At 06:56 PM 1/30/01 +1300, Bob Henderson wrote:
>Behind Canada and Norway but this is another crude index that has as one of
>its 3 factors, GNP/popln so wealth is still a major bias. Despite this, Cuba
>is ranked 58 out of 174 which classifies it as medium rather than third
>world.
That makes two invalid assumptions:
1) The gaps in actual HDI values is roughly equally across the rankings.
i.e. the difference between #11 and #12 is rought equal to the gap between
#58 and #59. This is incorrect.
2) Countries are evenly distributed among "developed", "transitioning", and
"developing."
>Because it is not a democracy and therefore doesn't have the same degree of
>socialism?
Clearly, Cuba is much more of a democracy than the US will ever be.
>" Indeed, I must admit I did not initially see much
>merit in the HDI itself, which, as it happens, I was privileged to help
>devise."
>AMARTYA SEN, 1998 NOBEL LAUREATE IN ECONOMICS
>Source - UN website.
I think this quote did not mean what you thought it meant.
>I read in another thread that you label yourself as an economist.
That is what the US Government tells me.
> An
>economist would have at the very worst a vague remembrance of the categories
>of govt income and expenditure no matter how specialised his work became.
>Your statement is a fine example of bigotry. Sycophantic supporters of the
>rich like to blame everything on the poor and in your case you blatantly
>state that the property of the rich is confiscated and given to the poor.
Who's blaming anything? I simply said that a tax rate of 40% is
confiscatory. (And that is only Federal tax, not counting local and State
taxes.) For many rich people, for every additional dolalr they earn,
they only see 60 cents! That is abhorrent to me.
>As
>a government economist it should not be difficult for you to determine the
>percentage of govt revenue derived from taxes and the percentage of
>expenditure on welfare for the poor.
Revenue
Individual Income Taxes : 48%
Corporate Income Taxes : 10%
Excise Taxes : 4%
Other Taxes (Estate, etc) : 4%
Spending:
Social Security: 22%
Medicare: 11%
Medicaid: 6%
Other Entitlements: 6%
Non-defense : 17%
Even excluding Social Security (which the rich, by definition, don't need),
that is at the very minimum 23% of spending on the poor.
>Taxes are used for a variety of expenditures. But the main benefactors of
>govt expenditure are the rich including the military/industrial complex and
>oil trans-nationals.
Obviously the poor do not benefit from a strong national defense and cheap
gasoline.
> But as an economist, you will know this already. It is the working and
>middle classes who pay disproportionate income and capital gains tax. (They
>are also the source of conscripted cannon fodder for the wars which further
>enrich America's aristocracy who are difficult to find in the infantry ranks
>but that is another topic.)
Yeah, the Middle Class should never have been asked to fight WWII. That
would have been just *awful.* After all, the middle class would have been
*so* much better off under Hitler or Stalin.
>I assume you are aware of the Bush
>family ownership of oil interests as it is more widely publicised than their
>WW2 joint ventures in banking and shipping with the Nazis.
George W. Bush was alive during WWII? Wow, that's a good one.
As for the rest of his family, I am sure that while George Sr. was being
shot done over the Pacific while fighting for his country, his first
thought was "there goes my joint ventures with the Nazis."
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"The point of living in a Republic after all, is that we do not live by
majority rule. We live by laws and a variety of isntitutions designed
to check each other." -Andrew Sullivan 01/29/01
