Funny column
David T. Bilek
political scene called, appropriately enough, "I hate your politics".
The author devotes equal time to deconstructing liberals,
conservatives, and libertarians, so there are things for everyone to
love.
http://www.scalzi.com/w020322.htm
One bit I especially liked given some of our regular contributors
belief that, like them, everyone should have at least a years worth of
canned and dry food in his or her home:
"Libertarians are ... all for slashing taxes for nearly every social
service but don't seem to understand why most people aren't at all
keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for
55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in
the basement."
(Oh, and I am rather Libertarian in leaning, so don't flame me, just
read the column. Plenty of bashing of your political foes, too.)
-David
Trinker
"David T. Bilek" wrote:
>
> I came across a rather (in my opinion) humorous take on the US
> political scene called, appropriately enough, "I hate your politics".
> The author devotes equal time to deconstructing liberals,
> conservatives, and libertarians, so there are things for everyone to
> love.
>
> http://www.scalzi.com/w020322.htm
>
> One bit I especially liked given some of our regular contributors
> belief that, like them, everyone should have at least a years worth of
> canned and dry food in his or her home:
>
> "Libertarians are ... all for slashing taxes for nearly every social
> service but don't seem to understand why most people aren't at all
> keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for
> 55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in
> the basement."
Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
> (Oh, and I am rather Libertarian in leaning, so don't flame me, just
> read the column. Plenty of bashing of your political foes, too.)
--Trinker
Jay Denebeim
Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
gets worse.
Jay
--
I'm looking for a job, for my resume please see:
http://www.deepthot.org:2001/denebeim.html
Trinker
Jay Denebeim wrote:
>
> In article <3C9D5246...@yahoo.com>,
> Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
>
> Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
> liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
> gets worse.
Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you think I'll
need to be before I turn from the light?
--Trinker
Jay Denebeim
Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you think I'll
>need to be before I turn from the light?
Actually, now that I think of it, I have no idea how old you are. At
a guess, judging by stuff you've said, I'd say something under 30, but
I wouldn't want to guess more than that. Am I close?
As far as when, I also have no idea. It's just that you're very
bright, and I would think you'd end up feeling that you could make up
your own mind about things.
Jay Denebeim
YAM <y...@example.com> wrote:
>You might have to change sex, too. There's evidence
>that men tend move rightward as they age because they
>acquire more wealth, while women move leftward as they
>see more of the injustice in the world.
Could be. Of course I got to libertarianism by moving leftward way
before I aquired much of my (rapidly depleating) 'wealth'. It's not a
left/right thing it's a control of yourself thing. Both the left and
the right want to control the actions of the populous.
Kristopher
>
> Trinker wrote:
>> Jay Denebeim wrote:
>>> Trinker wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian,
>>>> I don't have a basement!
>>>
>>> Personally I think it's because you're still young.
>>> I was at least as liberal as you are until I saw how
>>> much everything government touches gets worse.
>>
>> Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you
>> think I'll need to be before I turn from the light?
>
> that men tend move rightward as they age because they
> acquire more wealth, while women move leftward as they
> see more of the injustice in the world.
The problem being, at least as much injustice is caused
by organization and authority as is remedied by them.
--
Kristopher
"I'd like to trade in this shovel for what's behind Door #2.
Oh, look, a backhoe."
Dave Weingart
>You might have to change sex, too. There's evidence
>that men tend move rightward as they age because they
>acquire more wealth, while women move leftward as they
>see more of the injustice in the world.
Undoubtedly, this will happen to me (age 40) at the same time it happens
to my father (age 65), who shows no sign slowing down his leftward course.
Of course, my mother (age 63) has tended to move rightwards as time
goes on, as has my wife. Perhaps it's because they have the same name.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "There were no wrecks, and nobody
mailto:phyd...@liii.com drownded. I' fact, nothing to laugh
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux at at all!"
ICQ 57055207 -- Marriott Edgar
Nancy Lebovitz
YAM <y...@example.com> wrote:
>dene...@deepthot.org (Jay Denebeim) wrote:
>
>> ... Both the left and
>> the right want to control the actions of the populous.
>
>
Karl Hess very reasonably suggested that there are authoriatarian
and non-authoritarian people on both the left and the right.
>Of course, perhaps I'm really in the center.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com 100 new slogans
I want to move to theory. Everything works in theory.
Trinker
Jay Denebeim wrote:
>
> In article <3C9F0712...@yahoo.com>,
> Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you think I'll
> >need to be before I turn from the light?
>
> Actually, now that I think of it, I have no idea how old you are. At
> a guess, judging by stuff you've said, I'd say something under 30, but
> I wouldn't want to guess more than that. Am I close?
No.
> As far as when, I also have no idea. It's just that you're very
> bright, and I would think you'd end up feeling that you could make up
> your own mind about things.
You know, I notice in political/philosophical discussions, when
someone brings up my intelligence, it's always some not-a-liberal
guy who's telling me something that strongly implies that my
politics are based on not using my brains, or thinking for myself.
<spit!>
--Trinker
Jay Denebeim
YAM <y...@example.com> wrote:
>I'm sure mine is a minority viewpoint, but the more I
>studied the Soviet hegemony, the more trouble I had
>understanding in what _fundamental_ way they were
>different to Naziism, Capitalism, or even the 19th c.
>British Empire.
I hear you. I'm sure you've seen the world's smalles political quiz
http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html . That puts people on a two
dimensional axis. Rather than just left/right it also does
libertarian/authoritarian. I come up on the left side of libertarian,
in fact today when I took it I ended up right on the cusp between
libertarian and leftist. (Unemployment will do that to you)
I personally am an anti-authoritarian, not surprising I don't
recognize most forms of authority. (I recognize expert authority, but
that's about it) So, obviously I'm not real hot on a bunch of idiots
telling me what to do.
Michael J. Lowrey
> I hate to reply to my own post, but I just realised I
> was thinking of a different quiz. Ooops. Basically
> the same axes, but lots more questions.
>
> http://www.politicalcompass.org/
Economic Left/Right: -7.25; Authoritarian/Libertarian: -8.62
Yup, I'm still down there past Ken Livingstone.
Ya know, I'd love to do a more thorough version of this one
and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
--
Michael J. "Orange Mike" Lowrey
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>> Karl Hess very reasonably suggested that there are authoriatarian
>> and non-authoritarian people on both the left and the right.
>
>studied the Soviet hegemony, the more trouble I had
>understanding in what _fundamental_ way they were
>different to Naziism, Capitalism, or even the 19th c.
The big detail difference between Naziism, state Communism,
and Capitalism is the amount of murder. There's so little
money in just killing millions of people that Capitalist
systems don't go in for it. (Building supermax prisons
is another matter.)
State Communism is quite casual about killing millions
of a government's "own" citizens. Naziism is an expansionist
philosophy, and kills even more millions outside its borders
than inside.
>many of them important. But all seemed to be
>oligarchies, all seemed to be quite ruthless toward
>anyone who tried to stand in their way, all seemed to
>take political prisoners, all seemed to have deeply
>impoverished and hopeless population segments, and all
>seemed to need scapegoats. It felt quite disturbing to
>me. Still does.
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> Ya know, I'd love to do a more thorough version of this one
> and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
> software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
> axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
> will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
I'm trying to remember what axes I came up with last time the political
personality tests came around on the guitar; I don't think any of the
existing ones are overall much use aside from the fairly common belief
that they're meaningful (which does not always indicate the presence of
actual meaning).
I think there's an axis for how much collective groups should be treated
as if they were equivalent to individual persons (see also: questions on
the status of corporations). And then there's the related question of,
if collective entities such as corporations, partnerships, families,
what have you, should be dealt with differently under the law than
individual entities, should they have more power, less power, or some
different flavor of power that somehow does not translate to 'more' or
'less'?
I think there's an axis for how much people subject to a government
should be expected to get from that government, and a separate axis for
how much people subject to a government are responsible to the corporate
body of the nation/region/community. Neither of which addresses the
critical question of "in what ways are people entitled/responsible?",
but I suspect that there's enough grouping on that that it can be
simplified out of the model so as not to create a myriad axes.
I think there's an axis for what level of group government should be
optimised to interact with/serve, and that that axis is separate from
the collective groups/individuals one, though it is in some cases
related.
I think there's an axis for appropriate levels of government
intervention, which may or may not need two axes depending on whether or
not 'intervention in the lives of individuals' is considered different
in character from 'intervention in the actions of collective entities'.
Though the latter might be the same as the 'in what way should they be
treated different' axis, or at least consolodated with it.
I also think it's arguable that one might want axes to consider the
questions of answerability of government to populace and whether
government should preserve the status quo or seek innovation.
I also think that there's a continuum of position depending on whether
or not the questions are focused on government in the abstract, local
governing bodies, or the highest governmental entity to which a given
person is liable to give concern; I think that these are separate enough
questions that they might well be appropriately treated as three
separate axis-sets.
Okay. I think that's six to eight axes and a phase space right there.
What am I missing? (I'm sure I'm missing something.)
- Darkhawk, noodling
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Dreams are not lost, they merely fall beneath the ashes of what is left
To the soul from where it starts to where it catches.
