conservation of Euros

[Bill Sloman]

On May 15, 11:05 am, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:

On May 14, 4:49 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:



On May 14, 7:16 am, 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..

I think you are mixing your metaphors. If you want to refer to
Orwell's "Animal Farm" you had better read it first.

This falls a
long way short of Marx -

JL > Marx was kind of an idiot.

BS > The same kind of idiot as Darwin, who
BS > laid out the obvious facts that
BS > nobody had noticed before.

Your knee jerks when somebody assails Marx.
Then you compaare it to ... SCIENCE!   LOL

It's a cult like religion to you.

Marx certainly is worshipped as a diety by some nitwit left-wingers,
just as he is rejected as some kind of evil diety by nitwits like you.
His real contribution to economics was that he looked at trade and
productivity statistics and used tehm as the basis of his arguments.
That was the true revolutionary development for which he deserves
credit, and the Fabian Society were his real disciples. As a prophet,
he wasn't up to much.

"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?

That pretty much describes the state of industrial workers in
Victorian England before the trade union movement got under way. Marx
was describing the way the world worked at the time when he wrote
that, based - in part - on the data that he got from Friedrich Engels,
who not only supported Marx financially, but also provided a lot of
the social statistics on which Marx based his work.

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

Marx's economic writings were much more evidence-based than those of
his contemporaries. If Marx is a kind of idiot, it is the kind of
idiot that we should see more often.

Your comment demonstrates that you don't understand why industrial
workes are no longer paid a bare subsistence wage, and the
contribution that Marx made to the process that changed their
condition.

  Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep,
a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels.  Engels in turn
coasted off the family business.  Marx made his living guilt-tripping
Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists
today.

There was nothing pseudo-academic about Marx. He revolutionised
academic economics, in part by exploiting statistical data about the
actual economies of the time, quite a bit of which was collected by
Engels.

Marx and Engels are like deities to you!

Hardly. They both did useful - and in fact revolutionary - work, but
they were both decidedly fallible human beings.

You seem to prize academia over real world experience.

Engels worked recorded a load of real world facts, and Marx took
advantage of them. That is what useful academics do, and that it what
I admire in their work. I'm probably more aware than you of the
uselessness of academic input that isn't based on real world
experience.

Not every idea that enters the College (arena)
of thought is inherently patently true.

Obviously not. As Popper says, if a theory can't be falsified, it
isn't science.

You worship Noam Chomsky too, don't you?

Worship is a strong word. I respect him, both for his contribution to
linguistics in the 1950's which revolutionsied the field, and for his
evidence-based analyses of US foreign policy. Since you don't seem to
understand what evidence involves, the may not appeal to you in the
same way.

  "To each according to need" really means "From you to me."  "Dear
Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo
P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM"

Perhaps. Marx didn't have an appealing personality. But he was doing
important - ground-breaking  - work, and Engels saw its value and
provided the financial and intellectual support that allowed Marx to
get on with it.

That you don't see its value reflects your - negligible - intellectual
status as a right-wing nitwit.

  Marx's moronic precepts ruined scores of countries, and killed tens
of millions, maybe hundreds.
The Bolshevik version of Marxism, with its emphasis on the "leading
role of the party" has damaged a lot of countries, and killed a lot of
people. The problem isn't with Marxism, but the concentration of power
into the hands of an unrepresentative and irresponsible elite - the
Communist party in Stalin's Russian, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's
Cambodia killed a lot of people, but the Nazi Party in Hitler's
Germany, the Fascist parties in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain
weren't far behind, despite their violently anti-Marxist ideologies.

What?  Your GOD didn't foresee the greedy
limitations in the real world?    An ACADEMIC??  Nah.

That Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot used Marx's writings to justify
mass murder doesn't say much about Marx, any more than the deaths in
the various wars of religion have much to do with the nature of the
religions being used to justify the violence.

This is the kind of academic point that you seem ill-equipped to
understand.

 "Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean
  the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form
  of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no
  need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a
  great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying
  it daily."  --The Communist Manifesto
But, dim-witted Marx had it exactly bass-ackwards--industry was the
very salvation for the proletariat, pulling them up out of poverty.
Only after the trade union movement forced industrial employers to pay
their workers at above subsistence levels. Sometimes they achieved
this by direct strike action, but more often far-sighted employers
anticipated trade union activism by improving conditions of work to
make the jobs of trade union recruiters more difficult, in much the
same way as Bismark invented modern universal health care as a way of
stealing votes from his socialist political rivals.

