Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
On 03/04/2013 02:36 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: See also: Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/ This is the root of the problem. - Jed The Left keeps passing taxes which only apply to the poor. Obama's health care law was recently passed. It will tax the low and middle class about $2000 per family when it goes into effect. This tax won't affect the rich. Then there's medicare and social security. These add up to a 15% tax on the low and middle class. They don't apply on income over $100K. These taxes don't affect the rich. We have a regressive tax system in this country, and it just keeps getting worse with every new tax passed. I've worked my way up through this whole spectrum. Until I started making more than $100K, it felt like every time I was given a raise, it was taken away from me. It is quite discouraging, and is depressing society. The solution is to stop taking money from people against their will, using threats of violence. The idea that we can improve society if only we can threaten enough people, and take enough money from them, is preposterous. Craig
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 6:41 AM, Craig cchayniepub...@gmail.com wrote: The solution is to stop taking money from people against their will, using threats of violence. The idea that we can improve society if only we can threaten enough people, and take enough money from them, is preposterous. With the purchase of 2700 light tanks and millions of rounds of ammunition, it looks to me like the HSA is planning just the opposite of your recommendation: http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/homeland-security-has-purchased-2700.html I guess that, instead of assault weapons, we need to be stocking up on RPGs.
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
More of the same: http://www.silverdoctors.com/obama-begins-push-to-confiscate-iras-401ks/ If they do this, they will need the 2700 light tanks.
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 3:41 AM, Craig cchayniepub...@gmail.com wrote: The solution is to stop taking money from people against their will, using threats of violence. The idea that we can improve society if only we can threaten enough people, and take enough money from them, is preposterous. I cannot think of a more effective way to widen the gap between haves and have-nots than to repeal existing taxes. I appreciate the differing opinions on this list -- it's one of the few places where there's a genuine dialog on these topics that goes beyond sound-bites. But it is hard for me to see how there would be an occasion for confusion on this point. Eric
[Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
This is nicely done short video that illustrates quite well what people would like from the society. I would recommend to use two minutes on it, because it is interesting on sociological point of view. Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality http://mashable.com/2013/03/02/wealth-inequality/ —Jouni
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
RE: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Excellent neologism, Peter. This one will stick. I am always amazed at your creative instincts wrt the English language. Moneytheism, indeed! This alter-logo capability is reminiscent of Miguel Cervantes, who as a non-native speaker contributed more to this language at a certain level, than did Shakespeare. Forewarned is forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory. MdC From: Peter Gluck Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Peter, to be polite, your view is irrationally anti-civilization. It is so irrational that it gives a bad name to anarchists. You are irrational because you cannot seem to grasp that degrees of inequality -- degrees graphically illustrated in that video for those otherwise ignorant of the actual numbers (such as yourself) -- those degrees matter as a symptom of an underlying disease in society if not the disease itself. Look, its simple: Civilization enables accumulation of property beyond the homestead -- the accumulation of what might be called artificial property. Artificial property rights are therefore the proper tax base. Basing your taxes on economic activity is crazy and leads to run-away centralization of wealth. It is an obvious failure mode of civilization as the wealthy are prone to institutional capture in order to shift the tax base from wealth to economic activity. I laid all this out, including macroeconomic as well as microeconomic aspects in a white paper over 2 decades ago but the current short story is as follows: Tax the liquid value of artificial property rights at the risk free interest rate of modern portfolio theory. Establish liquid value via escrowed bids. The high escrowed bid for a property right receives interest at the risk free interest rate. Other bids do not. This gets rid of what might be called private sector economic rent as a corrupting influence on civilization. However, it leaves public sector rent seeking as a moral hazard. This is best dealt with by distributing revenues as a citizen's dividend -- equally to all citizens -- and requiring national defense to be decentralized as it is with the Swiss. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
The only thing shown to reduce income disparity is a freer market, yet that is the one thing not currently discussed. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
