If we could find them, no problem. We'd be doing it already. US corporate income is US corporate income and you're supposed to pay taxes on it.
It's a constant cat-and-mouse game between businessmen seeking to evade taxes by offshoring profits and the IRS. The evaders invent ever more complex and sophisticated structures to obfuscate the true source of their profits; sometimes they get found out, sometimes they don't.
Where a business actually does move overseas lock, stock, and barrel, with HQ, operations, etc. all moving, then I agree the country the business left probably has a competitiveness issue. When all that's moving is money, it's quite likely the only problem is the criminal intent of the tax evader.
I accused the *summary* of obscuring the issue. I speculated that maybe the encyclical did as well.
In any case, I don't need to read an encyclical to know it's propaganda, because it's clear from the purpose of encyclicals. They exist only to assert an authority founded on bad metaphysics.
It really doesn't matter. Either way, the pope's alleged authority is based on muddled metaphysical nonsense. And if you examine the actions of the church over history -- which ought to be the compelling basis for its authority -- you will most likely find its claiming to speak on "morality" to be a sad joke.
People don't "set up and operate" their businesses in tax havens. They operate the businesses in other places, which are usually much better markets than small, isolated tax havens, but then evade (usually democratically imposed) taxes by hiding the profits from those businesses in tax havens.
The summary (and maybe the encyclical; I'm not willing to read a piece of nutball religious propaganda to find out) obscures the issue by citing a couple examples of companies that actually operate their businesses in a tax haven. This is the exception, not the rule.
Be wary of any political system that requires major changes in human nature in order for it to succeed.
Very well put. That is why communism failed, it is why tyrannical monarchy failed, and it is why untrammeled libertarianism would fail.
The system that has proven most compatible with human nature is a well-regulated market with a government that takes care of basic life needs. Time and time again this has led to the least suffering and trouble in the real world (rather than imagined utopia where everyone turns responsible and honest overnight).
Totalitarianism and libertarianism, as concepts (not necessarily real-life political movements), are opposite sides of the same coin.
A totalitarian (are there really any more out there anymore?) believes that humanity's interests will be advanced most effectively through total control by the collective. A libertarian (in the unqualified sense) believes that humanity's interests will be advanced most effectively through total control by the individual. As other posters have pointed out, most libertarians today acknowledge the need for at least some kind of skeletal government, but that is really a concession to reality, not an essential part of the libertarian ideology.
On to your other point, I'm not saying that the situation in Iraq or Somalia derived from libertarian ideology. What I am really arguing (and I did not make this clear) is that pure libertarian ideology would lead inevitably to an Iraq- or Somalia-like situation. We can sit here in our comfortable well-policed houses and talk about rationality and what people are taught as kids, but in the real world, people have proven in every single situation where they've had total freedom that the law of the jungle rules.
Chances are you were not taught that you should be as careful with waste out of doors as you are in your home. Perhaps that additional education along with parents teaching their children to have some personal responsibility is enough to keep people from polluting in the "average person" sense (e.g. littering, dumping consumer chemicals, improper disposal of bio-hazardous waste, etc.).
And people tell me I'm being idealistic if I say that most bureaucrats aren't on the take...
My point is that I have found group learning experiences like classes (which do happen, by the way, in places other than dysfunctional public schools) to be tremendously valuable and think the GP was being very simplistic when he categorically trashed them.
And I'm not willing to concede that we, as a society, must give someone free healthcare when his life hangs in the balance. I'm not saying I necessarily disagree, mind you; I'm only saying that people tend to say "Of course we have to" and move on without offering any kind of a defense, as if no sensible person could disagree.
I'm not saying we "have" to give such care without an explanation. I'm explaining that it's impossible for us not to give the care because 1) there are obvious problems with not giving it and 2) human nature won't allow us not to.
And, if we're not going to leave the bodies in the street, someone, probably society as a whole, is going to have to pay for the personnel and equipment to remove them. Even that is affecting others' rights.
