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In praise of Brooks saddles



 
 
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  #61  
Old December 14th 19, 07:34 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
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Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 12:22 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 6:10:04 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 8:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/13/2019 7:53 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 2:57:00 PM UTC-8, John B.
wrote:
On Fri, 13 Dec 2019 10:59:46 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

Tom Kunich wrote:

"pro-capitalist"? You don't believe that you should
have to make
your own way in this life? That the F-ing world owes
you a living?

No, I believe working people deserve fair compensation,
and simply having wealth doesn't entitle you to the
spoils of others' labor. I believe money should be a
public utility and not a treasure hoard. And I believe
that economic surpluses should serve the needy and the
public good, not allow the development of perversions
like billionaires.

I believe the world doesn't owe rich fux a living just
for being rich.


Oh! You mean like Bill Gates? Or maybe Larry Page? Or
Sergey Brin? Or
even Mark Zuckerberg?

I could go on, I suppose, but what's the sense, as you
know that the
world doesn't owe rich fux a living just for being
rich.... even when
they made the money themselves.

As for money being a "public utility"? Hey, a really
great idea! And
how much of your salary will you be committing to this
scheme?

I think Chalo's point would be that those men did not make
money themselves. Gates, for example, didn't write a line
of code for DOS. He bought it from a guy who worked in a
local computer shop. It was a rip-off of CPM. Gates made
some good moves when IBM came calling looking for an
operating system, and the rest is history.

Gates was certainly captain of the ship, but he had a crew
and ultimately a huge crew. The question is whether the
crew was well treated, and judging by Seattle, Redmond and
Medina, I would say yes. Does Gates pay enough in taxes?
Maybe yes and maybe no -- Chalo would certainly say no,
and in 1958, the answer would certainly be no. He would be
in an 80% tax bracket.

I think it's undeniable that if you compare someone like
Bill Gates with an equally intelligent and motivated black
kid in the inner city, and if they both had precisely the
same idea for a business, the black kid would have far, far
less chance of getting rich. The difference was not the
dollar value of his inheritance. It was the background, the
opportunities, the connections.

The differences will probably be there forever. If your dad
is a prominent lawyer, you'll be able to meet and become
familiar with a lot more influential people than if your dad
is a janitor. IOW, "The poor you will always have with you."
But once someone is pulling in an income that's 100 times
what anyone needs to live in reasonable comfort, they should
be paying a much greater percentage of it to help keep our
society functioning. Hell, if it just went for pothole
repair, that would be something. How many Maseratis or
luxury homes does someone deserve?

It is tough setting brackets at a place that generates
enough revenue to run the country but avoids capital
flight. Tax policy is not easy. The Trump cuts, however,
were just foolish. They resulted in a massive deficit with
no trickle-down to ordinary Americans -- who will get left
holding the tab. Trump is now filling budget holes with
tariffs and SNAP and TANF cuts. Ordinary Americans will
pay the price of corporate tax rate cuts without any
reduction in the price of goods. It's not like corporate
America is passing on the tax savings to consumers.

I totally understand young people pointing out the massive
wealth gap and the unfairness of the system -- although
that is not a reason to ****-can the system. It just
needs fixing in a non-torch and pitchfork way.

Yes. And making the tax system more progressive isn't
torching the system. It's worked before.




The US tax system is among the most punitively 'progressive'
on earth already.


We can thank the union supported Democrats for that. In times of need such as the world wars it was easy to support that idea but after WW II, the unions wanted to lynch President Eisenhower for reducing the 90% tax on "the rich".


hmmm.
Those tax revisions were Kennedy's not Eisenhower's.
Party positions have changed a lot.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


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  #62  
Old December 14th 19, 08:00 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Andre Jute[_2_]
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Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 5:55:20 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 11:42:04 AM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 12:59 PM, Chalo wrote:
Tom Kunich wrote:

"pro-capitalist"? You don't believe that you should have to make
your own way in this life? That the F-ing world owes you a living?

No, I believe working people deserve fair compensation, and simply having wealth doesn't entitle you to the spoils of others' labor. I believe money should be a public utility and not a treasure hoard. And I believe that economic surpluses should serve the needy and the public good, not allow the development of perversions like billionaires.

I believe the world doesn't owe rich fux a living just for being rich..


