Well, thats impossible to say with any certainty. On the other hand, unemployment did go down signifigantly, to it's currently very low levels. Many other factors are responcible, and in fact most likely make up most of the increase, but it is very concievable that the tax cuts were a big part.
"Did they create new jobs?"
Yes, they almost certainly did. The question is how many.
"Please, enlighten us on how those tax cuts did any good for the economy."
Ok, they increased GDP and median income per household. They did not do so in a large enough proportion to increase tax revenue, but there have been several studies showing that the increase was there. Not only that, but the tax cuts expanded the use of the earned income tax credit, which has been rather benificial for the very poor.
Now overall, the tax cuts most likely did more harm than good, because we failed to curb spending. Deficits distort the economy, mostly by subverting our exchange rate, along with inflationary measures. But neither of these factors effect unemployment in the short term.
Now if we had supported entitlement spending cuts, that would have been better.
I vote too(or at least I would, but I'm not of legal age yet), but only because I irrationally enjoy the temporary fantasy that I have some sort of control over how things work. I also flush public toilets, mainly because I would feel guilty if I didn't.
Notice that these factors that drive me to take these actions have nothing to do with the effects of these actions on my personal well being?
"The truth of the matter is that the people who fail to turn up at the polls could completely alter the course of any given election."
Yes, if they all collectively voted, they would be rather decisive. But you, as a individual, can realistically do very little to sway their votes. Even if you are very active, you are not likely to gain your candidate more than 20 votes. And the chance of the margin being within a 100 votes is negligible(and don't pull up one election to the contrary, the actual chance is around 100/population) in everything but the smallest population sizes.
"Your examples are all pretty short sighted. Not flushing in public bathrooms? By the time 1 person per toilet had used the facility it would be rendered useless and within its first hour of operation would be shut down. Are you advocating we just shut down the polls and let the white-hairs on capitol hill decide the outcome of each "election"?"
Yes, clearly society is better off if everyone flushes. Are you familiar with the concept of Nash equilibrium? There are games where optimal outcomes can only be achieved through cooperation, and if everyone acts in their own self interest, they are all worse off. Cooperation is possible with a very small number of players, but it is statistically impossible to see widespread cooperation with large numbers of players. When faced with a game whose Nash-Equilibrium is suboptimal, it is best to change the rules of the game.
The toilet example works because luckily, not everyone needs to flush public toilets, only a percentage do(I could derive a model to describe this and give more details, but I don't really want to model shit). As long as a certain percentage of people will always flush the toilet(since they derive irrational joy from the act), everyone else can free-ride from their actions.
Public Choice should be used as little as possible to make decisions(for more reasons why, see Arrows impossibility theorem). Certain things have to be put up to public choice, mostly certain types of laws. When this is done, the best voting system should be used(I like a Cordecet runnoff system, but nearly all systems are better than what we actually see). But on the other hand, there are alternative means of making other decisions.
For example, the public does not vote on the price of Pizza. We instead use a decentralized price system. You seem not to like trivial examples, so I bring up pollution. The truth is, there is an optimal amount of pollution relative to economic benefit, that may or may not be zero. The problem is, that right now polluters do not pay for the costs to society, so pollution is overproduced. Instead of democratically deciding the optimum, Coases theorem(please read the wiki article) shows that if we institute artificial property rights, the problem is fixed by everyone acting in their self interest.
"More recently; what about air traffic reform, the various dozens of issues surrounding church & state separation (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), tax reforms, new land development and native land claims, funding of religious-based schools, anything related to the Internet or other electronic technology that isn't fully understood by 90% of the population at large or any of the other ten thousand issues that are on the table at any given time?"
I realize this, but from your perspective, you have little chance of changing things. You know there exist a certain number of people, who are more passionate and articulate then you are, who are campaigning for the issue. The truth is that any actions you could do to sway the public, will h
So by handing the CD you already stole to another human being, as opposed to say, throwing them at cars, there is a larger penalty? I understand that is the law, but it seems rather absurd.
Have you used Kazaa? Unless she had a dedicated linux server, dedicated for uploading, the number is very small. Kazaa had a very bad uploading algorithm, and even most attempted uploads did not go through.
I think it is far more likely that the total number is closer to 15 completed uploaded songs, assuming she always kept her computer on and never canceled uploads to save bandwidth.
The RIAA should need to prove the exact amount of people who uploaded, and if that is impractical, an impartial expert agreed upon by both parties needs to arrive at a reasonable expected number.
At that point, damage is equal to the number of people * the wholesale price of the good.
I hate this condescending answer. The truth is that your vote is completely irrelevant to the outcome of an election. Even in "close" elections, the margins are still in the hundreds range. Even if you had voted, nothing would have changed.
People who vote do not do so out of social change; we do it as social norm to feel better, like flushing in public bathrooms. Voting has a cost, you have to drive to a voting station and wait in line. Because of this, if the activity your doing instead gives you more joy then voting, it's entirely rational for you to abstain from voting(And don't look down on this preference, you are the one who likes standing in line to drop a slip of paper into a box).
