The way this has worked in the past is the US government will suddenly decide that small country is violating its citizens' human rights, or maybe fixing elections to get in power. Then comes the trade sanctions, a coup or even the marines. Look into the history of the US Fruit company in Central and South America.
You don't really think other countries go along with our crazy patent system out of choice, do you? They know they're getting screwed, but they hope to make up the difference with lower labor costs. The US patent system is, here in the US and also abroad, a kind of protection racket. Not much different than big city organized crime.
Its the same idiotic way that he thinks about the economy. Better to have large deficits now, and deplete social security now, so things look good NOW. In 20 or 30 years when the economy is shot and social security is gone, things will royally suck, but hey thats not Bush's problem as long as things look good NOW. He's such a freaking moron...
You must have just fallen off the turnip truck. This is the fundimental flaw with democracy. I distinctly recall the Republicans broaching the subject of fixing social security in 1998, and the Democrats used it to beat them about the head and shoulders. The reality is no politician will get elected unless he supports 1) no new taxes, 2) no decrease in social security or medicare. If Bush had taken any other position he wouldn't have been elected.
People look out for their own short-term interests. They don't care about jobs 20 years from now - they care about jobs now. You can do all the education you want, but if it comes to choosing between a new SUV and Kyoto the average guy will pick the SUV.
Incidentally, Kerry wouldn't have signed the treaty either, and even if he did it wouldn't have been ratified.
"Last I heard" is merely unsubstantiated, not necessarily disreputable. Just like someone else saying that caps will solve the problem.
I apologize for the poor choice of words. A cite would be nice if your going to make assertions of fact, though.
I've no problem with your friend, and can agree with you that she's being singled out as a high-risk (and high-victim-sympathy, don't forget) profession.
That's the worst one, but there are other specialties in a similar bind. The question is do we really want a system that punishes people for providing a public good? I can tell you she's very frustrated, and could make quite a bit more money doing cosmetic procedures without the risks she's taking now. Thankfully there seem to be a certain amount of personal satifaction in delivering babies.
I have a problem in that there does appear to be anecdotal evidence of doctors (not your friend) being moved away from their mistakes, and the evidence hidden.
The current system gives incentives for just that kind of behavior. It's very unusual for a doctor to criticize another for the simple reason he might end up in court repeating what he said. a Hospital will never own up to a mistake because it puts them on the hook for an enormous amount of money.
Certainly seems like a case should be made for more education. I have had doctors very clearly indicate risks involved in medical procedures.
I think it's less a case of education than desperation and greed.
So, I assume they don't have insurance? Because if the medical problem is bad, 10 - 20K isn't going to do anything. Perhaps we need universal insurance? Perhaps there ought to be a higher standard of proof in these cases? Or perhaps your friend isn't a very good doctor (unlikely, but possible...)
You are correct in your assumption - her clientelle is mostly poor with little or no education. The reason they settle for 10-20K is the hospital (actually the insurance company) has pretty much decided anything over that is worth taking to court. The lawyers want to settle the case because they can wrap the whole thing up in a couple of days and collect their contingency fee. And I agree with you on the universal health care.
Of course, if your statement is accurate, this is the reason that tort reform doesn't do much-a few large lawsuits aren't the problem, the sheer numbers are..
Oh, that is most certainly the case. The solution most other countries have is "loser pays", i.e. the loser of the suit pays the winner's legal expenses. That way the plaintif's lawyer won't take contingency cases they're not going to win.
You know what? Please don't mod me troll, but do I wish USAians would get over this terror thing. Countries like the UK and Spain have had to put up with terrorism and the the threat of terrorism for decades, but they haven't developed a culture of fear, and it has not stopped them from getting on with their lives as normal. This 'but what would the terrorists think?' automatic reaction to just about everything is starting to get a bit old.
You know what, it's getting old for us too. Every incompetant boob wants to blame his failings on terrorism or peoples fear of terrorism. In this case, American car companies are a little embarrassed that they're falling further and further behind the competition in the technology race. The solution? Tell the press we don't actually want new car technology because we're afraid of terrorists (it just wouldn't fly if he said "Americans don't want new technology" without some reason).
Believe me, Americans don't worry about Al Queda when we shop for a car. You shouldn't take this as a sign we're shaking in our boots.
Last I heard, something like 6% of doctors were causing 66% of the malpractice payouts.
"Last I heard" is hardly a reputable source. In any event there are some innocuous explanations for this anyway. I have a friend who's a doctor in a poor community. She does obstetrics, which is a pretty high-risk specialty. She gets sued every time a baby comes out wrong. Her customers don't have any way to deal with the costs associated with a problem child, so they try to get the money they'll need from the legal lottery. The hospital's insurance company gererally settles for 10-20k since it's cheaper than going to trial and elimites the risk of a hundred million dollar judgement.
