It's come to my attention that a few key areas have been neglected in this discussion, namely:
The thickness of sea ice, in addition/contrast to it's area and in relation to historical values. Especially with the recent openings of the NorthEast and NorethWest passages due to less/thinner ice.
The extent of the permafrost and the change in it's area in recent times.
ask the people in the northern part of the country how they are doing right now. I don't think they will say good.
3+ feet of snow in most places.
I talked with a friend of mine in dallas the other day it was snowing.
Anyway it use to be greenland was green and there were no glaciers on it. in fact there are a lot of glaciers where there wasn't any before.
That is like people love to bring up polar bears. according to the actual data.
1-2 species were in a minor decline
3-8 of them were holding steady
9-15(or 16) actually are thriving.
People the earths climate changes when it wants to. we are talking in spans of 100's of years at a time.
No human activity could have caused those changes then either no difference then than now. earth is going through another warming and cooling trend just like it always has.
Different weather patterns such as EL nino and LA nina have huge impacts on world temperatures and weather patterns as well. We have just left a very strong la nina and are headed into an el nino pattern.
which we will see warming ocean which leads to more co2 being released as well.
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I'm in love with this new intellectual world...:cool:
So in other words simply appealing to authority as a baseless claim that everyone that "denies" human effects on climate in the face of a nascent science is uneducated. There's enough pseudo sciences in the realm of history to fill multiple textbooks, ironically some of us conservatives have read some of them.
If you think that college is going to give you all the world's answers, you're wrong. Ultimately the best students search out for their own answers and take up the challenge to defend their positions with new knowledge. Actually if anything, if you're in an environment without opposition your education is stifled. It's great to learn from people that dedicate themselves to a field their entire lives, but also realize that there are other clusters out there that do not share that point of view.
There are also internal politicking in academia when it comes to tenure and resource allocation. Depending on how the department is ran, there are also egos that are larger than the moon that can stifle intellectualism. So, be warned academia isn't without its problems of pristine feats of intellectualism.
It isn't a myth. Businesses don't pay taxes. they charge your for it. it is figured into their expense on the item along with all their employee wages. then they mark it up to what profit they want to make.
Businesses do pay taxes, because otherwise they wouldn't be lobbying Congress to try to make tax loop holes that seem small on paper that translate into millions of dollars. If the Congress ever takes up rewriting the tax code this century, it'll make health reform look like a paper cut to the blood bath that will ensue.
"Profit" is relative. Profit for who, what, and where the money is allocated towards. Right now wages have risen for management exponentially and outstripping the lower end players. Management also increases their shares of the company in order to gain windfall from dividends. These actions are dynamically opposed to the interests of stockholders. The more stock in the pool, the lower value your stock is. The more management earns, the less stockholders receive in dividends or future earnings based on reinvestment into the business.
Administrative costs are out of proportion to what is profitable from bad contracts with management. Also, with American corporate taxes you have to factor in actual paid taxes versus what is preserved through loopholes. Every time a business sets up shop it gets tax incentives from the surrounding community and state and sometimes the Feds. At the federal level there are multiple loopholes exploited and continually created by lobbyists and government to increase net profits. So before you begin to talk about tax rates being too high for business, look at the resource allocation and the effects of those resource allocations.
Looking at the issue of taxation, let's look at Ireland. For a while it supported free immigration and very low corporate taxes. Conservative heaven. Except reality has now hit the Emerald Isle and the massive spike in home prices, speculation, and businesses are packing up shop and leaving areas destitute. This boom/bust scenario does not help out to make a stable society.
Predictability in an unstable system can be controlled some what. The Irish are also have issues with government financing. Why? Because of the other section of the Laffer Curve where you have taxes too low. Ireland is having issues paying for its expenses because it collected too few taxes to keep up with infrastructure and basic social services with the population explosion.
