New York Times reporter James Brooke was recently shocked, shocked to discover that the Japanese people's famous fascination with robots and automation stems from their"xenophobia." [Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged
Mar. 5, 2004 NYT ]
The labor-saving device that gave Brookes the willies was Sanyo's new clamshell-shaped automated bathing machine. It allows frail people confined to wheelchairs to roll in dirty and roll out clean and dry.
Shivered Brooke: "Futuristic images of elderly Japanese going through rinse and dry cycles in rows of washing machines may evoke chills."
Yet the machine doesn't seem to give the shivers to its users. Toshiko Shibahara, an 89-year-old resident of a Japanese nursing home told Brooke, "You don't get a chill. You feel always warm." Likewise, Kuni Kikuchi, an 88-year-old in a wheelchair, noted, "It automatically washes my body, so I am quite happy about it. These bubbles are good for the massage effect."
...
My question: doesn't the uniqueness of
Japanese culture add to the diversity of the world?
Oh, excuse me, that's the
wrong kind of diversity. We are supposed to celebrate the right kind of diversity--the kind where each country becomes so
diverse in population, its
culture so diluted by immigration, that all
countries are eventually the same.
How silly of me to forget that the ultimate goal of "diversity" is global uniformity--and monotony.
When the cold war was going hot and heavy the national labs needed computing power and they didn't care how they got it. They put out benchmarks/code and people designed computers to run the code or they didn't. If they did a good job they got PURCHASES.
As the cold war ended there was a shift away from such performance-based purchases to idiotic programs where really really "smart" guys would divine the next wave in wonderfulness and have people with Ivy League and press connections hang around the halls of power schmoozing it up a real whole lot so they could get funding in advance of technical accomplishment.
What you're missing is that the main source of increased speed for silicon was decreased feature size. This geometric scaling of speed is pretty independent of the material. What is not independent of the material is the electron mobility and capacitance.
Lessee... the notion that government grants for supercomputers started in 1985 with the CM1;
No, but the trend away from government as lead customer to lead investor started around that time.
That trend appears to be reversing finally with the long and sordid series of failures of government investments.
Tell me again, grandpa, about how the internet was created entirely without government funding or direction.
Well, anonymous coward whipper-snapper, look at the history of Ethernet and compare MAC addressing with IP addressing for a good example of the "benefit" of government direction of networking standards. We had MAC addresses around the same time we had IP addresses (maybe a little before) and the braniacs within the govt agencies decided to drive that brain-dead standard into all networking, including local area networking, while MAC addresses would have been superior.
Now, 3 DECADES later we're seeing IPv6 attempting to reinstitute MAC addresses but there is so much brain damage done by government picking winners we will probably see China go IPv6 before the US -- where MAC addresses were first developed.
First of all, when DARPA decided to directly back specific technologies such as Danny Hillis' "Connection Machine" while supercomputer sales were flagging, they corrupted the market-driven support for supercomputing innovation. As a result just when Seymour Cray had a viable production line for GaAs cpus there was virtually zero market demand for the technology. The lower capacitance as well as higher mobility of the electrons of his version of GaAs technology weren't the sole benefits -- it was also about a factor of 10 cheaper to capitalize the fabrication facilities.
Whenever the government "picks winners" rather than letting nature pick winners, the technologists and therefore technology loses.
(Now that Cray is dead, according to the supercomputing FAQ, "The CCC intellectual property was purchased for
a mere $250 thousand by Dasu, LLC - a corporation set up and
(AFAIK) wholly owned by Mr. Hub Finkelstein, a Texas oilman.
He's owned this stuff for five years and hasn't done anything with it.")
Secondly, as I've discussed before both operating system and database programming are awaiting the development of relations, most likely via the predicate calculus, as a foundation for software. Both are essentially parallel processing foundations for software.
This feeds into quantum computing quite nicely as well, as relations are not just inherently parallel, but are parallel in such a way that they precisely model quantum software.
Actually, this is one of the things I had to deal with when ramming through the first Ka-band satellite license (as VP of Public Affairs with E'Prime Aerospace) with the FCC:
With such high frequencies directional antennas are so small and the beams so tight, you aren't really dealing with interference in the normal sense. It's more like "licensing" laser colors.