So yeah, she gets sued more than any doctor in her community. But then, she's the only obstetrician. When she decides it's all too much pregnent mothers in that community will have to drive forty minutes to deliver their babies. I hope they're glad the legal system is there to protect them.
The rest of the money goes into overhead, executive pay, lobbying, and above all, marketing. How often do you see a Viagra ad on TV? That's where the money goes. It's unbelievable.
All these costs are borne by every industry - why should drugs be any different? They advertise because it brings in more top-line revenue. I don't see the problem advertising drugs that improve the quality of life but aren't absolutely necessary.
As far as profit goes, remember the money they're making now is based on investments 10 years ago. You have to allow for both opportunity cost and risk adjustment. And the risks in that industry are huge.
The role of universities in drug research is overstated. It's the drug companies that handle the really expensive part of double-blind studies. And part of the payoff reflects the risk that you might spend billions and have nothing to show for it.
Look on the shelves. There's this little white pill that everybody and his dog made (and still makes)- it's called ASPRIN.
No patents, yet everyone still makes the damn stuff and makes loads of money on it (or else nobody would bother with it...).
First of all, asprin would be cheap anyway since patents would have expired long ago. The problem isn't the drugs companies "still" make, it's the drugs that will not make it to market without billions of dollars in development and testing. Where is that money going to come from? And who's going to pay for research that leads into a dead end?
Secondly, asprin is on the market because everyone was already taking it when the FDA was established. It almost certainly wouldn't be a non-prescription drug if developed today, and the costs of proving it safe would drive up the cost of the pill. All that protective regulation has a price.
Also, drug companies do have the incentive to make new drugs - the old ones will eventually come off patent. Just this year I had a pill I was taking drop from $75/month to $20/month for that reason.
The reason drugs are cheaper in Canada is the government doesn't allow drug companies to factor the development costs into the drug prices. The real reason Canadians will be better off if Americans keep paying high prices for drugs is the aforementioned Canadians will benefit from the research without paying for it.
If everybody in the US stops paying for the research (by going to Mexico or Canada or whereever), there simply won't be much in the way of new drug development. The vast majority of new drugs come from US companies, and even the ones that don't make sense economically only because of the payoff in the American market.
I don't understand how this will actually help. No, I'm not trolling. Look, people work in those sweatshops for a reason - because where they live it's the best they can do. Sometimes the sweatshop job is an alternative to nothing - is sewing shoes for Nike all day really worse than, say, prostitution or digging through garbage? Is it worse than back-breaking manual labor?
There are really only two ways this can go - either the multinationals will use shell companies to get around it, or lots of people in the very poorest countries will lose their jobs. Either they'll be replaced by machines, or by workers in countries with a better infrastructure. So jobs would move from, say, the poorest areas of Guatemala to slightly-less-poor areas in Eastern Europe, where the wage/infrastructure ratio is a better fit to the agreement.
Also, I'm all for getting rid of child labor, but if the child is feeding his family, who is being helped by throwing him out of work? Child labor laws only make sense in countries that are wealthy enough to give people an alternative to starvation if the child doesn't work (because he's an orphan, or has sick parents, etc).
This is a classic example of applying rich-world-thinking to places it doesn't make sense. These people need jobs - as many as they can get. I'd rather see 1000 people making just enough to feed their families than 500 making twice as much and 500 starving.
If you really want to help people in the third world, the best way is to stop subsidizing the destruction of poor-country economies. A good place to start would be the abolition of farm subsidies in the rich world. Rich world farm subsidies have destroyed the major source of work in the less developed (mostly agrarian) countries. That's what creates the huge pool of jobless workers available for factory jobs. Does it seem reasonable a farmer in California can grow rice (which reqires lots of irrigation in California) and ship it to Asia and undercut a farmer who's making virtually nothing compared to the American farmer?
How about having real free trade, not just free trade when no first-world jobs are in danger? How about cutting some of the reasonable-sounding regulations that exist solely to keep out third-world competition. How about not lending development money to corrupt governments (so they can buy military hardware from the lender) and then saddling the next three generations of the country with a debt-induced inflationary spiral?
If these people had an alternative to sweatshop work, the Nikes of the world would have to compete for their labor. Then you would have a real improvement in the lives of poor people around the world and not just some salve for the conscience of well-meaning people in rich countries.
But, hey, isn't it all about people in the rich world feeling better?
"(up to and including not bothering to make money)"
This is ludicrous. Nobody anywhere in America is making the voluntary decision to not make money. Nobody. Bill Gates and George Soros are still trying to make more money. I mean, they must not know they are being taxed or else they would just stop working, right?
...