This creates a cascade effect on small businesses such as S type corporations and other such thing. The small business lacks the agility to spar with stealth taxation that their corporate counterparts do. Therefore, when new taxes are made with the ideal of increasing the actual taxation we get from corporations they instead use Super Lobbying powers to stifle the effects of that taxation. The tax then falls to lower ranking business, this is also part of the strategy of corporations to gain small economic advantages over their competitor corporations and small business counterparts.
What in short we have is two fold:
1. Unstable rules and unfair rules system to which he who has the gold makes the rules
2. Stealth taxes that are not fully comprehensible.
The reason I support a VAT tax is because its simple to calculate and can be used to pay off the deficit and increasing infrastructure. It would also pressure the market into using less fuel. It works in Europe, however Europe also in successful countries has a more diversified economy.
why? they costs have gone up everything from wages etc... they don't pay for it the consumer does.
Proportionality and wage power has declined. Why do we have the Gini Coefficient at all if those computations aren't useful for something? When wage power declines and housing prices increase, or our warped Bizzaro world scenario, you have created a proletariat class of people.
Does nothing more than increase the cost of consumer goods while businesses and companies continue doing what they are doing. If you think they are going to consume less you are mistaken. they will simply pass the cost onto the consumer.
That is in part of what its supposed to do, it is to make the consumer consume less. The corporations and businesses panic and place money into research that consumes less oil or alternative energies.
I agree to a point. Banks have learned their lesson for now and they are not lending it unless you have the assets to back it up with.
Quite the contrary, they aren't lending to anyone that really matters. The investment banks are utilizing capital to buy stock, which is nothing more than an M:TG card, and recapitalizing through these stock run ups. The issue is that it doesn't create any jobs. No jobs, stock market crashes again in a sucker's rally, and banks sit on their hoard.
It depends on the company. the company i work for and my wife work for another one both international companies. no one got raises last year. i got a bonus but it was very small.
Still the wage proportionality is not what it used to be post Labor Movement to the relative decline of the unions during the 1980's. The question is how the company deploys its capital to try and increase its relative power through LBO's and so forth.
I'm looking at the long term trends of businesses, not the short term trends with the financial mess we're in right now.
management didn't get one and just recently they went on another layoff spree in management.
Like likes like. Profit motivated people enjoy profit. The issue with the structural changers that boomers placed into the system were to make business more cut throat for middle management. However, we still reward mediocrity in many corporate top brass.
The issue with the 60's 70's was the massive spending through the Great Society projects and the Vietnam War. War triggers inflation; always. LBJ's Great Society was also not deficit neutral. It did create some good projects that we still benefit from today, but without it being deficit neutral it also triggered economic issues.
Keynesianism hasn't ever been really tried to be honest, since we rarely if ever run a surplus in government. This mostly has to do with us being over promised, and underfunded.
when my company was making more money i was making more money. now that they aren't making as much money i am making less money.
Yes, people will make less money sometimes. The question is agility and resourcefulness. Economically right now we're like a smoker trying to run a marathon. We have to quit smoking in order to beef up our economy. The question people don't agree on is what do we quit, where do we train, and how do we train to get back to "normal."
any attempts to fund other research is well just not there. more of it is coming from the private sector than from government. the problem with it is cost and infrastructure.
We have the wealth to do so, but not the will power. When you try to shoe horn everything into a Sigma Six approach for too many industries, you're going to short change innovation.
until we do we have to fund the thing that is keeping us going which is oil.
Which is why we need microeconomics back with convection of money to support local, small businesses. The convection of macroeconomics has to be diverted towards the telos of jobs and getting off oil. Sounds easy, but its not. Government needs to lead with an energy policy, a regulatory framework, simplified regulation (simplification=!deregulate everything), and fiscal policies of the 1990's institutionalized. Business needs to begin to realize that rising wages are good for business and unions aren't Satan. Low prices mean low wages and that means poverty.
it took 90 years to totally switch from leaded to unleaded gas. this is going to take much longer.
