conservation of Euros
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From: Robert Baer on 14 May 2010 02:58 All of this is a bit entertaining, but.. To conserve Euros (and Dollars), paste them on the wall and admire the boring wallpaper.. ...their "value" is getting to that point as the governments are all bankrupt.
From: Martin Brown on 14 May 2010 03:31 On 14/05/2010 06:16, dagmargoodboat(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. > >> This falls a >> long way short of Marx - > > Marx was kind of an idiot. > > "The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e., > that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely > requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer." > --The Communist Manifesto > > See what I mean? > > Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep, > a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn > coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping > Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists > today. Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety relief valves they would not pay out. It was common practice to overstoke the fire before the first shift and add weight to the pressure relief valve - this resulted in several large scale boiler explosions destroying big mills in the early morning and killing many workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/technical-steam/historic-steam-boiler-explosions-p-2658.html Articles on the history of boiler insurance show that the US had a worse record despite having the advantage of seeing the innovations in UK boilers. Some element of NIH played a part but mostly it was that industrialists greed was paramount and the workers powerless. eg. http://www.casact.org/pubs/proceed/proceed15/15407.pdf first page and page 7 under Normal Loss Hazard > > "To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear > Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo > P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM" It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on. Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this. In the UK there were some decent industrialists mostly of quaker families who did treat their workforce fairly - examples include some household names like Pilkingtons, Cadbury, Bournville, Marks&Spencer. But most of the rest were complete bastards who built large factories and employed the equivalent of bonded labour stuck very high density slum housing. It was not surprising that unions were formed in some cases the manager really did hold the whip hand - literally. Regards, Martin Brown
From: Martin Brown on 14 May 2010 03:50 On 14/05/2010 05:12, krw(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:03:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >> On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" >> <k...(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote: >>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin >>> <jjlar...(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote: >> >>>>> VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality. >>> >>>> VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage >>>> that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I >>>> prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to >>>> hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity. >>> >>> That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of >>> the pipe. >> >> No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing >> gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate, >> etc. > > So it's only collected at the end. > >> Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible. > > A lot of work, sure, but money only changes hands at the end of the pipe. No. You have it wrong. Every stage in the pipeline *pays* VAT inclusive prices to their suppliers and totals up their input tax and then charges their customers including VAT and totals up their output tax. Then every month if large or three months if a small company you send a VAT cheque to HMRC which is the difference of those two numbers. A modern computer system doesn't find this too difficult. Unless that is some half baked government changes the VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% in the run up to Christmas as they did last year. That was a disaster for shops as shelf prices are all marked inclusive of VAT. UK VAT is expected to go to 20% shortly to deal with the deficit. It will make mental arithmetic a lot easier - I never learnt my 17.5x table. Exceptions exist for cross boarder trades in the EEC which allow not charging VAT if the goods are for export to another country in the EEC. This leads to a complex form of cross border trade called carousel fraud which typically involves small high value objects like memory chips, mobile phones and latterly carbon credits. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5204422.stm > ...and IIRC, the Canuckistani VAT is paid by the buyer; a sales tax. A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT for a charity making disabled access improvements. Regards, Martin Brown
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 04:45 On May 13, 10:05 pm, Greegor <greego...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > BS > Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is > BS > now in will be fixed by Greece. The EU - as > BS > a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing > BS > until that happens. > > Oh GOODY! More DEBT! THAT'LL fix em! LOL! The alternative was to let them go bankrupt, taking down a bunch of Eurpean banks that had lent them money. This is pretty much what happend in 1929, and the relevant politicians know enough history to be aware of this, and didn't fancy going down that route again. Right-wing nitwits are less familiar with history, and correspondingly more enthusiastic about repeating their ancestor's mistakes. Make no mistake. The Greeks are in the process of reforming their economy. Already public servants are getting 10% lower salaries, and their retirement age has been raised from 61 to 65. There's a lot more of that kind of belt-tightening in the pipe-line. -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
From: Bill Sloman on 14 May 2010 05:49
On May 14, 12:17 am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...(a)On- My-Web-Site.com> wrote: > On Thu, 13 May 2010 13:13:00 -0700 (PDT), Greegor > > <greego...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >BS > Of course you love it. You are a right-wing > >BS > nitwit, and enthuse about every proposition > >BS > that favours the rich, as "The Fair Tax" most > >BS > certainly does. Bill Sloman, Nijmegen > > >For an Aussie who lives near Amsterdam you > >sure are emotional about taxation in the USA! > > >You are cartoon like in your liberal extremism. > > Isn't a VAT very much like the "Fair Tax", a flat rate for all? It's a little more complicated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax but in essence it is a properly worked out application of the same basic idea. The French governemnt gets more than 50% of it revenue from VAT. Because it is a tax on consumption, rather than income, the poor pay out a larger proportion of their income in VAT than do the rich, who are in a position to save and invest more of their income. It consequently appeals to right-wing nitwits, who have a rather ideosyncratic understanding of the word "fair". -- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen |