conservation of Euros

[Joerg]

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
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.

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.

You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.

Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[Joerg]

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 09:42:44 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
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.

Why would a Japanese car or Chinese-made flatscreen TV fall in price
quickly?

Because there is more than one manufacturer.

With consumer electronics the number of manufacturers inside the US is
often zero.

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.

There'll be new tax land-mines, like who gets to pay ficticious rent
tax, how much, and who doesn't. Et cetera.

That part still seems iffy, yes.

IMHO the whole idea is iffy. Fair means it has to be fair to just about
everyone and not just part of the population. And that's not the case.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
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.

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.

You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.


Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

No, but it's been in the news lately, with Obama's attack on the Swiss banks.
Apparently if you move cash out of the country you have to pay the equivalent
of the death tax.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

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

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.

You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.


Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

[...]

Keith is confused. The $10K CASH reporting requirement does not apply
to wires.

...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

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:27:01 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 09:42:44 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
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.

Why would a Japanese car or Chinese-made flatscreen TV fall in price
quickly?

Because there is more than one manufacturer.


With consumer electronics the number of manufacturers inside the US is
often zero.

I don't see the relevance.

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.

There'll be new tax land-mines, like who gets to pay ficticious rent
tax, how much, and who doesn't. Et cetera.

That part still seems iffy, yes.


IMHO the whole idea is iffy. Fair means it has to be fair to just about
everyone and not just part of the population. And that's not the case.

The only hole I see in it is savings, that we both object to. I may not agree
(or understand completely) the economics of taxing large items (homes and
cars) heavily.

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 14:35:20 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 19, 3:43 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
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:

[...]



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.

Here goes the bragging again.

Not exactly. The half-wit claims that because I don't share his
economic opinions, I don't have enough understanding of dynamics to
design electronics. It's very much an apples and pears comparison, but
it's also flat-out wrong, as I've gone to the trouble of pointing out.
If usig objective facts to point out that John has made an idot of
himself again is "bragging", then I amstuck with bragging - I did get
the Ph.D. in that area, and I'm not going to lie about it in a effort
tp project a modest persona.

How come that John, probably not that much different in age from you,
makes tons of money designing and building electronics, right now, has
created tons of jobs, and you don't?

He's more interested in making money than I am, and his expertise does
seem to lend itself to lower value systems than I worked on.

Systems that don't sell have no value. Systems that sell thousands of
copies at 4:1 margins have value.


Setting

up your own company to make electron microscope or phased array
ultrasound machines probably takes more capital than even John could
have got his hands on, and was never one of my ambitions.

I started with essentially no capital. I've never believed in raising
a lot of money and then developing a complex product; that path has
about a 90% failure rate. I developed modest products, sold them, and
worked my way up. But designing megabuck instruments doesn't appeal to
me; each one will take years of development and support, and I don't
have that sort of attention span. Six or eight designs a year is more
fun.

We can't all be entrepreneurs,

Good, I'm a circuit designer.


and the personality defects that lead

him to pontificate about subject he knows very little about may be
advantageous when it comes to setting up your own company and telling
people how good your products are going to be.

To me, whether someone has a Ph.D.
is rather irrelevant. What he or she does, that's relevant.

My opinion exactly. In this case, it was the work I had to do to get
the Ph.D. that was relevant, not the degree itself. I've seen enough
bad Ph.D. theses to be well aware that getting a Ph.D. is no guarantee
of competence, although it does indicate that you are persistent and
can write coherently.

Amen, brother.

John

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:46:38 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

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

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.

You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.


Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

[...]

Keith is confused. The $10K CASH reporting requirement does not apply
to wires.

Domestically, no. You're not allowed to take more than $10K out of the
country without declaring it, and possibly paying tax on it. Different issue.

 

[Joerg]

Bill Sloman wrote:

On May 19, 3:13 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:
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.

Which is the sort of claim that is easy to make after the fact. Have
you got any kind of record of what you actually said at the time? When
I've been able to check out my own prophecies, I've always found that
what I remember writing was always distinctly more explicit than what
I actually wrote at the time.

