The idea that an insurance only can be voluntary and not be mandatory, otherwise it would be a tax, is completely retarded. Look at your car insurance.
If you would need to pay for car insurance 5% of your salary, regardless of how many cars you have (including none), yes, I would call it a tax.
Anyway, discussion was about how much of your salary is taken by government compared to what your employer has to spend. It really doesn't matter if we call it tax, insurance, mandatory payment, protection racket, or whatever.
And BTW, I'm European as well and I'm not saying that government taking percentage of salary (as oppose to lump sum) for public health service is bad thing. I'm just calling it a tax, because there is no way to opt out and it meets all definition of word tax. If you think that health insurance etc is not tax, be sure to correct wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I do not live in Germany currently, used to live there. Regarding difference between tax and insurance - as long as it is mandatory, enforced by government and percentage your income, it is a tax in my book, regardless of how government might want to call it. If it would be medical 'insurance' then it would be a lump sum depending on what service you are getting, not percentage of your salary. As for the rest, please see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Please remember I'm talking about salary taxes as seen from the side of employer. Not showing them on employee payroll does not mean they do not exist. Otherwise you can just look at net salary and pretend taxes do not exist.
You are right about is possibility of getting out of church tax. Same way, in US you can probably move to state without a VAT/sales tax/whatever. I was comparing worst case scenario (this is why I took example of Lohnsteurklasse I instead of for example unemployed single mother of three).
Can you give some specific numbers? I have paid taxes in Germany and I really doubt you are right. We should count: - net pay compared to total employer gross cost for employee (Germany, like many other countries, define gross salary as some random number and then require employer to pay taxes on top of it, so they are invisible to employee); this includes not only income tax, but pension tax, church tax, let's help poor east Germans tax, medical tax, accidents tax, job protection tax, sick pay tax, maternity tak, insolvency tax (these are all taxes, no things you 'buy' from your salary) - then take goods taxes in account (VAT, sales tax, alcohol tax, gasoline tax etc) to find out what percent of the money reaches seller of goods
Not sure about exact net pay - but I think it ends up being around 50% of employer cost after you take everything into account (I'm talking about IT-level salaries, not McDonalds pay, single person, no children). So, from 5000 EUR spent by employer, you end up with 2500 EUR cash.
Then you got to the shop and you pay 19% VAT on everything. This ends up being 16% tax if you count it right way. So, from your 2500 EUR spent in shops, 400 ends up being immediately taxed. Rest is more complicated, we can assume it is already purchasing power.
So, it is roughly 2100 EUR out of 5000 EUR spent by employer. This comes to around 58% effective tax for private people, earning reasonable (but not extravagant) salaries. It will be probably in range of 55% for average salary.
Can you now do similar computation for your 'free' country?
Does it really make sense to measure CO2 locally? Is it different between different areas of same city by magnitude bigger than measurement error? Won't transient sources (like large old truck driving in front of you while you take measurements) have a lot larger impact than other differences (middle of forest versus middle of non-congested road)?
I have seen arguments that it is ok to have CO2 measurement station on top of vulcano, because CO2 mixes so well, it won't be affected by vulcano emissions. But now we want to measure it on completely local level?
What about labeling food with 'black people were involved in production of this food (not in Soylent Green meaning)' to give informed choice to KKK people to not buy such products? But at same time we are fine to have notifications of 'rabbi was involved in production of this food', to given informed choice to some other people to not buy other food.
It is has nothing to do with religion or common sense. It is just that some groups/religions had enough power to make their arbitrary requirements ok, while others are shunned upon. What most people (including me) are advocating is that we should make GMO distinction same shameful as my first example, because it hurts human progress. Other people are advocating their irrational beliefs in GMO-devil and that they should be given choice of worshipping God of Natural Food.
This is old war between religion and enlightenment.
I think it was considered a valid defense against snipers. Mount laser with some kind of rotating prism/mirror and any sniper looking at you with scope is going to get badly hurt. But: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How many times psychopathic tyrants were toppled because of moral rebellion within own forces? Hitler? Stalin? Saddam? Current-North-Kimchi-incarnation? I think that benevolent/democratic governments are risking a lot bigger chance of unrest, because of giving too long leash.
I suppose that what is really your point is not that psychopatic regimes will be easier to rule (they already are), but rather than countries currently democratic to some extend might turn into psychopatic regimes because of not having to care about their democracy-spoiled citizens. So it is AI-drone-wielding Obama which is a nightmare, not AI-drone-wielding Al Kaida. But, aren't there enough 'morally flexible' drone operators available that it doesn't really matter?
Please read back to wikipedia article I have quoted about how it worked in Soviet Union. If a bit of shock theraphy would make you abandon suicidal tendencies, renounce crazy terrorist faith and open yourself to confess other people which might need immediate psychiatric help... I could easily imagine doctors who would believe that they are doing it for the good of 'patient' and that they are doing 'no harm'. And there would be enough who would not care at all.
