Germany does well because of its worker education. The US does well because it has such great legislation that everybody else's highly talented entrepreneurs want to come here instead of being taxed to death at home.
Both societies can learn from each other but since the US specializes in flexibility, I'm guessing that this will end up to the US' net benefit.
You're more likely to be murdered in London than in NYC. Furthermore, on a per unit of out put basis, we're possibly the cleanest country on the planet. Ignorance, well, that does sort of depend on what country you're posting from...
It's also a factor of worker education which is what saves the FRG from falling apart and why german workers are still very prized by bosses with brains.
Please read the Constitution. July 4 is coming up. Do it by then so you might understand what we're all celebrating.
Re:Learned Professionals?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
The only one I ever heard talking about sales tax reform was Republican who wanted to charge a sales tax instead of an income tax and rebate the first $36k of tax paid. The only people talking about reforming FICA and Medicare were also Republicans. The Democrats have been brain dead on taxes for quite awhile except when they want to raise them or stop others from cutting them.
Negative income taxes are just welfare payments administered by the Dept. of Treasury.
Re:Learned Professionals?
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
The ECB is panicking because the high value of the euro is tanking economic growth there. Over here the Fed just dropped interest rates again (which tends to lower the value of the dollar). Face it, the current value of the dollar is on purpose.
Past a certain point, it's cheaper to hire workers to cut down on overtime. Benefits + salary generally = 1.3 pay. Since overtime is generally 1.5 pay it's cheaper to hire workers. The problem is that new workers actually cost money their first 6 months so you can't just hire somebody for temporary peaks and fire them in the valley 3 months later. You've lost money that way.
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Yes, one should make a differentiation between the bloody ax murderer and the slow strangler... in sentencing.
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
A reactionary change would be eliminating Social Security. A radical change would be transforming it into something not in existence before, like a private account plan (GWB is pushing this). On tort reform, the US has *never* had a loser pays rule so how can a loser pays rule be reactionary?
I could go on and on. Republicans cannot honestly be called reactionary and haven't been for quite some time unless you're talking about the return of radical Republicanism when they were also for massive change, pro-black, and the civil rights party of the day.
Re:People work harder in the U.S.?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
100 million people have bled their lives out on the altar of 'true communism'. When are you bloodthirsty bastards going to give up this religion and break the altar.
Re:People work harder in the U.S.?
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
Let's see, they're making it legally obligatory for more low end workers to get overtime and cutting the legal obligation for high paid workers to get overtime. Who has more leverage on their employers to *negotiate* overtime, the low paid store clerk or the $65k/year specialist?
If we're to have legally required OT, it should be mostly for low paid workers. Let everybody else negotiate for it.
If they were insurance programs, they could be privatized and run like, well, insurance programs. There is no SS account with my money earning interest. That's what Bush wants to provide and what the Dems are squealing like stuck pigs over but it isn't current law.
Charity is a social provision which may be done through private or government means. The private means are more efficient, have fewer perverse incentives, and are not universal. Government methods are universal but also trap people into poverty, create perverse electoral effects, and are much less efficient.
I think that a greater emphasis on private provision would serve most countries better than a growing reliance on government provision.
Re:Working Hard?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
By any objective standard we should be very pissed off at teachers today. Collectively they've been creating a work product that is at the bottom of the barrel in the industrial world. We can't read, count, or properly reason to match our international competitors and that's a fact that's been true for decades.
Teacher unions are the structure that work very hard to maintain that sad record of poor achievement. The good teachers don't get rewarded sufficiently, the bad teachers don't get moved out to something more appropriate to their talents (fruit picking perhaps?), and the entire system is bureaucratized and rigid.
The Archdiocese of NY offered to take over the 5 worst schools in NYC and turn them around over 5 years while keeping all the kids and doing it for less money. Who blocked this plan? The AFT was horrified and stopped it. They can't stand the idea that they will be visibly demonstrated to be incompetent and damn the kids if that's what it takes to hide their results.
I don't know. I'd be perpetually ashamed if I was in their shoes and if you look at the welfare laws, the poverty trap still does exist. It's tough to get back out of welfare once you're on it because you can end up with 80%+ marginal tax rates at some points of the income curve.
Since I was the guy who brought up firefly/preparation H, I think I have something of a say on what the conversation was about. I said sponsorship and meant it. Go have your own conversation.