Then why did Reagan screw around and not lead us with a superior energy policy? The best chance we had for a comprehensive energy policy was after 9/11. Bush played footsey with the concept, but did not follow through like he did with the wars. I'll give the Democrats this much, at least they tried. The only issue with Democrats is that demand-side economics means squat.
there are things that we can do now but they won't.
It goes back to will power. We have technology sitting on the side lines that would revolutionize multiple industries, but we don't use it because it's not cool enough. Businesses with money can sit on patents as long as they wish to do so.
It's come to my attention that a few key areas have been neglected in this discussion, namely:
The thickness of sea ice, in addition/contrast to it's area and in relation to historical values. Especially with the recent openings of the NorthEast and NorethWest passages due to less/thinner ice.
The extent of the permafrost and the change in it's area in recent times.
Except we're coming out of an interglacial period and warming up as a part of that trend. You're also neglecting that stuff happens pretty fast with the Earth, it's not going to stand still because of a few tribesmen remembering what it was like "back in the day."
There's also evidence and so forth that shows how during the Medival Warming Period about the trees in those cold regions began to grow larger and bigger. These places are specifically adapted to these kinds of changes. A warmer environment also triggers the growth process and migratory of larger land animals. Our land animals today dwarf the ancient animals that were killed off from in part a changing climate and the cascade effect it had on the wild life.
which we will see warming ocean which leads to more co2 being released as well.
You also neglected cloud power in the cycle with CO2, plant growth, solar reflection with snow, and clouds that rain and reflect sunlight. It's a self regulating cycle with the planet warming and cooling without us involved. Stratospheric cooling is also not completely nugatory either to compensate for heating or cooling of the planet as it fluctuates as a part of this cycle.
It goes back to will power. We have technology sitting on the side lines that would revolutionize multiple industries, but we don't use it because it's not cool enough. Businesses with money can sit on patents as long as they wish to do so.
It's not that it's not "cool" enough; it's that the dirty, old stuff is cheap enough. With an effective pricing system (carbon tax, cap-and-trade, doesn't matter) on coal and other inefficient, high-social-cost methods of energy production, companies will jump to natural gas, wind, solar, solar-thermal, solar-hydrogen, etc. in droves.
I mean, and also @mystery, consider the position of a business. Given a government tax on a certain production method, with others available, would you rather
a) Keep your current (and now taxed) production methods and raise prices, thereby lowering demand for your product; or
b) Switch to the cheapest alternative and keep prices the same (or even lower them?) and see no negative change in demand, at the very least
?
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Do I Contradict Myself? Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
"Stealth" taxes are actually good, in certain situations. Namely when they're used for the public interest.
"Stealth" taxation should be able to be done in your head when you know how much of a certain resource you use. The problem is when Bob's Corporation lobby's Congress for tax exclusion for their area of influence, but Jane's small LLC doesn't have the same advantage that is not covered by the law because of her sector being slightly different but still competing with Bob's Corporation.
A clear precise game field without any lobbying shenanigans that are kept in place and simple enough that a caveman could do it is necessary for economic stability. It's all about plug and play rules.
It's not that it's not "cool" enough; it's that the dirty, old stuff is cheap enough. With an effective pricing system (carbon tax, cap-and-trade, doesn't matter) on coal and other inefficient, high-social-cost methods of energy production, companies will jump to natural gas, wind, solar, solar-thermal, solar-hydrogen, etc. in droves.
I mean, and also @mystery, consider the position of a business. Given a government tax on a certain production method, with others available, would you rather
a) Keep your current (and now taxed) production methods and raise prices, thereby lowering demand for your product; or
b) Switch to the cheapest alternative and keep prices the same (or even lower them?) and see no negative change in demand, at the very least
?
The problem is supply side, not demand side. When regulating it at a macro level with something subjective like carbon emissions you have people:
1. Making a whole new financial infrastructure for the financial industry to mess with reallocating funds around. We already do this with Wall Street as is and we're still in trouble, why give the financial industry a new product when they can't manage the current ones?