This is why I said 2025. Assuming that things go into wrong direction. More terror-scare-mongering, more power for psychiatry, etc etc.
Maybe I'm emotionally scarred by watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sucker Punch"...
There is a knee-jerk reaction of always standing on the other side of whatever Scientology says, but you need to be very careful in case of mental instiutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't see it that far fetched that US government could classify fanatical suicide terrorism as mental illness in 2025 let's say. And then you don't need Guantanamo anymore - there is enough torture-like devices in hospitals to make life uncomfortable for people.
We have had very ugly case in Poland recently (and in theory, being part of EU, we are supposed to be 'first world' country). Some guy got cheated by mayor of small town, assaulted him in public and went for psychiatric observation. Chief doctor of the insitution was very good friend of the mayor... guy got diagnosed with mental illness, being dangerous and got locked away. He tried petitioning for cross-examination etc etc (he was ready to server small jail sentence for assault and then be able to go to civil court to get right for how he got cheated finacially by mayor), but all letters got stopped at hospital. They are allowed to do so, because some crazy people are writing conspiracy theory letters to police every day, so there is a law to stop 'aimless correspondence'. Here, chief doctor decided that all his appeals for crossexamination, freedom and accusing mayor of wrongdoings would upset authorities. Fast forward 7 years. Guy leaves hospital completely broken by heavy medication, homeless and to be honest, quite crazy now.
Another case - some guy claims other guy threatened to kill him. No process and instead of few months in prison for verbal threats, 8 years in closed ward.
(Opposite is also true. Guy drives car on pedestrian walk on purpose (there was no road nearby and he was driving for few km , hitting 23 people in process. Instead of going to jail, he got diagnosed as unstable, goes to hospital and can possibly go out after half year. He used to study psychiatrics and his father is very rich so...)
There are so many protections and possibilities to appeal built into judical system, but at same time, we want to give unlimited power without possibility of appeal to some doctors.
"I started trying to teach myself Japanese about 10 years ago, and I could speak it quite well, because of my phonology and phonetics training – but it’s very hard for me to understand what anybody says. So I can go to Japan and ask for directions, but I can’t really understand the answers!"
This is exactly what Perl is about. You can write code, but have no chance of understanding code of other people.
4th gen can run on things which are waste products of current generation of nuclear power and they promise to be 100 times more productive. Yes, fission is not renewable, but it can be damn efficient with what 4th gen is promising. At same time it is not fossil - neither in true meaning (fossil of long dead things), or by what is commonly meant by this (burning it up and releasing CO2).
What I'm advocating is exactly investing in stopgap solution - but with stopgap being 1000+ years, to allow us to look for true alternatives. Renewables are just not efficient/reliable enough to get us out of fossil completely and this means a lot shorter time period due to pollution (I count GW as pollution).
Always a dichotomy between renewables versus fossil fuels. Either you are hippy windmill-hugger or bad CO2-spewing coal monster. Maybe, instead, he could throw few billions in direction of 4th gen nuclear power and give us another 1000+ years to focus on solving fusion and/or proper renewable energy research/storage etc?
This might be because in most places you will call them map/dictionaries (int->whatever) if they are single dimensional and sparse _matrices_ when having more dimensions. One in the test is sparse matrix. Calling it sparse array requires a bit of mental exercise (by having said array indexed by tuples of (x,y) instead of integers). But this probably comes from concept of 2d arrays, which are neither...
Not at all. 'sounding' is a key phrase here. Most people don't care about over-lifetime ecological cost of product, they just look at the most efficient period and ignore the rest. Example of old-tech, inefficient solar panels - they ignore cost (and by cost I mean pollution/carbon-footprint rather than money) of manufacturing the panel and transporting it, then they focus on energy gains on sunny days again ignoring possible maintenance/replacement costs and finally disposal costs.
As MightYar said, it might end up being beneficial in long run because of drive/money to improve the solution, but nobody is saying "I'm green, so I'll increase pollution by using inefficient and crappy 'greenish' technology, so it can improve and in 20 years has net benefits". They all think that direct benefits are there from day one, just because technology _sounds_ green.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me of http://codeoffsets.com/
The idea that an insurance only can be voluntary and not be mandatory, otherwise it would be a tax, is completely retarded. Look at your car insurance.
If you would need to pay for car insurance 5% of your salary, regardless of how many cars you have (including none), yes, I would call it a tax.
Anyway, discussion was about how much of your salary is taken by government compared to what your employer has to spend. It really doesn't matter if we call it tax, insurance, mandatory payment, protection racket, or whatever.