If you're going to place gigabit repeaters on power lines, why not go wireless in Ka-band and just power through the rain? You certainly have enough power.
So long as a P2P system isn't editing for content, you really can't treat a P2P server as anything but a common carrier. That means you can't go after the owner/operators for the content. Going after content-neutral P2P systems is akin to going after Federal Express for delivering CDs that some customer of FedEx had copied illegally.
Now, to the extent that BitTorrent's architecture lends itself to centralized control of content, as asserted by the original poster, Cohen has indeed opened up the owner/operators of said points of control to legal attack.
The article's description of Cohen's "invention" is a description of the way eDonkey2000 works:
Paradoxically, BitTorrent's architecture means that the more popular the file is the faster it downloads - because more people are pitching in. Better yet, it's a virtuous cycle. Users download and share at the same time; as soon as someone receives even a single piece of Fokkers, his computer immediately begins offering it to others. The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads to your computer.
I had said: Think about it: Once you possess something, you basically have no tax burden.
To which "that evil gleek" respondeds: There is such a thing as property tax.
I was referring to Federal taxes (which are the largest source of government revenue), but if we take into account State and local property taxes, we're talking about a violation of the subsistence exemption that I proposed. It isn't right to tax the homes and tools of the trade of your households -- the subsistence assets of the population -- for the same reason it isn't right to confiscate those assets in bankruptcy procedings.
In his commentary on Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel"published on Edge.org, Bill Gates indicates he is sold on Diamond's advocacy of large panmictic ecosystems being the wave of the future. W. D. Hamilton has another view:
The incursions of barbaric pastoralists seem to do civilizations less harm in the long run than one might expect. Indeed, two dark ages and renaissances in Europe suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of pastoralists revitalize the conquered people with an ingredient of progress which tends to die out in a large panmictic population for the reasons already discussed. I have in mind altruism itself, or the part of the altruism which is perhaps better described as self-sacrificial daring. By the time of the renaissance it may be that the mixing of genes and cultures (or of cultures alone if these are the only vehicles, which I doubt) has continued long enough to bring the old mercantile thoughtfulness and the infused daring into conjunction in a few individuals who then find courage for all kinds of inventive innovation against the resistance of established thought and practice. Often, however, the cost in fitness of such altruism and sublimated pugnacity to the individuals concerned is by no means metaphorical, and the benefits to fitness, such as they are, go to a mass of individuals whose genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed. Thus civilization probably slowly reduces its altruism of all kinds, including the kinds needed for cultural creativity (see also Eshel 1972).
Basically, Hamilton is contradicting Diamond's thesis as promoted in "Guns, Germs and Steel" and more recently promoted in "Collapse". Guys like Gates are sold but I'm not.
Rather, I think Hamilton was an optimist:
The current forces driving panmixia, such as modernized global transport and climate control, are likely to produce not simply another collapse, but a dark age from which we may never recover because it will purge the entire world of its "barbarian pastoralists" refuges, leaving no source of rejuvenation for future generations.
This might not happen were it not for the fact that freedom of association, foundation of all other human rights, is systematically attacked by every globalist authority, denying even residents of reservations for indigenous peoples the right to determine their own associations without government interference.
The myth that people outside the reservations have anything approaching genuine freedom of association is falsified by every court decision regarding Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1870 -- making business and residency a domain of enforced panmixia, violating even individual preferences for association. It's bad enough that this fits the definition of genocide under the Geneva Conventions but guys like Diamond have turned it into a State religion crammed down the throats of the entire world via self-absorbed dupes like Gates.
I don't want to worship their gods. I demand my freedom of association. They have declared war by military and police enforcement of their religion upon the peoples of the world who do not want to participate in the technologically amplified mixing of ecosystems and cultures -- who believe something different is best for themselves and wish to associate exclusively with others of like mind -- even though they can't "prove" they are right anymore than can Diamond or Gates about their religion.
I wonder if there is anything fundamentally hostile toward technology in Islam.
If not then some ultra-fundamentalists could set up a government with Zakat Al Mal as the sole means of raising government revenue, setting the tax rate to the long-term rate of GDP growth (which is really how the Federal Reserve set's its interest rates), claim the moral high ground and kick butt not only within Islam but in high tech.
If they got really serious about technology, an idea Randall Burns came up with might cause a mass migration of western technologists to Islam:
Since Islam allows 4 wives per husband, use gender selection technology to maintain a 4 to 1 female to male ratio. A way to decide who sires sons would be those couplings that would maintain purebred lineages, since heterosis-maximizing breeding practices in animal husbandry use hybrid females as multiplier herds.
They could end up with western "nerds" flocking to Islam.
Zakat Al Mal appears to have some of the basic features: subsistence exemption and flat tax on net assets.
The big difference I see is since I'm advocating fixing the tax rate to the interest rate on national debt, and Islam prohibits usury, fixing the rate would be somewhat problematic.
However I don't think Zakat Al Mal the primary source of revenue for Islamic states, is it?
First of all, there is a rational question of how much retirement equity is reasonable to exempt from taxation. The American Association of Boomers told me the average retirement assets per household do not exceed $100k. So think about it. If you have a million dollars in assets you probably have the experience as well as assets to be helping younger people, like your children, set up their own businesses which should have a high ROR given the standard exemption.
The ROR depends on how much of your assets are exempted.
For those with assets below the subsistence exemption their rate of returnis much higher due to the total absence of taxation.
Businesses with a high ROR and high dependence on human capital enhancement will be attracted to this system.
Businesses with a low ROR and low dependence on human capital enhancement will be driven away.
Let's say ROR is the BEFORE TAX rate of return an entity can typically get from its assets including capital gains as well as profits. Let's say ITR is the income tax rate and ATR is the government debt rate and therefore would be the hypothetical asset tax rate. Let's say the entity owns net assets with a market value totaling MV.
For simplicity, let's ignore the standard exemption and assume that the capital gains tax rate is the same as the income tax rate:
The income I = ROR*MV. Income tax IT = I*ITR. After income tax income AITI = I-IT. After income tax rate of return AITROR = AITI/MV. Asset tax AT = MV*ATR. After asset tax income AATI = I-AT.
After asset tax rate of return AATROR = AATI/MV.
Now we can ask:
What how efficient does a business currently have to be in order to prefer the NAT over the current tax system? Or at what values of ROR is AATI>AITI?
The answer: ROR = ATR/ITR
So if your BEFORE tax rate of return on net assets is greater than the hypothetical asset tax rate divided by the income tax rate, you want the NAT. If it is less, you want the present system.
In terms of current AFTER INCOME TAX rates of return, this translates to:
AITROR = ATR*(1/ITR-1)
So under current conditions (approximately):
Setting ATR =.06 Interest on national debt is about 6%, and setting ITR =.28 (income tax is about.28% ignoring social security): AITROR =.06*(1/.28-1) or AITROR =.154
In other words, if our current after tax (ignoring social security tax) income (including capital gains) is more than 15.4% of our net assets, we benefit from the NAT. We'll call the AITROR at which we prefer the NAT over the current tax system the "Critical AITROR". For each Critical AITROR there is an implied "Critical AITI" which is simply the level of after tax income one must be making under the current income tax system, in order to prefer the NAT.
If we factor in the standard exemption (E) as well (still ignoring social security tax relief) the Critical AITROR is given by the formula:
Critical AITROR = (1/ITR-1)*(1-E/MV)*ATR
The Critical AITI is given by:
Critical AITI = MV * Critical AITROR
Setting E = $100,000:
Critical AITROR = (1/.28-1)*(1-$100,000/MV)*.06
For various values of MV (market value of net assets), then the Critical AITROR's (still ignoring social security tax relief) are:
Recall the asset tax exemption which has a very clear purpose and justification:
exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
The vast majority of residential and small business real estate would become totally untaxed directly or indirectly. The middle class would be dramatically expanded by such a reformed tax system. Such bankruptcy protection is routinely extended to retirement plans. The basic principle would probably be that a set dollar amount, say $100k, would be untaxed. If you wanted to live somewhere cheap and save up nearly $100k, you could do so without experiencing any taxes whatsoever. You'd never even have to file.
