There are companies selling periodically updated tax tables for the whole country.
We use one such product, it costs about $20000 per year in support, without source code for their tax calculation engine, source code option adds another $100000. I.e. a loose change for Amazon.
Ok. I've read both "Economics In One Lesson" (several years ago) and "The Failure of the New Economy" (finished it today).
Well, nothing new there.
Hazlett's mindset is firmly in 1800-s, he's not capable to stop thinking about economy as a 'zero sum' game. His critique of Keynes is mostly extremely naive and misleading.
Hazlett's books are very 'light on facts'. I.e. almost no statistics or mathematical modeling is used. In contrast, new Keynesians try to operate on the real world data, which unambiguously validates the basics of keynsianism.
"Banks have over-issued their notes for as long as they've existed. This is not solved by gathering all of the counterfeiting and fraud into one central authority which is able to compel us to accept their notes. It's better for banks to fail individually."
And before banks existed, there was virtually no economic growth. And it can be easily explained if you look in any good textbook of macroeconomics. Should I explain it for you?
"Nope. More debt is not a solution to the problems of existing debt. It only postpones and increases the scale of the mess."
You're just parroting republican idiocy.
"More debt" can very well be the solution for the problems of debt, if extra debt is offset by later economic growth. I.e. if an extra debt becomes an extra investment.
Notice the sharp drop of debt-to-GDP ratio while the absolute amount of debt has changed very little. That's because economy growth had offset the debt growth.
Also, late 40-s - 50s was a period with high income and corporate taxes and strong unions. Which should be very bad for business according to you.
"When they say ice and water, are they talking about the stuff you can fill up your canteen and go, or is there something else in it that would make it undrinkable?"
Plenty. Probably, heavy metals and other inorganic contaminants.
But it should be easy to filter them. Even if you have to break down water to hydrogen and oxygen, it'll still be cheaper than hauling water all the way from the Earth.
"What utter crap. The central bank creates the crises in the first place, and the best thing you can possibly do when a crash comes is get the government the hell out of the way, as Zimbabwe has just finally done."
Uhm. Wrong.
There were crises and price bubbles even before the central banks (Tulip mania in Dutch, anyone?). Capitalism is more than capable of producing bubbles.
Of course, government can screw up everything. But being 'fiscal conservative' during crises is _guaranteed_ to screw everything up.
Well, yeah. He did almost everything possible to increase the damage.
Folks, "fiscal conservatism" just doesn't work during crises.
Well, I have another example. During the onset of this crisis, Russia tried conservative monetary policy (_increasing_ the interest rate) to keep the currency exchange rate stable.
This caused a 'sudden stop' of the economy. Almost everything has crashed hard and only large reserves of foreign currency allowed to keep economy alive.
It did have a "nice" effect of stopping inflation.
Luckily, Russian government had stopped this idiotic policy fairly soon.
It'll provide automatic correction against inflation. And if government is flooding the markets with trillions and they don't cause significant inflation, then what is the problem?
"Most of the "new deal" was continuation of Hoover's interference in the economy."
No. There was a crucial difference - abandonment of the gold standard. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression#Gold_standard It was pretty much required by the Banking Act, which was drafted by the Hoover's administration, true. But it had been enacted by Roosevelt.
"No, the Japanese government refused to let failed banks go out of business. They poured money into them, just as the congress did in the TARP program."
Later. After the economy hit the wall and entered the vicious cycle of deflation.
"Keynes didn't understand economics, either. He understood how to curry favor with politicians by lending an air of "scientific" justification to their power-grabbing. He was the Lysenko [wikipedia.org] of economics."
Nope. He knew economy quite well to understand that simple 'fiscal conservatism' is meaningless in the growing economy.
"Except for every time Keynesian remedies have been tried, you mean?"
WTF?
"The first great depression, the Japanese lost decade, the second great depression that we're heading into right now..."
WTF cubed?
These are examples where Keynsian remedies WERE NOT tried (at first). During the first great depression Keynes has not even formulated keynsianism.
During the 'lost decade' Japan tried the 'fiscal conservatism' policy, by raising the interest rates and stopping the flow of money. So economy ground to a complete halt. Only after many years of low interest rates and various stimulus packages the Japanese economy started to grow again.
You simply don't understand economics.
Wanna to take bet that there will be the second great depression? Say, if in 2 years DOW falls below 7000 for period of more than 1 month then I'll give you 10 grams of gold (or its equivalent in the currency of your choice).
"The writers were passing their mores to the next generation, building a society viewed patriotism without today's fashionable disdain, without the snarky remarks about nationalism and right-wing beliefs. It was better then."