You think your attitudes are SCIENTIFIC FACT, right?

I think they are based on reliable evidence. Where's your counter-
eidence?

"Industry?" you ask?  Productivity-amplifying machines, powered by
fossil fuels.  Let's get rid of those, shall we?

Why? You do like introducing silly straw-man arguments.

Why do liberals accuse others of straw man
arguments so frequently?  Kinda stuck in
a high school (ACADEMIC) debate society mode?

No. I'm stuck on the idea that someone who accuses me of the wanting
to get rid of productivty amplifying machines because they run on
fossil fuels is a liar who is trying to claim someting that isn't true
- something that he should know isn't true.

This is bad argument in any context.

It would be a
much better idea to improve industry so that the machines didn't have
to be powered by burning fossil fuels, but understanding how one might
do this requires a better grasp of technological possiblities than you
have ever demonstrated.

from each according to the abilities, to each
according to their needs - and is compatible with a society where some
people can afford fancier cars, bigger houses and finer wines than
their neighbours, though the rich no longer have access to the
services of a truly deprived under-class who will do almost anything
to save their kids from starvation.

Socialist countries are the ones who crush their peoples in poverty,
and whose people flee to the USA, not the reverse.

And your statistical evidence for this unlikely story is?
Forty years ago, the USA did offer a higher standard of living than
any other country in the world, but that hasn't been true for quite
some time now. It still offers respectable material prosperity, but
education and health care are both now so expensive that immigrants
from the more prosperous  parts of Europe have to be confident of
getting very well paying jobs before they could contemplate making a
permanent move.

You got rejected because you're a Marxist, Bill?

Since I'm not a Marxist, nor anything like it - I visted US Army ECOM
at Forth Monmouth in New Jersey in 1970, back when I had an Australian
security clearance to "most secret" - this probably isn't true. I did
apply for a couple of jobs in the US during the 1970's, but it's more
likey that my formal training - as a Ph.D. physical chemist - didn't
impress the people who were assessing the aplications.

The INDIANS are flooding in on tricked up H1b visas
and most of them are very much CAPITALISTS!

So what?

This guy makes your case for you:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wwK7fggOs&NR=1

The link doesn't work for me, and if it had worked I imagine that its
content would be just as half-baked as your argument.

Pity.  A conspiracy idiot.  He makes your case well.

And what is the "conspiracy" to which you think I might be referring?
You right-wing nut cases

You DO realize that being a Marxist and
citing Engels places you firmly into
KOOK LEFT territory, right?

Only from the KOOK far-right point of view. The - few - academic
economists I've met regard Marx and Engels as part of their academic
background, though they do know better than to mention Marx or Engels
to Americans, who have been propagandised to see them as avatars of
the anti-Christ.

To you, almost EVERYBODY is relatively right wing!

Not really. In Europe and Australia I'm boringly middle of the road.

It's not like Marxists are seen as main stream thought, Bill!
LOL

-----------------------------------------------------------------

BS > do seem to share a number of delusions,
BS > but that can be explained without resorting
BS > to any conspiracy - simple-minded nitwits
BS > like simple solutions, and lack the historical
BS > insight to realise that these solutions
BS > haven't worked in the past and are even
BS > less likely to work now.

Translation:
Your ( ad hom) opponents are short sighted and
their solutions have failed, so we should do what YOU say.

Isn't that what that paragraph of pseudo-intellectualism said?

Not exactly. The nitwits who are posting here aren't primarily short-
sighted but actually ignorant, which is why they propose solutions
that have failed to work in the past. And I've not made any
suggestions of my own in this thread, so it would be difficult for you
to do what I say, since I'd not told you what to do, besides learning
a bit more about the subjects that you choose to pontificate about.

Your first language IS English isn't it??

You've just failed elementary Englsh comprehension, so you really
aren't in any position to ask, but English is my mother tongue. I did
learn some French and German during my secondary schooling in
Tasmania, and a smattering of science Russian at university, but
English is the only language I write with any competence, though my
spoken Dutch is pretty fluent.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:48:44 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 01:45:16 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 10:05 pm, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:
BS > Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is
BS > now in will be fixed by Greece. The EU - as
BS > a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing
BS > until that happens.

Oh GOODY!   More DEBT!   THAT'LL fix em!   LOL!

The alternative was to let them go bankrupt, taking down a bunch of
Eurpean banks that had lent them money. This is pretty much what
happend in 1929, and the relevant politicians know enough history to
be aware of this, and didn't fancy going down that route again.

