of hybrid and electric. An all electric car inherently has some serious issues, in particular, the five hour refueling time, limited range, and limited power. These can all be solved with a standard combustion engine or fuel cell. There are already groups out there modifying their hybrids into electric vehicles, using the electric mode for short trips and the hybrid mode for long trips.
Buy the minimum and learn to send text messages most of the time. I have lived in Japan for over a year and have less than THREE HOURS of talk time on my cell phone. 95% of the time I need to communicate with someone via cell phone, it is nothing more than "Hey, I will be 10 minutes late" or "where are you?". No need to talk, and no need to bug the hell out of everyone in a 50ft radius.
The fact that you almost never see people yammering on their cells is probably Japan's second-best feature (behind the women, of course). God, would it be wonderful if Americans shut the "#$# up.
I was just going to comment that these solar cells LOOK a heck of a lot more pleasant than the plain black ones. To pretend this does not matter would be a mistake.
This reminds me a lot of the wind generator debate. Some people really loathe them, while some people find them rather pleasant, actually. Me included, of course.
"Wealth", when used in a political context, means the total value of your assets minus your debts. There are a large number of people with very high incomes and negative net worths, and likewise there are a large number of people with modest incomes but large net worths.
while the housing bubble bursts, then move back to the Bay. Or brush up on your Chinese and get out before the dollar and US economy collapses. We are in for some pain real soon, methinks. We have been sending out tons of green paper for years, and sooner or later, it is all going to come back.
Taxes are part of that expenditure. Payroll taxes do not affect those with large incomes nearly the way they affect those with smaller incomes. For one thing, payroll taxes only affect wages. They do not affect capital gains and dividends.
Payroll taxes should not be lumped other taxes. They are quite unique, as the money is used for PRIVATE goods, not public ones - YOUR health care and YOUR retirement. Payroll "taxes" are a round-about way of a mandatory minimum retirement savings and insurance plan. The system is stupid but is not biased against the poor. In fact, FICA includes a small welfare program (transfering from rich to poor). For the middle-class, it is mostly just shuffling the deck with no purpose, as people get out what they put in. The reason the left opposes private accounts is not that it would drastically change anything, but it would A: Make the welfare program explicit and B: Make it obvious that retirement savings should not be lumped with public-good taxes. Noting that the poor need to save a larger fraction of their income to meet a basic retirement is not news.
Income taxes are progressive, but sales and property taxes are not. Sales tax is assessed in proportion to consumption, not in proportion to income or wealth. Thus, sales taxes tend to be regressive, as those with less income spend a greater proportion of their income on basic necessities. Property taxes are a bit more complicated: They tend to hit folks in the middle. Poorer folks tend to rent, and pay property tax indirectly through rent. That tax is amortized over all the renters and so tends to hit each individual less. The folks in the middle buy houses and get hit with property tax directly.
Both property and sales taxes are regressive, arbitrary and stupid. The income tax is far superior. Sin taxes (such as road tolls, park entrance fees, registration fees, or pollution fees) are even better. However, you should note that homeowners get absurd tax-breaks relative to renters. The biggest one of all is actually not the interest deduction, but the fact that you can sell your home tax-free. That saves middle-class folks billions upon billions every year. I have done some extensive calculations on this because I will soon buy my first home. Amazingly, I will accumulate more wealth after 20 years by spending $1400 on a mortage + upkeep on a house than half that on an apartment (and investing the rest). Without the tax incentives, it would be lop-sided in favor of renting.
Overall tax burden, measured as a proportion of income, is closer to flat than most people realize.
I agree. However, most people that make this argument lump too many thing under the umbrella of "taxes". There is a difference between paying the government money in return for them directly providing YOU with a service, and paying the government money in return for them providing a service that benefits everyone roughly equally (such as courts or the military). The former should be paid for by the user, and will probably be "regressive" in the sense that poorer people will use larger fractions of their money to purchase such services. They probably spend larger fractions of their money on other basics such as food, clothing, and housing, too. This is not unfair. The latter, however, should either be flat or progressive, depending on your point-of-view.
Personally, I think many of the recent tax reforms are rather bogus... they tend to tilt the overall tax burden further toward the lower ranks, pushing the investment (and thus, wealth accumulation) threshold further up. Cecil Adams did a thoughtful analysis of Reagan's tax reforms. I'd love to see him do an update relative to Bush's reforms. Hint: Us middle class wage earners don't earn the bulk of our income from dividends. I bet you can guess who does, though.