Between the two of them, they hold five jobs
I hate to break this to you... but if your parents don't make enough to pay the rent they don't pay any income taxes. When I was talking about marginal tax rates I wasn't talking about the end that doesn't pay. I was talking about rich people. So while you're right most people don't have a choice not to make money, the wealthy people (remember that 5% that pays 70% of the taxes?) do. If a wealthy guy (say, a CEO or a partner in a law firm) has to decide between retirement or sticking it out in the work force for a couple of more years, you can bet the tax rate has a large effect on his decision. So instead of collecting, say, 30% of his million dollar salary for four or five more years, you don't get anything when he decides the golf course looks like a better deal.
"You brought up the highly-taxed western European countries. They all have very high unemployment compared to the U.S."
And they also have much better unemployment insurance, and higher quality jobs when they're not unemployed. Next.
Sure, they have so many benefits it's hard to imaging why they work. That's temporary. Economic necessity will eventually force the curtailing of many of those benefits. You can't do it without a tax base. And mind you - those jobs are the tax base, since it's the middle class that pays for the larger state. The rich people pay about the same as ours do.
But isn't our standard of living FIRST out of 150?
No, in fact it's not. But in any event we do pay the most taxes in absolute terms, just not as a percentage of our incomes. But the real question is "who will pay those extra taxes?" Not Bill Gates. Me, you, your parents. That's my point.
The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States.
Are you being deliberately dense? I didn't ask who was the largest employer. The government doesn't create jobs in the sense it doesn't create wealth. Those government jobs only exist because the private sector creates wealth that can be taxed for their creation.
If government can create jobs, why don't we nationalize everything? Then everyone can work for the government and we can all be rich. Oh wait, that's been tried. Didn't work out very well, did it?
You're dancing around the issue like all the other tax-haters. What do you think pay for your police, your firemen, your schools?
The taxes I pay are certainly adequate for those services. I don't see why I should pay more. In any event these are not services the federal government provides, but the federal government certainly takes its cut. Just what does the Department of Education do anyway?
Keep guessing, Einstein. I'm over 30...
Have you been in jail for the last decade? You seem kind of ignorant of unintended consequences in tax policy.
Holy shit, you really said that, didn't you? Here. Take your pick. Your ignorance is fucking *breathtaking*. Stop posting before you embarass yourself further.
Let me quote from the sub-header of the first search result:
The Pentagon official, an evangelical, was nearly fired for insulting Islam
There's no way anybody in the administration would condone that kind of talk. Supports my point, doesn't it: Bush didn't "let" anybody say any such thing.
Sure, but duh, it's not just Europe that's pissed, Einstein. It's like every Muslim everywhere. Maybe you're naive enough to think there's no consequences for pissing off that many people, but I could think of, oh, about two. Two very big (you might
I should know better than to post anything on slashdot that isn't to the left of Michael Moore. It'll just get modded down and people will spew bile at me without addressing my points. But, as they say, I've got karma to burn.
Americans still pay among the lowest overall taxes in the world, IIRC
If you consider 14th highest out of 150 some odd to be "among the lowest". That's the tax burden as a percentage of income. But the actual marginal tax burden (not tax rate, mind you, tax burden) for high income people is remarkably similar. It turns out once you take more than about 25% of someone's income they will make adjustments (up to and including not bothering to make money) to reduce that burden. It makes sense when you think about it - if you take the fruits of my labors I'll stop laboring. The Europeans get more out of people by using a VAT to tax everyone when they buy goods and services (similar to American sales tax, but it's applied to a far wider range of economic activity). But that isn't going to be very progressive.
I'm all for abolishing tax shelters.
So is everyone else. Tax shelters are never (well, almost never) written into the law as such. The reason super rich people don't pay much in taxes is they have flexibility the rest of us don't have. I'm guessing you're probably either still in school or just out recently. Let me tell you, "abolishing tax shelters" is a common refrain, and it's been done over and over. But no 6000 page body of law is perfect, and the legal meaning of a sentence can be different than the intent. Having complex law is like having complex code - more bugs.
The other problem is the super-rich won't take any risks with their money if they don't get to keep more of the profits. That means economic stagnation - for you and me that means not very many jobs. You brought up the highly-taxed western European countries. They all have very high unemployment compared to the U.S. In fact, official unemployment numbers in Europe understate the extent of the problem, since in the wealthier countries if you get laid off you go to a state-supported retraining center. That means you still don't have a job but you don't count as "unemployed".
I'm well aware that Kerry is just as corporate as Bush is.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Where do you think jobs come from? The government?
The rest here is just an anti-bush diatribe. I'll try to take your points one at a time.
Who won't go around talking about crusades: "Crusade" as a word has entered the lexicon as meaning any heartfelt cause opposing a perceived social evil. "crusade against drugs", "crusade against poverty", etc. If it's offensive to Muslims you can blame the translator, as far as I'm concerned.
