Normally, I would pass on this but as an adopted American, I feel the need to stand up for my country:
1. Stealing land from others.
I am not aware anyone "owned" this land prior to the US moving in. Back in the 16th century, even among the indigenous population of America, ownership was at least mostly defined as being able to defend the territory from invaders. You might say the English, Spanish and French "stole" it from the indigenous population and then we either "stole" it from them or purchased it.
2. Using slave labour on that land.
This went on in parts of the country for a little more than half our existence and did not have that much of an impact on the country as a whole economically.
3. Cutting down the trees to drive the industrial revolution.
To paraphrase Archy Bunker, would you have preferred that we wait for them to fall over of old age? Christ if we did that the supply of hockey sticks would be very unstable.
4. Employing child labour to cheaply replace slaves.
The way kids behave today, I am beginning to think they were on to something back then. My mom always used to tell me "idol hands were the devil's playground"
How about just going over to nuke power. To the best of my knowledge, birds to generally splatter themselves on the cooling towers of a reactor. Sure, they might exhibit a dull glow at night and have the occasional offspring with a third wing growing out of it's head but I don't think it would come close to 3 or 4 of these a day.
It always amazes me that supposedly intelligent people feel that by virtue of living and working in an economic system, they are suddenly experts on how that economic system works and what can be done to "fix" it. I can tell you I have driven over hundreds, perhaps even thousands of bridges in my time and I can tell you with all humility aside, that fact does not make me an engineer. There is no way any of you would want to trust your life on a bridge of my design.
Hopefully, no one will read this guy's blog. And if they do, hopefully they will realize they are indeed stupider for the experience. Pick his stuff apart and you realize it's more pie-in-the-sky feel good crap:
...those who have lost jobs or had to accept menial ones over the past three years are left with only a wealth of culprits to blame: financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation...
Financial scandals yes as they create distrust in our capital market. Wars create uncertainty so sure, war not good. Tax cuts? Even screwed up Keynsians believe that in down times, governments should run deficits. Other more rational schools of thought believe that fiscal policy is always a bust. Stagnation? Are we talking stagnant water, stagnant love life, stagnant hard-drive? Yeah, stuff sitting still does not create much motion, brilliant.
...capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation.
Pure, unadulterated crap. Does this guy really think that technology that reduces the cost of production does not help out everyone? Were we not all made better by Edison creating the lightbulb? Would we all not be the worse off if we were still reading by gas lamp? Innovation takes risk capital. The rewards must be great to attract someone to put that money at risk. In the end, one person may be a millionaire but we are all left better off.
I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work
Work is meant to be a means to an end not an end in and of itself. It has been this way since the beginning of time. You don't do yard work just to work. You do it so your yard looks nice and perhaps get off your ass and away from your computer.
...venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?)
I assume he is trying to make a point here, I just don't know what the hell it is.
...1970s, a movement called participatory design started in Scandinavia...
This is known in other circles as socialism. You have any other ways you would like to flog that dead horse? They need you in the Howard Dean campaign.
Hmmmm, I don't know where to start with this you bring up so many good issues.
As far as use taxes, you are correct in that a state is limited to taxing within it's border. Use taxes are generally there to discourage consumers from traveling across state lines to purchase in low-taxed districts. However, your assertion that tax on internet sales runs afoul of the interstate commerce clause is not as clear-cut as you would make it. If someone orders an item online, has the transaction occurred in the district in which the internet server is, or in the district in which the consumer is? What if the item is shipped out of a warehouse in a third district? If the product is to be delivered via common carrier, is the transaction not being completed in the district to which it is shipped. When you travel across state lines to purchase an item and then bring it back home, it is clear that the transaction was made where you purchased the item. With the internet, things get a little more complicated.
Now, as far as the sales tax being a crummy way to tax, I disagree. Income taxes have to be the worst plague to visit the US in its entire history. Sales taxes, in as far as our current tax system goes, are the most efficient to collect. I'll go back to an earlier argument about Madison saying that the poor would keep the taxes under control for everyone. The fact is if you are taxing so much as to hurt the poor unduly, you are taxing too much. I never approach taxes from the point of maximizing revenues to the state, but rather minimizing it's destructive influences on the market. You have to keep in mind that wealth is created in the private sector and without wealth, the state is meaningless.