Actually, the system became more progressive under the Bush tax cuts. However, the poor do not pay any taxes, so you cannot cut zero (though I s
Is is a measure of the difference between what you earn and what you spend. Telling me that the rich are saving more than the poor, or more than they did in the past, doesn't tell me much that is useful, and surely doesn't imply there is a problem. INCOME, or the potential to spend, is the only measure that matters in this type of debate.
Who is richer? Someone who makes $1,000,000 a year and spends $1,050,000, or someone who makes $50,000 a year and spends $30,000. Who is has more "wealth"?
though you would have a better shot than doing it in Asia. If you have a problem with the bay area, feel free to move elsewhere. In the town I am moving to next month, I can buy a median family home with less than two years of my starting salary, before bonus. Of course, the weather won't be nearly perfect as it is in CA, but such is the trade-offs we all face.
Strangely enough, you try to imply that Europe is better than the US by comparing it to the Bay area, which is about as European a place as you can find in the US, though much richer and productive.
The difference between us and Europe is not that our poor are poorer, but that our rich are richer, and so is our middle-class. Perhaps the worst five percent in Europe is better off than the US, the next 20% is roughly equal, and the remaining 75% is somewhat to substantially poorer.
I will play the odds in the states, thank you very much. If you are worried about being in the botton 5%, buy insurance or move to Canada.
FYI, I have lived in both Europe and Asia, and thank God I am lucky enough to be an American. We have it better than anyone else. Also, as a side note, many Europeans appear to be rich because they are childless. Their birthrates are well below replacement levels, making such a society unsustainable. Instead of having kids, they are wasting money on travel and fashion. Does this make them richer?
power source so that you can drive for 10 hours without seeing any sign of humanity (except for the car and the road, of course). Try getting out of your car and slowing down, and you can you can get the same effect (actually better) without requiring uptillion square miles of empty land.
Then drive to your local state park which is ten
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Tilting At Windmills
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miles away, unless you live in downtown LA or NYC, in which case it is of your own damned choosing that there is not much green in your neighborhood.
There is a thousand times more green area to play in and travel through in America alone than anyone could see in a lifetime. If you want to live in it, move to a rural area. If you want a lifestyle with lots of ameneties, live in an urban or surburban area. I am sorry that you can't have your cake and eat it too, but that is life.
National Park, visited every state park within 500 miles, and been to at least fifty national parks outside of the US, please get back to me.
Until then, please quit whining about the "natural" view from the highway. For Christ's sake. You can drive through the desert forever and see nothing but dirt.
As his argument has turned religious (as is common among environmentalists). "Pristine" is little different than "holy" and has no place in political discourse.
You are right, wind has tax breaks. So do petro and nuclear. Eliminate them all or at least make them equal.
Ever been to western Texas? There are hundreds of them. However, you have to put them where the wind blows, and as close to the actual point of use as possible (you lose energy upon transmission).
and the evidence points to the fact that they INCREASE local property values. Those whining shits in Cape Cod should have their houses eminant-domained and turn into nuke plants ASAP.
The Sierra Club is not an environmental group
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They are a political action committee who spends the vast majority of their money on left-wing political activism and fundraising. If you want to find an organization that actually spends money on the environment, try the Nature Conservatory. Better yet, sign up for your local green energy program (available in most places for a 10% premium or so), replace all your incandescents with compact flourescents, and get better insulation for your attic, windows, and water heater.
I will give the Sierra Club the proper acknowledgement for being on the right side of the wind farm debate, however. They aren't ALWAYS wrong, of course.
This has been repeatedly confirmed in both the US and abroad. Anyone who claims this now is either and idiot or a liar, and their claims should be immediately dismissed as uninformed.
last year Exxon could make just about anything it wants its "core business" as of tomorrow. There are few industries with significant barriers to entry. Neither the automobile or the oil business does, as plenty of companies have gotten in and out over the last few decades.
Yes, it will. If they can build something that saves you a gallon of gas, they can charge you just under three bucks for it. Yes, they make a few cents for each gallon sold, but they would much rather be making three dollars.
As long as the customer is better served with the gasoline-saving device, the oil company can extract more profit selling it than it can selling gasoline. This is generally true in any market - one can always make more money by selling the product that the customer desires most.
Or are you willfully ignorant of the repeated cycles of oil boom and bust? Oil was much less than $20/barrel not very long ago. Many people have lost their shirts in the oil busts, and in any case, it is a competitive market. If profits get too high for too long, new people enter and lower them. Thank God for the invisible hand.
