This conversation seems to be hijacked. If I understood correctly, the original question was "Why have higher taxes on the rich historically correlated to higher economic growth?" I didn't click through either of the original links, so I'm not sure if the OP presented reliable evidence to support the proposition as fact. Regardless, none of the recent posts on this discussion thread seem to be attempting to answer or even discuss the question any longer. Perhaps these posts belong in some other thread, or in a new thread of their own?
In my humble opinion (though many don't agree with me), threads/conversations are meant to wander. |
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"without prior written consent"
The big boys can still play (Mt.Gox, etc), but yeah, no more direct user-to-user trades via Dwolla. Unless you don't tell them what it is for...
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EDIT: My maths skills fail at life today. Will be back tomorrow.
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Let's get the lowballers out of the way. 0.05 BTC  Now you're talkin! 0.10 BTC! 0.15 BTC 0.175 BTC |
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Let's get the lowballers out of the way. 0.05 BTC Now you're talkin! 0.10 BTC! |
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I think you need to answer this question:
How much is a person's life worth? If you could use $5 of taxpayer (or people who pay for healthcare) money to do it, would you? $10? $1,000? $1M? $1B? $1T?
At what point is the drain on society as a whole too much to bear to save a single life?
never But you are missing the point. With todays level of technology that sum is so marginal that it doesn't affect society more than random fluctuations in the market. It truly is negligible. Never? Really? So you would have taxpayers pay $1T to save someone's life? 100 lives later, and you've increase the national debt to 7 times what it is now, forever indebting your descendents to live a life of slavery in vain attempt to pay off said debt? And somehow, that is ok with you? Individual instances do not add much, but unpaid healthcare costs as a whole are a huge burden on society. The general attitude seems to be that every life is priceless, and everyone should be forced, via taxes or increased healthcare costs, to pay these priceless prices, but I think that is an inappropriate way to look at it. There are other concerns at play, such as opportunity cost and quality of life. Some procedures or series of procedures or ongoing health care can cost millions of dollars. Most people won't make more than a million dollars (present value) in their lifetime. And how many lives could be saved in third-world countries with the money spent on one procedure here in the US? Is it appropriate for us to deem the lives of our countrymen that much more valuable than the lives of other people around the world? If government is forcing us to "help" people in the way that they deem appropriate, then we have less funds available to help people the way we see fit, which, in some cases, might include saving a hundred lives of people in a third world country instead of one life in the US. Why does the government get to make such a judgement call on an issue of morality like this? |
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I am a serious bidder, and would like to know when my bid will be considered/accepted/rejected?
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None of this will help until there is an easy way of buying bitcoins relatively instantly.
This whole concept of having to wire money across the globe and wait days for funds to clear is a major obstacle. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83209.0People need something they can buy off the shelf. |
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So, uh, this is going to break BTC wide open to everyone who visits reddit! We're talking a serious explosion.
That said, I'm betting Reddit outlaws this within a week.
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I think you need to answer this question:
How much is a person's life worth? If you could use $5 of taxpayer (or people who pay for healthcare) money to do it, would you? $10? $1,000? $1M? $1B? $1T?
At what point is the drain on society as a whole too much to bear to save a single life?
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Society simply does not have the patience to wait around for their money to go through. We are a want it gotta have it now society.
ya I love it when I get to pay 5% and have to wait 3 days to send money overseas too..... 90 minutes? 0.001%? Outrage! You are not the norm. Most people want it now and do not care about a fee. For example; credit cards and the fee's that are charged to merchants and get passed on to product cost. Most people know about those fees and simply do not care because they got their instant gratification. That's less about instant gratification and more about not wanting to wait for 90 minutes at a checkout stand. |
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and taking a look at this great tool called ebay it seems as though they are selling them for what they are worth at copper per pound prices. now if you get into the exotic uncirculated mint condition copper penny then ya its a collect and worth more obviously. perhaps we got our communication wrong here I am talking about your basic "I found it on the road" penny. not your "its a family heirloom" penny.
Exactly. They are selling for what they are worth at copper per pound prices. Which is MORE than $0.01, and generally around $0.02 or $0.025. So, the copper pennies are WORTH $0.02. What do you not understand about this? And a gold $20 coin is only worth $20?
A pre-1965 quarter is only worth $0.25?
Do you even understand what value or worth means?
nope a 20 dollar gold coin is worth its weight in gold.. duh.. I see what you are trying to do.. I am not a fool but your doing your hardest to make me so.. keep trying  Exactly! Likewise, a copper penny is worth its weight in copper. It is worth more than just $0.01. perhaps you should re-read my posts I stated: the copper its made from is worth more than the penny. You also stated: currently a copper penny is worth.. a penny. Anyway, I am glad we are on the same page now. |
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and taking a look at this great tool called ebay it seems as though they are selling them for what they are worth at copper per pound prices. now if you get into the exotic uncirculated mint condition copper penny then ya its a collect and worth more obviously. perhaps we got our communication wrong here I am talking about your basic "I found it on the road" penny. not your "its a family heirloom" penny.
