You could likewise read a book by the Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman. Pick one:
* "Free to Choose" * "Capitalism and Freedom" * "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest" * "A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960"
Friedman was such a powerful economist in his heyday that even my Keynesian-leaning economics prof. this semester today enthusiastically referred to him as a "decent statistician."
If capitalism is an inefficient allocator of resources, then it is at least less-inefficient than socialism. Otherwise, the Soviet Union and its various satellite nations wouldn't have collapsed, and China wouldn't be on the path towards more-open markets as well.
Oh, the terror of the free-market! It will ruin us all! It will eat our children, destroy our homes, and convert our wives to to satanic beastiality! Oh my gawd!!
Ah, you subscribe to the idiot Adam Smith, who thinks that chaos makes things predictable.
You obviously have never taken a course in econometrics; else, you would learn that your supposedly "chaotic" market system actually *does* have recognizable patterns to it and correlations within it. There is absolutely a "method to the madness." The methods just aren't neatly-outlined and codified in law as they are in communist states.
Instead, in the market, the public -- individually -- decides what is good and what is not good. Not a faceless bureaucracy thousands of miles away, which isn't on-the-ground, local to the people they serve.
Go back in history to pre-1989 Germany. Compare socialist (or, commonly, "communist") East Germany to capitalist West Germany sometime. There's a reason the wall was torn down and East Germans flocked to West Germany as a result...
Except, you know, for that whole "war in Iraq" thing which the same statists protest endlessly... But just because the state can't plan for war and peace, that doesn't mean the state could screw up planning an economy!
I wish all conservatives, Christians, and conservative Christians were as well-reasoned and concerned about large, over-powerful government as you are... but you're right, most seem willing to throw their freedoms away in the name of security.
Sadly, the only real "conservatives" remaining as far as government bureaucracy and preservation of individual rights are concerned are the libertarians and hard-right Republicans (excluding the neocons).:( Seriously, WTF happened to the "party of Reagan"...
It was a rhetorical question, meant to make jabs at Cryofan's normal line of taxation thought.
Personally, I don't think the poor should have to pay much in taxes either, for the very reason you describe -- taxes make it harder for them to afford the things they need, as if it weren't hard enough.
Hence, my original point about removing some of the regressivity of the national sales tax by exempting "essential" goods/services, such as food and medicine (as noted elsewhere, this introduces the problem of rent-seeking though, which allows for lobbyists to create special-interest loopholes and/or knock legitimate tax-exemptions off the exempt list. I'm coming to warm up to the idea of a flat consumption tax, with rebates for those in poverty instead of exempting specific goods/services).
From what you say, it seems you think that poor people somehow choose to be poor. That they enjoy it.
I'm genuinely curious how you divined this leap of logic. I never said poor people choose to be poor (though you get the occasional weirdo who is actually rich and pretends to be poor, or is so frugal that they *look* poor).
But it'd be silly to say that people enjoy being poor. I can't imagine most people would enjoy that (some may on the philosophy that with wealth comes too much responsibility and/or fame, and they prefer not to have such things. I would guess they are a minority though)...
They can't choose which school to send their kids to, as they don't have the money for transport.
Which is all the more reason to implement a school-voucher system, whereby the tax-funded voucher allows parents to choose which schools - public or private -their children go to, rather than having their tax money automatically driven to the nearest public schools...
As for transportation costs, whether this is a significant issue in light of a voucher system is questionable, seeing as it's likely that schools would be created within local areas to serve the students (much like McDonalds' have sprouted up on every corner), rather than hiding out in the suburbs, etc.
BTW, Sweden is trying a voucher-based educational system. And they show that it works. So it can't be the all-bad, evil ultra-conservative solution to education that I'm sure some people make it out to be...
(I also went to the nearest public school, because my parents didn't want to pay for private school. I don't blame them, I wouldn't want to either. But I do wish we had better choice in our schools, rather than my being forced to go to the high school I did).
Poor kids don't choose to be born to poor parents, just like rich kids don't choose to be born to rich parents. If you think that's somehow fair, then fine.
You are again making a wild-ass assumption and putting words in my mouth. I never said "people choose to be poor" (they certainly may do so indirectly -- by not trying hard enough in school, by getting into trouble with the police, by eating too much and getting overweight, thus causing nasty health problems, etc. - and on those grounds, they *do* choose to be poor. But I really don't think anybody makes a conscious decision to be poor out of some kind of enjoyment of poverty...).
I favor a voucher-based education system, by which means all children are still are guaranteed an education (as Thomas Jefferson would've had it), but at the same time, offering more competition between schools, in order to invoke the discipline of market competition on them and force them to improve performance (or else, go out of business).
Such a system, more than any other, would help the poor rise out of their crappy inner-city schools onto a more-level educational playing field.
The FairTax has no exemptions, but provides a universal rebate to cover the costs of all purchases up to roughly the poverty level, so poor people pay zero or negative taxes. I like this better than exempting "necessities", because it avoids rent-seeking lobbyists trying to get their products on the list.
That is an excellent point, and it's one I've considered from time to time as well. Rent-seeking lobbyists would clearly be a problem w/ my sales-tax solution (whether to get their products on the list or their competitors' products *off* the list). I notice the FairTax FAQ points this out as well...
My suggestion was intended to stay within the framework of a national sales tax to eliminate the federal income tax (as the FairTax also does). Seeing as consumption taxes are inherently-regressive, and seeing as I can think of considerable economic reasons why we ought not leave the poor in the dust, I think it would still be a better situation (to have an NST w/ exemptions) than a purely-flat sales tax w/o exemptions... But throw things like rebate checks for the poverty-stricken into the mix, and then it becomes more sensible.
