You're speculating on the return of the decision to ban CFCs. Sure, it's your right to do so, and it sucks that you got ripped off by your mechanic (he could have instead directed you to someone who would refill the CFC refrigerant, since only *production* was banned -- it would have cost a bit more than $65, but you could have done it).
But I think before you continue speculating that there is very limited return on the ban of CFCs, you should probably do some research on the subject. I think you'll find it illuminating.
but I am also pretty sure that this thread is very appropriate for them.
Obviously, some mods disagree.
Sure, the whole thread may be off-topic. But I'd say it's human nature to preferentially downmod the ones that take up all the screen real-estate and make the rest of the (on-topic) article discussion harder to find.
No, someone is sick of you taking any pretext at all to post a wall of text with your economic and political ideas that have little to nothing to do with the articles the rest of us are commenting on.
Your shit-splattering posts are making slashdot a less enjoyable place for a lot of people.
It's not that some moderators don't like your "real economic message", it's that you're unable to limit yourself to talking about it in suitable stories. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that you have shown yourself to be unable to have reasonable discourse on the subject, as you employ all kinds of logical and rhetorical fallacies to make your points.
The truth is, anyone who disagrees with you learns quickly to ignore you -- it's a waste of time discussing economics with you. Anyone who might agree with you has either heard it all before, or is put off by your writing style. Even if they like reading your posts, it amounts to a circlejerk if you already all agree.
So why bother dragging your personal economic and political ideas into every damn article discussion? Are you really making anything better, or are you just tilting at windmills?
You're assuming far too much about my opinion. Stop making straw men. And stop generalizing, especially using an assumption that I would support your bad generalization.
Specifically, I believe that the extreme concentration of wealth we're undergoing is lowering the standard of living for most people and inhibiting the opportunity for people to rise from poverty or near-poverty. I also believe the concentration of wealth is one of the primary causes of our lagging economy.
In order to maintain a stable and growing economy, in order to ensure opportunity for all, I believe that the wealthy must be taxed in such a manner as to ensure they do not further concentrate wealth.
You don't think this is fair. I do. We'll never agree on this -- that being the case, please stop making disingenuous and specious arguments.
My argument is that it's fair for the wealthy to pay more of the tax burden in the US than their share of income, due to the amount of wealth they have.
Writing bugs into code, even if on purpose, is *nothing* like rat farming.
If you want to farm rats (which I strongly advise against, as it's a waste of turns -- better to farm wolves or spiders at a higher level), first you need to make sure you're on a level with minimal corruption. Then you need to get a wererat onto the level somehow (making it follow you from an adjacent level is usually the best way). Put yourself in a corner (or along a wall), and hack away at the summoned rats. This should be sufficient for some good shield and weapon training. Make sure you don't accidentally kill off the wererat!
But at any rate, writing bugs into code usually doesn't involve any of that.
I asked for a citation. You give me falsehoods with neither a citation nor a logical argument.
You're useless.
Progressive tax rates, and progressive policies, have steadily reduced wealth concentration. Erosion of progressive policies has led to increase wealth disparity.
Again, I ask for any kind of academically or logically rigorous supporting for your ridiculous assertion.
That's not true either. You lose your $2 billion when you realize the loss, that is, when you sell your stock or when the company dissolves. Paper gains/losses are ephemeral. It's the realized gain/loss that's important.
The only way for there to be a net gain/loss on an individual trade is (aside from the bid/ask spread) due to different valuations by the buying and selling parties. I think it's worth $10, I sell it to you for $11 -- I've made $1. You think it's worth $13, but you only paid $11 -- you made $2. This is why in theory it's not a zero-sum game; however, until we actually realize or leverage our gains they don't exist.
You're missing my point. If they're undergoing wasteful transport, that's not really 'turning the gears of the economy'. It's a wasted cost.
As for being parked when they're not working... that's not true at all. Plenty of trucks are empty on the road, either dong return trips or going to pick up a different load.
I said wealth, not income. Don't try to confuse the terms.
As for citations, Here you go. And that's through 2004. Data through 2008 shows that the wealthiest 10% own an astonishing 84% of the wealth in the US. Add in the next decile, and they own well over 90% of the wealth in the US.
And they're accumulating more of the nation's wealth as we speak.
progressive policies tend to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few
Citation, please. This is claptrap that I see repeated very often by simpleminded folk, but I've yet to see academically (or even logically!) rigorous explanation for this theory.