2. A VAT tax on oil products is superior:
A. A child can calculate VAT
B. It's been shown to impact cars in Europe and other vehicles of emission
C. Higher gas prices has always encouraged less consumption of resources in builds
D. It does not add any new levels of regulatory committees to government and restricts the power of government
So give me a reason why we need bigger corporations, bigger government, and bigger frameworks to screw with carbon emissions when a VAT tax that could be used to pay down the deficit and invest into infrastructure could be used instead?
Tell me, can you explain the entire stock market interactions with the banking industry and government to a small child? How about a VAT tax in comparison?
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Val business is always going to do what is cheaper for them even though it might not be as efficient as what we would like.
the biggest reason is return on investment. they get a better return on old reliable and new and shiny.
Businesses do pay taxes
I use to be a sales person and doing quotes for people. I can tell you that everytime i did a quote it factored in everything. time, materials, tax etc...
the company might have wrote a check for the taxes but someone else paid it.
Proportionality and wage power has declined
wages have declined as much as prices for items have exceed the raises. why because we keep raising the bottom line. which increases cost for everyone and thereby lowers pay even if it goes up.
companies will jump to natural gas, wind, solar, solar-thermal, solar-hydrogen, etc. in droves.
all of which are highly inefficient at produce mass amounts of energy. natural gas not so much but the rest yes.
in the mean time we get stuck paying huge taxes on things. you are looking at an economic disaster.
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I use to be a sales person and doing quotes for people. I can tell you that everytime i did a quote it factored in everything. time, materials, tax etc...
the company might have wrote a check for the taxes but someone else paid it.
And where does the money originate at? What begins that transaction cycle? Where does the velocity of money begin at? By your definition with transaction there is no originator for money.
wages have declined as much as prices for items have exceed the raises. why because we keep raising the bottom line. which increases cost for everyone and thereby lowers pay even if it goes up.
Which is only part of the equation, you're ignoring the effects of solvency and liquidity coupled with currency manipulation from China and an array of other factors. I mean do you even look at any other transactions than taxes?
all of which are highly inefficient at produce mass amounts of energy. natural gas not so much but the rest yes.
in the mean time we get stuck paying huge taxes on things. you are looking at an economic disaster.
The way to produce energy isn't so much at a massive scale, but on a microscale. It's better in the hands of locals rather than massive projects. Localism is more efficient than federal level projects when the needs of the community are met.
What disaster we're looking at now is with corporations redistributing capital offshore and into industries that do not create American jobs. The law in America is also convoluted and screws over the plug and play ability for microtransactors.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
And where does the money originate at? What begins that transaction cycle? Where does the velocity of money begin at? By your definition with transaction there is no originator for money.
Really has nothing to do with what i posted. sure there is it begins with the person coming in an wanting goods or services.
Which is only part of the equation, you're ignoring the effects of solvency and liquidity coupled with currency manipulation from China and an array of other factors. I mean do you even look at any other transactions than taxes?
I didn't ignore anything. wages have gone up but the price increase on goods and services has wiped out what increase there was. I am not ignoring anything you just didn't read what i posted.
The way to produce energy isn't so much at a massive scale, but on a microscale. It's better in the hands of locals rather than massive projects. Localism is more efficient than federal level projects when the needs of the community are met.
You are not understanding what i mean by massive. I am talking massive in terms of energy produced. solar and wind etc are great on a very small scale they will not support the needed infrastructure though. Nuclear power on the other hand can and does.
I understand that but we are talking about a national overhaul in how we produce power.
What disaster we're looking at now is with corporations redistributing capital offshore and into industries that do not create American jobs. The law in America is also convoluted and screws over the plug and play ability for microtransactors.
why do you think they are doing that? because it is cheaper. there isn't an incentive to keep jobs here. when it is cheaper to ship it overseas.
You want to create jobs you have to give a reason to do it. With your VAT tax you would only increase that rate rather than lower it.
