I can understand having this much space at home, for movies, TV series, pictures and the like, but on the go ?
Yes, on the go. I don't have one now but when I finally get a digital camera I will want to have as big an external drive as I can get. Actually two, one I can keep on-site and the other for off-site storage.
it's the same thing with iPods. the 30 GB model I had was enough to put all my music there
and this level of data storage still boggles my mind.
Not for me. My Linux box has two HDDs installed, a 40GB drive the OS is installed on and a 750GB drive for my user files. When it crashed I had more than 500GB used on that drive. Maybe a month ago I got a new 1.5TB external drive and once I start scanning my film I'm sure I can fill up space quickly. Pro photographers use NAS/SANs of a couple of terabytes or more to store photos. Here's someone asking about using a 2TB external drive on photo.net to store photos. He or she is only using a 15 megapixel camera and is concerned about running out of space yet there are cameras with higher resolutions and pixel counts. The digital camera I'd like to get to start with has a 21 megapixel sensor. Opening, editing, and saving a raw file in Aperture, Photoshop, or Lightroom can generate files of a few hundred megabytes.
I assume he's talking about the 750GB not the 1TB drive. Me, if I could get an internal 1TB drive for my laptop I'd use maybe 50GB for each OS, and the rest for the home or user partition. I could install Leopard, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and another two OSes for testing and still have 750GB for user files.
You may be waiting longer. It's height is 12.5mm so it doesn't fit in most laptops.
While this is just slightly ridiculous, now I can give windows i nice happy 250 GB to play with and give linux 500 GB.
I gave OS X Leopard and Linux 30 GB each on the 320 GB drive in my MacBook Pro with the rest setup for the home folder, both OSes will use the same home folder when I install Ubuntu. I'd like to get a bigger drive though, to give both OSes and the home folder more space. Why would you give Linux and Windows so much space? With a 1 TB drive I'd give each OS 50 and use the rest for user documents. That or I could setup more boot partitions to try out difference OSes and configurations.
to 1 TB since you can put 2.5" hard drives in there.
Maybe not. According to an article on eWeek it's height is 12.5mm. The PS3 probably has more clearance than most if not all laptops so it may fit in. I was hoping it'd fit in my MacBook Pro but I doubt it. And the thing is is I replaced the 160 GB HDD my MBP came with with the biggest drive I could find for it a 320 GB drive a few months ago.
About all the drives are good for is USB or Firewire, however I already have a 1.5 TB external drive.
Qwest DSL customers have free access to AT&T wifi hotspots, including at Starbucks and McDonald's. This is for anyone using Qwest's DSL connections, regardless of their choice of ISP.
Really? Currently I use cable my ISP gets through ComCast but they offer DSL through Qwest as well. Though I don't spend as much tyme there as I used to I could spend more tyme at Barnes and Noble which has ATT hotspots.
which is the impact of street protest/riot on the military and specially the grunts.
Ah but you missed where military personnel and dependents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. And as I said before I was in the Army, I was one of those grunts. My MOS was 11B, Small Weapons Specialist, or infantry which is often called grunts. Actually my first unit was one of the oldest army units and had the song "The Battle of New Orleans" written about it, the 7th Infantry Regiment or Cotton Balers that was led by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Stationed at Fort Benning, GA, my unit trained the Officer Cadet School cadets and the Rangers and we also trained with the Special Forces. Please don't think that I'm bragging or anything I just wanted to point out I was one of those grunts and have inside knowledge of how other grunts will act.
Grunts fragged their CO's not because they didnt want to kill the 'little people', but because they didnt want to be killed for a pointless cause.
Some but not all.
don't kid yourself that locking up 20-30K dissidents (the leadership) won't have a chilling effect on the masses.
It will chill some but outrage others. Some will clam up and others go underground. I knew some who would take it as the ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as in "Behold a Pale Horse". Others would see it as a sign of the New World Order. Yes, I knew some of each, both civilians and in the military.
Given sufficient stressors people will turn on, even torture and kill, their neighbors.
Oh I agree, I also agree it will be bloody and messy but some will rise up to oppose the government. Look even now there's conspiracy theories floating around 911. Look at all the militia groups in the US. Heck the government can't stop the drug trades.
Except that being an engineer isn't easy in the least
Neither is being a trader, it's not easy in the least.