Which is why the wealthy generally favor the progressive politics of the Democratic Party. They know that the policies of the Democratic Party help them consolidate ever more of the wealth of the country in thier own hands.
Ah, there you are, assigning motive to beliefs without any kind of supporting evidence. A casual search of actual studies will find that the wealthy who prefer progressive politics do not do so for personal gain; much the opposite, in fact. So you're either being willfully ignorant by not bothering to do any research, or you're lying through your teeth.
Then please explain why the share of federal tax revenue paid by the richest fraction of the U.S. population increases every time Republicans pass tax cuts.
Because parallel to the tax cuts, there are two other factors making this happen, these are (among many others): (1) increasing income among the richest fraction and (2) a greater portion of the US population having no income.
You shouldn't imply causation where it doesn't exist, that's intellectually dishonest.
This is why it's frustrating to "debate" people such as yourself -- intellectual honesty is nowhere to be found, and your lies are easy to believe at a casual glance.
I'd say that consolidation of wealth is the primary cause of loss of opportunity, so I'd say you are both right.
Whether wealth is finite or not... proportional control of wealth equates to power, and that is really what opportunity is about... access to the power to achieve. As long as the extremely wealthy accelerate their accumulation of wealth, it diminishes opportunity for everyone else.
In fact, I'll see your claim that the rich don't pay their share and raise you a citation of my own [american.com]. If these stats are accurate, and yes, I know what they say about statistics, then the top 25% of wealth in America pays 85% of the taxes. Does that seem "fair" to YOU?
Seems quite fair to me. After all, they own more than 85% of the wealth, which is a severe problem in our economy.
Shipping from factory to retail store is almost entirely waste cost -- it would be much better if they shipped from the factory to the installation site.
If you're going to be intentionally disingenuous, I can be too. (You should be comparing commute to shipping, not a weekend excursion to shipping).
9 of the top 10 largest percentage drops in the Dow Jones happened before 1990. This would ague the fact that algo trading has stabilized the markets. The flash crash was about 9% drop which would be #5 on the list if it closed at the day's low.
Except t would have gotten much worse. They suspended trading to prevent it from getting worse due to algo HFTs reacting to the shitstorm. That's antithetical to the liquidity they provide, which is supposed to make the market behave more like an ideal free market.
Sorry, dude. You have no clue of what you're writing about. I'm not gonna do line-by-line, as it'd be a waste of my time, I'll only mention a couple things.
Computing and electronics suffer from price deflation. But they are commodities, not currencies. Currency deflation and commodity price deflation are two very different beasts.
And I have no idea what your misguided view is on what "most people" vs "certain economic schools" view currency as. You say most people view it as a means for transactions and a store of value. That's exactly what I wrote in my post -- liquidity == fluid mean of transactions. Just because you don't understand the vocabulary used doesn't mean that I'm wrong... it just means that you lack sufficient education to discuss the subject at a high level without wasting extraordinary amounts of time on defining terms and sorting out misunderstandings due to misunderstood terms.
Shrinking government spending (while deregulating private activity) caused a boom in China. It has also made Germany the only stable economy in Western Europe in the recent years.
You attribute complicated situations to a single cause; it's a very simple-minded argument, and misses a host of other reasons that have caused Germany to be very stable and China to undergo their boom.
Germany: A big reason for the economic stability is Germany is due to their very high level of public spending, focused on effective programs -- like socialized medicine. Another would be their strong support of labor interests, which has propped up aggregate demand. Germany's public spending, even after their recent slight reduction in spending, is still far higher than the US, or even the UK, as a percentage of GDP.
China: Really? You lay China's boom at the foot of reduced government spending? Fiscal decentralization had nothing to do with it? Privatization had nothing to do with it? Massive supplies of cheap labor had nothing to do with it? Massive investment in resource extraction had nothing to do with it?
Considering Germany spends close to double what the US spends (as a % of GDP, excluding military and debt service), don't you think maybe our problem is not enough government spending on stimulatory efforts?
The Deflation like you're talking about only occurs after the inevitable monetary contraction which follows cascading debt defaults.
No, that's the only supply-side cause of deflation. There is also deflation caused by growth concomitant with a steady money supply (or a money supply growing slower than economic activity).