But even if you decide to vote, chances are, your cause will still lose. Your only option left is to campaign for this cause through social activism. The problem with this is that you are not the only one with this point of view. Furthermore, these others have been campaigning before you, and some of them are much more articulate and convincing then you are. If the public's mind was going to be changed, it would already have been done.
Now you can vote in hopes that you will tip over the election(The probability is vanishingly small, under generous assumptions about vote distribution, it is still about 1/population) and invest massive amounts of time and effort into attempting to shape an apathetic public with little hope of success.
Don't tell me I'm "part of the problem", even if I decide to dump massive amounts of resources into a pit of fire, that does nothing at all to actually change how everyone else will act. "The problem" is that public choice has serious, fundamental flaws, and should be avoided when at all possible.
Doubtful. As you said, any solid object disturbs radio waves, this includes birds. I'm not an expert, but it might not be possible to derive the shape of objects based on radio disturbances(I think it's entirely plausible that two objects with completely different shapes might produce the same signature), so as long as we make our planes look like innocent objects, we'll be fine.
It's not that people are not rational, but that people seem to like giving away money. The charity "market" can be more interesting by modeling it as givers "paying" recievers to take on guilt. Looking at it this way, this strategy makes a lot of sense for Radio-head.
The guilt transfer market is very income-elastic, rich people purchase far more of it then poor people: That is, they need to give away far more money before they feel good about themselves. Radio-head's system allows everyone, rich and poor, to give exactly the amount of money that makes them feel good. This is classic price discrimination, and it allows Radio-head to capture nearly all of the consumer surplus.
Good question, why bother voting? If political change were the sole reason why people voted, turnout would be much lower. Luckily, people seem to enjoy voting, or do it out of some sort of "civil duty".
This problem is isomorphic to the tragedy of the commons:
You are faced with the choice of supporting the band, or not supporting the band. Many people need to support the band in order for it to stay afloat.
If you support the band, you have no reason to believe anyone else will support the band, but you are unable to spend the money you spent supporting the band on other things. So the rational decision is to refuse to support the band, and hope that someone else does.
This might work because people feel good about giving away money, but it wouldnt scale very well for the rest of the industry.
"Um, no, it's already been distorted. What needs to be done is to undistort it."
If you are talking about oil company subsidies, isn't eliminating them a better solution? Further distortion to cancel out distortion seems inefficient. And I realize that these subsidies include asset protection in the middle east, I am willing to stop that too.
"Granted, I was talking about solar panels, but anyone could figure out the same applies to hybrid cars. We can wait 20 years for this industry to grow enough to be economically feasible, relying on early adopters to pay the cost, or we, in the form of the government, can pay the early-adopter cost and get it reasonable now."
Hybrid cars are not going to get any more efficient without a major breakthrough in battery technology, something that billions of dollars in research already goes toward from other industries.
I find it doubtful that much of the extra revenue this would generate for battery and solar cell manufacturers will go to research. I don't see why they would have an incentive, in fact, it is rather possible that they would divert money from research to production, to meet artificially inflated demand.
This will increase experience and possibly decrease production costs for solar cells, but not by much(if the effects were large enough, they would have gotten a private loan). Besides, current conventional solar and battery technologies are fundamentally unworkable, and cannot possibly scale to take oil's place.
The entirely new type of solar cell or battery that can replace oil, that would have been funded by research, which was most likely diverted to meet production.
"I was talking about raising them to 2-3 a gallon, which, obviously, makes no sense anymore, but doesn't appear to hurt poor people that much. But that's exactly why I proposed a tax on new cars instead of on gas."
Cars are durable goods, and can last much longer than consumers usually own them. A tax on new cars would simply prompt people to keep their old cars for a longer period of time. Luxury cars are different of course, but they are rather price-inelastic, so I don't think a tax would be anything more than a revenue grab.
"I'm pretty certain I didn't mention Europe at all, and actually, you're wrong. Europe uses a lot less gas per-person. They have tiny little cars exactly because gas costs so much, and they use mass transit a lot more because they actually build mass transit and thus can get everywhere using it."
Just because they use less gas per person does not mean they are less dependent on foreign oil and natural gas imports. They consume nearly five times as much oil as they produce. In fact, they would be hurt more by an oil shock than us, because they have already taken up every measure to conserve oil, there is nothing else they can do to cut down usage. Because of this, Europe is just as sensitive to political threats from oil producing countries as we are, despite all of these anti-consumption measures.
"As opposed to now, where big oil is in charge of funneling research?"
The current system sucks tremendously, but it is rather possible that your system could suck even more.
My solution would be to set of a carbon cap and trade scheme. Every year the government would auction off carbon credits, the total number auctioned would be determined by climate scientists. These credits would be transferable, and would ensure that the carbon that we do produce goes to the most profitable use possible.
Most importantly, companies would have a direct incentive to research in cleaner technologies. Since gasoline is rather polluting, I imagine this would prompt some movement away from fossil fuels as well.
