OT: Why there are no new jobs?

• Seems not.

• Just pick a dead person, register under that name,and vote...

• YES; excellent question, part of my point.

I don't believe that for one second.

It makes perfect sense to do that and I am glad that European universities finally understood it. There are scores of technical courses held in English only. Which is great because engineers who do not master English very well will have a hard time to achieve success in their career.

But this was about students in the US at elementary school and such where leftists demand that schools accommodate Spanish speakers who refuse to learn English. I am squarely against that. This country has only one official language and that is English. So they shall either learn English or move to a country where Spanish is spoken.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Exactly. If one would curb H-1B and thereby companies would be forced to leave some employees overseas then they will eventually move the whole operations overseas. Because it would make sense, not so much financially but to facilitate collaboration.

This is something leftists will likely never understand. I have been part of a few location decisions and it is mindboggling how fast and how final that process is.

Above you wrote "The salaries range from $75K to somewhere around $125K". $125k is a princely salary for an engineer, at least outside Silicon Valley. If that doesn't attract talent then chances are there aren't enough people available. Plus that salary level indicates a trend towards a zero-sum game where, inside one country, Peter begins to rob Paul and vice versa. That is not good for an economy.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

If a system is too restrictive (for example, lack of a VC environment in Germany) then opportunity begins to shrivel up in some markets. If a lack of ideological compatibility makes it unlikely that this ever changes much you can end up with the effects of a brain drain.

Both. But in California the voters revolted and got it stopped. I also met people in other states such as New York (no ten horses will get me to live there).

What council? It is enough to see when an old person must leve their house against their will and for tax reasons. That is flat wrong. Therefore, I would not live in such an area.

These were people on fixed incomes who were taxed out of their homes. To me that's communist and evil. Same to the majority of CAlifornia voters who struck this down.

Fact is, your propaganda about "utter environmental destruction" is wrong.

Has nothing to do with luck, it was methodically planned in the beginning until self-employment kind of ran by itself.

That is the big mistake. There usually is no meaningful local market for such engineering skills. But I've told you that before. One must work country-wide and often worldwide.

Ok, I do have one local client I can reach by bicycle in 21 minutes if I really step on it. But that's it. Most others are now out of state, courtesy of a leftist state government that chases companies away. My highest concentration of clients is in Southern Texas and that does not surprise me one bit.

So why is it that none of my clients ever asked about my age at the start? I am not too far from retirement age myself but it simply does not matter. The only times clients get a hunch about my age is during online conferencing where the camera catches the facial wrinkles.

Sure they do. However, then it's not so much a dad who hightailed it but a dad who got killed. Their families rallye around them, family is still their core value.

I can't follow you there.

Because they usually do.

I live here and my impression is very different.

No, they often provide waiting lists.

After the pre-existing condition exclusion was removed (the only good thing I ever saw coming out of Obamacare) anyone can buy health insurance. Even before most people could. For example, I bought ours on the free market. It's about choice. Some people make poor choices, I personally know folks who opted to buy a bigger car and forgo health insurance. One of them will likely lose his house soon because this backfired when he had a major health event.

Just because you don't understand something that doesn't mean it's not there.

Which doesn't mention that the populations age structure isn't quite

Don't know what you mean with GFC but under the current administration the economy will never come back to a roar for the middle class. That's why we need a change in 2016.

No comment about why. Nokia is reputed to be having a difficult time

Sure there is. Look again.

[...]

Did they fire the design engineers and managers involved in such gross negligence? How stupid must a design engineer be to make that mistake?

It has nothing to do with the topic. On a flight you must have two persons in the cockpit at all times and that's how it has always been at American carriers. Now Lufthansa learned why, unfortunately the hard way.

Trains are different. A rogue engineer in a locomotive cannot cause havoc if the system is designed right. Like it is, for example in Germany and much of Europe. Exceed the sector speed? Locomotive won't let you. Want to blow past a stop? Locomotive overrides and applies brakes. Plus there will be an unpleasant "discussion" at the office later.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Prop 13 is weird and wonderful. I pay 1/4 the property tax of my neighbor, who has basically the identical house, but he just bought it.