I suppose it's just another form of coercion, but things like carbon offsets might work.
Well, you have to have a regulatory framework for enforcement or the carbon offsets are pretty meaningless... I agree they're a good idea, though. They allow the government to set a pollution-reduction goal and the market to determine how to get there most efficiently. Just because I think libertarian ideas are often simplistic doesn't mean I don't appreciate letting the market work when possible.
Kids aren't property, they're people. If a parent beats the shit out of his kids, then he is obviously inflicting harm on another person, and therefore no libertarian in the world would object to the government getting involved in some capacity.
Reread the post I was responding to. It said, without any qualifications whatsoever:
Let adults do whatever they want, provided it doesn't hurt someone who is unwilling or not a minor member of their family.
Let adults do whatever they want, provided it doesn't hurt someone who is unwilling or not a minor member of their family.
You know, government rules don't get created unless someone's interests were hurt. I think everyone in the society believes this creed; the problem is that way more activities than you might think at first affect other people's interests.
Motorcycle helmets are the classic example.
A consistent libertarian says "Don't make me wear a helmet. If I crash, it's my responsibility, and it's OK for you to leave me dying in the street." The problem is that we as a body politic are simply unprepared to leave people dying in the street, for several reasons. 1) it's ugly and stinky, not to mention unsanitary; 2) our humanity just doesn't allow us to see that level of suffering and ignore it; 3) it scares people and causes them not to ride, depressing economic output. The result is that if the motorcycle rider is uninsured we treat him at public expense -- and, if he rides without a helmet and is honest about it, he won't be able to get insurance. Therefore his riding affects all of us by costing us money.
Pollution regulations are another good example (and the best current "tragedy of the commons" issue).
There is simply no incentive for any one individual not to pollute -- one person's pollution, no matter how bad, is usually not going to affect the rights of others. But in a country of 300 million individuals, of course widespread pollution will affect everyone's rights! There is no solution to this problem that does not involve society as a whole somehow coercing the individual -- in other words, regulation.
Also, I think you'll find that allowing parents to hurt their kids in any way they want leads to some pretty gruesome consequences...
I find that a very narrow way of looking at composing, even assuming that music is composed by one person (which has not been true in most traditions outside of Western classical music).
Sure, each piece may have been written alone, but most of the progress came through dialogue between composers over time, or through composers being influenced to do something they hadn't thought of before by ideas from other composers. Individual creativity is largely meaningless without the larger social framework in which it takes place. (Likewise, the social framework would be meaningless without individual contributions.)
Something like this is why I find libertarian politics, generally speaking, way too simplistic. Many libertarians forget that freedom doesn't mean much without an organized society -- it largely becomes the freedom to accumulate more guards and guns than the next guy. Likewise, totalitarians forget that an organized society isn't much good if individuals have no freedom. The problem is that extreme libertarians are much more influential than extreme totalitarians at the moment, because we learn about totalitarian nightmares better than we learn about libertarian nightmares (such as Somalia or, currently, Iraq).
Once people have switched to a Mac what % really use Boot Camp and run Windows?
Whatever percentage need to run Outlook/Access/Visio/Word-based DMS/[Windows app of choice] for work, but would rather use OS X for everything else. That is a hell of a lot of people. Most of them won't run Boot Camp, anyway; they'll run Parallels or Fusion.
Windows on Mac isn't just a security blanket; it's a clever way to enable corporate employees (that is, an awful lot of us) to buy Macs.
It may be feasible in high-density downtown areas, provided the population is willing to put up with constant digging in the streets.
But in most residential areas, there are *vastly* more structures you would need to run fiber to, spread out over a much wider area. Furthermore, the residential customer will not be willing to pay nearly as much for the install. The economics of residential infrastructure are much less favorable than the economics of business infrastructure. If it were so easy, we would have seen someone do it already in non-Verizon areas... nothing in the regulatory regime is preventing anyone from installing new fiber in most areas.