"Ah, I see. You like big oil."
No, I couldn't care less about them. I just don't see reducing oil importation as a valid goal. We import lots of things from the rest of the world, Cars, Chocolate, and Sugar. I don't see how oil is any different. What exactly are the costs to society of burning oil?(other than pollution, as I previously stated I want that to be accounted for).
No, they did not. The same risk taking investors who placed their money into the dot-com bubble, invested their money into housing after the bubble burt. After the housing market cooled down, they invested in commodities, creating a boom there.
Institutional investors who previously invested very conservatively, continued to.
"And you're overempashising the example I gave. There were a lot of tiny things that the government did to encourage it, and there were quite a lot of things the government could have done to stop it."
Your article did not mention them, so please elaborate on these other "tiny" things. And also, elaborate how you would have stopped the housing boom.
"Bzzzt, wrong. If oil prices had remained steady, the housing boom would still be happening, and it would happen all the way to the next president, who would get hit with the collapse, which at that point would be even worse. That was what was supposed to happen."
No, housing prices really couldn't have gotten higher than they did. Investors realized that it was a bubble, and pulled out.
Don't you think that it's a little absurd that one of the most incompetent presidencies in history successfuly orchestrated the movement of trillions of dollars by ingenious and unnoticeable micro-prods, and yet fail to realize that invading a oil rich country will increase the price of oil?
"More to the point, you'll notice that most of their bubbles and slowed in 2006 or 2005, and started a year or so after ours. (Ours actually started in 2000 or even 1999, although no one really noticed.) Why? Because those countries figured out how dangerous it was and stopped it!"
I don't really see what measures their governments have taken to "stop it". The ECB has a stronger anti-inflation mandate than the Feds, and raised rates faster than we did.
"Capital gains tax is the biggest scam in existence whereby the people who *own* the corporations get to pay 10-15% tax on their insanely huge earnings through stock."
Be a bit realistic here. A large chunk of wall street has already moved to London, where capital gains tax is 10%. If we equalized taxes, it is rather conceivable that the rest would go too.
"Our government, OTOH, is perfectly capable of slowly raising the taxes on heavy-gas-using cars"
That's just a show-measure, designed to make people feel good. Besides, the definition of "heavy-gas-using cars" is very sketchy, expect it to be distorted beyond belief in a congressional hearing.
"providing rebates to help defray the cost of hybrid cars"
Batteries require a tremendous amount of energy to create, unless the car is driven very often, this is often more energy than is saved. And hybrids are not nessiarily better for the envirement, they simply boost performance per gallon. Many hybrid cars just boost performance, keeping poor mialege(see the lexus models.)
"I'd suggest higher gas taxes"
Gasoline is highly price-inelastic. Prices would have to be raised to tremendous levels in order to signifigantly effect consumption(far more than the $2-$3 per gallon you are talking about). Not only that, but it would harm poor people rather severely, along with increasing inflation.
Before you mention Europe, keep in mind that they do not have a gasoline tax out of "energy independance" concerns. They have their tax purely for revenue, Gasoline is very price inelastic, just like cigarettes and Booze. Basic economic theory shows that such commodities are the best to tax(if you must tax at all), as they produce the most revenue and cause the least deadweight loss.
Europe is every bit as Dependant on the rest of the world for oil and natural gas as we are. In fact, because of their particular infrastructure, they are more so. So if energy security is your concern, don't look to them as a shining beacon.
"Or putting solar on top of their buildings. And, yes, we'd have idiots argue it wouldn't save money, when the point isn't to save money, or even energy. It's to help cover research and production-startup costs. We spend 80 dollars a panel so they can build big factories and then sell them to people at 25 dollars a customer, because people won't buy them at 80 and the first million are going to cost that much."
Any step forward in solar cell technology is going to be done by grad students working for a VC. How exactly are the profits of giant corporations funneled to them? I'm concerned that such subsidies distort funding away from original technologies that have not been considered.
Before we decide what are our goals. Is your goal achieving energy independence, or mitigating global warming? I am personally unsympathetic to the first goal, and very enthusiastic about the second. But they have nothing to do with each other, and I would like you to clarify your goals before I move on.
"But I'm not sure why a lot of people think a well-written sales tax is better than a well-written income tax. "
One motivation behind it is that foreign investors have essentially zero tax obligations under a sales tax. The theory is that nearly every corporation in the world would relocate here.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the two tax systems cause deadweight loss(economic damage caused by taxes that does not go to the government) in different ways.
Sales taxes cause deadweight loss by raising the price of a good, prompting consumers to buy less of the good. This new level of purchase is less than optimal, and a certain amount of utility is lost by both the consumer and the seller(there are nice graphical explanations of this in any microeconomics book). The precise level of deadweight loss is related to how much the tax changes purchasing behavior, and is determined by the price elasticity of a product.
Income taxes leave people with less money, causing them to buy less goods. Not only that, but it causes them to buy goods in smaller amounts(The classic example is that as people get richer, they buy more meat). This causes decreased utility for sellers and buyers. The precise amount of loss depends on the income elasticity of a good, along with a couple of population variables.
