If I were the newspaper industry (being killed by the web, because web ad revenue isn't close to replacing declining subscriptions and ads-on-paper), I'd approach ISPs with a micropayment system that they hosted and got a cut of. And I do mean micro: it shouldn't add more than a few dollars to the average user's account per month, so we're talking fractional cents per story
I don't see that working, what ISP would want to do this? My ISP already provides news articles for free. I'd think other ISPs do the same. If they started charging people to view what they do now they'll just move on.
Make it the same authority that licenses cars and taxes gasoline and tires.
I think it depends on the state who taxes what. I don't think the same authority taxes licenses, gas, and tires where I live. And we have the same recycling tax on tires, as well as batteries. I don't recall for sure but I think there's a deposit on batteries that you get back when you return a battery.
I mostly *read* slashdot, not comment on it, so a paid account is worthless to me.
I'm on disability and don't work so I post a lot on slashdot. Last week I checked into subscribing and there was only one way to subscribe, via PayPal, showing. I don't have a PayPal account so I emailed to see if there was another way. It took a few days and the answer was no. I'm not going to sign up with PayPal just so I can subscribe to slashdot.
You ask where they are, yet you espouse the very bullshit that has kept ALL nuclear projects out of the US for decades
And by focusing on nuclear power you ignore other sources of power, cleaner power.
Why do you think that last reactor took 30 fucking years?
Solar collectors and wind generators can be built faster than nuclear power plants. Even if a gigawatt nuclear power plant can be built in 5 years, in that tyme more wind genies can be erected. Erect 20 5 megawatt wind genies a month and in 5 years you'll add 6 gigawatts of capacity. In 2007 wind power generated almost 10% of Spain's electricity. If I had the space, I live in a city so I don't, I could erect a wind genie that would supply my electrical needs within a month. I could however mount PVs that would provide some power, if I owned and didn't rent. Hopefully that will change in a few years, the apartment building I live in my sister owns but when I can qualify for the mortgage she plans to sell it to me.
The small nuclear power plants being developed and tested (which you simply refuse to acknowledge) have the same advantage.
I don't refuse to acknowledge them, I asked where they are. I'll also ask if they are small enough to fit in my basement?
Why would you make Wall Street pay for anything? It's something the government should be paying for. Use some of the $700,000,000,000 for nuclear power, not bailing out the crooks.
Why? Because it's not government's job. I don't believe in communism or socialism. That $700,000,000,000 never should have been given away to begin with. Though people can be irrational individuals are better at deciding what they will spend their money on than government is.
Ahh yes, the poor should just grow some of their own food on their vast expanses of farmable land, that would certainly save them money.
One, gardening was only one suggestion. And farmland is not needed to grow a garden.
Or are you really suggesting that having a windowsill herb garden is going to feed someone? Or that it would save really them more than a few dollars a year even if they could grow things indoors?
I live in a major city myself, I can ride my bike to downtown Minneapolis in 10 minutes. Though I started late last year I planted enough in my garden to eat a salad a day for more than a month, can enough for a jar of tomato sauce a week through winter, and twice that in tomatillos. I still have some zucchini squash as well. This coming spring besides these I'll also grow carrots, onions, and maybe potatoes. I should also get a bunch of rhubarb and blueberries, I only planted them last year and after the first year the following years bring more to harvest.
Then there are city farms, city gardens, and other forms of city agriculture. CNN did a story last year that showed how this lady in a rough neighborhood of Chicago started a garden in her neighborhood and was able to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to children. Though I don't know where they are there are community gardens in Minneapolis, besides what I garden in my yard I may rent a plot at one or more of these gardens so I can grow more.
As for those dying in Gaza, stop firing rockets into Israel
If Israel hadn't taken land from Palestinians then they wouldn't be firing rockets into Israel. I'm not saying it's all Israel's fault, there plenty of blame to spread around, but there will be no peace in Israel until there's justice.
I prefer the sales tax factor - makes it difficult for a compnay to hide income/claim extra deductions to decrease tax costs. It's simpler, basically.
Buyer pay the sames tax though, an income tax the corporation will pay. Actually either way buyers pay.
As for the roads - add in 'or built into the real estate taxes
I didn't say in the post you replied to but I did in others that property taxes are also used for roads.
Though if we ever get electric cars up to a significant percentage, it's going to become more complicated.