Which is the primary reason for people becoming marketing droids,
Marketing isn't easy either. As an engineering student I tried that one myself. I knew someone who was good at roofing and custom cabinetry and he wasn't any good at marketing either. On the other hand I have a brother-in-law who's a Certified Financial Planner and used to day trade but ask him to solve a differential equation or swing a hammer and it's unlikely he could make a living at it.
As more money is invested though more jobs will be created which will drive up wages.
I thought trickle-down economics was discredited a long time ago.
I don't look at it as trickling down. My sister's a CPA and along with friends she quit her job and started her own business. They invested their tyme and money to create a new business, one that has hired others. The more people there are that work the more employers will have to pay employees to retain them. Employers can only get away with low wages if people are desperate to work.
Wages go up as demand goes up, not as money supply goes up.
And money drives demand, the more money people have the more they demand.
When you earn more in salary, do you start offering thrice the price for the same loaf of bread?
Me, no I wouldn't. I would spend and invest more though. And donate more. I used to say I wanted to make a million dollars and donate 10 tymes that.
it felt like 1/2 the town-folk would have happily marched on the campus and
pulled the trigger themselves.
And how many others from different towns would have marched to protect the students? Going back 15 years before the Kent State shootings there were white people supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Many of those offering rides to Blacks during the boycott were either military personnel or their dependents. Then six years later there was the first Freedom Ride in 1961 with whites riding buses from Washington, DC, to the south.
And like I said not everybody in the military would follow orders to fire on Americans. Some would actually frag, you're old enough to know what that means, officers giving such an order. It was used in Viet Nam, where the term comes from, a number of tymes.
Do not think for a minute that the USA is above detention centers
I don't. I have no illusion the US government would not have them, I've said elsewhere that I believe the government does have them. However there's no way the government could put into detention or reeducate enough people. The military couldn't do it to those in the military. Sure there are some who, like some Germans did, follow orders but not everyone will.
It only takes a bit of irrational violence to get that ball rolling; once in motion the fabric of society, the recognition that opposing sides should talk 1st and shoot later, dissolves as part of the de-humanization of those 'not like you'.
As there are those who ask questions and think for themselves even in the military there would be civil war, in the military itself. It's ludicrous to think that no one in the military now would frag those giving bad orders when it happened before.
The most deadly business accident I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster which killed an estimated 25,000.
I'm not talking about accidents, I'm talking about purposeful manipulation. How many people are dying of starvation in the world right now because of the structure of its economy?
Okay name one incident whereby a business purposefully killed as many people. And people are not dying of starvation because of a free market. People are starving because there is no free market. When a large US company like ADM and Cargill receive billions of tax payer dollars and can then export agricultural products to the Third World and sell it there for less than a Third World farmer can grow food for there is no free market. Nor is there a free market when governments take land away from the people who live on it and give it to large mining companies. Or when governments let timber and logging businesses clear cut other people's land.
Each and everyone of these is governmental interference and with this interference there is no free market.
You seem to be saying that you prefer the rule of democratically elected government to whoever can amass enough personal power to overthrow them. So do I.
No, I prefer liberty. Democracy is the worst form of government, but all the others. I don't trust government, and so want it small.
Governments have caused far more deaths and human rights violations than any business.
Actually, all your examples were of individuals who had gotten enough power to compel anyone to do anything. You demonstrated why regulation is necessary (to prevent dictators from rising), not the opposite.
Where do they teach such baloney? All of my previous examples were of governments or groups who seized control of government and not of businesses or free markets. And regulations would not have stopped them. In fact it was the other way around, they made their own laws and regulations. The German government, yes government, passed gun control laws in 1938 denying millions the means to defend themselves from the government. Turkey established laws and regulations controlling guns in 1911, then between 1915 and 1917 1.5 million Armenians were killed in Turkey.
"Exempting items by category is neither fair nor simple. Respected economists have shown that the wealthy spend much more on unprepared food, clothing, housing, and medical care than do the poor. Exempting these goods, as many state sales taxes do, actually gives the wealthy a disproportionate benefit. Also, today these purchases are not exempted from federal taxation. The purchase of food, clothing, and medical services is made from after-income-tax and after-payroll-tax dollars, while their purchase price hides the cost of corporate taxes and private sector compliance costs."
