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#171
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
On 2006-08-18, Travis (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea: What if there was a tax system though which prevented the most productive people from making the biggest profits? Um, in every tax system I have met, progressive or regressive, the more money you get paid, the more money you get, fullstop. Who cares if you do 2 dollars "worth" of work, and get 1 dollar back? You still get money for working "harder". While it is regrettable that some people won't be able to afford to buy much stuff because the products or services they can provide are not worth much to the community, I like this "worth" thing though. Apparently, teachers aren't as worthy as CTOs of a dotbomb. We can do without these damn cleaners too. All they ever do is empty the wrong bins, and you and I can do that anytime. Who can deny that the quality of life today is better than it was 100 years ago? My friend Matthew in school who lived in a squalid caravan for 4 others. Or anyone that ends up in modern prisons because they can't do anything else other than commit crime to survive. At least in the past they would have been shot and put out of their misery. Or exploited but given a roof over their heads. Ordinary working class people today can afford clothes, food and housing that a few hundred years ago would have been only available to great noblemen. If productivity continues to grow at such a rate, ordinary people in a few hundred years will, on average, enjoy a lifestyle that only the wealthy enjoy today. If the almost closed system that is the earth (+ solar input) could sustain a concept we mere mortals call "infinite growth". Pity economists seemed to have missed this (or is Costello, with his "have one for the country" policy, not a real economist?) -- TimC It's the _target_ that supposed to go "F00F", not the processor. -- Mike Andrews, on Pentiums in missiles |
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#172
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
Travis wrote:
Wow, this is off topic. Certainly is, but at least the subject line reflects that. What follows is an explanation of economics. shirt example Good example. I have heard that example before. It is a very good example, as far as it goes. However... 1. With the break down in trade barriers we now have the situation where local producers have to conform to our laws regarding pay, working conditions, use of pesticides etc while competitors in other countries are not subject to these rules. This is referred to as a "level playing field". Presumably we could fix this problem by reducing government interference (ie no minimum pay, no minimum working conditions, no restrictions on chemicals) 2. Some of the richest companies and individuals don't produce any goods at all. The Packers and Murdochs, advertising companies, banks. They are selling services which vanish as they are provided. Banks don't produce anything - they are just middle men, taking a cut on the money as it goes past. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but it ain't making shirts. Who can deny that the quality of life today is better than it was 100 years ago? The nutritional value of fruit and veg has deteriorated. Employment levels have deteriorated. Cancer rates are higher. Stress levels are higher. People live longer, but not all trends are upwards. I prefer to live in this century, but then I am one of the winners in this environment. Ordinary working class people today can afford clothes, food and housing that a few hundred years ago would have been only available to great noblemen. 100 years ago ordinary people owned their own homes. In 1929, 2% of homes in the US had mortgages. 60 years later 2% of homes did NOT have a mortgage. I am sure the trend is similar here. If productivity continues to grow at such a rate, ordinary people in a few hundred years will, on average, enjoy a lifestyle that only the wealthy enjoy today. They may have such a lifestyle. Whether they enjoy it remains to be seen :-) Primitive hunter gatherer societies live a fairly miserable existence, spending all of their hours engaged in backbreaking toil in order to scrape together enough to merely feed themselves. This really isn't true. In most hunter/gatherer societies people have more recreation time than we do. Maybe in desert environments it might be more of a struggle. |
#173
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
TimC wrote: On 2006-08-18, Travis (aka Bruce) was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea: What if there was a tax system though which prevented the most productive people from making the biggest profits? Um, in every tax system I have met, progressive or regressive, the more money you get paid, the more money you get, fullstop. Yep. The complaint you brought up was the one where the majority of wealth was owned by a small number of people. The only way to avoid such a situation is to design the tax system in such a way that it provides a serious disincentive to do any more work. There have been in the past in some countries marginal tax rates over 100%. These policies were of course designed with the egalitarian goal of preventing people from becoming "too" wealthy, and indeed when every dollar you earn results in you having LESS wealth, the effect was that people really did stop