I can't speak for all states but by the time California and the feds are through, a good 40% of my income is taxes alone.
I call bullshit, unless you're including the FICA employer contribution in "your" income.
The only way you pay over 40% of your income in California is if your income is seriously high (over about $175k) and you have NO deductions. The top California marginal rate is 9.3%; the top federal marginal rate is 35%, but that only applies to income over ~$174k. Remember that even at high income levels those marginal rates do not apply to a significant amount of your income. If your income is that high, the payroll taxes don't affect you too much, and I don't feel sorry for you paying 40% anyway (although I wouldn't suggest doubling your taxes).
More likely, you feel like you pay 40% because 40% comes out of your paycheck, but that 40% 1) includes deductions other than taxes and 2) doesn't take into account the refund you probably receive at the end of the year.
For me, over 30% is taken out of my paycheck, but when all is said and done I actually pay 24% in state and local payroll and income taxes. And, yes, I'd pay significantly more if I could have an effective and sensible government in return. Sadly, I'm not sure American anti-intellectualism and knee-jerk distrust of collective action will ever allow such a beast.
Let's see... about 24% of my income goes to federal & state (no local) income and payroll taxes... and, my best back-of-the-envelope guess is that I pay another 1%-2% in gas taxes, my car tab, and other user fees. (I own no property.) Yes, I'd happily pay half of my income to live in a country where we really had all of that stuff. Many Americans react just like you did when I say that, because the government is so ineffective here that they can't believe it would actually work. But there are a number of countries where it does, most notably a few of those evil European welfare states.
Obviously, competent management and fiscal discipline are necessary for such a state to succeed. Ultimately, those are political problems and are the responsibility of the people. Ask yourself why certain other countries have them and the U.S. doesn't. I think you will find the answer has to do with how people are educated.
My own feeling is that the very idea of regulated telecommunications is inconsistent with the First Amendment.
That's a very interesting and thought-provoking way of putting it. The problem is that completely unregulated telecommunications, as we saw in the very earliest days of radio, are even less effective, because no messages can get through at all. While there are obvious free-speech problems with any government involvement, I think some level of regulation is necessary to ensure that speech actually happens in a more or less organized fashion.
I think a solution that would not run into any potential First Amendment problems is a publicly owned broadband connection, available to each household for a nominal fee, with actual Internet service over the connection provided by a choice of private providers. Just have the government build the infrastructure and ban the government from exercising any control whatsoever on what goes across it. Of course, the problem here is that the public will not have the stomach to maintain total network neutrality the first time someone is busted for using the government network to send kiddie porn... then censorship will start.
Well it negates your point because it's the same thing over and over. For every single example you'll pull up about supposed "unbridled capitalism" quashing competition you'll find that if you actually examine the details, the lack of competition is a direct result of government interference and regulation.
The irony here is that, despite the heavy-handed government regulation, that's actually not true in telecommunications. The lack of competition would still exist without the regulation, because once one participant has built infrastructure, other participants will usually not find their return on building duplicate infrastructure to be worth the very intensive investment it would take. The regulation simply forestalls the natural solution to this problem: making the capital-intensive infrastructure a public utility and allowing providers to do the much less capital-intensive job of competing on the public infrastructure, which would still provide the benefits of competition to consumers.
You can't watch live video of any quality; you can't use any sort of interactive video link; you can't use any remote desktop solution with any level of fluidity; you can only participate in collaborative development with a very limited number of participants; you can't participate in e-commerce of any significant volume; you can't download software updates or revisions without tying up your connection entirely for minutes or hours; and, perhaps most significantly for the economy, you can't consume new, bandwidth-intensive applications such as sophisticated online gaming.
I would happily pay double my existing taxes to get a country with effective universal health care, a modern and well-maintained infrastructure, a people-focused government, and the financial condition of the Netherlands. Instead, I get low taxes and... nothing at all to show for those low taxes, because the people are so ignorant and apathetic that the government long ago stopped bothering with trying to serve them.