There's a good argument that the government interventions in the '30s
created a decade-long depression that otherwise would have been a
year-or-so stock market bust. The "success" of the Roosevelt acts has
entered our mythology.

It's not as though economists understand any of this stuff.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100511092406.htm


Right-wing nitwits are less familiar with history, and correspondingly
more enthusiastic about repeating their ancestor's mistakes.

History records that we had stock market bubbles and busts for
hundreds of years before 1929, and that the first great government
intervention in such a bust was followed by the first Great
Depression.


Make no mistake. The Greeks are in the process of reforming their
economy.

Beginning with a general strike.

Already public servants are getting 10% lower salaries, and
their retirement age has been raised from 61 to 65. There's a lot
more of that kind of belt-tightening in the pipe-line.

When "public servants" getting a 10% pay cut has serious effects on an
economy, you know that you have way too many "public servants."

Indeed. It becomes a bad problem when it is the only stable jobs well.

John

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 13:30:41 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 11:08:20 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 14, 4:48 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 01:45:16 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 10:05 pm, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:
BS > Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is
BS > now in will be fixed by Greece. The EU - as
BS > a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing
BS > until that happens.

Oh GOODY!   More DEBT!   THAT'LL fix em!   LOL!

The alternative was to let them go bankrupt, taking down a bunch of
Eurpean banks that had lent them money. This is pretty much what
happend in 1929, and the relevant politicians know enough history to
be aware of this, and didn't fancy going down that route again.

There's a good argument that the government interventions in the '30s
created a decade-long depression that otherwise would have been a
year-or-so stock market bust. The "success" of the Roosevelt acts has
entered our mythology.

You've peddled this nonsense before. Unemployment in the US was around
25% in the early 1930's, and Roosevelt's New Deal got it down to 9% in
1937, before an unfortunate revival in economic conservatism undid the
good work and pushed it back up to 17%.

When you last posted on this subject, you ignored the fact that
unemployment got down to 9% at the start of of 1937, which did make
nosense of the story you were trying to sell.

Correlation is not causality. It might have got down that low sooner
all by itself. Spending money cutting hiking trails and painting
murals is nice, but it's not the kind of productivity that hungry
people need.

John

Just the same, workfare that actually builds useful stuff and (re)trains
workers to do currently employable work is not really a loss. But it
needs to be called what it is, and handled as such.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 15:26:08 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

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.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7127621.ece

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqquuYOAN_sE


It's bizarre that this is happening. But you may recall that I've been
ranting for years about Europe's demographic time bomb. I didn't
realise that there was a shorter-fuse fiscal bomb too.

John

 

[JosephKK]

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

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:48 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:50:11 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 05:12, krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:03:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.
VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.
That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.
No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.
So it's only collected at the end.

Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible.
A lot of work, sure, but money only changes hands at the end of the pipe.
No. You have it wrong. Every stage in the pipeline *pays* VAT inclusive
prices to their suppliers and totals up their input tax and then charges
their customers including VAT and totals up their output tax. Then
every month if large or three months if a small company you send a VAT
cheque to HMRC which is the difference of those two numbers.

A modern computer system doesn't find this too difficult. Unless that is
some half baked government changes the VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% in the
run up to Christmas as they did last year. That was a disaster for shops
as shelf prices are all marked inclusive of VAT. UK VAT is expected to
go to 20% shortly to deal with the deficit. It will make mental
arithmetic a lot easier - I never learnt my 17.5x table.

Exceptions exist for cross boarder trades in the EEC which allow not
charging VAT if the goods are for export to another country in the EEC.
This leads to a complex form of cross border trade called carousel fraud
which typically involves small high value objects like memory chips,
mobile phones and latterly carbon credits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5204422.stm

...and IIRC, the Canuckistani VAT is paid by the buyer; a sales tax.
A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot
simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT
advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT
for a charity making disabled access improvements.
There's nothing wrong or difficult about having businesses pay sales
tax. We in California pay sales tax on anything we consume, like
equipment and furniture and supplies, and pay no tax on parts or
subassemblies that will go into sellable products. But it probably
makes sense to exempt productive equipment, since that would encourage
long-term productivity and job creation.

If there's an opamp in stock and I pull it out to make a breadboard or
a test fixture, I should in theory note the event and pay sales tax on
it. And if I buy a bunch of parts for engineering, taxed, but some
wind up in a shipped product, we should get a refund on the taxes.