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Man-made global warming is a hoax, and if it weren't apparent by the fact that global temperatures are going down, then it's hugely apparent in the fact that every "official" on the topic refuses to have open debates with proponents of it. If they're ever forced into the situation, they use vague evasive replies that answer only one thing: they don't know a damn thing.
Not to mention all the money in it.
Don't believe me? Mount Pinatubo and recent solar activities. The former released more CO2 than man ever has in one collosal eruption, and the latter would seem to largely account for the temperature rise, as it had been quite active.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Really has nothing to do with what i posted. sure there is it begins with the person coming in an wanting goods or services.
It does, the point you brought up was inflation. Inflation is tied to wages, and wages are tied to the credit market. Taxation is inherently tied to wages and the credit market. All are tied to the currency market. You have to account for the whole system to analyze transactions by which to comprehend demand and supply.
You are not understanding what i mean by massive. I am talking massive in terms of energy produced. solar and wind etc are great on a very small scale they will not support the needed infrastructure though. Nuclear power on the other hand can and does.
The question is whether we want or need centralized power stations any more or move towards a decentralized power grid with redistribution centers. I'll agree with you that we have to use transitional technologies, and the bugaboo about nuclear power is a hogwash.
The thing we need is two fold:
1. Energy consumption to go down
2. Energy distribution mechanics increased
I understand that but we are talking about a national overhaul in how we produce power.
The thing is we need new architecture, retrofitting services, and various other endemic issues to be corrected as well. However, the reason to mark up oil costs is to transition faster to conservative practices and technologies as well.
why do you think they are doing that? because it is cheaper. there isn't an incentive to keep jobs here. when it is cheaper to ship it overseas.
It's the framework we basically use. For starters our regulatory framework sucks. Our contracts and legal system are dominated by elites and becoming more and more unintelligible to even the lawmakers themselves. We have an overly centralized financial system that is taking wealth and concentrating it into a single institution.
Furthermore, China is messing with their currency to keep it low. When they have our money, they buy American property and bonds with it. This gives them economic hegemony over us to an extent but also leaves them vulnerable to our own endemic problems. The issue right now with trade is that China is gaming the system. You have to stop China from playing with its currency through devaluing it, since it's not only sucking American manufacturing jobs but also Asian manufacturing jobs like in Japan.
So let's take the classic conservative incentive approach to easy taxation and low regulation. Case in point: Ireland. There was rampant speculation within various markets that created several bubbles. The population outpaced the basic social services provided by government such as education and so forth, but they lacked funding because of the low wages and lack of business taxes. So when the economy start to sour, businesses and the buildings started to back out and leave. Immigrants also went home or abroad to other economic opportunities.
So what's Ireland like now? Well, they're in a big crunch without much stability. You want slow, periodic growth with some planning for infrastructure and financial regulations. Without it, you have economic desolation. Too much growth creates problems, too slow growth also creates problems as well as no growth at all.
The point is for a country you need "plug and play" based economics. You need people to understand the rules of the game and able to quickly interact with the market. This does not mean deregulate everything, it means simplify and codify the rule set so anyone with a high school diploma can understand law without the need for some interlocutor.
Increasing complexity increases the want for a black market system where people ignore rules. People like simplicity with their "shalt nots" and "shall do's," let's go back to that?
You want to create jobs you have to give a reason to do it. With your VAT tax you would only increase that rate rather than lower it.
The issue with conservatives is that we only look at incentives rather than disincentives coupled with incentives. Equal distribution of punishment and reward is an ancient political concept. We want to:
1. Lower oil consumption
2. Increase conservative fiscal practices and technologies
3. Pay off the national debt
Now what Liberals want to do with Cap and Trade is to stimulate new technologies. What that does though is partially good with the system used in Europe. Businesses took the stick as a threat, and changed behaviors. The plus side was less reliance on imported fuels, and new technologies and systems cropped up.