working once they hit a certain limit. These policies tend to be discontinued after a while once the politicians who devised them, or the ones who were voted in after the politicians who devised them were chased from office by angry mobs with pitchforks and flaming torches. They had the result of making people on the whole much worse off, killed entrepreneurialism etc. A 50% marginal tax rate isn't as bad as a 98% marginal tax rate, but it has an intermediate effect. Its just law of diminishing returns. People know that once they work a certain amount, the rest of the work they do that year will earn them a lower hourly rate. It gets to the point where people start saying stuff this, I'm not going to work for that hourly rate, I'd rather go home and watch TV. Who cares if you do 2 dollars "worth" of work, and get 1 dollar back? You still get money for working "harder". If your boss offered you overtime at half your regular hourly rate, you'd be financially better off taking it, but you'd probably question whether it was worth your while. That is what high marginal tax rates do. Tim, would YOU work an hour of overtime at half your regular rate? Maybe you would, but I imagine if we did a poll on the subject a majority of respondents would state that they would tell their boss where to stick his overtime. While it is regrettable that some people won't be able to afford to buy much stuff because the products or services they can provide are not worth much to the community, I like this "worth" thing though. Apparently, teachers aren't as worthy as CTOs of a dotbomb. Is a rock star "worth" more than a Nobel Prize winning chemist? Is a footballer "worth" more than a pediatrician? Is a supermodel worth more than a policeman? All worthy questions, but it comes down to a question of "so, if you think a policeman is worth more than a supermodel, how much should we pay supermodels, and how much should we pay policemen?" Communism started out as a very scientific theory of economics. The theory was that experts, armed with all the relevant data and imposing "for the good of the society" ethical principles, would do a better job of setting prices than a completely uncontrolled economy where the only thing setting prices was the mutual agreement of a buyer and seller to exchange goods at a price that both thought reasonable. As we know, this turned out to be a disaster. It resulted in massive misallocation of resources, lack of sufficient allowance for the needs of individuals instead of society etc. The whole thing collapsed. The problem was that "experts" did an inferior job of allocating resources than markets. The profit motive turns out to be a far more subtle and effective way of adjusting production to meet demand and incentivising innovation than anything else. So who says an A-list actor is worth millions of dollars per year? The studios who make millions of dollars by using him rather than an unknown actor. Why do the studios make millions of dollars using an A-list actor instead of an equally talented unknown guy? Because people go to watch movies with that guy in them. Who are we to say that they shouldn't, and the Terminator movies would have been just as good with some other musclebound clunk in the lead. Supply and demand affects salaries. If there is a shortage of teachers, nurses and police, one way to recruit more of them is to increase salaries. Governments will go on paying what teachers, nurses and police claim is too little money because, despite their rhetoric, teachers, nurses and police are willing to work for those salaries! We can do without these damn cleaners too. All they ever do is empty the wrong bins, and you and I can do that anytime. Who can deny that the quality of life today is better than it was 100 years ago? My friend Matthew in school who lived in a squalid caravan for 4 others. 100 years ago they would have starved to death in the street. There were crappy neighborhoods back then too you know. Time to read up on some Charles Dickens, or failing that maybe some George Orwell. People living in ****ty accomodation is not a new phenomenon, but its worth noting that 100 years ago the average working class family of 10 lived in a dismal little one room shack built right in the shadow of the smokestacks of the factory they and all the kids over 6 worked in. Today, the working class family lives in a place that a person 100 years ago would never have dreamed of owning and instead of shovelling coal for a living the kids go to school and return home afterwards and gripe when their parents make them do some housework. The reason today why children and the very old are not forced to work for a living is because there is enough production capacity that the needs of the society are fulfilled WITHOUT needing child labour. Or anyone that ends up in modern prisons because they can't do anything else other than commit crime to survive. At least in the past they would have been shot and put out of their misery. Or exploited but given a roof over their heads. I somehow doubt many people would consider capital punishment a more humane alternative to punishing crime than jail. And if you think today's jails are so bad, go on a historical tour of an old convict prison. Compared to the 100 year old working class shack next to the steel mill, a modern jail is actually quite nice. To describe prisons 100 years ago you need words like "hellhole". And again, the reason