It will at that. You could tax electricity and or tires but I don't know how that would work out. However it's done I see a problem, it more than likely will require a bureaucracy and bureaucracies tend to grow.
Right now we can just write that off as 'encouraging usage of alternate fuel vehicles'.
Some days ago someone posted a link to a news article about how this person was pulled over who had a biodiesel sticker on the car and ended up was required to pay a tax to the state. Ah good, it's still in my history: "Driver ticketed for using biofuel".
Also check out "The Third Wave". A group of high school students asks a teacher how the German's can allow the Holocaust to happen, so he shows them. Wiki says it was a tv movie however I saw it in my philosophy class in college.
There are a couple of reasons why I don't think you'll see a functioning free-market health-care system.
1) The cost of catastrophic care is high enough that people will need insurance.
I didn't say there wouldn't be insurance. Insurance is part of the plan. Right now most people can't buy insurance on their own and have to get it through their employers. This is because if an employer offers health insurance the employer will get a tax break, but if an individual buys health insurance they do not get a tax break. With a free market system everybody can get insurance and have a tax break. Allow people to choose what type of insurance coverage they want and can afford. If a family wants comprehensive coverage they can pay more for insurance but if an individual only wants catastrophic coverage they can pay out of pocket expenses to see a doctor. For major expenses the insurance will cover it. And if they want coverage for a disability they can buy short term disability insurance. With a plan like a Health Savings Account they can pay for regular expenses. Obviously those who choose such a plan will pay less for insurance than the family who buys comprehensive coverage.
2) Insurance doesn't work very well in the free market due to game theoretic reasons.
There's this thing called person responsibility I happen to believe in. When I've gone grocery shopping I've compared prices. With a freemarket in health care I'd also compare prices. When I can I shop for what I consider the best deal, which may be different than someone else's best deal.
3) Doctors in certain specialties have essentially monopolies in their local areas, forcing their salaries to absurd levels.
Encourage people to go into those specialties and introduce competition. As I say above, if I can shop for a service I can get the best deal.
4) Most importantly, society is not going to let anyone die from lack of healthcare. And so, many people will free-ride off of this and not get health insurance.
What do you think socialized medicine is? It's exactly like that. I don't now but I used to watch my health and try to live as healthy a life style as I could. Because I tried to take care of my health I should have been able to pay less for insurance. Under socialized medicine I wouldn't have that choice, I'd pay the same as the person down the street who eats 5 days a week at McDonald's or the corner greasy restaurant. Under a freemarket though if I wanted to I could join a local healthcare coop. As I'm already a member of two coops, Lakewinds Coop and The Wedge I probable would join one.
Those are some reasons why I think a France-style healthcare system would be cheaper and provide better heath-outcomes then a perfectly free-market one.
And under a system like France's I end up paying for the person down the street who eats at McDonald's 5 days a week even though I eat health food.
"Instead most of the money was simply given to banks, those banks aren't lending money instead their using the money to buy other banks."
No, it was given in exchange for equity, as I said...
Read the name of the program, Troubled Assets Relief Program. It was approved by congress to buy troubled assets from banks, not to give money to banks and that exactly what it should have done. If people wanted the money to go to banks then it should have been named something more appropriate. Heck congress wasn't even happy with what was done to the money.
The government has had a mandate to take care of the environment for at least a century(with the national parks act). But as we learned more about pollutants and ecosystems, it became necessary for the government to create a separate agency to fulfill the government's perceived responsibility over the environment.
Oh, I agree with having an EPA. Pollution doesn't know or respect lines on manmade maps. That is the one federal agency I would keep.
With the Department of Energy, the government had been explicitly maintaining an oil cartel for a century, and had already launched several coups in oil rich countries. Obviously, the government has believed that energy was it's responsibility for quite a while.
Yeap, the US has overthrown, helped to overthrow, or supported invasions of nations with democratically elected governments. That does not make it right. The 1953 Iranian coup d'état overthrew Iran's elected government and was supported by the UK and US. In 1975 then President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger authorized Suharto's Indonesian invasion of East Timor. From the tyme of the invasion until 1999 when East Timorese voted for independence 200,000 people were massacred, 1/3 of the population. Also in the '70s Ford and Kissinger also supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, after which tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands "disappeared".
Yea, the US is such a big supporter of democracy and human rights, unless they get in the way of greed.
You could make similar arguments for the HUD, CDC, and DHS.
