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From: John Larkin on 14 May 2010 13:05 On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:13:21 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >Martin Brown wrote: >> On 14/05/2010 16:25, John Larkin wrote: >>> On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:50:11 +0100, Martin Brown >>> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote: >>> >>>> A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot >>>> simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT >>>> advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT >>>> for a charity making disabled access improvements. >>> >>> There's nothing wrong or difficult about having businesses pay sales >>> tax. We in California pay sales tax on anything we consume, like >> >> I see that as faintly odd. Taxing businesses for buying stuff to help >> run their business and new equipment doesn't really make any sense. >> > >Moving the business to Montana and will make that problem go away :-) > >[...] Yes, but it would also make my edgier employees go away too. We could set up a manufacturing company in another state, or just subcontract manufacturing and some engineering there. Arizona sounds good, just to tweak the local idiots on the Board of Stupidvisors. John
From: John Larkin on 14 May 2010 13:08 On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:17:15 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >John Larkin wrote: >> On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:39:56 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> >> wrote: >> >>> John Larkin wrote: > >[...] > >>>> I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts >>>> business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because >>>> it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No >>>> accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no >>>> quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost. >>>> >>>> Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a >>>> person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be >>>> jealous of his wealth. >>>> >>> A serious problem with that: It punishes frugal people who have saved >>> for their retirement and rewards those who squandered everything. The >>> money they saved _has_ already been taxed. >> >> Simple fix: don't tax income. >> > >Yeah, but how do you deal with income that _has_ already been taxed but >not spent yet because people saved it for their retirement? A flat >VAT-type tax is the same as confiscating xx% percent of that. Not fair >at all. As I suggested, exempt basics, like food, reasonable rent, generic medicines. If people can afford a yacht, they can afford to pay sales tax on it. John
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 13:28 On May 14, 5:14 pm, John Larkin <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: > On Fri, 14 May 2010 02:49:23 -0700 (PDT),Bill Sloman > > <bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > >On May 14, 7:16 am, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >> On May 13, 5:02 pm,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > > >> > On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >> > The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those > >> > with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load. > > >> Right. That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other > >> animals' bread, greedy thing that she was. She had broad shoulders. > > >I think you are mixing your metaphors. If you want to refer to > >Orwell's "Animal Farm" you had better read it first. > > >> > This falls a > >> > long way short of Marx - > > >> Marx was kind of an idiot. > > >The same kind of idiot as Darwin, who laid out the obvious facts that > >nobody had noticed before. > > >> "The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., > >> that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely > >> requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer." > >> --The Communist Manifesto > > >> See what I mean? > > >That pretty much describes the state of industrial workers in > >Victorian England before the trade union movement got under way. Marx > >was describing the way the world worked at the time when he wrote > >that, based - in part - on the data that he got from Friedrich Engels, > >who not only supported Marx financially, but also provided a lot of > >the social statistics on which Marx based his work. > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels > > >Marx's economic writings were much more evidence-based than those of > >his contemporaries. If Marx is a kind of idiot, it is the kind of > >idiot that we should see more often. > > >Your comment demonstrates that you don't understand why industrial > >workes are no longer paid a bare subsistence wage, and the > >contribution that Marx made to the process that changed their > >condition. > > >> Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep, > >> a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn > >> coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping > >> Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists > >> today. > > >There was nothing pseudo-academic about Marx. He revolutionised > >academic economics, in part by exploiting statistical data about the > >actual economies of the time, quite a bit of which was collected by > >Engels. > > >> "To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear > >> Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo > >> P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM" > > >Perhaps. Marx didn't have an appealing personality. But he was doing > >important - ground-breaking - work, and Engels saw its value and > >provided the financial and intellectual support that allowed Marx to > >get on with it. > > >That you don't see its value reflects your - negligible - intellectual > >status as a right-wing nitwit. > > >> Marx's moronic precepts ruined scores of countries, and killed tens > >> of millions, maybe hundreds. > > >The Bolshevik version of Marxism, with its emphasis on the "leading > >role of the party" has damaged a lot of countries, and killed a lot of > >people. The problem isn't with Marxism, but the concentration of power > >into the hands of an unrepresentative and irresponsible elite - the > >Communist party in Stalin's Russian, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's > >Cambodia killed a lot of people, but the Nazi Party in Hitler's > >Germany, the Fascist parties in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain > >weren't far behind, despite their violently anti-Marxist