Another issue with this data is that areas with lots of cameras are likely to be areas with lots of crime. Unfortunately, crimes in high-crime areas are probably more likely to be "random", therefore being harder to solve. Also, residents of high-crime areas often distrust police, again making crimes harder to solve there.
What you would need to do in order to really observe these effects would be a randomized trial, and this was far from it.
And in any case, what about the deterrence effect?
I noticed the same thing out in Alberta earlier this summer. Everything seemed whacky expensive, at least 20% more than what I would pay in the states. Anything from a bottle of soda to cars seemed outrageous. The dollars were essentially equal at the time, so that wasn't factoring in to my surprise.
"Right. You said it. Outside of politics. You still refuse to actually correlate Bush's crimes with Clinton's crimes. My point is specifically that at different points up and down the chain, people get treated differently. People tend to give the president much license because he's so high-profile."
No, inside of politics, it has nothing to do with your position on the "chain". Republicans hold themselves to high standards (too high, actually....what Craig did, for instance, was equivalent to getting busted for driving five over in a speed trap). Democrats can't even get rid of people for accepting bribes, let alone such petty crimes as sexual harrassment.
"People are allowed to have as much ass sex as they want, as long as they don't vote against it. Plus, it's telling that the kid turned 18 6 weeks before a recorded interchange.
Sounds quite legal to me. Being a hypocrit and creep are not against the law.
There is a statement in there that is false under some interpretations ("no one anticipated") but not false under the much more narrow context that Bush meant. What he was trying to say is that no one in the leadership of FEMA or in his admin came to him and said "Oh my God! We have to do something! There is a good chance the levees will break", not "No one in the history of the universe has ever complained about the quality of those levees". When questioned on the statement, Bush clarified it to the first, true, meaning. There was no particular intent to deceive and hence it was not a lie.
Now you are suffering from a classic psychological trick called hindsight bias. It was not that Bush had NO warnings about AQ before 9/11. It was that he had 10,000 warnings about 10,000 different things before 9/11. Every idiot can see the needle in the haystack after the fact.
Well, then, this marks a change for the better now that the likes of Alberto Glz are caught. Let's hope the next Democrat who does it on such a major scale gets caught as well. Washington is a fucking cesspool.
Do you not understand that most presidents fire ALL of the people in that department and replace them ALL with their lackeys. This is the way it always has worked.
No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent.
"Dissent is important."
No, rational, well-thought, respectful dissent is important. The rest is garbage at best and dangerous at worst.
"People being able to speak without being threatened by the government is important."
Agreed, but who is being threatened for mere dissent?
It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.
"All false choices.
I was asking your preference, but I see you use the NeoCon ignorance defense."
You don't understand the concept of a "false choice". It means asking someone X or Y and trying to force them to choose, when both X and Y or neither X or Y are options.
"First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is.
Not in Iraq. I understand you're not a Humanist."
Actually, I am. Which is why I support the unseating of every dictator on earth. I have no idea why the left tolerates them so.
"
And you're probably very white and have probably never left the country."
I have lived outside the US twice and travelled abroad many times.
"But the real world exists out there, too. And people are trying to live their lives like you live you
"I keep trying to draw the correlation from president to president, and you keep drawing it from president to lower offices."
The distinction you wish for doesn't exist. Outside of politics, it you actually get held to higher standards as you move up the chain. Sexual harassment is common among blue collar workers. It is rare among professionals, as it would get you canned. And as for executives, even consentual, loving relationships with other executives can getted you canned, as happened to one of the former CEOs of Boeing. In politics, standards are lower, and for Democrats, even lower yet. Clinton sexually harassed an employee. He was utterly defended by his own party. The "page-fucker", as I believe you called him, sorta indicated that he was sexually interested in a former employee of legal age. He was roundly condemned by his own party. Grasp the difference yet?
"The current president has lied directly to the American people, and continues to lie."
Documentation, please. I have yet to find a liberal that can stand up to such a simple challenge.
"His administration has falsified information"
"fired people for political leanings"
That is normal. Most completely clean house as they enter office and put their own lackeys in place.
"He has appointed supreme court justices that prop up his cronies"
All the moderates SCOTUS were appointed by Republicans. Democrats ONLY appointed wingers. I think you need to re-evaluate who may be the problem.
