economics note

Software (or maybe writing romance novels) is a super-low-capital-investment business. Pure ideas. I just enjoy designing circuits, which are still pretty light on fixed costs. Someone can set up a good electronics lab for less than the cost of a good computer.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin
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DT has suggested the lower taxes will, in the long term, increase economic growth and result in more tax revenue. He's probably/usually right. Of course cutting taxes results in a short-term increase in defecits. It takes generations to invest profits into a growing business; taxes or regulations can kill it in one year. He wants to cut government spending, also the right thing to do.

"His billionaire mates" already have teams of lawyers and international hooks to avoid taxes. It's small domestic businesses (like mine) that will benefit from his tax cuts.

Of course, the goal of government is usually more tax revenue, more spending, more control, more power. No wonder the Deep State hates him so much.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Isn't ARM a Chinese company?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Then let's not do that.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Ok, I may have over-simplified my explanation of how things work. There are 4 types of feedback in psychology. This explains it quite well: "The Difference between Positive/Negative Reinforcement and Positive/Negative Punishment" The same 4 combinations can be applied to economics. In terms of money, positive reinforcement is where the government gives you money to do something. Negative reinforcements is where the government charges for some service. Positive punishment would be like investing in government bonds only to learn that inflation has destroyed any real chance of making a profit. Negative punishment would be doing something illegal, getting caught, and being fined for the act.

All the aforementioned can be applied in some contorted manner to economics. Most common are positive reinforcement and negative punishment. The other two combinations are possible, but not as useful or common.

Yep. However both positive and negative reinforcement tend to loose their effectiveness if applied continuously and endlessly. The subject is expected to react to the reinforcement. When the reinforcement is expected, there's often no reaction. Imagine getting a federal stimulus payment every year, year after year. It will soon becomes the norm and nothing interesting happens until it's withdrawn. Eventually, it might even become an entitlement.

Long ago, I took piano lessons. My teacher would endlessly criticize everything I did, even if I thought I had played rather well. The more I tried, the more detailed and critical he became. It was something I wanted to do because my extended family were almost all musicians and I wanted to belong. I wouldn't give up and kept trying (much to the irritation of my parents who had to listen to my pounding). One day, I was told that there would be no more lessons. My teacher was ill and would probably be dead fairly soon. So, I visited him to day goodbye and couldn't resist asking why he never said anything nice about my playing. He said that if he had told me what he really thought of my playing, I would become complacent, not bother to practice, not try harder, and end up a mediocre musician. I was about 13 years old at the time, and really didn't understand his comments until many years later. In economic terms, positive feedback would have been detrimental to the desired goal.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

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I don't think any of that is actually correct other than punishment. The g overnment giving you money to do something is not positive reinforcement or positive feedback. It is some form of investment. Did you mean giving yo u money because you *did* something?

Reinforcement is a result of something you have done. Negative reinforceme nt is the removal of some negative stimulus as a reward for some act that t hen increases in frequency of occurrence. It's not the government charging for things.

nt

I don't see that at all. Positive reinforcement is the strongest reinforce ment of all. Unfortunately the strongest form of positive reinforcement is intermittent... like gambling. Combine that with the perception that it i s based on skill and it is a very powerful motivator to gamble.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

But we are doing just that. Our entire income tax system is negative feedback and is based on a sliding scale, where success is punished by having to pay more taxes. Socialism and Communism extend that to punishing the productive to support the non-productive. The logic is that government should be supported by those who are best able to pay, who tend to be the most successful. See the Libertarian play book for the details. The system is perpetuated by claiming that this is fair and equitable, but my guess(tm) is that it persists because we haven't contrived a utopian way to fund a government, manage a society, and support a growing population.

In terms of a control system, a graduated income tax works very well to stabilize the system. If anyone gets out of line and actually makes a ton of money, the tax system insures that they don't become too wealthy. Negative feedback at its best. On the other hand, if we rewarded success and threw government money at the best people, we might be inundated by an unsupportable surplus of successful people and companies demanding a disproportionate size slice of the American pie. Positive feedback at its worst.

Carry a small carrot and a big stick.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

No. How would you classify Obama's economic stimulus package? I certainly didn't do anything to deserve the $150 check I received in the mail from the feds. It was a simple giveaway program by the feds, for no specific purpose beyond some speculation that if I spent the $150 on goods and services, the economy would magically recover.

Nope. Please read the definition of positive reinforcement carefully. "Positive reinforcement works by presenting a motivating/reinforcing stimulus to the person after the desired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior more likely to happen in the future."

The reinforcement or intent to reinforce is present to the subject BEFORE that act is committed. Something like the promise of profit sharing if the company does well.

Diversionary drivel: [Q] What's the difference between a bribe and commission? [A] A bribe is paid in advance. A commission after. Otherwise, they're the same.

How many times a year do your receive positive reinforcement from the government? My last stimulus payment was in 2008. Now, how many times a year are you subject to negative reinforcement or punishment by the same government? At a minimum, four times per year for quarterly estimated taxes, and various other taxes. Maybe the taxes on traffic tickets (in California)? Perhaps positive feedback might be the strongest reinforcement, but the negative flavor is far more common and far more pervasive.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

was a UK company now owned by Japanese company

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

Isn't. It came out of UK and is now Japanese owned.

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  When I tried casting out nines I made a hash of it.
Reply to
Jasen Betts

ST has some OK parts, but nothing spectacular.

I was looking into 1200 volt SiC power fets.