The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Households have historically provided cannon fodder during wars at
rates vastly below mercenary market rates. This requires some sort of
retainer fee to be equitable to those living with subsistence assets.
If you are going to have bankruptcy protection, the
government should be prevented from confiscating the same assets as
private concerns.
It just makes sense to let people build up some assets before
you start demanding that they pay taxes. People with assets are far
more likely to have long-term views of the world and to have viable
families.
Ultimately, you want to invest most heavily in human capital and the most important way to do that is to cease burdening investments in humans -- which this does.
Recall the asset tax exemption which has a very clear purpose and justification:
exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
The vast majority of residential and small busienss real estate would become totally untaxed directly or indirectly. The middle class would be dramatically expanded by such a reformed tax system.
The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Households have historically provided cannon fodder during wars at
rates vastly below mercenary market rates. This requires some sort of
retainer fee to be equitable to those living with subsistence assets.
If you are going to have bankruptcy protection, the
government should be prevented from confiscating the same assets as
private concerns.
It just makes sense to let people build up some assets before
you start demanding that they pay taxes. People with assets are far
more likely to have long-term views of the world and to have viable
families.
Ultimately, you want to invest most heavily in human capital and the most important way to do that is to cease burdening investments in humans -- which this does.
Recall the asset tax exemption which has a very clear purpose and justification:
exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
The middle class would be dramatically expanded by such a reformed tax system.
The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Households have historically provided cannon fodder during wars at rates vastly below mercenary market rates. This requires some sort of retainer fee to be equitable to those livign with subsistence assets.
If you are going to have bankruptcy protection, the government should be prevented from confiscating the same assets as private concersn.
It just makes sense to let people build up some assets before you start demanding that they pay taxes. People with assets are far more likely to have long-term views of the world and to have viable families.
Ultimately, you want to invest most heavily in human capital and the most important way to do that is to cease burdening investments in humans -- which this does.
Programmers write free software to subvert a system that denies them the protection of their property rights by pricing legal defense of those rights out of their reach.
If they were able to capture enough of the value of what they write to pay for the legal defense of their rights they'd probably write a lot less free software.
This gets to a fundamental problem with the incentives created by taxing things other than asset value:
Possession is rewarded over creation.
Think about it: Once you possess something, you basically have no tax burden. You enjoy the benefits of young men dutifully going out to die in wars, the entire legal edifice describing and protecting your rights and without you having to pay a cent. You can just soak the public for these benefits.
Taxing everything but possession (income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc) is just a way to tax the creative process.
Naturally, creators who are trying to get a leg up on the situation end up selling their creations cheap to those whose possession is subsidized by the tax payments of the creators.
Well, there is one exception to this rule of no taxation of possession -- and that is the patent maintanence fee. Patents are the only assets that the government taxes. This is an incredibly regressive tax hitting hardest those who are earliest to support the realization of a new technology's value -- forcing them to sell their rights ("assign") cheap to someone who has been sitting around enjying the government's protection.
It all adds up to a very nasty way of sucking capital out of the hands of creators and giving over to the hands of possessors.
So the creators, unable to change the tax laws to tax assets rather than creative processes (becuse they can't buy the Ways and Means Committee) become socialists.
This is directly related to the issue of outsourcing since if programmers who had created the value of the information industry had been allowed to retain the value they created, they wouldn't need jobs. The corporations would be paying them royalties or be paying companies owned by the programmers for the rights to their software instead of just throwing creators out on the street after extracting their youth and creativity.
A system that would work would elimnate all existing taxes (although not necessarily tariffs) and just tax net assets at a rate equal to the interest rate on the national debt -- exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
Earlier you said: "Again, I am arguing for freedom of association. If you do not like immigrants, do not associate with them. Don't have the government force your choice in a tyrannical fashion on others."
Then I said: "Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs."
To which you had the audacity to reply: "I am fully aware that the government (lodging laws, etc) does violate freedom of association in many ways, including lodging laws (Holiday Inn owner denying lodging to a black person, etc)."
Just what in the Hell is wrong with your brain?