"Finally, exempting one product or service, but not another, opens the door to the army of lobbyists and special interest groups that plague and distort our taxation system today. Those who have the money will send lobbyists to Washington to obtain special tax breaks in their own self-interest. This process causes unfair and inefficient distortions in our economy and must be stopped."
However, at some point in the wealthier brackets, it would still become regressive as investment takes over the outflow of capital from wealthy individuals' coffers.
As more money is invested though more jobs will be created which will drive up wages. So the poor will benefit. Only those who don't work may not, but with higher wages more people will be donate so even they may be helped.
Oh, and regarding donating I heard on CNN that the poor actually donate more than the wealthy. While I didn't find it on the CNN website I found another website that has it: "America's poor are its most generous givers".
You could still make an argument that this is a good way to incentivize investment, but I still think it would cause the rich-poor gap to widen.
I don't think that would happen the way I would do it. To save tyme I didn't include everything in my previous post on a fair tax. While I would get rid of personal income taxes I would not get rid of income tax on corporations. Now this is where I disagree with other Libertarians, some would eliminate income tax for corporations but not me. This is because corporations enjoy limited liability and I feel such a business has to pay for that. And an income tax is a good way to do it.
There's a lot of demand for shares because baby boomers are investing in their 401ks. When they massively pull out of the market, demand is going to drop significantly.
Using the United States Census Bureau definition of baby boomer, that being born between 1946 and 1964, they should already be moving their investment portfolio to income producing instruments. They could be stocks, bonds, or other interest bearing instruments. You however do not convert everything at once. The point is that baby boomers should still be in the market.
the stock market also behaves like a ponzi scheme
Social Security is the Ponzi scheme. The government will using the money those working now are paying into it to pay those who will be retiring. Unless something is done Social Security will go broke by the tyme the last of the baby boomers retire. Actually I see no way to avoid it.
However, I think the fair tax is a lot less progressive against poor people. The fair tax taxes expenditures, and as poor people spend more (in proportion) than rich people (rich people invest more), the poor are taxed more than the rich proportionally compared to the current tax structure.
Now that depends. If all purchases were taxed then the poor would be paying more as a percentage of income. However if food, medicine, and shelter were not taxed then the poor would not be paying as much in tax, because most of their income would be going to these whereas those with money would be buying other things.
Didn't almost everyone do "boring work"? Many think farming and gathering is boring work. And those along with hunting, which many think is gross, is what many did.
uncommon for a person to work 30 years and retire.
I always assumed 45 years. If you start working at age 21 and retire at age 65, that's 44 years.
Start working at 21? I was mowing yards by 15 and was on a payroll at 16. When 18 I went into the US Army. Where I came from if you didn't work you didn't have money.
Throw in the enormous growth in the economy and stronger antitrust laws (I'm pretty sure that Microsoft faced stronger enforcement than Standard Oil)
If Microsoft had faced as strong an enforcement as Standard Oil it would have been broken up, Standard Oil was. Here's a list of some of the companies that came from the breakup of Standard Oil. A few of those companies are some of the largest businesses in the US.
What may amaze some now is that Republican Teddy Roosevelt was known as the Trust Buster and was who led the effort to break up Standard Oil.
the stock market was never intended to be the domain of the average citizen.
The stock market was exactly for that. Average citizens have to have some way to invest their money, and that's where stock markets fit in, they provide liquidity.
Note how the regulations put in place after the Great Depression were lobbied against and removed, thus paving the way for our current mess.
Note how laws and regulations like Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression greater and last longer than it would have otherwise.
How does any kind of stock trading benefit anyone other than the traders themselves?
By providing a reason for people to invest. And people investing brings you all the goodies you get to use. Such as your computer and net access. It puts food on your table, and makes it worthwhile for doctors to go through all the training to treat you. Those drugs are expensive to develop.
And something that statists don't understand, or try to hoodwink people about, is that governments have caused more harm than any individuals or businesses. Hitler killed more than 600,000, Stalin more than 20 million, and Mao some 50 million. The most deadly business accident I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster which killed an estimated 25,000.
That's ancient history? After General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile in 1973 thousands of people disappeared. During his rule in the later 1970s Pol Pot was responsible for "slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population." After Indonesia's president Suharto ordered the invasion of the independent nation of East Timor in 1975-75 some 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population, was massacred.
Still too far in the past? How many people did Saddam have tortured and killed? Hundreds of thousands were killed during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. How many have been killed in Darfur?
