TK was exactly right. OT

"Jack Hollis" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:32:26 -0700, Fred Fredburger
wrote:

What basis do you have for disbelieving that high energy prices will
reverse the outward migration of jobs?

Actually, the opposite is true. High energy prices make it more
expensive to import good to the US. This could make US companies more
competitive.

Look, this is now a high tech country whether we like it or not. Yet the
primary schools are "graduating" most of the student that can barely write,
can do very little math and have the scientific education of a stone age
caveman.

I hate to point this out but since the morons on high have decided that it
was good to move the labor intensive jobs out of the USA they apparently
didn't seem to notice that at the same time a large percentage of foreign
students in our universities were obtaining the intellectual property
necessary to take the rest of the jobs with them.

Now the management position jobs in the USA will start falling apart and
THEN company management might realize the huge mistakes they made giving
away our lead in essentially every area.

On Jul 7, 8:51*am, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:

Now the management position jobs in the USA will start falling apart and
THEN company management might realize the huge mistakes they made giving
away our lead in essentially every area.


I think the solution is to outsource Washington DC to China and
India. Works for me.

On Jul 7, 1:46*pm, SLAVE of THE STATE wrote:
On Jul 7, 8:51*am, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:

Now the management position jobs in the USA will start falling apart and
THEN company management might realize the huge mistakes they made giving
away our lead in essentially every area.

I think the solution is to outsource Washington DC to China and
India. *Works for me.

Screw that ship 'em ALL to N. Korea, or Sudan, or Myanmar.
Bill C

On Jul 3, 5:05 am, Bill C wrote:
On Jul 2, 9:35 pm, Bill C wrote:

On Jul 2, 8:43 pm, SLAVE of THE STATE wrote:

On Jul 2, 5:27 pm, Fred Fredburger

wrote:
Bill C wrote:
Don't remember you're position on Global Warming, but you could say
exactly the same things about that. Why are we bothering with/ about
it?
...
Global warming is not nearly as immediate a danger the collapse of the
fossil fuel based economy might be.

Given Bill's hissy fit that the water coming out of a nuke plant is
warmer than it is going in, I take it by extension that he would like
to see all heat engines in the world shut down, since they all heat
the environment. I'd have to shut down my clown car. :-(

That is his way of helping "gay 'liberals'" kill not just 3rd world
inhabitants, but most all anywhere. The good news is that of whoever
is left, they won't have to worry about running out of fossil fuels.
See how it all works out? Where is the faith?

Large fish kills, and blighted spawning have done massive economic and
environmental damage. Why the hell should any corporation take those
resources out of my pocket without compensation?
Bill C
You bet I'm ****ed. You should be too.

http://www.masslive.com/living/repub...se/living-2/12...
Forests, Parks a big draw for Western Massachusetts vacationers this
summer
Thursday, July 03, 2008
By KEITH J. O'CONNOR
The state's vast arena of forests and parks are quickly becoming the
playground for vacationers who are staying closer to home this summer
given the higher prices at the gas pumps.

"We are seeing a large increase in the volume of inquiries about our
parks and in the number of visitors, while camping reservations are up
over 13 percent from last year," said Richard K. Sullivan, Jr.,
commissioner, of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
snipped

http://www.njsfsc.org/mission/economic/impact.html

Quoted:

As the tables demonstrate, hunting and fishing generate tremendous
economic activity in New Jersey and throughout the US. According to
the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation (2):

If hunting and fishing were a corporation, it would rank 10th on the
Fortune 500 list, ahead of AT&T and Philip Morris.

Sportsmen support more jobs than twice the number of workers employed
by WalMart, the largest Fortune 500 employer.

Tax revenues generated by sportsmen exceed the box office total of all
United States movie theaters or better yet the combined box office
earnings of the all-time top ten grossing films.

Federal tax revenues generated by sportsmen could pay for the combined
budgets of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Endangered Species
appropriation, Bureau of Land Management, National Biological Service,
and National Park Service for two years.
Snipped

We've voluntarily voted to impose those taxes on ourselves and the
goods we use for the good of the resource, for everyone to enjoy.

Imagine that "we've voluntarily voted to impose those taxes on
ourselves." Um, the key feature of taxation is that it is
involuntary. But I'm all for picking out which taxes I will
"voluntarily" pay. lol

Not for it to be looted and destroyed
in the name of corporate welfare.

Well with lingo like that, leftists and eco-frauds are sure to see how
open-minded you are, rather than some superficial facade of open-
mindedness.


