This idea got hijacked by the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-union movement who want to lower workers' salaries.
Let's set unions aside for a minute, because you have a point albeit with many caveats there. There are very few complete anarchists, so I'll set those people aside as red herrings.
People who want lower taxes want to keep more of their paychecks. This means greater nominal salaries ceteris paribus, since net pay is less than gross pay due to taxes.
People who want the government to spend less want to decrease the debt. This means greater real salaries ceteris paribus, since debt expands the money supply and devalues the currency.
Now, you are right to some extent in that less unionization generally means lower nominal salaries for the workers. However, those greater salaries come at the expense of lower employment and labor force participation. We compensate for this with welfare spending. Welfare recipients are not adding value to the economy, in a general sense, and so while they can spend the money they receive, they do not typically build wealth in doing so. This is inflation, and so diminishes the real value of the workers' greater nominal salaries.
There is no doubt that there are plenty of people who want to make a quick buck without doing much to justify it. But they are no less prevalent in government and union management than in business. You have to separate intentions from results.
The wireless network selector with a large font that takes over half your screen and the removal of the wireless network manager GUI (seriously, you have to open a command prompt and use "netsh wlan..." to see what networks are saved or change their settings if you're not connected to them at the time) are definite steps backward.
In other words, if 40% of the population is benefiting from something, it's perfectly acceptable for the other 60% to put a boot on their necks and make them stop.
As a result, of course, there is no need to worry much about the national debt, or to destabilize things by trying to pay them off rapidly.
Rapidly is the context in which I took the statement to which I responded, hence why I qualified the currency manipulation with "blatant". Gentler and more subtle forms of currency manipulation happen all the time.
If you think America is not socialist, you need to stop reading propaganda.
We have:
Fixed income for the elderly and disabled (Social Security) Single payer health care for everyone over 65 (Medicare) Single payer health care for everyone under a certain income level (Medicaid) Health assistance for children of parents who don't qualify for Medicaid (SCHIP) Health assistance for people injured on the job (Workers' Compensation) Food assistance for everyone under a certain income level (SNAP) Direct payments to families with children (TANF, EITC) Direct payments to the unemployed (Unemployment Insurance) Various forms of assistance to the homeless (shelters, soup kitchens, free clinics, etc.) Primary and secondary education for all from ages 5 to 18 (K-12 schools) Post-secondary education assistance for everyone under a certain income level (Pell Grant, Perkins and Stafford loans)
Just to name the bigger programs. Yep, not socialist at all.
Wealth is not a zero-sum game, and even if it was, a greater proportion of the population being paid to not work is not sustainable. Automation frees up capital to be spent elsewhere; if people are not doing so, then it the real question to ask is why not.
The whole premise behind the world of Star Trek, especially TNG, is a "post-scarcity" society in which all of life's necessities can be provided without cost. But no such thing will ever exist, in the commonly understood sense. The laws of thermodynamics are immutable, and the laws of economics derive from them. You cannot accomplish anything without some expenditure of energy; there will always be a cost, regardless of whether it's quantified in monetary terms or not. The replicator does not run itself; it requires a source of energy, and both of those things require knowledge to produce and work to maintain. Even if the marginal costs are reduced to practically infinitesimal amounts, people will simply expand their idea of what is a necessity for life. Today, we consider education the most pressing human necessity, a hundred years ago it was electricity, half a millennium ago it was sanitation, and ten thousand years ago it was food. Tomorrow, there will be new demands.
Profiting and rent seeking are not the same thing, and it is the conflation of the two, as you do and as our government and business leaders do, that will kill this system of ours.
If Warren Buffet pays a lower percentage tax rate than his secretary, I don't see how you can honestly claim taxes are progressive.
The principal reason for this is SS and Medicare taxes, which while definitely not progressive due to being capped, are tied to benefits that are also capped. Buffet will almost certainly have paid more into SS than he will have taken out by the day he dies.
Also, Buffet is roughly one-third owner of Berkshire Hathaway, while his secretary has no such holdings. Not only is he taxed on any realized capital gains, but the company paid taxes on its income, and so he paid a roughly one-third share of those taxes from his equity in the company.
The income tax by itself is definitely progressive; if you want to factor in other taxes, then you need to account for capital gains taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. as well.
The growth in income could not be described as even slightly balanced.
Income quintiles, 1960: 2,784 / 4,800 / 6,364 / 8,800 Income quintiles, 2012: 27,794 / 49,788 / 76,538 / 119,001 Change in quantiles: 998% / 1037% / 1203% / 1352%
CPI change from 1960 to 2012: 776%
Population change from 1960 to 2012: 175%
There are nearly twice as many people, yet even the lowest 20% of income earners are making 28% more in real dollars. How are they in any way harmed by the fact that the highest 20% of income earners are making 74% more in real dollars?