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If we could find them, no problem. We'd be doing it already. US corporate income is US corporate income and you're supposed to pay taxes on it.
It's a constant cat-and-mouse game between businessmen seeking to evade taxes by offshoring profits and the IRS. The evaders invent ever more complex and sophisticated structures to obfuscate the true source of their profits; sometimes they get found out, sometimes they don't.
Where a business actually does move overseas lock, stock, and barrel, with HQ, operations, etc. all moving, then I agree the country the business left probably has a competitiveness issue. When all that's moving is money, it's quite likely the only problem is the criminal intent of the tax evader.
Um... can you read?
I accused the *summary* of obscuring the issue. I speculated that maybe the encyclical did as well.
In any case, I don't need to read an encyclical to know it's propaganda, because it's clear from the purpose of encyclicals. They exist only to assert an authority founded on bad metaphysics.
Um, no, quite a few of them were caused by... popes (and other religious figures), not over taxes, but over stupid, unintelligible points of dogma.
Fanatical, nonsensical devotion inspires people to kill senselessly no matter what facet of life inspired it.
It really doesn't matter. Either way, the pope's alleged authority is based on muddled metaphysical nonsense. And if you examine the actions of the church over history -- which ought to be the compelling basis for its authority -- you will most likely find its claiming to speak on "morality" to be a sad joke.
People don't "set up and operate" their businesses in tax havens. They operate the businesses in other places, which are usually much better markets than small, isolated tax havens, but then evade (usually democratically imposed) taxes by hiding the profits from those businesses in tax havens.
The summary (and maybe the encyclical; I'm not willing to read a piece of nutball religious propaganda to find out) obscures the issue by citing a couple examples of companies that actually operate their businesses in a tax haven. This is the exception, not the rule.
/beats head against wall...
Sorry, I didn't see your post right... I thought you were replying to me, not to the actual parent.
(My point is still as described, though. :-) )
Very well put. That is why communism failed, it is why tyrannical monarchy failed, and it is why untrammeled libertarianism would fail.
The system that has proven most compatible with human nature is a well-regulated market with a government that takes care of basic life needs. Time and time again this has led to the least suffering and trouble in the real world (rather than imagined utopia where everyone turns responsible and honest overnight).
Totalitarianism and libertarianism, as concepts (not necessarily real-life political movements), are opposite sides of the same coin.
A totalitarian (are there really any more out there anymore?) believes that humanity's interests will be advanced most effectively through total control by the collective. A libertarian (in the unqualified sense) believes that humanity's interests will be advanced most effectively through total control by the individual. As other posters have pointed out, most libertarians today acknowledge the need for at least some kind of skeletal government, but that is really a concession to reality, not an essential part of the libertarian ideology.
On to your other point, I'm not saying that the situation in Iraq or Somalia derived from libertarian ideology. What I am really arguing (and I did not make this clear) is that pure libertarian ideology would lead inevitably to an Iraq- or Somalia-like situation. We can sit here in our comfortable well-policed houses and talk about rationality and what people are taught as kids, but in the real world, people have proven in every single situation where they've had total freedom that the law of the jungle rules.
And people tell me I'm being idealistic if I say that most bureaucrats aren't on the take...
My point is that I have found group learning experiences like classes (which do happen, by the way, in places other than dysfunctional public schools) to be tremendously valuable and think the GP was being very simplistic when he categorically trashed them.
I'm not saying we "have" to give such care without an explanation. I'm explaining that it's impossible for us not to give the care because 1) there are obvious problems with not giving it and 2) human nature won't allow us not to.
And, if we're not going to leave the bodies in the street, someone, probably society as a whole, is going to have to pay for the personnel and equipment to remove them. Even that is affecting others' rights.