You may want them, if you do the Constitution provides a way the authorize them, it's called an amendment. Propose one and try to get it ratified, but if you have to go through back doors you must not be confident enough it will be ratified.
And the reason any of this cannot be offered by a private company?
Water privatization has been and is being privatized. Atlanta, GA offers a cautionary tale. Once the water was privatized the water became bad. Eventually the city had to take the water system back. Water was also privatized in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As soon as Bechtel, the largest engineering company in the US, bought the water system they raised the price of water. It was raised so much many rioted. Several people, including a teenage boy, were shot and killed and a lot of other injured to protect Bechtel.
Americans have been paying a sizable chunk of their earnings to the government for a good 96 years now with new taxes churned out like flavors of ice cream.
And for more than 100 years before then, except for the Civil War, there wasn't an income tax. And like all those flavors of ice cream, once politicians tried taxes they liked them.
As I said, the TARP program mostly involved capital injections in exchange for equity in the companies.
But that was not the purpose of TARP. TARP was approved to buy troubled assets. Your wiki link even says that, "[TARP's] primary focus was expected to be the purchase of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and whole loans".
Then there's the fact that food, water, and shelter are not the only portions of a first-world lifestyle. It would be quite a bit easier for these same poor people to just move to a developing nation if that's all they need.
Other things can be made tax free as well. Not only that but there can also be a luxury tax. That Armani suit? It's a luxury, unless it's for business, and may be taxed. But to tell the truth, if government would stay within it's Constitutional limits taxes could be low. There is no authority for the Fatherland, er Motherland, er Homeland Security. If you want one then propose a constitutional amendment. The same with HUD and a number of government agencies and departments.
How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
Great, until five seconds later when the prices for everything double. Then you have to find money for education, a private protection racket to protect you, private fire insurance, and so on and so forth.
Education can and is paid for with property tax. So is police and the fire department. As for fire insurance, that's part of home owner's insurance and those who have a mortgage are required to pay for it.
cuts in public transport spending mean the roads are grid-locked with cars so no-one can actually get anywhere.
Road should be paid for with a tax on fuel, the more you drive the more you pay. Property tax can also help.
your job will be have been taken by cheap immigrants as there's no-one to keep them out.
Immigrants are more likely to start their own businesses and thus create jobs than native born people.
Your garbage won't be collected
Garbage collection is paid for by property tax not income tax.
wouldn't have very reliable or cheap electricity
I'd rather have my own PV generated power manufactured by those immigrants. One of those immigrants is Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google. I bet Google created thousands of jobs.
And of course the resultant anarchy that comes from millions of people on welfare
Lower taxes will create more jobs thus reducing the number of people on welfare.
You could send all the criminals to jail
With the world's largest prison population about half of the people in prison in the US are there for nonviolent drug offenses because of the War on Drugs. If drugs were legal those people would not only not be locked up but they'd be working and paying taxes.
cancelling public education
As has been said a number of tymes, education is paid for with property tax. And more and more people are homeschooling their children.
The "fair tax" will be much more painful to the unemployed and middle class, and will have the poor screaming for anesthesia.
Not if essential items like clothes, food, and medicine are tax free. The poor spend a lot of money on them, if they were tax free then they'd pay less in tax. As they would if they grew some of their own food.
Or go whole hog and get rid of income taxes in favor of sales taxes.
Along with user fees or taxes I'm all for that. Because they get limited liability the only things that should pay income taxes are corporations. If you drive on the roads you pay a tax on the fuel.
Health Care, Defense, Social Security, and interest on our debt make up literally 90% of the federal budget. Unless someone is to propose deep cuts in these programs, any populist moaning on taxes strikes me as a bit annoying.
I have before and will here and now propose it. Allow the freemarket operate in health care. Bring back almost if not all of the troops stationed overseas and close those bases. Stop griping about "illegal aliens" and let them legally work. Then deduce Social Security taxes from their pay, without a possibility to collect Social Security this will shore up SS. Allow citizens to put aside some of their pay into a investment portfolio. With a reduction in government, less will be spent, then the National Debt can reduced.
From what I can tell, the TARP program was pretty efficient in what it aimed to do: Injecting capital into banks in exchange for equity.
No, TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program, which as it's name implies, was meant to buy up troubled assets so bank would start to lend money again. Instead most of the money was simply given to banks, those banks aren't lending money instead their using the money to buy other banks. If you think it was bad when the banks started failing wait until instead of a bunch of banks there's only a couple of humongous banks.