VAT sounds like a mess to me. Accountants and attorneys and
bureaucrats are all useless, expensive overheads on society.

Yup. And now they are talking about taxing services. Meaning what I cost
my clients would then go up by x percent, or the cost of doing business
in California would go up by x percent. Which will increase the exodus
because the guy 50 miles east of here in Nevada doesn't have that cost.
I sure hope that the 2/3rds rule will hold to avert such damage. Every
business or person leaving the state will cause the net tax from that to
drop to zero.

Since we're increasingly a services economy, we should tax services
and simultaneously reduce tax rates on stuff.


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.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 16:53:49 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 16:25, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:50:11 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot
simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT
advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT
for a charity making disabled access improvements.

There's nothing wrong or difficult about having businesses pay sales
tax. We in California pay sales tax on anything we consume, like

I see that as faintly odd. Taxing businesses for buying stuff to help
run their business and new equipment doesn't really make any sense.

Many taxes do not make any sense.

equipment and furniture and supplies, and pay no tax on parts or
subassemblies that will go into sellable products. But it probably
makes sense to exempt productive equipment, since that would encourage
long-term productivity and job creation.

It does provide the odd interesting loophole. My supervisor at
university tried a lawnmower as a company expense (ruled invalid).
We tried company bicycles and that was accepted!

Helping make the point about making sense.

If there's an opamp in stock and I pull it out to make a breadboard or
a test fixture, I should in theory note the event and pay sales tax on
it. And if I buy a bunch of parts for engineering, taxed, but some
wind up in a shipped product, we should get a refund on the taxes.

It is different to what I am used to and just as messy to implement. If
anything you have the same nightmare scenario as UK fast food places
where the price you pay depends on whether you take away or eat in VAT=0
or 17.5 respectively. I presume that noone bothers in the US like buying
stuff from another state to evade state sales taxes.

Ignoring the possibility of sarcasm: I bother a lot to, avoid sales
taxes, so does _everyone_ i know.

VAT sounds like a mess to me. Accountants and attorneys and
bureaucrats are all useless, expensive overheads on society.

It is relatively straightforward provided that you do not have too many
different rates and/or wierd exemptions. Different to what you are used
to - but I think an end user purchase/sales tax would be a lot cleaner.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 11:21:11 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 13:47:27 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:40:49 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:


Check the tax situation first, all taxes including property taxes, cost
of living, et cetera. AZ may not be the first contender then.

Maybe they have some "boycott days" special deals.

There's idle talk around here to cut off Californica's water and
electricity... wonder how Californica would like Arizona's style of
"boycott" ? LA would shrivel up and die.

...Jim Thompson

Go for it. CA really needs to learn to live within its means.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:53:21 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Bill Sloman wrote:
On May 14, 6:03 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"

k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.
VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.
That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.
No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.

Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible.

But easily automated, unless you want to cheat. No place where I
worked complained about the complexity or got worried about
intrusions. European small business software packages claim to include
it as a matter of course.


And then you get a letter from the tax agency, asking for some
explanation why your VAT intake was so low and you claimed so much in
refunds. "Because I run a business, are VAT-exempt for that, and have
clients in places like Asia" ... "Can you come by with the books and
show us?" ... "Sure". It was a nice bicycle ride through a forest so I
didn't mind. The guy there was very friendly but became quite frustrated
because nearly all the stuff was in foreign languages, some in Korean


People who are sloppy about their paper-work can get in a mess with
VAT, as with every other item of accounting, but at least it isn't
hard to understand.


IIRC we had 6 or 7 VAT rates and you really had to watch your data
entry. At the "Pre-computer" point.

Please notice, Slowman produces _NO_ economic activity and cannot be
expected to know anything about it.

 

[JosephKK]

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.

I really don't get your issue. A consumption tax becomes a relatively
time invariant part of the price. Buy it now or buy it later for durable
goods, eat it now or go hungry for foodstuff, housing too (rent/buy);
where's the beef?

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 16, 5:44 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 06:05:49 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
The digital stroboscopic electron beam tester was canned after we'd
built a working prototype - the problem was that we would have needed
to sell 18 over about eighteen months to get the necessary cash flow,
and the original marketing estimates turned out to have been about 50%
too high. It didn't help that the original marketing specification had
included an irrational demand that we should be able to place our
500psec wide sampling pulse with a precision of 10psec, which meant
that the timing electronics had to be built around Gigabit Logic's
GaAs parts, making the development a little more demanding than it
needed to have been (not that we ran into many unanticipated problems
with the ultra-fast bits of the circuit).

