conservation of Euros

[Greegor]

Sloman, Do you see yourself as egotistical,
smarter, or superior to other people?

In the US, your arguments and reasoning
are more typical of the occasional misfit,
usually 17 or 18 years old and struggling
for IDENTITY, and going for shock value.

Generally, these people lack real world
experience, and so obsess about the ACADEMIC.
As they get more real world experience, they
soon realize the difference between
academia and real world.

Did you think that the KOOK LEFT was
populated mostly by PRODUCERS?

You claim you are over 50, yet you still
place great stock in academic sources,
and you claim to be an Aussie ex pat
living off your wife in Netherlands, yet
you obsess about economics in the USA.

Your situation as you've described it
is a bit like a cartoon!
A 50+ year old misfit NON-PRODUCER
who lives off his wife and advocates socialism?

How amazing is that?

There are some American retirees who were
cold hard capitalists but lost almost everything
in 2008-2009 and now that they see themselves
as recipients of socialistic handouts, they are
more receptive to ideas of socialism.

How amazing is that?

 

[Greegor]

On May 18, 10:35 am, John Larkin
JL > And which we use, and which wears out, and
JL > which will have an ebay value close to zero
JL > when it's worn out... if we're lucky. More likely
JL > we'll have to pay to have it hauled away.
JL > There's no pot of gold there.
JL >
JL > Damn, you are clueless about
JL > how a business actually works.

Sloman's supposedly over 50 years old,
yet he seems to think like an 18 year old
with ACADEMIC THEORY and propaganda
substituting for actual life experience.

 

[Charlie E.]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 12:13:55 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 12:00:36 -0700, Charlie E. <edmondson@ieee.org
wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 12:54:50 -0700,
"JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:10:21 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:



Well, if that happens and they also hit consultants and contractors with
it I may finally have to move to the island to drop my cost to clients
back to where it was. Luckily in my line of work it doesn't matter where
I reside. Selling a home in CA, that's a whole 'nother matter right now :-(

Unless you bought, refinanced (to grab the cash), or otherwise bought
into the bubble pricing; it should not be a problem. Prices are largely
about what they were pre-bubble (ca 2002). My boss is buying CA
properties to rent for the cost of the loan payment.

Well, I purchased in 2007, and basically paid cash! I can, at best,
recoup about 2/3 of my costs if I had to sell, assuming I could find a
buyer. The house next door has been on the market for at least a
year...

Charlie

Charlie, Where is it you live?

My daughter-in-law (Duane's widow) needs to move to somewhere around
Palm Desert to run her father's car parts business (he is in failing
health).

...Jim Thompson
Jim,

I am in Desert Hot Springs. From my house, I can get to central Palm
Desert in half an hour. The house next door is four bedrooms (or
five, if they converted the single car garage to another room...) and
probably originally went for $390K. I suspect that if you could get
hold of the bank that holds the foreclosure, it would be available for
less than $200K...

My real address is on my web siite.

Charlie

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 15:05:19 -0700, Charlie E. <edmondson@ieee.org>
wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 12:13:55 -0700, Jim Thompson
To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 12:00:36 -0700, Charlie E. <edmondson@ieee.org
wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 12:54:50 -0700,
"JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:10:21 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:



Well, if that happens and they also hit consultants and contractors with
it I may finally have to move to the island to drop my cost to clients
back to where it was. Luckily in my line of work it doesn't matter where
I reside. Selling a home in CA, that's a whole 'nother matter right now :-(

Unless you bought, refinanced (to grab the cash), or otherwise bought
into the bubble pricing; it should not be a problem. Prices are largely
about what they were pre-bubble (ca 2002). My boss is buying CA
properties to rent for the cost of the loan payment.

Well, I purchased in 2007, and basically paid cash! I can, at best,
recoup about 2/3 of my costs if I had to sell, assuming I could find a
buyer. The house next door has been on the market for at least a
year...

Charlie

Charlie, Where is it you live?

My daughter-in-law (Duane's widow) needs to move to somewhere around
Palm Desert to run her father's car parts business (he is in failing
health).

...Jim Thompson
Jim,
I am in Desert Hot Springs. From my house, I can get to central Palm
Desert in half an hour. The house next door is four bedrooms (or
five, if they converted the single car garage to another room...) and
probably originally went for $390K. I suspect that if you could get
hold of the bank that holds the foreclosure, it would be available for
less than $200K...

My real address is on my web site.

Charlie

Aha! I'll pass along the info.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

The only thing bipartisan in this country is hypocrisy

 

[Okkim Atnarivik]

Greegor <greegor47@gmail.com> wrote:

In the US, your arguments and reasoning
are more typical of the occasional misfit
usually 17 or 18 years old and struggling
for IDENTITY, and going for shock value

You don't seriously compare an american teenager to Sloman? His points,
even though I may not agree with every detail, are as a general rule
very well argued.

I'm glad that he takes time to cast doubt on stereotypical OT nonsense
which now and then appears in this group. Kids may be readlng these
posts, and would take all sorts of propaganda as actual facts if nobody
countered. Having said that, I'm also glad that Mr. Larkin challenges
Sloman's opinions, reasonably often fact based.

I said 'cast doubt' because nobody is under obligation to accept
blindly any of the claims made by anybody.

Now I must get back to productive work and earn some more euros to be
shoveled to Greece...

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 12:17:01 -0700, Charlie E. <edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 21:20:36 -0700,
"JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 16:00:15 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 13:54:00 -0700, "JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:17:15 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:39:56 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

[...]

I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts
business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because
it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No
accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no
quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost.

Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a
person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be
jealous of his wealth.

A serious problem with that: It punishes frugal people who have saved
for their retirement and rewards those who squandered everything. The
money they saved _has_ already been taxed.

Simple fix: don't tax income.


Yeah, but how do you deal with income that _has_ already been taxed but
not spent yet because people saved it for their retirement? A flat
VAT-type tax is the same as confiscating xx% percent of that. Not fair
at all.

Gosh, are your savings all that significant?

Many do have significant savings over their lifetimes. Having enough to live
on the rest of their lives, isn't uncommon.

Actually it is quite uncommon according to BLS data.

Don't you pay (an ever
increasing in CA) sales tax already? Please to explain the difference.

Compound interest tends to cancel inflation.

Not all that well. It really fell behind during Carter era.
Interestingly, credit card rates never came back down.

Yes, it is an issue that my wife and I deal with all the time. We do
have some significant savings, but they are in CDs, which she
considers 'safe.' Our big problem is that savings interest rates keep
going down and down, but inflation hasn't stopped, and the rates on
borrowed money keep going up! We are presently looking around for a
new bank to move what little money we have to. A bank seems to offer
decent rates for about a year, and then back off. Just to get 1% on a
12 month CD is almost impossible to find. We are presently looking at
AMEX...

CDs at 1.5% are pretty easy to find, though CDs in general are a poor place to
put money. I have a chunk in plain savings, which is even worse, but it's
there as an extended emergency fund (pay the mortgage for a couple of years).
One's life's savings in such a place is nuts.