Keep in mind, deadweight loss is completely different that government revenue. The money does not go to the government, but simply disappears, lowering the countries possibility curve.
Many Economists suggest that income taxes cause a larger deadweight loss per unit of revenue than sales taxes.
"The prescription drug program didn't give anyone entitlements except the drug companies.
If you meant he rose spending, yes, I know. Pretending it's caused by 'entitlements' when it's actually an expansion of the military and corporate welfare is just deceitful."
Yes, it was a rather disgusting corporate welfare program. Regardless, senior citizens received drugs they would have had to pay for, so I count it as an entitlement. Semantics aside, the deficit is due mostly to growth in these programs.
"Yes, they spiked and went down in some places, and went up in some places, went down in some places. Pretending the housing bubble is a global problem is idiotic. Nowhere else on the planet saw home prices double in the last eight years."
Those are just the ones with Wikipedia articles. In each of those countries, median home prices have doubled in the last 8 years, in most of them, the increase was far larger. Real estate prices have spiked by enormous amounts in nearly every country in the world (Japan is a notable exception; prices are still level from their boom in the 90's).
"The government influences the market in many ways. One of those ways was to remove certain bonds for investment purposes."
You vastly over-estimate the effect of the removal of the 30-year note. As I said earlier, the 30-year note had many close substitutes with essentially identical risk and return (FDIC insured CD's and state bonds for example).
Even without substitutes, the 30-year note was for very conservative investors. The idea that by removing one ultra-safe investment option, investors will suddenly pour funds into risky real estate is absurd.
"And I notice you didn't respond to my 'Ownership Society' mention. Bush went up there in 2004, boasting how home ownership was high and talking about the 'ownership society', etc, etc, at a time that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge could see we were in a bubble and encouraging people to buy a house at that moment was stupid. He did that because his economy was based on housing prices."
The "Ownership Society" was a political buzzword used by George Bush to capitalize on a trend. You have failed to provide convincing evidence that this was anything more than an empty slogan. Anyone with enough cash or credit to buy a home should know better than taking financial advice from a politician.
"The best solution for what? What fictional problem are you looking at? How on earth could taking consumption help the housing market? (Unless you're including taxing houses, which are not normally included in 'sales tax' proposals.)"
The best solution for attracting foreign investment without distorting the economy. I would support taxing houses though, along with all other economic transactions. As for its effect on the housing market? I do not think it would have one, I was responding to your complaint that dividends are taxed differently than incom
"Then you're a moron. Clinton left Bush with a balanced budget. Bush has not increased entitlements. Ergo, our deficit cannot be caused by entitlements."
Actually, Bush has raised entitlement spending more than any president since Johnson. The biggest offender is the prescription drug plan, but that is just one part of his "Compassionate Conservatism".
"And we didn't need to vastly increase military spending after 9/11. We could have beaten Afghanistan with one hand tied behind our back."
I didn't say we needed to, I said that after 9/11, the public wanted to spend more on the military.
"Did you read the article I linked to? The Treasury Department, which I assure you the president does control, almost single-handed caused the housing boom because of how they structured their bonds, causing anyone who wanted to invest long term have to do so in real estate.
And does the phrase 'Ownership Society' not ring a bell anymore? Maybe you should check out who coined that expression and used it repeatedly. The Treasury Department's behavior was not an accident."
Which explains why real estate prices spiked in a bunch of other countries too?
All the article says the treasury department did was eliminate the 30-year treasury note, claiming that this made long-term investment impossible without real-estate. This is absurd, anyone investing in real-estate is expecting far larger returns than a 30 year would give. Not only that, but CD's and Municipality bonds are close substitutes for the 30 year note.
The 30 year note was taken down in anticipation that we would enjoy a permanent surplus, shame that didn't work out. But don't apply any conspiracy theories.
"And, of course, Republicans automatically structure things where investments get less taxes than income."
We have to, to keep all of Wall Street from moving to London. They also have a giant financial industry, and a capital gains tax of 10%. Is this distorting? Of course, but we generate more tax revenue than if we equalized rates(And no, I don't support Laffer curve bullshit, so don't set up a straw man).
The best solution is to move to a consumption tax. Instead of taxing income that people make, you tax what people spend. The effects are a bit regressive, but you can overcome that with a tax rebate.
"Erm...tax breaks? Research grants? Higher taxes on non-alternative energy?
There's a dozen way to do it."
So far, government attempts to do all of that have been subverted into bipartisan pork competitions. I don't really believe that our government is capable of doing such a complicated and nuanced thing, at least not with our current constitutional system.
That isn't nice, I actualy think Clinton was the best president of the last 50 years. I don't support the war in Iraq, and I support any and every decrease in military spending. As for your brown people remark, I'm actually Arab myself, maybe I hate myself?
