If you have no evidence to contradict Rob's claim, then it's silly for you to ask for him to provide evidence. Your post is far worse than his in terms of unsupported assertions.
added new features to the iPad without raising the price so that proves there isn't any inflation, nevermind the price of things like food or oil or gold or silver.
OK, we may disagree on whether or not food and oil should be included in inflation measurements. There are fairly well-established arguments both for and against inclusion of volatiles, and suffice it to say that I don't agree with you.
But the price of gold or silver in inflation measurements? That's ridiculous. The demand for gold and silver is driven not by consumption, but by speculation, often in direct response to perceived inflationary risk. Including them in inflation measurements doesn't make any sense, at all. Gold and silver are not consumer goods.
I don't think they'd play that game. In the current economic downturn, China is already having problems with a restless out-of-work population. The level of downturn we're talking about would lead to civil unrest, and possible overthrow of the government.
Yes, the economic revival of China is a matter of intense national pride among the Chinese people. But the excesses of those who have gotten very wealthy, and the growing economic disparity in China, would pose real problems should sentiment in the lower Chinese classes turn negative. Younger people in China feel the promise of economic growth, and hope to better their situation. But don't forget that older people remember Mao, and his message -- the New Left in China is growing in popularity as their economy continues to stagnate while the rich get richer. For all the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping, for all the stock we place in their planned economy, the people of China would have to support their government through VERY lean times for this plan to work.
TLDR: The government of China would be too afraid of overthrow or revolution to support such a drastic scheme.
You're out of date with your perceptions of US dependency on cheap Chinese labor.
Turns out, costs to manufacture in the US are expected to reach near-parity with China around 2015. Chinese workers, when you factor in their productivity, are only slightly cheaper than workers in the southern states of the US, especially the states that are highly unfavorable to unions. This is one reason why a lot of European firms are planning production facilities in the US now.
The proof is your continued denial about the fact that the Sony Rootkit was malware according to definition, along with your inane writing style and lack of logical facilities. You've offered no serious argument to support your beliefs. Add in your disorganized writings (and I therefore assume, your disorganized thoughts) and it paints the picture that you're one of the three things I mentioned. Based upon your further replies, I assume you're off your rocker.
I disagree, you are talking about creating a federal price floor.
No. A subsidy does not create a price floor unless (1) the subsidy is greater than the amount paid by buyers in the unsubsidized market and (2) the subsidy is transparent to sellers.
No, my quoted text does no such thing; it, in fact, demostrates that the Sony rootkit was indeed malware. Unauthorized access to system resources? Check. Gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation? Check.
I should know better to argue with idiots; you're far more experienced at inanity than I could hope to be able to counter.
That has very little to do with the impact of the child care tax credit. Michigan setting a price floor by offering to pay up to $x to qualifying child care centers isn't really related to the federal child care tax subsidy, or how it impacts supply or demand for child care.
I do not end up $5000 richer, or even my roughly 20% average tax rate richer. What happens by supply and demand is the prices rise to match the new supply of money. Inflation, basically. The daycare knows darn well I can afford to pay more, and I will have to. So as an industry the price rises to compensate.
That's not the case at all. Daycare is a relatively competitive market. Prices do not increase simply because you have an increased ability to pay. Where did that notion come from? You claim supply and demand, but your conclusion does not follow from how supply and demand curves work. Your conclusion only works if the demand curve shifts exactly by the amount of the tax credit, but this is not the case. Furthermore, such a shift in the demand curve would cause more people to enter the market as suppliers, which would bring the prices back down.
Those are all fun numbers to play with, and you can use them all you like to make your point. On their face, it seems that there is some disproportion, and maybe the wealthy aren't getting a fair shake. But it's more complex than you point out. For one thing, I (and many others) believe we should be looking at income over subsistence level when trying to do wealth/tax comparisons like this. For another thing, you should be looking at wealth levels to gain some perspective.
Those top 5% of income earners that pay 57.1% of federal income taxes? They own 62% of the nation's privately-held wealth. Doesn't seem so unfair in that perspective, does it?
Today's tax rates are furthering the wealth disparity in this country. Despite all complaints such as your, the wealthy are still accumulating wealth at a greater rate (both straight-up and as a percentage of total wealth) than they have in the past century. This is problematic for a host of reasons.