But back to the point. About 85% of the electical energy passed to
"the grid" in the US is generated by steam engines. Most of those are
coal, and the rest are nat gas and nukes. (I don't bother counting
any oil plants). They all produce "heat pollution," which is a basic
cost of energy given today's capital structure of energy production
and demand. A part of my point was that nukes can't be singled out
solely on a basis of heat pollution -- all the heat engine generators
do it. If one wants a high-energy life-style, then heat pollution is
a trade-off that is made by default. (Almost all transportation is
heat engine based.)

An essential parameter of heat-engine efficiency is the "cold
reservoir" temperatu raise the cold reservoir temperature and you
get lower efficiency. Water is a favorable resource for the cold
reservoir in part due to its unusually high "specific heat."

Naturally, locating *any* heat engine on a river for using it as the
cold reservoir entails changing the temperature of the outflow water,
and this can, of course, have an effect on the local eco-system. It
could potentially disrupt the eco-system such that certain species can
no longer survive there. However, the river would not typically "die"
from such a thing, instead a new eco-system grows in place, more
suited to the new environment. What I mean to say is that it is not
necessarily an all-for-nothing tradeoff. Moreover, we know at the
outset of demanding a high-energy lifestyle that there will be a
tradeoff. Nukes produce no C02, which is claimed to endanger the
"global environment" via AGW.

So the remaining questions a

1. is it worth it?
2. what canon of judgement does one use in answering #1 where property
rights don't exist by decree of guvmint?

"We" sure do hate the adult world of tradeoffs.

I want a pony
Sacrifices must be made
Values are funny things
Think globally, act locally

Global warming is a global thing. Think locally by making the
sacrifice of a river for the global cause. After all, you said you
own the river. Maintain the high energy lifestyle, as you value it.

I want a pony. (I love that line.) Besides, the word is that I have
no dog in this fight, while I ride my pony.

On Jul 3, 9:57 am, "Paul G." wrote:
On Jul 2, 5:16 pm, SLAVE of THE STATE wrote:



No. From the links it looked like if spending had been held constant
(not _cut_, as you say), then there would have been no deficit, in
fact, there would have been a surplus.

Yeah, that's true. I'd also be saving even more money if I could hold
my spending at the same level as it was 5 yrs ago, but that would be
extremely difficult.

I divide inflation into two parts:
1. Caused by central bank expansion
2. True price inflation (for example, caused by a natural disaster, or
whatever)

I refer to inflation as something an individual "feels" according to
his/her own "local" expenditures.

But holding both constant, I disagree with you. There is no reason to
be spending more now than 5 years ago other than you have changed your
savings/consuming ratios according to your values and your personal
productivity growth, and then (hopefully) income generation.

If you don't hold both constant, you have to do a lot of work to
justify that you had to increase spending. Moreover, if you are
saying the central bank is effectively taxing you by expansion, thus
making your available real funds less (and then affecting your savings/
consuming ratio) then I certainly have no argument.

I'd have to do something extreme like sell my
house. Same with govt. It's unrealistic to talk about holding spending
constant when the lion's share of the budget is things like defense,
social security, medicare, and interest on the debt.

Oh, I don't know about that. First off, remember that Reagan promised
to slay the over-burdening beast of guvmint. Holding spending
constant, according to your assumptions, would call that out as a way
to slay that beast. So on that count we can say he failed.

(As Kinsley wrote: "Federal
tax collections rose about a fifth in real terms under Reagan.")

The population grows, the economy grows, so this is normal. Expenses
also grow with those things. Imagine if federal spending had been held
constant since 1800 or 1900. That's absurd. A better measure is
Federal expenditures as a percent of GDP.

I don't agree with that. Assuming we actually knew GDP for 1800 or
1900 (or do "we" really know it ever?), we could rather casually say
that guvmint spending has been increased as a percentage. So it has
hardly been maintained as a constant rate. Everyone has their
opinions, but as a side note, it is my opinion that the increased rate
is most certainly not justified in either social or constitutional
frames.

But assuming one did know GDP, and a portion of its growth was due to
population and we assume-in services growth per capita, there will
also be a portion just due to productivity growth (per capita). I am
not aware of any justification that guvmint should get a full slice of
this productivity growth. One (not me) could possibly argue that
there will need be some services growth due to productivity gains, but
there is nothing to adjust that argument to a full slice. So I'm
saying expenditures as a percent of GDP should go down, even granting
assumptions I don't agree with.

I would luv it if guvmint spending rates returned to 1800 or 1900.

. For example, SS, which is just another tax, was increased
under Reagan, and any excess SS dollars just go into the Treasury by
law (which is how Clinton and that congress managed to run a small
surplus).