...let his generals say we're fighting a Christian war on Islam. I'd like to see a citation on that. The Bush administration has been very clear from the beginning hostilities in the Middle East are not a "Christian war on Islam". I garauntee you Bush didn't "let" anybody say any such thing, and any general who said that would be reprimanded.
...piss off almost everybody that matters in the world. If you don't piss people off, you're not doing anything at all. I think after the Deulfer report it's pretty clear why they were pissed off - the gravy train was about to end. France, China, and Russia were all taking bribes and lining up big contracts to take effect after sanctions were lifted.
...let the Pakistanis and North Koreans get nukes. The pakistanis have had nukes for more than ten years - you can't pin that on Bush. As far as North Korea is concerned, nothing anybody has done has slowed their nuke program. Would you support an invasion? You realize they led Clinton and Albright down the garden path by taking money for not having a nuclear program and having one anyway? The difference in policy is merely a
Aside from efficiency, why is doing it in a test tube any different?
The difference is while you can breed one kind of monkey with another to get a slightly different dog, there's no way you can breed it with a bacteria to make it glow. You can do that with GM (it's been on slashdot, but I'm too lazy to find the link.
Do we? Bill Clinton did a lot of wrong shit, but he made a campign promise to end welfare as we know it, and damned if he didn't come within a hairs breadth of doing exactly that. And eliminated the federal defecit. How?
By taxing most those whom taxes affect the least.
Er... no. Bubba didn't actually change tax policy at all (well, he raised 'em early on, but less than Bush Sr.) . Nor did he constrain spending. The reason deficits were eliminated on his watch was the bubble economy temporarily pushed up revenue. That and the fact that Hillary's health plan went down in flames.
In fact, the rich pay almost all the taxes anyway. In the US, the top 50% of wage earners pay 96% of the taxes. The top 5% pay 70% of the taxes.
Tax rates were actually much higher on the top end in the early 1980s. When the
highest federal rate was lowered from 70% to 28% rich people actually started paying more taxes. Because they could make more by investing normally and taking the tax hit they started pulling their money out of perpetually "losing" investments (tax shelters) and double-tax-free bonds.
Anyway the point is it's not as simple as you make it out to be. It turns out wealthy people in America are paying about as much as you can make them pay. Worst comes to worst they just move to another country (as Anthony Hopkins did when he became a US citizen to escape high taxes in the UK).
But even before that they can go back to the tax shelters. At this point I would like to direct your attention to today's Wall Street Journal. It turns out John Kerry and his charming wife have been paying a tax rate of about 12%. As contrasted with the average joe, who's paying about 20%, and the Bushs who pay about 30% (this might be the best argument for voting Kerry - apparently Bush isn't savvy enough to avoid paying too much in taxes). So why does Kerry, a multi-billionaire (with a "b") have a lower tax rate than the average w-2 wage earner? By hiring an army of tax lawyers to exploit every favorable provision in the law. Legally.
Nope, if taxes go up to pay for new social programs it'll end up like every socialist country - the average guy will pay. Nothin' wrong with that, in my opinion, but don't support socialism thinking you're going to get the Kerrys to pay for it.
Running SETI costs tax payers money if the form of the electric bill and ware and tear on the equipment.
Wear and tear? What, if you push too many electrons through the logic gates they wear a little groove? Most servers use the same amount of power heavily loaded or just sitting there doing nothing.
And they would not arrest you for using a state car for personal business.
The genius of SpaceShipOne is that it essentially tumbles back into the atmosphere at a high angle of attack, with a high drag configuration, and very low speed. The low speed entry generates very little friction and therefore negligable heat.
That's not genius. That's the happy byproduct of not going into orbit. SpaceShipOne is in no way capable surviving reentry from orbital velocities. Not even close.
If you look at an orbital craft's launch profile, you see 90% of the energy goes into horizontal motion, not vertical. All that energy gets dumped on the return trip. The most tricky part of any orbital craft is dumping that reentry heat, and the X-prize simply didn't require that kind of sophistication. The shuttle would have been orders of magnitude cheaper and safer except for that pesky little detail.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that you've made over $100,000 from playing at Party Poker. Is this correct, or am I missing something?
That is correct. The amount I play varies over the course of the year - some weeks I don't play at all, some weeks I put in forty or fifty hours. I usually play two games at a time.
I haven't quit my day job. While I love the game of poker (been playing for fifteen years, though only the last couple online), I don't want to be in the position of playing to pay the rent. That requires a sizeable bankroll, since sometimes you'll have long losing streaks. Poker is a game of odds - you can balance the odds in your favor, but just like flipping a coin will come up heads roughly one time in a thousand, you can have "the best of it" and still lose hand after hand after hand.
