Pretty much everybody knows more than Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompso n.
The reason serious people live in densely populated cities is that face-to- face interactions are more productive than Skype meetings. Jim's happy with what he produces, and ignores the fact that the people who were - and are
- more productive in his area produced devices that were easier to use, and more effective when you used them.
If he came face-to-face with his actual competition, his complaceny might g et dented, so he's happier living in the sticks.
On Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 12:08:34 PM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@notreal.com wrote :
te:
Krw is the idiot. Zero tax in Trump's case meant that his accountant manage d to get a $916 million dollar loss onto his 1995 tax return
formatting link
572.html
and that's been covering his taxable income for quite a whie now.
That particular tax mess - bizarre allowances for depreciation - isn't one that lefties have ever expressed much enthusiasm for.
Not that krw has got a clue about any of this.
Inequality is usually measured by the Gini index
formatting link
It's a bit one-dimensional - as a single number has to be - and people who are interested in inequality (which krw isn't) tend to look at other number s.
formatting link
most_Always_Do_Better
n
g,
It's not nonsense, but sober economic fact. If everybody - or at least lots of people - want to live close to the centre of a big city, the available land around the city centre comes under pressure. In this context the restr iction on the available land is the number of people who want to live on it .
Krw doesn't know what anything means. He knows how to react to particular s tatements, but that's more of a conditioned reflex than any kind of rationa l response. He doesn't comprehend counter-arguments or absorb information t hat contradicts what he chose to believe, back when his brain was flexible enough to choose.
I wonder which government krw had in mind? In Tom Gardner's UK the government does try to get people to get as educated as possible, which is the royal road for getting them out of poverty.
The deduction for depreciation is no free lunch. When you depreciate assets, that offsets income, but also reduces your cost basis. So when you sell the depreciated property you have more profit to declare, or in Trump's case, less loss. That has nothing to do with Trump's billion dollar loss in one year. That was from true losses. Being able to carry losses forward is legit. I'm just glad to not have losses to carry forward. We'll never know the real basis of Trump's income or losses because he won't share.
That is the only value to property, how badly people want it, same as anything else. If people don't especially want to live there property is cheap. City property values are much higher because they are good places to live in general. Heck, in most big cities you don't even need a car. There's a big savings.
Over time one would likely become poorer due to living outside ones means.
What I said
Well there are "absolute" and "relative" definitions of poverty.
In industrialised countries it a "relative" definition of poverty that is used. (Since e.g. the "international poverty line" is $1.90 per day).
"Once economic development has progressed beyond a certain minimum level, the rub of the poverty problem ? from the point of view of both the poor individual and of the societies in which they live ? is not so much the effects of poverty in any absolute form but the effects of the contrast, daily perceived, between the lives of the poor and the lives of those around them. For practical purposes, the problem of poverty in the industrialized nations today is a problem of relative poverty "
formatting link
I am surprised to see you not accepting this. The monetary value of something is what someone is willing to pay, remember? If prices were too high nobody will live there and there will be plenty of available housing / land.
Of course. Do you live in a cardboard box under a bridge? If no, housing costs money and is driven by the same land costs and taxes.
No, instantly. Your spending power is lower - YOU'RE POORER.
It doesn't measure "inequality", whatever that is, either.
Why don't you use a few more undefiend terms. It makes your argument easier.
Sure, we don't have (voluntary) poverty, in the West (US, anyway). Some are crazy and have been dumped on the streets (by the lefties, BTW) but other than that, poverty doesn't exist. 60" TVs don't constitute poverty,
Use the "McDonalds standard".
Then you agree. We should stop enableing the "poor", rather help them. Tough love.
Why worry about what everyone else has?
You really are stupid. Of course it's supply/demand but supply is often artificially restricted (by leftists).
Because these are federal programs flowing directly to citizens, which a state cannot control?
Because a progressive tax system forces people who live in high-cost progressive states to maintain higher incomes, and pay more tax?
If people in blue states are truly concerned about the poor and convinced that sending money helps the poor, why aren't blue states organizing funding drives to send *more* money to red states, to get all these people off poverty?
But then if blue states have the 'cure' why does California have so much wealth, yet 1/3rd of the nation's welfare roll? Why are the riots always in blue cities?
You're assuming states have a choice. States can't control who moves in, or the numbers of their citizens federal money entices into accepting a 'poverty' that most of the world could only dream of.
That's often quipped about conservatives accepting Social Security benefits. But even if you don't like and were opposed to a system of force, once it has taken your money, it's only rational you'd want to get (some of) your money back.
If The Great Society works, why do we still have poor people 50 years later, more of them, and more heavily dependent than ever?
I can't get anyone to give me a straight answer so I'd appreciate your explanation:
"Why /should/ it work? Why would giving money to the poor fix poverty?"
If you could get everything you needed without working, why wouldn't you do that instead of working?
If you could get the government to force other people feed you, provide you medical care, shelter, and so forth, why *would* you work?