But really, we have to be realistic. Shouting "BUSH SUCKS" at the top of our lungs does not accomplish anything. While I am incredibly disappointed with the events of the last 7 years, I want to analyze the real causes, and pinpoint blame to the right people, to ensure that the mistakes of this decade are never repeated.
"No, just perhaps an economic return that's equal to or greater than the cost of educating them. Tuition doesn't cover it if you're talking about state schools. The rest is paid by tax money. A foreign national who can't legally work contributes little to the economy, and once he returns home, contributes nothing."
I don't see how this is any different than domestic students. There are only two reasons why most foreign students would leave after school: 1) they are forced to by Visa restrictions, or 2)Wages are higher in other countries.
The first reason is very easy to fix, give them citizenship and let them stay. The second reason applies to domestic students as much as foreign ones.
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Well, thats impossible to say with any certainty. On the other hand, unemployment did go down signifigantly, to it's currently very low levels. Many other factors are responcible, and in fact most likely make up most of the increase, but it is very concievable that the tax cuts were a big part.
"Did they create new jobs?"
Yes, they almost certainly did. The question is how many.
"Please, enlighten us on how those tax cuts did any good for the economy."
Ok, they increased GDP and median income per household. They did not do so in a large enough proportion to increase tax revenue, but there have been several studies showing that the increase was there. Not only that, but the tax cuts expanded the use of the earned income tax credit, which has been rather benificial for the very poor.
Now overall, the tax cuts most likely did more harm than good, because we failed to curb spending. Deficits distort the economy, mostly by subverting our exchange rate, along with inflationary measures. But neither of these factors effect unemployment in the short term.
Now if we had supported entitlement spending cuts, that would have been better.
Notice that these factors that drive me to take these actions have nothing to do with the effects of these actions on my personal well being?
"The truth of the matter is that the people who fail to turn up at the polls could completely alter the course of any given election."
Yes, if they all collectively voted, they would be rather decisive. But you, as a individual, can realistically do very little to sway their votes. Even if you are very active, you are not likely to gain your candidate more than 20 votes. And the chance of the margin being within a 100 votes is negligible(and don't pull up one election to the contrary, the actual chance is around 100/population) in everything but the smallest population sizes.
"Your examples are all pretty short sighted. Not flushing in public bathrooms? By the time 1 person per toilet had used the facility it would be rendered useless and within its first hour of operation would be shut down. Are you advocating we just shut down the polls and let the white-hairs on capitol hill decide the outcome of each "election"?"
Yes, clearly society is better off if everyone flushes. Are you familiar with the concept of Nash equilibrium? There are games where optimal outcomes can only be achieved through cooperation, and if everyone acts in their own self interest, they are all worse off. Cooperation is possible with a very small number of players, but it is statistically impossible to see widespread cooperation with large numbers of players. When faced with a game whose Nash-Equilibrium is suboptimal, it is best to change the rules of the game.
The toilet example works because luckily, not everyone needs to flush public toilets, only a percentage do(I could derive a model to describe this and give more details, but I don't really want to model shit). As long as a certain percentage of people will always flush the toilet(since they derive irrational joy from the act), everyone else can free-ride from their actions.
Public Choice should be used as little as possible to make decisions(for more reasons why, see Arrows impossibility theorem). Certain things have to be put up to public choice, mostly certain types of laws. When this is done, the best voting system should be used(I like a Cordecet runnoff system, but nearly all systems are better than what we actually see). But on the other hand, there are alternative means of making other decisions.
For example, the public does not vote on the price of Pizza. We instead use a decentralized price system. You seem not to like trivial examples, so I bring up pollution. The truth is, there is an optimal amount of pollution relative to economic benefit, that may or may not be zero. The problem is, that right now polluters do not pay for the costs to society, so pollution is overproduced. Instead of democratically deciding the optimum, Coases theorem(please read the wiki article) shows that if we institute artificial property rights, the problem is fixed by everyone acting in their self interest.
"More recently; what about air traffic reform, the various dozens of issues surrounding church & state separation (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), tax reforms, new land development and native land claims, funding of religious-based schools, anything related to the Internet or other electronic technology that isn't fully understood by 90% of the population at large or any of the other ten thousand issues that are on the table at any given time?"
I realize this, but from your perspective, you have little chance of changing things. You know there exist a certain number of people, who are more passionate and articulate then you are, who are campaigning for the issue. The truth is that any actions you could do to sway the public, will h
So by handing the CD you already stole to another human being, as opposed to say, throwing them at cars, there is a larger penalty? I understand that is the law, but it seems rather absurd.
I think it is far more likely that the total number is closer to 15 completed uploaded songs, assuming she always kept her computer on and never canceled uploads to save bandwidth.
The RIAA should need to prove the exact amount of people who uploaded, and if that is impractical, an impartial expert agreed upon by both parties needs to arrive at a reasonable expected number.
At that point, damage is equal to the number of people * the wholesale price of the good.
That makes 8*15=$120 bucks.