First, you are saying we can associate how we want then you say you are fully aware we can't associate the way we want.
Secondly, you characterize Civil Rights interferences in a far more limited light than they are actually enforced.
Read my lips mentally deaf one:
You may not set up ANY business without passing the government's test on who you employ.
You may not sign ANY contracts without passing the government's test on who you do sign.
Your command "If you do not like immigrants, do not associate with them." is pure garbage and your inability to hold in your working memory your own statements from one response to the next proof you are zombified to the point you are worthless to dialogue with.
I said: "Read up how the Supreme Court has ruled about Title VII and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Acts as preventing you from forming businesses or even making contracts based on criteria for associations of which the government disapproves"
You responded: "And you claim to be against totalitarian governments and abusive elites...."
I'm saying the government's interference in our private decisions about with whom and on what basis we assocate is of the same moral quality as your interference with our decisions as US citizens about with whom and on what basis we share territorial residence.
There is no de jur "civil right" for anyone to be an employee nor to be a candidate for awarding a contract. Likewise, there is no "basic freedom" for anyone to reside in the US other than US citizens and those who US citizens decide to allow to reside. These supposed "rights" aka "freedoms" are purely de facto operating under color of law with the support of treasonous court decisions.
You are claiming that we have no right to determine who we let into our country.
You have declared war on the majority of the citizens of the United States.
Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs. This indicates that your moral bankruptcy is compounded by mendacity or militant ignorance.
Read up how the Supreme Court has ruled about Title VII and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Acts as preventing you from forming businesses or even making contracts based on criteria for associations of which the government disapproves.
Keep in mind, this same government de facto approves of the association where you may be incarcerated and raped by a "minority" gang if you dare exclude from your private association the immigrants you say have a right to cross the border and stay.
Your specious distinction between "basic freedom" and "fundament human right" won't save your credibility.
If you are in a condo association and you run round with guns enforcing policies for others in the association against the rules to which they agreed on the grounds that some outsiders must be guaranteed the "basic freedom" of invading the condo association, you will rightfully be thought of as a totalitarian tyrant.
The analogy is perfect since you are arguing that due to some specious "basic right" already possessed by the immigrants and/or corporations, the rest of us must admit immigrants to the United States.
If you don't like immigrants, don't employ them, sell to them, buy from them
Until you are more effective working for the repeal of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, than you are opening borders against the wises of your co-citizens, you are fair game. Anyone who recognizes the fact that freedom of association is, not simply a cornerstone, but the foundation of all human rights rightfully sees you as a totalitarian tyrant who is a participant in the greatest current crime against humanity.
It is not a corporate welfare program in any way, as nothing is being given to corporations when you allow individuals the basic freedom to seek a better life.
What is being taken from the majority of the US citizens, are flower lowered immigration levels, is their right to exclude people with whom they wish to not include in their lawful association known as the United States of America. What is beign given to the corporations is a their wish to pay less money in labor costs. It's a clear transfer of rights.
Slashdot Mirror
As the cold war ended there was a shift away from such performance-based purchases to idiotic programs where really really "smart" guys would divine the next wave in wonderfulness and have people with Ivy League and press connections hang around the halls of power schmoozing it up a real whole lot so they could get funding in advance of technical accomplishment.
What you're missing is that the main source of increased speed for silicon was decreased feature size. This geometric scaling of speed is pretty independent of the material. What is not independent of the material is the electron mobility and capacitance.
No, but the trend away from government as lead customer to lead investor started around that time.
That trend appears to be reversing finally with the long and sordid series of failures of government investments.
Tell me again, grandpa, about how the internet was created entirely without government funding or direction.
Well, anonymous coward whipper-snapper, look at the history of Ethernet and compare MAC addressing with IP addressing for a good example of the "benefit" of government direction of networking standards. We had MAC addresses around the same time we had IP addresses (maybe a little before) and the braniacs within the govt agencies decided to drive that brain-dead standard into all networking, including local area networking, while MAC addresses would have been superior.
Now, 3 DECADES later we're seeing IPv6 attempting to reinstitute MAC addresses but there is so much brain damage done by government picking winners we will probably see China go IPv6 before the US -- where MAC addresses were first developed.