The downside was the creation of a new reallocation of wealth with traders that trade in something inherently worthless; Carbon Credits. Carbon Credits are prone to bubbles and everything else like the stock market (it is the stock market 2.0). It centralizes power into the hands of a few and takes money out of the pockets of common folk and gives it to the hands of a few people adept at trading something inherently as worthless as a Magic the Gathering card. However, with a complex framework that MTG card/credit now has significance to multiple industries and many lives. If manipulation and bubbles occurs, we'll need a cycle of more regulation and so forth.
A VAT tax on the other hand does increase government, but smaller government is not the way to go as seen by the last several years. You have to have plug and play economics available to everyone. This requires a nightwatchman or the government to have a regulatory framework in place. Everyone understands the basics of taxes, and try to go great lengths to avoid them. Everyone can also understand a VAT tax.
Furthermore, a VAT tax has no centralization. Actually, it decentralizes taxation to an extent depending on how it is allocated. If allocated to different infrastructure projects or lowering the deficit, it would have a positive feedback loop to the nation at large. Businesses use infrastructure, period. The national debt right now is helping to trigger inflation and lowering the amount of property available to the United States citizen.
However, the issue is also fair trade coupled with this. What a VAT tax does is hobble places like Iran without much effort. Less oil money going to the Middle East, the less they get to invest into military arms. This may also trigger a negative feedback loop into making these countries finally diversifying their own economies and getting out of the oil boom/bust scenario. We put up the "no oil economy" signal, and they'll be scrambling to figure out what to do. They do have resources there they do not use though to diversify with, it's just a choice not to.
Anyway, returning back to "equal distribution of punishment and reward." It is the carrot and the stick. If you use the carrot too much, you make people fat and lazy. If you use the stick too much, you make them fearful and therefore inept. If you reward a person properly with the "carrot" they will go where you want them to or find ways to surprise you, but if they go astray you have to use the stick to shoo them in the right direction.
Right now business is not going in the right direction. Trade is not in a good shape right now for many countries because of China's China First policy and currency manipulation screwing over fair free trade. There's also businesses themselves, but I can get into that later. If money centralizes into the hands of the few, then the few can exert hegemony over the many.
In essence, we want plug and play rules with fair trade to allow everyone to participate. We need a framework that offers up less consolidation of power, more property ownership (in the classical sense), and evenly distributed wealth through the capitalist system.
My argument for government involvement in the oil crisis is based on two points of national security:
1. We cannot support rogue nations indirectly through our exportation of American wealth that will be turned on us.
2. We need economic stability in the Americas or else we will not be able to maintain our institutions at all. No middle class, no America.
3. This ties in with the third, by sacrificing now we can live through peak oil and a lower saturation point for oil without much change to our daily lives. Moving away from oil by taking some pain after the recession is over through a VAT tax.
4. We fight fascism and other problems with plug and play economics with a focus on local economies.
5. Boom/bust scenarios invites human suffering, human suffering invites reactions like fascism and communism and to an extent terrorism.
Not to mention the positive feedback cycle that's garnered through people buying less stuff and saving more.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
It does, the point you brought up was inflation. Inflation is tied to wages, and wages are tied to the credit market. Taxation is inherently tied to wages and the credit market. All are tied to the currency market. You have to account for the whole system to analyze transactions by which to comprehend demand and supply.
Inflation is not tied to wages but the cost of making a product. It goes up and down based upon how expensive it is to get that product. During the housing boom building materials suffered from hyper-inflation.
That didn't mean wages went up at all. Wages did increase in those years but that was because businesses were making money.
Wages are tied to the ability of the company to pay them. Not the credit market. The credit market goes up and down all the time that doesn't mean my pay does.
The currency market just reflects the buying power of that currency. Right now the US dollar is taking a beating. What that means though is that it is cheaper for other countries to buy our products. Taxation is put at whatever the government decides to set it at.
that in turn can affect other economic functions.
The question is whether we want or need centralized power stations any more or move towards a decentralized power grid with redistribution centers. I'll agree with you that we have to use transitional technologies, and the bugaboo about nuclear power is a hogwash.
I believe that a centralized system is bad. it has to many single points of failure while a decentralized on won't. remember that black out in NY that knocked out half the north part of the country. all because of a problem in maimi i think.
sorry nuclear power is the next generation whether you like it or not. there is nothing more efficient.
1. Energy consumption to go down
2. Energy distribution mechanics increased
1. isn't going to happen.
2. i agree we need more efficient ways to generate power.
The thing is we need new architecture, retrofitting services, and various other endemic issues to be corrected as well. However, the reason to mark up oil costs is to transition faster to conservative practices and technologies as well.
marking up oil costs does nothing but hurt people instead. You can't get a faster transition it will happen as those product prove viable and sustainable not until then.
It's the framework we basically use. For starters our regulatory framework sucks. Our contracts and legal system are dominated by elites and becoming more and more unintelligible to even the lawmakers themselves. We have an overly centralized financial system that is taking wealth and concentrating it into a single institution.
i agree. I think the fed is screwing this country and no one cares.
Furthermore, China is messing with their currency to keep it low.
they have been doing this forever and have gotten in trouble on more than one occasion by the world banks for it. nothing is done though they still manipulate it.
So let's take the classic conservative incentive approach to easy taxation and low regulation.
I am more in the camp of low taxation and moderate regulation. I believe some thing needs to be there but it shouldn't be over bearing to the point of suffication. lower taxation brings in more money this is a proven fact and has been proven.
This does not mean deregulate everything, it means simplify and codify the rule set so anyone with a high school diploma can understand law without the need for some interlocutor
I agree there is no reason that our tax system can't be 1 page. which is why i am for either a flat tax at 10% or a consumption tax of some kind while getting rid of the income tax.
The downside was the creation of a new reallocation of wealth with traders that trade in something inherently worthless; Carbon Credits. Carbon Credits are prone to bubbles and everything else like the stock market
I remember the last time this was in effect there were companies that were started just for the purpose of buying and selling carbon credits. bid/ask price and they made millions off the spreads.
of course they went away when the last one was done away with.
A VAT tax on the other hand does increase government, but smaller government is not the way to go as seen by the last several years.
we haven't had a smaller government since reagan. since then government has done nothing but expand.
Everyone can also understand a VAT tax.
yes they understand. they understand that it means they just have to work that much harder to make what they did before the VAT tax. all taxes do is hurt the working person and keep them further down in the hole.
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More money for whom, exactly? This didn't work out well for Reagan anyway since he cut income and increased defence spending and somehow debt tripled. Fancy that. It didn't work very well for Bush either since actual collected tax revenue 2000-2007 slowed.
But Reagan "increased government" too. It's true that he cut support for poor people and threw the mentally ill out onto the streets but he was a lot more generous towards the military-industrial complex and gave them a lot of money. That he had borrowed. Never mind that he saw that this wasn't working and raised some other taxes to attempt to compensate.
Reagan has a mixed report card like Jackson. I like some of what these presidents did to the country, but they also had glaring negatives. Reagan also lacked the hindsight we have today. His generation was paranoid about the USSR and wanted it gone. So he utilized the arms race and that useless Star Wars program to run them into the ground. However, people could also argue Karol Wojtyla's work and those of the union in Easter Europe were equally, if not more productive to pick the bones of the USSR empire. There was also Gorbachev that introduced glasnost and perestroika reforms.
However, Reagan's hand forced Gorbachev to the negotiating table rather than allow for him to preen himself under the guise of superiority, though.
What Reagan did right was what Clinton and Gingrich did right. They lowered government spending, lowered the right taxes, deregulated some of the stupid ideas liberals had put in place (price controlled oil being #1), and retained some of the better ideas out of the New Deal.