People who vote do not do so out of social change; we do it as social norm to feel better, like flushing in public bathrooms. Voting has a cost, you have to drive to a voting station and wait in line. Because of this, if the activity your doing instead gives you more joy then voting, it's entirely rational for you to abstain from voting(And don't look down on this preference, you are the one who likes standing in line to drop a slip of paper into a box).
But even if you decide to vote, chances are, your cause will still lose. Your only option left is to campaign for this cause through social activism. The problem with this is that you are not the only one with this point of view. Furthermore, these others have been campaigning before you, and some of them are much more articulate and convincing then you are. If the public's mind was going to be changed, it would already have been done.
Now you can vote in hopes that you will tip over the election(The probability is vanishingly small, under generous assumptions about vote distribution, it is still about 1/population) and invest massive amounts of time and effort into attempting to shape an apathetic public with little hope of success.
Don't tell me I'm "part of the problem", even if I decide to dump massive amounts of resources into a pit of fire, that does nothing at all to actually change how everyone else will act. "The problem" is that public choice has serious, fundamental flaws, and should be avoided when at all possible.
So fuck the ballot box, vote with your feet.
She could have shoplifted a cd for each of them, and then some extra tracks, and still have come out ahead.
Thats a good point, I think at some point, bombers will just have to be hyper-sonic UAV's. That would make detection rather irrelevant.
Doubtful. As you said, any solid object disturbs radio waves, this includes birds. I'm not an expert, but it might not be possible to derive the shape of objects based on radio disturbances(I think it's entirely plausible that two objects with completely different shapes might produce the same signature), so as long as we make our planes look like innocent objects, we'll be fine.
How exactly would they know? The F-22 has not been used on a capable airforce yet.
The guilt transfer market is very income-elastic, rich people purchase far more of it then poor people: That is, they need to give away far more money before they feel good about themselves. Radio-head's system allows everyone, rich and poor, to give exactly the amount of money that makes them feel good. This is classic price discrimination, and it allows Radio-head to capture nearly all of the consumer surplus.
Good for them.
Good question, why bother voting? If political change were the sole reason why people voted, turnout would be much lower. Luckily, people seem to enjoy voting, or do it out of some sort of "civil duty".
That would work pretty well, assuming the rating agency is well picked.
The only thing that it says about the band is that none of their fans have taken game theory.
Because your support alone, is not enough to keep them afloat. You have to "hope" either way that the other parties will donate.
You are faced with the choice of supporting the band, or not supporting the band. Many people need to support the band in order for it to stay afloat.
If you support the band, you have no reason to believe anyone else will support the band, but you are unable to spend the money you spent supporting the band on other things. So the rational decision is to refuse to support the band, and hope that someone else does.
This might work because people feel good about giving away money, but it wouldnt scale very well for the rest of the industry.
If you are talking about oil company subsidies, isn't eliminating them a better solution? Further distortion to cancel out distortion seems inefficient. And I realize that these subsidies include asset protection in the middle east, I am willing to stop that too.
"Granted, I was talking about solar panels, but anyone could figure out the same applies to hybrid cars. We can wait 20 years for this industry to grow enough to be economically feasible, relying on early adopters to pay the cost, or we, in the form of the government, can pay the early-adopter cost and get it reasonable now."
Hybrid cars are not going to get any more efficient without a major breakthrough in battery technology, something that billions of dollars in research already goes toward from other industries.
I find it doubtful that much of the extra revenue this would generate for battery and solar cell manufacturers will go to research. I don't see why they would have an incentive, in fact, it is rather possible that they would divert money from research to production, to meet artificially inflated demand.
This will increase experience and possibly decrease production costs for solar cells, but not by much(if the effects were large enough, they would have gotten a private loan). Besides, current conventional solar and battery technologies are fundamentally unworkable, and cannot possibly scale to take oil's place.
The entirely new type of solar cell or battery that can replace oil, that would have been funded by research, which was most likely diverted to meet production.
"I was talking about raising them to 2-3 a gallon, which, obviously, makes no sense anymore, but doesn't appear to hurt poor people that much. But that's exactly why I proposed a tax on new cars instead of on gas."
Cars are durable goods, and can last much longer than consumers usually own them. A tax on new cars would simply prompt people to keep their old cars for a longer period of time. Luxury cars are different of course, but they are rather price-inelastic, so I don't think a tax would be anything more than a revenue grab.
"I'm pretty certain I didn't mention Europe at all, and actually, you're wrong. Europe uses a lot less gas per-person. They have tiny little cars exactly because gas costs so much, and they use mass transit a lot more because they actually build mass transit and thus can get everywhere using it."
Just because they use less gas per person does not mean they are less dependent on foreign oil and natural gas imports. They consume nearly five times as much oil as they produce. In fact, they would be hurt more by an oil shock than us, because they have already taken up every measure to conserve oil, there is nothing else they can do to cut down usage. Because of this, Europe is just as sensitive to political threats from oil producing countries as we are, despite all of these anti-consumption measures.
"As opposed to now, where big oil is in charge of funneling research?"
The current system sucks tremendously, but it is rather possible that your system could suck even more.