America rose to its economic supremacy, not because of any kind of American specialism rooted in rugged individualism, but because of the following factors:
Vast natural resources Vast amounts of land to absorb population growth without causing political instability An ongoing supply of cheap immigrant labor Not having fought any world wars on its own soil
There are other reasons for sure, but keep in mind that the US experienced economic supremacy only after introducing socialist programs like Social Security.
If one wants to live in a European welfare state where your tax burden rises above 50% in exchange for "free" health care (eventually), there are many of those places to choose from.
Instead you'd rather live in the US, where when you add in the cost of your healthcare to your taxes, you're paying more (for less return!) than people in those so-called European welfare states?
re: ad hominem: Your prior post clearly falls under the second definition you provided. You attacked my maturity rather than addressing any of my arguments.
re: our disagreement: I've clearly explained why I feel the Sony rootkit was malware. Your response? "No, you're wrong". How is the Sony rootkit NOT malware? It meets the definition of malware as per US Cert. Here's the definition from that source:
Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior.
You can dismiss my arguments all you like, I'm fully confident that I'm correct in this instance and that you are either off your rocker, a Sony fanboy, or a Sony astroturfer.
It's very simple. Sony installed, without permission, a rootkit. You claim this rootkit was not malware. I disagree. That rootkit enabled other malware unauthorized access to people's PCs. It was malware. It did something to people's PCs that they would not wish to be done, without their knowledge.
you must be not an adult as your language is quiet improper for posting on Slashdot .
What the fuck? "improper language for posting on slashdot"? Are you serious? Besides which, an ad hominem is not a very effective way to counter someone's point.
Are you fucking kidding me? Where have you been, offline for the past five years?
Sony greenlit a rootkit on their audio CDs. You don't remember that?
Sony had unpatched Apache servers running. That's inadequate protection of consumer data. I didn't say NO protection, I wrote that they failed to have proper protection.
You write like Sony exists in a vacuum. They do not.
They have competitors who could take up their slack.
So I vented my frustration with Sony in a slightly creative way.
The fact that they provide people with the things they want, and they are still in business pretty much proves that they are doing more good than bad...
False. All it proves is that they are good at advertising, marketing, and PR. Nothing else.
I used to think Sony made good products... either I was wrong or they have changed. My experience with them over the past five years or so has made me realize that they are a relatively shitty company.
To top off the horseshit mentioned in my first post, let us not forget that Sony is an enemy of open standards. Blu-Ray. Sony Memory Sticks. It goes back at least as far as Betamax (I doubt you're old enough to remember those).
I accuse Sony of being a shitty company, and here you are defending them just like an abused spouse will defend his or her abuser. Surely THIS time they will really quit drinking and beating you, right?
What do you think Sony should do, if anything, to compensate for what has happened?"
IMO, Sony should do nothing. They should pack it all in and sell off their assets to competitors.
How many times does Sony have to abuse our trust before we stop going back like some beaten spouse who thinks maybe, just maybe, this time he really means it when he says he's done drinking and is going to counseling and will really change?
Sony is no longer, if it ever was, a company with which you should place any trust. They have deliberately infected machines with malware. They have a record of producing shitty stuff (like exploding batteries). They failed to take proper precautions to protect personal information.
It's time for Sony to take the honorable way out and commit seppuku.
As has been noted by many, many posts below this -- fuel consumption does not scale at nearly the same rate as road wear.
And as you point out, the hybrid and electric vehicle problem remains. So obviously the gas tax no longer even approximates actual road wear, since some vehicles are excluded.
My point is that if we're going to capture the road wear on hybrids and electrics via a miles-driven tax, we need to weight it for vehicular weight (or even better, by axle load and number of axles).
People on the liberal end of the spectrum tend to view taxation in static terms.
Horseshit.
People on the conservative end of the spectrum tend to raise strawmen they can argue against; your post is example of that.
Wealth flees. People cut back in other areas. People hire less. And a bunch of other unintended consequences we can't foresee.
And yet the economic impact of taxes on the poor is much, much higher, because more of their income is spent on actual goods and services. Furthermore, wealth flight has been shown to be much less severe than you conservatives have been crying about. Here's some analysis to get your started. Turns out when NJ increased it's tax on the wealthy in 2004, flight actually decreased. The problem is that there was a reduction in the influx of new wealthy people... partly due to the fact that there were much fewer newly wealthy people, partly due to the fact that real estate prices had skyrocketed. And yet the study referred to in the article I linked to is being used to justify conservatives' fears of wealth flight.