Why don't national parks have "Please feed the bears" signs and intensive federal feeding programs to nudge bears to greater industry, independence, and ambition?
Could be. And, as an engineer, if the money cured poverty, shouldn't you be pointing to evidence that red states had less poverty? Or do we just need more of it--your money? :-)
(Sorry for the delay--I've been pressed, writing code.) Cheers, James Arthur
To organize a national defense is possibly the principal reason peoples form governments: to secure their safety, which they all desire and profit from, and agree to support.
But seeking defense for one's self and property does not rationalize or excuse taking money from one citizen to benefit another, under the same pretext.
In fact the latter is a perfect inversion of the original purpose--government was created to *protect* citizens from plunder, not organize it. Among free peoples, anyhow.
No, the stats don't include assets, only income exclusive of federal benefits. So, a family earning $10,000 a year and receiving $35k tax-free in federal benefits would counted as living on $10k. But, because of living mostly tax-free, they'd have the buying power of a family earning roughly $60k. But they lose it if they start work.
That situation is actually fairly common.
Quite possible, if he actually ever had such a year :)
Yup.
Yes, and that has resulted in a thirty-year migration leaving California for AZ, CO, WA, OR, etc.
But please note that that only makes economic sense if the people believe they can enjoy a better standard of living elsewhere on that same money. Otherwise, the sensible thing would be to take their real estate profits and move *to* California, or to stay, if they're already there.
How does a progressive tax system force people to live anywhere?
ing
Isn't that what the federal government is doing?
Perhaps because the wealthy bits of California - high tech and the like - a ren't drawing welfare and the seasonally employed agricutural workers are?
Treating each states if it one homogeneous lump isn't entirely realisitic.
in,
has
ey
er,
There are a couple of explanations - the obvious one being that the Great S ociety was never all that great, and the attempts to get the poor out of po verty were neither sustained nor all that well-funded.
Less obvious but probably more important is that there are a lot less unski lled jobs around, and the US education and training system doesn't seem to be able to train all that many people for skilled work - the German work fo rce has a rather higher proportion of people with some kind of tertiary tra ining. The US system seems to be even less capable of retraining people wit h obsolete skills.
There are more of the them because the US population has gone up quite a bi t since 1966 - it was 196.6 million back then and it's 324 million now.
As to why they are "more heavily dependent" now, one would need to know wha t James Arthur meant by "more heavily dependent". If he meant that they wer e getting more money per head - in inflation adjusted dollars - it might ju st be the poor being allowed to keep up with their more prosperous neighbou rs.
One doesn't give money to the poor to fix poverty - though if you give enou gh, the recipients wouldn't be poor any more. The aim is more to keep them fed, house and tolerably healthy until they can find a new job. If you spen d a bit more to train them for new job, this can reduce the long term incid ence of poverty, but doesn't seem to eliminate it.
do
Since one of the things that working gives you is social contacts and statu s, in a way that not easy to duplicate with handouts, people can't get ever ything they feel they need without working.
Bastiat doesn't seem to have been aware of this - the social research that makes this clear hadn't been done back then - and right-wing economists who believe in the perfection of the free market don't want to pay any attenti on to this as it complicates their economic models no end.
ou
Because you like what you do when you are working? Because you get on with your co-workers and like spending time with them? Because your snooty relat ives and neighbours treat you better when you have a job?
,
Bears aren't people. In particular, they aren't social animals.
be
d
Money definitely cures poverty, until it runs out.
You do have to define poverty - it's usually taken to be having an income l ess than 50% of the median income, but in places where the cost of living i s high, such as New York or Sydney, you feel a lot poorer on 50% of the nat ional median income than somebody living out on the boondocks - or "flyover states" in modern American.
Apparently the red states have fewer people living below the red state medi an incomes, so in practical terms they do have less poverty.
On Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 1:53:38 AM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wr ote:
te:
orer
on
ing
on
.
y
ch if there isn't a war on?
orm
m,
That's one way of looking at it. The protection racket theory of government sees the army as finding a bunch of citizens to mooch off.
An army and a police force primarily defend the well-off - who have stuff w orth stealing in places that are easy to locate. The well-off are happy eno ugh to pay the taxes to protect what they have got. The less well-off still get taxed, even though what they are paying for doesn't do all that much f or them.
The army primarily defends people who live on the borders of a country, so the money is being taken from the heartland for the benefit of the border r egions.
ment
ree
Government wasn't created at all. It just grew. Making assumptions about "t he original purpose" is just fantasising.
Collecting taxes to pay for universal health care and universal education i sn't any kind of plunder - even the most generous contributors get somethin g back in terms of fewer epidemics and better trained employees.
You problem is that you want to pay as little tax as possible, and you are happy to have the state cheapskate on services that don't benefit you perso nally, right now, and you are happy to claim that the state is ineffective and incompetent as an excuse for not giving them enough money allow even th e most competent people do anything effective.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.