The Cree that I'm using has a FOM, Ron*Cout, of 6.4 ps. A similar ST part is 12.3 ps, so the Cree wins big-time.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

I beg to differ. In the distant past, I sold a rental house. I ended up paying capital gains tax and AMT (alternative minimum tax). The amounts involved were huge. My accountant summed it up nicely. Find something deductible on which to spend the money, or pay it to the government in taxes. I would have preferred to save the money as bank deposits, certificates of deposit, and investments. Instead, I burned some money on various tax avoidance schemes which did reduce my tax debt, but also put a big hole in my planned retirement savings. In other words, I didn't save much solely because of the taxes.

Currently, I pay my taxes through my business(s) as sole proprietor and self-employed. That gives me plenty of opportunities to contrive tax deductible expenses. However, I plan to retire fairly soon and those taxes will now be paid out of my savings. In other words, taxes will decrease my savings and offer me no incentives to save.

Yep. At this time, I spend about the first 3 months of the working for the federal and state government. Double that if I include taxes that I pay indirectly in pass through taxes from various businesses. It's not quite confiscatory as I still have enough money left for postage to mail my "contribution" to the appropriate agency.

Nothing is certain except death and taxes. Modern medicine has made great progress in deferring and preventing death. Modern politicians have done quite the opposite with taxes.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

Wrong. Banks only loan money to those who can prove that they can repay the loan. The only time the bank really gets involved in what the borrowed does with the money is if the purpose is to buy something which the bank plans to use as collateral on the loan.

Also, I have a problem with the word "need". What criteria would you expect the bank to determine "need"? What number do they put on the degree of need in order to separate those who need more from those who need less? The prime purpose of a bank is to make money. How does their customers "need" relate to the banks profitability? These are all rhetorical questions that probably don't deserve answers. What they do is demonstrate that "need" should not enter into a financial transaction.

Sounds wonderful. What really happens is that in a recession, the Federal Reverse Bank lowers the discount rate on the interest it charges member banks. That allows the banks to lower the interest rate it charges its customers, which allows more customers to qualify for loans. However, most of the money comes from customer deposits. Lowering the loan interest rate causes the interest rate the bank pays on deposits to also drop. All that works nicely, until the interest on deposits hits zero. My working bank account currently pays a whopping 0.01%. Some banks are up to about 2% because people find it more profitable to invest in stocks, bonds, or foreign banks. What's missing from all this is social responsibility and other intangibles that are difficult to assign a number or value. Can I interest you in a bank account that promises that your money will be used in a socially or ecologically responsible manner? As I vaguely recall, that's been tried several times, with predictably dismal results. I suspect that most people don't want their finances mixed with their banks politics.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

At some point, maybe 50% taxation, working at tax avoidance is more rational than producing and earning.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

The threshold of pain varies with the individual, but as usual, there's some comedy involved. In 2018, 44% of Americans were expected to pay zero taxes: However, another poll, indicated that 45% of Americans thought their taxes were too high, while the other 48% thought their taxes were "about right". Click on the video near the bottom: "A new poll finds that less than half of Americans think their federal income taxes are too high, the lowest amount since 2012." It's not too difficult to guess which group thought their taxes were "about right", leaving the other 45% believing that *ANY* level of taxation is too high.

For at time, I thought moving to a tax haven would be a good solution. Then I discovered that most acceptable countries had about the same maximum tax rate (about 50%) as the US. However, the US minimum tax rate is zero for both federal, state, and local taxes, while many countries have a finite minimum tax rate. Since I expect to be in an impoverished tax bracket, a finite minimum tax rate will not work for me.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
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Jeff Liebermann

Taxes take away money that you could otherwise have saved,or spent.

The choice to save or spend is still yours.

Taxes aren't designed to give you any incentive to do anything. The tax system can - and in Australia does - give you incentives to invest in savings to pay a pension in retirement, but that's an incidental feature grafted onto the system.

Clearly true. 95% super-tax regimes fell out of favour years ago.

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Nobody now seems to try to collect more than 60% of earned income on the highest parts of the highest incomes.

This doesn't have any effect on the choice between saving and spending.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

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You aren't grasping the concept. Reinforcement is a stimulus that happens subsequent to behavior, at least as viewed by the organism. The original s tudies were done on pigeons. They have no concept of tax incentives or reb ates. The concept of reinforcement has to do with an organism doing or not doing things to get or avoid a given response.

I have no knowledge of your $150 check. I don't recall receiving one. Wha t was the qualifier to have received the check? I thought the Obama stimul us was largely to improve the infrastructure.

Even if the check was symbolic, it would have had psychological impact and economics is largely behavioral and so psychological.

I would consider the rebate to be intermittent reinforcement. Not sure wha t behavior would be rewarded, but likely each organism will fixate on somet hing different.

You are replying to a paragraph about negative reinforcement by quoting an unknown source a definition of positive reinforcement. Regardless, the gov ernment charging for a service is not any form of reinforcement.

See, that is the opposite of reinforcement which is reinforcement *after* t he act. That's why it is reinforcement, it reinforces the action... afterw ords. You can't reinforce the action before it happens. That would be som ething different.

Yes, the simple act of filing taxes seems like punishment, but that is by d efinition not reinforcement which always has a positive effect... by defini tion. If the stimulus to the organism reduces the behavior it isn't reinf orcement... by definition.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

Zero income tax, still 'payroll' taxes, (SS and medicare), and any sales tax.

George H. who also thinks income tax is too low to pay for everything. cut spending, raise taxes or both.

Reply to
George Herold

Yeah, funny everyone was talking about income taxes and such but no one mentioned what we would need to do to balance the budget.

Politics is a power struggle. War in a sense. All is fair in love and war. Maybe one day we will figure out how to wage war enough to actually do the hard things.

Rick C.

Reply to
gnuarm.deletethisbit

Revenue is already up. Big time. Unfortunately, so is spending. Happened with Reagan, too.

"You didn't build that."

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krw

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