... clauses to allow certain goods to not be taxed. There is some question about the constitutionality of taxes with such provisions, as they are also clearly discriminatory from a business perspective. This could make for an interesting case in a few years
You are really stretching here. You say "constitutionality" but you fail to identify which constitution. Are you speaking of the US constitution or the state's constitution. Since there are 50 unique state constitutions, I cannot speak to the constitutionality of state sales tax laws, but I have seen nothing in the US constitution that would preclude a state from levying a tax on one type of good and not another. I can't imagine a federal court even agreeing to hear an argument on sales tax discrimination.
As for your second point about sales taxes being cyclical, I can't think of a tax that would be counter-cyclical to the business cycle. Even Keynsians thought that during downturns, gov'ts would have to run deficits to stimulate the economy
Anyway, I really, really don't like paying taxes. But I also like to see an even playing field when it comes to the gov't and I think here, local brick-and-mortars are getting the shaft.
You at least got the last 3/4 of you statement correct. Tax bad, period.
A progressive income tax is better still because then it scales the rate so that the burden of taxation is felt equally by everyone, but that's another discussion..
Actually, this just gives whoring politicians the ability to tell the unwashed masses that they will deliver a chicken to every pot by screwing over the "rich". It's funny that politicians will try to tax social ills to make them go away (i.e. vice taxes on gambling, cigarettes, beer) yet they seem to think that taxing income will, er, raise everyone's standard of living! I like to shock people in conversations sometimes by proposing a "Poor Tax". Just as you want to convince people to stop smoking and pay for medical bills caused by tobacco by taxing tobacco products, a "Poor Tax" would discourage people from being unproductive. The way to get rid of poverty is not to subsidize it (ie. welfare), but to TAX it! Besides, the poor use more social services than the rich so shouldn't they be forced to foot the bill?
I am not sure I agree with you analysis. In reality there is no difference between catalog orders and internet orders. The states should treat all retailers the same regardless of the matter in which the commerce took place and I don't think catalog retailing will ever be able to approach the volume of business done on the internet since to order from a catalog you need to have the thing in front of you. With the internet, you need only a computer.
I think what the states need to do, and have started to do, is to agree on a uniform sales tax code for internet purchases so that it is easier for internet businesses to comply. I could see a business model for a transaction brokerage to operate to collect and oversee state taxes to relieve very small.coms from doing paperwork.
But let's go with your analysis and say the state should ignore internet retailing. What then? Since the percentage of commerce being conducted over the internet grows each year, the states can either look at reduced sales tax revenues or increase some other tax. Increase other taxes on the local population and they only exacerbate the problem, creating more internet commerce and reducing the amount of tax revenues.
Also, virtually every state that has a sales tax also has a use tax. Simply put, if your retailer does not collect the state tax or you buy something out of state, then you as the new owner are responsible for paying the tax to the state. The only thing that keeps states from vigorously enforcing this is it is cost prohibitive in most instances
I'll go back to my original premise, that it is bad to treat businesses differently for tax purposes when they are enganged in the exact same business. Taxes that concentrate on form over substance will inevitably be avoided.
The problem here is that when people search the net for "Britney Spears", they're not looking to buy her CDs - but that's will be what they get with Amahoo!!!
Can't believe the moderators ranked your comment as insightful. I hate taxes as much as the next guy - actually because I am a libertarian I hate them more than the next 99 guys. But the only thing worse than taxes are taxes that distort the economy to the point where they actually affect the way business is done en masse.
I am not sure that people actually buy stuff on the net to avoid state and local sales taxes, but I know when I compare prices on the net I usually factor in the lack of those taxes and the added shipping cost into the final decision. Consider if you were a business owner and you could be undercut by businesses on the net simply because internet businesses were not collecting state sales taxes.
I am all for the individual states getting their fiscal house in order without more taxes but I think to be intellectually honest one must admit the status quo is unfair to local business.
I don't think the real worry here should be whether Dr. Who will end up gay, but whether the tech factor will trump the writing. For a while I was a big Dr. Who addict and never missed a show but back then the special effects were decidedly low-budget (a notch below the original Star Trek). It was the great story lines and fascinating characters that really made the series. Like all great fiction, it made you use your imagination to picture the things they could not possibly display using the technology of the time and the budget they had. I think the big threat here is that the new Dr. Who will be all CGI and no real story.
..say, on income and capital gains, because it needs to be progressive...
Actually, no tax needs to be progressive. You may want it to be progressive, but that is a different matter. Economically speaking, income taxes are the least efficient tax to collect. The amount spent on income tax compliance is roughly equal to the output of the 3 big auto manufacturers in the United States. Capital gains are ineffective because the gov't either has to deal with large variations in receipts (ie. caused by big fluctuations in exchange of capital like the stock market) or taxed unrealized gains (ie. force you to sell stuff to pay taxes based on theoretical values).
I agree we ought to have as few tax streams as possible to limit compliance costs, but the economic solution is a simple, nation-wide value added tax. In as far as progressiveness, I believe it was Madison who stated, and I am paraphrasing, that the poor would keep taxes on the American populace in check as the gov't could not get too greedy without stirring a revolt. Obviously, he never envisioned a day when one man would be penalized for his success while another would be subsidized for his lack thereof.
It's really just a way of saying "Your price is going up $1.50 a month, but we'd like to blame it on the government." It's really a practice the FTC should step in on...
Sweet Jesus, man - you must make whatever public school you rolled out of proud! Would it make sense for all taxes to be collected out of your sight? I am sure the government would like it that way. Then, when you send a letter to your Senator and complain about why it costs $3.99 per minute to IM (due to taxes the Feds levied on ISPs) he could tell you it is not right that you have to pay that much for IMing and convene a blue-ribbon panel to look into the matter. The panel will come back with the recommendation that the ISPs need more federal oversight and the FTC will have to levy a special fee on your phone line to cover the costs of the extra oversight on ISPs.
This is where public schools really pay off for politicians. Kind of like the old data processing adage "garbage in - garbage out". Fill the electorate with economic idiots and they will buy and horse shit you pass their way.
I like a good conspiracy myself, but I prefer them to come from a more imaginative perspective than from some group trying to push a political agenda. These are censored news stories because there was no news to censor, only conjecture. Let's examine the list:
1: The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance - If these guys had done their homework they would have found out that the neo-cons are just a smoke screen for the real group scheming for global dominance, the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers!
2: Homeland Security? Yeah, yeah John Ashcroft is going to rifle through your undies drawer. That's why I left a particularly nasty pair on top for him!
3: US Removes Pages from Iraq Report - This was just part of the "Paperwork Reduction Act" which unbelievably applies to all reports done by 3rd world dictatorships. Besides, I think the 8,000 pages was actually included in Hillary Clinton's best seller "Living History" and credited to a ghost writer.
4: Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists - BFD, he does that every time he appears on Fox News. If it's underreported, it's only because the reporters are now afraid to speak to him for fear of looking like the stupid, vacuous idiots that they are.
5: The Effort to Make Unions Extinct - This got plenty of coverage by the press...in India!
6: Closing Access to Information Technology - Why would you need the FCC for this when you have geeks putting out stuff like the Nachi worm. Besides, if you turn off the pr0n pipe you'll have geeks in the streets with torches and pitchforks within an hour.
13: US Military's War on the Earth - Well, we are working on conducting war in space but those damn Greys never show up for the fight. I am all for fighting wars on Mars for instance because if CNN and FOX had to get live coverage, we might actually end up with a Martian explorer that worked!
19: U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro - Now there's an explosive headline for you. Have a news outlet run this as a top story and they'll have an audience to rival that of NPR...come to think of it I think NPR actually led off with this story yesterday.
22: Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization and Still No Safety Net - Translation: we had to go out and get a job and now we have less time to write about how the Bush administration is screwing minorities, women, children, immigrants and the environment.
What you have here is a list that reads like a promotional brouchure for the Communist Party of the USA. I really think Slashdot ought to keep the postings to LEGITIMATE conspiracies rather than the political rantings of some wash-up, has-been commies out in California.
Slashdot Mirror
The real question is who the hell wants to play TE on ANY platform?
He probably got the idea from trying to keep track of his daughters. OH, you mean it's a joke? Wow, and here I thought it was a good idea....
1. Stealing land from others.
I am not aware anyone "owned" this land prior to the US moving in. Back in the 16th century, even among the indigenous population of America, ownership was at least mostly defined as being able to defend the territory from invaders. You might say the English, Spanish and French "stole" it from the indigenous population and then we either "stole" it from them or purchased it.
2. Using slave labour on that land.
This went on in parts of the country for a little more than half our existence and did not have that much of an impact on the country as a whole economically.
3. Cutting down the trees to drive the industrial revolution.
To paraphrase Archy Bunker, would you have preferred that we wait for them to fall over of old age? Christ if we did that the supply of hockey sticks would be very unstable.
4. Employing child labour to cheaply replace slaves.
The way kids behave today, I am beginning to think they were on to something back then. My mom always used to tell me "idol hands were the devil's playground"
How about just going over to nuke power. To the best of my knowledge, birds to generally splatter themselves on the cooling towers of a reactor. Sure, they might exhibit a dull glow at night and have the occasional offspring with a third wing growing out of it's head but I don't think it would come close to 3 or 4 of these a day.
I disagree. And now they have a patch especially for those suffering from "nanoism" - I get about 20 emails a day about it!
It always amazes me that supposedly intelligent people feel that by virtue of living and working in an economic system, they are suddenly experts on how that economic system works and what can be done to "fix" it. I can tell you I have driven over hundreds, perhaps even thousands of bridges in my time and I can tell you with all humility aside, that fact does not make me an engineer. There is no way any of you would want to trust your life on a bridge of my design.
Hopefully, no one will read this guy's blog. And if they do, hopefully they will realize they are indeed stupider for the experience. Pick his stuff apart and you realize it's more pie-in-the-sky feel good crap:
Financial scandals yes as they create distrust in our capital market. Wars create uncertainty so sure, war not good. Tax cuts? Even screwed up Keynsians believe that in down times, governments should run deficits. Other more rational schools of thought believe that fiscal policy is always a bust. Stagnation? Are we talking stagnant water, stagnant love life, stagnant hard-drive? Yeah, stuff sitting still does not create much motion, brilliant.
Pure, unadulterated crap. Does this guy really think that technology that reduces the cost of production does not help out everyone? Were we not all made better by Edison creating the lightbulb? Would we all not be the worse off if we were still reading by gas lamp? Innovation takes risk capital. The rewards must be great to attract someone to put that money at risk. In the end, one person may be a millionaire but we are all left better off.
I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work
Work is meant to be a means to an end not an end in and of itself. It has been this way since the beginning of time. You don't do yard work just to work. You do it so your yard looks nice and perhaps get off your ass and away from your computer.
I assume he is trying to make a point here, I just don't know what the hell it is.
This is known in other circles as socialism. You have any other ways you would like to flog that dead horse? They need you in the Howard Dean campaign.
Hmmmm, I don't know where to start with this you bring up so many good issues.
As far as use taxes, you are correct in that a state is limited to taxing within it's border. Use taxes are generally there to discourage consumers from traveling across state lines to purchase in low-taxed districts. However, your assertion that tax on internet sales runs afoul of the interstate commerce clause is not as clear-cut as you would make it. If someone orders an item online, has the transaction occurred in the district in which the internet server is, or in the district in which the consumer is? What if the item is shipped out of a warehouse in a third district? If the product is to be delivered via common carrier, is the transaction not being completed in the district to which it is shipped. When you travel across state lines to purchase an item and then bring it back home, it is clear that the transaction was made where you purchased the item. With the internet, things get a little more complicated.
Now, as far as the sales tax being a crummy way to tax, I disagree. Income taxes have to be the worst plague to visit the US in its entire history. Sales taxes, in as far as our current tax system goes, are the most efficient to collect. I'll go back to an earlier argument about Madison saying that the poor would keep the taxes under control for everyone. The fact is if you are taxing so much as to hurt the poor unduly, you are taxing too much. I never approach taxes from the point of maximizing revenues to the state, but rather minimizing it's destructive influences on the market. You have to keep in mind that wealth is created in the private sector and without wealth, the state is meaningless.
You are really stretching here. You say "constitutionality" but you fail to identify which constitution. Are you speaking of the US constitution or the state's constitution. Since there are 50 unique state constitutions, I cannot speak to the constitutionality of state sales tax laws, but I have seen nothing in the US constitution that would preclude a state from levying a tax on one type of good and not another. I can't imagine a federal court even agreeing to hear an argument on sales tax discrimination.
As for your second point about sales taxes being cyclical, I can't think of a tax that would be counter-cyclical to the business cycle. Even Keynsians thought that during downturns, gov'ts would have to run deficits to stimulate the economy
Anyway, I really, really don't like paying taxes. But I also like to see an even playing field when it comes to the gov't and I think here, local brick-and-mortars are getting the shaft.
Groucho Marx! Try Karl Marx.
You at least got the last 3/4 of you statement correct. Tax bad, period.
A progressive income tax is better still because then it scales the rate so that the burden of taxation is felt equally by everyone, but that's another discussion..
Actually, this just gives whoring politicians the ability to tell the unwashed masses that they will deliver a chicken to every pot by screwing over the "rich". It's funny that politicians will try to tax social ills to make them go away (i.e. vice taxes on gambling, cigarettes, beer) yet they seem to think that taxing income will, er, raise everyone's standard of living! I like to shock people in conversations sometimes by proposing a "Poor Tax". Just as you want to convince people to stop smoking and pay for medical bills caused by tobacco by taxing tobacco products, a "Poor Tax" would discourage people from being unproductive. The way to get rid of poverty is not to subsidize it (ie. welfare), but to TAX it! Besides, the poor use more social services than the rich so shouldn't they be forced to foot the bill?
Just something to think about.
I am not sure I agree with you analysis. In reality there is no difference between catalog orders and internet orders. The states should treat all retailers the same regardless of the matter in which the commerce took place and I don't think catalog retailing will ever be able to approach the volume of business done on the internet since to order from a catalog you need to have the thing in front of you. With the internet, you need only a computer.
I think what the states need to do, and have started to do, is to agree on a uniform sales tax code for internet purchases so that it is easier for internet businesses to comply. I could see a business model for a transaction brokerage to operate to collect and oversee state taxes to relieve very small .coms from doing paperwork.
But let's go with your analysis and say the state should ignore internet retailing. What then? Since the percentage of commerce being conducted over the internet grows each year, the states can either look at reduced sales tax revenues or increase some other tax. Increase other taxes on the local population and they only exacerbate the problem, creating more internet commerce and reducing the amount of tax revenues.
Also, virtually every state that has a sales tax also has a use tax. Simply put, if your retailer does not collect the state tax or you buy something out of state, then you as the new owner are responsible for paying the tax to the state. The only thing that keeps states from vigorously enforcing this is it is cost prohibitive in most instances
I'll go back to my original premise, that it is bad to treat businesses differently for tax purposes when they are enganged in the exact same business. Taxes that concentrate on form over substance will inevitably be avoided.
The problem here is that when people search the net for "Britney Spears", they're not looking to buy her CDs - but that's will be what they get with Amahoo!!!
This thing just needs an OS upgrade. I hear XP doesn't crash, just slows down a wee bit...
Can't believe the moderators ranked your comment as insightful. I hate taxes as much as the next guy - actually because I am a libertarian I hate them more than the next 99 guys. But the only thing worse than taxes are taxes that distort the economy to the point where they actually affect the way business is done en masse.
I am not sure that people actually buy stuff on the net to avoid state and local sales taxes, but I know when I compare prices on the net I usually factor in the lack of those taxes and the added shipping cost into the final decision. Consider if you were a business owner and you could be undercut by businesses on the net simply because internet businesses were not collecting state sales taxes.
I am all for the individual states getting their fiscal house in order without more taxes but I think to be intellectually honest one must admit the status quo is unfair to local business.