 

On May 18, 2:46 pm, Charlie E. <edmond...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Mon, 17 May 2010 14:31:43 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:
major snippage and attributions...

$1 only buys $0.77 worth of _stuff_ today, say the Fair Tax people
(AIUI).  The rest goes to taxes hidden in the item's price.

 If I tax-deferred the
$1.40, I could buy $1.00 worth of stuff.  Any after-tax savings (that
is socked away before the change) gets hammered *twice*.

If you had tax-deferred the $1.40, you'd escape the indignities of the
old system.  That's a windfall (assuming Congress allows it).

Going forward though, with income-taxed money, the $1 we have left
still buys the same with or without the Fair Tax.  $1 with embedded
tax burden hidden inside it, or ($0.77 actual price + $0.23 Fair Tax)
both cost you $1 at the register.  No loss of purchasing power.
That's the contention, AIUI.

The other false assumption is that the price would drop
instantaneously to $.77 as soon as the tax was passed.

I don't assume that.  There are all sorts of 2nd and 3rd-order
effects.

In reality,
the price stays at $1.00, and the retailer uses this 'profit' to pay
off his loans.  Now, as time goes by, prices 'might' drop, but I
wouldn't bet on it.  I actually expect prices to rise.

I expect prices to fall, quickly. Like with gasoline there's a delay
for goods-in-transit, then market forces handle the rest.

 If the
government stops taking out SS and IRS taxes from my paycheck, I have
more to spend.  I can then afford these now 'higher' prices of that
$1, plus $.23 fair tax, plus the sales tax of $.09, so it is now
$1.33.

As for savings, I don't sweat it as much.  Yes, it makes my post-taxes
savings less valuable, but it also removes a lot of taxes on my
earnings and interest!

I'm interested in saving the time and energy I waste avoiding tax land-
mines. That's worth a lot--at least a couple weeks a year. More like
three, methinks.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 18, 5:43 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 01:54:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 17, 10:48 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 17, 3:09 pm, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2010 12:57:38 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On May 17, 12:29 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 21:09:07 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:

On May 15, 9:27 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 10:52 pm, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 11:29:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 14, 5:18 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 14, 9:51 am, John Larkin

jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 22:16:49 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb....@yahoo.com
wrote:

On May 13, 5:02 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those
with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load.

Right.  That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other
animals' bread, greedy thing that she was.  She had broad shoulders.

This falls a
long way short of Marx -

Marx was kind of an idiot.

"The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e.,
that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer."
  --The Communist Manifesto

 See what I mean?

Yeah, he wouldn't understand a female plumber making $150K.

What created our modern wealth was engineers applying science.

Yep.  They made machines to relieve human toil, to improve the human
condition.

Evil capitalists.  Marx the Moocher should've stopped 'em.

Some of the capitalists were quite evil, as Martin Brown has pointed
out elsewhere in this thread. Trade unions were one of the mechanisms
that reigned in the greedy, evil, short-sighted minority.

No. Competition did.

Comptetion was one of the other mechanisms, once anti-trust
legislation had forced the greedy, evil and shorted sighted
capitalists to compete rather than conspire.

Conspiring is harmful.  Why, though, is it bad for capitalists, yet
infinitely good for labor?

Conspiracies among competing capitalists are inherently unstable.. Like
OPEC, the players have competing interests; squabble, the alliances
fall apart, and they resume competing for advantage.  It's a beautiful
thing.

James Arthur

So we don't so much need anti-trust laws, as long as murder is
illegal?

To the contrary--anti-trust should apply to labor, too.  E.g.
government unions.

Agreed; all unions.

Sure.  A union is nothing more than an attempt to monopolize labor.

True. But non-unionised labour is almost always in a hopelessly weak
negotiating position vis-a-vis employers.

I have never felt that. I have feet and can leave one job for a better
one, if I can find it. Anybody can do that.

Good engineers almost always have unique skills and experience. If we
can find an employer who needs us, they rarely have the option of
hiring somebody else with a comparable mix of talents.

We don't need a trade union, and trade unions can't usually do
anything much for us.

People with more stereotyped skills are less fortunate. Employers can
send out a form letter to employment agencies and take their pick of a
bunch of more or less interchangeable candidates. There will be a
standard rate for the job, so there isn't a lot of financial advantage
in looking for a better job - you might end up with more congenial
colleagues and a more competent boss, but unless you have an
acquaintance already working for your target employer, you won't be
able to find this out in advance.

The down-side of unique skills and experience is that it can take a
while to find an employer who needs someone like you; employers get
less picky when the economy is running flat out,but one does gget to
hear the word "over-qualified" more often than one would like.

Unions freeze people in
jobs even as technology changes, sort of a static friction, so stops
the best-fit mechanism that moving around provides.

I don't think unions can be blamed for this; employers do like to
pidgeon-hole their employees, and trade qualifications play to this.
Multiple-skills trademen transcend this sort of thinking, but I've
only heard about them.

By definition, employers
have capital, and are better placed to survive a strike or lock-out
than the workers and their families. Futhermore, the employer is often
a single organisation, which can practice divide-and-conquer on non-
unionised workers in a way that the workers can only dream about.

Boeing has numerous unions, any one of which can shut down all
airplane production, and make outrageous demands for themselves, which
they do fairly often. In the auto industry, it's done across multiple
companies as "pattern bargaining", which is one reason I've never
bought a crappy American car.

The successful businesses in the USA are mostly non-union.

Because they depend on innovation, which - in turn - depends on people
who don't need trade unions.

Less innovative US buinesses have been relatively unsuccessful because
they tend to out-source work which can be done by interchangeable
trademen to countries where these trademen are paid less. This makes
it difficult to practice management by walking about.

The Germans haven't made this mistake, which may be why they are
second only to China in export volume, despite having only 6.2% of the
population, and a strong and legally entrenched trade union movement.

Unlike US trade unions, which tend to be regularly corrupted by
employers (who then turn around and complain that the malleable
officials that they helped to get elected are prone to other kinds of
criminal behaviour), German trade unions seems to be both honest and
sensible, and may well have contributed to Germany's industrial
success.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 18, 5:35 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 01:47:19 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 17, 7:10 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2010 03:40:11 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 17, 4:22 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 14, 5:07 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 14, 10:42 pm, John Larkin
Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Perfectly true. But it doesn't do a thing to ensure that the benefits
of increased productivity are equally shared between capital and
labour.

Obviously it's extremely critical how and when those benefits are
shared.  Labor does not deserve all the proceeds of my innovation,
risk, and investment simply because I hire them, guarantee them a
regular check when I get none, and insulate them from the predations
and petty ministration of their rulers.  Showing up for a paycheck at
a factory does not entitle you to the factory.

Freedom means you can start something yourself, if you want those
rewards and are prepared to take those risks; government means you
can't, to a larger and larger extent.

Society as whole provides the environment where you can hire
technically educated employees, communicate with them, and have them
travel around and get looked after when they get sick.