My main problem w/ rebate checks, however, is their immediacy. People living at the bottom of the wage scale live paycheck-to-paycheck. They have neither the personal financial discipline nor the practical ability to wait for a check to come back in 6 months to a year, giving them back the money they shouldn't have paid in the first place. The problem lessens as the checks become more frequent (monthly, weekly, etc.), but then, the costs of administration and distribution rise as the frequency rises too.
Simply-put, the solution of rebate checks fails to deal with the opportunity cost of leaving one's money tied-up with the government for any amount of time.
Rather, and still within the FairTax's system (which I think overall is quite solid), I (theoretically, since I've never seen this idea posed before; it's just a seemingly-better solution I cooked up) would favor something like a "tax-reduction card", whereby whenever a purchase is made by somebody who qualifies (i.e. is in poverty), they display the card, which has a lower-than-normal (or even zero) tax rate printed on it (the figure and on magstripe). That rate would be the national sales tax they are charged. The card would be replaced once a year and the next year's tax based on the previous year (or 2 or 3 or 5...) qualification for poverty relief. The cards would be plastic, so they would get recycled back into new cards every year, hence, little environmental waste.
That way, poor people get immediate discounts on the things they purchase. Moreover, this saves the government and Postal Service the costs of writing these checks (true, the administration is fairly-cheap, given it can be automated in the same way corporations automate their payrolls. But the cost of mailing that many checks is still significant; if 10% of the nation qualifies, that's 28m people, which, at $0.37/letter, comes out to about $10.3m/year if mailed annually, or, about $124m/year if mailed monthly. Either way, it's an extremely-trivial sum by federal standards, but still more than I'm guessing is necessary, compared to a once-a-year plastic card (that is, can 28m cards be created within the difference of $114m/year that remains after postage, compared to a rebate check?)), while providing immediate relief to those who need it.
The biggest problem I see with a tax-reduction card is that the government can track the purchases of the poor. The potential for totalitarian abuse there is considerable (for example, it makes it easy for the government to know which poor people own guns, unless they don't use their tax-reduction card at the time of purchase).
What do you think - a tax-exempt card vs. rebate checks?:) (serious question)
Well, hell, then if you so choose, you don't *have* to earn anything because you don't *have* to buy anything and the income tax passes your very odd sense of fairness.
Ahh, but that's the fatal flaw made by Austrian economists. That is not true.
I can choose whether to drive a Honda or take a train to work. I can choose whether to spend big on pizza made by the delicious local pizzaria, or I can choose to make my own pizza (or take the middle route and bake a frozen pizza). I can choose whether to buy expensive clothes or cheap clothes.
In so doing, I am also choosing (based on the price of each product) how much in sales tax I want to pay. I am free to choose how much tax I pay, based on the price of the product.
But let's say I don't want to pay the income tax. How do I avoid it? By going on welfare? Who pays for welfare then? Somebody else -- and that somebody else then, is not free to choose how to spend the money they earned which has been redistributed to me to fund my welfare living (which I might choose just to avoid paying taxes -- is *that* fair? And if not, what do you do about somebody like me? Force me to work? Is that not, then, slavery? Therein lies the problem with welfare vs. work, and the consequences were disturbingly-visible in former Soviet-bloc nations).
Moreover, I cannot avoid earning an income if I want to own property, because property taxes are in effect everywhere (as they should be, more or less). In order to continue renting land from the government (or rather, the public, of which other members might instead rent the land) on which I live, I must earn an income. But the income tax taxes me. Thus, I would be stuck between a rock and a hard place -- not having land to live on, or not being able to choose how much I want to give up to taxes.
In economic jargon, it's a problem of elasticity. Every one of us is far-more elastic on our choices of goods/services than we are on whether we will work. Essentially, more elasticity = more freedom to vary from the norm, i.e. more freedom to choose. (an example, if you're unfamiliar w/ the concept of elasticity, is the difference between, say, gasoline and tickets to a football game. Almost everybody needs gasoline for their cars, and we need it almost all the time -- this is a classic example of an inelastic good. But tickets to a football game are purely entertainment; a luxury. People can and do go without football tickets on a regular basis. Football tickets, then, are an elastic good.)
The sales tax avoids this problem. It's far from a perfect solution by any means, I agree, but I think it's a better one than the income tax.
I'm also very skeptical of your math. Care to elaborate?
I really would like to, believe me.
But given that I would greatly-prefer not to reveal too much about my personal income and spending habits, I prefer even-more not to elaborate too much... It's a choice I'm making based on privacy (you're free to believe what you like about my math. I'm humble enough to admit it may well not be correct, but I've gone over it so many times in light of this discovery that I'm hard-pressed to find fault w/ it).
All I can say is that, at least on the surface of things, and at least for me, it seems like it would work. That said, I am alraedy a relatively-frugal person, generally (and moreover, there is a good probability that as a soon-to-graduate student, my rate of consumption will rise in the next few years, in which case, the sales tax obviously becomes a worse deal, though from my current rough estimates, perhaps not *too* much worse. Still, as the value of our dollar on foreign-exchange markets worsens, import prices rise, which, when combined w/ the NST, drives prices up even further. In light of these considerations, even just in the last few days, I've actually been re-thinking whether a NST would be such a good idea. I'm still of the opinion that it probably would be for fairness' sake, but IMO, it's
I *so* hope this bill passes! Keeping Internet access tax-free will aid poor people in getting online by keeping the price of access limited to market rates.
Adding a tax on top of that price would only drive out people who would otherwise get online.
Its to compensate for your behaviour of the selfish people who always want to go faster than everyone else that the 'keep right except to pass' rule exists in the first place.
How terrible that people are selfish. Oh horrors that one should optimize the time used in their own life!
You're just angry because you haven't the balls or the skill to drive as fast as the rest of traffic. Either that, or you have some perverse joy in holding traffic up, as though inefficient use of people's time is somehow a *good* thing...
Selfishness and greed are *good* things. They allow the individual to pursue their dreams and goals, and if it's "selfish" to drive fast, then thank god the Germans autobahn'ers are as selfish as they are!