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of hybrid and electric. An all electric car inherently has some serious issues, in particular, the five hour refueling time, limited range, and limited power. These can all be solved with a standard combustion engine or fuel cell. There are already groups out there modifying their hybrids into electric vehicles, using the electric mode for short trips and the hybrid mode for long trips.
m l
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69519-0.ht
Buy the minimum and learn to send text messages most of the time. I have lived in Japan for over a year and have less than THREE HOURS of talk time on my cell phone. 95% of the time I need to communicate with someone via cell phone, it is nothing more than "Hey, I will be 10 minutes late" or "where are you?". No need to talk, and no need to bug the hell out of everyone in a 50ft radius.
The fact that you almost never see people yammering on their cells is probably Japan's second-best feature (behind the women, of course). God, would it be wonderful if Americans shut the "#$# up.
I was just going to comment that these solar cells LOOK a heck of a lot more pleasant than the plain black ones. To pretend this does not matter would be a mistake.
This reminds me a lot of the wind generator debate. Some people really loathe them, while some people find them rather pleasant, actually. Me included, of course.
"Wealth", when used in a political context, means the total value of your assets minus your debts. There are a large number of people with very high incomes and negative net worths, and likewise there are a large number of people with modest incomes but large net worths.
while the housing bubble bursts, then move back to the Bay. Or brush up on your Chinese and get out before the dollar and US economy collapses. We are in for some pain real soon, methinks. We have been sending out tons of green paper for years, and sooner or later, it is all going to come back.
Taxes are part of that expenditure. Payroll taxes do not affect those with large incomes nearly the way they affect those with smaller incomes. For one thing, payroll taxes only affect wages. They do not affect capital gains and dividends.
Payroll taxes should not be lumped other taxes. They are quite unique, as the money is used for PRIVATE goods, not public ones - YOUR health care and YOUR retirement. Payroll "taxes" are a round-about way of a mandatory minimum retirement savings and insurance plan. The system is stupid but is not biased against the poor. In fact, FICA includes a small welfare program (transfering from rich to poor). For the middle-class, it is mostly just shuffling the deck with no purpose, as people get out what they put in. The reason the left opposes private accounts is not that it would drastically change anything, but it would A: Make the welfare program explicit and B: Make it obvious that retirement savings should not be lumped with public-good taxes. Noting that the poor need to save a larger fraction of their income to meet a basic retirement is not news.
Income taxes are progressive, but sales and property taxes are not. Sales tax is assessed in proportion to consumption, not in proportion to income or wealth. Thus, sales taxes tend to be regressive, as those with less income spend a greater proportion of their income on basic necessities. Property taxes are a bit more complicated: They tend to hit folks in the middle. Poorer folks tend to rent, and pay property tax indirectly through rent. That tax is amortized over all the renters and so tends to hit each individual less. The folks in the middle buy houses and get hit with property tax directly.
Both property and sales taxes are regressive, arbitrary and stupid. The income tax is far superior. Sin taxes (such as road tolls, park entrance fees, registration fees, or pollution fees) are even better. However, you should note that homeowners get absurd tax-breaks relative to renters. The biggest one of all is actually not the interest deduction, but the fact that you can sell your home tax-free. That saves middle-class folks billions upon billions every year. I have done some extensive calculations on this because I will soon buy my first home. Amazingly, I will accumulate more wealth after 20 years by spending $1400 on a mortage + upkeep on a house than half that on an apartment (and investing the rest). Without the tax incentives, it would be lop-sided in favor of renting.
Overall tax burden, measured as a proportion of income, is closer to flat than most people realize.
I agree. However, most people that make this argument lump too many thing under the umbrella of "taxes". There is a difference between paying the government money in return for them directly providing YOU with a service, and paying the government money in return for them providing a service that benefits everyone roughly equally (such as courts or the military). The former should be paid for by the user, and will probably be "regressive" in the sense that poorer people will use larger fractions of their money to purchase such services. They probably spend larger fractions of their money on other basics such as food, clothing, and housing, too. This is not unfair. The latter, however, should either be flat or progressive, depending on your point-of-view.
Personally, I think many of the recent tax reforms are rather bogus... they tend to tilt the overall tax burden further toward the lower ranks, pushing the investment (and thus, wealth accumulation) threshold further up. Cecil Adams did a thoughtful analysis of Reagan's tax reforms. I'd love to see him do an update relative to Bush's reforms. Hint: Us middle class wage earners don't earn the bulk of our income from dividends. I bet you can guess who does, though.
Actually, the system became more progressive under the Bush tax cuts. However, the poor do not pay any taxes, so you cannot cut zero (though I s
Is is a measure of the difference between what you earn and what you spend. Telling me that the rich are saving more than the poor, or more than they did in the past, doesn't tell me much that is useful, and surely doesn't imply there is a problem. INCOME, or the potential to spend, is the only measure that matters in this type of debate.
