I think they should be exempt from even that if they're poor enough.
This is the main problem with this whole idea: how do we establish who is "poor enough?" Back in my country, it was fairly customary for children to live with their parents, even after they are married, and only get a place of their own much later. Usually that would be an apartment. Sometimes we had whole families living in the same house for generations. Here, everyone wants their own house, and if they lose a job, they're homeless. This is why I don't get the issue with foreclosures being portrayed as such a horrible thing. I would say, move back in with your parents, and use your family for support, or at least downgrade to an apartment, but it's being shown as this terrible thing that will leave families out on the street. My point is, what do you use the basis for being poor? Someone who makes $10k a year or less? Someone who would be considered poor in India or Somalia? On a mailing list I am on, some guy posted an off-topic e-mail asking if anyone had a spare computer to donate. When pressed for more info, he revealed he got an old video game for his birthday, and his computer was not powerful enough to play it. It was pointed out to him that all he needs is a $30 to $40 video card for what he needed. He explained that he lives on SSI in an assisted living apartment, and has the government paying for his apartment, and giving him food stamps and $110 a month as a social security check. Then he explained that of that check $97 goes to pay for his cable and internet. It was suggested that he either go without that for a month, or better, cut his cable and just keep the internet, downloading the sows he watches or watch them on Hulu. He was rather upset and angry that people wouldn't help him and give him anything, instead giving him useless suggestions, and was coming up with excuses for why he needs to keep paying for his tv. Now, he's someone who only makes $110 a month, but has his food and shelter provided for him. Compared to some of the poor people in other countries, he's doing pretty well. Considering he can sit around at home and watch TV and surf the web all day, he's doing REALLY damn well. It'll be at least a decade or more until I save enough to be able to do that too. Anyway, sorry, went off on a rant. That guy is poor, but he's also feeling rather entitled. My parents, on the other hand, make six figures each, but have about $20,000 a month in bills, and support my sick grandparents on my mom's side, and my family back in my home country. Both of my parents are working extremely hard morning to night, have only one old busted car between the two of them, and my mom sometimes can't afford to buy new pantyhose. After all expenses, their remaining money every month is also maybe $100. Are they poor? |
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There's a reason that most people who believe in libertarianism are in high school and have zero experience with the real world, and you and Atlas illustrate it quite well.
Btw, just fyi, I was a liberal democrat until I got to college. After getting my degree in business finance, and now going through most of my master's in business, I've become more of a social liberal and economic conservative. I guess moderate democrat/libertarian or something. The main reason was that I ended up learning how economics works, exactly, what effects government tax policies REALLY have (I don't mean "omg they're evil!", I mean totally unexpected things and tax avoidance issues), and what kind of crap people and businesses have to deal with globally from a bureaucratic/regulation aspect. I'm not against free markets. Not at all. Competition is necessary. But regulation is necessary. Especially with resource management and the environment. We don't have enough regulation with regard to resource exploitation and pollution, frankly. If you're proud of your education and ability to understand economics, then look into steady state growth and ecological economics. Keyword: "Herman Daly". One idea I'm a fan of is, instead of leasing land to companies to drill and mine on, make them buy it, and make them pay property taxes like everyone else. That way, instead of them just abandoning the land back to the government, they'll have to sell it. And if the company wants to be able to resell the land after they're done with it, they'll either make sure to be really careful when mining, or clean it up when they're done. Otherwise they're stuck with worthless land and are forced to keep paying property taxes for it. |
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Do you realize how much spending would have to be reduced to avoid default though?
1) If all discretionary spending was eliminated, including defense, the U.S. would be $50 billion short.
2) Cut 70% of medicare and social security.
3) Or, increase tax revenue by 2/3.
That's just not realistically going to happen, and I'd argue that if any of these things happen, it would mean the end of the U.S. as we know it. I think that either defaulting or cutting what needs to be cut would send the world into great depression 2.0.
A HUGE reason expenditures rose and revenues fell is due to the slump in the economy. Tax-paying businesses/individuals are not paying taxes any more, and in turn, the government is now paying out a lot more in unemployment checks and other assistance. If we cut at least something, even if it's not enough, we can hope that once the economy picks up, revenues will as well. |
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There's a reason that most people who believe in libertarianism are in high school and have zero experience with the real world, and you and Atlas illustrate it quite well.