Your taxes support that society. Try setting up an innovative business
in a third world country where the tax rates are lower (or easily
evaded by bribing the right people).

Showing up for a paycheck at a factory doesn't entitle you to the
whole factory, but the last hundred years has demonstrated that the
optimum split for rewarding capital versus labour comes out at around
fifty-fifty.

My business spends a tad over 50% of revenues on salaries, retirement
funds, benefits, and insurance/other worker-related fees. 22 to 24% is
parts. Most of the rest is rent, professional services, utilities,
subcontracting, things like that. Then there's the heap of fees and
taxes. We're small enough that we can expense capital equipment
purchases, so we do.

In a good year, that leaves a few per cent for profit, the return on
capital.

Where's my 50:50 split?

You are plowing it back into the business -"expense capital equipment"
- which you presumably own.

And which we use, and which wears out, and which will have an ebay
value close to zero when it's worn out... if we're lucky. More likely
we'll have to pay to have it hauled away. There's no pot of gold
there.

If you weren't going to make money out of the equipment you wouldn't
have bought it. It's a depreciating asset, but until it is fully
depreciated its an asset to the firm and adds to its value.

Damn, you are clueless about how a business actually works.

Based on your comment above, you are the one who is clueless.

You don't seem to be exracting a
commercial rate of return on the equity that you have built up in the
business, but if the business is becoming more valuable, year by year,
and you own it, the increase in value could be seen as your return on
capital.

I will never, under any reasonable scenario, cash out for anything
approaching the sum of salaries and benefits I have disbursed to
employees over the years.

Of course not. That's part of your running expenses, and has to be
funded from money you collect the gear that you sell every year.

IBM and Exxon and Boeing manage small
profits in good years, losses in bad years, but every month they
generate a mountain of payroll checks. The numbers of my business
aren't much different from Boeing's, or that of any modestly
successful restaurant: a few percent "profit" (which isn't cash in the
bank) on sales and a few percent return on equity (or loss, depending)
and about 50% of gross revenue going directly to employees. ANd lots
of taxes paid.

So what. That how most businesses work. An old friend of mine in
Australia started up a company that eventually got most of its cash
flow from royalties on my friends patents, but that is exceptional,
and my old friend wasn't too pleased with the policy decisions that
lead to that state of affairs, and is now separated from the company
that he set up.

When I die, the government will make an absurd valuation of the heap,
including "goodwill", and levy enough death taxes to wipe it out,
roughly 6 times over. I suppose if they want to wipe out the
businesses that create jobs and pay taxes, it's their choice.

Your business advisors haven't suggested ways of restructuring the
company to avoid this particular scenario? When I did Commerce 1 at
secondary school in Tasmania, surrounded by farmers sons, the teacher
was obliged to detail some of the schemes that worked in Tasmania at
the time ...

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 18, 8:48 pm, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:

On May 18, 10:35 am, John Larkin
JL > And which we use, and which wears out, and
JL > which will have an ebay value close to zero
JL > when it's worn out... if we're lucky. More likely
JL > we'll have to pay to have it hauled away.
JL > There's no pot of gold there.
JL
JL > Damn, you are clueless about
JL > how a business actually works.

Sloman's supposedly over 50 years old,
yet he seems to think like an 18 year old
with ACADEMIC THEORY and propaganda
substituting for actual life experience.

Since John Larkin's comments are surprisingly unsophisticated for
someone in his position, his characterisation of me as "clueless" does
seem to represent one of his outbursts of wishful thinking.

Since you are a totally trivial little jerk, this point probably isn't
quite as obvious to you as it is to more sophisticated adults, but you
should note that you have - once again - made an ass of yourself.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

On May 18, 12:53 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 17, 8:43 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 17, 3:31 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
[...]

That is, if your laborer has to pay income tax, you have to pay him
more to compensate, and you have to raise your sales prices to recover
that loss from your customers.
c) So, when you buy an item, you *are* paying all the taxes of all the
people and entities that made the item.
Make sense so far?
d) Under the Fair Tax, with all those embedded taxes eliminated, the
manufacturer would now be able to make the same profit selling his $1
item for $0.77, which would be the new price.
e) At checkout, your (formerly) $1 item would now appear on the sales
ticket as
    1) price = $0.77, plus
    2) $0.23 in Fair Tax, collected at point-of-sale to pay all the
taxes of all the people who made the thing.
  Total = $1.00, just like before.  No difference.
There, I think that's basically their pitch.  I'm not a Fair Tax
expert, so I could've biffed something.
Ahm, major bug in the calcs:
The price of a piece of merchandise does _not_ consist of lots of labor.
If MLO (materials+labor+overhead) is anywhere north of 30% on a mass
product then it is already doomed.
That's an average.  The Fair Tax economists worked from gross averages
applied across all of society; services are nearly 100% labor, mass-
produced Joerg-designed items not so much.
I'd have to see their math. Most of what we buy is not services but
cars, TV set, washing machines, lumber, groceries, beer and so on. Labor
is a small fraction of the cost in these products. Say it was 10%, then
this whole "fair tax" of 23% would turn into a de facto 20% ripoff for
all those folks in or close to retirement who have diligently saved.
Because those savings are from income that has already been taxed.
Nothing fair about that at all.

Even in high-tech medical devices labor wasn't a whole lot, and there I
speak from experience because I ran a division including production.
Health care costs would instantly shoot up if they did that extra sales
tax. On top of the tax increases we just got in that domain. We have to
think about those consequences.

I can't speak to their methods or calculations, but I'd sure love it
if you'd read their material and report back on it! ...
This one?

http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

This document gives figures, but not methods:
 http://www.fairtax.org/site/DocServer/What_the_federal_tax_system_is_...

This is the main info page:
 http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main

I had looked at both. No meat in there other than assumptions.

You sure give up awfully easily Joerg! There's a load of academic
papers, cited in the footnotes, with 10 full .PDFs for free download.
Like this one:
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/Tax%20Notes%20article%20on%20FT%20rate.pdf
(footnote #1 on http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_basics_main
)

There's too much, really, and kind of scattered across white
papers, .PDFs, and FAQs.

About the FairTax-->Basics has some numbers:
 http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_basics_main

Major mistake, and that's a big one, quote: "Consumption increases by
2.4 percent more in the first year, ..."

What were they smoking?

Just a small hint: Joe Q.Public does not pay 23% income tax on _100%_ of
his salary, in fact many people pay hardly anything. Those folks'
consumption will drop 23%, plain and simple. Then, there will be massive
layoffs.

Joe. Q. Public *does* pay at least 14% SS tax, plus others, so at the
very worst it's not as bad as you say.

Further, Joe Q. will be getting a "prebate" check in the mail, further
reducing his tax, and the harmful impact you project.

Those factors take most, if not nearly all the wind out of that
concern's sails.

I can only see lots of text, no hard math.

Lots of equations in the one .PDF I just linked. That's the kind of
documentation I remembered seeing before.