"He has manipulated the state of fear generated by terrorism to control the population, which I think is terrorism in and of itself."
And Democrats don't use fear with respect to Social Security, Health Care, and a host of other issues? Man, you reek of hypocrisy and are clearly blind to your own side's foibles.
"He encouraged--still encourages--a climate where dissent equals betrayal to our country."
No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent. It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.
1. Would you prefer to be tortured, or sexually harassed?
2. Would you prefer a bomb drop on your house, or be sexually harassed?
3. Would you prefer to be blamed for emboldening the terrorists when you disagree with a politician, or be lied to about sexual harassment?
4. Would you prefer to have a couple billion dollars stolen, or be sexually harassed?
All false choices. First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is. Second, most of them are more likely happen under Democrats anyway.
"5. Would you prefer to be black in America, or be sexually harassed? (hint: you probably don't know what it's like to be black)"
Racism is such a minor factor in America now that if you believe it is what is holding you back, the problem is your lack of self-will, not the few remaining closet bigots.
"Your spin has the unfortunate fact of not being as well supported by the study's data. The liberals had increased brain activity when presented with the unexpected data"
You mean that on average, they had more activity in some tiny fragment of the brain. That doesn't imply "more brain activity".
"whereas nothing indicated that the conservatives would have preferred to "stop and think about it" given more time, but I will give you the point that a study could be conducted to see if this is the case."
If five percent of the liberal's brain doubles in activity, you could measure it. If that extra activity it spread throughout the brain, you wouldn't.
However, the point that liberals ignore the contradictory information is silly - the data shows that the contradictory information was processed and acted upon accurately, which doesn't jive well with your hypothetical spin.
There are plenty of instances where gut instinct has been shown to be better than deliberate thought, especially when rushed.
The spin researchers put on data is important and open to bias, but your spin simply doesn't correspond to the data presented in TFA.
Any connection AT ALL between millisecond differences in clicking patterns and complex thoughts about the real world is not supported by the data in any way.
Quite relevant in a sexual harassment case. Clinton should have been smart enough to know that his past shenanegans could come back to haunt him and kept it in his pants (or at least outside of work). Actually, any CEO in America or Republican would have been canned by his own directors/party just for what he did with Lewinski, let alone what he was accused of doing with Jones or the others.
"but we've got the neo-cons, the page-fucker, the anonymous gay sex guy, and my republican acquaintances are completely steadfast in their support of 'their' people, even when they can provide zero reason"
Actually, these guys got canned because of pressure from their own party, even though in none of those cases did the person in question break any serious law. However, Democrats to this day still venerate people who lied under oath, and committed sexual harassment and probably rape. And what about that guy with the 90k in his fridge? You guys even bothered to getting him off his committee yet (let alone forcing him out of congress). Oh wait, if the bribery is good enough, you get leadership positions like Murfa.
I think the correct conclusion would be that a strikingly even line is drawn through our population. One half freely (to an extent) accepts new information when it's presented. The other half is resistant to new information, and favors information that is older and more established.
Since the moment I saw this article, this type of interpretation struck me as spin, not data. First, the correlation was weak. But even granting that it was real, the interpretation from clicking M's and W's to anything regarding complex thoughts is aburdly suspect, and anyone claiming to be a scientist or researcher should refrain from it entirely. I consider myself to be part of that community, though my research has nothing to do with neurology.
For example, one could spin the data entirely differently than you just did. How about
"When presented with information contradictory to their expectations, liberals ignore it, while conservatives stop and think about it".
This is just as justified an interpretation as the one you gave, but switches around who sounds "smart" and "dumb".
If we charge $200, then we only get 10 customers, so the revenue is $2,000, the fixed costs are $1,000, and the variable costs are 10*10=100. So the profit is $900. i don't know what $90 "social profit" means.
In the simplest case of a market placing the price at $200 (or at ANY single profitable price), you will find that the total profit made by all involved is $900. In the case of $200, the ten rich folks break even (paying $200 for something worth $200), the company makes $900, and the poor folks also break even (paying nothing for nothing). However, what your textbook was trying to show is that there was a government based solution that could exceed $900. In your example, the poor again break even (paying $11 total for something worth $11), but the rich now only pay $101 for something they value at $200, meaning they make in total $990. The company breaks even under your numbers. Note that $990>$900, which is what your textbook was trying to emphasize...that a government could in theory beat a market.