In addition, there is deflation caused by a reduction in circulating money supply (decreased money velocity) caused by hoarding. This particular form of deflation is dangerous, because hoarding results in greater deflation, resulting in even more hoarding... you get the picture. A deflationary spiral that ends up contracting the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
You're speculating on the return of the decision to ban CFCs. Sure, it's your right to do so, and it sucks that you got ripped off by your mechanic (he could have instead directed you to someone who would refill the CFC refrigerant, since only *production* was banned -- it would have cost a bit more than $65, but you could have done it).
But I think before you continue speculating that there is very limited return on the ban of CFCs, you should probably do some research on the subject. I think you'll find it illuminating.
Obviously, some mods disagree.
Sure, the whole thread may be off-topic. But I'd say it's human nature to preferentially downmod the ones that take up all the screen real-estate and make the rest of the (on-topic) article discussion harder to find.
No, someone is sick of you taking any pretext at all to post a wall of text with your economic and political ideas that have little to nothing to do with the articles the rest of us are commenting on.
Your shit-splattering posts are making slashdot a less enjoyable place for a lot of people.
It's not that some moderators don't like your "real economic message", it's that you're unable to limit yourself to talking about it in suitable stories. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that you have shown yourself to be unable to have reasonable discourse on the subject, as you employ all kinds of logical and rhetorical fallacies to make your points.
The truth is, anyone who disagrees with you learns quickly to ignore you -- it's a waste of time discussing economics with you. Anyone who might agree with you has either heard it all before, or is put off by your writing style. Even if they like reading your posts, it amounts to a circlejerk if you already all agree.
So why bother dragging your personal economic and political ideas into every damn article discussion? Are you really making anything better, or are you just tilting at windmills?
You're assuming far too much about my opinion. Stop making straw men. And stop generalizing, especially using an assumption that I would support your bad generalization.
Specifically, I believe that the extreme concentration of wealth we're undergoing is lowering the standard of living for most people and inhibiting the opportunity for people to rise from poverty or near-poverty. I also believe the concentration of wealth is one of the primary causes of our lagging economy.
In order to maintain a stable and growing economy, in order to ensure opportunity for all, I believe that the wealthy must be taxed in such a manner as to ensure they do not further concentrate wealth.
You don't think this is fair. I do. We'll never agree on this -- that being the case, please stop making disingenuous and specious arguments.
That's absolutely false in the context of taxation. Capital gains taxes are only assessed upon realization of the gain/loss.
Catching a homerun baseball is a different beast... it's windfall income and is subject to income tax, not capital gains.
You're being deliberately obtuse.
My argument is that it's fair for the wealthy to pay more of the tax burden in the US than their share of income, due to the amount of wealth they have.
Writing bugs into code, even if on purpose, is *nothing* like rat farming.
If you want to farm rats (which I strongly advise against, as it's a waste of turns -- better to farm wolves or spiders at a higher level), first you need to make sure you're on a level with minimal corruption. Then you need to get a wererat onto the level somehow (making it follow you from an adjacent level is usually the best way). Put yourself in a corner (or along a wall), and hack away at the summoned rats. This should be sufficient for some good shield and weapon training. Make sure you don't accidentally kill off the wererat!
But at any rate, writing bugs into code usually doesn't involve any of that.
I asked for a citation. You give me falsehoods with neither a citation nor a logical argument.
You're useless.
Progressive tax rates, and progressive policies, have steadily reduced wealth concentration. Erosion of progressive policies has led to increase wealth disparity.
Again, I ask for any kind of academically or logically rigorous supporting for your ridiculous assertion.
Sorry for late response.
That's not true either. You lose your $2 billion when you realize the loss, that is, when you sell your stock or when the company dissolves. Paper gains/losses are ephemeral. It's the realized gain/loss that's important.
The only way for there to be a net gain/loss on an individual trade is (aside from the bid/ask spread) due to different valuations by the buying and selling parties. I think it's worth $10, I sell it to you for $11 -- I've made $1. You think it's worth $13, but you only paid $11 -- you made $2. This is why in theory it's not a zero-sum game; however, until we actually realize or leverage our gains they don't exist.
You're missing my point. If they're undergoing wasteful transport, that's not really 'turning the gears of the economy'. It's a wasted cost.
As for being parked when they're not working... that's not true at all. Plenty of trucks are empty on the road, either dong return trips or going to pick up a different load.
I said wealth, not income. Don't try to confuse the terms.
As for citations, Here you go. And that's through 2004. Data through 2008 shows that the wealthiest 10% own an astonishing 84% of the wealth in the US. Add in the next decile, and they own well over 90% of the wealth in the US.