You forget, that the right wing deserved its disdain by distorting the word 'patriotic' with their 1-bit white&black view.
Grandparent is not talking about paradoxes. Suppose that a free Higgs boson simply destroys the universe. Then the only remaining universes will be the one where boson is not created.
It's a bit tautological as is the whole business of 'interpretations' of the quantum mechanics.
"Ah, I see. So you're in a position where you don't actually have any skin in the game. No wonder you don't care about protecting "your" work, it's not you that's going to potentially lose any revenue, it's the company you work for. Got it."
I own more than 50% of shares of the company I work in.
"Regardless of whether one's entire livelihood depends upon the work in question, I see no reason why it should be so frowned upon that one should resist being compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way, including for their own profit."
You are not 'compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way'. You can simply stop selling your works, so no one can use it in any way.
And selling a copy of your work is no different than selling a hammer. You customer might use it for any purpose, including building a masterpiece which then will be sold for $10000000.
Of course, unauthorized commercial redistribution (aka piracy) should be forbidden. As it is forbidden under the current copyright law.
"I understand the argument for not wanting to allow people to artificially inflate the value of their product(s), but to exhort that any form of protection is equal to greed is a false comparison indeed."
Remember, that you enjoy a government-mandated monopoly on your works not because you are entitled to large profits but to stimulate useful arts.
Slashdot Mirror
It contains tax engine for the _whole_ country. Our software has to do some tax calculations for all states, so there was not much choice :(
There are companies selling periodically updated tax tables for the whole country.
We use one such product, it costs about $20000 per year in support, without source code for their tax calculation engine, source code option adds another $100000. I.e. a loose change for Amazon.
Well, it's better than InitializePrintProvidor.
Ok. I've read both "Economics In One Lesson" (several years ago) and "The Failure of the New Economy" (finished it today).
Well, nothing new there.
Hazlett's mindset is firmly in 1800-s, he's not capable to stop thinking about economy as a 'zero sum' game. His critique of Keynes is mostly extremely naive and misleading.
Hazlett's books are very 'light on facts'. I.e. almost no statistics or mathematical modeling is used. In contrast, new Keynesians try to operate on the real world data, which unambiguously validates the basics of keynsianism.
No wonder you like his books so much.
Probably, he's honest when he tells about corruption. Speaking from experience, there are almost no honest policemen in Russia.
For example, road police is _completely_ corrupted.
Yes, it's starting to change. Slowly.
Middle class is slowly being formed, and this is the prerequisite for a healthy society.
We'll see more changes when oil and gas reserves in Russia will be close to depletion.
And don't forget to check your coffee for the traces of Polonium.
"Banks have over-issued their notes for as long as they've existed. This is not solved by gathering all of the counterfeiting and fraud into one central authority which is able to compel us to accept their notes. It's better for banks to fail individually."
And before banks existed, there was virtually no economic growth. And it can be easily explained if you look in any good textbook of macroeconomics. Should I explain it for you?
"Nope. More debt is not a solution to the problems of existing debt. It only postpones and increases the scale of the mess."
You're just parroting republican idiocy.
"More debt" can very well be the solution for the problems of debt, if extra debt is offset by later economic growth. I.e. if an extra debt becomes an extra investment.
Case in point, USA during late 40-s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png
Notice the sharp drop of debt-to-GDP ratio while the absolute amount of debt has changed very little. That's because economy growth had offset the debt growth.
Also, late 40-s - 50s was a period with high income and corporate taxes and strong unions. Which should be very bad for business according to you.
"When they say ice and water, are they talking about the stuff you can fill up your canteen and go, or is there something else in it that would make it undrinkable?"
Plenty. Probably, heavy metals and other inorganic contaminants.
But it should be easy to filter them. Even if you have to break down water to hydrogen and oxygen, it'll still be cheaper than hauling water all the way from the Earth.
"What utter crap. The central bank creates the crises in the first place, and the best thing you can possibly do when a crash comes is get the government the hell out of the way, as Zimbabwe has just finally done."
Uhm. Wrong.
There were crises and price bubbles even before the central banks (Tulip mania in Dutch, anyone?). Capitalism is more than capable of producing bubbles.
Of course, government can screw up everything. But being 'fiscal conservative' during crises is _guaranteed_ to screw everything up.
Well, yeah. He did almost everything possible to increase the damage.
Folks, "fiscal conservatism" just doesn't work during crises.