- "Matter," Josh Joplin Group
Mark Atwood
>
> Ya know, I'd love to do a more thorough version of this one
> and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
> software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
> axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
> will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
ISTR reading that such a study has actually been done, with bit set of
both "obviously" directed, and also undirected questions.
Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any significant
weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly "left vs
right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just barely
significant, and the rest is just noise.
I'll go googling for it.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Niall McAuley
> Yup, I'm still down there past Ken Livingstone.
I'm Charles Kennedy and so is my wife!
Actually, I seem to be Charles Kennedy (1996). I
suppose Labour's lurch to the right has caused
Kennedy to appear more left wing these days.
--
Niall [real address ends in ie, not ei.invalid]
Mark Atwood
>
> That's my perception too...the major detail difference
> is what's to be done with people who are deemed surplus
> to requirements (which is merely a rephrasing of what
> you said, of course). Immensely chilling.
When capitalism is working properly, the correct answer is "there is
*always* more work to be done".
Jay Denebeim
>I think I know what you mean about unemployment but I'll ask anyway
>rather than jump to a conclusion -- what will it do to one (or you,
>if you meant it personally).
Oh, I answered the monitary questions a little more liberally than I
normally would.
>I don't particularly think that premise of those axes is very good
>tho. I think the authoritarian one is alright, but the
>centralisation one doesn't seem to work, for me.
I think that's just because that's where the graph works. I dunno. I
always hit the edge. So centerist I ain't by their POV. (Again, it's
because I'm very anti-authoritarian)
Jay Denebeim
Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Jay Denebeim wrote:
>>
>> In article <3C9F0712...@yahoo.com>,
>> Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you think I'll
>> >need to be before I turn from the light?
>>
>> Actually, now that I think of it, I have no idea how old you are. At
>> a guess, judging by stuff you've said, I'd say something under 30, but
>> I wouldn't want to guess more than that. Am I close?
>No.
Interesting.
>> As far as when, I also have no idea. It's just that you're very
>> bright, and I would think you'd end up feeling that you could make up
>> your own mind about things.
>
>You know, I notice in political/philosophical discussions, when
>someone brings up my intelligence, it's always some not-a-liberal
>guy who's telling me something that strongly implies that my
>politics are based on not using my brains, or thinking for myself.
Well, for me anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of you being
too nice to steal from people to line other people's pockets (not the
people the money was supposedly taken for). Guess I was wrong. I
mean that's why I gave up hoping the government would be able to do
anything for anyone. All I see are a bunch of corrupt whores who sell
their vote to the highest bidder.
The way something as black and white as the anti-spam legislation
turned out was very educational for me.
David T. Bilek
>In <3C9FAE66...@uwm.edu>,
> Michael J. Lowrey <oran...@uwm.edu> onsendan:
>> YAM wrote:
>>> I hate to reply to my own post, but I just realised I
>>> was thinking of a different quiz. Ooops. Basically
>>> the same axes, but lots more questions.
>>>
>>> http://www.politicalcompass.org/
>>
>> Economic Left/Right: -7.25; Authoritarian/Libertarian: -8.62
>>
>> Yup, I'm still down there past Ken Livingstone.
>
>I seem to be about where Ken Livingstone is, though I think the design
>of the questions was pretty bad. (They problably assume that becuase I
>think science _will_ be able to 'cure homosexuality' that I think that
>this should be undertaken, frex.)
>
>Economic Left/Right: -5.62; Authoritarian/Libertarian: -6.46
>
Me too. I got Economic 1.12, A/L -3.44, which probably makes me a
reactionary statist here. My guess is I would score more Libertarian
than this on a test with a better format, though.
-David
Trinker
Jay Denebeim wrote:
>
> In article <3C9FA575...@yahoo.com>,
> Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Jay Denebeim wrote:
> >>
> >> In article <3C9F0712...@yahoo.com>,
> >> Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Just how young do you think I am, and how old do you think I'll
> >> >need to be before I turn from the light?
> >>
> >> Actually, now that I think of it, I have no idea how old you are. At
> >> a guess, judging by stuff you've said, I'd say something under 30, but
> >> I wouldn't want to guess more than that. Am I close?
>
> >No.
>
> Interesting.
You see 30 as a bright and shining line?
> >> As far as when, I also have no idea. It's just that you're very
> >> bright, and I would think you'd end up feeling that you could make up
> >> your own mind about things.
> >
> >You know, I notice in political/philosophical discussions, when
> >someone brings up my intelligence, it's always some not-a-liberal
> >guy who's telling me something that strongly implies that my
> >politics are based on not using my brains, or thinking for myself.
>
> Well, for me anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of you being
> too nice to steal from people to line other people's pockets (not the
> people the money was supposedly taken for). Guess I was wrong. I
> mean that's why I gave up hoping the government would be able to do
> anything for anyone. All I see are a bunch of corrupt whores who sell
> their vote to the highest bidder.
Funny how you didn't use "nice", nor "stealing from people" in
your original statement, but instead used "bright" and "make up
your own mind". Are these Libertarian code words, or did you
actually not write what you had in mind, making it difficult
for me to respond to what you were "thinking more along..." ?
> The way something as black and white as the anti-spam legislation
> turned out was very educational for me.
Mrf?
--Trinker
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>In article <3C9D5246...@yahoo.com>,
>Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
>
>Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
>liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
>gets worse.
I'm 47, I'm still a liberal.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
James S. Battista
> "Michael J. Lowrey" <oran...@uwm.edu> writes:
>>
>> Ya know, I'd love to do a more thorough version of this one
>> and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
>> software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
>> axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
>> will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
>
> ISTR reading that such a study has actually been done, with bit set of
> both "obviously" directed, and also undirected questions.
>
> Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any significant
> weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly "left vs
> right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just barely
> significant, and the rest is just noise.
Ditto for Congress. Analyses of roll-call votes almost always
find one dimension that matters a lot -- correctly predicting
about 85% of votes -- that seems to be your basic left-right.
A second dimension helps *some*, correctly classifying another
5-10% of votes... it's not always certain what the issue content
of the second dimension is, but when it matters more it looks
like race.
Same thing in state legislatures, so far, except that they look
to be even closer to unidimensional.
--
James S. Coleman Battista
--A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man
(J. Springfield)
Avram Grumer
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> "Michael J. Lowrey" <oran...@uwm.edu> writes:
> >
> > Ya know, I'd love to do a more thorough version of this one and run
> > it through some serious multi-variate analysis software. I would
> > wager that I'd come up with 5 or more axes of significant
> > weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom will tend to produce
> > outliers on all the damned graphs!)
>
> ISTR reading that such a study has actually been done, with bit set
> of both "obviously" directed, and also undirected questions.
>
> Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any
> significant weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly
> "left vs right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just
> barely significant, and the rest is just noise.
>
> I'll go googling for it.
I've read about something like this being done with US Congressional
voting records, and getting results like those you describe (one major
axis, one minor, the rest noise).
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to
stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,
but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
Vicki Rosenzweig
>In article <3C9D5246...@yahoo.com>,
>Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
>
>Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
>liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
>gets worse.
>
That's funny, I was an anarchist until I noticed the useful things
government was organizing, and the wonders of such self-organized
groups as the Mafia and the KKK.
In my universe, the government has touched such things as the NY
Fire Department, the Adirondack Park, and the Clean Air Act.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Karen Lofstrom
Marilee J. Layman wrote:
> I'm 47, I'm still a liberal.
I'm 54 and according to the test, I'm a left anti-authoritarian. I'd
describe myself as an ecumenical Bundist, but it's not so bad having a
political position close to Gandhi's. (Not that I approve of his foolery
with young girls, but other than that ..)
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bool bool bool! It makes me laugh just to "trink" about it.
James S. Battista
> In article <m3vgbki...@khem.blackfedora.com>,
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any
>> significant weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly
>> "left vs right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just
>> barely significant, and the rest is just noise.
>>
>> I'll go googling for it.
>
> I've read about something like this being done with US Congressional
> voting records, and getting results like those you describe (one major
> axis, one minor, the rest noise).
Avram Grumer
Vicki Rosenzweig <v...@redbird.org> wrote:
> Quoth dene...@deepthot.org (Jay Denebeim) on 25 Mar 2002 10:16:39 GMT:
>
> >In article <3C9D5246...@yahoo.com>,
> >Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
> >
> >Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least
> >as liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government
> >touches gets worse.
>
> That's funny, I was an anarchist until I noticed the useful things
> government was organizing, and the wonders of such self-organized
> groups as the Mafia and the KKK.
>
> In my universe, the government has touched such things as the NY
> Fire Department, the Adirondack Park, and the Clean Air Act.
I was a libertarian in college, till I realized that there are useful
and necessary things that markets just won't do, and harmful things they
will.
Kristopher
>
> Kristopher onsendan:
>
>>> You might have to change sex, too. There's evidence
>>> that men tend move rightward as they age because they
>>> acquire more wealth, while women move leftward as they
>>> see more of the injustice in the world.
>>
>> The problem being, at least as much injustice is caused
>> by organization and authority as is remedied by them.
>
> scale -- you're not at risk of starvation, you're not at
> risk of this year's outbreak of cholera, you're not having
> to worry about having your home burned around you by vikings
> or steppe nomads, you're generally quite freed to go about
> your lawful occaisons.
A) You don't hit injustice until you get to the viking and
nomads.