Of course I did not put a tape recorder on the table. At banks that is
generally frowned upon

I do vividly remember that discussion. It was about a real estate
investment fund opportunity which, after that discussion, was shelved.
And boy was I glad we did.

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?

No. ...

Thought so.

... You can be an advanced industrial country without manufacturing
and exporting high-tech products. The Greeks may have found a niche
they can dominate, but if they have I don't know about it, and more
than you knew about them having the the largest shipping fleet. In any
event there are other products they can produce and export in
sufficient volume to fund the goods that they have to import.

The shipping fleet is obviously not able to keep this country afloat,
else they wouldn't have gone begging at the IMF, would they?

... 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"?

Compare them with the ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe, where
the GDP is closer to a third of the European average.

The retirement age - 58 or 61 or whatever it is - is roughly the same
as the average age of exiting work in Australia - 59 - and the
Netherlands and France. In fact the Greeks tend to continue to work
after their official retirement age, so the Greeks avtually work
longer than the Dutch or the French, making a nonsense of half of your
claim. Presumably the mediterranean diet keeps them healthy for longer
than their Dutch adn French equivalents.

Greeks have told me the exact opposite of what you claim. And the state
of their economy proves it beyond a doubt. So does the per-capita GDP.

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

The only ones I knew about were flame ionisation spectrometers, which
are handy for elemental analysis, and gas chromatography detectors.
You might find them in a clinical laboratory.

So what company/companies? You claimed a billion bucks. That's a lotta
bucks and it should show on some balance sheets.

... 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.

Dream on. I was in the UK during the three day week, and the
subsequent period when Wilson and Callaghan had to reign in domestic
spending to get the economy back on the rails. The came to power in
1974,"when a period of economic crisis was beginning to hit most
Western countries".

I lived in Germany and other than the energy crisis I don't remember
anything remotely close to what they and the neighbor countries are
experiencing today. And unfortunately that goes for the US as well
although we do have some nice upsides in the area of high-tech that can
(hopefully) pull us out. Medical devices, aerospace and so on.

That has dramatically changed during the last few years, and the US is
unfortunately no exception.

Your memory doesn't seem to be all that reliable.

I can read statistics. And I assume you can read as well? Take a look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png

Now read my statement about the 70's again and look at the graphs. Do
you see it now? If not get your glasses and try again

This is in no way a US-only phenomenon, except that statistics are more
opens and easily located here. Since you live in NL I assume you can
read Dutch:

http://www.tijd.be/nieuws/wijde_wereld/Kaap_van_300_miljard_euro_staatsschuld_overschreden.8102208-603.art

snip

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 ignored
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.

The money squandering seems to have more to do with corruption and tax
evasion - both of which are exceptionally popular under right wing
regimes - than with any dramatic expenidture on social security.

What exactly is right-wing about Greek government? A brief educational
link for ya:

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

Following the American model and cheap-skating on food and education
for poor kids is a recipe for long term disaster.

You obviously do not know much about America.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 14:54:44 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 19, 8:44 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Tue, 18 May 2010 15:54:36 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
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:

snip

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.

The first control system I ever designed, at about the age of 19, was
for a 32,000 horsepower steamship propulsion system. The system
nonlinearities, propeller/hull bahavior, and the boiler dynamics had
to be considered. I simulated it in FOCAL on a PDP-8. A sub-loop drove
a dc servo motor/pot that positioned the steam valve, which was in
turn moved by a hydraulic servo. It all worked first try.

I'll bet the FOCAL simulation didn't work first try, or the various
control schemes that you tested on the simulation.

Does any complex software work first try? The initial algorithm
(nonlinear function generator feedforward with constrained PID around
that) worked as planned. The sim allowed me to tweak the loop for
turbine inertia, gearing, steam valve curve, prop coupling, hull mass,
water resistance on the hull.

I plotted a simulated run from dead stop to 100 RPM, valve position,
RPMs, and hull speed versus time, on a Teletype machine, just one of
those



*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

sorts of things, then went over the characters with colored pens to
make nice graphs. We took it to the ship owners and showed it to them
(remember, I was 19 and looked about 16.) We'd never done any control
system before. They had an old crusty ex-Chief Engineer at the
meeting. He said "that's exactly the way an experienced engineer would
work the valve by hand" so we got the job.