why we can afford to build decent prisons with flushing toilets and airconditioning and no rats gnawing at your toes while you sleep is that society is wealthy enough to afford such "luxuries". I don't think 100 years ago there would have been much popular support for building prisons of the same quality as today, because much of the law abiding population lived in places of a much lower standard. Ordinary working class people today can afford clothes, food and housing that a few hundred years ago would have been only available to great noblemen. If productivity continues to grow at such a rate, ordinary people in a few hundred years will, on average, enjoy a lifestyle that only the wealthy enjoy today. If the almost closed system that is the earth (+ solar input) could sustain a concept we mere mortals call "infinite growth". So far there has been no sign of any kind of letup in progress. Moore's Law seems to be holding, there are new developments every day in genetics, nanotechnology and medicine which indicate that for the forseeable future this will continue. Hopefully within the next 50 years they'll finally figure out how to build a commercial fusion power station, and then all sorts of things which currently aren't feasible, such as a transportation network built entirely on electric vehicles, would be not only possible but actually significantly more economical than fossil fuel powered vehicles. The world is a cleaner place today than it was 40 years ago. You can swim in the Thames River in London and the Hudson in New York. 40 years ago they were full of garbage and no fish survived. 100 years ago they were the source of outbreaks of cholera and typhus. Factories install scrubbers on their smokestacks to remove a lot of the real nasties, but 10 years ago they were permitted to rain heavy metals all over the worker's shacks. Its more than just naive nostalgia to say that the old days were better, life for most of human history for the majority of the population was nasty, brutal and short. No, the olden days sucked. People had 10 kids and 5 would reach adulthood. They would toil all of their lives at menial jobs and never hope to retire. Productivity means doing more with the same amount of resources. There is no forseeable limit on how efficient we may become at producing things. Pity economists seemed to have missed this (or is Costello, with his "have one for the country" policy, not a real economist?) Contrary to predictions made in the 1970s, the population has not grown out of control and there is no global famine. We have more food today than at any time in history, and its much better food than the crap factory workers ate 100 years ago. In fact, the fertility rate has dropped dramatically. Demographics show that in many parts of the world there is actually negative growth projected. It isn't necessarily going to be an economic disaster if the population does decrease, but at the same time the balance of risks at the moment is not tilted toward overpopulation. Travis |
#174
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
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#175
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
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#176
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less cars : roll on $2 per litre
Theo Bekkers wrote:
Ten years? We're not talking car batteries here, you need deep discharge batteries. Will last maybe 5 years in lead-acid, and cost twice as much as a regular car battery. Yes, I have a few. {:-(. Apparently their life is closely related to the cost of the charger you use and the depth/rate of discharge. A $300 battery requires a $500 charger. Cost varies from 150-200% for Centurion, etc, to quadruple for name brands. You also need a crane. A 120AmpHr weighs 35kg. what use have you used them for? Mine have just been standby for power outages, so they don't really get stressed. |
#177
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less cars : roll on $2 per litre
Donga wrote:
Random Data wrote: Boy have we got off-track here. I carelessly obscured my point with personal information. It's not about me, it's about people wishing for harm to others. Whether you agree or not about points of economics, there are many people who are suffering badly out of rising petrol prices. Wishing that on them I find 'odd' for want of a better word. Err, isn't this like the drug addicts excuse? Unfortunately, too many people ignore the real choices and consequent risks they are taking on board with certain life choices. If you live at the limit of your "income" then that is living dangerously in my books. and no, I wont apologise for chuckling when you learn that the hard way. Something about history ignore peril own. Sonmeone once said that "we need more natural disasters. It makes people think" Petrol going over $2/litre isn't a natural disaster, but it might make people re-asses what they are doing. Frankly, if it reduces the number of cars on the road, then I will love it. Sure, I don't like the fact that whenever I go away, my travel costs are higher, but I use the roads every day. |
#178
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
Travis wrote:
Wealth will always be distributed in the manner described in any healthy economy. Notice how you apply the work "healthy" to the economiy and not the people living in the economy. What follows is an explanation of economics. I'm glad you didn't say "science of economics" ROFL. Lets face it, economics is a philosophy, just like any religious belief. I will give you a clue; boundary conditions make a mockery of everything you wrote. There is in fact a program to do this now, personal financial planning courses are being rolled out in schools all over the country. ROFL. That won't fix anything. Just line the suckers up and make it easier for the economic scammers to dupe them. |
#179
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
Travis wrote:
The subject of tarrifs etc is another perpetual "debate" which economists figured out long ago, but every generation screws up anew. Lol, rest of philosophical rant clipped. You obviously know nothing about the economics of modern computer chip production, because if you did, you would understand why everything you wrote is just a blind drivel from an indoctrinated fool. |
#180
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Grossly offtopic: (Was less cars : roll on $2 per litre)
Plodder (remove DAKS to reply) wrote: A couple of things about this model bother me: First, it's assumed that wealth comes from work - the more wealth you have, the harder (or more) you've worked. There is something of a direct relationship implied Patently untrue. No, not how much you *work*, how much what you *produce* is worth to the market. You can work yourself to death digging holes and filling them in again, but the market doesn't consider that useful and nobody owes you a living for it. You can spend your life and your fortune creating a theme park dedicated to navel lint but if nobody wants to visit your park will be a flop. On the other hand, you might tinker away in your shed for a bit to build a better mousetrap, and fame and fortune will be yours. The differentiating factor is that people get wealthy if they provide something which is wanted and needed, not just for the amount of labour they put into it. The reason why the planned economy didn't work was because a committee of experts can not possibly hope to be as adept at figuring out what was actually wanted and needed by the market as an army of profit motivated entrepreneurs, and there is no feedback mechanism more accurate than profit. I struggle to imagine that Tom Cruise works squillions of times harder that Jill Bloggs who assembles riding jerseys on a production line. Perhaps we need to define what "work", "effort" and so-on mean before drawing wealth, earning, and so-on into the model. I'm sure he doesn't, but that's beside the point. Tom Cruise makes millions per movie because studios know that just having his name on it means people will go. Of course most of what Cruise does these days is schlock, but its profitable schlock. The studios pay good money to someone that can help turn schlock into profitable schlock, which is entirely rational. Would it be fair on Cruise if he was just paid the standard rate of an average worker, if people were getting rich from his efforts to this degree? While it burns people who enjoy a good movie that the world is full of moviegoers that won't attend quality cinema and instead choose to go watch Tom Cruise swaggering around, it isn't for us to say that movie goers are wrong. If the economy were run by a central comittee (as per the Soviet Union) then no doubt the central comittee would only allow "quality" movies to be made, and we'd see less schlock. But like in the Soviet Union, the result would probably be just a bunch of boring historical epics and political propaganda glorifying the state. The point being that Tom Cruise makes lots of money because people like to watch the guy in movies, and Hollywood studios know this more than a bunch of grey men in the Ministry of Arts. But a semi-skilled lady sewing jerseys? If we pay them as much as Cruise nobody would buy any cycling jerseys, and if we tried to pay Cruise what the lady with a sewing machine makes an hour he'd probably refuse to work until he gets a reasonable share of the vast profits he generates - and unlike the seamstress he'd actually be in a position to ask for it because he isn't readily substituted. Second, again to do with work and the 'reward' associated with the concept: To bring things vaguely back on topic - most people drive to work because the effort involved is (to their minds) reasonable for the outcome achieved; they get realtively cheap, easy transport to where they want to go. Riding to work is perceived as too much effort (work) for the same outcome. Yet many people do ride to work. Why? It seems that people do work of various kinds for various reasons, so equating work with wealth (and wealth as a measure of the work that has been done) is a somewhat simplistic model. Perhaps in the case of riding to work, 'wealth' can be stretched to include gaining a certain fitness level or sense of acheivement/self-worth/etc. If 'wealth' is to be stretched to that, where does the stretching stop? It seems the idea of wealth is already stretched so far as to make the word almost meaningless. All argued from the basis that you think I'm saying wealth is proportional to work, when actually I'm saying its proportional to the value of what you produce. They're very different. There's so much more to argue on this topic. I'd love to rabbit on and on, but this is a cycling forum, so I'll shut up now... True.dat. Travis |
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