And the stimulus package, while it hasn't gone through congress yet, seems to be pretty clean. Looking through the big ticket line items, everything in it seems to do what it's supposed to: Raise aggregate demand by utilizing under-utilized resources in the economy.
Oh really? You had enough tyme to read the 647 pages in the House version?
And even that much assumes that you have at least one parent home all the time, and free to pay attention to the kids at least 4 or 5 hours a day which rules out any real job, even remote ones.
So you don't think it's good the have a parent at home? They used to call kids like that latchkey kids. And no it doesn't mean no real job, but I guess you don't consider raising kids as a real job. I bet my brother-in-law would argue that with you. Home schooling children are getting more and more popular, and it doesn't even require a child's parent to stay home, instead a group of families may get together and they'll decide who teaches. With a groups of families the children will get their socializing.
It's not, as libertarians like to believe, that government's scope has increased. It's that the areas under the government scope have become much more expensive.
Actually the US had an income tax before 1913. You must be thinking of the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which authorized an income tax. However there was an income tax that was used to pay for the Civil War. Between $600 and $10,000 the tax was 3%, above $10,000 it was 5%. In 1864 the income was lowered and tax raised, below $5,000 the tax was 5% and over $5000 it was 10%. This income tax was not repealed until 1872.
Slashdot Mirror
except when the tax is tied to income people with less money to spend get taxed less. That's why income tax is actually the fair tax.
Except people work to earn the money which isn't fair.
Falcon
If I were the newspaper industry (being killed by the web, because web ad revenue isn't close to replacing declining subscriptions and ads-on-paper), I'd approach ISPs with a micropayment system that they hosted and got a cut of. And I do mean micro: it shouldn't add more than a few dollars to the average user's account per month, so we're talking fractional cents per story
I don't see that working, what ISP would want to do this? My ISP already provides news articles for free. I'd think other ISPs do the same. If they started charging people to view what they do now they'll just move on.
Falcon
luxury providers have smaller clientele and end up having to eat the tax instead of passing it on.
The same can be said of any tax. The more tax a person has to pay the less they can spend.
Falcon
Make it the same authority that licenses cars and taxes gasoline and tires.
I think it depends on the state who taxes what. I don't think the same authority taxes licenses, gas, and tires where I live. And we have the same recycling tax on tires, as well as batteries. I don't recall for sure but I think there's a deposit on batteries that you get back when you return a battery.
Falcon
I mostly *read* slashdot, not comment on it, so a paid account is worthless to me.
I'm on disability and don't work so I post a lot on slashdot. Last week I checked into subscribing and there was only one way to subscribe, via PayPal, showing. I don't have a PayPal account so I emailed to see if there was another way. It took a few days and the answer was no. I'm not going to sign up with PayPal just so I can subscribe to slashdot.
Falcon
You ask where they are, yet you espouse the very bullshit that has kept ALL nuclear projects out of the US for decades
And by focusing on nuclear power you ignore other sources of power, cleaner power.
Why do you think that last reactor took 30 fucking years?
Solar collectors and wind generators can be built faster than nuclear power plants. Even if a gigawatt nuclear power plant can be built in 5 years, in that tyme more wind genies can be erected. Erect 20 5 megawatt wind genies a month and in 5 years you'll add 6 gigawatts of capacity. In 2007 wind power generated almost 10% of Spain's electricity. If I had the space, I live in a city so I don't, I could erect a wind genie that would supply my electrical needs within a month. I could however mount PVs that would provide some power, if I owned and didn't rent. Hopefully that will change in a few years, the apartment building I live in my sister owns but when I can qualify for the mortgage she plans to sell it to me.
The small nuclear power plants being developed and tested (which you simply refuse to acknowledge) have the same advantage.
I don't refuse to acknowledge them, I asked where they are. I'll also ask if they are small enough to fit in my basement?
Why would you make Wall Street pay for anything? It's something the government should be paying for. Use some of the $700,000,000,000 for nuclear power, not bailing out the crooks.
Why? Because it's not government's job. I don't believe in communism or socialism. That $700,000,000,000 never should have been given away to begin with. Though people can be irrational individuals are better at deciding what they will spend their money on than government is.
Falcon
Ahh yes, the poor should just grow some of their own food on their vast expanses of farmable land, that would certainly save them money.