The really impreesive part of that story is that you were able to set
up a tolerably realistic simulation. The PDP-8 wasn't a large
computer. To quote the Wikipedia article on FOCAL

"FOCAL ran on very low-end PDP-8 systems, even systems with only 4K
words of memory and lacking mass storage. The FOCAL interpreter was
written in very tight assembly language and typically used only 3K 12-
bit words, leaving a somewhat limiting 1K words to hold the user
program, and variables.

Yup. Rick Merrill did a stunning job on FOCAL, especially considering
what a barbaric machine the PDP-8 was. His internal constructs changed
DECs design of the PDP-11, which pissed off Edson DeCastro so much he
left and started Data General. The NOVA was basically the klunky
page-oriented PDP-11 initial design... which so influenced Wozniak.

The low-end PICs are essentially PDP-8s. Horrible machines. The
6800/6803 and later the 68K were heavily influenced by the PDP-11. The
PDP-11 was a truly beautiful machine. The instruction set was so
regular that I can still assemble programs in my head, in octal.

LandMine instruction:

MOV -(PC), -(PC) 014747

If the system was upgraded by adding one or more extra 4K banks of
memory, FOCAL could use that extra memory, either for a single user,
or split the extra memory across several time-sharing users. FOCAL
made extensive use of interrupt-driven terminal I/O, so it could keep
four teletypes busily whirring with nary a pause."

I don't recall Focal-8 using interrupts for TTY i/o. I certainly
didn't have four TTY interfaces. I did have 4kx12 core memory.

Somehow I suspect that you had access to somebody else's mathematical
model of the steamship propulsion system.

Absolutely not. I coded it myself, based on physics and what data I
could get from DeLaval about the turbine and steam valve.

And I got to ride on the ships, too.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 20:19:10 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 19/05/2010 19:55, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 08:46:45 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

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.

I'd rather design electronics than try to change the world.

Obviously that is your choice.

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!

In that I have to do a lot of expensive and boring estate planning to
avoid blunt injury from the idiotic laws, yes.

This is pretty much basic boilerplate stuff. You can spot the cut and
paste in the first draft documents from the less skilled places.

But don't you appreciate the skill that clever lawyers demonstrate in
their word craft? It isn't really all that different to the creative
processes of new software and hardware design. There are a set of rules
but they can be constructively tweaked. I have to say that my encounters
using solicitors have been about 50:50 good *and* bad.

The key to using solicitors effectively is asking the right question(s).

Zero inheritance taxation would remove all that silly overhead.

Taxing liquid assets (including house and saleable effects) of the
estate on death seems reasonable to me. You can't take it with you.

I can give it to my kids. Everything I have has been taxed already.

John

 

[Joerg]

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:27:01 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 09:42:44 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
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.

Why would a Japanese car or Chinese-made flatscreen TV fall in price
quickly?
Because there is more than one manufacturer.

With consumer electronics the number of manufacturers inside the US is
often zero.

I don't see the relevance.

The relevance is this:

When a group of "experts" claims the price of goods will fall because
the income tax burden of the labor in a product will drop by 23 percent
that assumption is flawed for two reasons:

a. Most consumer products are from China and, consequently, not one iota
will change in the tax on labor. The only cost that changes is the labor
associated with the sales and distribution process but that's miniscule.

b. The percentage of labor in the COGS even for products made in the US
is much smaller than they anticipate.

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.

There'll be new tax land-mines, like who gets to pay ficticious rent
tax, how much, and who doesn't. Et cetera.
That part still seems iffy, yes.

IMHO the whole idea is iffy. Fair means it has to be fair to just about
everyone and not just part of the population. And that's not the case.

The only hole I see in it is savings, that we both object to. I may not agree
(or understand completely) the economics of taxing large items (homes and
cars) heavily.

There would be some major stampedes if it ever were to happen (or even
seriously discussed, after the recent retroactive stuff). And as people
not only in the Wild West know stampedes are usually dangerous.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 19, 8:47 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 06:43:28 -0700, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid
wrote:



Bill Slomanwrote:
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:

[...]