Very good. You get an "A". Not many people know that, or understand
the ramifications. That was pure genius. Under the guise of "fixing
social security" the Reaganites put thru a HUGE increase in the
social security tax. This created a "social security surplus" which
was promptly spent on tax cuts. The beauty is that social security
taxes are mostly paid by working class Americans, while the tax cuts
were structured to mostly benefit the wealthy. So the money went out
of the pockets of ordinary Americans and into the pockets of wealthy
Republicans. Being unsophisticated, average Americans have no idea
they were fleeced. They'll find out when social security and medicare
can't pay the benefits they were promised.

"Wealthy" amerikans don't need SS benefits, as they are rich. There
is no reason for them to pay into that system at all, or take anything
out (other than by guvmint decree). So if the rich get more out of
SS than they pay in, well who's fault is that?

And in in the link I gave, Gwartney says quite the opposite of you:
"The critics of the eighties tax policy argue that the top rate
reductions were a bonanza for the rich. The taxable income in the
upper tax brackets did increase sharply during the eighties. But the
taxes collected in these brackets also rose sharply. Measured in
1982-84 dollars, the income tax revenue collected from the top 10
percent of earners rose from $150.6 billion in 1981 to $199.8 billion
in 1988, an increase of 32.7 percent. The percentage increases in the
real tax revenue collected from the top 1 and top 5 percent of
taxpayers were even larger. In contrast, the real tax liability of
other taxpayers (the bottom 90 percent) declined from $161.8 billion
to $149.1 billion, a reduction of 7.8 percent. These findings confirm
what the supply-siders predicted: the lower rates, by increasing the
tax base substantially in the upper tax brackets, caused high-income
taxpayers to pay more taxes. In effect, the lower rates soaked the
rich."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/S...Economics.html
About the Author
James D. Gwartney is a professor of economics at Florida State
University. He was previously chief economist of the Joint Economic
Committee of the U.S. Congress.


It's true that the budget math lumps in social security with other
revenue, so Clinton's budgets would not have been balanced without
that revenue, but it was still a monumental accomplishment. That was
an attempt by the Republicans to move the goal posts so they could
deny that Clinton had scored. Notice they never say that the record
deficits of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were actually larger if you
leave out the social security revenue.

The point of this paragraph is that as much as I am unsure
that Laffer is condemned or vindicated by anything that happened in
the '80's, I am also not sure under what particular way of thinking/
analyzing one can honestly say "Reagan cut taxes." Did he? Under
what definition? In any case, whatever he (and congress) did to
taxes, I cannot assign that as a direct causal mechanism to running
deficits.

shrug You thoughtfully provided me with this:
"One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase
to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous
year's reduction."
I agree that the Reagan spending spree was certainly a factor.
Compare that with how Clinton balanced the budget. He basically
restrained the growth of spending and raised taxes to reduce the
deficit. That reduced the threat of inflation, which brought down
interest rates. That stimulated the economy as that low cost money was
invested by businesses. That raised revenues, which further lowered
the deficit. That's why we experienced a steadily declining deficit
and unprecedented prosperity during the Clinton years.

George Bush has reversed all that, which is why we're back in a job-
killing inflation spiral again.

I guess you're saying it is time to leave Laffer and enter Phillips.
I would rather just leave.

Why would inflation kill jobs? Does inflation effect real wage
rates. Would inflation make real wage rates decrease or increase?
Would that make it easier or harder to hire workers? How does the
president effect changes in inflation?

You have the facts right, it doesn't seem necessary to quibble over
whether it was spending or tax cuts that caused the deficits, clearly
it was both.

"It's the spending, stupid." -- Ben Franklin


From the perspective of the prototypical republican, Reagan was not
the saint he is made out to be. From the perspective of the
prototypical democrat, Reagan was not the demon he is made out to be.
Laffer's proposition has not be proven wrong, that I am aware of.

"SLAVE of THE STATE" wrote in message
...

But holding both constant, I disagree with you. There is no reason to
be spending more now than 5 years ago other than you have changed your
savings/consuming ratios according to your values and your personal
productivity growth, and then (hopefully) income generation.

If you don't hold both constant, you have to do a lot of work to
justify that you had to increase spending. Moreover, if you are
saying the central bank is effectively taxing you by expansion, thus
making your available real funds less (and then affecting your savings/
consuming ratio) then I certainly have no argument.

What's plain is that most of the fools here don't realize that the increase
in the economy automatically hands an increase in taxable income to the
federal government which means that as long as they're doing a decent job
growing the economy then they gain an increase at the same time.