Whenever the government "picks winners" rather than letting nature pick winners, the technologists and therefore technology loses.
(Now that Cray is dead, according to the supercomputing FAQ, "The CCC intellectual property was purchased for a mere $250 thousand by Dasu, LLC - a corporation set up and (AFAIK) wholly owned by Mr. Hub Finkelstein, a Texas oilman. He's owned this stuff for five years and hasn't done anything with it.")
Secondly, as I've discussed before both operating system and database programming are awaiting the development of relations, most likely via the predicate calculus, as a foundation for software. Both are essentially parallel processing foundations for software.
This feeds into quantum computing quite nicely as well, as relations are not just inherently parallel, but are parallel in such a way that they precisely model quantum software.
With such high frequencies directional antennas are so small and the beams so tight, you aren't really dealing with interference in the normal sense. It's more like "licensing" laser colors.
If you're going to place gigabit repeaters on power lines, why not go wireless in Ka-band and just power through the rain? You certainly have enough power.
- The FBI goes after a P2P server because it is transporting illegal material.
- The FBI goes after a P2P server because it refuses to cooperate in an investigation.
See the difference?Now, to the extent that BitTorrent's architecture lends itself to centralized control of content, as asserted by the original poster, Cohen has indeed opened up the owner/operators of said points of control to legal attack.
Here is the link to Bill Gate's worshipful words for Jared Diamond.
To which "that evil gleek" respondeds: There is such a thing as property tax.
I was referring to Federal taxes (which are the largest source of government revenue), but if we take into account State and local property taxes, we're talking about a violation of the subsistence exemption that I proposed. It isn't right to tax the homes and tools of the trade of your households -- the subsistence assets of the population -- for the same reason it isn't right to confiscate those assets in bankruptcy procedings.
Rather, I think Hamilton was an optimist:
The current forces driving panmixia, such as modernized global transport and climate control, are likely to produce not simply another collapse, but a dark age from which we may never recover because it will purge the entire world of its "barbarian pastoralists" refuges, leaving no source of rejuvenation for future generations.
This might not happen were it not for the fact that freedom of association, foundation of all other human rights, is systematically attacked by every globalist authority, denying even residents of reservations for indigenous peoples the right to determine their own associations without government interference.
The myth that people outside the reservations have anything approaching genuine freedom of association is falsified by every court decision regarding Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1870 -- making business and residency a domain of enforced panmixia, violating even individual preferences for association. It's bad enough that this fits the definition of genocide under the Geneva Conventions but guys like Diamond have turned it into a State religion crammed down the throats of the entire world via self-absorbed dupes like Gates.
I don't want to worship their gods. I demand my freedom of association. They have declared war by military and police enforcement of their religion upon the peoples of the world who do not want to participate in the technologically amplified mixing of ecosystems and cultures -- who believe something different is best for themselves and wish to associate exclusively with others of like mind -- even though they can't "prove" they are right anymore than can Diamond or Gates about their religion.
If not then some ultra-fundamentalists could set up a government with Zakat Al Mal as the sole means of raising government revenue, setting the tax rate to the long-term rate of GDP growth (which is really how the Federal Reserve set's its interest rates), claim the moral high ground and kick butt not only within Islam but in high tech.
If they got really serious about technology, an idea Randall Burns came up with might cause a mass migration of western technologists to Islam:
Since Islam allows 4 wives per husband, use gender selection technology to maintain a 4 to 1 female to male ratio. A way to decide who sires sons would be those couplings that would maintain purebred lineages, since heterosis-maximizing breeding practices in animal husbandry use hybrid females as multiplier herds.
They could end up with western "nerds" flocking to Islam.
The big difference I see is since I'm advocating fixing the tax rate to the interest rate on national debt, and Islam prohibits usury, fixing the rate would be somewhat problematic.
However I don't think Zakat Al Mal the primary source of revenue for Islamic states, is it?
The ROR depends on how much of your assets are exempted.
For those with assets below the subsistence exemption their rate of returnis much higher due to the total absence of taxation.
Businesses with a high ROR and high dependence on human capital enhancement will be attracted to this system.