These types of budget problems... require higher taxes.
For 70 years, federal tax revenue has averaged 16-18% of GDP while expenditures have increased from 16% of GDP to 24% of GDP. Our budget issues are not revenue problems.
The richest have been undertaxed for decades.
The highest income earners pay the most in income taxes, the owners of the most valuable real estate pay the most in property taxes, and the largest consumers pay the most in sales taxes. How is this undertaxation?
If tariffs are necessarily a bad idea, then why did the US prosper so much for so long with high tariffs that started when Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury?
No income tax, no inheritance tax, no property tax, no sales tax,...
If the FAA didn't step in now, the first time that UPS's drone cargo 747 smashed into an airport terminal people would say, "Why haven't you been regulating these since the beginning?"
And the FAA can respond by making the case that regulations for their own sake would not have prevented it. Now, having witnessed the accident, they can investigate and determine an appropriate response. Just because some people tend to have irrational responses doesn't mean that everybody else has to give in to them.
The day they decide they can get away with running drone aircraft you'll see layoffs.
How is that relevant to aviation safety? New Jersey and Oregon say that self-service gasoline pumping is dangerous, but those of us in the other 48 states aren't blowing up all the time pumping our own gas. If the absence of a pilot proves to be an important factor in the likelihood of aviation accidents, then a case can be made for requiring one, but not until.
I can go to a doctor and not be out of pocket. That's free.
No, it's not. The cost is paid indirectly, but it is still paid. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Now as for the taxation cost, that's a hell of a lot cheaper than private systems and better quality,
What private systems? Oh you mean the United States? The heavily regulated, mostly state-funded, highly corrupt system that will soon have state-run health insurance? Yeah, that's a private system alright.
I don't have to worry about the triage nurse having to do a credit check before stopping the bleeding.
Hospitals want you to die, don't you know? That's why they hire doctors and nurses, so that people will die right at their doorsteps! If you believe that people won't help you unless they're forced to do so, then you have a morally bankrupt view of the world. Why would you even want their help?
And you use the exact same assertion without evidence, except you're also using an appeal to authority.
What assertion? What authority? Are you arguing against what I wrote, or what you thought I wrote?
You can leave.
Such a welcoming attitude! Tolerance and diversity, all around.
Farewell and I wish you luck in your libertarian paradise, if you can find one that isn't a despotic nightmare.
There is no such thing as paradise. The first rule of economics is scarcity.
LoL, many businesses are set up that you cant do that.
You mean, you can't stop paying them and still receive the service they provide? Yeah, things have a cost, that's why they're not free.
Don't like the way petrol companies are colluding, erm... Public telco's, well they're the only one operating in your area.
And yet every attempt by the government to solve these problems only exacerbates them. Every once in a while, we're treated to the government solving problems by creating new ones! Price fixing and gasoline rationing worked out great in the 1970s.
As above, you can leave.
You first. No, I insist.
Even getting off the grid and living in some cabin in the woods would get you out of it.
What woods? Half the forests are owned by the government, and the other half you'd have to pay property taxes (= rent to the government) on.
However you simply dont want to because it would require you to give up too many creature comforts you've grown accustomed to.
I'll pay for them. What you can't accept is that I will pay for the things I want, and not pay for the things I don't want. It's choice that you don't want me to have.
This is less of a case of the GPP being wrong and more of a case of "waaahhhhh the world is not as I would like it"
What is the point of democracy if everybody is supposed to vote the same way?
Well grow up and get over it.
Yes, grow up and worship the state. Surely, you will find absolution in its bosom.
If you want to let the private sector take care of education, road maintenance, defense, and health care, then move to some place like Somalia or Afghanistan where that's effectively the case.
After 30 years of communist rule, Somalia was ruled by warlords and Islamists (aka Muslim socialists). The current "internationally recognized" government is secular socialist. Afghanistan was ruled by communists, then unelected Islamists, and now elected Islamists. There is no "private sector" to speak of in either country. Everything is confiscated in the name of the state, the religion, or both.
No, you get no choice.
Gee, thanks for pointing out the obvious!
That's the price of living in a society with civil institutions.
No, it's not. It's the "price" of living in a country that steals from its own people and then justifies it in the name of "civilization".
Again, if you don't like it, Somalia beckons... go there for a taste of anarchy.
How the hell is a failed communist state an example of what not paying taxes looks like?
That business could affect you in many other ways
Unlike the government...?