One, gardening was only one suggestion. And farmland is not needed to grow a garden.
Or are you really suggesting that having a windowsill herb garden is going to feed someone? Or that it would save really them more than a few dollars a year even if they could grow things indoors?
I live in a major city myself, I can ride my bike to downtown Minneapolis in 10 minutes. Though I started late last year I planted enough in my garden to eat a salad a day for more than a month, can enough for a jar of tomato sauce a week through winter, and twice that in tomatillos. I still have some zucchini squash as well. This coming spring besides these I'll also grow carrots, onions, and maybe potatoes. I should also get a bunch of rhubarb and blueberries, I only planted them last year and after the first year the following years bring more to harvest.
Then there are city farms, city gardens, and other forms of city agriculture. CNN did a story last year that showed how this lady in a rough neighborhood of Chicago started a garden in her neighborhood and was able to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to children. Though I don't know where they are there are community gardens in Minneapolis, besides what I garden in my yard I may rent a plot at one or more of these gardens so I can grow more.
Falcon
As for those dying in Gaza, stop firing rockets into Israel
If Israel hadn't taken land from Palestinians then they wouldn't be firing rockets into Israel. I'm not saying it's all Israel's fault, there plenty of blame to spread around, but there will be no peace in Israel until there's justice.
Falcon
I prefer the sales tax factor - makes it difficult for a compnay to hide income/claim extra deductions to decrease tax costs. It's simpler, basically.
Buyer pay the sames tax though, an income tax the corporation will pay. Actually either way buyers pay.
As for the roads - add in 'or built into the real estate taxes
I didn't say in the post you replied to but I did in others that property taxes are also used for roads.
Though if we ever get electric cars up to a significant percentage, it's going to become more complicated.
It will at that. You could tax electricity and or tires but I don't know how that would work out. However it's done I see a problem, it more than likely will require a bureaucracy and bureaucracies tend to grow.
Right now we can just write that off as 'encouraging usage of alternate fuel vehicles'.
Some days ago someone posted a link to a news article about how this person was pulled over who had a biodiesel sticker on the car and ended up was required to pay a tax to the state. Ah good, it's still in my history: "Driver ticketed for using biofuel".
Falcon
Also check out "The Third Wave". A group of high school students asks a teacher how the German's can allow the Holocaust to happen, so he shows them. Wiki says it was a tv movie however I saw it in my philosophy class in college.
Falcon
There are a couple of reasons why I don't think you'll see a functioning free-market health-care system.
1) The cost of catastrophic care is high enough that people will need insurance.
I didn't say there wouldn't be insurance. Insurance is part of the plan. Right now most people can't buy insurance on their own and have to get it through their employers. This is because if an employer offers health insurance the employer will get a tax break, but if an individual buys health insurance they do not get a tax break. With a free market system everybody can get insurance and have a tax break. Allow people to choose what type of insurance coverage they want and can afford. If a family wants comprehensive coverage they can pay more for insurance but if an individual only wants catastrophic coverage they can pay out of pocket expenses to see a doctor. For major expenses the insurance will cover it. And if they want coverage for a disability they can buy short term disability insurance. With a plan like a Health Savings Account they can pay for regular expenses. Obviously those who choose such a plan will pay less for insurance than the family who buys comprehensive coverage.
2) Insurance doesn't work very well in the free market due to game theoretic reasons.
There's this thing called person responsibility I happen to believe in. When I've gone grocery shopping I've compared prices. With a freemarket in health care I'd also compare prices. When I can I shop for what I consider the best deal, which may be different than someone else's best deal.
3) Doctors in certain specialties have essentially monopolies in their local areas, forcing their salaries to absurd levels.
Encourage people to go into those specialties and introduce competition. As I say above, if I can shop for a service I can get the best deal.
4) Most importantly, society is not going to let anyone die from lack of healthcare. And so, many people will free-ride off of this and not get health insurance.
What do you think socialized medicine is? It's exactly like that. I don't now but I used to watch my health and try to live as healthy a life style as I could. Because I tried to take care of my health I should have been able to pay less for insurance. Under socialized medicine I wouldn't have that choice, I'd pay the same as the person down the street who eats 5 days a week at McDonald's or the corner greasy restaurant. Under a freemarket though if I wanted to I could join a local healthcare coop. As I'm already a member of two coops, Lakewinds Coop and The Wedge I probable would join one.