Re:The problem is people take jobs just for the mo
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Bottom line translation, you're a selfish idiot.
Re:The problem is people take jobs just for the mo
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Wealth creation isn't entirely about you. Right now, there are billions of people out there stuck in substandard economic conditions because their governments are a lying pack of thieves and looters. These bands get propped up and supported by 1st world governments because of a dirty little secret, there isn't enough wealth to go around.
At our current level of technology and wealth, and resource usage patterns we can't afford to spend the money necessary to liberate and uplift all these people (or even to open our borders and let them in to escape their oppressors). It would be such a massive disruption and would bid up resource prices so high that we would end up destroying our own economies before we could improve theirs.
Wealth creation matters because it brings us closer to the day when, as a practical matter, we can write the check to get rid of all the dictators. That's why all the "what do we need all this money for" false saints tick me off. They personally don't see the need for growth and they don't want to let others grow the world economy as fast as possible to end the human shithole known as the 3rd world. They'd rather waste resources redistributing amongst ourselves and congratulating themselves that now *our* poor now have 2 TVs instead of just one.
Growth matters, money matters, efficiency matters, and they matter because when there's enough, the elites will have the option of bringing in the 2nd and 3rd world into the 1st one country at a time and in the meantime those poor bastards still stuck there might get $2/day instead of their current >$1/day. It's a delicate game and we all might end up in armaggedon if we screw it up but its' worth fighting for.
Re:The problem is people take jobs just for the mo
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
"Not that there's anything wrong with that;)"
I'm guessing you made that as a cutesy joke but no, I can't go along with it anymore. After 100 Million bodies, after the hundreds of millions of lives made miserable and ruined by it, YES, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT! Communism is just plain evil.
Thank you I needed to get that off my chest.
Re:The problem is people take jobs just for the mo
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
I'd guess that you're probably in an urban or suburban area. Grocery clerks matter because if they weren't there, you wouldn't eat and you would die.
The only reason people deliver to grocery stores is because they have clerks there who break down the big pallets that huge agribusiness favors into little individual sized portions that you're willing to buy. The only way for grocery clerks not to matter is for the people they enable to live not to matter either.
Oh, and before you lay on the 'I could feed myself if I wanted to' line, face up to the fact that you're not in isolation and everybody else in your urb/suburb is going to be bidding up those local food/food production resources too.
In the end, the system would survive because somebody would get the bright idea of playing the middle man between the agribusiness conglomorates and the individual people who don't want to buy in case and pallet sizes (and often can't afford to). They wouldn't call themselves clerks but they would end up doing the job.
The voluntary system has its own rewards and punishments for those who do not give to charity. They don't involve prison terms for tax evasion but they do involve a loss of respect, influence, and social status.
The private systems are much more efficient than the public systems. In fact, the public systems often are socially perverse, trapping the poor and not letting them progress. Forget about the stupid greedheads, don't you have compassion for the poor?
It may not sound like munch but compare apples to apples with your other expenditures. For a lot of people, $0.36 an hour exceeds what they put aside for long term savings for their families to get a better life.
It might not matter much for the high paid tech worker but for some guy bagging groceries one shift and working another shift in fast food, that's a considerable amount of money that would have had a real impact in his life.
There are significant costs, both legal and societal imposed on foreign based corporations. You have to have a pretty hefty tax rate to make it worthwhile.
There's two ways to stop it. Become a gestapo state and don't let people leave and lower the tax rate to the point where it isn't worth the hassle.
Welfare=Transfare payments This doesn't just include the people on programs named welfare. The problem with classicly defined welfare is that people end up getting on line at the supermarket behind one of these people and notice that they welfare recipient is buying name brand while they're scrimping on store brand. They tend to buy better cuts of meat and more of it than their lower-middle and middle class neighbors. This absolutely pisses them off because they perceive the object of their charity living better than they do.
Re:Democrats....Repubs
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Yes, in a libertarian society, it would likely be legal to sell to adults containers marked toxic sludge, poisonous, and it would likely to be legal for people to drink it as long as they knew what they were doing. It would be murder to do it with intent to kill, it would be depraved indifference and fraud to do it without intent. If you properly shift the penalties around, everybody goes to jail and loses the same amount of money as before.
What changes is that you lose huge books of mandatory regulations that freeze innovations and allow entrepreneurs to come up with better ways of keeping the toxic sludge out of the food chain while using fewer resources to do it.