If everyone drove the speed limit (whatever it happens to be) there would be less traffic jams caused by self-important pricks who want to get their home or office 30 seconds before everyone else.
Sounds good. Let's raise the speed limit to 100MPH on the Interstates then and *strictly* enforce the law then...
Otherwise, if you're doing 65 in a 65 on the tollway when everybody else is doing 80, I'm going to pass your ass doing 80 as well, because quite frankly, *you* are the danger by creating a plug in the flow of traffic.
I just calculated what the effect on me would be if we replaced the Federal income tax (FICA) with a national sales tax, as some GOP'ers have been considering. And you know what?
At a $15/hour wage, a national sales tax (a national consumption tax) would put *more* disposable income in my pocket than the current income tax. The income tax does not start looking better for me until the national sales tax reaches about 50% -- and the current claims by the left is that we would have to set it at about 30% in order to reap the tax revenues as the govn't currently takes in via the income tax.
A sales tax is far-more fair, for the simple reason that if you so choose, you don't *have* to buy anything, and thus, you pay nothing in taxes. It'd be a miserable, agrarian lifestyle (much like that of the Amish I suspect), but it could be done.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
Now, to reduce the regressive nature of the sales tax, were it me, I would eliminate *all* sales taxes on life-necessities: food, any health/medical supplies (including prescriptions), and possibly housing (but not land; the property tax should definitely stay, so as to prevent people from hoarding land).
And I would further raise the sales tax on items which have socially-negative effects: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana (if it's ever legalized), possibly firearms (I'm a gun nut, of course, but I also recognize the socially-negative aspects of them), and so on. I'd probably place a luxury tax on grossly-expensive items (items that only the top 5% of income earners typically purchase -- again, the Rolls, the Bentley, the 50' yachts, etc.).
That way, the tax is made at least somewhat progressive, but still is optional -- people are left free to decide whether or not to pay the tax (by consuming).
You know, a national sales tax ought to appeal to the leftie anti-consumerist, anti-materialist mentality which says that "Americans consume too much! Ach, it makes me sick that all people do is buy stuff! Waaahh!" Funny that they've been silent on the issue.
Anyway, whether the GOP will be so smart as to implement my version of the sales tax is another question...
I'm curious why you think low-income people shouldn't pay taxes. Don't they owe a responsibility to the state? By what right do they *deserve* a free ride? The right of being poor? Under your system, if everyone could get a free ride off the rich by being poor, I think I would remain poor too, just so I could loaf around and do nothing on the rich man's dollar.
Gosh, how nice it would be to sit around and let the rich man work for me. Boy, the world owes me a living!! LOL.
Big corporations are using RFID in employees' badges as well, allowing employees to swipe in/out of workplace premises. The badge (sometimes annoyingly) has to be within about 1" of the reader, and getting it to activate is sometimes a challenge...
(Ironically, nothing prevents people from just walking (or at least sneaking, commando-style) onto premises without swiping. Of course, it would make sense to worry about the real criminals trying to steal our IP, break into our buildings, etc., so instead, we worry about herding the cattle we call "employees" into their cubes in an orderly fashion.)
When I speak of "free market capitalism", I'm speaking of a Constitutionally-limited version of capitalism.
What you describe as "libertarian capitalism" is better referred to "anarcho-capitalism", or, anarchy, wherein there does not exist even a public police or military force. I quite agree that such a system would be a failure.
There do need to be copyright, trademark, and patent laws to protect the unusual form of property of IP, but those laws also need far-less ridiculous configuration than we currently have (such as copyright, which is life + 75 years, rather than the possible 28 years total (14 years + 14 more if renewed) when the U.S. law of copyright was originally created).
Without them, in particular patent laws (limited to unique, non-process inventions, not things like "1 click purchases," etc.), there would be no incentive to create new inventions b/c people would just rip off the creator -- as you note. That's why IP is a special kind of property, requiring a special kind of law.
Is it a *pure* free market without such laws? No. But it's a hell of a lot freer than the market we have now.
In an unregulated, free-market capitalism, those organisms are the monopolies. Once a single corporation gets to the point where they regulate their environment-- say, by economic control of the lines of distribution, or by controlling limited resources-- they excercise de-facto control of the market itself. Microsoft has proven this, as has Starbucks and Wal*Mart and Standard Oil.
Starbucks is a monopoly? That's a gas. There are plenty of non-Starbucks-coffee-serving coffee shops I can go to (Caribou Coffee, Borders cafe, etc.).
Microsoft is a monopoly, unquestionably, but look what's happening to them -- they're battling the software war in the market, and Linux is eating their lunch in some areas. Monopolies eventually fall apart under their own size and inflexibility.
Unfortunately, because corporations wield such economic power, especially when compared with the average group of organized citizens, corporations are able to force government intervention that favors corporations.
That's silly. Corporations wield no power except that of money.
They can *attempt* to buy off all the legislators they want, sure. But that's not force; force would be putting a gun to the legislator's head and saying "pass pro-corporate laws."
Businesses only wield money. And whether or not those businesses get the laws they want due to the money they wield depends *entirely* on the legislator passing that law. Without the legislator's passing it, the businessman is as helpless as you or I.
Hence, it's still the legislator's fault. And legislators are government agents, hence, the government is still at fault. Even though there is supposedly "corporate force" at work...
A consumer action which, in a P2P network fashion, encourages other people not to buy a seller's products, no lawsuit required. Word rhymes with "roykott"...
WRONG. The corporations are the government. They are so big, so powerful, that they've PURCHASED your government officials. "Your elected politicians" believe whatever the megacorporations whant them to believe, and do whatever they want them to do.
Free-market capitalism isn't the cure -- it's the problem.
You obviously don't know anything about economics, or else you wouldn't say that.
Let me take this slowly for you: a true free market exists absent any and all government intervention. If government is involved in any way, it is not a *true* free market.