Businesses with a low ROR and low dependence on human capital enhancement will be driven away.
Let's say ROR is the BEFORE TAX rate of return an entity can typically get from its assets including capital gains as well as profits. Let's say ITR is the income tax rate and ATR is the government debt rate and therefore would be the hypothetical asset tax rate. Let's say the entity owns net assets with a market value totaling MV.
For simplicity, let's ignore the standard exemption and assume that the capital gains tax rate is the same as the income tax rate:
The income I = ROR*MV. Income tax IT = I*ITR. After income tax income AITI = I-IT. After income tax rate of return AITROR = AITI/MV. Asset tax AT = MV*ATR. After asset tax income AATI = I-AT. After asset tax rate of return AATROR = AATI/MV.
Now we can ask:
What how efficient does a business currently have to be in order to prefer the NAT over the current tax system? Or at what values of ROR is AATI>AITI?
The answer: ROR = ATR/ITR
So if your BEFORE tax rate of return on net assets is greater than the hypothetical asset tax rate divided by the income tax rate, you want the NAT. If it is less, you want the present system.
In terms of current AFTER INCOME TAX rates of return, this translates to:
AITROR = ATR*(1/ITR-1)
So under current conditions (approximately): .06 Interest on national debt is about 6%, and setting ITR = .28 (income tax is about .28% ignoring social security): AITROR = .06*(1/.28-1) or AITROR = .154
Setting ATR =
In other words, if our current after tax (ignoring social security tax) income (including capital gains) is more than 15.4% of our net assets, we benefit from the NAT. We'll call the AITROR at which we prefer the NAT over the current tax system the "Critical AITROR". For each Critical AITROR there is an implied "Critical AITI" which is simply the level of after tax income one must be making under the current income tax system, in order to prefer the NAT.
If we factor in the standard exemption (E) as well (still ignoring social security tax relief) the Critical AITROR is given by the formula:
Critical AITROR = (1/ITR-1)*(1-E/MV)*ATR
The Critical AITI is given by:
Critical AITI = MV * Critical AITROR
Setting E = $100,000:
Critical AITROR = (1/.28-1)*(1-$100,000/MV)*.06
For various values of MV (market value of net assets), then the Critical AITROR's (still ignoring social security tax relief) are:
MV Critical AITROR Critical AITI/YEAR
$0 - $100,000 0% $0
$150,000 5.1% $7650
$200,000 7.7% $15,400
$300,000 10.3% $31,200
$500,000 12.32% $61,600
$1,000,000 13.77% $137,700
These are the figures that are most relevant to wealthy retirees and other individuals who pay no social security.
The most regressive of all taxes, Social Security payroll tax, is at 15.3% of your income (I) up to $53,400 (split 7.65% for you and your employ
Recall the asset tax exemption which has a very clear purpose and justification:
The vast majority of residential and small business real estate would become totally untaxed directly or indirectly. The middle class would be dramatically expanded by such a reformed tax system. Such bankruptcy protection is routinely extended to retirement plans. The basic principle would probably be that a set dollar amount, say $100k, would be untaxed. If you wanted to live somewhere cheap and save up nearly $100k, you could do so without experiencing any taxes whatsoever. You'd never even have to file.The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Do you get it?
Recall the asset tax exemption which has a very clear purpose and justification:
The vast majority of residential and small busienss real estate would become totally untaxed directly or indirectly. The middle class would be dramatically expanded by such a reformed tax system.The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Do you get it?
The reasons for the exemption are manifold and really very obvious:
Do you get it?
If they were able to capture enough of the value of what they write to pay for the legal defense of their rights they'd probably write a lot less free software.
This gets to a fundamental problem with the incentives created by taxing things other than asset value:
Possession is rewarded over creation.
Think about it: Once you possess something, you basically have no tax burden. You enjoy the benefits of young men dutifully going out to die in wars, the entire legal edifice describing and protecting your rights and without you having to pay a cent. You can just soak the public for these benefits.
Taxing everything but possession (income, capital gains, sales, value added, etc) is just a way to tax the creative process.