Governments have caused far more deaths and human rights violations than any business.
BS! Investing and trading is just speculation using different timescales.
BS! Investing is planning for the future. Instead of counting on the grand Ponzi scheme of Social Security, each person has the responsibility to invest for their own future.
Stocks are a means by which a company can get access to capital without having to pay interest payments.
Many stocks pay dividends, which in this economy is what you want.
BTW one of the things that most people forget about is that once a company has issued stock they don't see any further profit.
Oh? Apple and Microsoft don't make profits? According to Yahoo Apple made gross profit of more than $11 billion for the year ended September 2008 and Microsoft more than $48 billion for the year ended 30 June 2008. Or do you mean they didn't issue stocks? That's funny, they are both traded on the stock exchanges.
Perhaps you're projecting your socialist or communist fantasizes.
No, it's not a moot point. They are artificially raising the price that everyone has to pay for a stock. They literally see what you are going to buy, snatch it up before you can buy it, and then sell it to you at an increased price. How is this even a little fair?
If you're not setting limits then it's your own fault you're paying more. Every, or nearly every, online brokers allows people to set limits, price over which you will not pay or under which you will not sell. Even ETrade users can set limits, which ETrade calls Conditional orders.
That's what they're "for" but is that what people buy stocks for?
Dividends are one purpose of stocks but not the only. The original purpose for granting limited liability to businesses was so they would serve the common or public good. For investors another reason for stocks is growth. But only the young should invest solely for growth, as you get older your investment portfolio should shift to income.
A $20 dividend check doesn't mean much in the general scheme of things
For the short term you're right. But if you have a lot of tyme left before you'll need or want the money signing up for the corporation's DRIP, Dividend reinvestment plan, it can mean a lot later.
Slashdot Mirror
I can understand having this much space at home, for movies, TV series, pictures and the like, but on the go ?
Yes, on the go. I don't have one now but when I finally get a digital camera I will want to have as big an external drive as I can get. Actually two, one I can keep on-site and the other for off-site storage.
it's the same thing with iPods. the 30 GB model I had was enough to put all my music there
Some photographers use iPods to store photos.
Falcon
Same here.
and this level of data storage still boggles my mind.
Not for me. My Linux box has two HDDs installed, a 40GB drive the OS is installed on and a 750GB drive for my user files. When it crashed I had more than 500GB used on that drive. Maybe a month ago I got a new 1.5TB external drive and once I start scanning my film I'm sure I can fill up space quickly. Pro photographers use NAS/SANs of a couple of terabytes or more to store photos. Here's someone asking about using a 2TB external drive on photo.net to store photos. He or she is only using a 15 megapixel camera and is concerned about running out of space yet there are cameras with higher resolutions and pixel counts. The digital camera I'd like to get to start with has a 21 megapixel sensor. Opening, editing, and saving a raw file in Aperture, Photoshop, or Lightroom can generate files of a few hundred megabytes.
Falcon
I assume he's talking about the 750GB not the 1TB drive. Me, if I could get an internal 1TB drive for my laptop I'd use maybe 50GB for each OS, and the rest for the home or user partition. I could install Leopard, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and another two OSes for testing and still have 750GB for user files.
Falcon
to purchase a new HDD for my laptop.
You may be waiting longer. It's height is 12.5mm so it doesn't fit in most laptops.
While this is just slightly ridiculous, now I can give windows i nice happy 250 GB to play with and give linux 500 GB.
I gave OS X Leopard and Linux 30 GB each on the 320 GB drive in my MacBook Pro with the rest setup for the home folder, both OSes will use the same home folder when I install Ubuntu. I'd like to get a bigger drive though, to give both OSes and the home folder more space. Why would you give Linux and Windows so much space? With a 1 TB drive I'd give each OS 50 and use the rest for user documents. That or I could setup more boot partitions to try out difference OSes and configurations.
Falcon
to 1 TB since you can put 2.5" hard drives in there.
Maybe not. According to an article on eWeek it's height is 12.5mm. The PS3 probably has more clearance than most if not all laptops so it may fit in. I was hoping it'd fit in my MacBook Pro but I doubt it. And the thing is is I replaced the 160 GB HDD my MBP came with with the biggest drive I could find for it a 320 GB drive a few months ago.
About all the drives are good for is USB or Firewire, however I already have a 1.5 TB external drive.