ideologies. > > >> "Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean > >> the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form > >> of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no > >> need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a > >> great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying > >> it daily." --The Communist Manifesto > > >> But, dim-witted Marx had it exactly bass-ackwards--industry was the > >> very salvation for the proletariat, pulling them up out of poverty. > > >Only after the trade union movement forced industrial employers to pay > >their workers at above subsistence levels. > > All a union can do is increase its members' wages at the expense of > other, poorer citizens. Wrong. The historical purpose of trade unions was to increase the price that capital had to pay for labour; for most manufacturing, the cost of the product is now more or less evenly split between the interest on the capital invested in the manufacturing plant and the wages paid out to the people who work the plant to produce the product. In so far as the people who own that plant are generally richer than the people who work in it, your point is entirely invalid. > It's a less-then-zero-sum game. Only from your hopelessly ill-informed point of view. >The thing that > makes everybody better off is productivity, and unions are generally > opposed to that. They aren't. They do have a preference for employers to retrain existing workers rather than firing them and hiring a new work force, which does - marginally - increase the cost of up-grading manufacturing equipment, but trade unionists are well aware that if they succeeded in preventing their employers from increasing productivity, their employers would go out of business because they would trying to sell a more expensive product in competiton with manufacturers who could make it more cheaply. This isn't a recipe for job security. Unfortunately, employers have been known to lie about changes to manufacturing plant, and trade unionists have been known to be sceptical about the stories they have been told. > Ford doubled his workers wages before they were > unionized for two reasons: it was good for his business, and the > technology that he invented increased productivity enough that he > could afford it. Manufacturers have a vested interest in hanging onto trained and experienced workers, though they hate to admit it. Ford was just being sensible. > Productivity is the only real source of wealth, and technology is the > main source of productivity. Unions went for the money *after* > technology created the money. You obviously haven't got a clue about the early history of the trade union movement. The 1890's were interesting, in Australia and in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_Australian_shearers%27_strike http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUdockers.htm > The most productive enterprises these days are non-union. Unions exist to represent a bunch of people who all do much the same kind of work. The most productive modern enterprises practice continuous innovation - individual employees don't do the same kind work for much more than year at time. It's difficult to negotiate a rate for a job which will be radically different in a few months time. > Unions have mostly killed off the classic union industries. The employers made a substantial contribution to their decline - the famous line about the railways was that the railway companies thought that they were in the railroad busniess, and were devastated to find out that they were in transportation, at a time when other modes of transport had become cheaper and more flexible. Detroit didn't go down the tubes because the emloyees were unionised - the German auto industry is even more unionised and hasn't lost its competitive edge - but because the employers didn't understand their market. When the message finally got through, the employers only option was to downsize, which is tough on the employees being let go, and leaves the unions very little room to negotiate. The German car industry has been more technically innovative, and because they were leading the industry, rather than failing to follow it, the necessary retraining and redeployment didn't involve firing a lot of workers. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Joerg on 14 May 2010 13:40 John Larkin wrote: > On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:13:21 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> > wrote: > >> Martin Brown wrote: >>> On 14/05/2010 16:25, John Larkin wrote: >>>> On Fri, 14 May 2010 08:50:11 +0100, Martin Brown >>>> <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote: >>>> >>>>> A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot >>>>> simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT >>>>> advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT >>>>> for a charity making disabled access improvements. >>>> There's nothing wrong or difficult about having businesses pay sales >>>> tax. We in California pay sales tax on anything we consume, like >>> I see that as faintly odd. Taxing businesses for buying stuff to help >>> run their business and new equipment doesn't really make any sense. >>> >> Moving the business to Montana and will make that problem go away :-) >> >> [...] > > Yes, but it would also make my edgier employees go away too. > I dunno, depends on whether they are the outdoors kind or not. Once a SW guys threw the question into the round: "What if we all packed it up and moved to Bozeman, Montana?". Some silence. Then one by one the guys uttered "Yeah", "Cool", "I'd come" and so on. > We could set up a manufacturing company in another state, or just > subcontract manufacturing and some engineering there. Arizona sounds > good, just to tweak the local idiots on the Board of Stupidvisors. > Check the tax situation first, all taxes including property taxes, cost of living, et cetera. AZ may not be the first contender then. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
From: Joerg on 14 May 2010 13:44
John Larkin wrote: > On Fri, 14 May 2010 09:17:15 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> > wrote: > >> John Larkin wrote: >>> On Fri, 14 May 2010 07:39:56 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)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. > Then you also have to exempt cars, sofas, washing machines, dryers, blood pressure monitors, shoes, jeans, shirts, chain saws, firewood, TV sets of non-obscene size, stereos, telephones, everything at Home Depot, ... -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM. |