I haven't read thru all their papers--there are so many.  I remember
hitting a couple that looked well-considered, but I was really just
skimming.

I don't find it well-considered at all.

Some of the more serious bugs in here, for example ...

http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/MacroeconomicAnalysisofFairTax.pdf

include quote "The specific taxes repealed include ... Social Security
and Medicare taxes". Now I am certainly against the extremely plum
public employee pensions that are wrecking California. But on the same
token it isn't fair that a teacher who used to not pay SS taxes but also
doesn't get SS pays into the system for me. Because that's what he'd do
if he buys a beer.

You're trying to make SS fair? Man have you got a project!

What's fair about the worlds's biggest Ponzi scheme--giving the first
investors outrageous returns, paid by later investors, with the
promise that even later investors will pay even more, ad infinitum,
all under force of law?

The paper also lacks a crucial consideration, the one I mentioned: It
socks it to retirees who have diligently saved every penny they could.
Now that already taxed money would get taxed again the millisecond they
buy something. This is not fair and I sure hope some organizations like
AARP will see that unfair punishment and hold the line, and not let that
happen.

a) It doesn't tax savings any more than they'll be taxed anyhow. When
Mr. Obama jacks up taxes (as he's already massively done by spending,
and will soon do by hook or by crook), do you honestly think that cost
to companies and workers won't be reflected in higher prices for you?
That you won't, ultimately, be paying your taxes and everyone else's
too every time you buy anything? You will.

b) As I laid out for Keith, once you remove all those expenses from
the manufacturers' cost, prices will fall. Not instantly, but
quickly. You may not think they'll fall enough, but they will fall at
least some, offsetting the effect you fear.


<snip>

Besides, I don't like having my money at the whim of Congress.  They
burned me ex post facto with my 401k, charging me a penalty for doing
something that was allowed when I did it, then changing the law
retroactively months later.
You couldn't sue?
Nope.  You can't sue Congress.  Sovereign immunity.  (Impunity,
really.)
If a law is deemed unfair it can be challenged in court. Not Congress,
but the law. Slamming people retroactively sure sounds unfair to me (and
probably to a judge or jury).

It *is* unfair--even unconstitutional[*]--but there's Supreme Court
precedent for it.

[*] "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed" --US
Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9.

I've cribbed this from an earlier post, Nov. 22, 2009:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.design/browse_frm/thre...

In United States v. Darusmont, 449 U.S. 292 (1981)
 http://supreme.justia.com/us/449/292/case.html
a couple sold their house (a triplex)--to relocate for a new job--
after carefully consulting with their tax guys to sell in a way
minimizing their tax.  Congress changed the law later that year, and
then IRS came after the couple for more tax.

The homeowners argued that tax change was a violation of their due
process rights under the 5th Amendment; the justices said no, because
the issue had been under discussion in Congress for a year prior, so
the
homeowners *should've* known.  Further, the Court said changing the
tax rate of an existing law was not the same as enacting a new /ex
post facto/ law.

If done retroactively it is ex post facto. The constituioon does not say
new. Otherwise it would also be ok to set the income tax to 110%
retroactively, wouldn't it?

You Sir, are exactly right. That's the problem with a "living and
breathing" Constitution. "Living and breathing" really means "it says
whatever [the current regime] wants it to say", flipping it upside
down if necessary..

The 2nd problem is that people don't appreciate the timelessness of
the core of its design. It's a control system, a brilliant one, but
even brilliant control systems quit working if you start twiddling the
feedbacks and jumpering around the safeties. The salesmen are
monkeying with the hardware.

This started under Franklin Delano Obama.  He's back, so beware.

Everything's fair once you stop following the Constitution.

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is
in session."
 --Judge Gideon J. Tucker (1826-1899)

Lots of people are hoping that the worst will be stopped after the
November elections. In fact, I have met people who said they'd make some
major business decisions based on the outcome.

I spoke at length to a business owner today. He's got a nice shop
with a fun crew, and he's disgusted.(*) A fun, fine, compassionate,
caring man, who's just finally gotten tired of all the Slomans heaping
their mandates on him, for nothing. But he's fine, he made his money
long ago, and he doesn't need the hassle. So he's quitting, closing
shop. Chalk up a few more jobs created or saved, Mr. Obama.

(*But he sold me a load of 1" plate, cheap, and offered me a BIG IRON
American mill for peanuts. (I'd be tempted, but I think it'd punch a
hole in my slab!)

James Arthur

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 18, 5:19 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 01:20:40 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 17, 5:18 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2010 07:01:48 -0700, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 16, 1:11 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
I don't harvest; I think.
An unconvincing claim. Your "thinking" reflects your indolent habit of
picking up predigested  nonsense that fits your fat-headed
preconceptions.
I've been calling you a fathead for years. You can't even design
original insults.
In this thread you've claimed that the euro can't be stable currency
because it shared across several countries with different economic
strengths and weaknessess, while failing to note that the US dollar is
shared across the united states of America - running from Alaska to
Wyoming (neither of whose economies look much like California's).
But we only have one government.
Your states don't have legislatures and governors?
They aren't allowed to print money or regulate big financial
institutions. Most must balance their budgets. The trouble that
California is in now will be fixed by California. The trouble that
Greece is in now will be fixed by Germany.
Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece. The EU - as a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing until
that happens. The Germans have had quite a lot of influence on the
requirements imposed on the Greeks in return for the guarantees, but
the Greeks have to do the work.
Do pay attention:
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2010/05/german-parliament-clears...
Quote: "Members of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, approved a
state-backed guarantee for the loan ..."
It's you who needs to pay attention. The EU - as a whole - is under-
writing the Greek borrowing. The individual memebers of the EU have to
pass legislation to approve their particular country's part of the
package. The Dutch lower house approved the Dutch component recently.
It's still a collective decision.
So, what exactly does "state-backed" mean in your opinion?

That the individual states guarantee that their particular portion of
the loan will be paid by that particular loan if Greece goes bankrupt?
What else would it mean?

Ah, now you are beginning to get it. You wrote above, quote "The EU - as
a whole - is underwriting the Greek borrowing". Which is wrong. For
example if Greece fails to service the debt it now has in Germany the EU
won't pay the Germans back. Their own taxpayers will. And those are
rather pissed right now and for good reason.

Your notion that "The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece" will IMHO not come to pass.

You are making a prediction, based on the little you know about the
situation, heavily influenced by what you've read in the US mass
media. As opinions go, it doesn't carry a lot of weight.

Check the facts. Greece has no industry to write home about, tourism is
declining because countries like Turkey are cheaper, and they can't
print Euros. Did I forget anything? Guess not.

They are unlikely to be able to fix the
damage that living beyond their means for years has done.

Why? The US - which has been running a hugge balance of payemnts
deficit since Regan was president - would suggest that you might be
right, but the money market hasn't yet got around to labelling US
treasury bonds as risky investments.

We have an industry. Greece doesn't. HUGE difference. Open your PC or
whatever else electronic and see how many components in there are from
Greek companies. Open the hood of your car and do same. In fact, open
just about anything.

The Greek credit rating has now gone through the floor, and they've
got no option but reform.

But torching the bank buildings isn't going to achieve that.

Their option is to carry on as before, and let the Germans pay for
this round. Reform after this shot of money runs out, and party for a
few more years.

That's not an option. The EU support ws condtional on painful and
immediate reform, and if the Greek goverment doesn't deliver on that,
the support goes away.

It's other European countries who will fix it, also countries
overseas such as the US (via IMF).

The IMF has a one-size-fits all solution for every country that gets
into serious debt. It does seem to be based on the prescriptions of a
group of particularly unrealistic US economic theorists, and tends to
do serious damage to the real economy in the process of restoring the
credit rating, but international credit rating never did have much to
do with reality, as we got to see when the sub-prime mortgage crisi
hit the fan.

And your alternative would be?

Be that as it may, the Greeks have run out of options, and they will
do what every other government has done when they fall into the hands
of the IMF, which is to follow the - stupid - prescriptions.

Obviously that will be much better than what they did so far, and what
got them into this mess in the first place.

Sloman doesn't approve of stupid prescriptions, like producing as much
as you consume.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100517/D9FOHKGO0.html

Although the article doesn't make this explicit, its all about the
economics of "pump-priming" stimulation of the economy, to compensate
for the damage done by the collapse of the US housing price bubble,
which had conjured up an immense amount of credit out of thin air.

National governments have had to conjure up comparable amounts of
credit by deficit financing to keep the economy running at a
respectable fraction of its potential productivity.

The Greeks didn't lack credit. They lacked productivity. Credit just
let them party hearty and run up debt, with the French and the Germans
picking up the tab. Thay won't be able to repay the assistance unless
they get to work.

(Hint hint)

Your "expert" opinion of the Greek economy seems to have missed the
point that they own and run more ships than any other country. This
isn't a form of productivity that either you or Joerg seem to know
much about, and it does make the point that Greece is a real country
with real means of making money. Their goverment has been making a
mess of running the economy for quite some time now - the Greek
military junta that ran the country from 1967 to 1974 didn't leave the
economy in a well-organised state, and political passion has stood in
the way of rational government - but the current crisis does seem to
have finally been sufficiently dramatic to command concentrated
atention.

The alternative do-nothing approach, as practiced by Hoover in 1929,
leads to vast tracts of industry standing idle with 25% unemployment,
dramatically reducing production and consumption.

The argument isn't about "producing as much as you consume" - it's
about maintaining consumption and production under circumstances where
both would otherwise collapse.

Managing the transition back to balanced budgets without crimping the
level of economic activity too much isn't a trivial job, and the banks
don't help by bleating about financial responsiblity as if their US
colleagues hadn't created the problem in the first place by being
totally irresponsible.

With your understanding of dynamics, it's a good thing you don't
design electronics.

With your understanding of dynamics, it is a miracle that you can.

As you should know, I can use the Ziegler-Nichols step response test
to tune a PID controller. This is tolerably primitive (Ziegler and
Nichols published their test in 1942, the year I was born) but
adequate in a lot of practical situations. I know about more
sophisticated schemes - such as state variable control - but happily
I've yet to run into a situation where I needed to use one. And my
Ph.D. thesis was on the reaction dynamics of the thermal decompostion
of nitrosyl bromide, which involved simulating a non-linear process (a
second order rate law, perturbed by self-cooling). Your own background
is probably less sophisticated.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Joerg]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On May 18, 5:21 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 17, 4:01 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 16, 1:11 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

snip

Germany is part of the EU. If the Greeks fail to service the debt it
has in Germany, it won't be servicing the debt held in France, the UK
or the Netherlands either, and their taxpayers will be equally pissed.
What is pising off the German taxpayers is that the rescue package is
seen as a source of inflation, and the Germans have been terrified of
inflation since 1923.
And rightfully so. Because there are numerous other countries that have
overspent and are now teetering. We have only seen the tip of the
iceberg so far. Mark my words.

You mean Spain and Portugal. The Spanish economy is now growing again,
if only by 0.1% in the last quarter. Portugal has more of problem, in
that it was selling itself as a low wage economy and more recent
additions to the EU offer even lower wages, but at least it has
already dealt with the problems that brought the Greeks down, and is
correspondingly better placed to reduce its budget deficit to
acceptable levels.

As a prophet, you are about as reliable as the right wing commentators
you are parroting, which is to say, not very.

In the mid-90's my financial adviser in Europe and I both predicted that
the financial system in Greece would one day teeter and go kablouie.
That's before there even was a Euro. The only thing we didn't see was
that the implosion would be this massive and loud but that's because
they joined the Euro zone and thus couldn't devalue their currency anymore.

Your notion that "The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece" will IMHO not come to pass.
You are making a prediction, based on the little you know about the
situation, heavily influenced by what you've read in the US mass
media. As opinions go, it doesn't carry a lot of weight.
Check the facts. Greece has no industry to write home about, tourism is
declining because countries like Turkey are cheaper, and they can't
print Euros. Did I forget anything? Guess not.
Greece has the world's largest shipping fleet. This may not be an
industry, but it is certaly a source of revenue. Try not to guess this
sort of information - Wikipedia may not be perfect, but it's more
reliable than your imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece
GDP is around $30k per capita. And that's the problem, that doesn't
support the lavish perks like early retirement, too many gvt workers,
and so on. Other Western countries with lesser perks are around 1/3rd
higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_p...

Combine that with rampant tax evasion in Greece and a tax authority that
was asleep at the wheel and you'll know what I meant.

These are are the problems that the Greek governemnt has now faced up
to, whence the aggressive political theatre in the streets of Athens.

The difference in GDP between Greece and its neighbours isn't
dramatic. It is stiil an advanced industrial country. ...

Care to point out any high-tech products they make and sell in
significant volumes?

... It doesn't enjoy
the economies of scale of the larger European countries, but it's
inhabitants don't have to spend a bundle on heating their houses, and
its commercial sector can't claim to be making money by selling the
oil and gas that heats Northern European homes and contributes to the
Northern European GDP.

They are unlikely to be able to fix the
damage that living beyond their means for years has done.
Why? The US - which has been running a hugge balance of payemnts
deficit since Regan was president - would suggest that you might be
right, but the money market hasn't yet got around to labelling US
treasury bonds as risky investments.
We have an industry. Greece doesn't. HUGE difference.
You've exported a lot of your industry to China. Greece is a small
country - about 11 million people - and it's industry, such as it is,
isn't widely publicised. It is a developed country, and the GPD per
head is about the same as that of France, Italy and Germany.
It is not, the GDP is lower.

Not dramatically.

30% less and retirement around 5 years earlier than other EU countries
is "not dramatically"?