Btw, just fyi, I was a liberal democrat until I got to college. After getting my degree in business finance, and now going through most of my master's in business, I've become more of a social liberal and economic conservative. I guess moderate democrat/libertarian or something. The main reason was that I ended up learning how economics works, exactly, what effects government tax policies REALLY have (I don't mean "omg they're evil!", I mean totally unexpected things and tax avoidance issues), and what kind of crap people and businesses have to deal with globally from a bureaucratic/regulation aspect. |
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Just to interject, minimum wage, high unemployment, and low income issues are currently more of an issue of artificial and distance-based borders suddenly collapsing due to globalization, nothing more. In short, the minimum wage suddenly went from what someone in your country was willing to work for and need to earn to live, to what anyone in the entire world is willing to work for and needs to earn to live. In this world, the only thing that a minimum wage will accomplish is make sure that all types of work that are below that wage get shipped overseas, and everyone who was at that job level is now either required to learn new skills to compete and get higher wage jobs (competing with everyone else who was laid off), or starve (go on SSI). Only real political options are to keep increasing the minimum wage and force more jobs overseas, or allow local citizens to compete globally, and allow the global low wages to increase all together (outsourced work wages in China and India are growing really fast btw, so that shouldn't take long)
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In your view, which has more worth. Human life, or private property? Let's speak in general terms for this, as obviously "the life of your mother" would carry different weight.
Both of those are VERY general with a VERY wide range. I think the life of a professor with a PhD in sciences or mathematics, or a "captain of industry" type CEO who is employing thousands of people and providing service to thousands of customers, is worth a lot more than the life of a homeless drug addict. Likewise, the range is wide for property. I think there are cases where some life is worth more than some property, and some property is worth more than some life. |
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SecondLife used to have in-world casinos that let you gamble using SecondLife's currency. They eventually had to ban that, because there was an obvious link between exchanging USD for SLL and back, just to gamble. Though the issue there could have been that all of SecondLife's servers are residing within US territories, or that SecondLife SLL currency is still minted and owned by a US corporation.
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Because, unlike the people in Soviet Union, people in America had a choice and a say in their debt, and are thus fully responsible for things like wanting a war in the Middle East and supporting politicians who pushed for it, or voting to approve local and state government projects.
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1. the vast majority of UL ratings are testing to conform to government created standards. UL creates relatively few standards, mostly for niche industrial equipment rather than anything the average person would use or even know of.
Four letters: IEEE |
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And yeah, there are issues with construction crew unions and no-bid contract corruption, but who's to say that also won't happen with a private monopoly?)
The private 'monopoly' would still have to provide good service, at a good price, or a competitor could undercut them. A natural monopoly is still subject to market forces, even when it's alone. The threat of competition is just as good as actual competition, most of the time. The chief problem here is that land is the one monopoly you can't undercut. With data, you can switch to multiple carriers, including radio. With electric, you can switch to generating some of the power yourself. But if someone owns all the roads, there's really no way to compete, since there aren't any easy substitutes. I guess this may push more research into automated flying machines, or teleportation... Precisely. A road is not only competing with other roads, but also flying, telecommuting, biking, subways, and walking. Ah, good point. Forgot about those. |
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And yeah, there are issues with construction crew unions and no-bid contract corruption, but who's to say that also won't happen with a private monopoly?)
The private 'monopoly' would still have to provide good service, at a good price, or a competitor could undercut them. A natural monopoly is still subject to market forces, even when it's alone. The threat of competition is just as good as actual competition, most of the time. The chief problem here is that land is the one monopoly you can't undercut. With data, you can switch to multiple carriers, including radio. With electric, you can switch to generating some of the power yourself. But if someone owns all the roads, there's really no way to compete, since there aren't any easy substitutes. I guess this may push more research into automated flying machines, or teleportation... |
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It's not the roads I drive on that I'm complaining about. It's the roads I don't drive on. Tell me taxation isn't theft, though. Go on, try.