It also turns out that higher taxes on the truly wealthy do NOT greatly reduce hiring. Hiring at that income level is dependent on demand for services, not on accrual of additional wealth. Furthermore, most hiring is not done by the truly wealthy -- it is done by small businesses (typically, the owners of which make less than $200,000 per year) and by corporations -- whose spending on hiring is unaffected by personal income taxes.
I'm not sure you understand the subject as much as you profess to.
All of those states like California, New Jersey, and Illinois who raised taxes on the rich and instituted "millionaire's taxes" and they are still facing gaping budget holes.
Which would be even more goatse-sized if we hadn't passed those taxes.
The problem is that there is always good and nice things to spend on and you can only tax so much.
We all understand that. What we're arguing over is what level of taxation is proper considering the level of spending we want, and in what proportions should different economic levels contribute to the public coffers.
I'm glad you picked NJ as one of your examples. Being a resident of this fine state, I am very familiar with its budget problems. We have a host of issues, some of which are not so easy to distill into a pithy one-liner as you have tried to do. What we have discovered is that the millionaires' tax has increased our revenue without causing the the money-flight we were fearful of. See, wealthy people in NJ stay, even when taxed more, partly because of the expensive public services we have. Things like good schools in those wealthy areas, access to NY and Philly that is maintained at great expense (roads, bridges, etc). We benefit from the state-run services, even if not directly. We benefit from things like the social safety net, which keeps our urban areas from becoming more blighted during an economic downturn. We benefit from the baseline level of state spending that keeps people employed doing things of (admittedly, sometimes marginal) benefit to us.
The fact of the matter is that wealthy people benefit disproportionately from indirect effects of public spending. They should therefore pay more taxes (from a justness point of view). Taxes on the wealthy are a lot less inhibitive on the economy than taxes on the poor... so from an economic perspective, the wealthy should be paying more in order to maximize economic activity, and thus net wealth creation across the economy.
In truth, your post is a non sequitur. It does not follow that if the millionaires' taxes hadn't been passed, those states would be in the black. So I'm not sure why I bothered with a lengthy post when I could have just pointed out the flaw in your logic.
Slashdot Mirror
You're lazy.
If you have no evidence to contradict Rob's claim, then it's silly for you to ask for him to provide evidence. Your post is far worse than his in terms of unsupported assertions.
It's the old adage --
If someone owes you $10, it's their problem.
If someone owes you $1,000,000, it's your problem.
We borrowed enough from the Chinese that it has become their problem, not ours.
OK, we may disagree on whether or not food and oil should be included in inflation measurements. There are fairly well-established arguments both for and against inclusion of volatiles, and suffice it to say that I don't agree with you.
But the price of gold or silver in inflation measurements? That's ridiculous. The demand for gold and silver is driven not by consumption, but by speculation, often in direct response to perceived inflationary risk. Including them in inflation measurements doesn't make any sense, at all. Gold and silver are not consumer goods.
I don't think they'd play that game. In the current economic downturn, China is already having problems with a restless out-of-work population. The level of downturn we're talking about would lead to civil unrest, and possible overthrow of the government.
Yes, the economic revival of China is a matter of intense national pride among the Chinese people. But the excesses of those who have gotten very wealthy, and the growing economic disparity in China, would pose real problems should sentiment in the lower Chinese classes turn negative. Younger people in China feel the promise of economic growth, and hope to better their situation. But don't forget that older people remember Mao, and his message -- the New Left in China is growing in popularity as their economy continues to stagnate while the rich get richer. For all the reforms instituted by Deng Xiaoping, for all the stock we place in their planned economy, the people of China would have to support their government through VERY lean times for this plan to work.
TLDR: The government of China would be too afraid of overthrow or revolution to support such a drastic scheme.
You're out of date with your perceptions of US dependency on cheap Chinese labor.
Turns out, costs to manufacture in the US are expected to reach near-parity with China around 2015. Chinese workers, when you factor in their productivity, are only slightly cheaper than workers in the southern states of the US, especially the states that are highly unfavorable to unions. This is one reason why a lot of European firms are planning production facilities in the US now.