And when the government is involved as much as it is in the U.S.'s case -- by taking bribes (a.k.a. "contributions") from businesses from businesses, clearly it is not a free market even by a fuzzy definition.
The merging of the corporation and state you allude to is known as "fascism" or "crony capitalism." Not "free market capitalism."
Not that your average leftist Slashdotter would actually know anything about the economics about which he complains so often...
With regards to Peterson, is it theoretically possible that a cult killed Laci like we are told? Theoretically possible. Yet is this reasonable? No. The jurors are going to confuse theory and reality.
Ignoring the extrema of a data set -- as you say "stupid contrarians" do not do, but *should* do -- will ignore the occasional result-changing point.
We should not ignore those extrema for the sake of "reasonableness" if we are conducting a court trial or a scientific study. We should ignore them only if it becomes cost-prohibitive *not* to ignore them, be that cost in terms of time or money, but in the case of science, especially of money, and in the case of trials, especially of time (given that the Constitution guarantees the "right to a speedy trial").
Truth does not always lie within 1 or 2 standard deviations from the mean. Einstein's discoveries constitute one example in science, the observations of FA Hayek and Milton Friedman constitute examples in economics, and the rise in acceptance of Linux from the extrema of the computing community should serve as a third example.
Do not ignore extrema; just treat them with the more skepticism than you might other, more-mainstream points...
Get them Legos or Erector (laugh at the name) sets.
I spent years as a kid building all kinds of stuff with Legos, and it was a blast. Great for improving one's spatial thinking, and they can do it while building Lego cities or Lego cars to crash into each other (and then the pieces go flying everywhere!).
Quitting one's job doesn't mean *staying* quit after quitting.
It's called "finding a new job while you work at the one you don't like, then quitting after you've accepted somebody else's job offer." Preferably in your spare time, so your crappy employer doesn't catch on to what you're up to, but if you're like these EA employees, you may have no choice but to surf from work.
But if you do have a wife/kids/other attachments which make your life hard, then make them do something useful and have them help. Have them look for new jobs for you and point you to their ads when you get home.
A relative of mine quit his job at a refinery once because the toxic fumes were slowly killing him. He willingly retired for 6 months on his savings, then decided to go back to work in a non-oil industry.
It's not magic, it's called "savings" and "screwing your employer as hard as he screws you." The second aspect is key, and is expected by employers. The problem is that most people still think the world -- and their employers -- owe them a living, that their employer is their friend, not merely a business entity out to use them as a "human resource." People still live in the fantasy world that businesses care about them; they do not.
Once one realizes this much and *behaves* as such, there's a lot more control over the work/life balance.
You don't like gasoline-powered vehicles because they pollute like crazy and make us dependent on foreign oil. That's agreeable.
You don't like hydrogen vehicles because hydrogen is highly-flammable (no duh; that's the point), even as it produces only water in its combustion.
My challenge to the Greens and other eco-liberals is this: create a machine which transforms one form of energy into mechanical power which does not pollute in any environmentally-damaging way, which does not make us reliant on foreign nations, and which is infinitely-renewable (read: powered by the sun, wind, lightning, ocean currents and tides, etc.) so that we never have to confront the problem of switching to new energy sources ever again.
Oh, and it must be cost-efficient enough that it may be mass-manufactured by automobile companies; it needn't be so cheap that everybody can afford it immediately -- let the economies of scale inherent in automobile manufacturing drive the cost down over time. This will additionally allow for a gradual -- rather than immediate -- switch in our nation's energy useage for our individual automobiles, which is what we want anyway, to minimize economic shock. But b/c of that extra lead time, we do need to start ASAP, and we need to be finished *before* we run out of cheap-enough oil...
Think it can be done? Then for the good of all humanity, develop a better solution than the currently existing ones and let's end this problem once and for all!:-) Anybody who can meet such a challenge will surely be regarded as one of the greatest inventors in the history of mankind.
So the original parent (OP) won't shop there again. Assuming he/she will live another 40 years (and BB stays in business that long), and assuming he spends $1000/year there (at current price levels), BB has lost $40,000 to this one customer in future sales.
But to other people reading his comment? I doubt it's had much effect.
I read the OP's comment. I'm still going to shop at BB if they have the best price. They definitely treat their customers like shit, but until I have an experience like the OP's, I won't care as long as I get my goods in a timely, inexpensive fashion without being hassled *too* much.
I would guesstimate that BB lost *maybe* another $40,000 to $60,000 to other people over the same 40 years as a result of the post. And on Slashdot, that might be generous... (after all, how many people decry the evils of the MPAA, only to buy the latest "Star Wars" or "LotR" DVDs a week later? How many/.'ers hate Microsoft, yet still use Internet Explorer (oh, right, about 60%)...)
That is a WAG (Wild-Ass Guess), admittedly. But $2m? I LOL in your general direction, even if it's adjusted for inflation; people just aren't that principled. People don't care what happens in the market until they personally get hurt.
Good. It's called "the customer optimizing the service the seller provides."
Better the customer optimize against while the seller optimizes against the customer than the seller optimizes while the customer does not. Markets are a 2-way street, and traffic needs to flow both ways to be efficient...
Slashdot Mirror
You could likewise read a book by the Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman. Pick one:
* "Free to Choose"
* "Capitalism and Freedom"
* "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest"
* "A Monetary History of the United States: 1867-1960"
Friedman was such a powerful economist in his heyday that even my Keynesian-leaning economics prof. this semester today enthusiastically referred to him as a "decent statistician."
If capitalism is an inefficient allocator of resources, then it is at least less-inefficient than socialism. Otherwise, the Soviet Union and its various satellite nations wouldn't have collapsed, and China wouldn't be on the path towards more-open markets as well.
Oh, the terror of the free-market! It will ruin us all! It will eat our children, destroy our homes, and convert our wives to to satanic beastiality! Oh my gawd!!