I think that much of the money held by the 1% crowd was obtained by legal monopolies. It is a shame that the regulators have not prevented this from occurring, but instead have encouraged it. True competition would prevent this from happening in most cases since the profits are substantial for those participating, and the various laws should be adjusted to break up such concentrations of power. Dave -Original Message- From: Paul Breed p...@rasdoc.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, Mar 4, 2013 11:16 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S. The only thing shown to reduce income disparity is a freer market, yet that is the one thing not currently discussed. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
My proposed tax system does just that through the liquid value estimation. Monopolies are basically no brainer asset valuations and if an asset's value is basically no brainer then its profit stream will be distributed to all citizens equally in the citizen's dividend. This works even for non-legislated monopolies such as Bill Gates' asset value in MS-DOS once IBM had made it the defacto industry standard birtually forcing everyone to pay a tax to Gates in order to benefit from industry standardization. Its terribly tragic people won't listen to me about this. It really is. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:34 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I think that much of the money held by the 1% crowd was obtained by legal monopolies. It is a shame that the regulators have not prevented this from occurring, but instead have encouraged it. True competition would prevent this from happening in most cases since the profits are substantial for those participating, and the various laws should be adjusted to break up such concentrations of power. Dave -Original Message- From: Paul Breed p...@rasdoc.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, Mar 4, 2013 11:16 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S. The only thing shown to reduce income disparity is a freer market, yet that is the one thing not currently discussed. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Dear James, I will not discuss here about subjects that are not related to LENR. Actually you are not speaking about my opinion, inequality is a fact both in Nature and in societies, I am not ignorant about any actual numbers or the Gini coefficients worldwide. You are over-complicating the facts, inequality goes beyond taxes and even political regimes. What a dredful inequality is in North Korea! The dictator is a god, many people die of hunger etc and from inside nothing can be changed. By the way, when I have worked in journalism (2002-2010) I could follow the steady increase of inequality worldwide on the Web and in practice in my country, It is a very powerful process. I remember using the following quote for one of my writings about Inequality: “*Nature* is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom”. *Francis Picabia quote* Nature's main aim is interestingness. I will continue this discussion only in private, Vortex has to be focused on LENR, it was almost destroyed by a Troll. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:04 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: Peter, to be polite, your view is irrationally anti-civilization. It is so irrational that it gives a bad name to anarchists. You are irrational because you cannot seem to grasp that degrees of inequality -- degrees graphically illustrated in that video for those otherwise ignorant of the actual numbers (such as yourself) -- those degrees matter as a symptom of an underlying disease in society if not the disease itself. Look, its simple: Civilization enables accumulation of property beyond the homestead -- the accumulation of what might be called artificial property. Artificial property rights are therefore the proper tax base. Basing your taxes on economic activity is crazy and leads to run-away centralization of wealth. It is an obvious failure mode of civilization as the wealthy are prone to institutional capture in order to shift the tax base from wealth to economic activity. I laid all this out, including macroeconomic as well as microeconomic aspects in a white paper over 2 decades ago but the current short story is as follows: Tax the liquid value of artificial property rights at the risk free interest rate of modern portfolio theory. Establish liquid value via escrowed bids. The high escrowed bid for a property right receives interest at the risk free interest rate. Other bids do not. This gets rid of what might be called private sector economic rent as a corrupting influence on civilization. However, it leaves public sector rent seeking as a moral hazard. This is best dealt with by distributing revenues as a citizen's dividend -- equally to all citizens -- and requiring national defense to be decentralized as it is with the Swiss. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