Good luck with that.

As Tom Sherman often noted, people who advocate communal
systems stop short when asked to share one toothbrush with
the neighborhood.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


I think that there is something seriously wrong with people who believe that economics is a zero sum game. If a man is rich, that doesn't mean that you are poor. Yet that is the Marxist strategy for pushing socialism. Of course Marx himself lived a happy and free life in London living off of the fortune his father left him.


Just as a point of information, Tom, Marx soon ran through his father's money and for the rest of his life sponged off Friedrich Engels, who ran one of those "satanic mills". Engels is the fellow who completed Das Kapital after Marx died.

AJ
  #63  
Old December 14th 19, 08:18 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Andre Jute[_2_]
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Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 6:07:53 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:

1. Bill Gates used HIS money to pay programmers to write DOS with absolutely no guarantee of any return at all.


The theory and practice of the entrepreneur as an innovator and job creator is now well over a century old. Slow Johnny will look up the exact year for us but I seem to recall Joseph Schumpeter came up with it c1912. But the SJWs have still to catch up. The elephant in the room is Chalo's assumption that, say, Boeing could be run by a works committee instead of by managers who take large risks and must be recompensed for those risks.

2. DOS was not a "rip=-off" of CPM. The programs are entirely different,


I used CP/M extensively. It was a useful programme with useful software. DOS was not. I went straight from CP/M to the Mac GUI.

3. Capital flight is a real and measurable thing. This year alone in California 50,000 of the most well paid professionals left California and are grown new Silicon Valley's all over the US. This will eventually cripple Silicon Valley because of the cost of living and the unbelievable state taxes here.


I remember that back in the 1960's, when there was a 98% tax rate in the UK, when I walked out onto the dealing floor of a large stockbroker, and there was dead silence, nothing happening, nobody wanting to finance a new factory. A guy I knew from Cambridge called out to me, "You should take up asset stripping, Andre, make you richer than advertising in the States has." I said I was hiring and all the younger and more energetic guys stood up. The socialist/envy-tax-induced brain drain was a tangible thing -- I shook its hands.

4. This same thing is going to occur with Google. Search engines are going to become nothing more than a utility. Facebook is going to either die or become nothing more than a small noise. Other applications that don't require enough information for identity theft are coming along already.


Remember - it takes very little money to start a Google - that is nothing more than a bank of computers and with the increasing speed of computers the size of that bank necessary is shrinking by the minute.


I agree with all this as too obvious to need saying except to the braindead..

Andre Jute
Not braindead
  #64  
Old December 14th 19, 10:53 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 10:56 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/14/2019 9:40 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/14/2019 9:10 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 8:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:


Yes. And making the tax system more progressive isn't
torching the system. It's worked before.

The US tax system is among the most punitively
'progressive' on earth already.


Got numbers on that?




16th of 195 :
https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/c...-income-taxes/


You may have just changed the subject. In discussions of taxes,
"progressive" means those of higher means pay a larger percentage of
their means in taxes. So being 16th highest in maximum tax rate doesn't
speak to how progressive a system is.

Also, you've focused only on income taxes. There are other taxes that
may be paid by everyone, and are not progressive at all. Sales tax is an
example, and it is proportionally a bigger burden on the poor, since
they to have all their money consumed by sales. By contrast, a person
(like me) who doesn't have to spend all his income on food, gas, etc.
avoids sales tax on the portion saved or invested.

Speaking of total taxes (which is what should really matter) there's
this:
https://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/fi...%20%281%29.png

Doesn't look to me like we're overtaxed. And the huge potholes in my
street say the same thing.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #65  
Old December 14th 19, 10:55 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 11:48 AM, AMuzi wrote:

[1] There's a very good argument to be made, and economists make it,
that corporations should not be taxed, only employees and shareholders.
I'm sympathetic to that argument.


Well, if you overturn the notion that a corporation is legally a
"person" with all that legally implies, we can talk about that.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #66  
Old December 14th 19, 11:01 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 12:52 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:

No one forces you to work for any specific employer in a free market. That's what FREE means. If you don't like what this guy is paying go somewhere else if that job doesn't pay more change your career path.


Funny _you_ are saying that...

How's that hellhole you live in? And how's the job search?