I am sad that you somehow got through an economics book and didn't come across the concept of deadweight loss. It usually is in the first couple chapters of Econ 101. A deadweight loss is a loss offset by no corresponding gain. Taxes almost always are coupled with them. How so? Because virtually all taxes (income, sales, property in particular) are taxes on productive behavior. To SOME degree, taxing these productive behaviors discourages them....people don't take the job, buy that shirt, or add to their house even though these things are a net positive for them in the absence of taxes. Nobody gains anything when people skip out on mutually beneficial trades or enjoyable private behaviors because taxes make them unprofitable. That good is simply lost - a dead weight. Monopolies also create dead-weight losses, which is why most governments regulate against them. The dead-weight associated with the major taxes is around 15-20%...by which I mean that for every dollar the government brings in, $.15-.20 of productive economic behavior is effectively discouraged, never taxed, and never undertaken, to no ones benefit. A pure loss it is.
One would be hard-pressed indeed to stretch the numbers in your example in order to make the dead-weight associated with fixed costs exceed the dead-weight associated with the taxes you would like to implement as a solution. Additionally, the market already HAS a mechanism to solve the problem you presented anyway. There is a reason there are such choices as first class airplane tickets vs coach, HBO vs basic cable, coupons, senior citizen discounts, etc. Markets will find a way to set tiered prices to solve the very dilemma you managed to find, without government intervention.
Note that the price could have been set at $200, and only $90 less social profit total would have been made in theory. On the other hand, you had to collect $1000 in tax, which has dead-weight losses much larger than the $90 (15-20% is a typical "textbook" estimate). You already had to bend the numbers well beyond reality to even observe your desired effect. Now you will have to bend them 2-3 times further to get things to tip your way.
Being half-right can be as bad being completely wrong.
I am a libertarian nerd, and can assure you, my political leanings were developed long before I ever had much money, or even really had a solid plan to get it. The same is true for most people. I would hazard to guess that most people could be sorted into basic political categories by 7th or 8th grade with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
However, I have noticed over the years a strong tendency for libertarianism vs liberalism based on mathematical ability, and clearly that also correlates with "nerdiness".
If my neighbors were on vacation, and I went over to their house, picked the lock, and put a sign out on the road saying "Door unlocked, owners out-of-town, please help yourself", should I be surprised if someone loots the place and I get my butt sued over it?
Who says it will cost more to deal with the aftermath in Iraq than to stay there?
If you are going to claim that you want to use the money "saved" by pulling out of Iraq will fund your pet project, the burden of proof is on your shoulders, not mine.
How are we saving money by occupying a country indefinitely?
Because it could arguably be cheaper than the alternatives.
How would we save money by generating a public health care crisis?
Outside of communicable diseases, which generally aren't much of an issue in the US and don't cost much to fend off, health care is a private matter.
All those people who want to fund their "pet project" of funding higher education would like to do so with money...
money that belongs to someone else, of course. If you have the ability to truly benefit from higher education, you have the ability to self-finance it.
It is always interesting that when people want to find money for their pet program, they always call to cut the war in Iraq. Why not Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Those are a much bigger slice of the budget pie? And in any case, how would cutting funding to the war save us money, as dealing with the disasterous aftermath (a full-scale middle east blowup) could cost us even more?
Yeah, because Bush would really sign that into law, wouldn't he? So Congress is forced to take what they can get, and raising the minimum wage is better than nothing.
So if you can't get an effective policy passed, it somehow justifies supporting an ineffective and costly policy instead? One more reason I will never be able to vote for a Democrat...
The problem is the area outside of the row-to-row houses, which extends for miles in all directions. The houses are not 50 feet apart, but a hundred, two hundred, etc.
I have lived both in Japan and Europe. Neither cities nor villages sprawl like this. They tend to be much more compact with fairly well-defined edges.
In any case, it is rather irrelevant. I do not know a single person in the US that wants broadband but can't get it, or can't afford it. I know many who either don't care about the internet at all, or find dial-up sufficient. I think the differences between us and some other countries on this matter are more social than technological.