Yeah, because the FCC has done such a superb job (of spectrum-allocation, among other things). Riiiight...
Ah, you subscribe to the idiot Adam Smith, who thinks that chaos makes things predictable.
You obviously have never taken a course in econometrics; else, you would learn that your supposedly "chaotic" market system actually *does* have recognizable patterns to it and correlations within it. There is absolutely a "method to the madness." The methods just aren't neatly-outlined and codified in law as they are in communist states.
Instead, in the market, the public -- individually -- decides what is good and what is not good. Not a faceless bureaucracy thousands of miles away, which isn't on-the-ground, local to the people they serve.
Go back in history to pre-1989 Germany. Compare socialist (or, commonly, "communist") East Germany to capitalist West Germany sometime. There's a reason the wall was torn down and East Germans flocked to West Germany as a result...
Didn't you know? Governments never make mistakes!
Except, you know, for that whole "war in Iraq" thing which the same statists protest endlessly... But just because the state can't plan for war and peace, that doesn't mean the state could screw up planning an economy!
*rolls eyes*
I wish all conservatives, Christians, and conservative Christians were as well-reasoned and concerned about large, over-powerful government as you are... but you're right, most seem willing to throw their freedoms away in the name of security.
:( Seriously, WTF happened to the "party of Reagan"...
Sadly, the only real "conservatives" remaining as far as government bureaucracy and preservation of individual rights are concerned are the libertarians and hard-right Republicans (excluding the neocons).
You ask why poor people shouldn't pay taxes?
It was a rhetorical question, meant to make jabs at Cryofan's normal line of taxation thought.
Personally, I don't think the poor should have to pay much in taxes either, for the very reason you describe -- taxes make it harder for them to afford the things they need, as if it weren't hard enough.
Hence, my original point about removing some of the regressivity of the national sales tax by exempting "essential" goods/services, such as food and medicine (as noted elsewhere, this introduces the problem of rent-seeking though, which allows for lobbyists to create special-interest loopholes and/or knock legitimate tax-exemptions off the exempt list. I'm coming to warm up to the idea of a flat consumption tax, with rebates for those in poverty instead of exempting specific goods/services).
From what you say, it seems you think that poor people somehow choose to be poor. That they enjoy it.
I'm genuinely curious how you divined this leap of logic. I never said poor people choose to be poor (though you get the occasional weirdo who is actually rich and pretends to be poor, or is so frugal that they *look* poor).
But it'd be silly to say that people enjoy being poor. I can't imagine most people would enjoy that (some may on the philosophy that with wealth comes too much responsibility and/or fame, and they prefer not to have such things. I would guess they are a minority though)...
They can't choose which school to send their kids to, as they don't have the money for transport.
Which is all the more reason to implement a school-voucher system, whereby the tax-funded voucher allows parents to choose which schools - public or private -their children go to, rather than having their tax money automatically driven to the nearest public schools...
As for transportation costs, whether this is a significant issue in light of a voucher system is questionable, seeing as it's likely that schools would be created within local areas to serve the students (much like McDonalds' have sprouted up on every corner), rather than hiding out in the suburbs, etc.
BTW, Sweden is trying a voucher-based educational system. And they show that it works. So it can't be the all-bad, evil ultra-conservative solution to education that I'm sure some people make it out to be...
(I also went to the nearest public school, because my parents didn't want to pay for private school. I don't blame them, I wouldn't want to either. But I do wish we had better choice in our schools, rather than my being forced to go to the high school I did).
Poor kids don't choose to be born to poor parents, just like rich kids don't choose to be born to rich parents. If you think that's somehow fair, then fine.
You are again making a wild-ass assumption and putting words in my mouth. I never said "people choose to be poor" (they certainly may do so indirectly -- by not trying hard enough in school, by getting into trouble with the police, by eating too much and getting overweight, thus causing nasty health problems, etc. - and on those grounds, they *do* choose to be poor. But I really don't think anybody makes a conscious decision to be poor out of some kind of enjoyment of poverty...).
I favor a voucher-based education system, by which means all children are still are guaranteed an education (as Thomas Jefferson would've had it), but at the same time, offering more competition between schools, in order to invoke the discipline of market competition on them and force them to improve performance (or else, go out of business).
Such a system, more than any other, would help the poor rise out of their crappy inner-city schools onto a more-level educational playing field.
The FairTax has no exemptions, but provides a universal rebate to cover the costs of all purchases up to roughly the poverty level, so poor people pay zero or negative taxes. I like this better than exempting "necessities", because it avoids rent-seeking lobbyists trying to get their products on the list.
:) (serious question)
That is an excellent point, and it's one I've considered from time to time as well. Rent-seeking lobbyists would clearly be a problem w/ my sales-tax solution (whether to get their products on the list or their competitors' products *off* the list). I notice the FairTax FAQ points this out as well...
My suggestion was intended to stay within the framework of a national sales tax to eliminate the federal income tax (as the FairTax also does). Seeing as consumption taxes are inherently-regressive, and seeing as I can think of considerable economic reasons why we ought not leave the poor in the dust, I think it would still be a better situation (to have an NST w/ exemptions) than a purely-flat sales tax w/o exemptions... But throw things like rebate checks for the poverty-stricken into the mix, and then it becomes more sensible.
My main problem w/ rebate checks, however, is their immediacy. People living at the bottom of the wage scale live paycheck-to-paycheck. They have neither the personal financial discipline nor the practical ability to wait for a check to come back in 6 months to a year, giving them back the money they shouldn't have paid in the first place. The problem lessens as the checks become more frequent (monthly, weekly, etc.), but then, the costs of administration and distribution rise as the frequency rises too.
Simply-put, the solution of rebate checks fails to deal with the opportunity cost of leaving one's money tied-up with the government for any amount of time.