And they're accumulating more of the nation's wealth as we speak.
Citation, please. This is claptrap that I see repeated very often by simpleminded folk, but I've yet to see academically (or even logically!) rigorous explanation for this theory.
What, to increase the national debt?
/rimshot
//but Republicans do, indeed, act as if increasing the debt is their job. Despite their lipservice to the contrary.
Ah, there you are, assigning motive to beliefs without any kind of supporting evidence. A casual search of actual studies will find that the wealthy who prefer progressive politics do not do so for personal gain; much the opposite, in fact. So you're either being willfully ignorant by not bothering to do any research, or you're lying through your teeth.
Because parallel to the tax cuts, there are two other factors making this happen, these are (among many others): (1) increasing income among the richest fraction and (2) a greater portion of the US population having no income.
You shouldn't imply causation where it doesn't exist, that's intellectually dishonest.
This is why it's frustrating to "debate" people such as yourself -- intellectual honesty is nowhere to be found, and your lies are easy to believe at a casual glance.
I'd say that consolidation of wealth is the primary cause of loss of opportunity, so I'd say you are both right.
Whether wealth is finite or not... proportional control of wealth equates to power, and that is really what opportunity is about... access to the power to achieve. As long as the extremely wealthy accelerate their accumulation of wealth, it diminishes opportunity for everyone else.
Seems quite fair to me. After all, they own more than 85% of the wealth, which is a severe problem in our economy.
Shipping from factory to retail store is almost entirely waste cost -- it would be much better if they shipped from the factory to the installation site.
If you're going to be intentionally disingenuous, I can be too. (You should be comparing commute to shipping, not a weekend excursion to shipping).
So your point is... he's able to take advantage of the system, so he's better than someone without the balls to take advantage of the system.
Which ignores the underlying problem we're discussing, which is that the system is inefficient and/or deficient.
Way to go. You've missed the point again.
No, it's not... but individual trades are zero-sum actions.
Except t would have gotten much worse. They suspended trading to prevent it from getting worse due to algo HFTs reacting to the shitstorm. That's antithetical to the liquidity they provide, which is supposed to make the market behave more like an ideal free market.
Sorry, dude. You have no clue of what you're writing about. I'm not gonna do line-by-line, as it'd be a waste of my time, I'll only mention a couple things.
Computing and electronics suffer from price deflation. But they are commodities, not currencies. Currency deflation and commodity price deflation are two very different beasts.
And I have no idea what your misguided view is on what "most people" vs "certain economic schools" view currency as. You say most people view it as a means for transactions and a store of value. That's exactly what I wrote in my post -- liquidity == fluid mean of transactions. Just because you don't understand the vocabulary used doesn't mean that I'm wrong... it just means that you lack sufficient education to discuss the subject at a high level without wasting extraordinary amounts of time on defining terms and sorting out misunderstandings due to misunderstood terms.
No they don't. Stop making things up.
Well, Islam, Judaism, and Muslims are all Abrahamic faiths. So should be able to call all Muslims Jews, since they share the same basis?
Because the spending we did do was refocused on domestic programs that are stimulatory in nature.
It's not just how much money is spent. It's also what it's spent on.
You attribute complicated situations to a single cause; it's a very simple-minded argument, and misses a host of other reasons that have caused Germany to be very stable and China to undergo their boom.
Germany: A big reason for the economic stability is Germany is due to their very high level of public spending, focused on effective programs -- like socialized medicine. Another would be their strong support of labor interests, which has propped up aggregate demand. Germany's public spending, even after their recent slight reduction in spending, is still far higher than the US, or even the UK, as a percentage of GDP.
China: Really? You lay China's boom at the foot of reduced government spending? Fiscal decentralization had nothing to do with it? Privatization had nothing to do with it? Massive supplies of cheap labor had nothing to do with it? Massive investment in resource extraction had nothing to do with it?
Considering Germany spends close to double what the US spends (as a % of GDP, excluding military and debt service), don't you think maybe our problem is not enough government spending on stimulatory efforts?
No, that's the only supply-side cause of deflation. There is also deflation caused by growth concomitant with a steady money supply (or a money supply growing slower than economic activity).
In addition, there is deflation caused by a reduction in circulating money supply (decreased money velocity) caused by hoarding. This particular form of deflation is dangerous, because hoarding results in greater deflation, resulting in even more hoarding... you get the picture. A deflationary spiral that ends up contracting the economy.