Yep, and Econ 102 doesn't turn Econ 101 upside down, as you clearly wish it would.
For example, if you want to force others to give money to the working poor, there is a far better way to do it than the minimum wage. Just raise taxes and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. It actually accomplishes your goal, and spreads the costs around to all taxpayers as evenly and fairly as the tax code can accomplish.
The minimum wage, on the other hand, doesn't actually make anyone any richer in a competitive market, which low-wage labor most certainly is. Instead, the worst workers (usually teens) lose their jobs, and the rest are made to work a bit harder to make up for it. The boss might have to pay you a few extra cents an hour, but he can always turn off the AC in the kitchen, cut the discounted meals, and crack down on those breaks that had been running a few minutes over Are you any better off? Presumably not, because you could have negotiated this "a few more pennies for a more annoying job" system before the minimum wage was passed, but you did not.
About 80% of policies supported by Democrats are direct affronts to Economics 101. Some currently debated ones are minimum wages, CAFE standards, protectionist trade policies, and many more.
The left also hates genetically modified foods and nuclear power, despite the science that confirms that there is no reason to fear them more than the alternatives.
Neither side is very good at dealing with data that refutes their beliefs.
Urbanization doesn't explain much, either. It is an "either or", rather than a continuum. By whatever your definition is, your "urban" areas clearly include our sprawling suburbs.
But most Fins and Swedes live in concentrated areas, much more so that in the US. Population density very deceptive in this regard. It is not how many people you have per square mile, but rather this average distance to your nearest neighbor. These can lead to quite different conclusions.
What a stupid, childish attitude. If you think that those who disagree with you politically are by-and-large stupid, evil, greedy and/or corrupt, it is a sure sign that you are simply too stupid to understand them.
Re:An argument for doing away with drug patents
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Patents Don't Pay
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As someone who prefers data to anecdotes, you make me laugh.
Slashdot Mirror
to critically analyze a research paper probably DOES already have access to it.
The layman cannot do this anymore. Not even a scientist in a tangentially-related field can.
Quit trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and just live a life where you don't have embarassing secrets to hide.
It really does make life easier.
Another issue with this data is that areas with lots of cameras are likely to be areas with lots of crime. Unfortunately, crimes in high-crime areas are probably more likely to be "random", therefore being harder to solve. Also, residents of high-crime areas often distrust police, again making crimes harder to solve there.
What you would need to do in order to really observe these effects would be a randomized trial, and this was far from it.
And in any case, what about the deterrence effect?
I noticed the same thing out in Alberta earlier this summer. Everything seemed whacky expensive, at least 20% more than what I would pay in the states. Anything from a bottle of soda to cars seemed outrageous. The dollars were essentially equal at the time, so that wasn't factoring in to my surprise.
"Right. You said it. Outside of politics. You still refuse to actually correlate Bush's crimes with Clinton's crimes. My point is specifically that at different points up and down the chain, people get treated differently. People tend to give the president much license because he's so high-profile."
No, inside of politics, it has nothing to do with your position on the "chain". Republicans hold themselves to high standards (too high, actually....what Craig did, for instance, was equivalent to getting busted for driving five over in a speed trap). Democrats can't even get rid of people for accepting bribes, let alone such petty crimes as sexual harrassment.
"People are allowed to have as much ass sex as they want, as long as they don't vote against it. Plus, it's telling that the kid turned 18 6 weeks before a recorded interchange.
Sounds quite legal to me. Being a hypocrit and creep are not against the law.
OK, Katrina: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/02/fema.tapes/index.html
There is a statement in there that is false under some interpretations ("no one anticipated") but not false under the much more narrow context that Bush meant. What he was trying to say is that no one in the leadership of FEMA or in his admin came to him and said "Oh my God! We have to do something! There is a good chance the levees will break", not "No one in the history of the universe has ever complained about the quality of those levees". When questioned on the statement, Bush clarified it to the first, true, meaning. There was no particular intent to deceive and hence it was not a lie.
WMDs, and on my fear-as-manipulation claim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o
Both sides use fear. Not news to me.
9/11: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm
Now you are suffering from a classic psychological trick called hindsight bias. It was not that Bush had NO warnings about AQ before 9/11. It was that he had 10,000 warnings about 10,000 different things before 9/11. Every idiot can see the needle in the haystack after the fact.