Rather, and still within the FairTax's system (which I think overall is quite solid), I (theoretically, since I've never seen this idea posed before; it's just a seemingly-better solution I cooked up) would favor something like a "tax-reduction card", whereby whenever a purchase is made by somebody who qualifies (i.e. is in poverty), they display the card, which has a lower-than-normal (or even zero) tax rate printed on it (the figure and on magstripe). That rate would be the national sales tax they are charged. The card would be replaced once a year and the next year's tax based on the previous year (or 2 or 3 or 5...) qualification for poverty relief. The cards would be plastic, so they would get recycled back into new cards every year, hence, little environmental waste.
That way, poor people get immediate discounts on the things they purchase. Moreover, this saves the government and Postal Service the costs of writing these checks (true, the administration is fairly-cheap, given it can be automated in the same way corporations automate their payrolls. But the cost of mailing that many checks is still significant; if 10% of the nation qualifies, that's 28m people, which, at $0.37/letter, comes out to about $10.3m/year if mailed annually, or, about $124m/year if mailed monthly. Either way, it's an extremely-trivial sum by federal standards, but still more than I'm guessing is necessary, compared to a once-a-year plastic card (that is, can 28m cards be created within the difference of $114m/year that remains after postage, compared to a rebate check?)), while providing immediate relief to those who need it.
The biggest problem I see with a tax-reduction card is that the government can track the purchases of the poor. The potential for totalitarian abuse there is considerable (for example, it makes it easy for the government to know which poor people own guns, unless they don't use their tax-reduction card at the time of purchase).
What do you think - a tax-exempt card vs. rebate checks?
Well, hell, then if you so choose, you don't *have* to earn anything because you don't *have* to buy anything and the income tax passes your very odd sense of fairness.
Ahh, but that's the fatal flaw made by Austrian economists. That is not true.
I can choose whether to drive a Honda or take a train to work. I can choose whether to spend big on pizza made by the delicious local pizzaria, or I can choose to make my own pizza (or take the middle route and bake a frozen pizza). I can choose whether to buy expensive clothes or cheap clothes.
In so doing, I am also choosing (based on the price of each product) how much in sales tax I want to pay. I am free to choose how much tax I pay, based on the price of the product.
But let's say I don't want to pay the income tax. How do I avoid it? By going on welfare? Who pays for welfare then? Somebody else -- and that somebody else then, is not free to choose how to spend the money they earned which has been redistributed to me to fund my welfare living (which I might choose just to avoid paying taxes -- is *that* fair? And if not, what do you do about somebody like me? Force me to work? Is that not, then, slavery? Therein lies the problem with welfare vs. work, and the consequences were disturbingly-visible in former Soviet-bloc nations).
Moreover, I cannot avoid earning an income if I want to own property, because property taxes are in effect everywhere (as they should be, more or less). In order to continue renting land from the government (or rather, the public, of which other members might instead rent the land) on which I live, I must earn an income. But the income tax taxes me. Thus, I would be stuck between a rock and a hard place -- not having land to live on, or not being able to choose how much I want to give up to taxes.
In economic jargon, it's a problem of elasticity. Every one of us is far-more elastic on our choices of goods/services than we are on whether we will work. Essentially, more elasticity = more freedom to vary from the norm, i.e. more freedom to choose. (an example, if you're unfamiliar w/ the concept of elasticity, is the difference between, say, gasoline and tickets to a football game. Almost everybody needs gasoline for their cars, and we need it almost all the time -- this is a classic example of an inelastic good. But tickets to a football game are purely entertainment; a luxury. People can and do go without football tickets on a regular basis. Football tickets, then, are an elastic good.)
The sales tax avoids this problem. It's far from a perfect solution by any means, I agree, but I think it's a better one than the income tax.
I'm also very skeptical of your math. Care to elaborate?
I really would like to, believe me.
But given that I would greatly-prefer not to reveal too much about my personal income and spending habits, I prefer even-more not to elaborate too much... It's a choice I'm making based on privacy (you're free to believe what you like about my math. I'm humble enough to admit it may well not be correct, but I've gone over it so many times in light of this discovery that I'm hard-pressed to find fault w/ it).
All I can say is that, at least on the surface of things, and at least for me, it seems like it would work. That said, I am alraedy a relatively-frugal person, generally (and moreover, there is a good probability that as a soon-to-graduate student, my rate of consumption will rise in the next few years, in which case, the sales tax obviously becomes a worse deal, though from my current rough estimates, perhaps not *too* much worse. Still, as the value of our dollar on foreign-exchange markets worsens, import prices rise, which, when combined w/ the NST, drives prices up even further. In light of these considerations, even just in the last few days, I've actually been re-thinking whether a NST would be such a good idea. I'm still of the opinion that it probably would be for fairness' sake, but IMO, it's
Elsewhere, in Texas, 28,000 students test an e-tagging system which promises better security for them.
More like it promises better slavery for them.
Oh well, best to whip 'em into place and make them love Big Brother at an early age, right?
I *so* hope this bill passes! Keeping Internet access tax-free will aid poor people in getting online by keeping the price of access limited to market rates.
Adding a tax on top of that price would only drive out people who would otherwise get online.
Its to compensate for your behaviour of the selfish people who always want to go faster than everyone else that the 'keep right except to pass' rule exists in the first place.
How terrible that people are selfish. Oh horrors that one should optimize the time used in their own life!
You're just angry because you haven't the balls or the skill to drive as fast as the rest of traffic. Either that, or you have some perverse joy in holding traffic up, as though inefficient use of people's time is somehow a *good* thing...
Selfishness and greed are *good* things. They allow the individual to pursue their dreams and goals, and if it's "selfish" to drive fast, then thank god the Germans autobahn'ers are as selfish as they are!
If everyone drove the speed limit (whatever it happens to be) there would be less traffic jams caused by self-important pricks who want to get their home or office 30 seconds before everyone else.