B) The last bit, about going about doing lawful things, is
great, until they start making lots of stuff unlawful.
> It's important not to confuse 'systems sense of control,
> able to cause a change in state' with 'political sense of
> control, able to compell behaviour on the part of specific
> individuals' when talking about social mechanisms of
> control; the former is often a good thing (or forget any
> actual ability to legislate, fund libraries, etc.) and the
> later is sometimes a good thing (you may not kill people
> who annoy you, and if you try or do, we'll stop you), but
> confusing the controls necessary to the exercise of the
> later with those necessary to the former is _not_.
Power is power, and will be abused, because people are
people, and those most attracted to power and the most able
to get it, are usually the sort most likely to abuse it as
well. Power does not corrupt -- it attracts the
corruptable. Power is anti-entropic. It gathers in one
place all by itself, like the surface tension of water, but
gone mad. Power attracts power and power begets power.
> It also seems to be heavily entangled with US political
> rhetoric of all descriptions, somewhere down deep in the
> axioms; I think this may be the fundamental propaganda
> success of the US Founding Fathers, and it's sure not
> doing y'all any good at all now.
Decompress, please.
Doug Wickstrom
<slrna9urcg....@hunding.localdomain>
Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>It also seems to be heavily entangled with US political rhetoric of all
>descriptions, somewhere down deep in the axioms; I think this may be the
>fundamental propaganda success of the US Founding Fathers, and it's sure
>not doing y'all any good at all now.
Your characterization of them doesn't seem to square with what
they actually wrote.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com>
"I think it [Western civilization] would be a good idea." --Mohandas K. Gandhi
Nancy Lebovitz
I think you've missed my handy-dandy liberal/conservative distinguisher:
which do you hate more, cruelty or weakness?
Arthur D. Hlavaty
wrote:
>The big detail difference between Naziism, state Communism,
>and Capitalism is the amount of murder. There's so little
>money in just killing millions of people that Capitalist
>systems don't go in for it. (Building supermax prisons
>is another matter.)
>
>State Communism is quite casual about killing millions
>of a government's "own" citizens. Naziism is an expansionist
>philosophy, and kills even more millions outside its borders
>than inside.
>>many of them important. But all seemed to be
>>oligarchies, all seemed to be quite ruthless toward
>>anyone who tried to stand in their way, all seemed to
>>take political prisoners, all seemed to have deeply
>>impoverished and hopeless population segments, and all
>>seemed to need scapegoats. It felt quite disturbing to
>>me. Still does.
Excellent summary.
--
Arthur D.Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius in Wile E. we trust
E-zine available on request
Arthur D. Hlavaty
<mjla...@erols.com> wrote:
>On 25 Mar 2002 10:16:39 GMT, dene...@deepthot.org (Jay Denebeim)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <3C9D5246...@yahoo.com>,
>>Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
>>
>>Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
>>liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
>>gets worse.
>
>I'm 47, I'm still a liberal.
One is supposed to become a cranky old conservative with age, but in
my 50s I have renounced my flirtations with libertarianism, and become
a cranky old liberal.
I still believe that consenting adults should be allowed to
engage in whatever sex they like as long as they do not frighten the
horses (I now add, "or break the sprinkler system"). I still think
that black people are as good as white people (which isn't saying
much). I'm still fanatically in favor of the First Amendment. And I
have gone back to thinking that we should feed the hungry and shelter
the homeless, even if we have to get the money for it by that form of
armed robbery known as taxation. As a wise man said, their lives may
not have cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt.
Doug Wickstrom
<3C9FD0E0...@yahoo.com>
Trinker <trinke...@yahoo.com> excited the ether to say:
>Jay Denebeim wrote:
[...]
>> The way something as black and white as the anti-spam legislation
>> turned out was very educational for me.
>
>Mrf?
If passed, it would have legalized and legitimized spam.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com>
Gentlemen do not wear flippers with a sombrero.
Nancy Lebovitz
>> which do you hate more, cruelty or weakness?
>
Yes--it's very efficient.
There may be some overlap with Lakoff's analysis of liberal and conservative
metaphors in the US. <http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html>.
Nancy Lebovitz
Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>In <a7oc23$i...@netaxs.com>, Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com>
>onsendan:
>> In article <356v9u8r6b22onpgo...@4ax.com>, YAM
>> <y...@example.com> wrote:
>>>na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Karl Hess very reasonably suggested that there are authoriatarian
>>>> and non-authoritarian people on both the left and the right.
>>>
>>>I'm sure mine is a minority viewpoint, but the more I studied the
>>>Soviet hegemony, the more trouble I had understanding in what
>>>_fundamental_ way they were different to Naziism, Capitalism, or even
>>>the 19th c. British Empire. Detail differences abound, of course,
>>
>> The big detail difference between Naziism, state Communism, and
>> Capitalism is the amount of murder. There's so little money in just
>> killing millions of people that Capitalist systems don't go in for it.
>> (Building supermax prisons is another matter.)
>
>of the Amerindian tribal peoples.
>
>Consider the fate of the Irish, for that matter, or the nineteenth
>century urban poor.
>
On the other hand, all your examples are on the oldish side (and I'm
not sure that fate of the Amerindians counts as a result of capitalism).
Maybe Mark's right that we're figuring out how to make Capitalism
(or possibly mixed Capitalist/government systems) work properly.
Michael J. Lowrey
> >>Oh! That's why I'm not a Libertarian, I don't have a basement!
> >
> >Personally I think it's because you're still young. I was at least as
> >liberal as you are until I saw how much everything government touches
> >gets worse.
>
> I'm 47, I'm still a liberal.
I'm 48, I'm still a Christian anarcho-socialist.
My momma moved from supporting George Wallace in her 40s, to
voting for George McGovern in her 50s.
Nancy Lebovitz
YAM <y...@address.invalid> wrote:
>Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> When capitalism is working properly, the correct answer is "there is
>> *always* more work to be done".
>
>yourself a cap-libber, don't you?
I think Mark's point is that in systems where labor is likely to be
of value to *somebody*, people aren't casually thrown away. And I *do*
see a difference between even very bad jobs and slave labor/death camps/
engineered famines.
In addition, I think we're just beginning to see the consequences of
the raising of children getting taken seriously as a cost. It's not
necessarily paid work, but it's competing with paid work.
Michael J. Lowrey
>
> Avram Grumer <av...@grumer.org> wrote:
> > Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any
> >> significant weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly
> >> "left vs right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just
> >> barely significant, and the rest is just noise.
> >>
> >> I'll go googling for it.
> >
> > I've read about something like this being done with US Congressional
> > voting records, and getting results like those you describe (one major
> > axis, one minor, the rest noise).
>
> voteview.uh.edu
Dr. Poole's studies which James pointed to, while excellent,
are solely confined to the votes within the U.S. Congress.
What I am more interested in is the broad range of political
thought (Usonian and otherwise) that is NOT necessarily
represented in the people elected to the U.S. Congress
(especially nowadays).
--
Michael J. Lowrey
poli.sci. nerd
Michael J. Lowrey
>
> Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> onsendan:
> > The big detail difference between Naziism, state Communism, and
> > Capitalism is the amount of murder. There's so little money in just
> > killing millions of people that Capitalist systems don't go in for it.
> > (Building supermax prisons is another matter.)
>
> When there _is_ money in it, they do indeed do that; consider the fate
> of the Amerindian tribal peoples.
>
> Consider the fate of the Irish, for that matter, or the nineteenth
> century urban poor.
The nineteenth century urban [and rural] poor, like the
Irish, were a resource, to be mined at need: cannon-fodder,
staff for the dark Satanic mills, whores, servants, etc.
The trick was not to spend any more money than necessary on
maintaining this resource until needed.
Dave Weingart
>YAM wrote:
>> I hate to reply to my own post, but I just realised I
>> was thinking of a different quiz. Ooops. Basically
>> the same axes, but lots more questions.
>>
>> http://www.politicalcompass.org/
>
>Economic Left/Right: -7.25; Authoritarian/Libertarian: -8.62
>
>Yup, I'm still down there past Ken Livingstone.
>
>and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
>software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
>axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
>will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
And I'm stil more or less where I was.
Economic Left/Right: -2.62
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -5.85
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "There were no wrecks, and nobody
mailto:phyd...@liii.com drownded. I' fact, nothing to laugh
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux at at all!"
ICQ 57055207 -- Marriott Edgar
Michael J. Lowrey
> > and run it through some serious multi-variate analysis
> > software. I would wager that I'd come up with 5 or more
> > axes of significant weighting. (I'll also wager that fandom
> > will tend to produce outliers on all the damned graphs!)
>
> both "obviously" directed, and also undirected questions.
>
> weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly "left vs
> right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just barely
> significant, and the rest is just noise.
>
> I'll go googling for it.
Please do; no sense re-inventing the wheel.
David Dyer-Bennet
> I think you've missed my handy-dandy liberal/conservative distinguisher:
> which do you hate more, cruelty or weakness?
I hate cruelty by others, and weakness in myself. Especially if it
lets me descent to cruelty.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Nancy Lebovitz
>> YAM <y...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> >Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> When capitalism is working properly, the correct answer is "there is
>> >> *always* more work to be done".
>> >
>> >I'm surprised you say that, since I believe you count
>> >yourself a cap-libber, don't you?