Falcon
Qwest DSL customers have free access to AT&T wifi hotspots, including at Starbucks and McDonald's. This is for anyone using Qwest's DSL connections, regardless of their choice of ISP.
Really? Currently I use cable my ISP gets through ComCast but they offer DSL through Qwest as well. Though I don't spend as much tyme there as I used to I could spend more tyme at Barnes and Noble which has ATT hotspots.
Falcon
which is the impact of street protest/riot on the military and specially the grunts.
Ah but you missed where military personnel and dependents supported the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. And as I said before I was in the Army, I was one of those grunts. My MOS was 11B, Small Weapons Specialist, or infantry which is often called grunts. Actually my first unit was one of the oldest army units and had the song "The Battle of New Orleans" written about it, the 7th Infantry Regiment or Cotton Balers that was led by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Stationed at Fort Benning, GA, my unit trained the Officer Cadet School cadets and the Rangers and we also trained with the Special Forces. Please don't think that I'm bragging or anything I just wanted to point out I was one of those grunts and have inside knowledge of how other grunts will act.
Grunts fragged their CO's not because they didnt want to kill the 'little people', but because they didnt want to be killed for a pointless cause.
Some but not all.
don't kid yourself that locking up 20-30K dissidents (the leadership) won't have a chilling effect on the masses.
It will chill some but outrage others. Some will clam up and others go underground. I knew some who would take it as the ride of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as in "Behold a Pale Horse". Others would see it as a sign of the New World Order. Yes, I knew some of each, both civilians and in the military.
Given sufficient stressors people will turn on, even torture and kill, their neighbors.
Oh I agree, I also agree it will be bloody and messy but some will rise up to oppose the government. Look even now there's conspiracy theories floating around 911. Look at all the militia groups in the US. Heck the government can't stop the drug trades.
Falcon
Except that being an engineer isn't easy in the least
Neither is being a trader, it's not easy in the least.
Which is the primary reason for people becoming marketing droids,
Marketing isn't easy either. As an engineering student I tried that one myself. I knew someone who was good at roofing and custom cabinetry and he wasn't any good at marketing either. On the other hand I have a brother-in-law who's a Certified Financial Planner and used to day trade but ask him to solve a differential equation or swing a hammer and it's unlikely he could make a living at it.
Falcon
As more money is invested though more jobs will be created which will drive up wages.
I thought trickle-down economics was discredited a long time ago.
I don't look at it as trickling down. My sister's a CPA and along with friends she quit her job and started her own business. They invested their tyme and money to create a new business, one that has hired others. The more people there are that work the more employers will have to pay employees to retain them. Employers can only get away with low wages if people are desperate to work.
Wages go up as demand goes up, not as money supply goes up.
And money drives demand, the more money people have the more they demand.
When you earn more in salary, do you start offering thrice the price for the same loaf of bread?
Me, no I wouldn't. I would spend and invest more though. And donate more. I used to say I wanted to make a million dollars and donate 10 tymes that.
Falcon
it felt like 1/2 the town-folk would have happily marched on the campus and pulled the trigger themselves.
And how many others from different towns would have marched to protect the students? Going back 15 years before the Kent State shootings there were white people supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Many of those offering rides to Blacks during the boycott were either military personnel or their dependents. Then six years later there was the first Freedom Ride in 1961 with whites riding buses from Washington, DC, to the south.
And like I said not everybody in the military would follow orders to fire on Americans. Some would actually frag, you're old enough to know what that means, officers giving such an order. It was used in Viet Nam, where the term comes from, a number of tymes.
Do not think for a minute that the USA is above detention centers
I don't. I have no illusion the US government would not have them, I've said elsewhere that I believe the government does have them. However there's no way the government could put into detention or reeducate enough people. The military couldn't do it to those in the military. Sure there are some who, like some Germans did, follow orders but not everyone will.
It only takes a bit of irrational violence to get that ball rolling; once in motion the fabric of society, the recognition that opposing sides should talk 1st and shoot later, dissolves as part of the de-humanization of those 'not like you'.
As there are those who ask questions and think for themselves even in the military there would be civil war, in the military itself. It's ludicrous to think that no one in the military now would frag those giving bad orders when it happened before.
Falcon
The most deadly business accident I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster which killed an estimated 25,000.
I'm not talking about accidents, I'm talking about purposeful manipulation. How many people are dying of starvation in the world right now because of the structure of its economy?