Sounds good. Let's raise the speed limit to 100MPH on the Interstates then and *strictly* enforce the law then...
Otherwise, if you're doing 65 in a 65 on the tollway when everybody else is doing 80, I'm going to pass your ass doing 80 as well, because quite frankly, *you* are the danger by creating a plug in the flow of traffic.
LOL, Cryofan up to his old socialist tricks...
I just calculated what the effect on me would be if we replaced the Federal income tax (FICA) with a national sales tax, as some GOP'ers have been considering. And you know what?
At a $15/hour wage, a national sales tax (a national consumption tax) would put *more* disposable income in my pocket than the current income tax. The income tax does not start looking better for me until the national sales tax reaches about 50% -- and the current claims by the left is that we would have to set it at about 30% in order to reap the tax revenues as the govn't currently takes in via the income tax.
A sales tax is far-more fair, for the simple reason that if you so choose, you don't *have* to buy anything, and thus, you pay nothing in taxes. It'd be a miserable, agrarian lifestyle (much like that of the Amish I suspect), but it could be done.
Likewise, the people who buy the most expensive, most luxurious items -- the Beemer and Rolls-Royce crowd we both envy but only one of us is jealous enough of to support theft to get those riches -- would pay the most taxes on those items, b/c they tend to buy those items in the greatest quantities.
Now, to reduce the regressive nature of the sales tax, were it me, I would eliminate *all* sales taxes on life-necessities: food, any health/medical supplies (including prescriptions), and possibly housing (but not land; the property tax should definitely stay, so as to prevent people from hoarding land).
And I would further raise the sales tax on items which have socially-negative effects: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana (if it's ever legalized), possibly firearms (I'm a gun nut, of course, but I also recognize the socially-negative aspects of them), and so on. I'd probably place a luxury tax on grossly-expensive items (items that only the top 5% of income earners typically purchase -- again, the Rolls, the Bentley, the 50' yachts, etc.).
That way, the tax is made at least somewhat progressive, but still is optional -- people are left free to decide whether or not to pay the tax (by consuming).
You know, a national sales tax ought to appeal to the leftie anti-consumerist, anti-materialist mentality which says that "Americans consume too much! Ach, it makes me sick that all people do is buy stuff! Waaahh!" Funny that they've been silent on the issue.
Anyway, whether the GOP will be so smart as to implement my version of the sales tax is another question...
I'm curious why you think low-income people shouldn't pay taxes. Don't they owe a responsibility to the state? By what right do they *deserve* a free ride? The right of being poor? Under your system, if everyone could get a free ride off the rich by being poor, I think I would remain poor too, just so I could loaf around and do nothing on the rich man's dollar.
Gosh, how nice it would be to sit around and let the rich man work for me. Boy, the world owes me a living!! LOL.
Big corporations are using RFID in employees' badges as well, allowing employees to swipe in/out of workplace premises. The badge (sometimes annoyingly) has to be within about 1" of the reader, and getting it to activate is sometimes a challenge...
(Ironically, nothing prevents people from just walking (or at least sneaking, commando-style) onto premises without swiping. Of course, it would make sense to worry about the real criminals trying to steal our IP, break into our buildings, etc., so instead, we worry about herding the cattle we call "employees" into their cubes in an orderly fashion.)
When I speak of "free market capitalism", I'm speaking of a Constitutionally-limited version of capitalism.
What you describe as "libertarian capitalism" is better referred to "anarcho-capitalism", or, anarchy, wherein there does not exist even a public police or military force. I quite agree that such a system would be a failure.
There do need to be copyright, trademark, and patent laws to protect the unusual form of property of IP, but those laws also need far-less ridiculous configuration than we currently have (such as copyright, which is life + 75 years, rather than the possible 28 years total (14 years + 14 more if renewed) when the U.S. law of copyright was originally created).
Without them, in particular patent laws (limited to unique, non-process inventions, not things like "1 click purchases," etc.), there would be no incentive to create new inventions b/c people would just rip off the creator -- as you note. That's why IP is a special kind of property, requiring a special kind of law.
Is it a *pure* free market without such laws? No. But it's a hell of a lot freer than the market we have now.
In an unregulated, free-market capitalism, those organisms are the monopolies. Once a single corporation gets to the point where they regulate their environment-- say, by economic control of the lines of distribution, or by controlling limited resources-- they excercise de-facto control of the market itself. Microsoft has proven this, as has Starbucks and Wal*Mart and Standard Oil.
Starbucks is a monopoly? That's a gas. There are plenty of non-Starbucks-coffee-serving coffee shops I can go to (Caribou Coffee, Borders cafe, etc.).
Microsoft is a monopoly, unquestionably, but look what's happening to them -- they're battling the software war in the market, and Linux is eating their lunch in some areas. Monopolies eventually fall apart under their own size and inflexibility.
Unfortunately, because corporations wield such economic power, especially when compared with the average group of organized citizens, corporations are able to force government intervention that favors corporations.
That's silly. Corporations wield no power except that of money.
They can *attempt* to buy off all the legislators they want, sure. But that's not force; force would be putting a gun to the legislator's head and saying "pass pro-corporate laws."
Businesses only wield money. And whether or not those businesses get the laws they want due to the money they wield depends *entirely* on the legislator passing that law. Without the legislator's passing it, the businessman is as helpless as you or I.
Hence, it's still the legislator's fault. And legislators are government agents, hence, the government is still at fault. Even though there is supposedly "corporate force" at work...
A consumer action which, in a P2P network fashion, encourages other people not to buy a seller's products, no lawsuit required. Word rhymes with "roykott"...
WRONG. The corporations are the government. They are so big, so powerful, that they've PURCHASED your government officials. "Your elected politicians" believe whatever the megacorporations whant them to believe, and do whatever they want them to do.
Free-market capitalism isn't the cure -- it's the problem.