Well, then, this marks a change for the better now that the likes of Alberto Glz are caught. Let's hope the next Democrat who does it on such a major scale gets caught as well. Washington is a fucking cesspool.
Do you not understand that most presidents fire ALL of the people in that department and replace them ALL with their lackeys. This is the way it always has worked.
No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent.
"Dissent is important."
No, rational, well-thought, respectful dissent is important. The rest is garbage at best and dangerous at worst.
"People being able to speak without being threatened by the government is important."
Agreed, but who is being threatened for mere dissent?
It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.
"All false choices. I was asking your preference, but I see you use the NeoCon ignorance defense."
You don't understand the concept of a "false choice". It means asking someone X or Y and trying to force them to choose, when both X and Y or neither X or Y are options.
"First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is. Not in Iraq. I understand you're not a Humanist."
Actually, I am. Which is why I support the unseating of every dictator on earth. I have no idea why the left tolerates them so.
" And you're probably very white and have probably never left the country."
I have lived outside the US twice and travelled abroad many times.
"But the real world exists out there, too. And people are trying to live their lives like you live you
"I keep trying to draw the correlation from president to president, and you keep drawing it from president to lower offices."
The distinction you wish for doesn't exist. Outside of politics, it you actually get held to higher standards as you move up the chain. Sexual harassment is common among blue collar workers. It is rare among professionals, as it would get you canned. And as for executives, even consentual, loving relationships with other executives can getted you canned, as happened to one of the former CEOs of Boeing. In politics, standards are lower, and for Democrats, even lower yet. Clinton sexually harassed an employee. He was utterly defended by his own party. The "page-fucker", as I believe you called him, sorta indicated that he was sexually interested in a former employee of legal age. He was roundly condemned by his own party. Grasp the difference yet?
"The current president has lied directly to the American people, and continues to lie."
Documentation, please. I have yet to find a liberal that can stand up to such a simple challenge.
"His administration has falsified information"
"fired people for political leanings"
That is normal. Most completely clean house as they enter office and put their own lackeys in place.
"He has appointed supreme court justices that prop up his cronies"
All the moderates SCOTUS were appointed by Republicans. Democrats ONLY appointed wingers. I think you need to re-evaluate who may be the problem.
"He has manipulated the state of fear generated by terrorism to control the population, which I think is terrorism in and of itself."
And Democrats don't use fear with respect to Social Security, Health Care, and a host of other issues? Man, you reek of hypocrisy and are clearly blind to your own side's foibles.
"He encouraged--still encourages--a climate where dissent equals betrayal to our country."
No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent. It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.
1. Would you prefer to be tortured, or sexually harassed? 2. Would you prefer a bomb drop on your house, or be sexually harassed? 3. Would you prefer to be blamed for emboldening the terrorists when you disagree with a politician, or be lied to about sexual harassment? 4. Would you prefer to have a couple billion dollars stolen, or be sexually harassed?
All false choices. First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is. Second, most of them are more likely happen under Democrats anyway.
"5. Would you prefer to be black in America, or be sexually harassed? (hint: you probably don't know what it's like to be black)"
Racism is such a minor factor in America now that if you believe it is what is holding you back, the problem is your lack of self-will, not the few remaining closet bigots.
"Your spin has the unfortunate fact of not being as well supported by the study's data. The liberals had increased brain activity when presented with the unexpected data"
You mean that on average, they had more activity in some tiny fragment of the brain. That doesn't imply "more brain activity".
"whereas nothing indicated that the conservatives would have preferred to "stop and think about it" given more time, but I will give you the point that a study could be conducted to see if this is the case."
If five percent of the liberal's brain doubles in activity, you could measure it. If that extra activity it spread throughout the brain, you wouldn't.
However, the point that liberals ignore the contradictory information is silly - the data shows that the contradictory information was processed and acted upon accurately, which doesn't jive well with your hypothetical spin.
There are plenty of instances where gut instinct has been shown to be better than deliberate thought, especially when rushed.
The spin researchers put on data is important and open to bias, but your spin simply doesn't correspond to the data presented in TFA.
Any connection AT ALL between millisecond differences in clicking patterns and complex thoughts about the real world is not supported by the data in any way.