>>
>> I think Mark's point is that in systems where labor is likely to be
>> of value to *somebody*, people aren't casually thrown away. And I *do*
>> see a difference between even very bad jobs and slave labor/death camps/
>> engineered famines.
>
>that private-profit capitalism (aka Capitalism)--which
There's another kind?
>is the kind I presume Mark to mean--concentrates rather
>than distributes money, and one of the mechanisms of
>concentration is that only things that are useful to
>the cap are paid for. So it's puzzling to me why he
However, the only way the cap can make money is by selling
things that lots of people want. It's possible to make
money by selling to the elite, but not nearly as much--
there just aren't enough wealthy people, and there's a
lot of competition with other luxury products.
>would say what he did. Unless he means it pejoratively
>(there's always more work to be done because no one is
>paying or intends to pay for it to be done) which I'm
>fairly sure he's not because it doesn't seem to square
>up with him responding to our 'surplus to requirements'
>issue.
Mark can speak for himself, but I think his point is that
people seem to be very good at making work for each other.
>> In addition, I think we're just beginning to see the consequences of
>> the raising of children getting taken seriously as a cost. It's not
>> necessarily paid work, but it's competing with paid work.
>
>How do you reckon that will play out?
More freedom of travel and employment as it becomes clear that
immigrants are valuable. Less war. The end of the third world
as the cost of labor gets bid up.
James S. Battista
> "James S. Battista" wrote:
>>
>> Avram Grumer <av...@grumer.org> wrote:
>> > Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >> Turns out that there is really only a single axis with any
>> >> significant weight, which is roughly approximately but not exactly
>> >> "left vs right". There is one, maybe two, other axis that are just
>> >> barely significant, and the rest is just noise.
>> >>
>> >> I'll go googling for it.
>> >
>> > I've read about something like this being done with US Congressional
>> > voting records, and getting results like those you describe (one major
>> > axis, one minor, the rest noise).
>>
>> voteview.uh.edu
>
> Dr. Poole's studies which James pointed to, while excellent,
> are solely confined to the votes within the U.S. Congress.
Well, almost.
I've generated NOMINATE scores for several state legislatures in the
late '90's, and Jeff Jenkins at Michigan State did so for the Confederate
Congress, or at least one chamber. Once you get the vote matrix, it's
just easy-peasey.
> What I am more interested in is the broad range of political
> thought (Usonian and otherwise) that is NOT necessarily
> represented in the people elected to the U.S. Congress
> (especially nowadays).
In the mass public? You won't generally find much structure at the
opinions of 70-80% of the mass public. The plurality of people, AFAIK,
are still responding to group benefits rather than anything remotely
ideological.
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
[my post snipped]
> I think you've missed my handy-dandy liberal/conservative distinguisher:
> which do you hate more, cruelty or weakness?
Okay, peripherally related thoughts.
When I was structuring my axes, I did so on results, rather than the
moral judgements that might or might not exist to lead to those results.
(The above statement looks like a query into morality to me, you see, in
the event that that isn't a sequitur comment.)
However, it occurs to me that cases not covered by descriptive axes
might well be best described with moral-dimension questions. So my
questions on this would be: Is it possible to adequately describe
political positions with results-based axes? and Is it desirable to
include the moral dimensions in the description-set, or to come up with
a different set of queries to describe the moral dimensions in a
separate-but-related phase space?
With the separate question of "How consistently do moral dimensions
transform into practical dimensions, and how much predictive value does
this have for covering cases not explicitly tested for?"
I'm really not sure about how I feel about including moral dimensions in
the question; perhaps in a descriptor-based axis system an axis for,
"How much rule should morality have in politics, then?" The moral axes
themselves seem to me to have much more fuzziness to them, and add whole
new dimensions that I don't see necessarily adding much to the
result-descriptions.
Or rather, uh, I can see the point in having an axis to distinguish
between people of wildly differing moralities who happen to agree on
particular points, but I don't know that that difference is not covered
otherwise on the practical axes or useful additional information.
I'm not sure I'm making sense here.
- Darkhawk, blitheringly
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Dreams are not lost, they merely fall beneath the ashes of what is left
To the soul from where it starts to where it catches.
- "Matter," Josh Joplin Group
Mike Scott
wrote:
>More freedom of travel and employment as it becomes clear that
>immigrants are valuable. Less war. The end of the third world
>as the cost of labor gets bid up.
More likely the third world gets plunged into a vicious circle of
poverty and despair as all the people with initiative leave for more
clement economic conditions.
--
Mike Scott
mi...@plokta.com
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> I think a definition of 'moral' might be helpful.
Addressing questions of what is good and what is evil.
My axes, as designed, were addressing questions of what is deemed
appropriate, which may be informed by moral questions, but is not
equivalent to them.
The question, "Which do you hate more, cruelty or weakness" is appealing
to the question of which is considered the greater evil.
- Darkhawk, who answers that question "Yes," or,
possibly, "No"
Mark Atwood
>
> I don't see a lot of wealthy people running to low-tax,
> low-government states such as Somalia, do you?
No, but I *do* see them moving to the US, and/or negotiating with
local EU governments "I get a lower tax rate or I move" sorts of
deals.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Marilee J. Layman
Anybody catch "Family Law" last night? They cheated....
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
They had a man with five wives, who he married sequentially, living
with their kids. The difference from the real case is that in the
show, the women were all adults when they entered the relationship.
In the real case, the wives were teenagers, some young, who had been
brought up that this was the way to heaven. I wouldn't have any
problem representing the case on the show (except that I'm not a
lawyer, of course).
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Marilee J. Layman
I don't know how my dad ever voted, but he's become much more
conservative in his old age, and quite bigoted.
Robert Sneddon
<m...@pobox.com> writes
>YAM <y...@address.invalid> writes:
>>
>> I don't see a lot of wealthy people running to low-tax,
>> low-government states such as Somalia, do you?
>
>No, but I *do* see them moving to the US, and/or negotiating with
>local EU governments "I get a lower tax rate or I move" sorts of
>deals.
Jersey is nice, so is Guernsey. The Cayman Islands have a nice climate
and friendly banks and uninquisitive regulators.
--
Robert Sneddon nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
Mike Scott
>Mike Scott <mi...@plokta.com> wrote:
>
>> More likely the third world gets plunged into a vicious circle of
>> poverty and despair as all the people with initiative leave for more
>> clement economic conditions.
>
>I don't see a lot of wealthy people running to low-tax,
>low-government states such as Somalia, do you?
I said "more clement economic conditions", not "low-tax low-government
states". I do not believe that very low levels of either taxation or
government are economically beneficial.
--
Mike Scott
mi...@plokta.com
Kristopher
>
> Doug Wickstrom onsendan:
>> Graydon excited the ether to say:
>>
>>> It also seems to be heavily entangled with US political
>>> rhetoric of all descriptions, somewhere down deep in the
>>> axioms; I think this may be the fundamental propaganda
>>> success of the US Founding Fathers, and it's sure not
>>> doing y'all any good at all now.
>>
>> Your characterization of them doesn't seem to square with
>> what they actually wrote.
>
> government _might_ do? And, indeed, for the intense
> concern for that matter, what power might do, so that
> it must be heavily entangled?
Not might, _will_.
Doug Wickstrom
<slrnaa1g1f....@hunding.localdomain>
Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>In <i1f0ausnlbh1m0tbs...@4ax.com>,
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com> onsendan:
>> On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 13:33:52 -0500, in message
>><slrna9urcg....@hunding.localdomain>
>> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>>>It also seems to be heavily entangled with US political rhetoric of all
>>>descriptions, somewhere down deep in the axioms; I think this may be the
>>>fundamental propaganda success of the US Founding Fathers, and it's sure
>>>not doing y'all any good at all now.
>>
>> Your characterization of them doesn't seem to square with what
>> they actually wrote.
>
>Not even in the reasons for rebellion being what the government _might_
>do? And, indeed, for the intense concern for that matter, what power
>might do, so that it must be heavily entangled?
There is no justification for rebellion in what a government
_might_ do. The argument was that in the event of governmental
abuse of power, rebellion would then be justified. As for
concerns about power, they'd just managed to wiggle free from an
excellent example of the abuse of power. Do remember that this
was in a time of real Royal authority exercised by a king who
wasn't quite all there all the time, and a Parliament stacked
with rotten boroughs.
They were very much concerned that national government not be
empowered to affect private lives any more than absolutely
necessary. Massachusetts was a very different place from
Georgia, and the peoples of both States wanted to keep it that
way. State government, however, was very much less limited --
there were very few Federal prohibitions on what a State might
do, and all of them were clearly defined. What the Several
States actually did varied greatly from one to another.
Frankly, I'd rather have a government deadlock over an issue from
time to time, than have a majority invoke a "notwithstanding"
clause.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com>
"Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing. 'Twas mine,
'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches from me my
good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed."
--William Shakespeare, "Othello"
Kristopher
>
> Anyone who really understands _________________ would know this.
"If you really understood, you wouldn't disagree!"
I've heard this from too many True Believers to put any stock in
any arguement that rests even ever so slightly on it.