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.

Here goes the bragging again.

How come that John, probably not that much different in age from you,
makes tons of money designing and building electronics, right now, has
created tons of jobs, and you don't? To me, whether someone has a Ph.D.
is rather irrelevant. What he or she does, that's relevant.

I probably make about what any senior engineer or engineering manager
makes; it's all I need. But I bet I have more fun than average.

Engineeering can be a great source of amusement. Given that, the money
doesn't much matter.

Pretty much my attitude, which make my incapacity to find electronic
engineering work particularly galling.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Joerg]

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
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.

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.
You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.

Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

No, but it's been in the news lately, with Obama's attack on the Swiss banks.
Apparently if you move cash out of the country you have to pay the equivalent
of the death tax.

This cannot be the case. I have clients who buy expensive machines
overseas because they have to. They don't pay a death tax.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 19, 3:43 pm, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:
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:

[...]



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.

Here goes the bragging again.

Not exactly. The half-wit claims that because I don't share his
economic opinions, I don't have enough understanding of dynamics to
design electronics. It's very much an apples and pears comparison, but
it's also flat-out wrong, as I've gone to the trouble of pointing out.
If usig objective facts to point out that John has made an idot of
himself again is "bragging", then I amstuck with bragging - I did get
the Ph.D. in that area, and I'm not going to lie about it in a effort
tp project a modest persona.

How come that John, probably not that much different in age from you,
makes tons of money designing and building electronics, right now, has
created tons of jobs, and you don't?

He's more interested in making money than I am, and his expertise does
seem to lend itself to lower value systems than I worked on. Setting
up your own company to make electron microscope or phased array
ultrasound machines probably takes more capital than even John could
have got his hands on, and was never one of my ambitions.

We can't all be entrepreneurs, and the personality defects that lead
him to pontificate about subject he knows very little about may be
advantageous when it comes to setting up your own company and telling
people how good your products are going to be.

To me, whether someone has a Ph.D.
is rather irrelevant. What he or she does, that's relevant.

My opinion exactly. In this case, it was the work I had to do to get
the Ph.D. that was relevant, not the degree itself. I've seen enough
bad Ph.D. theses to be well aware that getting a Ph.D. is no guarantee
of competence, although it does indicate that you are persistent and
can write coherently.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 19, 8:44 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2010 15:54:36 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman

bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
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:

<snip>

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.

The first control system I ever designed, at about the age of 19, was
for a 32,000 horsepower steamship propulsion system. The system
nonlinearities, propeller/hull bahavior, and the boiler dynamics had
to be considered. I simulated it in FOCAL on a PDP-8. A sub-loop drove
a dc servo motor/pot that positioned the steam valve, which was in
turn moved by a hydraulic servo. It all worked first try.

I'll bet the FOCAL simulation didn't work first try, or the various
control schemes that you tested on the simulation.

The really impreesive part of that story is that you were able to set
up a tolerably realistic simulation. The PDP-8 wasn't a large
computer. To quote the Wikipedia article on FOCAL

"FOCAL ran on very low-end PDP-8 systems, even systems with only 4K
words of memory and lacking mass storage. The FOCAL interpreter was
written in very tight assembly language and typically used only 3K 12-
bit words, leaving a somewhat limiting 1K words to hold the user
program, and variables.

If the system was upgraded by adding one or more extra 4K banks of
memory, FOCAL could use that extra memory, either for a single user,
or split the extra memory across several time-sharing users. FOCAL
made extensive use of interrupt-driven terminal I/O, so it could keep
four teletypes busily whirring with nary a pause."

Somehow I suspect that you had access to somebody else's mathematical
model of the steamship propulsion system. I wrote my PDP-8 program in
assembler, and worked out my own low level signal processing, not to
mention the algorithm that simulated my chemical reaction (though I
programmed that in FORTRAN 4 and ran it on an IBM 7040/44, a rather
larger compute with a memory that offered 32k of 36-bit words.