The best tax is sales tax. If you want a Porsche or a 4K teevee, buy it and pay the tax.

Right. Granny shouldn't be taxed out of her house.

Basic food could be free; that would simplify things and remove some bad disincentives. Just keep people from nabbing tons of it to feed to pigs and chickens.

The Brat is working on her MBA at Berkeley. She reports that there is a lot of discussion of offshoring, with the emphasis that it often doesn't work very well.

I've seen high-tech companies move manufacturing and engineering offshore with pretty disastrous results. I guess it does make sense for Apple to use Chinese child labor at 17 cents an hour to make $600 iPhones.

On Wed, 30 Sep 2015 19:24:19 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

snip

If one has a product with SMPS in it, for example, and one is planning on making xM number counts of the product, THEN it is a good idea to partner up with an existing chinese power supply maker. Someone who has many years experience with making PC supplies, for instance, and years of in-house engineering making standards conformal units.

Property taxes are un-American. IMHO they should at least be based on square footage and acreage (not on sales price) _and_ capped at 2% yearly increase max or inflation, whichever is lower. Then it's fair to everyone including the person who has to move.

And then when you sell the Porsche the next guy must pay sales tax again. A double-dipping grab at its finest.

The rich folks would buy the Porsche in Oregon, pay no tax and "officially" keep it there for a while.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Why? Property taxes have the advantage that the property doesn't move, and everybody can see roughly what it's worth.

Thatcher tried to get rid of them in the UK - by replacing them with a flat per-head council tax, which was manifestly unfair in the other direction.

There's a strong suspicion she was aiming at the predictable side-effect, which was to get the poor Labour-voters off the electoral rolls, in which she did succeed to a useful degree.

The replacement graded property into something like five bands, which the rich appreciated. the top band wasn't all that high compared with what they'd been paying on the real value of their property.

It's a regressive tax. All but the most extravagant of the rich pay out a lower proportion of their income in sales tax than do poorer people. You can fudge what get's sales taxed, but the rich like sales taxes better than the merely well-off.

Difficult to do with property.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

There is an argument that used stuff should not be taxed. That lets poor people buy used things cheaper.

I was thinking about a national sales tax to replace the income tax, and especially replace multiple business taxes. Imports now have a huge advantage over USA products, and a sales tax on both would equalize things and create US jobs.

But politicians don't use logic, or work for the greater good, so it won't happen.

The main problem is the double taxation of accumulated assets due to the change. It wouldn't be such a problem with houses, say, since everybody's income would effectively go up to match the tax. Normal IRAs and 401(k)s would be okay too, since they're pre-tax. With after-tax financial assets (including Roth IRAs) it would be a real blow. It would also hurt LLCs as well (such as mine), since I can expense everything I buy for the business.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

The Fair Tax is a proposal for a nat'l sales tax like John's, that would replace all other federal taxes (corporate, SS, Medicare, personal income, etc.). The FT has a 'prebate' provision that sends every citizen a fixed check--everyone gets the same, regardless of how rich or poor--for the tax on their basic living expense, then taxes all sales of NEW goods (not used) at XX%, XX ~=22. That's a simple way of capturing XX percent of GDP to fund the federal government, with a minimum of hassles.

It has the (transitional) problem you mentioned of taxing post-tax assets like Roth IRAs, which I brought up in person with one of the plan's authors. His reply was that they expected politicians to work those things out. My suggestion was a tax-free debit card you could use, equal to your Roth IRA assets.

The bigger problem is that progressives want a national sales tax as an *extra* tax to increase the burden of government, and to keep the existing mess too. Preventing that requires repealing the 16th Amendment, no small task.

Cheers, James Arthur

It sounds OK.. but I see a lot of details that are tricky. Do I pay tax when I buy a new home? (but not a used house?) What makes a house used? (Say I build my own home and then sell it.. in ten years, in one year, in one week?)

If I have a plumber come in and do some work, I pay no tax.(?) What about if I hire someone to make furniture for me? I use it for one year and then sell it. tax or no tax?