I don't think the real worry here should be whether Dr. Who will end up gay, but whether the tech factor will trump the writing. For a while I was a big Dr. Who addict and never missed a show but back then the special effects were decidedly low-budget (a notch below the original Star Trek). It was the great story lines and fascinating characters that really made the series. Like all great fiction, it made you use your imagination to picture the things they could not possibly display using the technology of the time and the budget they had. I think the big threat here is that the new Dr. Who will be all CGI and no real story.
Actually, no tax needs to be progressive. You may want it to be progressive, but that is a different matter. Economically speaking, income taxes are the least efficient tax to collect. The amount spent on income tax compliance is roughly equal to the output of the 3 big auto manufacturers in the United States. Capital gains are ineffective because the gov't either has to deal with large variations in receipts (ie. caused by big fluctuations in exchange of capital like the stock market) or taxed unrealized gains (ie. force you to sell stuff to pay taxes based on theoretical values).
I agree we ought to have as few tax streams as possible to limit compliance costs, but the economic solution is a simple, nation-wide value added tax. In as far as progressiveness, I believe it was Madison who stated, and I am paraphrasing, that the poor would keep taxes on the American populace in check as the gov't could not get too greedy without stirring a revolt. Obviously, he never envisioned a day when one man would be penalized for his success while another would be subsidized for his lack thereof.
It's really just a way of saying "Your price is going up $1.50 a month, but we'd like to blame it on the government." It's really a practice the FTC should step in on...
Sweet Jesus, man - you must make whatever public school you rolled out of proud! Would it make sense for all taxes to be collected out of your sight? I am sure the government would like it that way. Then, when you send a letter to your Senator and complain about why it costs $3.99 per minute to IM (due to taxes the Feds levied on ISPs) he could tell you it is not right that you have to pay that much for IMing and convene a blue-ribbon panel to look into the matter. The panel will come back with the recommendation that the ISPs need more federal oversight and the FTC will have to levy a special fee on your phone line to cover the costs of the extra oversight on ISPs.
This is where public schools really pay off for politicians. Kind of like the old data processing adage "garbage in - garbage out". Fill the electorate with economic idiots and they will buy and horse shit you pass their way.
I like a good conspiracy myself, but I prefer them to come from a more imaginative perspective than from some group trying to push a political agenda. These are censored news stories because there was no news to censor, only conjecture. Let's examine the list:
1: The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance - If these guys had done their homework they would have found out that the neo-cons are just a smoke screen for the real group scheming for global dominance, the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers!
2: Homeland Security? Yeah, yeah John Ashcroft is going to rifle through your undies drawer. That's why I left a particularly nasty pair on top for him!
3: US Removes Pages from Iraq Report - This was just part of the "Paperwork Reduction Act" which unbelievably applies to all reports done by 3rd world dictatorships. Besides, I think the 8,000 pages was actually included in Hillary Clinton's best seller "Living History" and credited to a ghost writer.
4: Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists - BFD, he does that every time he appears on Fox News. If it's underreported, it's only because the reporters are now afraid to speak to him for fear of looking like the stupid, vacuous idiots that they are.
5: The Effort to Make Unions Extinct - This got plenty of coverage by the press...in India!
6: Closing Access to Information Technology - Why would you need the FCC for this when you have geeks putting out stuff like the Nachi worm. Besides, if you turn off the pr0n pipe you'll have geeks in the streets with torches and pitchforks within an hour.
13: US Military's War on the Earth - Well, we are working on conducting war in space but those damn Greys never show up for the fight. I am all for fighting wars on Mars for instance because if CNN and FOX had to get live coverage, we might actually end up with a Martian explorer that worked!
19: U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro - Now there's an explosive headline for you. Have a news outlet run this as a top story and they'll have an audience to rival that of NPR...come to think of it I think NPR actually led off with this story yesterday.
22: Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization and Still No Safety Net - Translation: we had to go out and get a job and now we have less time to write about how the Bush administration is screwing minorities, women, children, immigrants and the environment.
What you have here is a list that reads like a promotional brouchure for the Communist Party of the USA. I really think Slashdot ought to keep the postings to LEGITIMATE conspiracies rather than the political rantings of some wash-up, has-been commies out in California.