Open your PC or
whatever else electronic and see how many components in there are from
Greek companies. Open the hood of your car and do same. In fact, open
just about anything.
So what? There's nothing there from Australia either, or Switzerland.
Australia largely lives off of its minerals and other goodies, as long
as they have some. Switzerland, well, we all know what they do besides
making watch movements and precision machinery

Australia exports around a billion dollars worth of scientifc
instruments and services every year. ...

I have yet to see one such instrument. Would be a first for me, and I
deal with tons of instruments in my job (but admittedly, mostly EE
stuff). However, I do have an Astor BPJ radio

... When I was a student - until 1970
- Australia had always had a positive balance of trade in scientific
instruments. It's small beer compared with the minerals and primary
produce - even wine exports bring in several billion dollars a year -
but its the kind of thing (like the Greek shipping fleet) that you
won't know about if you aren't - in some way - involved.

In the 70's most countries were reasonable with financial management.
That has dramatically changed during the last few years, and the US is
unfortunately no exception.

Be that as it may, the Greeks have run out of options, and they will
do what every other government has done when they fall into the hands
of the IMF, which is to follow the - stupid - prescriptions.
Obviously that will be much better than what they did so far, and what
got them into this mess in the first place.
Obviously. But it's applying bang-bang control where proportional,
integral and derivative control would let the economy transiton to the
desired state rather faster. Because the IMF is run by American
educated monetarist economists, whose "economic science" has very
limited predictive power, they haven't a hope of implementing any kind
of feed-forward control strategy.
There comes a time when bang is needed, not bang-bang. Meaning someone
has to hit the emergency stop button because the system that was
entrusted with running the place has gone out of control. Just like you
don't keep pulling the yoke on an aircraft to maintain altitude when the
stall horn is blaring because that would end in a fiery crash. You have
to prepare everyone for an "off field landing" and then land as soon as
possible.

Stall recovery is famously conter-intuitive. When I was a kid and
interested in aircraft, I got to read the account of the first guy who
worked out how to get out of a stall, and proceeded to get into an
aircraft, take off and test his hypothesis - putting his neck on the
line in the process.

The non-linear mechanisms involved don't have obvious analogies with
the Greek situation - all the control mechanisms were available and
working as expected, but the Greek government seems to have ingored
the fact that they were steadily losing height.

I think they are really close to a flat spin. Maybe they can recover if
they ditch all that socialist money squandering. If they don't then they
will not recover.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

 

[Jamie]

Joerg wrote:

Bill Sloman wrote:

On May 18, 5:21 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:

On May 17, 4:01 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:

On May 16, 1:11 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:

On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:

On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:


snip

Germany is part of the EU. If the Greeks fail to service the debt it
has in Germany, it won't be servicing the debt held in France, the UK
or the Netherlands either, and their taxpayers will be equally pissed.
What is pising off the German taxpayers is that the rescue package is
seen as a source of inflation, and the Germans have been terrified of
inflation since 1923.

And rightfully so. Because there are numerous other countries that have
overspent and are now teetering. We have only seen the tip of the
iceberg so far. Mark my words.


You mean Spain and Portugal. The Spanish economy is now growing again,
if only by 0.1% in the last quarter. Portugal has more of problem, in
that it was selling itself as a low wage economy and more recent
additions to the EU offer even lower wages, but at least it has
already dealt with the problems that brought the Greeks down, and is
correspondingly better placed to reduce its budget deficit to
acceptable levels.

As a prophet, you are about as reliable as the right wing commentators
you are parroting, which is to say, not very.


In the mid-90's my financial adviser in Europe and I both predicted that
the financial system in Greece would one day teeter and go kablouie.
That's before there even was a Euro. The only thing we didn't see was
that the implosion would be this massive and loud but that's because
they joined the Euro zone and thus couldn't devalue their currency anymore.


Your notion that "The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece" will IMHO not come to pass.

You are making a prediction, based on the little you know about the
situation, heavily influenced by what you've read in the US mass
media. As opinions go, it doesn't carry a lot of weight.

Check the facts. Greece has no industry to write home about,
tourism is
declining because countries like Turkey are cheaper, and they can't
print Euros. Did I forget anything? Guess not.

Greece has the world's largest shipping fleet. This may not be an
industry, but it is certaly a source of revenue. Try not to guess this
sort of information - Wikipedia may not be perfect, but it's more
reliable than your imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece

GDP is around $30k per capita. And that's the problem, that doesn't
support the lavish perks like early retirement, too many gvt workers,
and so on. Other Western countries with lesser perks are around 1/3rd
higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_p...

Combine that with rampant tax evasion in Greece and a tax authority that
was asleep at the wheel and you'll know what I meant.


These are are the problems that the Greek governemnt has now faced up
to, whence the aggressive political theatre in the streets of Athens.

The difference in GDP between Greece and its neighbours isn't
dramatic. It is stiil an advanced industrial country. ...



Care to point out any high-tech products they make and sell in
significant volumes?


... It doesn't enjoy
the economies of scale of the larger European countries, but it's
inhabitants don't have to spend a bundle on heating their houses, and
its commercial sector can't claim to be making money by selling the
oil and gas that heats Northern European homes and contributes to the
Northern European GDP.

They are unlikely to be able to fix the
damage that living beyond their means for years has done.

Why? The US - which has been running a hugge balance of payemnts
deficit since Regan was president - would suggest that you might be
right, but the money market hasn't yet got around to labelling US
treasury bonds as risky investments.

We have an industry. Greece doesn't. HUGE difference.

You've exported a lot of your industry to China. Greece is a small
country - about 11 million people - and it's industry, such as it is,
isn't widely publicised. It is a developed country, and the GPD per
head is about the same as that of France, Italy and Germany.

It is not, the GDP is lower.


Not dramatically.


30% less and retirement around 5 years earlier than other EU countries
is "not dramatically"?


Open your PC or
whatever else electronic and see how many components in there are from
Greek companies. Open the hood of your car and do same. In fact, open
just about anything.

So what? There's nothing there from Australia either, or Switzerland.

Australia largely lives off of its minerals and other goodies, as long
as they have some. Switzerland, well, we all know what they do besides
making watch movements and precision machinery


Australia exports around a billion dollars worth of scientifc
instruments and services every year. ...



I have yet to see one such instrument. Would be a first for me, and I
deal with tons of instruments in my job (but admittedly, mostly EE
stuff). However, I do have an Astor BPJ radio


... When I was a student - until 1970
- Australia had always had a positive balance of trade in scientific
instruments. It's small beer compared with the minerals and primary
produce - even wine exports bring in several billion dollars a year -
but its the kind of thing (like the Greek shipping fleet) that you
won't know about if you aren't - in some way - involved.


In the 70's most countries were reasonable with financial management.
That has dramatically changed during the last few years, and the US is
unfortunately no exception.


Be that as it may, the Greeks have run out of options, and they will
do what every other government has done when they fall into the hands
of the IMF, which is to follow the - stupid - prescriptions.

Obviously that will be much better than what they did so far, and what
got them into this mess in the first place.