The GBL parts were fabulously expensive, and weren't long for this
world anyhow.

Back then, 100k ECL cost roughtly ten times as much as TTL and
Gigabit's GaAs cost ten times as much as the 100k ECL. More important,
there were three suppliers of 100k ECL - Philips, National and
Motorola, none of whom were going to go out of business, while there
was just one Gigabit. I really would have much preferred to go with
National's 300k ECL - the masks were made with a Cambridge Instrument
EBMF 10.5 electron beam microfabricator, whose beam-steering
electronics I'd personally up-graded to meet the demsnds imposed by
the new, fast electron beam resist that National were using.

Tek was making sampling scopes ca 1968 that had 10 ps
resolution and jitter, using all discrete transistors. Heck, the
HP185, around 1962, managed about that good with tubes. 10KH ECL is
fine for 10 ps timing.

I was digitising the trigger time delay position vis avis the 800MHz
clock by digitising a period between 1.25 to 2.5 nsec to eight-bit
accuracy and feeding the digtised result into the digital time delay
generator, and using the low order bits of the output to generate a
delay with the same resolution. the whole process - from input to
output - took about 40nsec, which rather restircted the A/D converters
and the D/A converters that I could use.

At the time 100k ECL would have supported a 200MHz clock and 10psec
resoluton in 5nsec is 9-bit accuracy, which wasn't on offer at the
time. The guy running the project was primarily interested in being
able to sell the machines after they had been built, and the 10psec
specification would have made that part of his life easier, though in
fact it slowed down the development enough that he was never in a
position to actually sell a machine.

I cleaned out our library before we moved a few years ago, and tossed
a VW-sized dumpster worth of datasheets and databooks, including the
GBL databook. Pity, I should have kept that one. I still have one of
their samples, a $150 pin driver thing.

I've still got my databook, but no samples. They were a bit too
expensive to snaffle for souveniers.

Hittite is sort of repeating that pattern: very fast, high power
dissipation simple gates and comparators, made from exotic materials,
very expensive. I haven't bought any so far.

I've used Motorola's ECLinPs parts, back when they were good for
500MHz synchronous counters. Much easier to use than GaAs, and from a
much more reliable source.

Betting the farm on one product is dangerous. Our approach is to
design a lot of products every year and accept that some will sell and
some won't, and survive on the ones that sell. That means that they
all have to be turned around fast.

The electron beam tester would have sold for about half a million
dollars a unit, and we spent something like five million dollars on
the development. You can't design a lot of that kind of product every
year, and you can't turn them around fast, particularly if you push
the envelope as far as we - foolishly - did.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[JosephKK]

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

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:08:36 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.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.

As I suggested, exempt basics, like food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines. If people can afford a yacht, they can afford to pay sales
tax on it.

John

Aside from raw food, why have any exclusions? Cars, airplanes and yachts

all get taxed; just like they do now.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

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.

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

Compound interest tends to cancel inflation.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 22:55:23 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:08:36 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.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.

As I suggested, exempt basics, like food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines. If people can afford a yacht, they can afford to pay sales
tax on it.

The point is that that money has already been taxed. It shouldn't matter if
it is used to buy a yacht. Taxing it again is wrong (one reason I don't trust
Roth IRAs).

So, i am not the only one to notice the recent attacks on them for tax
money. I know people who have actually had attempts to tax their Roth
IRA savings.

 

[Joerg]

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

The difference is this: Yes, I do save for retirement. And yes, one has
to make sacrifices to do that. Such as not buying a new car every five
years. As said several times this money _has_ already been taxed. So if
the income of the paycheck-to-paycheck guy gets taxed only at
consumption he has only paid tax once. I have then paid twice. That is
simply unfair.

Are you really thinking CA will give up their "normal" sales tax? You
must be dreaming ...

It'll also lead to tricks that people play. Lots of Europeans who must
pay a painfully high VAT come to the US and buy tons of stuff.
Electronics, clothes, you name it. If they manage to sneak it past
customs when going back home the vacation they enjoyed was often largely
"free".

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[JosephKK]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 00:18:43 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 21:26:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 22:55:23 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:08:36 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.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.

As I suggested, exempt basics, like food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines. If people can afford a yacht, they can afford to pay sales
tax on it.

The point is that that money has already been taxed. It shouldn't matter if
it is used to buy a yacht. Taxing it again is wrong (one reason I don't trust
Roth IRAs).