Kristopher
>
> Kristopher <eosl...@net-link.net> onsendan:
>> Graydon wrote:
>>> Kristopher onsendan:
>>>
>>>>> You might have to change sex, too. There's evidence
>>>>> that men tend move rightward as they age because they
>>>>> acquire more wealth, while women move leftward as they
>>>>> see more of the injustice in the world.
>>>>
>>>> The problem being, at least as much injustice is caused
>>>> by organization and authority as is remedied by them.
>>>
>>> Only because you're not looking at it on a long enough time
>>> scale -- you're not at risk of starvation, you're not at
>>> risk of this year's outbreak of cholera, you're not having
>>> to worry about having your home burned around you by vikings
>>> or steppe nomads, you're generally quite freed to go about
>>> your lawful occaisons.
>>
>> A) You don't hit injustice until you get to the viking and
>> nomads.
>
> !
>
> Someone dumping raw sewage upstream of you in your watershed
> isn't unjust? Have you looked at how food distribution used
> to be done, and why people commonly starved?
You only said "cholera outbreak" and "starvation," which are
not caused only and ever time by human injustices. Someone
causing disease outbreak or starvation is an injustice. A
disease outbreak or starvation are not, in and of themselves,
injustices.
>> B) The last bit, about going about doing lawful things, is
>> great, until they start making lots of stuff unlawful.
>
> So _stop them_. They're just pursuing what they want, much
> as you expect to be free to do.
They're inflicting their desires on others, which means they've
crossed the line.
>>> It's important not to confuse 'systems sense of control,
>>> able to cause a change in state' with 'political sense of
>>> control, able to compell behaviour on the part of specific
>>> individuals' when talking about social mechanisms of
>>> control; the former is often a good thing (or forget any
>>> actual ability to legislate, fund libraries, etc.) and the
>>> later is sometimes a good thing (you may not kill people
>>> who annoy you, and if you try or do, we'll stop you), but
>>> confusing the controls necessary to the exercise of the
>>> later with those necessary to the former is _not_.
>>
>> Power is power, and will be abused, because people are people,
>> and
>
> Power is real, yes; the question is what is to be done with it.
>
>> those most attracted to power and the most able to get it, are
>> usually the sort most likely to abuse it as well.
>
> This is a truism; I don't think it's actually true.
"Usually." It has largely been my experience in these matters.
>> Power does not corrupt -- it attracts the corruptable. Power
>> is anti-entropic. It gathers in one place all by itself, like
>> the surface tension of water, but gone mad. Power attracts
>> power and power begets power.
>
> So, given that power is inevitable, what do you want done with
> it?
Prune it, burn it back, destroy as much of it as you can. You
cannot, it seems, count on human beings or their creations to
use power in a responsible, ethical, and moral way.
> Declaring it evil is to declare, in effect, that this is hell.
Yes.
>>> It also seems to be heavily entangled with US political
>>> rhetoric of all descriptions, somewhere down deep in the
>>> axioms; I think this may be the fundamental propaganda
>>> success of the US Founding Fathers, and it's sure not
>>> doing y'all any good at all now.
>>
>> Decompress, please.
>
> The great rhetorical trick of the Founding Fathers was to argue
> that armed rebellion was justified by what the legitimate
> government _might_ do; this was in places arguing by extension
> of what was already happening, but it was not either a nuanced
> position or an initially mainstream one, it was very extreme.
>
> To do this, they had to create an imagination of government as
> necessarily hostile and ineffective; _how_ they did that seems
> to have been to confuse social-meaning 'control' -- I can make
> you do what I want -- and technical meaning 'control' -- I can
> get this system to change state in some deliberate way.
<snip>
Where the system is comprised of people, there's nothing to
confuse, because there is _no_ difference.
LAFF
<oran...@uwm.edu> wrote:
> My momma moved from supporting George Wallace in her 40s, to
> voting for George McGovern in her 50s.
My dad did that, too. His politics didn't change though -- my dad's
politics, in terms of Presidential elections, from 1968 through 1988,
could be summed up thusly: "Vote for the third party guy." Thumbing his
nose at the major parties was the gist of it, though he was a registered
Democrat and tended to vote that way in most other races.
In his last Presidential vote, though, in 1992, he voted for -- ta da!
-- Bill Clinton. When I asked him why, he said he couldn't bring
himself to vote for a billionaire (Perot).
My mom was a lifelong Republican who voted for the Democratic candidate
for President exactly twice: 1964 and 1984. (The latter, again, was the
last time she ever voted; she was so weak, having just got out of the
hospital, that Daddy practically had to carry her into the voting
booth.) Why didn't she vote for Reagan? "He doesn't understand the
problems of old people." And she was 7 years younger than RR.
--
Lois Fundis lfu...@weir.net
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/9377/handy-dandy.html
1851 W. WILSON Little Earnest Bk. upon Great Old Subject x. 137 (heading) Science-Fiction.
Ibid., We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as
we believe such works likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where,
unhappily, science alone might fail.
-- from the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of Science Fiction
Michael J. Lowrey
>
> In article <m3wuvzl...@khem.blackfedora.com>, Mark Atwood
> <m...@pobox.com> writes
> >YAM <y...@address.invalid> writes:
> >>
> >> I don't see a lot of wealthy people running to low-tax,
> >> low-government states such as Somalia, do you?
> >
> >No, but I *do* see them moving to the US, and/or negotiating with
> >local EU governments "I get a lower tax rate or I move" sorts of
> >deals.
>
> Jersey is nice, so is Guernsey. The Cayman Islands have a nice climate
> and friendly banks and uninquisitive regulators.
But the tax-haven types don't actually MOVE to Jersey or
Guernsey or the Caymans; they just move the nominal home of
their money there. They remain in the countries whose
civilized standards make them enjoyable to live in; they
just don't want to pay for maintaining that civilization.
--
Michael J. "Orange Mike" Lowrey
pays his taxes
Nancy Lebovitz
A lot of those people will be sending money home to family members.
I'm hypothesizing a wealthier world where it doesn't take nearly
as much initiative for people to get out of even third world poverty.
Robert Sneddon
<oran...@uwm.edu> writes
>Robert Sneddon wrote:
>>
>>
>> Jersey is nice, so is Guernsey. The Cayman Islands have a nice climate
>> and friendly banks and uninquisitive regulators.
>
>But the tax-haven types don't actually MOVE to Jersey or
>Guernsey or the Caymans; they just move the nominal home of
>their money there. They remain in the countries whose
>civilized standards make them enjoyable to live in; they
>just don't want to pay for maintaining that civilization.
Actually Jersey is a very pleasant place to live and a popular holiday
destination; in about 18 hours from now I'm flying over there for the
Easter weekend. It will take me about fifty minutes for the trip, wheels
up to wheels down. IIt would be about the same amount of time from one
of the Paris airports.
To become a permanent resident in Jersey (without being born there)
takes cash money plus a few other considerations -- it is quite a small
island. At that point you are under the governance of the States of
Jersey, who know what side of the bread the butter is on, and continue
to be welcoming to rich people. I understand that the Cayman Islands are
also well-appointed, with roads, sewers and fine luxury hotels to cater
for their wealthy visitors and permanent residents.
Unless you bar rich people who don't pay taxes in your country from
entering and leaving as visitors, they can travel to New York to take in
a show, drive through the National Parks, cruise the boulevards of New
Orleans etc. etc. They are not American citizens any more, perhaps, but
they will look at near-100% tax rates and decide that the Land of the
Free has become the Land of the Fee, and depart those dear shores sadder
but richer.
Rich people can afford to travel widely and comfortably. If you do bar
rich non-American citizens from visiting America, your tourist trade is
going to take a big hit.
Marcus L. Rowland
<no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>>No, but I *do* see them moving to the US, and/or negotiating with
>>local EU governments "I get a lower tax rate or I move" sorts of
>>deals.
>
> Jersey is nice, so is Guernsey. The Cayman Islands have a nice climate
>and friendly banks and uninquisitive regulators.
According to Private Eye the government of Jersey is going to be
tightening up its banking regulation, since it is widely perceived as a
haven for "dirty" money. When that happens a LOT of money is going to be
moving away very quickly, and things like the astronomical minimum
financial requirement before you can become a non-native-born Jersey
resident will probably change. I suspect that some of the tax advantages
for residents will go too.
--
Marcus L. Rowland http://www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/
Forgotten Futures - The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game
"He put his hand into his waistcoat and pulled out his heart. It
was fat and pink, and the Princess did not like the look of it."
- E. Nesbit: The Magician's Heart
Rob Hansen
wrote:
>Both the left and
>the right want to control the actions of the populous
Populace. I've been seeing this misuse of 'populous' a lot lately, for
some reason.
--
Rob Hansen
=============================================
Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
RE-ELECT GORE IN 2004.
Kristopher
>
> Kristopher onsendan:
>> Graydon wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone who really understands _________________ would know this.
>>
>> "If you really understood, you wouldn't disagree!"
>>
>> I've heard this from too many True Believers to put any stock in
>> any arguement that rests even ever so slightly on it.
>
> the independent stability of free markets are arguing for
> something that was proved false by the biologists in the 1930s.
>
> It is possible to be actually knowledgeable.
_Biologists_ demonstrated that an _economic_ system wasn't stable?
In the _1930s_?