Who is richer? Someone who makes $1,000,000 a year and spends $1,050,000, or someone who makes $50,000 a year and spends $30,000. Who is has more "wealth"?
though you would have a better shot than doing it in Asia. If you have a problem with the bay area, feel free to move elsewhere. In the town I am moving to next month, I can buy a median family home with less than two years of my starting salary, before bonus. Of course, the weather won't be nearly perfect as it is in CA, but such is the trade-offs we all face.
Strangely enough, you try to imply that Europe is better than the US by comparing it to the Bay area, which is about as European a place as you can find in the US, though much richer and productive.
The difference between us and Europe is not that our poor are poorer, but that our rich are richer, and so is our middle-class. Perhaps the worst five percent in Europe is better off than the US, the next 20% is roughly equal, and the remaining 75% is somewhat to substantially poorer.
I will play the odds in the states, thank you very much. If you are worried about being in the botton 5%, buy insurance or move to Canada.
FYI, I have lived in both Europe and Asia, and thank God I am lucky enough to be an American. We have it better than anyone else. Also, as a side note, many Europeans appear to be rich because they are childless. Their birthrates are well below replacement levels, making such a society unsustainable. Instead of having kids, they are wasting money on travel and fashion. Does this make them richer?
power source so that you can drive for 10 hours without seeing any sign of humanity (except for the car and the road, of course). Try getting out of your car and slowing down, and you can you can get the same effect (actually better) without requiring uptillion square miles of empty land.
miles away, unless you live in downtown LA or NYC, in which case it is of your own damned choosing that there is not much green in your neighborhood.
There is a thousand times more green area to play in and travel through in America alone than anyone could see in a lifetime. If you want to live in it, move to a rural area. If you want a lifestyle with lots of ameneties, live in an urban or surburban area. I am sorry that you can't have your cake and eat it too, but that is life.
National Park, visited every state park within 500 miles, and been to at least fifty national parks outside of the US, please get back to me.
Until then, please quit whining about the "natural" view from the highway. For Christ's sake. You can drive through the desert forever and see nothing but dirt.
As his argument has turned religious (as is common among environmentalists). "Pristine" is little different than "holy" and has no place in political discourse.
You are right, wind has tax breaks. So do petro and nuclear. Eliminate them all or at least make them equal.
Ever been to western Texas? There are hundreds of them. However, you have to put them where the wind blows, and as close to the actual point of use as possible (you lose energy upon transmission).
and the evidence points to the fact that they INCREASE local property values. Those whining shits in Cape Cod should have their houses eminant-domained and turn into nuke plants ASAP.
They are a political action committee who spends the vast majority of their money on left-wing political activism and fundraising. If you want to find an organization that actually spends money on the environment, try the Nature Conservatory. Better yet, sign up for your local green energy program (available in most places for a 10% premium or so), replace all your incandescents with compact flourescents, and get better insulation for your attic, windows, and water heater.
I will give the Sierra Club the proper acknowledgement for being on the right side of the wind farm debate, however. They aren't ALWAYS wrong, of course.
in Texas where a professor said it would be a good thing if a virus whiped out 90% of the population. Is that close enough?
millions.
Just for perspective.
This has been repeatedly confirmed in both the US and abroad. Anyone who claims this now is either and idiot or a liar, and their claims should be immediately dismissed as uninformed.
the bills. See HBO and its like for details. Nor does cable cover broadcast television.
Sorry, but you need to contribute more time or money.
Producing and distributing TV shows ain't free. One way or another, we have to pay. Get over it.
Typical margins for manufacturing are 5-8%. The lower the number, the stronger the my argument, actually.
Now I am willing to bet if we compare Exxon's margins during the 80s bust vs the same period for GM, we would find the opposite trend as we do now.
last year Exxon could make just about anything it wants its "core business" as of tomorrow. There are few industries with significant barriers to entry. Neither the automobile or the oil business does, as plenty of companies have gotten in and out over the last few decades.
Yes, it will. If they can build something that saves you a gallon of gas, they can charge you just under three bucks for it. Yes, they make a few cents for each gallon sold, but they would much rather be making three dollars.
As long as the customer is better served with the gasoline-saving device, the oil company can extract more profit selling it than it can selling gasoline. This is generally true in any market - one can always make more money by selling the product that the customer desires most.
Or are you willfully ignorant of the repeated cycles of oil boom and bust? Oil was much less than $20/barrel not very long ago. Many people have lost their shirts in the oil busts, and in any case, it is a competitive market. If profits get too high for too long, new people enter and lower them. Thank God for the invisible hand.