The proof is your continued denial about the fact that the Sony Rootkit was malware according to definition, along with your inane writing style and lack of logical facilities. You've offered no serious argument to support your beliefs. Add in your disorganized writings (and I therefore assume, your disorganized thoughts) and it paints the picture that you're one of the three things I mentioned. Based upon your further replies, I assume you're off your rocker.
Or, you could just be trolling.
Good day.
You started with the name calling. And I call 'em as I see 'em -- you're both a loony and a hypocrite.
No. A subsidy does not create a price floor unless (1) the subsidy is greater than the amount paid by buyers in the unsubsidized market and (2) the subsidy is transparent to sellers.
Neither criteria is met here.
No, my quoted text does no such thing; it, in fact, demostrates that the Sony rootkit was indeed malware. Unauthorized access to system resources? Check. Gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation? Check.
I should know better to argue with idiots; you're far more experienced at inanity than I could hope to be able to counter.
Lack of intelligent logic? Pot, meet kettle.
Your arguments do not ring true. They ring loony.
That has very little to do with the impact of the child care tax credit. Michigan setting a price floor by offering to pay up to $x to qualifying child care centers isn't really related to the federal child care tax subsidy, or how it impacts supply or demand for child care.
That's not the case at all. Daycare is a relatively competitive market. Prices do not increase simply because you have an increased ability to pay. Where did that notion come from? You claim supply and demand, but your conclusion does not follow from how supply and demand curves work. Your conclusion only works if the demand curve shifts exactly by the amount of the tax credit, but this is not the case. Furthermore, such a shift in the demand curve would cause more people to enter the market as suppliers, which would bring the prices back down.
Spending also improves the economy. Yet I doubt you'd support reducing taxes on the bottom three quintiles in order to increase spending.
Those are all fun numbers to play with, and you can use them all you like to make your point. On their face, it seems that there is some disproportion, and maybe the wealthy aren't getting a fair shake. But it's more complex than you point out. For one thing, I (and many others) believe we should be looking at income over subsistence level when trying to do wealth/tax comparisons like this. For another thing, you should be looking at wealth levels to gain some perspective.
Those top 5% of income earners that pay 57.1% of federal income taxes? They own 62% of the nation's privately-held wealth. Doesn't seem so unfair in that perspective, does it?
Today's tax rates are furthering the wealth disparity in this country. Despite all complaints such as your, the wealthy are still accumulating wealth at a greater rate (both straight-up and as a percentage of total wealth) than they have in the past century. This is problematic for a host of reasons.
America rose to its economic supremacy, not because of any kind of American specialism rooted in rugged individualism, but because of the following factors:
Vast natural resources
Vast amounts of land to absorb population growth without causing political instability
An ongoing supply of cheap immigrant labor
Not having fought any world wars on its own soil
There are other reasons for sure, but keep in mind that the US experienced economic supremacy only after introducing socialist programs like Social Security.
Instead you'd rather live in the US, where when you add in the cost of your healthcare to your taxes, you're paying more (for less return!) than people in those so-called European welfare states?
re: ad hominem: Your prior post clearly falls under the second definition you provided. You attacked my maturity rather than addressing any of my arguments.
re: our disagreement: I've clearly explained why I feel the Sony rootkit was malware. Your response? "No, you're wrong". How is the Sony rootkit NOT malware? It meets the definition of malware as per US Cert. Here's the definition from that source:
You can dismiss my arguments all you like, I'm fully confident that I'm correct in this instance and that you are either off your rocker, a Sony fanboy, or a Sony astroturfer.
It's very simple. Sony installed, without permission, a rootkit. You claim this rootkit was not malware. I disagree. That rootkit enabled other malware unauthorized access to people's PCs. It was malware. It did something to people's PCs that they would not wish to be done, without their knowledge.
What the fuck? "improper language for posting on slashdot"? Are you serious? Besides which, an ad hominem is not a very effective way to counter someone's point.
Hell, I used to embed Active-X controls in Excel docs, mixed up with a good bit of VB. My way of paying back that employer for sub-par wages ;)
Are you fucking kidding me? Where have you been, offline for the past five years?
Sony greenlit a rootkit on their audio CDs. You don't remember that?
Sony had unpatched Apache servers running. That's inadequate protection of consumer data. I didn't say NO protection, I wrote that they failed to have proper protection.
But go ahead, defend your abuser.
They have competitors who could take up their slack.
So I vented my frustration with Sony in a slightly creative way.