My solution would be to set of a carbon cap and trade scheme. Every year the government would auction off carbon credits, the total number auctioned would be determined by climate scientists. These credits would be transferable, and would ensure that the carbon that we do produce goes to the most profitable use possible.
Most importantly, companies would have a direct incentive to research in cleaner technologies. Since gasoline is rather polluting, I imagine this would prompt some movement away from fossil fuels as well.
"Ah, I see. You like big oil."
No, I couldn't care less about them. I just don't see reducing oil importation as a valid goal. We import lots of things from the rest of the world, Cars, Chocolate, and Sugar. I don't see how oil is any different. What exactly are the costs to society of burning oil?(other than pollution, as I previously stated I want that to be accounted for).
No, they did not. The same risk taking investors who placed their money into the dot-com bubble, invested their money into housing after the bubble burt. After the housing market cooled down, they invested in commodities, creating a boom there.
Institutional investors who previously invested very conservatively, continued to.
"And you're overempashising the example I gave. There were a lot of tiny things that the government did to encourage it, and there were quite a lot of things the government could have done to stop it."
Your article did not mention them, so please elaborate on these other "tiny" things. And also, elaborate how you would have stopped the housing boom.
"Bzzzt, wrong. If oil prices had remained steady, the housing boom would still be happening, and it would happen all the way to the next president, who would get hit with the collapse, which at that point would be even worse. That was what was supposed to happen."
No, housing prices really couldn't have gotten higher than they did. Investors realized that it was a bubble, and pulled out.
Don't you think that it's a little absurd that one of the most incompetent presidencies in history successfuly orchestrated the movement of trillions of dollars by ingenious and unnoticeable micro-prods, and yet fail to realize that invading a oil rich country will increase the price of oil?
"More to the point, you'll notice that most of their bubbles and slowed in 2006 or 2005, and started a year or so after ours. (Ours actually started in 2000 or even 1999, although no one really noticed.) Why? Because those countries figured out how dangerous it was and stopped it!"
I don't really see what measures their governments have taken to "stop it". The ECB has a stronger anti-inflation mandate than the Feds, and raised rates faster than we did.
Be a bit realistic here. A large chunk of wall street has already moved to London, where capital gains tax is 10%. If we equalized taxes, it is rather conceivable that the rest would go too.
That's just a show-measure, designed to make people feel good. Besides, the definition of "heavy-gas-using cars" is very sketchy, expect it to be distorted beyond belief in a congressional hearing.
"providing rebates to help defray the cost of hybrid cars"
Batteries require a tremendous amount of energy to create, unless the car is driven very often, this is often more energy than is saved. And hybrids are not nessiarily better for the envirement, they simply boost performance per gallon. Many hybrid cars just boost performance, keeping poor mialege(see the lexus models.)
"I'd suggest higher gas taxes"
Gasoline is highly price-inelastic. Prices would have to be raised to tremendous levels in order to signifigantly effect consumption(far more than the $2-$3 per gallon you are talking about). Not only that, but it would harm poor people rather severely, along with increasing inflation.
Before you mention Europe, keep in mind that they do not have a gasoline tax out of "energy independance" concerns. They have their tax purely for revenue, Gasoline is very price inelastic, just like cigarettes and Booze. Basic economic theory shows that such commodities are the best to tax(if you must tax at all), as they produce the most revenue and cause the least deadweight loss.
Europe is every bit as Dependant on the rest of the world for oil and natural gas as we are. In fact, because of their particular infrastructure, they are more so. So if energy security is your concern, don't look to them as a shining beacon.
"Or putting solar on top of their buildings. And, yes, we'd have idiots argue it wouldn't save money, when the point isn't to save money, or even energy. It's to help cover research and production-startup costs. We spend 80 dollars a panel so they can build big factories and then sell them to people at 25 dollars a customer, because people won't buy them at 80 and the first million are going to cost that much."
Any step forward in solar cell technology is going to be done by grad students working for a VC. How exactly are the profits of giant corporations funneled to them? I'm concerned that such subsidies distort funding away from original technologies that have not been considered.
Before we decide what are our goals. Is your goal achieving energy independence, or mitigating global warming? I am personally unsympathetic to the first goal, and very enthusiastic about the second. But they have nothing to do with each other, and I would like you to clarify your goals before I move on.
One motivation behind it is that foreign investors have essentially zero tax obligations under a sales tax. The theory is that nearly every corporation in the world would relocate here.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the two tax systems cause deadweight loss(economic damage caused by taxes that does not go to the government) in different ways.
Sales taxes cause deadweight loss by raising the price of a good, prompting consumers to buy less of the good. This new level of purchase is less than optimal, and a certain amount of utility is lost by both the consumer and the seller(there are nice graphical explanations of this in any microeconomics book). The precise level of deadweight loss is related to how much the tax changes purchasing behavior, and is determined by the price elasticity of a product.