I suppose it's just another form of coercion, but things like carbon offsets might work.Well, you have to have a regulatory framework for enforcement or the carbon offsets are pretty meaningless... I agree they're a good idea, though. They allow the government to set a pollution-reduction goal and the market to determine how to get there most efficiently. Just because I think libertarian ideas are often simplistic doesn't mean I don't appreciate letting the market work when possible.
Kids aren't property, they're people. If a parent beats the shit out of his kids, then he is obviously inflicting harm on another person, and therefore no libertarian in the world would object to the government getting involved in some capacity.Reread the post I was responding to. It said, without any qualifications whatsoever:
Let adults do whatever they want, provided it doesn't hurt someone who is unwilling or not a minor member of their family.You know, government rules don't get created unless someone's interests were hurt. I think everyone in the society believes this creed; the problem is that way more activities than you might think at first affect other people's interests.
Motorcycle helmets are the classic example.
A consistent libertarian says "Don't make me wear a helmet. If I crash, it's my responsibility, and it's OK for you to leave me dying in the street." The problem is that we as a body politic are simply unprepared to leave people dying in the street, for several reasons. 1) it's ugly and stinky, not to mention unsanitary; 2) our humanity just doesn't allow us to see that level of suffering and ignore it; 3) it scares people and causes them not to ride, depressing economic output. The result is that if the motorcycle rider is uninsured we treat him at public expense -- and, if he rides without a helmet and is honest about it, he won't be able to get insurance. Therefore his riding affects all of us by costing us money.
Pollution regulations are another good example (and the best current "tragedy of the commons" issue).
There is simply no incentive for any one individual not to pollute -- one person's pollution, no matter how bad, is usually not going to affect the rights of others. But in a country of 300 million individuals, of course widespread pollution will affect everyone's rights! There is no solution to this problem that does not involve society as a whole somehow coercing the individual -- in other words, regulation.
Also, I think you'll find that allowing parents to hurt their kids in any way they want leads to some pretty gruesome consequences...
I find that a very narrow way of looking at composing, even assuming that music is composed by one person (which has not been true in most traditions outside of Western classical music).
Sure, each piece may have been written alone, but most of the progress came through dialogue between composers over time, or through composers being influenced to do something they hadn't thought of before by ideas from other composers. Individual creativity is largely meaningless without the larger social framework in which it takes place. (Likewise, the social framework would be meaningless without individual contributions.)
Something like this is why I find libertarian politics, generally speaking, way too simplistic. Many libertarians forget that freedom doesn't mean much without an organized society -- it largely becomes the freedom to accumulate more guards and guns than the next guy. Likewise, totalitarians forget that an organized society isn't much good if individuals have no freedom. The problem is that extreme libertarians are much more influential than extreme totalitarians at the moment, because we learn about totalitarian nightmares better than we learn about libertarian nightmares (such as Somalia or, currently, Iraq).
So are you suggesting we abolish all classes and force everyone to learn from books in rooms by themselves? Sure sounds like it.
Whatever percentage need to run Outlook/Access/Visio/Word-based DMS/[Windows app of choice] for work, but would rather use OS X for everything else. That is a hell of a lot of people. Most of them won't run Boot Camp, anyway; they'll run Parallels or Fusion.
Windows on Mac isn't just a security blanket; it's a clever way to enable corporate employees (that is, an awful lot of us) to buy Macs.
You don't even have to be tall, just muscular.
The BMI formula says that Ichiro Suzuki, at 5'9" and 172 lbs. is (marginally) overweight.
(I'm also muscular, 5'9", and 180 pounds... but I'm afraid I'm not as vivid an example.)
It may be feasible in high-density downtown areas, provided the population is willing to put up with constant digging in the streets.
But in most residential areas, there are *vastly* more structures you would need to run fiber to, spread out over a much wider area. Furthermore, the residential customer will not be willing to pay nearly as much for the install. The economics of residential infrastructure are much less favorable than the economics of business infrastructure. If it were so easy, we would have seen someone do it already in non-Verizon areas... nothing in the regulatory regime is preventing anyone from installing new fiber in most areas.