Naturally, creators who are trying to get a leg up on the situation end up selling their creations cheap to those whose possession is subsidized by the tax payments of the creators.
Well, there is one exception to this rule of no taxation of possession -- and that is the patent maintanence fee. Patents are the only assets that the government taxes. This is an incredibly regressive tax hitting hardest those who are earliest to support the realization of a new technology's value -- forcing them to sell their rights ("assign") cheap to someone who has been sitting around enjying the government's protection.
It all adds up to a very nasty way of sucking capital out of the hands of creators and giving over to the hands of possessors.
So the creators, unable to change the tax laws to tax assets rather than creative processes (becuse they can't buy the Ways and Means Committee) become socialists.
This is directly related to the issue of outsourcing since if programmers who had created the value of the information industry had been allowed to retain the value they created, they wouldn't need jobs. The corporations would be paying them royalties or be paying companies owned by the programmers for the rights to their software instead of just throwing creators out on the street after extracting their youth and creativity.
A system that would work would elimnate all existing taxes (although not necessarily tariffs) and just tax net assets at a rate equal to the interest rate on the national debt -- exempting from taxation the same assets that are exempted by personal bankruptcy protection: home and tools of the trade.
Then I said: "Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs."
To which you had the audacity to reply: "I am fully aware that the government (lodging laws, etc) does violate freedom of association in many ways, including lodging laws (Holiday Inn owner denying lodging to a black person, etc)."
Just what in the Hell is wrong with your brain?
First, you are saying we can associate how we want then you say you are fully aware we can't associate the way we want.
Secondly, you characterize Civil Rights interferences in a far more limited light than they are actually enforced.
Read my lips mentally deaf one:
You may not set up ANY business without passing the government's test on who you employ.
You may not sign ANY contracts without passing the government's test on who you do sign.
Your command "If you do not like immigrants, do not associate with them." is pure garbage and your inability to hold in your working memory your own statements from one response to the next proof you are zombified to the point you are worthless to dialogue with.
You responded: "And you claim to be against totalitarian governments and abusive elites...."
I'm saying the government's interference in our private decisions about with whom and on what basis we assocate is of the same moral quality as your interference with our decisions as US citizens about with whom and on what basis we share territorial residence.
There is no de jur "civil right" for anyone to be an employee nor to be a candidate for awarding a contract. Likewise, there is no "basic freedom" for anyone to reside in the US other than US citizens and those who US citizens decide to allow to reside. These supposed "rights" aka "freedoms" are purely de facto operating under color of law with the support of treasonous court decisions.
You have declared war on the majority of the citizens of the United States.
Worse, you deny that there has been an ongoing government enforcement of violation of the sort of freedom of association you claim we possess in our private affairs. This indicates that your moral bankruptcy is compounded by mendacity or militant ignorance.
Read up how the Supreme Court has ruled about Title VII and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Acts as preventing you from forming businesses or even making contracts based on criteria for associations of which the government disapproves.
Keep in mind, this same government de facto approves of the association where you may be incarcerated and raped by a "minority" gang if you dare exclude from your private association the immigrants you say have a right to cross the border and stay.
If you are in a condo association and you run round with guns enforcing policies for others in the association against the rules to which they agreed on the grounds that some outsiders must be guaranteed the "basic freedom" of invading the condo association, you will rightfully be thought of as a totalitarian tyrant.
The analogy is perfect since you are arguing that due to some specious "basic right" already possessed by the immigrants and/or corporations, the rest of us must admit immigrants to the United States.
If you don't like immigrants, don't employ them, sell to them, buy from them
Until you are more effective working for the repeal of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, than you are opening borders against the wises of your co-citizens, you are fair game. Anyone who recognizes the fact that freedom of association is, not simply a cornerstone, but the foundation of all human rights rightfully sees you as a totalitarian tyrant who is a participant in the greatest current crime against humanity.
To which you responded: "I don't think it is a fundamental human right."
When previously you said:
What is being taken from the majority of the US citizens, are flower lowered immigration levels, is their right to exclude people with whom they wish to not include in their lawful association known as the United States of America. What is beign given to the corporations is a their wish to pay less money in labor costs. It's a clear transfer of rights.