While I was tuning the first system, on a new LASH ship tied up at
Avondale shipyards on the Mississippi, I turned one trimpot too far
and *almost* ripped the ship off the dock, which could well have
killed a couple of shipyard workers but would certainly have attracted
notice anyhow.

The stuff I do isn't academic. And I still do it.

Most of the stuff I did wasn't all that academic - my colleagues
described me as "gadget-happy" - though the results I got were of
academic interest. Experimental science can involve a lot of severely
practical engineering, and a lot of the stuff I did was ground-
breaking work.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 19, 3:13 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Bill Slomanwrote:
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.

Which is the sort of claim that is easy to make after the fact. Have
you got any kind of record of what you actually said at the time? When
I've been able to check out my own prophecies, I've always found that
what I remember writing was always distinctly more explicit than what
I actually wrote at the time.

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?

No. You can be an advanced industrial country without manufacturing
and exporting high-tech products. The Greeks may have found a niche
they can dominate, but if they have I don't know about it, and more
than you knew about them having the the largest shipping fleet. In any
event there are other products they can produce and export in
sufficient volume to fund the goods that they have to import.
                                             

... 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"?

Compare them with the ex-communist countries of Eastern Europe, where
the GDP is closer to a third of the European average.

The retirement age - 58 or 61 or whatever it is - is roughly the same
as the average age of exiting work in Australia - 59 - and the
Netherlands and France. In fact the Greeks tend to continue to work
after their official retirement age, so the Greeks avtually work
longer than the Dutch or the French, making a nonsense of half of your
claim. Presumably the mediterranean diet keeps them healthy for longer
than their Dutch adn French equivalents.

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

The only ones I knew about were flame ionisation spectrometers, which
are handy for elemental analysis, and gas chromatography detectors.
You might find them in a clinical laboratory.

                             ... 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.

Dream on. I was in the UK during the three day week, and the
subsequent period when Wilson and Callaghan had to reign in domestic
spending to get the economy back on the rails. The came to power in
1974,"when a period of economic crisis was beginning to hit most
Western countries".

That has dramatically changed during the last few years, and the US is
unfortunately no exception.

Your memory doesn't seem to be all that reliable.

<snip>

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 ignored
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.

The money squandering seems to have more to do with corruption and tax
evasion - both of which are exceptionally popular under right wing
regimes - than with any dramatic expenidture on social security.

Following the American model and cheap-skating on food and education
for poor kids is a recipe for long term disaster.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 16:34:59 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
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.

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.
You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.

Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.

No, but it's been in the news lately, with Obama's attack on the Swiss banks.
Apparently if you move cash out of the country you have to pay the equivalent
of the death tax.


This cannot be the case. I have clients who buy expensive machines
overseas because they have to. They don't pay a death tax.

Corporations "living" in the US.

 

[Joerg]

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Wed, 19 May 2010 16:34:59 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:02 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50:39 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:
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.

Huh? It's just one big wire transfer.
You think you can just wire money out of the country without government
intervention? More than $10K requires all sorts of paperwork, and taxes paid.

Got any links? That would completely squish international trade. I know
people who have bought rather pricey stuff overseas, and just wired the
payment. Plus they can't make you pay taxes on already taxed money.
No, but it's been in the news lately, with Obama's attack on the Swiss banks.
Apparently if you move cash out of the country you have to pay the equivalent
of the death tax.

This cannot be the case. I have clients who buy expensive machines
overseas because they have to. They don't pay a death tax.

Corporations "living" in the US.

And proprietors living in the US. So what's the (legal, in terms of
those taxes) difference between them and John Q.Public?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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

 

[JosephKK]

On Tue, 18 May 2010 08:45:14 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2010 21:11:54 -0700, "JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2010 14:13:24 -0700, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid
wrote:

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).
I only have a little of such, most is in other (post income tax) forms.
erp. ^^^^/pre


Don't know how old you are but if there ain't a big stash in those IRAs
and you don't have some plum pension coming your way I'd start saving
now

I figure i can only semi-retire. Maybe in 10 years. OK pension, medical
included. Not as much saving as paying off house. Well over $1000/mo
there. I have spreadsheets and can use them. The outlook is not grim
but not flush, so i go to about half time as a consultant. The
consulting pays for the cake, bread and butter will be taken care of
unless the Damnicrats deficit spend everything away.