Income taxes leave people with less money, causing them to buy less goods. Not only that, but it causes them to buy goods in smaller amounts(The classic example is that as people get richer, they buy more meat). This causes decreased utility for sellers and buyers. The precise amount of loss depends on the income elasticity of a good, along with a couple of population variables.
Keep in mind, deadweight loss is completely different that government revenue. The money does not go to the government, but simply disappears, lowering the countries possibility curve.
Many Economists suggest that income taxes cause a larger deadweight loss per unit of revenue than sales taxes.
Yes, it was a rather disgusting corporate welfare program. Regardless, senior citizens received drugs they would have had to pay for, so I count it as an entitlement. Semantics aside, the deficit is due mostly to growth in these programs.
"Yes, they spiked and went down in some places, and went up in some places, went down in some places. Pretending the housing bubble is a global problem is idiotic. Nowhere else on the planet saw home prices double in the last eight years."
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_property_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_property_bubble
Those are just the ones with Wikipedia articles. In each of those countries, median home prices have doubled in the last 8 years, in most of them, the increase was far larger. Real estate prices have spiked by enormous amounts in nearly every country in the world (Japan is a notable exception; prices are still level from their boom in the 90's).
"The government influences the market in many ways. One of those ways was to remove certain bonds for investment purposes."
You vastly over-estimate the effect of the removal of the 30-year note. As I said earlier, the 30-year note had many close substitutes with essentially identical risk and return (FDIC insured CD's and state bonds for example).
Even without substitutes, the 30-year note was for very conservative investors. The idea that by removing one ultra-safe investment option, investors will suddenly pour funds into risky real estate is absurd.
"And I notice you didn't respond to my 'Ownership Society' mention. Bush went up there in 2004, boasting how home ownership was high and talking about the 'ownership society', etc, etc, at a time that anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge could see we were in a bubble and encouraging people to buy a house at that moment was stupid. He did that because his economy was based on housing prices."
The "Ownership Society" was a political buzzword used by George Bush to capitalize on a trend. You have failed to provide convincing evidence that this was anything more than an empty slogan. Anyone with enough cash or credit to buy a home should know better than taking financial advice from a politician.
"The best solution for what? What fictional problem are you looking at? How on earth could taking consumption help the housing market? (Unless you're including taxing houses, which are not normally included in 'sales tax' proposals.)"
The best solution for attracting foreign investment without distorting the economy. I would support taxing houses though, along with all other economic transactions. As for its effect on the housing market? I do not think it would have one, I was responding to your complaint that dividends are taxed differently than incom
Really? I stand by my description, and would be glad to clarify any point you didn't get.
Actually, Bush has raised entitlement spending more than any president since Johnson. The biggest offender is the prescription drug plan, but that is just one part of his "Compassionate Conservatism".
"And we didn't need to vastly increase military spending after 9/11. We could have beaten Afghanistan with one hand tied behind our back."
I didn't say we needed to, I said that after 9/11, the public wanted to spend more on the military.
"Did you read the article I linked to? The Treasury Department, which I assure you the president does control, almost single-handed caused the housing boom because of how they structured their bonds, causing anyone who wanted to invest long term have to do so in real estate. And does the phrase 'Ownership Society' not ring a bell anymore? Maybe you should check out who coined that expression and used it repeatedly. The Treasury Department's behavior was not an accident."
Which explains why real estate prices spiked in a bunch of other countries too?
All the article says the treasury department did was eliminate the 30-year treasury note, claiming that this made long-term investment impossible without real-estate. This is absurd, anyone investing in real-estate is expecting far larger returns than a 30 year would give. Not only that, but CD's and Municipality bonds are close substitutes for the 30 year note.
The 30 year note was taken down in anticipation that we would enjoy a permanent surplus, shame that didn't work out. But don't apply any conspiracy theories.
"And, of course, Republicans automatically structure things where investments get less taxes than income."
We have to, to keep all of Wall Street from moving to London. They also have a giant financial industry, and a capital gains tax of 10%. Is this distorting? Of course, but we generate more tax revenue than if we equalized rates(And no, I don't support Laffer curve bullshit, so don't set up a straw man).
The best solution is to move to a consumption tax. Instead of taxing income that people make, you tax what people spend. The effects are a bit regressive, but you can overcome that with a tax rebate.
"Erm...tax breaks? Research grants? Higher taxes on non-alternative energy? There's a dozen way to do it."
So far, government attempts to do all of that have been subverted into bipartisan pork competitions. I don't really believe that our government is capable of doing such a complicated and nuanced thing, at least not with our current constitutional system.
But really, we have to be realistic. Shouting "BUSH SUCKS" at the top of our lungs does not accomplish anything. While I am incredibly disappointed with the events of the last 7 years, I want to analyze the real causes, and pinpoint blame to the right people, to ensure that the mistakes of this decade are never repeated.
I don't see how this is any different than domestic students. There are only two reasons why most foreign students would leave after school: 1) they are forced to by Visa restrictions, or 2)Wages are higher in other countries.
The first reason is very easy to fix, give them citizenship and let them stay. The second reason applies to domestic students as much as foreign ones.