Oh, and yes, lied under oath about a blowjob
Quite relevant in a sexual harassment case. Clinton should have been smart enough to know that his past shenanegans could come back to haunt him and kept it in his pants (or at least outside of work). Actually, any CEO in America or Republican would have been canned by his own directors/party just for what he did with Lewinski, let alone what he was accused of doing with Jones or the others.
"but we've got the neo-cons, the page-fucker, the anonymous gay sex guy, and my republican acquaintances are completely steadfast in their support of 'their' people, even when they can provide zero reason"
Actually, these guys got canned because of pressure from their own party, even though in none of those cases did the person in question break any serious law. However, Democrats to this day still venerate people who lied under oath, and committed sexual harassment and probably rape. And what about that guy with the 90k in his fridge? You guys even bothered to getting him off his committee yet (let alone forcing him out of congress). Oh wait, if the bribery is good enough, you get leadership positions like Murfa.
I think the correct conclusion would be that a strikingly even line is drawn through our population. One half freely (to an extent) accepts new information when it's presented. The other half is resistant to new information, and favors information that is older and more established.
Since the moment I saw this article, this type of interpretation struck me as spin, not data. First, the correlation was weak. But even granting that it was real, the interpretation from clicking M's and W's to anything regarding complex thoughts is aburdly suspect, and anyone claiming to be a scientist or researcher should refrain from it entirely. I consider myself to be part of that community, though my research has nothing to do with neurology.
For example, one could spin the data entirely differently than you just did. How about
"When presented with information contradictory to their expectations, liberals ignore it, while conservatives stop and think about it".
This is just as justified an interpretation as the one you gave, but switches around who sounds "smart" and "dumb".
If we charge $200, then we only get 10 customers, so the revenue is $2,000, the fixed costs are $1,000, and the variable costs are 10*10=100. So the profit is $900. i don't know what $90 "social profit" means.
In the simplest case of a market placing the price at $200 (or at ANY single profitable price), you will find that the total profit made by all involved is $900. In the case of $200, the ten rich folks break even (paying $200 for something worth $200), the company makes $900, and the poor folks also break even (paying nothing for nothing). However, what your textbook was trying to show is that there was a government based solution that could exceed $900. In your example, the poor again break even (paying $11 total for something worth $11), but the rich now only pay $101 for something they value at $200, meaning they make in total $990. The company breaks even under your numbers. Note that $990>$900, which is what your textbook was trying to emphasize...that a government could in theory beat a market.
I am sad that you somehow got through an economics book and didn't come across the concept of deadweight loss. It usually is in the first couple chapters of Econ 101. A deadweight loss is a loss offset by no corresponding gain. Taxes almost always are coupled with them. How so? Because virtually all taxes (income, sales, property in particular) are taxes on productive behavior. To SOME degree, taxing these productive behaviors discourages them....people don't take the job, buy that shirt, or add to their house even though these things are a net positive for them in the absence of taxes. Nobody gains anything when people skip out on mutually beneficial trades or enjoyable private behaviors because taxes make them unprofitable. That good is simply lost - a dead weight. Monopolies also create dead-weight losses, which is why most governments regulate against them. The dead-weight associated with the major taxes is around 15-20%...by which I mean that for every dollar the government brings in, $.15-.20 of productive economic behavior is effectively discouraged, never taxed, and never undertaken, to no ones benefit. A pure loss it is.
One would be hard-pressed indeed to stretch the numbers in your example in order to make the dead-weight associated with fixed costs exceed the dead-weight associated with the taxes you would like to implement as a solution. Additionally, the market already HAS a mechanism to solve the problem you presented anyway. There is a reason there are such choices as first class airplane tickets vs coach, HBO vs basic cable, coupons, senior citizen discounts, etc. Markets will find a way to set tiered prices to solve the very dilemma you managed to find, without government intervention.
Note that the price could have been set at $200, and only $90 less social profit total would have been made in theory. On the other hand, you had to collect $1000 in tax, which has dead-weight losses much larger than the $90 (15-20% is a typical "textbook" estimate). You already had to bend the numbers well beyond reality to even observe your desired effect. Now you will have to bend them 2-3 times further to get things to tip your way.
Being half-right can be as bad being completely wrong.