In any event, I'm making more at my day job. In fact, anyone who's smart enough to make it as a professional poker player can make more money doing something else. And this way I can get health care.
You can go to any number of poker sites (I recommend http://www.twoplustwo.com/) and find a good discussion of why it isn't a good idea to go pro. It turns out it only makes sense if your some kind of idiot savante or you just can't (or don't like to) work with other people.
Honestly, I think it would be _trivial_ to write a poker client that could kick the stuffing out of any human player
I think this goes right up there with it being trivial to write a perfect operating system or a cypher nobody can crack. Lots of people have tried, and it's never been done, to my knowledge. Remember there's more to it than just figuring out what the other players have and adjusting your strategy to it. Your bot will have tendencies, just like any human player. When other players figure out how to exploit those tendencies your bot will start to lose.
So far, if poker sites have bots they're not very good - I have more than 100k hands logged on Party Poker and I'm not having any more trouble beating it than ever (I win a little more than $1/hand).
Until recently, they were sitting on a $40 billion surplus. Do you really think the price will go down as their "piracy" enforcement measures become more effective?
So... don't... buy... it. Maybe if people did a little less pirating and a little more rowing the OS boat forward they wouldn't be a "staple of our economy". We're not talking about food, medicine, or some scarce natural resource here. Whatever you think of Windows, Microsoft wrote it, didn't they? It's theirs.
Pirates? Look, if $299 CAD is too much, don't buy it - nobody's shoving it down your throat. Use linux, or use a notepad. You don't have any right too someone else's property just because you think it's too expensive.
If music is worth the download, its worth the 15$ for the CD
Er... no. If it's worth the download for free, it might be worth some amount of money. It might be worth the $0.99 for the iTunes download (or whatever they raised it to). It might be worth $5 for the used CD. But just because the recording industry decided they make the most money by charging $15 for a CD doesn't mean it's gonna be worth $15 to everyone.
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You don't really think other countries go along with our crazy patent system out of choice, do you? They know they're getting screwed, but they hope to make up the difference with lower labor costs. The US patent system is, here in the US and also abroad, a kind of protection racket. Not much different than big city organized crime.
You must have just fallen off the turnip truck. This is the fundimental flaw with democracy. I distinctly recall the Republicans broaching the subject of fixing social security in 1998, and the Democrats used it to beat them about the head and shoulders. The reality is no politician will get elected unless he supports 1) no new taxes, 2) no decrease in social security or medicare. If Bush had taken any other position he wouldn't have been elected.
People look out for their own short-term interests. They don't care about jobs 20 years from now - they care about jobs now. You can do all the education you want, but if it comes to choosing between a new SUV and Kyoto the average guy will pick the SUV.
Incidentally, Kerry wouldn't have signed the treaty either, and even if he did it wouldn't have been ratified.
I apologize for the poor choice of words. A cite would be nice if your going to make assertions of fact, though.
I've no problem with your friend, and can agree with you that she's being singled out as a high-risk (and high-victim-sympathy, don't forget) profession.
That's the worst one, but there are other specialties in a similar bind. The question is do we really want a system that punishes people for providing a public good? I can tell you she's very frustrated, and could make quite a bit more money doing cosmetic procedures without the risks she's taking now. Thankfully there seem to be a certain amount of personal satifaction in delivering babies.
I have a problem in that there does appear to be anecdotal evidence of doctors (not your friend) being moved away from their mistakes, and the evidence hidden.
The current system gives incentives for just that kind of behavior. It's very unusual for a doctor to criticize another for the simple reason he might end up in court repeating what he said. a Hospital will never own up to a mistake because it puts them on the hook for an enormous amount of money.
I think it's less a case of education than desperation and greed.
So, I assume they don't have insurance? Because if the medical problem is bad, 10 - 20K isn't going to do anything. Perhaps we need universal insurance? Perhaps there ought to be a higher standard of proof in these cases? Or perhaps your friend isn't a very good doctor (unlikely, but possible...)
You are correct in your assumption - her clientelle is mostly poor with little or no education. The reason they settle for 10-20K is the hospital (actually the insurance company) has pretty much decided anything over that is worth taking to court. The lawyers want to settle the case because they can wrap the whole thing up in a couple of days and collect their contingency fee. And I agree with you on the universal health care.
Of course, if your statement is accurate, this is the reason that tort reform doesn't do much-a few large lawsuits aren't the problem, the sheer numbers are..
Oh, that is most certainly the case. The solution most other countries have is "loser pays", i.e. the loser of the suit pays the winner's legal expenses. That way the plaintif's lawyer won't take contingency cases they're not going to win.