I call bullshit, unless you're including the FICA employer contribution in "your" income.
The only way you pay over 40% of your income in California is if your income is seriously high (over about $175k) and you have NO deductions. The top California marginal rate is 9.3%; the top federal marginal rate is 35%, but that only applies to income over ~$174k. Remember that even at high income levels those marginal rates do not apply to a significant amount of your income. If your income is that high, the payroll taxes don't affect you too much, and I don't feel sorry for you paying 40% anyway (although I wouldn't suggest doubling your taxes).
More likely, you feel like you pay 40% because 40% comes out of your paycheck, but that 40% 1) includes deductions other than taxes and 2) doesn't take into account the refund you probably receive at the end of the year.
For me, over 30% is taken out of my paycheck, but when all is said and done I actually pay 24% in state and local payroll and income taxes. And, yes, I'd pay significantly more if I could have an effective and sensible government in return. Sadly, I'm not sure American anti-intellectualism and knee-jerk distrust of collective action will ever allow such a beast.
South Korea, most of northern Europe (excepting the UK), and soon Australia.
Let's see... about 24% of my income goes to federal & state (no local) income and payroll taxes... and, my best back-of-the-envelope guess is that I pay another 1%-2% in gas taxes, my car tab, and other user fees. (I own no property.) Yes, I'd happily pay half of my income to live in a country where we really had all of that stuff. Many Americans react just like you did when I say that, because the government is so ineffective here that they can't believe it would actually work. But there are a number of countries where it does, most notably a few of those evil European welfare states.
Obviously, competent management and fiscal discipline are necessary for such a state to succeed. Ultimately, those are political problems and are the responsibility of the people. Ask yourself why certain other countries have them and the U.S. doesn't. I think you will find the answer has to do with how people are educated.
That's a very interesting and thought-provoking way of putting it. The problem is that completely unregulated telecommunications, as we saw in the very earliest days of radio, are even less effective, because no messages can get through at all. While there are obvious free-speech problems with any government involvement, I think some level of regulation is necessary to ensure that speech actually happens in a more or less organized fashion.
I think a solution that would not run into any potential First Amendment problems is a publicly owned broadband connection, available to each household for a nominal fee, with actual Internet service over the connection provided by a choice of private providers. Just have the government build the infrastructure and ban the government from exercising any control whatsoever on what goes across it. Of course, the problem here is that the public will not have the stomach to maintain total network neutrality the first time someone is busted for using the government network to send kiddie porn... then censorship will start.
The irony here is that, despite the heavy-handed government regulation, that's actually not true in telecommunications. The lack of competition would still exist without the regulation, because once one participant has built infrastructure, other participants will usually not find their return on building duplicate infrastructure to be worth the very intensive investment it would take. The regulation simply forestalls the natural solution to this problem: making the capital-intensive infrastructure a public utility and allowing providers to do the much less capital-intensive job of competing on the public infrastructure, which would still provide the benefits of competition to consumers.
You can't watch live video of any quality; you can't use any sort of interactive video link; you can't use any remote desktop solution with any level of fluidity; you can only participate in collaborative development with a very limited number of participants; you can't participate in e-commerce of any significant volume; you can't download software updates or revisions without tying up your connection entirely for minutes or hours; and, perhaps most significantly for the economy, you can't consume new, bandwidth-intensive applications such as sophisticated online gaming.
Because in several other countries your $15 a month would get you between 20-100 Mb/s both down and up.
I would happily pay double my existing taxes to get a country with effective universal health care, a modern and well-maintained infrastructure, a people-focused government, and the financial condition of the Netherlands. Instead, I get low taxes and... nothing at all to show for those low taxes, because the people are so ignorant and apathetic that the government long ago stopped bothering with trying to serve them.