And BTW, I'm European as well and I'm not saying that government taking percentage of salary (as oppose to lump sum) for public health service is bad thing. I'm just calling it a tax, because there is no way to opt out and it meets all definition of word tax.
If you think that health insurance etc is not tax, be sure to correct wikipedia entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I do not live in Germany currently, used to live there.
Regarding difference between tax and insurance - as long as it is mandatory, enforced by government and percentage your income, it is a tax in my book, regardless of how government might want to call it. If it would be medical 'insurance' then it would be a lump sum depending on what service you are getting, not percentage of your salary.
As for the rest, please see here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Please remember I'm talking about salary taxes as seen from the side of employer. Not showing them on employee payroll does not mean they do not exist. Otherwise you can just look at net salary and pretend taxes do not exist.
You are right about is possibility of getting out of church tax. Same way, in US you can probably move to state without a VAT/sales tax/whatever. I was comparing worst case scenario (this is why I took example of Lohnsteurklasse I instead of for example unemployed single mother of three).
Can you give some specific numbers? I have paid taxes in Germany and I really doubt you are right. We should count:
- net pay compared to total employer gross cost for employee (Germany, like many other countries, define gross salary as some random number and then require employer to pay taxes on top of it, so they are invisible to employee); this includes not only income tax, but pension tax, church tax, let's help poor east Germans tax, medical tax, accidents tax, job protection tax, sick pay tax, maternity tak, insolvency tax (these are all taxes, no things you 'buy' from your salary)
- then take goods taxes in account (VAT, sales tax, alcohol tax, gasoline tax etc) to find out what percent of the money reaches seller of goods
Not sure about exact net pay - but I think it ends up being around 50% of employer cost after you take everything into account (I'm talking about IT-level salaries, not McDonalds pay, single person, no children). So, from 5000 EUR spent by employer, you end up with 2500 EUR cash.
Then you got to the shop and you pay 19% VAT on everything. This ends up being 16% tax if you count it right way. So, from your 2500 EUR spent in shops, 400 ends up being immediately taxed. Rest is more complicated, we can assume it is already purchasing power.
So, it is roughly 2100 EUR out of 5000 EUR spent by employer. This comes to around 58% effective tax for private people, earning reasonable (but not extravagant) salaries. It will be probably in range of 55% for average salary.
Can you now do similar computation for your 'free' country?
To keep slashdot tradition going:
https://xkcd.com/695/
https://xkcd.com/1504/
"Within a fraction of second, the bubble would then expand to consume the entire visible universe."
So, we can now communicate faster the light by modulating Higgs field, instead of torturing kings.
http://www.goodreads.com/quote...
Does it really make sense to measure CO2 locally? Is it different between different areas of same city by magnitude bigger than measurement error? Won't transient sources (like large old truck driving in front of you while you take measurements) have a lot larger impact than other differences (middle of forest versus middle of non-congested road)?
I have seen arguments that it is ok to have CO2 measurement station on top of vulcano, because CO2 mixes so well, it won't be affected by vulcano emissions. But now we want to measure it on completely local level?
Real question is, will sensors be 3d printed?
What about labeling food with 'black people were involved in production of this food (not in Soylent Green meaning)' to give informed choice to KKK people to not buy such products? But at same time we are fine to have notifications of 'rabbi was involved in production of this food', to given informed choice to some other people to not buy other food.
It is has nothing to do with religion or common sense. It is just that some groups/religions had enough power to make their arbitrary requirements ok, while others are shunned upon. What most people (including me) are advocating is that we should make GMO distinction same shameful as my first example, because it hurts human progress. Other people are advocating their irrational beliefs in GMO-devil and that they should be given choice of worshipping God of Natural Food.
This is old war between religion and enlightenment.
I think it was considered a valid defense against snipers. Mount laser with some kind of rotating prism/mirror and any sniper looking at you with scope is going to get badly hurt. But:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Directed energy weapons are not that interesting. I'm more scared of undirected energy weapon and very curious about ballistic energy weapons.
How many times psychopathic tyrants were toppled because of moral rebellion within own forces? Hitler? Stalin? Saddam? Current-North-Kimchi-incarnation?
I think that benevolent/democratic governments are risking a lot bigger chance of unrest, because of giving too long leash.
I suppose that what is really your point is not that psychopatic regimes will be easier to rule (they already are), but rather than countries currently democratic to some extend might turn into psychopatic regimes because of not having to care about their democracy-spoiled citizens. So it is AI-drone-wielding Obama which is a nightmare, not AI-drone-wielding Al Kaida. But, aren't there enough 'morally flexible' drone operators available that it doesn't really matter?
Please read back to wikipedia article I have quoted about how it worked in Soviet Union.