Okay name one incident whereby a business purposefully killed as many people. And people are not dying of starvation because of a free market. People are starving because there is no free market. When a large US company like ADM and Cargill receive billions of tax payer dollars and can then export agricultural products to the Third World and sell it there for less than a Third World farmer can grow food for there is no free market. Nor is there a free market when governments take land away from the people who live on it and give it to large mining companies. Or when governments let timber and logging businesses clear cut other people's land.
Each and everyone of these is governmental interference and with this interference there is no free market.
You seem to be saying that you prefer the rule of democratically elected government to whoever can amass enough personal power to overthrow them. So do I.
No, I prefer liberty. Democracy is the worst form of government, but all the others. I don't trust government, and so want it small.
Governments have caused far more deaths and human rights violations than any business.
Actually, all your examples were of individuals who had gotten enough power to compel anyone to do anything. You demonstrated why regulation is necessary (to prevent dictators from rising), not the opposite.
Where do they teach such baloney? All of my previous examples were of governments or groups who seized control of government and not of businesses or free markets. And regulations would not have stopped them. In fact it was the other way around, they made their own laws and regulations. The German government, yes government, passed gun control laws in 1938 denying millions the means to defend themselves from the government. Turkey established laws and regulations controlling guns in 1911, then between 1915 and 1917 1.5 million Armenians were killed in Turkey.
Falcon
if food, medicine, and shelter were not taxed then the poor would not be paying as much in tax
That is true. However, it seems that the FairTax does not have such exemptions.
I thought I heard of one fair tax proposal that did have exemptions for food, medicine, and shelter. While looking I didn;t find it but I did find this: Why not just exempt food and medicine from the tax? Wouldn't that be fair and simple?"
"Exempting items by category is neither fair nor simple. Respected economists have shown that the wealthy spend much more on unprepared food, clothing, housing, and medical care than do the poor. Exempting these goods, as many state sales taxes do, actually gives the wealthy a disproportionate benefit. Also, today these purchases are not exempted from federal taxation. The purchase of food, clothing, and medical services is made from after-income-tax and after-payroll-tax dollars, while their purchase price hides the cost of corporate taxes and private sector compliance costs."
"Finally, exempting one product or service, but not another, opens the door to the army of lobbyists and special interest groups that plague and distort our taxation system today. Those who have the money will send lobbyists to Washington to obtain special tax breaks in their own self-interest. This process causes unfair and inefficient distortions in our economy and must be stopped."
However, at some point in the wealthier brackets, it would still become regressive as investment takes over the outflow of capital from wealthy individuals' coffers.
As more money is invested though more jobs will be created which will drive up wages. So the poor will benefit. Only those who don't work may not, but with higher wages more people will be donate so even they may be helped.
Oh, and regarding donating I heard on CNN that the poor actually donate more than the wealthy. While I didn't find it on the CNN website I found another website that has it: "America's poor are its most generous givers".
You could still make an argument that this is a good way to incentivize investment, but I still think it would cause the rich-poor gap to widen.
I don't think that would happen the way I would do it. To save tyme I didn't include everything in my previous post on a fair tax. While I would get rid of personal income taxes I would not get rid of income tax on corporations. Now this is where I disagree with other Libertarians, some would eliminate income tax for corporations but not me. This is because corporations enjoy limited liability and I feel such a business has to pay for that. And an income tax is a good way to do it.
Falcon
In the real world, starting new businesses is a lot harder than maintaining an existing one.
Better not tell that to my sister, oops she already started her own business. And I'm hoping to start my own.
Falcon
There's a lot of demand for shares because baby boomers are investing in their 401ks. When they massively pull out of the market, demand is going to drop significantly.
Using the United States Census Bureau definition of baby boomer, that being born between 1946 and 1964, they should already be moving their investment portfolio to income producing instruments. They could be stocks, bonds, or other interest bearing instruments. You however do not convert everything at once. The point is that baby boomers should still be in the market.
the stock market also behaves like a ponzi scheme
Social Security is the Ponzi scheme. The government will using the money those working now are paying into it to pay those who will be retiring. Unless something is done Social Security will go broke by the tyme the last of the baby boomers retire. Actually I see no way to avoid it.
However, I think the fair tax is a lot less progressive against poor people. The fair tax taxes expenditures, and as poor people spend more (in proportion) than rich people (rich people invest more), the poor are taxed more than the rich proportionally compared to the current tax structure.