By polluting, through monopolistic market manipulation, through buying legislation,... I'm sure you can think of many more.
Pollution can only be solved when people are wealthy enough to afford products made cleanly. China has a state-run economy, and yet pollution is rampant. The Soviet Union had a massive pollution problem. Governments don't solve these problems, wealth does.
What legislation can a business buy in a government that has no power to grant it favors?
Yes, that's the cynical view that's easy to promote via sound bites.
Statistics are cynical, now? The only reason you believe the system is accountable to you is because you are blind to its flaws. You are judging by intentions, not outcomes.
However, I would much rather live in a society like Canada's with our democratic system (flawed though it may be) than in any other society.
There really aren't a whole lot of choices. There's democratic socialism, communist kleptocracy, and brutal theocracy.
And migration patterns show that most people agree and vote with their feet.
You really don't get the whole "correlation is not causation" thing, do you? Countries like Canada and the US are the only ones that even make a pretense of private property and the preservation of wealth. That doesn't mean you have the right system, only the least wrong one.
It isn't harassment to be told by the agency responsible for regulating aviation to put on the brakes until the rules are in place.
If the drones are not causing problems, then there is no need to regulate them. Regulation should only exist when it is useful in solving problems that a) people aren't resolving on their own and b) have severe consequences to the lives and freedom of others. A regulatory agency should not act like an ivory tower, passing decrees based upon arbitrary criteria. The rules should come from best practices; how do you determine best practices by forbidding the activity altogether?
It isn't difficult to imagine that alcohol deliveries on inland and coastal waters are going to present some special problems.
Alcohol as a payload does not present any hazards relevant to aviation.
Slashdot Mirror
This idea got hijacked by the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-union movement who want to lower workers' salaries.
Let's set unions aside for a minute, because you have a point albeit with many caveats there. There are very few complete anarchists, so I'll set those people aside as red herrings.
People who want lower taxes want to keep more of their paychecks. This means greater nominal salaries ceteris paribus, since net pay is less than gross pay due to taxes.
People who want the government to spend less want to decrease the debt. This means greater real salaries ceteris paribus, since debt expands the money supply and devalues the currency.
Now, you are right to some extent in that less unionization generally means lower nominal salaries for the workers. However, those greater salaries come at the expense of lower employment and labor force participation. We compensate for this with welfare spending. Welfare recipients are not adding value to the economy, in a general sense, and so while they can spend the money they receive, they do not typically build wealth in doing so. This is inflation, and so diminishes the real value of the workers' greater nominal salaries.
There is no doubt that there are plenty of people who want to make a quick buck without doing much to justify it. But they are no less prevalent in government and union management than in business. You have to separate intentions from results.
The wireless network selector with a large font that takes over half your screen and the removal of the wireless network manager GUI (seriously, you have to open a command prompt and use "netsh wlan ..." to see what networks are saved or change their settings if you're not connected to them at the time) are definite steps backward.
s/horde/hoard/
Putin and his cronies horde a lot of capital, but that doesn't mean they're capitalist.
In other words, if 40% of the population is benefiting from something, it's perfectly acceptable for the other 60% to put a boot on their necks and make them stop.
As a result, of course, there is no need to worry much about the national debt, or to destabilize things by trying to pay them off rapidly.
Rapidly is the context in which I took the statement to which I responded, hence why I qualified the currency manipulation with "blatant". Gentler and more subtle forms of currency manipulation happen all the time.
If you think America is not socialist, you need to stop reading propaganda.
We have:
Fixed income for the elderly and disabled (Social Security)
Single payer health care for everyone over 65 (Medicare)
Single payer health care for everyone under a certain income level (Medicaid)
Health assistance for children of parents who don't qualify for Medicaid (SCHIP)
Health assistance for people injured on the job (Workers' Compensation)
Food assistance for everyone under a certain income level (SNAP)
Direct payments to families with children (TANF, EITC)
Direct payments to the unemployed (Unemployment Insurance)
Various forms of assistance to the homeless (shelters, soup kitchens, free clinics, etc.)
Primary and secondary education for all from ages 5 to 18 (K-12 schools)
Post-secondary education assistance for everyone under a certain income level (Pell Grant, Perkins and Stafford loans)
Just to name the bigger programs. Yep, not socialist at all.
A socialist is someone who believes that some proportion of the population should be sustained at the forcibly extracted expense of the rest.
Not forcible, you say? Well fine, make taxes optional and tell me how long you can afford to maintain welfare benefits at current levels.
The only practical difference between socialists and communists is that one of them thinks the proportion should be 100%.