**Insert sound of much laughter unto the point of coughing here**
John Bartley
<snip>
> Unless you bar rich people who don't pay taxes in your country from
> entering and leaving as visitors, they can travel to New York to take in
> a show, drive through the National Parks, cruise the boulevards of New
> Orleans etc. etc. They are not American citizens any more, perhaps, but
> they will look at near-100% tax rates and decide that the Land of the
> Free has become the Land of the Fee, and depart those dear shores sadder
> but richer.
The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
minimize the impact of income taxes.
May I suggest reviewing
http://www.ctj.org/html/margfaq.htm
Lucy Kemnitzer
<r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On 25 Mar 2002 17:32:47 GMT, dene...@deepthot.org (Jay Denebeim)
>wrote:
>
>>Both the left and
>>the right want to control the actions of the populous
>
>Populace. I've been seeing this misuse of 'populous' a lot lately, for
>some reason.
>--
I believe it isb at least partly because of the video game of that
name.
Lucy Kemnitzer
David T. Bilek
>usb...@my-deja.com (John Bartley) wrote:
>
>> The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
>> theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
>> equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
>> minimize the impact of income taxes.
>
>I find it interesting--in part because I don't
>understand it--that the hyperwealthy often have actual
>*incomes* that are less than the next tier down. The
>only thing I can imagine is that they are *so* wealthy
>that they can buy laws that let them off.
>
>Does anyone know for sure how that works? That the
>very wealthiest (wealthiest half-percent, I think) can
>have smaller incomes than the group next down, who are
>actually less wealthy?
>
I believe that works by mostly not having much basis in reality
anymore.
-David
David T. Bilek
>dbi...@attbi.com (David T. Bilek) wrote:
>
>> I believe that works by mostly not having much basis in reality
>> anymore.
>
>Sorry, no cigar. There's actual government data to
>that effect.
>
Cite please. That data is likely at least 25 years old from when tax
rates on very high incomes was confiscatory..
-David
David T. Bilek
wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 14:27:21 -0500, YAM <y...@address.invalid> wrote:
>
>>dbi...@attbi.com (David T. Bilek) wrote:
>>
>>> I believe that works by mostly not having much basis in reality
>>> anymore.
>>
>>Sorry, no cigar. There's actual government data to
>>that effect.
>>
>
>Cite please. That data is likely at least 25 years old from when tax
>rates on very high incomes was confiscatory..
>
Me talk english good. Either "when the tax rate was... or when tax
rates were..." of course.
To Add Value instead of simply correcting, though, in the past rich
people were forced to hide income in the method you described because
otherwise the government took it all. This was a costly and annoying
process, but worth it.
With tax rates still high, but reasonable, it's usually not worth the
effort and hassle.
-David
David G. Bell
<7n54auo5fn2mrqevm...@4ax.com>
y...@address.invalid "YAM" wrote:
> usb...@my-deja.com (John Bartley) wrote:
>
> > The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
> > theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
> > equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
> > minimize the impact of income taxes.
>
> I find it interesting--in part because I don't
> understand it--that the hyperwealthy often have actual
> *incomes* that are less than the next tier down. The
> only thing I can imagine is that they are *so* wealthy
> that they can buy laws that let them off.
>
> Does anyone know for sure how that works? That the
> very wealthiest (wealthiest half-percent, I think) can
> have smaller incomes than the group next down, who are
> actually less wealthy?
Not all the capital is in a form which generates income. Investment,
whether direct in a business or indirect via banks and stock narkets,
does generate income. Take the same money and buy art, or a house, and
it isn't generating income.
That, I think, is a part of it. Also, there are people such as Bill
Gates, who owns stock that has a high value so long as he doesn't try to
realise that value.
And some assets which can generate income are, in some places, grossly
overpriced. Farmland, for instance. It's crazy to pay 2500 for land
which might earn 80 per year. In the UK, tax laws do make the net price
of the land a bit less crazy, if you've sold other capital assets, but
you can still make a better income by paying the tax and putting the
capital left into a bank account.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Mr. Punch's Advice to a Young Man About to Become a Farmer:
"Marry, instead."
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>Similarly, the house advantage in a casino is so tiny
>it takes fairly sophisticated maths to detect. It
>certainly can't be 'eyeballed' by even quite good
>mathematicians (maybe Ramanujan could).
Huh? In what game?
Most casino games have a very clear and obvious house percentage. In
roulette it's the green zero slot on all the field bets, and the
35-to-1 payoff on 40-to-1 odds for individual numbers (for some
wheels; there's local variation on the exact numbers, American wheels
have a double zero where European ones don't, etc.). Slots have a
built-in percentage for the house, blackjack pays off because with
optimum play the bettor will bust before the house hits so that the
house collects without having to take the final card, etc.
The one place in a casino where you can always have the odds on _your_
side is in craps, and that's by betting against the shooter -- which
is what the house does. And you lose that edge if they pass you the
dice.
None of this ever struck me as requiring sophisticated math -- well,
except maybe the craps thing.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 3/2/02
My latest novel is THE DRAGON SOCIETY, published by Tor.
Robert Sneddon
Bartley <usb...@my-deja.com> writes
>Robert Sneddon <no...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<65uq0IAaWeo8Ewt
>w...@nojay.fsnet.co.uk>...
><snip>
>> Unless you bar rich people who don't pay taxes in your country from
>> entering and leaving as visitors, they can travel to New York to take in
>> a show, drive through the National Parks, cruise the boulevards of New
>> Orleans etc. etc. They are not American citizens any more, perhaps, but
>> they will look at near-100% tax rates and decide that the Land of the
>> Free has become the Land of the Fee, and depart those dear shores sadder
>> but richer.
><snip>
>
>The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
>theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
>equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
>minimize the impact of income taxes.
Orange Mike has put forward the (theoretical) idea of preventing a
billionaire getting a second billion until certain conditions are met.
The only practical way I can see for a government to achieve this is to
tax billionaires at almost-100% rates to prevent them reaching the magic
$2,000,000,000 figure. At this point I'd expect most of those people
affected by this confiscatory tax regime to leave the country, and
renounce American citizenship.
David T. Bilek
>Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>
>> The 1930s was when folks wanted to quantify the speed at which
>> selection worked, so they did things like postulating red and blue
>> elephants, with the red elephants having 2% better odds of successful
>> reproduction than blue elephants. (it takes remarkably few generations
>> until there are nothing but red elephants.)
>
>Similarly, the house advantage in a casino is so tiny
>it takes fairly sophisticated maths to detect. It
>certainly can't be 'eyeballed' by even quite good
>mathematicians (maybe Ramanujan could). Yet it hoovers
>money very effectively indeed.
>
What? Do you gamble a lot?
The house advantage on most games is so blatantly obvious that I don't
understand the above. You have to be a mathematician to see that the
house has a big advantage in roulette when they pay 35-1 and there are
38 slots? That the house edge in Caribbean Stud Poker must be very
large given that they pay like 20-1 on 4 of a kind and 100-1 on a
*royal flush*?
About the only place this isn't true is the craps table. Maybe
Blackjack too *if* you are a true expert at counting cards and the
rules aren't stacked against you too badly. And with 6 deck shoes
shuffled halfway through, that's not really feasible anymore.
House advantage in a casino is not at all subtle.
-David
David Dyer-Bennet
> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>
> > The 1930s was when folks wanted to quantify the speed at which
> > selection worked, so they did things like postulating red and blue
> > elephants, with the red elephants having 2% better odds of successful
> > reproduction than blue elephants. (it takes remarkably few generations
> > until there are nothing but red elephants.)
>
> Similarly, the house advantage in a casino is so tiny
> it takes fairly sophisticated maths to detect. It
> certainly can't be 'eyeballed' by even quite good
> mathematicians (maybe Ramanujan could). Yet it hoovers
> money very effectively indeed.
Depends on the game; in roulette, it's those two green places (and it
used to be only one).
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / Ghugle: the Fannish Ghod of Queries
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Ken MacLeod
<gra...@dsl.ca> writes
>In <3ca1fd31$0$1423$bbae...@news.net-link.net>,
> Kristopher <eosl...@net-link.net> onsendan:
>> Graydon wrote:
>>> Kristopher onsendan:
>>>> Graydon wrote:
>>>
>
>>> Go read some bio, and get back to me; the people who argue for
>>> the independent stability of free markets are arguing for
>>> something that was proved false by the biologists in the 1930s.
>>>
>
Kristopher challenges; Graydon explains:
>The 1930s was when folks wanted to quantify the speed at which
>selection worked, so they did things like postulating red and blue
>elephants, with the red elephants having 2% better odds of successful
>reproduction than blue elephants. (it takes remarkably few generations
>until there are nothing but red elephants.)
>
>This wasn't the expected answer; it implied something that wasn't
>observed in the fossil record (but which _is_ observed in the DNA
>studies just now being done, to the great glee of many and the
>consternation of others; much of what makes an organism 'sucessful'
>doesn't show in any visible way at all, and there can be great genetic
>diversity between organisms which look the same in macroscopic terms).
>
>So they went looking for what kinds of systems of selection are stable
>-- for sure won't self destruct -- and are still looking today, though
>today the expectation is that the answer is 'there aren't any evolved
>ones'.
>
I think you need to spell out, here, just what you mean by a stable
system of selection, and how it is relevant to a market.