If a bit of shock theraphy would make you abandon suicidal tendencies, renounce crazy terrorist faith and open yourself to confess other people which might need immediate psychiatric help... I could easily imagine doctors who would believe that they are doing it for the good of 'patient' and that they are doing 'no harm'. And there would be enough who would not care at all.
This is why I said 2025. Assuming that things go into wrong direction. More terror-scare-mongering, more power for psychiatry, etc etc.
Maybe I'm emotionally scarred by watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Sucker Punch"...
There is a knee-jerk reaction of always standing on the other side of whatever Scientology says, but you need to be very careful in case of mental instiutions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I don't see it that far fetched that US government could classify fanatical suicide terrorism as mental illness in 2025 let's say. And then you don't need Guantanamo anymore - there is enough torture-like devices in hospitals to make life uncomfortable for people.
We have had very ugly case in Poland recently (and in theory, being part of EU, we are supposed to be 'first world' country). Some guy got cheated by mayor of small town, assaulted him in public and went for psychiatric observation. Chief doctor of the insitution was very good friend of the mayor... guy got diagnosed with mental illness, being dangerous and got locked away. He tried petitioning for cross-examination etc etc (he was ready to server small jail sentence for assault and then be able to go to civil court to get right for how he got cheated finacially by mayor), but all letters got stopped at hospital. They are allowed to do so, because some crazy people are writing conspiracy theory letters to police every day, so there is a law to stop 'aimless correspondence'. Here, chief doctor decided that all his appeals for crossexamination, freedom and accusing mayor of wrongdoings would upset authorities.
Fast forward 7 years.
Guy leaves hospital completely broken by heavy medication, homeless and to be honest, quite crazy now.
Another case - some guy claims other guy threatened to kill him. No process and instead of few months in prison for verbal threats, 8 years in closed ward.
(Opposite is also true. Guy drives car on pedestrian walk on purpose (there was no road nearby and he was driving for few km , hitting 23 people in process. Instead of going to jail, he got diagnosed as unstable, goes to hospital and can possibly go out after half year. He used to study psychiatrics and his father is very rich so...)
There are so many protections and possibilities to appeal built into judical system, but at same time, we want to give unlimited power without possibility of appeal to some doctors.
Grrr... It was of course supposed to be "understand himself trying to speak Japanese".
And there is a good chance Larry would understand you trying to speak Japanese. It is just those 120 million other people he cannot understand.
"I started trying to teach myself Japanese about 10 years ago, and I could speak it quite well, because of my phonology and phonetics training – but it’s very hard for me to understand what anybody says. So I can go to Japan and ask for directions, but I can’t really understand the answers!"
This is exactly what Perl is about. You can write code, but have no chance of understanding code of other people.
In UK, "You can't do that here, Sir!" said in proper voice should be a lot more embarassing to perpetrator than being handcuffed in public...
Famous last post...
4th gen can run on things which are waste products of current generation of nuclear power and they promise to be 100 times more productive.
Yes, fission is not renewable, but it can be damn efficient with what 4th gen is promising. At same time it is not fossil - neither in true meaning (fossil of long dead things), or by what is commonly meant by this (burning it up and releasing CO2).
What I'm advocating is exactly investing in stopgap solution - but with stopgap being 1000+ years, to allow us to look for true alternatives. Renewables are just not efficient/reliable enough to get us out of fossil completely and this means a lot shorter time period due to pollution (I count GW as pollution).
Always a dichotomy between renewables versus fossil fuels. Either you are hippy windmill-hugger or bad CO2-spewing coal monster.
Maybe, instead, he could throw few billions in direction of 4th gen nuclear power and give us another 1000+ years to focus on solving fusion and/or proper renewable energy research/storage etc?
This might be because in most places you will call them map/dictionaries (int->whatever) if they are single dimensional and sparse _matrices_ when having more dimensions.
One in the test is sparse matrix. Calling it sparse array requires a bit of mental exercise (by having said array indexed by tuples of (x,y) instead of integers). But this probably comes from concept of 2d arrays, which are neither...
Too bad it is not 1 in 1e100 or more - we could observe radiation healing thanks to homeopatic effect.
So, you started your analysis by assuming a spherical human?
If you eat enough pies, it can be true.
Not at all. 'sounding' is a key phrase here. Most people don't care about over-lifetime ecological cost of product, they just look at the most efficient period and ignore the rest. Example of old-tech, inefficient solar panels - they ignore cost (and by cost I mean pollution/carbon-footprint rather than money) of manufacturing the panel and transporting it, then they focus on energy gains on sunny days again ignoring possible maintenance/replacement costs and finally disposal costs.
As MightYar said, it might end up being beneficial in long run because of drive/money to improve the solution, but nobody is saying "I'm green, so I'll increase pollution by using inefficient and crappy 'greenish' technology, so it can improve and in 20 years has net benefits". They all think that direct benefits are there from day one, just because technology _sounds_ green.