Wealth is not a zero-sum game, and even if it was, a greater proportion of the population being paid to not work is not sustainable. Automation frees up capital to be spent elsewhere; if people are not doing so, then it the real question to ask is why not.
The whole premise behind the world of Star Trek, especially TNG, is a "post-scarcity" society in which all of life's necessities can be provided without cost. But no such thing will ever exist, in the commonly understood sense. The laws of thermodynamics are immutable, and the laws of economics derive from them. You cannot accomplish anything without some expenditure of energy; there will always be a cost, regardless of whether it's quantified in monetary terms or not. The replicator does not run itself; it requires a source of energy, and both of those things require knowledge to produce and work to maintain. Even if the marginal costs are reduced to practically infinitesimal amounts, people will simply expand their idea of what is a necessity for life. Today, we consider education the most pressing human necessity, a hundred years ago it was electricity, half a millennium ago it was sanitation, and ten thousand years ago it was food. Tomorrow, there will be new demands.
The problem is that automation should mean that people are working less and living better lives, not working more and making less like is happening.
Citation needed. Money is not wealth, and hours on the clock are not work.
No, it has never been tried. We haven't sufficient industry until recently. Go take a history class.
-- the Bolsheviks, ca. 1920.
Automation is not magic, it has to be implemented and maintained by people, and people are not like machines.
Profiting and rent seeking are not the same thing, and it is the conflation of the two, as you do and as our government and business leaders do, that will kill this system of ours.
It's very easy for the U.S. to pay off the U.S. debt. It is denominated in U.S. dollars.
Such blatant currency manipulation, while "easy" to do from the perspective of accountants and legislators, would have severe economic consequences.
If Warren Buffet pays a lower percentage tax rate than his secretary, I don't see how you can honestly claim taxes are progressive.
The principal reason for this is SS and Medicare taxes, which while definitely not progressive due to being capped, are tied to benefits that are also capped. Buffet will almost certainly have paid more into SS than he will have taken out by the day he dies.
Also, Buffet is roughly one-third owner of Berkshire Hathaway, while his secretary has no such holdings. Not only is he taxed on any realized capital gains, but the company paid taxes on its income, and so he paid a roughly one-third share of those taxes from his equity in the company.
The income tax by itself is definitely progressive; if you want to factor in other taxes, then you need to account for capital gains taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. as well.
The growth in income could not be described as even slightly balanced.
Income quintiles, 1960: 2,784 / 4,800 / 6,364 / 8,800
Income quintiles, 2012: 27,794 / 49,788 / 76,538 / 119,001
Change in quantiles: 998% / 1037% / 1203% / 1352%
CPI change from 1960 to 2012: 776%
Population change from 1960 to 2012: 175%
There are nearly twice as many people, yet even the lowest 20% of income earners are making 28% more in real dollars. How are they in any way harmed by the fact that the highest 20% of income earners are making 74% more in real dollars?
These types of budget problems ... require higher taxes.
For 70 years, federal tax revenue has averaged 16-18% of GDP while expenditures have increased from 16% of GDP to 24% of GDP. Our budget issues are not revenue problems.
The richest have been undertaxed for decades.
The highest income earners pay the most in income taxes, the owners of the most valuable real estate pay the most in property taxes, and the largest consumers pay the most in sales taxes. How is this undertaxation?
I don't want to tax the rich, I want to tax the rich corporations.
No matter what name appears on the check, it is people who pay taxes.
You can't sell your products/services locally!
You can do this right now, it's called a boycott.
If tariffs are necessarily a bad idea, then why did the US prosper so much for so long with high tariffs that started when Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury?
No income tax, no inheritance tax, no property tax, no sales tax, ...
Change can happen, and relatively quickly at that too. Just needs a bit of momentum.
We are just one proletarian revolution away from utopia.
If the FAA didn't step in now, the first time that UPS's drone cargo 747 smashed into an airport terminal people would say, "Why haven't you been regulating these since the beginning?"
And the FAA can respond by making the case that regulations for their own sake would not have prevented it. Now, having witnessed the accident, they can investigate and determine an appropriate response. Just because some people tend to have irrational responses doesn't mean that everybody else has to give in to them.
The day they decide they can get away with running drone aircraft you'll see layoffs.
How is that relevant to aviation safety? New Jersey and Oregon say that self-service gasoline pumping is dangerous, but those of us in the other 48 states aren't blowing up all the time pumping our own gas. If the absence of a pilot proves to be an important factor in the likelihood of aviation accidents, then a case can be made for requiring one, but not until.
I can go to a doctor and not be out of pocket. That's free.