You know what, it's getting old for us too. Every incompetant boob wants to blame his failings on terrorism or peoples fear of terrorism. In this case, American car companies are a little embarrassed that they're falling further and further behind the competition in the technology race. The solution? Tell the press we don't actually want new car technology because we're afraid of terrorists (it just wouldn't fly if he said "Americans don't want new technology" without some reason).
Believe me, Americans don't worry about Al Queda when we shop for a car. You shouldn't take this as a sign we're shaking in our boots.
"Last I heard" is hardly a reputable source. In any event there are some innocuous explanations for this anyway. I have a friend who's a doctor in a poor community. She does obstetrics, which is a pretty high-risk specialty. She gets sued every time a baby comes out wrong. Her customers don't have any way to deal with the costs associated with a problem child, so they try to get the money they'll need from the legal lottery. The hospital's insurance company gererally settles for 10-20k since it's cheaper than going to trial and elimites the risk of a hundred million dollar judgement.
So yeah, she gets sued more than any doctor in her community. But then, she's the only obstetrician. When she decides it's all too much pregnent mothers in that community will have to drive forty minutes to deliver their babies. I hope they're glad the legal system is there to protect them.
All these costs are borne by every industry - why should drugs be any different? They advertise because it brings in more top-line revenue. I don't see the problem advertising drugs that improve the quality of life but aren't absolutely necessary.
As far as profit goes, remember the money they're making now is based on investments 10 years ago. You have to allow for both opportunity cost and risk adjustment. And the risks in that industry are huge.
The role of universities in drug research is overstated. It's the drug companies that handle the really expensive part of double-blind studies. And part of the payoff reflects the risk that you might spend billions and have nothing to show for it.
No patents, yet everyone still makes the damn stuff and makes loads of money on it (or else nobody would bother with it...).
First of all, asprin would be cheap anyway since patents would have expired long ago. The problem isn't the drugs companies "still" make, it's the drugs that will not make it to market without billions of dollars in development and testing. Where is that money going to come from? And who's going to pay for research that leads into a dead end?
Secondly, asprin is on the market because everyone was already taking it when the FDA was established. It almost certainly wouldn't be a non-prescription drug if developed today, and the costs of proving it safe would drive up the cost of the pill. All that protective regulation has a price.
Also, drug companies do have the incentive to make new drugs - the old ones will eventually come off patent. Just this year I had a pill I was taking drop from $75/month to $20/month for that reason.
If everybody in the US stops paying for the research (by going to Mexico or Canada or whereever), there simply won't be much in the way of new drug development. The vast majority of new drugs come from US companies, and even the ones that don't make sense economically only because of the payoff in the American market.
You're welcome.
There are really only two ways this can go - either the multinationals will use shell companies to get around it, or lots of people in the very poorest countries will lose their jobs. Either they'll be replaced by machines, or by workers in countries with a better infrastructure. So jobs would move from, say, the poorest areas of Guatemala to slightly-less-poor areas in Eastern Europe, where the wage/infrastructure ratio is a better fit to the agreement.
Also, I'm all for getting rid of child labor, but if the child is feeding his family, who is being helped by throwing him out of work? Child labor laws only make sense in countries that are wealthy enough to give people an alternative to starvation if the child doesn't work (because he's an orphan, or has sick parents, etc).
This is a classic example of applying rich-world-thinking to places it doesn't make sense. These people need jobs - as many as they can get. I'd rather see 1000 people making just enough to feed their families than 500 making twice as much and 500 starving.
If you really want to help people in the third world, the best way is to stop subsidizing the destruction of poor-country economies. A good place to start would be the abolition of farm subsidies in the rich world. Rich world farm subsidies have destroyed the major source of work in the less developed (mostly agrarian) countries. That's what creates the huge pool of jobless workers available for factory jobs. Does it seem reasonable a farmer in California can grow rice (which reqires lots of irrigation in California) and ship it to Asia and undercut a farmer who's making virtually nothing compared to the American farmer?
How about having real free trade, not just free trade when no first-world jobs are in danger? How about cutting some of the reasonable-sounding regulations that exist solely to keep out third-world competition. How about not lending development money to corrupt governments (so they can buy military hardware from the lender) and then saddling the next three generations of the country with a debt-induced inflationary spiral?
If these people had an alternative to sweatshop work, the Nikes of the world would have to compete for their labor. Then you would have a real improvement in the lives of poor people around the world and not just some salve for the conscience of well-meaning people in rich countries.
But, hey, isn't it all about people in the rich world feeling better?
This should help you understand the parent post. http://tinyurl.com/4ejg
This is ludicrous. Nobody anywhere in America is making the voluntary decision to not make money. Nobody. Bill Gates and George Soros are still trying to make more money. I mean, they must not know they are being taxed or else they would just stop working, right?