Obviously. But it's applying bang-bang control where proportional,
integral and derivative control would let the economy transiton to the
desired state rather faster. Because the IMF is run by American
educated monetarist economists, whose "economic science" has very
limited predictive power, they haven't a hope of implementing any kind
of feed-forward control strategy.

There comes a time when bang is needed, not bang-bang. Meaning someone
has to hit the emergency stop button because the system that was
entrusted with running the place has gone out of control. Just like you
don't keep pulling the yoke on an aircraft to maintain altitude when the
stall horn is blaring because that would end in a fiery crash. You have
to prepare everyone for an "off field landing" and then land as soon as
possible.


Stall recovery is famously conter-intuitive. When I was a kid and
interested in aircraft, I got to read the account of the first guy who
worked out how to get out of a stall, and proceeded to get into an
aircraft, take off and test his hypothesis - putting his neck on the
line in the process.

The non-linear mechanisms involved don't have obvious analogies with
the Greek situation - all the control mechanisms were available and
working as expected, but the Greek government seems to have ingored
the fact that they were steadily losing height.


I think they are really close to a flat spin. Maybe they can recover if
they ditch all that socialist money squandering. If they don't then they
will not recover.

Oh, like us (US), you mean?

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 10:53:10 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 17, 8:43 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

<snip>

If a law is deemed unfair it can be challenged in court. Not Congress,
but the law. Slamming people retroactively sure sounds unfair to me (and
probably to a judge or jury).

It *is* unfair--even unconstitutional[*]--but there's Supreme Court
precedent for it.

[*] "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed" --US
Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9.

I've cribbed this from an earlier post, Nov. 22, 2009:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.electronics.design/browse_frm/thread/b3f726c5d69b722b/e075062237db96b7?


In United States v. Darusmont, 449 U.S. 292 (1981)
http://supreme.justia.com/us/449/292/case.html
a couple sold their house (a triplex)--to relocate for a new job--
after carefully consulting with their tax guys to sell in a way
minimizing their tax. Congress changed the law later that year, and
then IRS came after the couple for more tax.

The homeowners argued that tax change was a violation of their due
process rights under the 5th Amendment; the justices said no, because
the issue had been under discussion in Congress for a year prior, so
the
homeowners *should've* known. Further, the Court said changing the
tax rate of an existing law was not the same as enacting a new /ex
post facto/ law.


If done retroactively it is ex post facto. The constituioon does not say
new. Otherwise it would also be ok to set the income tax to 110%
retroactively, wouldn't it?

How about Clinton's retroactive tax increase? It *has* been done and will be
again.

This started under Franklin Delano Obama. He's back, so beware.

Everything's fair once you stop following the Constitution.

"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is
in session."
--Judge Gideon J. Tucker (1826-1899)


Lots of people are hoping that the worst will be stopped after the
November elections. In fact, I have met people who said they'd make some
major business decisions based on the outcome.

Here's to hoping.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 11:42:26 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2010 14:31:43 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 17, 4:05 pm, "keith...@gmail.com" <keith...@gmail.com> wrote:
On May 17, 3:53 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:



On May 17, 3:41 pm, "keith...@gmail.com" <keith...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

Again, you're missing the point. With after-tax savings you're
*already* paying that tax. If the "Fair Tax" is implemented you get
to pay the "consumption tax" on the *AFTER-TAX* money.
I'm not missing the point, I just think you're mathematically wrong.
If the thing costs $1 today, or $0.77 plus $0.23 Fair Tax tomorrow,
what have you lost? Where have I gone wrong?
Because it cost me $1.40 yesterday (when I earned it) to have the
$1.00 today,
If you paid taxes already under the old system then you were screwed
*yesterday*. That can't be fixed-it's gone. Sorry. Me too.

No, I was playing the game by the rules yesterday. Today the government
change the rules after the game was in play. The winner is the one who spent
every dime he ever made, not the one who took care of his life.


Many of the ones who took care of their life will then move, to some
places outside the US, and escape such confiscatory "fair tax" should it
ever happen. Who knows, Baja, NZ, some island ... because then the
problem simply goes away. The consequences? Even more layoffs here.

That's fine if they don't want to take their money with them. They've already
plugged that hole.

and tomorrow (after I retire, take it out of the bank,
and spend it) it only buys $.77 worth of stuff.
$1 only buys $0.77 worth of _stuff_ today, say the Fair Tax people
(AIUI). The rest goes to taxes hidden in the item's price.

Fine, if it really works, but that was not my point.


It doesn't work.

Other than ruining people's lives who have played by the rules (the life's
savings part we are objecting to here), I think it might have legs.

If I tax-deferred the
$1.40, I could buy $1.00 worth of stuff. Any after-tax savings (that
is socked away before the change) gets hammered *twice*.
If you had tax-deferred the $1.40, you'd escape the indignities of the
old system. That's a windfall (assuming Congress allows it).

If they don't, I'll yank it all out and spend it. I may do that anyway.
Property looks like the only thing worth having.


Sure does. I am thinking about the same. But how do you avoid the
hassles of being a landlord yet not pay humongous amounts to some
property management place?

Not rent to people? Dunno. Forty years ago land was put in "the bank" by
making drive-in theaters. They paid for themselves and the taxes until the
land became incredibly valuable. Twenty years ago it was golf courses. Next?

Going forward though, with income-taxed money, the $1 we have left
still buys the same with or without the Fair Tax. $1 with embedded
tax burden hidden inside it, or ($0.77 actual price + $0.23 Fair Tax)
both cost you $1 at the register. No loss of purchasing power.
That's the contention, AIUI.

Ok, but that doesn't help the people who have saved all their lives, which was
the point of this threadlet.


Exactly.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 18, 5:21 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 17, 4:01 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 16, 1:11 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 5:59 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
On May 13, 3:46 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 02:34:35 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 12, 7:57 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 10:13:56 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman
bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

<snip>

Germany is part of the EU. If the Greeks fail to service the debt it
has in Germany, it won't be servicing the debt held in France, the UK
or the Netherlands either, and their taxpayers will be equally pissed.
What is pising off the German taxpayers is that the rescue package is
seen as a source of inflation, and the Germans have been terrified of
inflation since 1923.

And rightfully so. Because there are numerous other countries that have
overspent and are now teetering. We have only seen the tip of the
iceberg so far. Mark my words.

You mean Spain and Portugal. The Spanish economy is now growing again,
if only by 0.1% in the last quarter. Portugal has more of problem, in
that it was selling itself as a low wage economy and more recent
additions to the EU offer even lower wages, but at least it has
already dealt with the problems that brought the Greeks down, and is
correspondingly better placed to reduce its budget deficit to
acceptable levels.

As a prophet, you are about as reliable as the right wing commentators
you are parroting, which is to say, not very.

Your notion that "The trouble that Greece is now in will be fixed by
Greece" will IMHO not come to pass.
You are making a prediction, based on the little you know about the
situation, heavily influenced by what you've read in the US mass
media. As opinions go, it doesn't carry a lot of weight.
Check the facts. Greece has no industry to write home about, tourism is
declining because countries like Turkey are cheaper, and they can't
print Euros. Did I forget anything? Guess not.