Those are some reasons why I think a France-style healthcare system would be cheaper and provide better heath-outcomes then a perfectly free-market one.
And under a system like France's I end up paying for the person down the street who eats at McDonald's 5 days a week even though I eat health food.
"Instead most of the money was simply given to banks, those banks aren't lending money instead their using the money to buy other banks."
No, it was given in exchange for equity, as I said...
Read the name of the program, Troubled Assets Relief Program. It was approved by congress to buy troubled assets from banks, not to give money to banks and that exactly what it should have done. If people wanted the money to go to banks then it should have been named something more appropriate. Heck congress wasn't even happy with what was done to the money.
Falcon
The government has had a mandate to take care of the environment for at least a century(with the national parks act). But as we learned more about pollutants and ecosystems, it became necessary for the government to create a separate agency to fulfill the government's perceived responsibility over the environment.
Oh, I agree with having an EPA. Pollution doesn't know or respect lines on manmade maps. That is the one federal agency I would keep.
With the Department of Energy, the government had been explicitly maintaining an oil cartel for a century, and had already launched several coups in oil rich countries. Obviously, the government has believed that energy was it's responsibility for quite a while.
Yeap, the US has overthrown, helped to overthrow, or supported invasions of nations with democratically elected governments. That does not make it right. The 1953 Iranian coup d'état overthrew Iran's elected government and was supported by the UK and US. In 1975 then President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger authorized Suharto's Indonesian invasion of East Timor. From the tyme of the invasion until 1999 when East Timorese voted for independence 200,000 people were massacred, 1/3 of the population. Also in the '70s Ford and Kissinger also supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile, after which tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands "disappeared".
Yea, the US is such a big supporter of democracy and human rights, unless they get in the way of greed.
You could make similar arguments for the HUD, CDC, and DHS.
You may want them, if you do the Constitution provides a way the authorize them, it's called an amendment. Propose one and try to get it ratified, but if you have to go through back doors you must not be confident enough it will be ratified.
Falcon
And the reason any of this cannot be offered by a private company?
Water privatization has been and is being privatized. Atlanta, GA offers a cautionary tale. Once the water was privatized the water became bad. Eventually the city had to take the water system back. Water was also privatized in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As soon as Bechtel, the largest engineering company in the US, bought the water system they raised the price of water. It was raised so much many rioted. Several people, including a teenage boy, were shot and killed and a lot of other injured to protect Bechtel.
Falcon
Americans have been paying a sizable chunk of their earnings to the government for a good 96 years now with new taxes churned out like flavors of ice cream.
And for more than 100 years before then, except for the Civil War, there wasn't an income tax. And like all those flavors of ice cream, once politicians tried taxes they liked them.
Falcon
As I said, the TARP program mostly involved capital injections in exchange for equity in the companies.
But that was not the purpose of TARP. TARP was approved to buy troubled assets. Your wiki link even says that, "[TARP's] primary focus was expected to be the purchase of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and whole loans".
Falcon
Then there's the fact that food, water, and shelter are not the only portions of a first-world lifestyle. It would be quite a bit easier for these same poor people to just move to a developing nation if that's all they need.
Other things can be made tax free as well. Not only that but there can also be a luxury tax. That Armani suit? It's a luxury, unless it's for business, and may be taxed. But to tell the truth, if government would stay within it's Constitutional limits taxes could be low. There is no authority for the Fatherland, er Motherland, er Homeland Security. If you want one then propose a constitutional amendment. The same with HUD and a number of government agencies and departments.
Falcon
Furthermore the art, music, and sports, what I call "light entertainment", do NOT need to be taught since they are not necessary job skills
To me they are necessary skills and do need to be taught. And no, I'm not an artist or entertainer, in college my major was Computer Engineering.
Where they are deficient are the reading and math skills, and schools need to make-up for that deficiency.
They are also deficient in the arts, of which music is one, and in sports.
I think I see the problem, if it doesn't turn you into a robot it's not necessary.
Falcon
How great would it be if everyone's earnings were suddenly doubled?
Great, until five seconds later when the prices for everything double. Then you have to find money for education, a private protection racket to protect you, private fire insurance, and so on and so forth.
Education can and is paid for with property tax. So is police and the fire department. As for fire insurance, that's part of home owner's insurance and those who have a mortgage are required to pay for it.
cuts in public transport spending mean the roads are grid-locked with cars so no-one can actually get anywhere.