I am a libertarian nerd, and can assure you, my political leanings were developed long before I ever had much money, or even really had a solid plan to get it. The same is true for most people. I would hazard to guess that most people could be sorted into basic political categories by 7th or 8th grade with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
However, I have noticed over the years a strong tendency for libertarianism vs liberalism based on mathematical ability, and clearly that also correlates with "nerdiness".
Quit taxing hypothetical legal entities (ie, corporations) and just raise taxes on the actual human beings that own them.
Duh.
If my neighbors were on vacation, and I went over to their house, picked the lock, and put a sign out on the road saying "Door unlocked, owners out-of-town, please help yourself", should I be surprised if someone loots the place and I get my butt sued over it?
Who says it will cost more to deal with the aftermath in Iraq than to stay there?
If you are going to claim that you want to use the money "saved" by pulling out of Iraq will fund your pet project, the burden of proof is on your shoulders, not mine.
How are we saving money by occupying a country indefinitely?
Because it could arguably be cheaper than the alternatives.
How would we save money by generating a public health care crisis?
Outside of communicable diseases, which generally aren't much of an issue in the US and don't cost much to fend off, health care is a private matter.
All those people who want to fund their "pet project" of funding higher education would like to do so with money...
money that belongs to someone else, of course. If you have the ability to truly benefit from higher education, you have the ability to self-finance it.
It is always interesting that when people want to find money for their pet program, they always call to cut the war in Iraq. Why not Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Those are a much bigger slice of the budget pie? And in any case, how would cutting funding to the war save us money, as dealing with the disasterous aftermath (a full-scale middle east blowup) could cost us even more?
Yeah, because Bush would really sign that into law, wouldn't he? So Congress is forced to take what they can get, and raising the minimum wage is better than nothing.
So if you can't get an effective policy passed, it somehow justifies supporting an ineffective and costly policy instead? One more reason I will never be able to vote for a Democrat...
The problem is the area outside of the row-to-row houses, which extends for miles in all directions. The houses are not 50 feet apart, but a hundred, two hundred, etc.
I have lived both in Japan and Europe. Neither cities nor villages sprawl like this. They tend to be much more compact with fairly well-defined edges.
In any case, it is rather irrelevant. I do not know a single person in the US that wants broadband but can't get it, or can't afford it. I know many who either don't care about the internet at all, or find dial-up sufficient. I think the differences between us and some other countries on this matter are more social than technological.
Yep, and Econ 102 doesn't turn Econ 101 upside down, as you clearly wish it would.
For example, if you want to force others to give money to the working poor, there is a far better way to do it than the minimum wage. Just raise taxes and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. It actually accomplishes your goal, and spreads the costs around to all taxpayers as evenly and fairly as the tax code can accomplish.
The minimum wage, on the other hand, doesn't actually make anyone any richer in a competitive market, which low-wage labor most certainly is. Instead, the worst workers (usually teens) lose their jobs, and the rest are made to work a bit harder to make up for it. The boss might have to pay you a few extra cents an hour, but he can always turn off the AC in the kitchen, cut the discounted meals, and crack down on those breaks that had been running a few minutes over Are you any better off? Presumably not, because you could have negotiated this "a few more pennies for a more annoying job" system before the minimum wage was passed, but you did not.
economy?
About 80% of policies supported by Democrats are direct affronts to Economics 101. Some currently debated ones are minimum wages, CAFE standards, protectionist trade policies, and many more.
The left also hates genetically modified foods and nuclear power, despite the science that confirms that there is no reason to fear them more than the alternatives.
Neither side is very good at dealing with data that refutes their beliefs.
Urbanization doesn't explain much, either. It is an "either or", rather than a continuum. By whatever your definition is, your "urban" areas clearly include our sprawling suburbs.
But most Fins and Swedes live in concentrated areas, much more so that in the US. Population density very deceptive in this regard. It is not how many people you have per square mile, but rather this average distance to your nearest neighbor. These can lead to quite different conclusions.
they have to be corrupt.
What a stupid, childish attitude. If you think that those who disagree with you politically are by-and-large stupid, evil, greedy and/or corrupt, it is a sure sign that you are simply too stupid to understand them.
As someone who prefers data to anecdotes, you make me laugh.