with them) and also send messages backwards in time, it's all on paper and considered fact, but no experiments have been done to prove it... does that now sound like craziness to anyone but me?
No, because these aren't accepted as established fact without evidence to back them up, contrary to your assertion, and because they were created in the first place to explain observed phenomena.
I have a two step program for fixing that:
1) Put me in charge of everything.
2) I kill all my enemies, real and imagined, to make the perfect people for the greedless utopia I have created.
What could possibly go wrong?
When am I going to bang out intelligible Slashdot posts with opposable thumbs? Yep, definitely no sign of evolution here.
The 1999-2000 budget came within a billion dollars of break even by this metric. Given that GDP grows at a significant rate, just coming close like this on a regular basis would improve the US's fiscal outlook.
The shutdown wasn't really a big deal, sure, but if the US had defaulted on its debt, that would have been catastrophic.
Anyone who cared sold off their US debt some time ago. They aren't going to care that much about some retarded political bickering that doesn't actually change debt payments past a few weeks out.
Goodbye, Medicare. Goodbye, Social Security. Goodbye, foodstamps and welfare and section 8. Hello, social upheaval. Hello, desperation-induced crime wave. Hello, Great Depression.
You mean we'd get rid of the two biggest spending burdens the US has? That's a pretty big silver lining for that cloud.