I don't remember the product (I think it was a car company) but I do think that Andromeda was a sponsored show for a time, at least in the Chicago market.
Slashdot Mirror
Germany does well because of its worker education. The US does well because it has such great legislation that everybody else's highly talented entrepreneurs want to come here instead of being taxed to death at home.
Both societies can learn from each other but since the US specializes in flexibility, I'm guessing that this will end up to the US' net benefit.
You're more likely to be murdered in London than in NYC. Furthermore, on a per unit of out put basis, we're possibly the cleanest country on the planet. Ignorance, well, that does sort of depend on what country you're posting from...
It's also a factor of worker education which is what saves the FRG from falling apart and why german workers are still very prized by bosses with brains.
Please read the Constitution. July 4 is coming up. Do it by then so you might understand what we're all celebrating.
The only one I ever heard talking about sales tax reform was Republican who wanted to charge a sales tax instead of an income tax and rebate the first $36k of tax paid. The only people talking about reforming FICA and Medicare were also Republicans. The Democrats have been brain dead on taxes for quite awhile except when they want to raise them or stop others from cutting them.
Negative income taxes are just welfare payments administered by the Dept. of Treasury.
The ECB is panicking because the high value of the euro is tanking economic growth there. Over here the Fed just dropped interest rates again (which tends to lower the value of the dollar). Face it, the current value of the dollar is on purpose.
Stratfor had a nice piece about that this week.
Past a certain point, it's cheaper to hire workers to cut down on overtime. Benefits + salary generally = 1.3 pay. Since overtime is generally 1.5 pay it's cheaper to hire workers. The problem is that new workers actually cost money their first 6 months so you can't just hire somebody for temporary peaks and fire them in the valley 3 months later. You've lost money that way.
Yes, one should make a differentiation between the bloody ax murderer and the slow strangler... in sentencing.
A reactionary change would be eliminating Social Security. A radical change would be transforming it into something not in existence before, like a private account plan (GWB is pushing this). On tort reform, the US has *never* had a loser pays rule so how can a loser pays rule be reactionary?
I could go on and on. Republicans cannot honestly be called reactionary and haven't been for quite some time unless you're talking about the return of radical Republicanism when they were also for massive change, pro-black, and the civil rights party of the day.
100 million people have bled their lives out on the altar of 'true communism'. When are you bloodthirsty bastards going to give up this religion and break the altar.
Let's see, they're making it legally obligatory for more low end workers to get overtime and cutting the legal obligation for high paid workers to get overtime. Who has more leverage on their employers to *negotiate* overtime, the low paid store clerk or the $65k/year specialist?
If we're to have legally required OT, it should be mostly for low paid workers. Let everybody else negotiate for it.
If they were insurance programs, they could be privatized and run like, well, insurance programs. There is no SS account with my money earning interest. That's what Bush wants to provide and what the Dems are squealing like stuck pigs over but it isn't current law.
Charity is a social provision which may be done through private or government means. The private means are more efficient, have fewer perverse incentives, and are not universal. Government methods are universal but also trap people into poverty, create perverse electoral effects, and are much less efficient.
I think that a greater emphasis on private provision would serve most countries better than a growing reliance on government provision.
By any objective standard we should be very pissed off at teachers today. Collectively they've been creating a work product that is at the bottom of the barrel in the industrial world. We can't read, count, or properly reason to match our international competitors and that's a fact that's been true for decades.
Teacher unions are the structure that work very hard to maintain that sad record of poor achievement. The good teachers don't get rewarded sufficiently, the bad teachers don't get moved out to something more appropriate to their talents (fruit picking perhaps?), and the entire system is bureaucratized and rigid.
The Archdiocese of NY offered to take over the 5 worst schools in NYC and turn them around over 5 years while keeping all the kids and doing it for less money. Who blocked this plan? The AFT was horrified and stopped it. They can't stand the idea that they will be visibly demonstrated to be incompetent and damn the kids if that's what it takes to hide their results.
I don't know. I'd be perpetually ashamed if I was in their shoes and if you look at the welfare laws, the poverty trap still does exist. It's tough to get back out of welfare once you're on it because you can end up with 80%+ marginal tax rates at some points of the income curve.
Since I was the guy who brought up firefly/preparation H, I think I have something of a say on what the conversation was about. I said sponsorship and meant it. Go have your own conversation.
Bottom line translation, you're a selfish idiot.
Wealth creation isn't entirely about you. Right now, there are billions of people out there stuck in substandard economic conditions because their governments are a lying pack of thieves and looters. These bands get propped up and supported by 1st world governments because of a dirty little secret, there isn't enough wealth to go around.
At our current level of technology and wealth, and resource usage patterns we can't afford to spend the money necessary to liberate and uplift all these people (or even to open our borders and let them in to escape their oppressors). It would be such a massive disruption and would bid up resource prices so high that we would end up destroying our own economies before we could improve theirs.
Wealth creation matters because it brings us closer to the day when, as a practical matter, we can write the check to get rid of all the dictators. That's why all the "what do we need all this money for" false saints tick me off. They personally don't see the need for growth and they don't want to let others grow the world economy as fast as possible to end the human shithole known as the 3rd world. They'd rather waste resources redistributing amongst ourselves and congratulating themselves that now *our* poor now have 2 TVs instead of just one.
Growth matters, money matters, efficiency matters, and they matter because when there's enough, the elites will have the option of bringing in the 2nd and 3rd world into the 1st one country at a time and in the meantime those poor bastards still stuck there might get $2/day instead of their current >$1/day. It's a delicate game and we all might end up in armaggedon if we screw it up but its' worth fighting for.
"Not that there's anything wrong with that ;)"
I'm guessing you made that as a cutesy joke but no, I can't go along with it anymore. After 100 Million bodies, after the hundreds of millions of lives made miserable and ruined by it, YES, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT! Communism is just plain evil.
Thank you
I needed to get that off my chest.
I'd guess that you're probably in an urban or suburban area. Grocery clerks matter because if they weren't there, you wouldn't eat and you would die.
The only reason people deliver to grocery stores is because they have clerks there who break down the big pallets that huge agribusiness favors into little individual sized portions that you're willing to buy. The only way for grocery clerks not to matter is for the people they enable to live not to matter either.
Oh, and before you lay on the 'I could feed myself if I wanted to' line, face up to the fact that you're not in isolation and everybody else in your urb/suburb is going to be bidding up those local food/food production resources too.
In the end, the system would survive because somebody would get the bright idea of playing the middle man between the agribusiness conglomorates and the individual people who don't want to buy in case and pallet sizes (and often can't afford to). They wouldn't call themselves clerks but they would end up doing the job.
The voluntary system has its own rewards and punishments for those who do not give to charity. They don't involve prison terms for tax evasion but they do involve a loss of respect, influence, and social status.
The private systems are much more efficient than the public systems. In fact, the public systems often are socially perverse, trapping the poor and not letting them progress. Forget about the stupid greedheads, don't you have compassion for the poor?
It may not sound like munch but compare apples to apples with your other expenditures. For a lot of people, $0.36 an hour exceeds what they put aside for long term savings for their families to get a better life.
It might not matter much for the high paid tech worker but for some guy bagging groceries one shift and working another shift in fast food, that's a considerable amount of money that would have had a real impact in his life.
There are significant costs, both legal and societal imposed on foreign based corporations. You have to have a pretty hefty tax rate to make it worthwhile.
There's two ways to stop it. Become a gestapo state and don't let people leave and lower the tax rate to the point where it isn't worth the hassle.
I like option two.
Welfare=Transfare payments
This doesn't just include the people on programs named welfare. The problem with classicly defined welfare is that people end up getting on line at the supermarket behind one of these people and notice that they welfare recipient is buying name brand while they're scrimping on store brand. They tend to buy better cuts of meat and more of it than their lower-middle and middle class neighbors. This absolutely pisses them off because they perceive the object of their charity living better than they do.
Yes, in a libertarian society, it would likely be legal to sell to adults containers marked toxic sludge, poisonous, and it would likely to be legal for people to drink it as long as they knew what they were doing. It would be murder to do it with intent to kill, it would be depraved indifference and fraud to do it without intent. If you properly shift the penalties around, everybody goes to jail and loses the same amount of money as before.
What changes is that you lose huge books of mandatory regulations that freeze innovations and allow entrepreneurs to come up with better ways of keeping the toxic sludge out of the food chain while using fewer resources to do it.
And what's the problem with that?
I don't remember the product (I think it was a car company) but I do think that Andromeda was a sponsored show for a time, at least in the Chicago market.