No, it's not. The cost is paid indirectly, but it is still paid. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Now as for the taxation cost, that's a hell of a lot cheaper than private systems and better quality,
What private systems? Oh you mean the United States? The heavily regulated, mostly state-funded, highly corrupt system that will soon have state-run health insurance? Yeah, that's a private system alright.
I don't have to worry about the triage nurse having to do a credit check before stopping the bleeding.
Hospitals want you to die, don't you know? That's why they hire doctors and nurses, so that people will die right at their doorsteps! If you believe that people won't help you unless they're forced to do so, then you have a morally bankrupt view of the world. Why would you even want their help?
And you use the exact same assertion without evidence, except you're also using an appeal to authority.
What assertion? What authority? Are you arguing against what I wrote, or what you thought I wrote?
You can leave.
Such a welcoming attitude! Tolerance and diversity, all around.
Farewell and I wish you luck in your libertarian paradise, if you can find one that isn't a despotic nightmare.
There is no such thing as paradise. The first rule of economics is scarcity.
LoL, many businesses are set up that you cant do that.
You mean, you can't stop paying them and still receive the service they provide? Yeah, things have a cost, that's why they're not free.
Don't like the way petrol companies are colluding, erm... Public telco's, well they're the only one operating in your area.
And yet every attempt by the government to solve these problems only exacerbates them. Every once in a while, we're treated to the government solving problems by creating new ones! Price fixing and gasoline rationing worked out great in the 1970s.
As above, you can leave.
You first. No, I insist.
Even getting off the grid and living in some cabin in the woods would get you out of it.
What woods? Half the forests are owned by the government, and the other half you'd have to pay property taxes (= rent to the government) on.
However you simply dont want to because it would require you to give up too many creature comforts you've grown accustomed to.
I'll pay for them. What you can't accept is that I will pay for the things I want, and not pay for the things I don't want. It's choice that you don't want me to have.
This is less of a case of the GPP being wrong and more of a case of "waaahhhhh the world is not as I would like it"
What is the point of democracy if everybody is supposed to vote the same way?
Well grow up and get over it.
Yes, grow up and worship the state. Surely, you will find absolution in its bosom.
And more cheaply than in the US, I might add.
Price != Cost
If you want to let the private sector take care of education, road maintenance, defense, and health care, then move to some place like Somalia or Afghanistan where that's effectively the case.
After 30 years of communist rule, Somalia was ruled by warlords and Islamists (aka Muslim socialists). The current "internationally recognized" government is secular socialist. Afghanistan was ruled by communists, then unelected Islamists, and now elected Islamists. There is no "private sector" to speak of in either country. Everything is confiscated in the name of the state, the religion, or both.
No, you get no choice.
Gee, thanks for pointing out the obvious!
That's the price of living in a society with civil institutions.
No, it's not. It's the "price" of living in a country that steals from its own people and then justifies it in the name of "civilization".
Again, if you don't like it, Somalia beckons... go there for a taste of anarchy.
How the hell is a failed communist state an example of what not paying taxes looks like?
That business could affect you in many other ways
Unlike the government...?
By polluting, through monopolistic market manipulation, through buying legislation, ... I'm sure you can think of many more.
Pollution can only be solved when people are wealthy enough to afford products made cleanly. China has a state-run economy, and yet pollution is rampant. The Soviet Union had a massive pollution problem. Governments don't solve these problems, wealth does.
What legislation can a business buy in a government that has no power to grant it favors?
Yes, that's the cynical view that's easy to promote via sound bites.
Statistics are cynical, now? The only reason you believe the system is accountable to you is because you are blind to its flaws. You are judging by intentions, not outcomes.
However, I would much rather live in a society like Canada's with our democratic system (flawed though it may be) than in any other society.
There really aren't a whole lot of choices. There's democratic socialism, communist kleptocracy, and brutal theocracy.
And migration patterns show that most people agree and vote with their feet.
You really don't get the whole "correlation is not causation" thing, do you? Countries like Canada and the US are the only ones that even make a pretense of private property and the preservation of wealth. That doesn't mean you have the right system, only the least wrong one.
It isn't harassment to be told by the agency responsible for regulating aviation to put on the brakes until the rules are in place.
If the drones are not causing problems, then there is no need to regulate them. Regulation should only exist when it is useful in solving problems that a) people aren't resolving on their own and b) have severe consequences to the lives and freedom of others. A regulatory agency should not act like an ivory tower, passing decrees based upon arbitrary criteria. The rules should come from best practices; how do you determine best practices by forbidding the activity altogether?
It isn't difficult to imagine that alcohol deliveries on inland and coastal waters are going to present some special problems.
Alcohol as a payload does not present any hazards relevant to aviation.