And then the whole business/ OEM thing. As a business I buy some stuff to put in a product. Do I pay tax on the stuff? Then I sell it. How much tax... do we get the whole VAT type thing in Europe?

What about taxes on assets, stocks, bonds, companies, rental property? It seems to me I can spin all sorts of "deals" where by I add value but pay no tax. I just fear that those with lots of money will be able to "game" the system, where us poor slobs in the middle class carry the load.

Mind you I have no problem changing our current tax structure.

(First thing (as I've said before) is get rid of the payroll tax that employer's pay on the behave of their employee's... Everyone* gets a ~7% raise and then see's their SS, medicare etc taxes go up by 7%... But at least they see the money on their W2.)

George H.

*Oh everyone but Phil H, and Joerg and Tim W and all the other self employed... They already get to see their "full bill" :^)

In part it's already happening in the gray zone. People by a used car for one price but then another much lower one gets reported. That is an inevitable consequence of excessive taxation.

Simplifying the income tax code alone would do wonders, reducing tax rates and at the same time taking away many of those complicated deductions. The only one who dared to say that was again ... Donald Trump. Of course he is generally short on the details.

That is the key problem, making it a non-starter. It would punish everyone for having saved for old age and would casue people to make their retirement home Curacao or somewhere, taking all their spending money with them.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nobody in their right might would ever believe that to be possible anymore.

And all your other savings, real estate assets, et cetera. It would literally mean that frugal people would never pay tax anymore until their dying day, and then some.

Here's hoping that all this ends in 2016.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Homes are sort of sacred politically. But some tax on the sale of any home is reasonable.

Services are usually not taxed, but should be. More and more of our economy is services.

As now, a biz pays sales tax on stuff that it consumes, not sales tax on stuff for resale. A biz collects sales tax when they sell to end-users, consumers.

I think a visible end-user sales tax would be best. Let people see it. VAT is complex and hidden. And apparently scammable.

A small tax on financial transactiions would be great. That would kill a lot of dangerous speculation and automated trading.

Rent could be taxed like services, but there is less benefit there, compared to taxing stuff.

Assets should not be taxed; only sales transactions. Inheritances should not be taxed, because that kills farms and businesses. It's double taxation.

It's a nightmare. And very counter-productive.

Payroll tax and workman's comp and unemployment insurance are major job killers. When you punish employers for creating jobs, they don't.

Yes.

Dunno. Would have to set by reasonable rules.

Taxed, I think.

Taxed, IIRC.

No. Only retail sales. Businesses wouldn't pay taxes at all.

No tax, IIRC, except rentals, where I'm not sure.

I like that a lot. I like for things to be honest, out in the open. Currently they're not.

I do not like the Fair Tax for two reasons, first, because I don't like the idea of every single American coming to expect a regular check from the government (for the "prebate"). I think that's bad psychology.

Second, it's unlikely to happen because the 16th has to be repealed first, and there's an enormous danger that doesn't happen and we wind up with just a new tax.

An easy compromise that's doable would be a flat income tax with no fancy gimmicks (ideally not even the popular deductions--they're all handouts for special interests, even us). Or, if need be, two tiers based on income and one fixed large deduction. Even that's a lot better.

That would be an easy way to save, oh, 130 million returns filed, times two hours' labor to fill out, hire the tax guy, drive it in, etc. ... ~230 million man-hours' of labor a year.

A friend showed me his dad's return from the '50's. The front had a line for his income, some lines to multiply by his rate, then a line for the amount he owed. IT WAS A POSTCARD--not kidding--and that was his official IRS return.

The economy would soar, and it's free.

Cheers, James Arthur

With engineering I have often seen poor result when companies offshore. I just went through a case with a vendor and it cost us more than two months of schedule slip.

Production will always be offshored. The more unions strangle employers here in the US the more jobs will leave. It is foolish to stick the head into the sand about it like some do. It's a fact and I have seen it first hand many times. Like one of my older designs that is still in production, initially produced in Southern California and when that gradually turn socialist it went to Guangdong. Those jobs will never come back.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/