Between the two of them, they hold five jobs
I hate to break this to you... but if your parents don't make enough to pay the rent they don't pay any income taxes. When I was talking about marginal tax rates I wasn't talking about the end that doesn't pay. I was talking about rich people. So while you're right most people don't have a choice not to make money, the wealthy people (remember that 5% that pays 70% of the taxes?) do. If a wealthy guy (say, a CEO or a partner in a law firm) has to decide between retirement or sticking it out in the work force for a couple of more years, you can bet the tax rate has a large effect on his decision. So instead of collecting, say, 30% of his million dollar salary for four or five more years, you don't get anything when he decides the golf course looks like a better deal.
"You brought up the highly-taxed western European countries. They all have very high unemployment compared to the U.S."
And they also have much better unemployment insurance, and higher quality jobs when they're not unemployed. Next.
Sure, they have so many benefits it's hard to imaging why they work. That's temporary. Economic necessity will eventually force the curtailing of many of those benefits. You can't do it without a tax base. And mind you - those jobs are the tax base, since it's the middle class that pays for the larger state. The rich people pay about the same as ours do.
But isn't our standard of living FIRST out of 150?
No, in fact it's not. But in any event we do pay the most taxes in absolute terms, just not as a percentage of our incomes. But the real question is "who will pay those extra taxes?" Not Bill Gates. Me, you, your parents. That's my point.
The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States.
Are you being deliberately dense? I didn't ask who was the largest employer. The government doesn't create jobs in the sense it doesn't create wealth. Those government jobs only exist because the private sector creates wealth that can be taxed for their creation.
If government can create jobs, why don't we nationalize everything? Then everyone can work for the government and we can all be rich. Oh wait, that's been tried. Didn't work out very well, did it?
You're dancing around the issue like all the other tax-haters. What do you think pay for your police, your firemen, your schools?
The taxes I pay are certainly adequate for those services. I don't see why I should pay more. In any event these are not services the federal government provides, but the federal government certainly takes its cut. Just what does the Department of Education do anyway?
Keep guessing, Einstein. I'm over 30...
Have you been in jail for the last decade? You seem kind of ignorant of unintended consequences in tax policy.
Holy shit, you really said that, didn't you? Here. Take your pick. Your ignorance is fucking *breathtaking*. Stop posting before you embarass yourself further.
Let me quote from the sub-header of the first search result:
The Pentagon official, an evangelical, was nearly fired for insulting Islam
There's no way anybody in the administration would condone that kind of talk. Supports my point, doesn't it: Bush didn't "let" anybody say any such thing.
Sure, but duh, it's not just Europe that's pissed, Einstein. It's like every Muslim everywhere. Maybe you're naive enough to think there's no consequences for pissing off that many people, but I could think of, oh, about two. Two very big (you might
Americans still pay among the lowest overall taxes in the world, IIRC
If you consider 14th highest out of 150 some odd to be "among the lowest". That's the tax burden as a percentage of income. But the actual marginal tax burden (not tax rate, mind you, tax burden) for high income people is remarkably similar. It turns out once you take more than about 25% of someone's income they will make adjustments (up to and including not bothering to make money) to reduce that burden. It makes sense when you think about it - if you take the fruits of my labors I'll stop laboring. The Europeans get more out of people by using a VAT to tax everyone when they buy goods and services (similar to American sales tax, but it's applied to a far wider range of economic activity). But that isn't going to be very progressive.
I'm all for abolishing tax shelters.
So is everyone else. Tax shelters are never (well, almost never) written into the law as such. The reason super rich people don't pay much in taxes is they have flexibility the rest of us don't have. I'm guessing you're probably either still in school or just out recently. Let me tell you, "abolishing tax shelters" is a common refrain, and it's been done over and over. But no 6000 page body of law is perfect, and the legal meaning of a sentence can be different than the intent. Having complex law is like having complex code - more bugs.
The other problem is the super-rich won't take any risks with their money if they don't get to keep more of the profits. That means economic stagnation - for you and me that means not very many jobs. You brought up the highly-taxed western European countries. They all have very high unemployment compared to the U.S. In fact, official unemployment numbers in Europe understate the extent of the problem, since in the wealthier countries if you get laid off you go to a state-supported retraining center. That means you still don't have a job but you don't count as "unemployed".
I'm well aware that Kerry is just as corporate as Bush is.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Where do you think jobs come from? The government?
The rest here is just an anti-bush diatribe. I'll try to take your points one at a time.
Who won't go around talking about crusades: "Crusade" as a word has entered the lexicon as meaning any heartfelt cause opposing a perceived social evil. "crusade against drugs", "crusade against poverty", etc. If it's offensive to Muslims you can blame the translator, as far as I'm concerned.
The difference is while you can breed one kind of monkey with another to get a slightly different dog, there's no way you can breed it with a bacteria to make it glow. You can do that with GM (it's been on slashdot, but I'm too lazy to find the link.