And they don't seem to understand that deficit spending isn't a bill hanging
over our heads all alone - As well as the money that the government has
borrowed from the banking system, and hence generating a deficit, the
Federal Reserve simply prints up not only that much but additional amounts
to pay for the interest rates on that borrowed money. This means that there
each year is an increase in printed money (or debt) which each year makes
your savings worth less and less. This is an indirect form of taxation which
the Democrats invented and the Republicans are more than happy to use.

So the money went out
of the pockets of ordinary Americans and into the pockets of wealthy
Republicans.

The pretense being that Democrats would NEVER do anything like that. Yet
note Clinton years....

"Wealthy" amerikans don't need SS benefits, as they are rich. There
is no reason for them to pay into that system at all, or take anything
out (other than by guvmint decree). So if the rich get more out of
SS than they pay in, well who's fault is that?

Do you suppose that everyone that is rich at 25 is also rich at 65? If you
look into the Kennedy family you discover the overwhelming majority of them
are not "rich". We ALL pay SS because you never knew who was going to
require it. We pay everyone because they pay in.

The real problem is that the government never made any way of investing SS
funds so that they would end up with more than was put in. That didn't stop
them from pretending they could and raising SS often.

And in in the link I gave, Gwartney says quite the opposite of you:
"The critics of the eighties tax policy argue that the top rate
reductions were a bonanza for the rich. The taxable income in the
upper tax brackets did increase sharply during the eighties. But the
taxes collected in these brackets also rose sharply. Measured in
1982-84 dollars, the income tax revenue collected from the top 10
percent of earners rose from $150.6 billion in 1981 to $199.8 billion
in 1988, an increase of 32.7 percent. The percentage increases in the
real tax revenue collected from the top 1 and top 5 percent of
taxpayers were even larger. In contrast, the real tax liability of
other taxpayers (the bottom 90 percent) declined from $161.8 billion
to $149.1 billion, a reduction of 7.8 percent. These findings confirm
what the supply-siders predicted: the lower rates, by increasing the
tax base substantially in the upper tax brackets, caused high-income
taxpayers to pay more taxes. In effect, the lower rates soaked the
rich."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/S...Economics.html
About the Author
James D. Gwartney is a professor of economics at Florida State
University. He was previously chief economist of the Joint Economic
Committee of the U.S. Congress.

Of course that's been all over the internet for a decade and yet we still
see people lying about it. Maybe they're the same people who are trying to
tell us that Obama isn't simply a Communist in disguise.

George Bush has reversed all that, which is why we're back in a job-
killing inflation spiral again.

I guess you're saying it is time to leave Laffer and enter Phillips.
I would rather just leave.

Always those who are blaming Republicans are those who would be the first
targets of the super Socialists they are pushing. We can GUARANTEE that if
Obama gets in we will see the Military taking sharp cuts and social programs
taking HUGE increases. The end result is still higher national debts.

Why would inflation kill jobs? Does inflation effect real wage
rates. Would inflation make real wage rates decrease or increase?
Would that make it easier or harder to hire workers? How does the
president effect changes in inflation?

Shhhh! You aren't supposed to bring up the point that real inflation hardly
has any effect inside of a country as long as it isn't too rapid.

On Jul 7, 2:40*pm, SLAVE of THE STATE wrote:

*We've voluntarily voted to impose those taxes on ourselves and the
goods we use for the good of the resource, for everyone to enjoy.

Imagine that "we've voluntarily voted to impose those taxes on
ourselves." Um, the key feature of taxation is that it is
involuntary. *But I'm all for picking out which taxes I will
"voluntarily" pay. *lol

The taxes on hunting and fishing equipment were proposed and driven
through by conservation and sporting groups. This is one of them on
the federal level, and there are many more on the State level we have
asked for, and pushed through.

http://ipl.unm.edu/cwl/fedbook/pract.html

Not for it to be looted and destroyed
in the name of corporate welfare.

Well with lingo like that, leftists and eco-frauds are sure to see how
open-minded you are, rather than some superficial facade of open-
mindedness.

It's redistribution of the resources at my expense for little to no
gain on my part. They are taking my resource/money and handing it to a
corporation for no services rendered to me. Call it what you will.