Exactly. They are selling for what they are worth at copper per pound prices. Which is MORE than $0.01, and generally around $0.02 or $0.025. So, the copper pennies are WORTH $0.02. What do you not understand about this? And a gold $20 coin is only worth $20?
A pre-1965 quarter is only worth $0.25?
Do you even understand what value or worth means?
nope a 20 dollar gold coin is worth its weight in gold.. duh.. I see what you are trying to do.. I am not a fool but your doing your hardest to make me so.. keep trying Exactly! Likewise, a copper penny is worth its weight in copper. It is worth more than just $0.01. |
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Looks like fun to me!
It'd be neat to see professional artwork and printing on something like this...!
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I estimate (roughly) that a dozen 5-gallon buckets means about a $5000 profit (about $.015 per penny). I seems like a lot of money, but what about the amount of time spent buying and sorting all those coins. I'm guessing it isn't a very high-paying job.
Good point! I suppose many people probably feel like they'll be worth more in the future, but if that's the case, why not buy copper directly? I estimate (roughly) that a dozen 5-gallon buckets means about a $5000 profit (about $.015 per penny). I seems like a lot of money, but what about the amount of time spent buying and sorting all those coins. I'm guessing it isn't a very high-paying job.
true.. having to collect all the coins sort em out.. if you decide to melt em you need propane or some type of fuel.. some cement to make a foundry furnace (or buy one ). A lot of work for what its worth. To sell copper over here you need to show your ID and give a fingerprint but that rarely happens from what I am told.. and I think it only applies to copper wire and pipe not ingots. Then good luck finding a place that will give you a good price per pound. I have met a lot of people talking about doing this but have yet to hear one of them attempting it. Why would you melt them? Just leave them in coin form and sell them that way, same as everyone does with silver and gold coins. currently a copper penny is worth.. a penny. 145 pennies is roughly a pound (could be wrong just googled it) thats $1.45 1lb of copper on kitco says 3.70. the copper its made from is worth more than the penny. as far as I know most scrap yards are not going to accept a bucket full of pennies but who knows. if your talking about the collector aspect to it then ya keep em. who knows copper pennies could be the next rare american eagle coin (highly doubtful with the amount of copper pennies in circulation) Eh? People know the copper is worth more than the penny. You don't have to smelt it down for them to see that value. Take a look at eBay - people are buying copper pennies for far more than they are worth, according to you! whoa calm down just saying if you take a bucket full of pennies to anyone other than a coin collector they are gonna give you exactly how many pennies worth are in that bucket.. not a penny more bitcoins are selling for far more than what they are worth on ebay too.. ebay sucks.. not a very good tool to measure value. That's not what you were saying. You were saying that the copper pennies were only worth a penny, when they are clearly worth more than that. Regardless, if you are changing your stance now to just stating that they are not very liquid, then I agree with you. Coins that are worth more than their face value generally aren't. copper pennies are worth only a penny. take it to the local corner store and see how many you need to purchase a soda they are not going to give you a discount cause they are copper. nobody changed their stance on anything. And a gold $20 coin is only worth $20? A pre-1965 quarter is only worth $0.25? Do you even understand what value or worth means? |
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And in those cases where people end up with nothing, those people die off. What's the big deal?
Well, most people on earth realize that our society can only exist if we take care of everyone. We are social animals and thus feel compassion for others because everyone knows that there is a good chance that they themselfs may need help at some point. If everyone thought like you then we would not live in this relatively nice and stable world. It would be dog eat dog and only assholes would survive. Now, would you want to live in a world composed primarily out of assholes or is it enough for you to look in the mirror in the morning? I don't see how society depends on taking care of EVERYONE. Please elaborate. You misunderstand me. I do not believe individuals should be FORCED to help other individuals. I believe they should do it out of the kindness of their heart. I make donations to local organizations and give to individuals to help them out. Especially if a family member or friend needs some help, I give it to them. I make donations to charities that help people in other countries too. But I do NOT believe in using tax dollars to "help" people. It should be voluntary. And yes, some people need to die off to avoid being too much of a burden on the people. I'm not trying to be an asshole, that's just reality. Let me ask you this - how much is it worth paying, out of taxpayer dollars, to save a person's life? $5? $10? $1,000? $1M? $100M? Think about it... Well, the problem is that you say these things standing on the shoulders of society. A lot of people that you don't care about helped the world get to this place. Most charities are there to help wealthy people get rid of their guilt and are actually artrociously inefficient. In our current society noone has to die because they are a burden. There is enough room to take care of these people. The point is also that the world economy turned for the better when we started to take care of people as an integral part of society. As i said before, we are social animals so once you start this kind of stratification there is no end. Paris Hilton would propably shit on your head whenever she felt like because, you know, she is clearly the better human because she is in a better position than you. What would be her motivation to not put a bullet in your sorry head for not being as successfull in society as you? So you have to realise that there are even greater assholes than you and they would think the same way about you as you about the people you want to leave for dead. Fortunately this is not how most people think and actually most people realize we need each other. Economy is highly connected. But what's even more crucial is that genetics are highly connected. The