Road should be paid for with a tax on fuel, the more you drive the more you pay. Property tax can also help.
your job will be have been taken by cheap immigrants as there's no-one to keep them out.
Immigrants are more likely to start their own businesses and thus create jobs than native born people.
Your garbage won't be collected
Garbage collection is paid for by property tax not income tax.
wouldn't have very reliable or cheap electricity
I'd rather have my own PV generated power manufactured by those immigrants. One of those immigrants is Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google. I bet Google created thousands of jobs.
And of course the resultant anarchy that comes from millions of people on welfare
Lower taxes will create more jobs thus reducing the number of people on welfare.
You could send all the criminals to jail
With the world's largest prison population about half of the people in prison in the US are there for nonviolent drug offenses because of the War on Drugs. If drugs were legal those people would not only not be locked up but they'd be working and paying taxes.
cancelling public education
As has been said a number of tymes, education is paid for with property tax. And more and more people are homeschooling their children.
Falcon
The "fair tax" will be much more painful to the unemployed and middle class, and will have the poor screaming for anesthesia.
Not if essential items like clothes, food, and medicine are tax free. The poor spend a lot of money on them, if they were tax free then they'd pay less in tax. As they would if they grew some of their own food.
Falcon
Or go whole hog and get rid of income taxes in favor of sales taxes.
Along with user fees or taxes I'm all for that. Because they get limited liability the only things that should pay income taxes are corporations. If you drive on the roads you pay a tax on the fuel.
Falcon
Health Care, Defense, Social Security, and interest on our debt make up literally 90% of the federal budget. Unless someone is to propose deep cuts in these programs, any populist moaning on taxes strikes me as a bit annoying.
I have before and will here and now propose it. Allow the freemarket operate in health care. Bring back almost if not all of the troops stationed overseas and close those bases. Stop griping about "illegal aliens" and let them legally work. Then deduce Social Security taxes from their pay, without a possibility to collect Social Security this will shore up SS. Allow citizens to put aside some of their pay into a investment portfolio. With a reduction in government, less will be spent, then the National Debt can reduced.
From what I can tell, the TARP program was pretty efficient in what it aimed to do: Injecting capital into banks in exchange for equity.
No, TARP, Troubled Assets Relief Program, which as it's name implies, was meant to buy up troubled assets so bank would start to lend money again. Instead most of the money was simply given to banks, those banks aren't lending money instead their using the money to buy other banks. If you think it was bad when the banks started failing wait until instead of a bunch of banks there's only a couple of humongous banks.
And the stimulus package, while it hasn't gone through congress yet, seems to be pretty clean. Looking through the big ticket line items, everything in it seems to do what it's supposed to: Raise aggregate demand by utilizing under-utilized resources in the economy.
Oh really? You had enough tyme to read the 647 pages in the House version?
Falcon
And even that much assumes that you have at least one parent home all the time, and free to pay attention to the kids at least 4 or 5 hours a day which rules out any real job, even remote ones.
So you don't think it's good the have a parent at home? They used to call kids like that latchkey kids. And no it doesn't mean no real job, but I guess you don't consider raising kids as a real job. I bet my brother-in-law would argue that with you. Home schooling children are getting more and more popular, and it doesn't even require a child's parent to stay home, instead a group of families may get together and they'll decide who teaches. With a groups of families the children will get their socializing.
Falcon
It's not, as libertarians like to believe, that government's scope has increased. It's that the areas under the government scope have become much more expensive.
Oh but government's scope has increased. Before 1970 there was no Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA started operations on December 2, 1970. Before 1977 there was no Department of Energy. It was created on 4 August 1977. HUD, Housing and Urban Development was created on 9 September 1965. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dated to 1 July 1946. And on 3 March 2003 United States Department of Homeland Security was created. The list can go on.
Falcon
until 1913?
Actually the US had an income tax before 1913. You must be thinking of the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which authorized an income tax. However there was an income tax that was used to pay for the Civil War. Between $600 and $10,000 the tax was 3%, above $10,000 it was 5%. In 1864 the income was lowered and tax raised, below $5,000 the tax was 5% and over $5000 it was 10%. This income tax was not repealed until 1872.
Falcon
Yeah, the free market usually knows best. That's why American health care is so cheap and provides so much coverage
What freemarket? There is no freemarket in health care.
Falcon