Just, out of curiosity, let's say the road system is privatized. You'll have competing companies owning roads and charging toll. At first, if you like one road more than the other, you'll have a choice to avoid the poorly performing company. But, eventually, the better performing one will be able to buy up more and more poorly performing ones around your area. When it gets to the point that there is only one company servicing all roads and charging you for their use, you're pretty much stuck with a monopoly, having to pay one organization if you want to drive anywhere. So... how would that be different from being forced to pay the government? (You could take public transportation, but you'd be paying indirectly, or you could stay home... And yeah, there are issues with construction crew unions and no-bid contract corruption, but who's to say that also won't happen with a private monopoly?) |
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How about Sealand? It's fairly prosperous, with all it's residents being fairly wealthy.
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Maybe Monaco? Though they still have some social security type stuff...
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This is probably a very logical thread between the two. I'm sure there are a lot of Alex Jones types in Ukraine and Russia (replace with Russian-sounding name).
Aleksey Djon |
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The OMG! 16 TRILLION IN LOANS!!!!!! is outright dishonest reporting and political grandstanding. the 16 trillion number is the total of all loans, including overnight loans (which are exactly what they sound like. they're repaid the next day). it's like saying i loaned you $1000 if i actually loaned you $125 each day, which you repaid in the morning. the most loaned at any time was a bit more than 1 trillion. furthermore, if one takes a moment to go look at page 4 of the actual report, practically all have been repaid in full, with about 57 billion still outstanding. thats BS. explain this: http://www.research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&s[1][id]=EXCRESNS&s[1][range]=5yrs these are "banks" excess reserves gotten from the bailout money which has NOT been paid back. Where does it say that this money is money borrowed from the government, and not owned the banks themselves, which the banks are keeping in excess of their own required reserves, simply because the Fed apparently pays them interest for that now? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_reserves |
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Regarding ex-Soviets, there's A LOT of them who really don't like that socialism/communism thing. They had to live under it, so they're often more anti-communist/socialist than Americans.
Plus yea, there's lost of mafias there :/
I'm fully aware and always loathe people who talk sympathetically of the Soviet Union while condemning Nazism. The "ex-Soviet" tag was simply used to spruce up the title. Wasn't accusing you of doing anything wrong or making any sort of assumptions. Just pointing out that both, ex-Soviets and Texans, have large section of their population as anti-Socialist. |
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$16 trillion!
To give you an idea of how much 16 trillion is, I cant give you an idea of how much 16 trillion is.
To give you an idea of how much $16 trillion is... imagine every man, woman, and child in the US having $53,000 in their bank account, then put all those bank accounts together. Or imagine every single Chinese person being owed about $12,300 Or imagine everyone in US having to pay $562 a month for ten years straight to pay off that loan at 5% interest. It's A LOT, but not A LOT when compared to the scale of a whole country. Also, do note they are "loans" not "grants." It's a bailout, but it's not a giveaway, and as we already know, has actually ended up being somewhat profitable for the government (repaid interest) Question, though. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said. Also, this part doesn't really make much sense... Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street." ...since working families don't have the credit rating or substantial assets to qualify for such high volume, low interest loans  I thought the fed was an independent entity, not a federal agency? |
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What is your cost basis for each coin? $0? The cost of electricity to mine each one? Something else?
and that is why we need the client upgraded with the ability to send specific coins. the cost basis for a coin i mined in march is entirely different than one i mined last week. if we don't get the ability to cost out Bitcoin, the IRS will do it for us, in some kind of catch-all fashion. and they'll do that sooner, rather than later. and it will suck. You don't need to track specific coins I don't think. From what I remember of doing my investment related taxes in TurboTax last January, I just needed to know how much it was worth when I bought and how much it was worth when I sold. It then just calculated by gains and losses from that, I think maybe even using weighted averages for number of shares, or something... |
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In AnCapistan, I suspect things like fire and burglary protection would be provided by your home owner's insurance, who would in turn outsource it to whomever they think is best. Since an insurance company's incentive is to not have to pay out any claims, they would have to make sure to hire the best security and fire teams on the market. And you get the service of having a business with lots of connections in that area doing the shopping for service and contracts for you. Though, that MAY end up in them insisting to cover your pretty house with some not-so pretty fire-retardant coating, but it may also result in really cool security laser cannons around your roof top  |
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