As I suggested, eliminate income taxes and go to sales tax. Then
things are only taxed once.

You're missing the point. Those millions of people who have saved all their
lives will be taxed a second time. They've *already* been taxed on that
money.

Not to bust your bubble, but i am already paying both taxes.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:41:52 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:56:31 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

Bill Sloman wrote:
On May 14, 12:39 am, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

[...]

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not. I can't imagine how you could work a
thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain.

It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the
things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating
around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things
like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen.

(One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because
hot ones have a higher tax rate.)

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.

Dream on. Why do you think that VAT was invented?

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


The usual. To squeeze ever more taxes out of people. Whether you call
them VAT, fees, surcharges, carbon credits or whatever, a tax is a tax
is a tax.

But some taxes require you to hire an army of bookkeepers and CPAs and
attorneys just to figure out how much taxes you should pay. Luckily,
all their fees are tax-deductable. This year, we will spend more on
the droids than we will pay in taxes.

John

The truest indication that the "system" has gone malignant (malevolent).

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:

On Sat, 15 May 2010 00:18:43 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 21:26:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 22:55:23 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 10:08:36 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.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.
As I suggested, exempt basics, like food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines. If people can afford a yacht, they can afford to pay sales
tax on it.
The point is that that money has already been taxed. It shouldn't matter if
it is used to buy a yacht. Taxing it again is wrong (one reason I don't trust
Roth IRAs).
As I suggested, eliminate income taxes and go to sales tax. Then
things are only taxed once.
You're missing the point. Those millions of people who have saved all their
lives will be taxed a second time. They've *already* been taxed on that
money.

Not to bust your bubble, but i am already paying both taxes.

When income tax gets turned into a point-of-sale tax you'll have paid
even more (if you have saved after-tax money).

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 16 May 2010 14:04:22 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

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


The difference is this: Yes, I do save for retirement. And yes, one has
to make sacrifices to do that. Such as not buying a new car every five
years. As said several times this money _has_ already been taxed. So if
the income of the paycheck-to-paycheck guy gets taxed only at
consumption he has only paid tax once. I have then paid twice. That is
simply unfair.

Sometimes "fair" is the enemy of "works." If everyone were equally
dirt-poor, it would be fair.

John

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:06:18 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 06:16, dagmargoodboat@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?

Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep,
a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn
coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping
Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists
today.

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

It was common practice to overstoke the fire before the first shift and
add weight to the pressure relief valve - this resulted in several large
scale boiler explosions destroying big mills in the early morning and
killing many workers in the Lancashire cotton industry.

http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/technical-steam/historic-steam-boiler-explosions-p-2658.html

Articles on the history of boiler insurance show that the US had a worse
record despite having the advantage of seeing the innovations in UK
boilers. Some element of NIH played a part but mostly it was that
industrialists greed was paramount and the workers powerless. eg.

http://www.casact.org/pubs/proceed/proceed15/15407.pdf
first page and page 7 under Normal Loss Hazard

"To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear
Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo
P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM"

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

It only makes sense if the money comes from somewhere. If all the
employers arbitrarily doubled wages, inflation would take it all away
within weeks, maybe days.

In late 1930s Germany it was hours to minutes. Israel had a similar
problem twice since. (well over 1000% per year inflation).

If a single employer did it, he's go out of
business. Shuffling paper money around is meaningless; productivity is
real. Ford increased wages because he had a revolutionary
super-efficient way of making cheap cars, and most workers found the
pace and discipline tiring and tended to quit after a few months. He
needed the best workers to stick around, so he golden-handcuffed them;
this was *before* they were unionized. The "invisible hand" was at
work. Productivity was the key.

This is good:

http://www.amazon.com/Ford-Men-Machine-Robert-Lacey/dp/0517635046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273849223&sr=1-1

While i will not argue that the assembly line was(or not) an important

innovation, it did tend to make humans into robots, and people are
notoriously mediocre robot machines. Way too much people as
robot/machine(/assembly line) thinking still permeates management
thinking today.

In the UK there were some decent industrialists mostly of quaker
families who did treat their workforce fairly - examples include some
household names like Pilkingtons, Cadbury, Bournville, Marks&Spencer.

A decent industrialist realizes that a partnership with workers is
mutually beneficial, but must still compete with company owners who
don't agree with this philosophy. A company can't arbitrarily give
away high wages without achieving corresponding competitive benefits.

John