 

[JosephKK]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 09:14:20 +0100, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/05/2010 16:50, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 15 May 2010 11:08:13 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 21:42, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 17:53:22 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/05/2010 16:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:31:49 +0100, Martin Brown
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

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.

[snip]

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

We are talking here of industrialised manufacture that was possibly two
or more orders of magnitude more productive. All the profits went to the
mill owners and their workers were left to starve on a subsistance level
of pay because it was marginally better than being out of work.

That effect was transient. The first mill owners could indeed hire
unemployed labor cheap. As other mill owners got into the act, they
had to compete for labor whether they were nice people or not. The

That isn't how it worked at all. There were enough starving people
migrating to the cities that the mill owners could fix the price they
were prepared to pay and anyway preferred to employ children at roughly
1/10 of the adult rate where possible. The working day was unregulated
but typically around 14 hours. A brief history of some of the worst
areas of the country for these practices is online at:

http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/history/victorian/Victorian1.html

The poor were viewed as an underclass to be exploited for commercial
gain like beasts of burden and kept poor. They lived in squalour and
paid barely enough to stay alive. This "transient" situation persisted
until the late 19th century which is how Engles came to observe it.

Yes, that was al the transition period. Before technology caught up
with fertility.

A very long transitional period. It would have remained the status quo
but for the ruling classes running scared of what happened during the
French revolution. In some senses the same landless peasants and urban
poor revolt against rich overlords is playing out today in Bankok.

It seems that the global banking system has major crashes with an almost
predictable period of 80-90 years - 1847, 1929, 2008

The period is getting shorter, and nobody with any sense is doing
anything to lend stability. Quite the opposite.

Germany has just banned trading in "naked short selling" a practice
largely used to drive the share price of sound companies downwards. It
is little more than a form of spread betting on future share price.

In theory I think such transactions are banned in the USA but are not
adequately policed by an SEC more interested in downloading porn videos.

Productivity is the ultimate benevolence. Technology pushes
productivity.

Increased productivity is good, but only when some of the proceeds are
shared with the people who are doing the work.

If workers are massively productive, where is the stuff going to go,
but to the workers? Where else could it go? Why would Henry Ford want
to personally own a million model Ts? Why would Edison want a billion
light bulbs for himself?

Widespread productivity is better than widespread lack of same.

Simple example for the UK was the rest of the empire. The Linen factory
I know most about produced stuff that the workforce would need more than
a years salary to buy. Amusingly it also included fine linen tablecloths
for the White House that were shipped during the American War of
Independence. We know this because the copy invoice survives.


In the Victorian era most
of the mill owners were out to exploit the poor for maximum profit. They
had enough money to buy the capital kit to enter the market and were
determined to keep it that way. The eventual rise of a powerful middle
class of managers and administrators eventually broke the deadlock but
the workers at the bottom of the pile had little option but to form
unions if they were ever to get a fair deal.

All business people want to maximize profit. As productivity and

Timothy 6:10 (King James Version):

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted
after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through
with many sorrows.

There is maximising profit by producing a good product, but there was
also a lot of maximising profits by exploiting the poor and vulnerable
leaving them with a choice of starving to death quickly or more slowly.

Famines usually epitomise this scenario. There is food in warehouses,
but the merchants want a price that is way beyond what any of the
starving people can afford to pay. Ireland was still exporting food
during the infamous potato famine.

competition increase, we go from pre-Victorian poverty to modern
car-in-every-drivway. Nobody guides the process... it has its own
dynamic. There's no credit and no blame; actors act and the system
changes.

That is why the airlines form cartels to keep prices up?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/26/ba-virgin-cartel-price-fixing

Left to their own devices industries will shake down to two or three big
players that carve up the market between them and then raise prices. US
anti-trust laws were to prevent this scenario after fo example
Rockefellers Standard Oil company showed how to create and exploit a
monopoly.

For all his vicious business practices he was also quite philanthropic.
And even more so in his long retirement.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Philanthropic. Really? What percentage of the total accumulated wealth
was donated?