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #67  
Old December 14th 19, 11:42 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
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Posts: 5,870
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:30:11 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 4:00:24 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:

The US does not have the luxury of Chapter 11.


Stick to the law, Jay. You don't know **** about economics either, or realpolitik. If Donald Trump were to wake up in the morning with a sore head (everyone should consider themselves lucky that he's a teetotaller -- heh-heh) and announce that the US were repudiating all her foreign debts, everyone else except the US would hurt. (Here's a hint: he wouldn't put it like that, he'd announce the US was changing over to the Coyote Standard or some such.) And they'd immediately start buying US Treasury Bonds again, because they have too much stake in the US economy to let it slow or go under. And if they were slow, Trump would only have to hint that he was nationalising their US assets at nightfall for them to see the sense and logic of his position.


Andre, stick to whatever it is you do, which is what? If the US defaulted on all its debt, the economic system in the US as we know it would fail for a variety of reasons. The government lights would go off, and TK's Social Security welfare would be done. I'm not even talking about the foreign held debt or the world-wide effect of the collapse of our currency, although the failure of our currency would lead to massive inflation.

This is all imaginary since the US cannot constitutionally default on its debt (and redemption is by maturity date anyway, so the US would not default all at once). Taxes would have to be raised to meet obligations; the US would sell naming rights to the Washington Monument to Huawei. It would be the biggest fire sale in history. Massive, massive inflation.

Moving past the imaginary default Armageddon, the reality is that cutting tax revenues and rampant deficit spending just means inflation, higher borrowing costs, higher taxes -- basically another recession for the administration that gets stuck with the tab, regardless of party, although usually Democrat.

Ande Jute
If you owe the bank a thousand dollars you can't pay, you're in trouble. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars you *won't* pay, the bank is n trouble.


Not with collateralized debt or when the borrower is constitutionally obligated to repay the debt. In the real world, a bank would manage the risk with credit default swaps, credit insurance, etc., etc. Banks are not stupid, usually.

-- Jay Beattie.
  #68  
Old December 14th 19, 11:42 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
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Posts: 13,447
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 3:53 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/14/2019 10:56 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/14/2019 9:40 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/14/2019 9:10 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 12/13/2019 8:18 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:


Yes. And making the tax system more progressive isn't
torching the system. It's worked before.

The US tax system is among the most punitively
'progressive' on earth already.

Got numbers on that?




16th of 195 :
https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/c...-income-taxes/


You may have just changed the subject. In discussions of
taxes, "progressive" means those of higher means pay a
larger percentage of their means in taxes. So being 16th
highest in maximum tax rate doesn't speak to how progressive
a system is.

Also, you've focused only on income taxes. There are other
taxes that may be paid by everyone, and are not progressive
at all. Sales tax is an example, and it is proportionally a
bigger burden on the poor, since they to have all their
money consumed by sales. By contrast, a person (like me) who
doesn't have to spend all his income on food, gas, etc.
avoids sales tax on the portion saved or invested.

Speaking of total taxes (which is what should really matter)
there's this:
https://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/fi...%20%281%29.png


Doesn't look to me like we're overtaxed. And the huge
potholes in my street say the same thing.


Subsidiarity is a different subject, one about which I am
passionate, but this isn't that.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


  #69  
Old December 15th 19, 12:08 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
JBeattie
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Posts: 5,870
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:35:46 AM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 4:17:36 PM UTC, jbeattie wrote:

The US has no VAT,


Crap. What do you think VAT is? It's a sales tax, same as State sales taxes in the US.


Crap, we have no federal sales tax. We have federal excise taxes on certain goods, e.g. gas, alcohol. State sales tax vary. There is no sales tax in Oregon.

And I might also mention that State income taxes are taxes on the consumption of those so poor they cannot afford to move to the Southwest.


State income taxes are taxes on income. A typical consumption tax is a sales tax. BTW, Alaska has a direct flight from PDX to Phoenix in June for $119. Very affordable.

-- Jay Beattie.
  #70  
Old December 15th 19, 12:41 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default In praise of Brooks saddles

On 12/14/2019 5:42 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Andre, stick to whatever it is you do, which is what?


What he does is troll aggressively and obnoxiously.

Many of us would prefer he found something else to do, something that
was a little productive and a lot more distant.

--
- Frank Krygowski
 




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