Well, I have another example. During the onset of this crisis, Russia tried conservative monetary policy (_increasing_ the interest rate) to keep the currency exchange rate stable.
This caused a 'sudden stop' of the economy. Almost everything has crashed hard and only large reserves of foreign currency allowed to keep economy alive.
It did have a "nice" effect of stopping inflation.
Luckily, Russian government had stopped this idiotic policy fairly soon.
I offered to use inflation-adjusted value of DOW.
It'll provide automatic correction against inflation. And if government is flooding the markets with trillions and they don't cause significant inflation, then what is the problem?
"And even after trying the same theories of using central banking fiat money supply nonsense being proven false."
I'd like to see this proof.
I was losing about 2kg each month when I was dieting. Without any significant 'lifestyle changes', just started to eat less.
But you also need to transmit _a_ _lot_ of power over hundreds of kilometers. Which is not cheap and easy.
That's why local power storage might be the best way to solve this problem.
"Most of the "new deal" was continuation of Hoover's interference in the economy."
No. There was a crucial difference - abandonment of the gold standard. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression#Gold_standard It was pretty much required by the Banking Act, which was drafted by the Hoover's administration, true. But it had been enacted by Roosevelt.
"No, the Japanese government refused to let failed banks go out of business. They poured money into them, just as the congress did in the TARP program."
Later. After the economy hit the wall and entered the vicious cycle of deflation.
"Keynes didn't understand economics, either. He understood how to curry favor with politicians by lending an air of "scientific" justification to their power-grabbing. He was the Lysenko [wikipedia.org] of economics."
Nope. He knew economy quite well to understand that simple 'fiscal conservatism' is meaningless in the growing economy.
I see you don't want to take my bet?
OK. Let's bet on inflation-adjusted DOW (using the Nov 1 value as a base), my offer still stands.
"Except for every time Keynesian remedies have been tried, you mean?"
WTF?
"The first great depression, the Japanese lost decade, the second great depression that we're heading into right now..."
WTF cubed?
These are examples where Keynsian remedies WERE NOT tried (at first). During the first great depression Keynes has not even formulated keynsianism.
During the 'lost decade' Japan tried the 'fiscal conservatism' policy, by raising the interest rates and stopping the flow of money. So economy ground to a complete halt. Only after many years of low interest rates and various stimulus packages the Japanese economy started to grow again.
You simply don't understand economics.
Wanna to take bet that there will be the second great depression? Say, if in 2 years DOW falls below 7000 for period of more than 1 month then I'll give you 10 grams of gold (or its equivalent in the currency of your choice).
And yet, Keynsian economic model is the only one that works...
"The writers were passing their mores to the next generation, building a society viewed patriotism without today's fashionable disdain, without the snarky remarks about nationalism and right-wing beliefs. It was better then."
You forget, that the right wing deserved its disdain by distorting the word 'patriotic' with their 1-bit white&black view.
A simple solution: use a dedicated server (say $30-per-month VPS) to work as an adapter for their clumsy protocols.
I fine point: there are different kinds of impossibility.
It's physically impossible to do some things. I.e. you can't create a free quark, however you try. Or you can't lower the entropy of a closed system.
It might be physically possible to create a Higgs boson, but the act of creation might trigger the destruction of the universe.
Grandparent is not talking about paradoxes. Suppose that a free Higgs boson simply destroys the universe. Then the only remaining universes will be the one where boson is not created.
It's a bit tautological as is the whole business of 'interpretations' of the quantum mechanics.
OK. That proves it.
Multi-world interpretation is correct and LHC is just a variant of quantum-suicide experiment.
"Ah, I see. So you're in a position where you don't actually have any skin in the game. No wonder you don't care about protecting "your" work, it's not you that's going to potentially lose any revenue, it's the company you work for. Got it."
I own more than 50% of shares of the company I work in.
"Regardless of whether one's entire livelihood depends upon the work in question, I see no reason why it should be so frowned upon that one should resist being compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way, including for their own profit."
You are not 'compelled to offer it for anyone to use at any time in any way'. You can simply stop selling your works, so no one can use it in any way.
And selling a copy of your work is no different than selling a hammer. You customer might use it for any purpose, including building a masterpiece which then will be sold for $10000000.
Of course, unauthorized commercial redistribution (aka piracy) should be forbidden. As it is forbidden under the current copyright law.
"I understand the argument for not wanting to allow people to artificially inflate the value of their product(s), but to exhort that any form of protection is equal to greed is a false comparison indeed."
Remember, that you enjoy a government-mandated monopoly on your works not because you are entitled to large profits but to stimulate useful arts.