James you need to find people who will listen. Look at the Basic Income Earth Network if you haven't already heard of the organization. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/ How to fund a basic income is a serious topic in places where the movement is more advanced such as Europe, Brazil and Nambia and South Africa. Also check out the Journal of Basic Income studies: Basic Income Studies is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted to basic income and related issues of poverty relief and universal welfare. An exciting venture supported by major international networks of scholars, policy makers, and activists, Basic Income Studies is the only forum for scholarly research on this leading edge movement in contemporary social policy. Articles discuss the design and implementation of basic income schemes, and address the theory and practice of universal welfare in clear, non-technical language that engages the wider policy community. Past authors include Philippe Van Parijs, Claus Offe, Joel Handler, Erik Olin Wright, Philip Pettit, Carole Pateman and many more. BIS is published by The Berkeley Electronic Press, and from 2008 onwards publishes three issues per year, including a special themed issue in December. Recent themed issues discussed the relation between basic income and republicanism and feminist perspectives on basic income. You can download articles and research notes published in BIS *for free* via the Bepress guest access policy. Please visit the journal at http://www.bepress.com/bis, click the link of the article you want to view, and follow the instructions. harry On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:42 AM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: My proposed tax system does just that through the liquid value estimation. Monopolies are basically no brainer asset valuations and if an asset's value is basically no brainer then its profit stream will be distributed to all citizens equally in the citizen's dividend. This works even for non-legislated monopolies such as Bill Gates' asset value in MS-DOS once IBM had made it the defacto industry standard birtually forcing everyone to pay a tax to Gates in order to benefit from industry standardization. Its terribly tragic people won't listen to me about this. It really is. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:34 AM, David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com wrote: I think that much of the money held by the 1% crowd was obtained by legal monopolies. It is a shame that the regulators have not prevented this from occurring, but instead have encouraged it. True competition would prevent this from happening in most cases since the profits are substantial for those participating, and the various laws should be adjusted to break up such concentrations of power. Dave -Original Message- From: Paul Breed p...@rasdoc.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, Mar 4, 2013 11:16 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S. The only thing shown to reduce income disparity is a freer market, yet that is the one thing not currently discussed. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
To be clear, when I say irrational I mean it literally in the sense of Greek philosophy's emphasis on ratio: If you can't take a number out of context -- that is to say, a number without respect to another number which may provide a ratio. To attempt to do so is irRATIOnal. Yes inequality of wealth will always be with us. To read people talking about comparative degrees of inequality is to deny their RATIOnality. In your mind there are two positions to the discourse: equality and inequality. This is quite clearly irrational. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Dear James, I will not discuss here about subjects that are not related to LENR. Actually you are not speaking about my opinion, inequality is a fact both in Nature and in societies, I am not ignorant about any actual numbers or the Gini coefficients worldwide. You are over-complicating the facts, inequality goes beyond taxes and even political regimes. What a dredful inequality is in North Korea! The dictator is a god, many people die of hunger etc and from inside nothing can be changed. By the way, when I have worked in journalism (2002-2010) I could follow the steady increase of inequality worldwide on the Web and in practice in my country, It is a very powerful process. I remember using the following quote for one of my writings about Inequality: “*Nature* is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom”. *Francis Picabia quote* Nature's main aim is interestingness. I will continue this discussion only in private, Vortex has to be focused on LENR, it was almost destroyed by a Troll. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:04 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: Peter, to be polite, your view is irrationally anti-civilization. It is so irrational that it gives a bad name to anarchists. You are irrational because you cannot seem to grasp that degrees of inequality -- degrees graphically illustrated in that video for those otherwise ignorant of the actual numbers (such as yourself) -- those degrees matter as a symptom of an underlying disease in society if not the disease itself. Look, its simple: Civilization enables accumulation of property beyond the homestead -- the accumulation of what might be called artificial property. Artificial property rights are therefore the proper tax base. Basing your taxes on economic activity is crazy and leads to run-away centralization of wealth. It is an obvious failure mode of civilization as the wealthy are prone to institutional capture in order to shift the tax base from wealth to economic activity. I laid all this out, including macroeconomic as well as microeconomic aspects in a white paper over 2 decades ago but the current short story is as follows: Tax the liquid value of artificial property rights at the risk free interest rate of modern portfolio theory. Establish liquid value via escrowed bids. The high escrowed bid for a property right receives interest at the risk free interest rate. Other bids do not. This gets rid of what might be called private sector economic rent as a corrupting influence on civilization. However, it leaves public sector rent seeking as a moral hazard. This is best dealt with by distributing revenues as a citizen's dividend -- equally to all citizens -- and requiring national defense to be decentralized as it is with the Swiss. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.comwrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Erratum: If you... - You... On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:27 AM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: To be clear, when I say irrational I mean it literally in the sense of Greek philosophy's emphasis on ratio: If you can't take a number out of context -- that is to say, a number without respect to another number which may provide a ratio. To attempt to do so is irRATIOnal. Yes inequality of wealth will always be with us. To read people talking about comparative degrees of inequality is to deny their RATIOnality. In your mind there are two positions to the discourse: equality and inequality. This is quite clearly irrational. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.comwrote: Dear James, I will not discuss here about subjects that are not related to LENR. Actually you are not speaking about my opinion, inequality is a fact both in Nature and in societies, I am not ignorant about any actual numbers or the Gini coefficients worldwide. You are over-complicating the facts, inequality goes beyond taxes and even political regimes. What a dredful inequality is in North Korea! The dictator is a god, many people die of hunger etc and from inside nothing can be changed. By the way, when I have worked in journalism (2002-2010) I could follow the steady increase of inequality worldwide on the Web and in practice in my country, It is a very powerful process. I remember using the following quote for one of my writings about Inequality: “*Nature* is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom”. *Francis Picabia quote* Nature's main aim is interestingness. I will continue this discussion only in private, Vortex has to be focused on LENR, it was almost destroyed by a Troll. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:04 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: Peter, to be polite, your view is irrationally anti-civilization. It is so irrational that it gives a bad name to anarchists. You are irrational because you cannot seem to grasp that degrees of inequality -- degrees graphically illustrated in that video for those otherwise ignorant of the actual numbers (such as yourself) -- those degrees matter as a symptom of an underlying disease in society if not the disease itself. Look, its simple: Civilization enables accumulation of property beyond the homestead -- the accumulation of what might be called artificial property. Artificial property rights are therefore the proper tax base. Basing your taxes on economic activity is crazy and leads to run-away centralization of wealth. It is an obvious failure mode of civilization as the wealthy are prone to institutional capture in order to shift the tax base from wealth to economic activity. I laid all this out, including macroeconomic as well as microeconomic aspects in a white paper over 2 decades ago but the current short story is as follows: Tax the liquid value of artificial property rights at the risk free interest rate of modern portfolio theory. Establish liquid value via escrowed bids. The high escrowed bid for a property right receives interest at the risk free interest rate. Other bids do not. This gets rid of what might be called private sector economic rent as a corrupting influence on civilization. However, it leaves public sector rent seeking as a moral hazard. This is best dealt with by distributing revenues as a citizen's dividend -- equally to all citizens -- and requiring national defense to be decentralized as it is with the Swiss. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.comwrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Dear Peter, I think you choosing between the western style inequality of the 1960's with Soviet style equality. However, western style inequality of today is wicked. harry On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Dear James, I will not discuss here about subjects that are not related to LENR. Actually you are not speaking about my opinion, inequality is a fact both in Nature and in societies, I am not ignorant about any actual numbers or the Gini coefficients worldwide. You are over-complicating the facts, inequality goes beyond taxes and even political regimes. What a dredful inequality is in North Korea! The dictator is a god, many people die of hunger etc and from inside nothing can be changed. By the way, when I have worked in journalism (2002-2010) I could follow the steady increase of inequality worldwide on the Web and in practice in my country, It is a very powerful process. I remember using the following quote for one of my writings about Inequality: “Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom”. Francis Picabia quote Nature's main aim is interestingness. I will continue this discussion only in private, Vortex has to be focused on LENR, it was almost destroyed by a Troll. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 6:04 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: Peter, to be polite, your view is irrationally anti-civilization. It is so irrational that it gives a bad name to anarchists. You are irrational because you cannot seem to grasp that degrees of inequality -- degrees graphically illustrated in that video for those otherwise ignorant of the actual numbers (such as yourself) -- those degrees matter as a symptom of an underlying disease in society if not the disease itself. Look, its simple: Civilization enables accumulation of property beyond the homestead -- the accumulation of what might be called artificial property. Artificial property rights are therefore the proper tax base. Basing your taxes on economic activity is crazy and leads to run-away centralization of wealth. It is an obvious failure mode of civilization as the wealthy are prone to institutional capture in order to shift the tax base from wealth to economic activity. I laid all this out, including macroeconomic as well as microeconomic aspects in a white paper over 2 decades ago but the current short story is as follows: Tax the liquid value of artificial property rights at the risk free interest rate of modern portfolio theory. Establish liquid value via escrowed bids. The high escrowed bid for a property right receives interest at the risk free interest rate. Other bids do not. This gets rid of what might be called private sector economic rent as a corrupting influence on civilization. However, it leaves public sector rent seeking as a moral hazard. This is best dealt with by distributing revenues as a citizen's dividend -- equally to all citizens -- and requiring national defense to be decentralized as it is with the Swiss. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com wrote: Inequality is a law of Nature. Now, when we are living in Moneytheism, it is applied to wealth, in the dawn of the human societies it was already applied to power. (who has invented kings, emperors, dictators?) Re-read please the chapter about Mediocristan and Extremistan in the Black Swan by N.N. Taleb a great book to be read by LENR workers of all ages,too. Democracy can scratch a bit at the surface of Inequality but cannot change the situation much. Peter On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: That is depressing. The facts described in it have been widely known for decades. It is like the extreme cost variations of healthcare described in Time magazine the other day. Educated people know about it but it is not considered politically correct to discuss it in the mass media or during political campaigns. - Jed -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com -- Dr. Peter Gluck Cluj, Romania http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
On Mar 4, 2013, at 7:27 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: Yes inequality of wealth will always be with us. As Vortex L is a science forum, then scientifically speaking what level of inequality would be preferred? Sociological and economical aspects are good to be considered. Inequality is not something that is discretely on/off but it is matter of degree and lots of grey shades. Platon was an advocate of inequality, because he thought that richest people should earn five times as much as common people. Is this good level of inequality? —Jouni
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
See also: Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/ This is the root of the problem. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
Buffett says his rate is lower while at the same time the company he owns is having a major battle with the IRS. With both Liberal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.html and Conservative references: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/buffett-irs-back-taxes/2011/09/01/id/409520 Do as I say not as I do. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: See also: Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/ This is the root of the problem. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
When you see public policies that offer you an opportunity to profit at the expense of society, the proper response is to proclaim the policies as bad while you go ahead and exploit those profit opportunities so you can remain competitive against those who would silently profit at society's expense. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 4:41 PM, Paul Breed p...@rasdoc.com wrote: Buffett says his rate is lower while at the same time the company he owns is having a major battle with the IRS. With both Liberal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.html and Conservative references: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/buffett-irs-back-taxes/2011/09/01/id/409520 Do as I say not as I do. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: See also: Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/ This is the root of the problem. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:OT: Wealth and Inequality in U.S.
i would much prefer to live in a world where the immediate discussion on stories such as this was how can we increase government productivity and eliminate inefficiencies so the secretary's rate could be reduced below that of his not to immediately want to raise his. Paul Breed p...@rasdoc.com wrote: Buffett says his rate is lower while at the same time the company he owns is having a major battle with the IRS. With both Liberal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/29/warren-buffett-taxes-berkshire-hathaway_n_941099.html and Conservative references: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/buffett-irs-back-taxes/2011/09/01/id/409520 Do as I say not as I do. On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: See also: Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/ This is the root of the problem. - Jed