>Along the way, and very early on, someone managed to prove that single
>criteria systems -- which natural selection in biology isn't for
>sexually reproducing organisms, though there was argument about it at
>the time [1] -- can't be stable if the environment changes.
>
>Pure capitalism is a single criteria system using profit. It's not that
>people aren't moral enough, or smart enough, or whichever, to actually
>_use_ it, it's that it really doesn't work _as a system_. Which is why
>people start making rules to give the thing some stability, and the
>rules get ossified, and the system crashes, through known history.
I think, here, you need to spell out what you mean by 'pure capitalism'.
If by 'pure capitalism' you mean 'a system in which the only criterion
for whether an economic actor engages in a given behaviour is (monetary)
profit' then you do not mean what the 'people who argue for the
independent stability of free markets' mean. I know of no free-market
advocate who argues that assassinating one's competitors should, if
profitable, be permitted; or who thinks that a society in which it and
its like were permitted would be stable.
Consider the likely evolution of the recreational cocaine industry. If
it remains the case that participants in that industry don't have
recourse to some relatively impartial third parties to settle
differences and property claims and so forth, it's quite possible that
they'll move (if they haven't already) to some agreement not to
assassinate each other. (Assassination of competitors may be profitable,
but living with the prospect of assassination is costly.) However, this
agreement is unlikely to welcome new entrants, and will, over time, give
rise to the sort of rigidity and instability which you predict. Giving
the participants (not necessarily the present participants) recourse to
the legal system might well not have any such effect; or at least, so
the advocates of a free market in recreational cocaine might argue.
Some have argued that capitalism has developed historically on something
like the gangster's agreement model, but that has little to do with the
question of whether a free market is stable.
(I'm not arguing that it is or isn't, by the way.)
[...]
--
Ken MacLeod
Kate Secor
> usb...@my-deja.com (John Bartley) wrote:
>
>
>>The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
>>theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
>>equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
>>minimize the impact of income taxes.
>>
>
> I find it interesting--in part because I don't
> understand it--that the hyperwealthy often have actual
> *incomes* that are less than the next tier down. The
> only thing I can imagine is that they are *so* wealthy
> that they can buy laws that let them off.
>
> Does anyone know for sure how that works? That the
> very wealthiest (wealthiest half-percent, I think) can
> have smaller incomes than the group next down, who are
> actually less wealthy?
Depends on how you're structuring "income," probably. "I make less
money in terms of actual income because I don't really work, but I make
quite a bit on capital gains (taxed at some stupidly high rate)..."
Also, one can *hold* quite a bit of money in tax shelters (thus allowing
one to be stupidly rich) without making a whole lot of money (or,
indeed, ever having made a whole lot of money).
Aiglet
Arthur D. Hlavaty
>usb...@my-deja.com (John Bartley) wrote:
>
>> The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
>> theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
>> equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
>> minimize the impact of income taxes.
>
>I find it interesting--in part because I don't
>understand it--that the hyperwealthy often have actual
>*incomes* that are less than the next tier down. The
>only thing I can imagine is that they are *so* wealthy
>that they can buy laws that let them off.
>
>Does anyone know for sure how that works? That the
>very wealthiest (wealthiest half-percent, I think) can
>have smaller incomes than the group next down, who are
>actually less wealthy?
Sounds plausible. There's a diminishing returns factor with money (you
can't put one ass in five Cadillacs), and people would want other
things.
--
Arthur D.Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius in Wile E. we trust
E-zine available on request
David Dyer-Bennet
> YAM wrote:
>
> > usb...@my-deja.com (John Bartley) wrote:
> >
> >>The U.S. does not charge "near-100%" tax rates. Although the
> >>theoretical 39.6% can add to state tax rates (e.g., Oregon's 9%, to
> >>equal 48.6%), only a rich sap fails to structure investments to
> >>minimize the impact of income taxes.
> >>
> > I find it interesting--in part because I don't
> > understand it--that the hyperwealthy often have actual
> > *incomes* that are less than the next tier down. The
> > only thing I can imagine is that they are *so* wealthy
> > that they can buy laws that let them off.
> > Does anyone know for sure how that works? That the
> > very wealthiest (wealthiest half-percent, I think) can
> > have smaller incomes than the group next down, who are
> > actually less wealthy?
>
> Depends on how you're structuring "income," probably. "I make less
> money in terms of actual income because I don't really work, but I
> make quite a bit on capital gains (taxed at some stupidly high
> rate)..."
Note that capital gains are taxed at a *lower* rate than ordinary
income generally in the US. (they've been fiddling off and on, but
all the times I remember it's been a lower rate; they've just fiddled
about *how much* lower). It may still be a stupidly high rate; that's
another argument. I want to make sure you and others know how the
rate compares to the rate on ordinary income first...
> Also, one can *hold* quite a bit of money in tax shelters (thus
> allowing one to be stupidly rich) without making a whole lot of money
> (or, indeed, ever having made a whole lot of money).
The last parenthetical being because they might have inherited it
rather than making it?
David T. Bilek
Long term rates, yes. Short term are the same as your ordinary income
rate. But I think it should be kept in mind that the money used to
get the capital gains in the first place has often already been taxed
at the ordinary income level.
I mean, most people who have money in the market had to earn that
money, and thus pay taxes on it, in the first place.
-David
Kate Secor
> Kate Secor <kas...@vassar.edu> writes:
>>Depends on how you're structuring "income," probably. "I make less
>>money in terms of actual income because I don't really work, but I
>>make quite a bit on capital gains (taxed at some stupidly high
>>rate)..."
>>
>
> Note that capital gains are taxed at a *lower* rate than ordinary
> income generally in the US. (they've been fiddling off and on, but
> all the times I remember it's been a lower rate; they've just fiddled
> about *how much* lower). It may still be a stupidly high rate; that's
> another argument. I want to make sure you and others know how the
> rate compares to the rate on ordinary income first...
My personal capital gains are taxed at a higher rate than my personal
earned income, but I know that's not necessarily a valid generalization.
I think that taxing capital gains is an odd situation, since a lot of
companies are dependent on investment income... OTOH, I'm not sure where
I stand on money one didn't earn...
>>Also, one can *hold* quite a bit of money in tax shelters (thus
>>allowing one to be stupidly rich) without making a whole lot of money
>>(or, indeed, ever having made a whole lot of money).
>>
>
> The last parenthetical being because they might have inherited it
> rather than making it?
Pretty much.
Aiglet
Mark Atwood
>
> So, a stable system in one is which, frex, you don't get an island
> covered with peat bog poisoning itself to death, where once there was a
> thriving ecosystem. (Since this actually does happen, it is certain
> that all observed ecosystems _aren't_ inherently evolutionarily stable.)
The primeval ecosystem on this planet "poisoned itself to death" with
oxygen.
I fail to see the problem.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
David T. Bilek
wrote:
>David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>
>> Kate Secor <kas...@vassar.edu> writes:
>
>>>Depends on how you're structuring "income," probably. "I make less
>>>money in terms of actual income because I don't really work, but I
>>>make quite a bit on capital gains (taxed at some stupidly high
>>>rate)..."
>>>
>>
>> Note that capital gains are taxed at a *lower* rate than ordinary
>> income generally in the US. (they've been fiddling off and on, but
>> all the times I remember it's been a lower rate; they've just fiddled
>> about *how much* lower). It may still be a stupidly high rate; that's
>> another argument. I want to make sure you and others know how the
>> rate compares to the rate on ordinary income first...
>
>
>My personal capital gains are taxed at a higher rate than my personal
>earned income, but I know that's not necessarily a valid generalization.
>
Even now? Have you checked the laws this year?
-David
Mike Scott
>I think that taxing capital gains is an odd situation, since a lot of
>companies are dependent on investment income... OTOH, I'm not sure where
>I stand on money one didn't earn...
Capital gains "ought" to be taxed at exactly the same rate as other
income, to avoid companies and individuals doing time-wasting things to
move money around between the columns, e.g. US companies stopping paying
dividends and retaining the money in the companies instead, to make it a
capital gain rather than income for the shareholders.
--
Mike Scott
mi...@plokta.com
Mark Atwood
>
> Capital gains "ought" to be taxed at exactly the same rate as other
> income, to avoid companies and individuals doing time-wasting things to
> move money around between the columns, e.g. US companies stopping paying
> dividends and retaining the money in the companies instead, to make it a
> capital gain rather than income for the shareholders.
Funny thing is, when it was the case that companies paid dividendes
instead of reinvesting, the people who love high capital gains taxes
piss and moan about said companies transfering the profits to the
shareholders who "didn't do anything to earn them", instead of using
them to pay salaries and to grow the company and thus hire more
people...
One can't win.
David Goldfarb
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 16:59:48 +0000, Rob Hansen
><r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Populace. I've been seeing this misuse of 'populous' a lot lately, for
>>some reason.
>
>name.
Isn't the video game at least a dozen years old? It's hard to see why
that would affect people's speech patterns these days.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | The one-O "lose": reverse of "win" or "find".
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | The two-O "loose": reverse of "tight" or "bind".
|
Captain Button
IANAA, but I think one of the other factors with capital gains is
that you don't have to pay taxes on them until you "realize" them
by selling the asset. Which means you can choose when to pay
taxes on them. Assuming that YAM's statement about lower incomes
among the hyperwealthy is correct, this might be due to the
hyperwealthy having lots of unrealized captial gains.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Kate Secor
Since capital gains is the only tax I'm paying, yes, I'm sure.