You obviously don't know anything about economics, or else you wouldn't say that.
Let me take this slowly for you: a true free market exists absent any and all government intervention. If government is involved in any way, it is not a *true* free market.
And when the government is involved as much as it is in the U.S.'s case -- by taking bribes (a.k.a. "contributions") from businesses from businesses, clearly it is not a free market even by a fuzzy definition.
The merging of the corporation and state you allude to is known as "fascism" or "crony capitalism." Not "free market capitalism."
Not that your average leftist Slashdotter would actually know anything about the economics about which he complains so often...
With regards to Peterson, is it theoretically possible that a cult killed Laci like we are told? Theoretically possible. Yet is this reasonable? No. The jurors are going to confuse theory and reality.
How funny. Scott Peterson was found guilty of both first and second degree murder. Looks like the jurors didn't going to confuse theory and reality after all!
Ignoring the extrema of a data set -- as you say "stupid contrarians" do not do, but *should* do -- will ignore the occasional result-changing point.
We should not ignore those extrema for the sake of "reasonableness" if we are conducting a court trial or a scientific study. We should ignore them only if it becomes cost-prohibitive *not* to ignore them, be that cost in terms of time or money, but in the case of science, especially of money, and in the case of trials, especially of time (given that the Constitution guarantees the "right to a speedy trial").
Truth does not always lie within 1 or 2 standard deviations from the mean. Einstein's discoveries constitute one example in science, the observations of FA Hayek and Milton Friedman constitute examples in economics, and the rise in acceptance of Linux from the extrema of the computing community should serve as a third example.
Do not ignore extrema; just treat them with the more skepticism than you might other, more-mainstream points...
Get them Legos or Erector (laugh at the name) sets.
:-)
I spent years as a kid building all kinds of stuff with Legos, and it was a blast. Great for improving one's spatial thinking, and they can do it while building Lego cities or Lego cars to crash into each other (and then the pieces go flying everywhere!).
Fun stuff.
Quitting one's job doesn't mean *staying* quit after quitting.
It's called "finding a new job while you work at the one you don't like, then quitting after you've accepted somebody else's job offer." Preferably in your spare time, so your crappy employer doesn't catch on to what you're up to, but if you're like these EA employees, you may have no choice but to surf from work.
But if you do have a wife/kids/other attachments which make your life hard, then make them do something useful and have them help. Have them look for new jobs for you and point you to their ads when you get home.
A relative of mine quit his job at a refinery once because the toxic fumes were slowly killing him. He willingly retired for 6 months on his savings, then decided to go back to work in a non-oil industry.
It's not magic, it's called "savings" and "screwing your employer as hard as he screws you." The second aspect is key, and is expected by employers. The problem is that most people still think the world -- and their employers -- owe them a living, that their employer is their friend, not merely a business entity out to use them as a "human resource." People still live in the fantasy world that businesses care about them; they do not.
Once one realizes this much and *behaves* as such, there's a lot more control over the work/life balance.
Dear Greens:
:-) Anybody who can meet such a challenge will surely be regarded as one of the greatest inventors in the history of mankind.
You don't like gasoline-powered vehicles because they pollute like crazy and make us dependent on foreign oil. That's agreeable.
You don't like hydrogen vehicles because hydrogen is highly-flammable (no duh; that's the point), even as it produces only water in its combustion.
My challenge to the Greens and other eco-liberals is this: create a machine which transforms one form of energy into mechanical power which does not pollute in any environmentally-damaging way, which does not make us reliant on foreign nations, and which is infinitely-renewable (read: powered by the sun, wind, lightning, ocean currents and tides, etc.) so that we never have to confront the problem of switching to new energy sources ever again.
Oh, and it must be cost-efficient enough that it may be mass-manufactured by automobile companies; it needn't be so cheap that everybody can afford it immediately -- let the economies of scale inherent in automobile manufacturing drive the cost down over time. This will additionally allow for a gradual -- rather than immediate -- switch in our nation's energy useage for our individual automobiles, which is what we want anyway, to minimize economic shock. But b/c of that extra lead time, we do need to start ASAP, and we need to be finished *before* we run out of cheap-enough oil...
Think it can be done? Then for the good of all humanity, develop a better solution than the currently existing ones and let's end this problem once and for all!
This is a great day for American liberty! Finally, after 4 years, one of the greatest menaces to civil liberty is gone!
:-)
Maybe we can get back to being free again someday after all...
I'll drink to Ashcroft's resignation! Who's with me?
So the original parent (OP) won't shop there again. Assuming he/she will live another 40 years (and BB stays in business that long), and assuming he spends $1000/year there (at current price levels), BB has lost $40,000 to this one customer in future sales.
/.'ers hate Microsoft, yet still use Internet Explorer (oh, right, about 60%)...)
But to other people reading his comment? I doubt it's had much effect.
I read the OP's comment. I'm still going to shop at BB if they have the best price. They definitely treat their customers like shit, but until I have an experience like the OP's, I won't care as long as I get my goods in a timely, inexpensive fashion without being hassled *too* much.
I would guesstimate that BB lost *maybe* another $40,000 to $60,000 to other people over the same 40 years as a result of the post. And on Slashdot, that might be generous... (after all, how many people decry the evils of the MPAA, only to buy the latest "Star Wars" or "LotR" DVDs a week later? How many
That is a WAG (Wild-Ass Guess), admittedly. But $2m? I LOL in your general direction, even if it's adjusted for inflation; people just aren't that principled. People don't care what happens in the market until they personally get hurt.
These people do exist.
Good. It's called "the customer optimizing the service the seller provides."
Better the customer optimize against while the seller optimizes against the customer than the seller optimizes while the customer does not. Markets are a 2-way street, and traffic needs to flow both ways to be efficient...
Maybe instead of chasing IT jobs, Packman should run from ghosts of IT past and go around eating white pills instead!
*rimshot*