whole pure genes/perfect human thing is a myth. In our daily life we as a species completely fail at judging people on this level of connectedness altho it plays a major role in social dynamics. If you want to look at humanity strictly as a tool for creating an economy then you can swap them out like light bulbs. But that is a groce oversimplification as the economy has a lot of symbiotic caracteristics that can only happen in these highly connected meshes of social relations. A single idea from a disabled person can start a whole industry. So the very least i can say is that things are not so simple that you can just say "let them die". Of course you can have your opinion but i'm just telling you that it is not a healthy one for society. What do you think will happen to the mental health of people that are for some reason near to the survival barrier? They will live under constant stress and think about their survival all the time. These people will have a much harder time participating in society because of the angst that may not have any food the next day. 'let them die' is just a very crude and uneducated opinion. You make a lot of bold assumptions here... If by "standing on the shoulders of society", you mean I am wealthy, you are completely wrong. I have a net worth in the neighborhood of n negative $50k. No i'm saying that you apparently have a computer and an internet connection and that you could not possibly have that if there was realy poor chinese juvenile in some underlit factory that helped making one for you. Most people just don't realize just how much privileges they enjoy that are made possible by other people organised into a society. I would say that 99.99% of the people on this forum live on the shoulders of society. Things like food distribution, roads, rails, etc are all due to a big effort of lots and lots of people you don't know and part of those people you may have wished dead. And in fact during the industrial revolution many people died becasue they worked under sub-human conditions. And today we still enjoy these works. Take a look at how many people got disabled while building the Hoover dam. And Vegas until today uses the power that was generated there. Ok, now I understand what you meant. What does that have to do with the discussion? |
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I've just gotten started doing business in bitcoins and I'm curious what solutions other bitcoin businesses use for bookkeeping.
Is there any bookkeeping software or website that can handle btc and dynamically import exchange rate data? Anything that offers an API extensible enough to add this?
There are some multi-currency accounting apps listed here: - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/3612/153Perhaps a method for doing the importing of the exchange rate table could be built into one of the open source ones. That would be neat! Technically, GAAP standards only require the exchange rate to be reported once per day (or once per month, in some cases). All transactions within that day (or month) would be reported at the same exchange rate. This would probably be much simpler than attempting to acquire the proper exchange rate at the exact date/time of each individual transaction. |
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I really don't care who writes it as long it's based on empirical evidence and logic and makes sense to me. If it'll meet these criteria and is of the appropriate length, I'll pay up.
That sounds a lot like "original research", which is against the Wikipedia policies ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOR). It needs to be based on attributable primary sources, not "empirical evidence and logic", unless you want to see it quickly reverted. Then post it up on pastebin and use that as a primary source. Or start a free blog. |
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I estimate (roughly) that a dozen 5-gallon buckets means about a $5000 profit (about $.015 per penny). I seems like a lot of money, but what about the amount of time spent buying and sorting all those coins. I'm guessing it isn't a very high-paying job.
Good point! I suppose many people probably feel like they'll be worth more in the future, but if that's the case, why not buy copper directly? I estimate (roughly) that a dozen 5-gallon buckets means about a $5000 profit (about $.015 per penny). I seems like a lot of money, but what about the amount of time spent buying and sorting all those coins. I'm guessing it isn't a very high-paying job.
true.. having to collect all the coins sort em out.. if you decide to melt em you need propane or some type of fuel.. some cement to make a foundry furnace (or buy one ). A lot of work for what its worth. To sell copper over here you need to show your ID and give a fingerprint but that rarely happens from what I am told.. and I think it only applies to copper wire and pipe not ingots. Then good luck finding a place that will give you a good price per pound. I have met a lot of people talking about doing this but have yet to hear one of them attempting it. Why would you melt them? Just leave them in coin form and sell them that way, same as everyone does with silver and gold coins. currently a copper penny is worth.. a penny. 145 pennies is roughly a pound (could be wrong just googled it) thats $1.45 1lb of copper on kitco says 3.70. the copper its made from is worth more than the penny. as far as I know most scrap yards are not going to accept a bucket full of pennies but who knows. if your talking about the collector aspect to it then ya keep em. who knows copper pennies could be the next rare american eagle coin (highly doubtful with the amount of copper pennies in circulation) Eh? People know the copper is worth more than the penny. You don't have to smelt it down for them to see that value. Take a look at eBay - people are buying copper pennies for far more than they are worth, according to you! whoa calm down just saying if you take a bucket full of pennies to anyone other than a coin collector they are gonna give you exactly how many pennies worth are in that bucket.. not a penny more bitcoins are selling for far more than what they are worth on ebay too.. ebay sucks.. not a very good tool to measure value. That's not what you were saying. You were saying that the copper pennies were only worth a penny, when they are clearly worth more than that. Regardless, if you are changing your stance now to just stating that they are not very liquid, then I agree with you. Coins that are worth more than their face value generally aren't. |
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