Aiglet
Michael J. Lowrey
>
> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> writes:
> > So, a stable system in one is which, frex, you don't get an island
> > covered with peat bog poisoning itself to death, where once there was a
> > thriving ecosystem. (Since this actually does happen, it is certain
> > that all observed ecosystems _aren't_ inherently evolutionarily stable.)
>
> The primeval ecosystem on this planet "poisoned itself to death" with
> oxygen.
>
> I fail to see the problem.
Because what suffers and dies in capitalism's 'creative
destruction' is far too often living, breathing human
beings?
--
Michael J. Lowrey
Mark Atwood
>
> You make it sound as though it's being taxed twice.
> Surely you don't believe that?
It *is* taxed twice.
Captain Button
-0500, YAM <y...@address.invalid> wrote:
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> YAM <y...@address.invalid> writes:
>> >
>> > You make it sound as though it's being taxed twice.
>> > Surely you don't believe that?
>>
>> It *is* taxed twice.
> Rubbish. It's the *profit* that's taxed. The profit
> does not include the investment.
It might help to be specific about which taxes are meant here.
Does taxed twice mean "corporate income tax" and then "personal
income tax", or does it mean "personal income tax two times"?
Nels E Satterlund
AMT
Nels
Tax's on gain you don't have and may not ever get.
--
Nels E Satterlund I don't speak for the company, specially here
Ne...@Starstream.net <-- Use this address for personal Email
My Lurkers motto: I read much better and faster, than I type.
Steven desJardins
<Nels.E.S...@intel.com> wrote:
>> IANAA, but I think one of the other factors with capital gains is
>> that you don't have to pay taxes on them until you "realize" them
>> by selling the asset. Which means you can choose when to pay
>> taxes on them. Assuming that YAM's statement about lower incomes
>> among the hyperwealthy is correct, this might be due to the
>> hyperwealthy having lots of unrealized captial gains.
>
>AMT
>
>Nels
>Tax's on gain you don't have and may not ever get.
I believe this only applies to incentive stock options, which is only
one type of unrealized capital gain. (And there's nothing to prevent
people from immediately cashing in enough stock options to pay the
tax; I have limited sympathy for folks who end up in tax difficulty
because they tried to game the system and lost a bet.)
It might be helpful if you would use more than one word to explain
your point. I'm not a tax expert, and may have misunderstood what you
were trying to get at.
LAFF
<y...@address.invalid> wrote:
> LAFF <lfu...@weir.net> wrote:
>
> >... Why didn't she vote for Reagan? "He doesn't understand the
> > problems of old people." And she was 7 years younger than RR.
>
> She just didn't completely specify her reason: RR
> didn't understand the problems of old people _who
> aren't wealthy and privileged_, which I presume
> described your mum.
That was indeed what she meant, as the conversation evolved. Especially
the "wealthy" part.
--
Lois Fundis lfu...@weir.net
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/9377/handy-dandy.html
1851 W. WILSON Little Earnest Bk. upon Great Old Subject x. 137 (heading) Science-Fiction.
Ibid., We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as
we believe such works likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where,
unhappily, science alone might fail.
-- from the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of Science Fiction
Simon van Dongen
>On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 19:54:37 GMT, dbi...@attbi.com (David T. Bilek)
>wrote:
>
>>Cite please. That data is likely at least 25 years old from when tax
>>rates on very high incomes was confiscatory..
>>
>
>Me talk english good. Either "when the tax rate was... or when tax
>rates were..." of course.
>
If we're nitpicking on that subject anyway: 'data' is a plural. Why
isn't it 'Those data are...'?
Simon
--
Simon van Dongen <sg...@xs4all.nl> Rotterdam, The Netherlands
'Bear courteous greetings to the accomplished musician outside our
gate, [...] and convince him - by means of a heavily-weighted club
if necessary - that the situation he has taken up is quite unworthy
of his incomparable efforts.' -Bramah, 'Kai Lung's Golden Hours'
David T. Bilek
>sg...@xs4all.nl (Simon van Dongen) wrote:
>
>> If we're nitpicking on that subject anyway: 'data' is a plural. Why
>> isn't it 'Those data are...'?
>
>As you know, Si...er, Bob, since it came into common
>use, 'data' has undergone a change in US (and perhaps
>Canadian and Antipodean and even UK, I'm not sure)
>English. It's now seen as a 'collective singular'.
>It's the mirror image of UK 'unitary plural' usage in
>such phrases as 'the Government are'.
>
Yes, this is it exactly. Though I must say my cultural conditioning
means I see the collective singular as normal but the unitary plural
annoys the hell out of me.
-David
David Dyer-Bennet
> dbi...@attbi.com (David T. Bilek) wrote:
>
> > Long term rates, yes. Short term are the same as your ordinary income
> > rate. But I think it should be kept in mind that the money used to
> > get the capital gains in the first place has often already been taxed
> > at the ordinary income level.
> >
> > I mean, most people who have money in the market had to earn that
> > money, and thus pay taxes on it, in the first place.
>
> You make it sound as though it's being taxed twice.
> Surely you don't believe that?
I sure hope not, since it's obviously not true; when you sell stock
you pay taxes on the *gain*, not on the gross sales price.
However, I've heard the argument that corporate income taxes really
*are* double taxation. That's not *completely* and totally bogus;
although of course salaries are deductible, so the corporation
*doesn't* pay taxes on that money, for example. But dividends issued
come from after tax money in the corporation, don't they?
Ken MacLeod
<gra...@dsl.ca> writes
>In <VJmppHA7...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>,
> Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> onsendan:
>>
[snippage]
>
>> I think you need to spell out, here, just what you mean by a stable
>> system of selection, and how it is relevant to a market.
>
>In biology, a stable system of selection is one which will not result in
>widespread extinctions _for causes internal to the system_. (Does not
>reduce diversity or disparity.)
>
OK.
>So, a stable system in one is which, frex, you don't get an island
>covered with peat bog poisoning itself to death, where once there was a
>thriving ecosystem. (Since this actually does happen, it is certain
>that all observed ecosystems _aren't_ inherently evolutionarily stable.)
>
Just to avoid an ambiguity of English syntax - you mean: not all
observed ecosystems are evolutionarily stable. Yes?
>In market terms, a market which functions as a stable system of
>selection is one in which value is not destroyed. (Before someone tells
>me markets cannot destroy value, this is just what bubbles do; a lot of
>real value (people's accumulated lifetime capital) gets converted into
>nothing. Not the same thing as buying something over the market price,
>because there isn't anything actually there to buy in the bubble.)
>
I'm not sure about that. Not just in bubbles, but in normal competition,
value is destroyed. When you make a better mousetrap, and the world
beats a path to your door, some or all of the value of the other unsold
mousetraps and of the old mousetrap factories (which until you came
along were the best in the world) is destroyed.
The question is whether, whatever its fluctuations, the market is self-
correcting. If it has a tendency to fall into some kind of loop that
shakes it to pieces, or into some kind of stationary state followed by
decline (like the peat bog island) then it's not self-correcting in the
long run. But I don't think this can be shown by an analysis of other
systems, though they can certainly suggest useful lines of inquiry.
--
Ken MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
<gra...@dsl.ca> writes
[snip large areas of agreement]
At this point I can't commit to further discussion, but I've enjoyed it
so far. I'll leave it with a couple of minor points.
>Darwinian individuals are born, die, are recognizably themselves between
>times, have the possibility of descent, and their descent will be like
>them with a possibility of variation. This seems to describe some
>companies well enough. (Some others are more in the form of colony
>organisms.)
>
If you want to establish interesting parallels between ecosystems and
economies, 'First identify your Darwinian individual' is a good place to
start. I'm not at all sure companies are Darwinian individuals.
Are product lines Darwinian individuals?
>The other thing to consider about markets is that they _depend_ on good
>information being held by those making the decisions; since markets
>_generate_ enormous amounts of data, finding the sparse information --
>information is what causes change -- in that mass of data is extremely
>challenging, and it's quite possible to argue that any possible
>individual human brains were outstripped at this around the time of the
>demise of John Paul Getty.
Those economists who are most eloquent on the information-generating
properties of markets would argue that this point was reached somewhere
in the epoch when [~] flint blades from Siberia were being traded for
[~] beads from Provence.
[~] proposed glyph of handwave.
In this case the handwave refers to something I vaguely remember from
'Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age', which despite its title was
mainstream and not kooky.
--
Ken MacLeod
Karen Cooper
>Those economists who are most eloquent on the information-generating
>properties of markets would argue that this point was reached somewhere
>in the epoch when [~] flint blades from Siberia were being traded for
>[~] beads from Provence.
>
>[~] proposed glyph of handwave.
I want to be on record as enthusiastically For This.
Karen. [finds it hard to type and handwave at the same time]
David Dyer-Bennet
> Those economists who are most eloquent on the information-generating
> properties of markets would argue that this point was reached somewhere
> in the epoch when [~] flint blades from Siberia were being traded for
> [~] beads from Provence.
>
> [~] proposed glyph of handwave.
Oooh. Second the proposal for a glyph of handwave. VERY useful. Um,
especially around here.