By taxing most those whom taxes affect the least.
Er... no. Bubba didn't actually change tax policy at all (well, he raised 'em early on, but less than Bush Sr.) . Nor did he constrain spending. The reason deficits were eliminated on his watch was the bubble economy temporarily pushed up revenue. That and the fact that Hillary's health plan went down in flames.
In fact, the rich pay almost all the taxes anyway. In the US, the top 50% of wage earners pay 96% of the taxes. The top 5% pay 70% of the taxes.
Tax rates were actually much higher on the top end in the early 1980s. When the highest federal rate was lowered from 70% to 28% rich people actually started paying more taxes. Because they could make more by investing normally and taking the tax hit they started pulling their money out of perpetually "losing" investments (tax shelters) and double-tax-free bonds.
Anyway the point is it's not as simple as you make it out to be. It turns out wealthy people in America are paying about as much as you can make them pay. Worst comes to worst they just move to another country (as Anthony Hopkins did when he became a US citizen to escape high taxes in the UK).
But even before that they can go back to the tax shelters. At this point I would like to direct your attention to today's Wall Street Journal. It turns out John Kerry and his charming wife have been paying a tax rate of about 12%. As contrasted with the average joe, who's paying about 20%, and the Bushs who pay about 30% (this might be the best argument for voting Kerry - apparently Bush isn't savvy enough to avoid paying too much in taxes). So why does Kerry, a multi-billionaire (with a "b") have a lower tax rate than the average w-2 wage earner? By hiring an army of tax lawyers to exploit every favorable provision in the law. Legally.
Nope, if taxes go up to pay for new social programs it'll end up like every socialist country - the average guy will pay. Nothin' wrong with that, in my opinion, but don't support socialism thinking you're going to get the Kerrys to pay for it.
Wear and tear? What, if you push too many electrons through the logic gates they wear a little groove? Most servers use the same amount of power heavily loaded or just sitting there doing nothing.
And they would not arrest you for using a state car for personal business.
That's not genius. That's the happy byproduct of not going into orbit. SpaceShipOne is in no way capable surviving reentry from orbital velocities. Not even close.
If you look at an orbital craft's launch profile, you see 90% of the energy goes into horizontal motion, not vertical. All that energy gets dumped on the return trip. The most tricky part of any orbital craft is dumping that reentry heat, and the X-prize simply didn't require that kind of sophistication. The shuttle would have been orders of magnitude cheaper and safer except for that pesky little detail.
I can't. She's watching TV.
That is correct. The amount I play varies over the course of the year - some weeks I don't play at all, some weeks I put in forty or fifty hours. I usually play two games at a time.
I haven't quit my day job. While I love the game of poker (been playing for fifteen years, though only the last couple online), I don't want to be in the position of playing to pay the rent. That requires a sizeable bankroll, since sometimes you'll have long losing streaks. Poker is a game of odds - you can balance the odds in your favor, but just like flipping a coin will come up heads roughly one time in a thousand, you can have "the best of it" and still lose hand after hand after hand.
In any event, I'm making more at my day job. In fact, anyone who's smart enough to make it as a professional poker player can make more money doing something else. And this way I can get health care.
You can go to any number of poker sites (I recommend http://www.twoplustwo.com/) and find a good discussion of why it isn't a good idea to go pro. It turns out it only makes sense if your some kind of idiot savante or you just can't (or don't like to) work with other people.
I think this goes right up there with it being trivial to write a perfect operating system or a cypher nobody can crack. Lots of people have tried, and it's never been done, to my knowledge. Remember there's more to it than just figuring out what the other players have and adjusting your strategy to it. Your bot will have tendencies, just like any human player. When other players figure out how to exploit those tendencies your bot will start to lose.
So far, if poker sites have bots they're not very good - I have more than 100k hands logged on Party Poker and I'm not having any more trouble beating it than ever (I win a little more than $1/hand).
So... don't... buy... it. Maybe if people did a little less pirating and a little more rowing the OS boat forward they wouldn't be a "staple of our economy". We're not talking about food, medicine, or some scarce natural resource here. Whatever you think of Windows, Microsoft wrote it, didn't they? It's theirs.
And they pay for it don't they?
Pirates? Look, if $299 CAD is too much, don't buy it - nobody's shoving it down your throat. Use linux, or use a notepad. You don't have any right too someone else's property just because you think it's too expensive.
Er... no. If it's worth the download for free, it might be worth some amount of money. It might be worth the $0.99 for the iTunes download (or whatever they raised it to). It might be worth $5 for the used CD. But just because the recording industry decided they make the most money by charging $15 for a CD doesn't mean it's gonna be worth $15 to everyone.