Now that depends. If all purchases were taxed then the poor would be paying more as a percentage of income. However if food, medicine, and shelter were not taxed then the poor would not be paying as much in tax, because most of their income would be going to these whereas those with money would be buying other things.
Falcon
Didn't almost everyone do "boring work"? Many think farming and gathering is boring work. And those along with hunting, which many think is gross, is what many did.
Falcon
uncommon for a person to work 30 years and retire.
I always assumed 45 years. If you start working at age 21 and retire at age 65, that's 44 years.
Start working at 21? I was mowing yards by 15 and was on a payroll at 16. When 18 I went into the US Army. Where I came from if you didn't work you didn't have money.
Falcon
Throw in the enormous growth in the economy and stronger antitrust laws (I'm pretty sure that Microsoft faced stronger enforcement than Standard Oil)
If Microsoft had faced as strong an enforcement as Standard Oil it would have been broken up, Standard Oil was. Here's a list of some of the companies that came from the breakup of Standard Oil. A few of those companies are some of the largest businesses in the US.
What may amaze some now is that Republican Teddy Roosevelt was known as the Trust Buster and was who led the effort to break up Standard Oil.
Falcon
the stock market was never intended to be the domain of the average citizen.
The stock market was exactly for that. Average citizens have to have some way to invest their money, and that's where stock markets fit in, they provide liquidity.
Note how the regulations put in place after the Great Depression were lobbied against and removed, thus paving the way for our current mess.
Note how laws and regulations like Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression greater and last longer than it would have otherwise.
Falcon
How does any kind of stock trading benefit anyone other than the traders themselves?
By providing a reason for people to invest. And people investing brings you all the goodies you get to use. Such as your computer and net access. It puts food on your table, and makes it worthwhile for doctors to go through all the training to treat you. Those drugs are expensive to develop.
Falcon
And something that statists don't understand, or try to hoodwink people about, is that governments have caused more harm than any individuals or businesses. Hitler killed more than 600,000, Stalin more than 20 million, and Mao some 50 million. The most deadly business accident I know of was Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster which killed an estimated 25,000.
That's ancient history? After General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile in 1973 thousands of people disappeared. During his rule in the later 1970s Pol Pot was responsible for "slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population." After Indonesia's president Suharto ordered the invasion of the independent nation of East Timor in 1975-75 some 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population, was massacred.
Still too far in the past? How many people did Saddam have tortured and killed? Hundreds of thousands were killed during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. How many have been killed in Darfur?
Governments have caused far more deaths and human rights violations than any business.
Falcon
BS! Investing and trading is just speculation using different timescales.
BS! Investing is planning for the future. Instead of counting on the grand Ponzi scheme of Social Security, each person has the responsibility to invest for their own future.
Stocks are a means by which a company can get access to capital without having to pay interest payments.
Many stocks pay dividends, which in this economy is what you want.
BTW one of the things that most people forget about is that once a company has issued stock they don't see any further profit.
Oh? Apple and Microsoft don't make profits? According to Yahoo Apple made gross profit of more than $11 billion for the year ended September 2008 and Microsoft more than $48 billion for the year ended 30 June 2008. Or do you mean they didn't issue stocks? That's funny, they are both traded on the stock exchanges.
Perhaps you're projecting your socialist or communist fantasizes.
Falcon
No, it's not a moot point. They are artificially raising the price that everyone has to pay for a stock. They literally see what you are going to buy, snatch it up before you can buy it, and then sell it to you at an increased price. How is this even a little fair?
If you're not setting limits then it's your own fault you're paying more. Every, or nearly every, online brokers allows people to set limits, price over which you will not pay or under which you will not sell. Even ETrade users can set limits, which ETrade calls Conditional orders.
Falcon
That's what they're "for" but is that what people buy stocks for?
Dividends are one purpose of stocks but not the only. The original purpose for granting limited liability to businesses was so they would serve the common or public good. For investors another reason for stocks is growth. But only the young should invest solely for growth, as you get older your investment portfolio should shift to income.
Falcon
A $20 dividend check doesn't mean much in the general scheme of things
For the short term you're right. But if you have a lot of tyme left before you'll need or want the money signing up for the corporation's DRIP, Dividend reinvestment plan, it can mean a lot later.
Falcon