Greece has the world's largest shipping fleet. This may not be an
industry, but it is certaly a source of revenue. Try not to guess this
sort of information - Wikipedia may not be perfect, but it's more
reliable than your imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece

GDP is around $30k per capita. And that's the problem, that doesn't
support the lavish perks like early retirement, too many gvt workers,
and so on. Other Western countries with lesser perks are around 1/3rd
higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_p...

Combine that with rampant tax evasion in Greece and a tax authority that
was asleep at the wheel and you'll know what I meant.

These are are the problems that the Greek governemnt has now faced up
to, whence the aggressive political theatre in the streets of Athens.

The difference in GDP between Greece and its neighbours isn't
dramatic. It is stiil an advanced industrial country. It doesn't enjoy
the economies of scale of the larger European countries, but it's
inhabitants don't have to spend a bundle on heating their houses, and
its commercial sector can't claim to be making money by selling the
oil and gas that heats Northern European homes and contributes to the
Northern European GDP.

They are unlikely to be able to fix the
damage that living beyond their means for years has done.
Why? The US - which has been running a hugge balance of payemnts
deficit since Regan was president - would suggest that you might be
right, but the money market hasn't yet got around to labelling US
treasury bonds as risky investments.
We have an industry. Greece doesn't. HUGE difference.

You've exported a lot of your industry to China. Greece is a small
country - about 11 million people - and it's industry, such as it is,
isn't widely publicised. It is a developed country, and the GPD per
head is about the same as that of France, Italy and Germany.

It is not, the GDP is lower.

Not dramatically.

Open your PC or
whatever else electronic and see how many components in there are from
Greek companies. Open the hood of your car and do same. In fact, open
just about anything.

So what? There's nothing there from Australia either, or Switzerland.

Australia largely lives off of its minerals and other goodies, as long
as they have some. Switzerland, well, we all know what they do besides
making watch movements and precision machinery

Australia exports around a billion dollars worth of scientifc
instruments and services every year. When I was a student - until 1970
- Australia had always had a positive balance of trade in scientific
instruments. It's small beer compared with the minerals and primary
produce - even wine exports bring in several billion dollars a year -
but its the kind of thing (like the Greek shipping fleet) that you
won't know about if you aren't - in some way - involved.

Be that as it may, the Greeks have run out of options, and they will
do what every other government has done when they fall into the hands
of the IMF, which is to follow the - stupid - prescriptions.
Obviously that will be much better than what they did so far, and what
got them into this mess in the first place.

Obviously. But it's applying bang-bang control where proportional,
integral and derivative control would let the economy transiton to the
desired state rather faster. Because the IMF is run by American
educated monetarist economists, whose "economic science" has very
limited predictive power, they haven't a hope of implementing any kind
of feed-forward control strategy.

There comes a time when bang is needed, not bang-bang. Meaning someone
has to hit the emergency stop button because the system that was
entrusted with running the place has gone out of control. Just like you
don't keep pulling the yoke on an aircraft to maintain altitude when the
stall horn is blaring because that would end in a fiery crash. You have
to prepare everyone for an "off field landing" and then land as soon as
possible.

Stall recovery is famously conter-intuitive. When I was a kid and
interested in aircraft, I got to read the account of the first guy who
worked out how to get out of a stall, and proceeded to get into an
aircraft, take off and test his hypothesis - putting his neck on the
line in the process.

The non-linear mechanisms involved don't have obvious analogies with
the Greek situation - all the control mechanisms were available and
working as expected, but the Greek government seems to have ingored
the fact that they were steadily losing height.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 18:13:07 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Sloman wrote:
snip

The difference in GDP between Greece and its neighbours isn't
dramatic. It is stiil an advanced industrial country. ...


Care to point out any high-tech products they make and sell in
significant volumes?

Gyros. ;-)

 

[Bill Bowden]

On May 18, 12:17 pm, Charlie E. <edmond...@ieee.org> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 21:20:36 -0700,



"JosephKK"<quiettechb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 16:00:15 -0500, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 13:54:00 -0700, "JosephKK"<quiettechb...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:17:15 -0700, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:39:56 -0700, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

[...]

I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts
business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because
it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No
accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no
quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost.

Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a
person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be
jealous of his wealth.

A serious problem with that: It punishes frugal people who have saved
for their retirement and rewards those who squandered everything. The
money they saved _has_ already been taxed.

Simple fix: don't tax income.

Yeah, but how do you deal with income that _has_ already been taxed but
not spent yet because people saved it for their retirement? A flat
VAT-type tax is the same as confiscating xx% percent of that. Not fair
at all.

Gosh, are your savings all that significant?  

Many do have significant savings over their lifetimes.  Having enough to live
on the rest of their lives, isn't uncommon.  

Actually it is quite uncommon according to BLS data.

Don't you pay (an ever
increasing in CA) sales tax already?  Please to explain the difference.

Compound interest tends to cancel inflation.

Not all that well.  It really fell behind during Carter era.
Interestingly, credit card rates never came back down.

Yes, it is an issue that my wife and I deal with all the time.  We do
have some significant savings, but they are in CDs, which she
considers 'safe.'  Our big problem is that savings interest rates keep
going down and down, but inflation hasn't stopped, and the rates on
borrowed money keep going up!  We are presently looking around for a
new bank to move what little money we have to.  A bank seems to offer
decent rates for about a year, and then back off.  Just to get 1% on a
12 month CD is almost impossible to find.  We are presently looking at
AMEX...

Charlie

Take a look at Vanguard's GNMA fund (VFIIX) that pays 3.44%. It's
government insured, and principal went up today (0.09%) as the market
fell 1%. But the downside could be -10% if market conditions change.
Another idea is junk bonds that pay 9% or better, but the risk is
higher at 25%. Look at HYG or VWEHX for high yield junk bonds (Yahoo
finance). They have a good record the past year, (about 32%) but took
a bath in 2008. But all the losses were recovered the next year, plus
more.

-Bill

 

[Martin Brown]

On 18/05/2010 16:35, John Larkin wrote:

When I die, the government will make an absurd valuation of the heap,
including "goodwill", and levy enough death taxes to wipe it out,
roughly 6 times over. I suppose if they want to wipe out the
businesses that create jobs and pay taxes, it's their choice.

You should campaign to get the law changed then.

The UK protects family businesses and farms from being wiped out by
inheritance tax liability. Tax planning using the potentially exempt
rules would work for transfer of any asset at all provided you did it at
least 7 years in advance of your expiry. (2 years in the case of handing
a business to a close relative)

Granted it is no use at all if you fall under a bus tomorrow.

For a quick guide on how the UK system works try
http://www.estatesortrusts.co.uk/estates-inheritance-business-succession-case-study.html

It seems "Land of the Free" rips you off again!

Regards,
Martin Brown