False. All it proves is that they are good at advertising, marketing, and PR. Nothing else.
I used to think Sony made good products... either I was wrong or they have changed. My experience with them over the past five years or so has made me realize that they are a relatively shitty company.
To top off the horseshit mentioned in my first post, let us not forget that Sony is an enemy of open standards. Blu-Ray. Sony Memory Sticks. It goes back at least as far as Betamax (I doubt you're old enough to remember those).
I accuse Sony of being a shitty company, and here you are defending them just like an abused spouse will defend his or her abuser. Surely THIS time they will really quit drinking and beating you, right?
IMO, Sony should do nothing. They should pack it all in and sell off their assets to competitors.
How many times does Sony have to abuse our trust before we stop going back like some beaten spouse who thinks maybe, just maybe, this time he really means it when he says he's done drinking and is going to counseling and will really change?
Sony is no longer, if it ever was, a company with which you should place any trust. They have deliberately infected machines with malware. They have a record of producing shitty stuff (like exploding batteries). They failed to take proper precautions to protect personal information.
It's time for Sony to take the honorable way out and commit seppuku.
Surely there are lower forms of comedy -- slapstick or shock, for example.
Poorly executed puns are horrid, I agree. But a well-executed pun, with insightful double entendre, can be a magical thing to behold.
Then again, a golden pegasus that shits caviar and pisses wine would also be a wonderful thing to behold, and I haven't seen one of those yet, either.
As has been noted by many, many posts below this -- fuel consumption does not scale at nearly the same rate as road wear.
And as you point out, the hybrid and electric vehicle problem remains. So obviously the gas tax no longer even approximates actual road wear, since some vehicles are excluded.
My point is that if we're going to capture the road wear on hybrids and electrics via a miles-driven tax, we need to weight it for vehicular weight (or even better, by axle load and number of axles).
Horseshit.
People on the conservative end of the spectrum tend to raise strawmen they can argue against; your post is example of that.
And yet the economic impact of taxes on the poor is much, much higher, because more of their income is spent on actual goods and services. Furthermore, wealth flight has been shown to be much less severe than you conservatives have been crying about. Here's some analysis to get your started. Turns out when NJ increased it's tax on the wealthy in 2004, flight actually decreased. The problem is that there was a reduction in the influx of new wealthy people... partly due to the fact that there were much fewer newly wealthy people, partly due to the fact that real estate prices had skyrocketed. And yet the study referred to in the article I linked to is being used to justify conservatives' fears of wealth flight.
It also turns out that higher taxes on the truly wealthy do NOT greatly reduce hiring. Hiring at that income level is dependent on demand for services, not on accrual of additional wealth. Furthermore, most hiring is not done by the truly wealthy -- it is done by small businesses (typically, the owners of which make less than $200,000 per year) and by corporations -- whose spending on hiring is unaffected by personal income taxes.
I'm not sure you understand the subject as much as you profess to.
Which would be even more goatse-sized if we hadn't passed those taxes.
We all understand that. What we're arguing over is what level of taxation is proper considering the level of spending we want, and in what proportions should different economic levels contribute to the public coffers.
I'm glad you picked NJ as one of your examples. Being a resident of this fine state, I am very familiar with its budget problems. We have a host of issues, some of which are not so easy to distill into a pithy one-liner as you have tried to do. What we have discovered is that the millionaires' tax has increased our revenue without causing the the money-flight we were fearful of. See, wealthy people in NJ stay, even when taxed more, partly because of the expensive public services we have. Things like good schools in those wealthy areas, access to NY and Philly that is maintained at great expense (roads, bridges, etc). We benefit from the state-run services, even if not directly. We benefit from things like the social safety net, which keeps our urban areas from becoming more blighted during an economic downturn. We benefit from the baseline level of state spending that keeps people employed doing things of (admittedly, sometimes marginal) benefit to us.
The fact of the matter is that wealthy people benefit disproportionately from indirect effects of public spending. They should therefore pay more taxes (from a justness point of view). Taxes on the wealthy are a lot less inhibitive on the economy than taxes on the poor... so from an economic perspective, the wealthy should be paying more in order to maximize economic activity, and thus net wealth creation across the economy.
In truth, your post is a non sequitur. It does not follow that if the millionaires' taxes hadn't been passed, those states would be in the black. So I'm not sure why I bothered with a lengthy post when I could have just pointed out the flaw in your logic.