But back to the point. *About 85% of the electical energy passed to
"the grid" in the US is generated by steam engines. *Most of those are
coal, and the rest are nat gas and nukes. *(I don't bother counting
any oil plants). *They all produce "heat pollution," which is a basic
cost of energy given today's capital structure of energy production
and demand. *A part of my point was that nukes can't be singled out
solely on a basis of heat pollution -- all the heat engine generators
do it. *If one wants a high-energy life-style, then heat pollution is
a trade-off that is made by default. *(Almost all transportation is
heat engine based.)

An essential parameter of heat-engine efficiency is the "cold
reservoir" temperatu raise the cold reservoir temperature and you
get lower efficiency. *Water is a favorable resource for the cold
reservoir in part due to its unusually high "specific heat."

Naturally, locating *any* heat engine on a river for using it as the
cold reservoir entails changing the temperature of the outflow water,
and this can, of course, have an effect on the local eco-system. *It
could potentially disrupt the eco-system such that certain species can
no longer survive there. *However, the river would not typically "die"
from such a thing, instead a new eco-system grows in place, more
suited to the new environment. *What I mean to say is that it is not
necessarily an all-for-nothing tradeoff. *Moreover, we know at the
outset of demanding a high-energy lifestyle that there will be a
tradeoff. *Nukes produce no C02, which is claimed to endanger the
"global environment" via AGW.

So the remaining questions a

1. is it worth it?
2. what canon of judgement does one use in answering #1 where property
rights don't exist by decree of guvmint?

"We" sure do hate the adult world of tradeoffs.

I failed to make it clear that this has been an operating plant, that
was putting water back into the river at current river temperatue, or
within a few degrees by running through their existing air cooling
tower. What they are being allowed to do is skip the air cooling to
increase their profit margin, at our expense. It's a whole lot cheaper
to buy a few politicians than do it right.

I want a pony
Sacrifices must be made
Values are funny things
Think globally, act locally

Global warming is a global thing. *Think locally by making the
sacrifice of a river for the global cause. *After all, you said you
own the river. *Maintain the high energy lifestyle, as you value it.

My choice is, and always has been to have a fairly small footprint.
I'm not willing to be screwed by a government endorsed monopoly so
that they can maintain their record profit margins.
Open up the competition. The river generates more revenue for the
State than the plant, but that is coming from many smaller sources,
not one bribe spewing cash cow. If your theory is the corporations can
do whatever they want, we should be able to do whatever we want to
defend our interests, if that's the case I can work with that. We
bring in David Brower and the troops and have a little libertarian
discussion.
I wasn't aware that the government helping monopoly corporations run
over individuals and their property was part of the libertarian
philiosophy. It's not part of mine.

I want a pony. *(I love that line.) *Besides, the word is that I have
no dog in this fight, while I ride my pony.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I have no idea how the critters got into this discussion, and really
don't care.
Bill C

"Bill C" wrote in message
...

My choice is, and always has been to have a fairly small footprint.
I'm not willing to be screwed by a government endorsed monopoly so
that they can maintain their record profit margins.

What are their profit margins?

The river generates more revenue for the
State than the plant, but that is coming from many smaller sources,
not one bribe spewing cash cow.

How many people work at that plant?

On Jul 7, 4:04*pm, "Tom Kunich" cyclintom@yahoo. com wrote:

Always those who are blaming Republicans are those who would be the first
targets of the super Socialists they are pushing. We can GUARANTEE that if
Obama gets in we will see the Military taking sharp cuts and social programs
taking HUGE increases. The end result is still higher national debts.


Not sure it's a guarantee Tom, but it's a really good bet. Even if he
does pull US troops out, or they are already on their way out which
should be the case, it's going to take massive amounts of cash to
rebuild the capablilities of the units, their equipment, and
stockpiles of spares and ammunition.
Wont even talk about the cost of actually funding the VA properly.
The good news is the Iraqi Govt is pushing for us to get out, and
since they are protecting some of the worst of the bunch fighting us
we need to take them up on THEIR demand, and get the hell out now.
Darwin at it's best. The Country explodes after that, too bleeping
bad. It's not always good to get what you want, but they just
giftwrapped Bush/McCain a HUGE present if he's smart enough to take
it. This isn't the enemy telling us to get out, this is the sovereogn
Govt. we are supporting standing on it's own two feet, which was our
goal, telling us it's ready to take over.
They should be signing that SO fast the pen leaves scorch marks on
the paper.
Bill C

"Bill C" wrote in message
...

The good news is the Iraqi Govt is pushing for us to get out, and
since they are protecting some of the worst of the bunch fighting us
we need to take them up on THEIR demand, and get the hell out now.

Sure we ought to simply throw away all of our investment in time, material,
money and planning.

They we ought to destroy our own military and let the Chinese run the world
in their manner.