The issue with us after Reagan and what Reagan had started, was that Bush I raised taxes much to the chagrin of the public. Conservatives got stupid with taxation by increasingly lowering it and increasing spending. The reason I'd excuse Reagan some what for the $3 trillion deficit was because he considered it a war expenditure against an old enemy. I still question though if the $3 trillion deficit was a good idea though, like you. However, during the 80's recession he was also, like Obama and Bush II, spending more on wellfare systems than he or anyone had anticipated. The recessions also contributed to the deficit much in the same way it is now with social spending.
Congress also didn't want to take some of the spending cuts Reagan wanted in order to fund his military expenditures. In the 1990's Congress had a leash on spending up until around Bush II through the work of Gingrich. However, I will give Bush II credit with his attempts at Social Security and trying to get more executive veto power like governors have to slap the legislature silly with more veto power against erroneous spending.
Anyway, with government you need to leash Congresses' spending habits, period. I watched cspan yesterday and some Republican was talking as if Obama had caused the recession. I just find it irritating as a fiscal conservative to see that kind of whining out of a party that helped to bankrupt the country. But you're right, the government deficit spending does increase inflation, especially during wartime.
Anyway in summation:
1. Reagan was fighting communism that he viewed as a threat to freedom and we do accrue debt during war. Congress also did not decrease spending enough to compensate for increased expenditures else where. It's not all Reagan's fault, Congress controls the purse.
2. We had the opportunity to pay off all our debt during the 1990's with decreased military spending, great Congressional fiscal rules, and proper regulations and deregulations. However, this was squandered with over deregulation and crippling spending practices.
3. We need more healthy regulations, a structured way for government to spend, better accounting out of government, and a better financial police force.
Inflation is not tied to wages but the cost of making a product. It goes up and down based upon how expensive it is to get that product. During the housing boom building materials suffered from hyper-inflation.
That didn't mean wages went up at all. Wages did increase in those years but that was because businesses were making money.
It's tied to both production and wages. The reason for inflation was because of greater demand, but also a greater money supply for people to build up those prices. This is why we had a bubble with Greenspan's loose money policy.
Wages are tied to the ability of the company to pay them. Not the credit market. The credit market goes up and down all the time that doesn't mean my pay does.
Yes it is:
1. Wages for corporate workers are paid through short term loans from banks, after they make their profit the banks are paid back.
2. The amount of money businesses can borrow and how much they get hit for is dependent upon the short term interest rates.
If these short interest rates are high, it cuts into corporate profits. If a company cannot borrow for these short term loans, they cannot pay their people, and therefore it shuts down production. I'll say it again: follow the money trail.
The currency market just reflects the buying power of that currency. Right now the US dollar is taking a beating. What that means though is that it is cheaper for other countries to buy our products. Taxation is put at whatever the government decides to set it at.
that in turn can affect other economic functions.
That's how it works in a normal world, we're in Bizzaro World. The Chinese buy and sell their currency directly to control its price as it was pegged to the dollar. The Chinese currency should be increasing steadily with its massive exporting build, but its not right now since it's pegged to the Euro and Yen more than the Dollar.
I believe that a centralized system is bad. it has to many single points of failure while a decentralized on won't. remember that black out in NY that knocked out half the north part of the country. all because of a problem in maimi i think.
sorry nuclear power is the next generation whether you like it or not. there is nothing more efficient.
1. isn't going to happen.
2. i agree we need more efficient ways to generate power.
It'll be a hybrid system, in some areas the geography allows for power generation to be more effective than nuclear. We also have this nasty problem with Australia having an embargo not to sell us uranium.
marking up oil costs does nothing but hurt people instead. You can't get a faster transition it will happen as those product prove viable and sustainable not until then.
I'm a supply sider, it's all about supply. If you reduce the amount of supply used and force the death of the SUV and so forth, then people will adapt like they did in Europe.
they have been doing this forever and have gotten in trouble on more than one occasion by the world banks for it. nothing is done though they still manipulate it.
A fair trade tariff would basically send the message to China to stop it. Tariffs aren't bad, it's a myth that the WWII tariffs messed with the world economy. It was mostly the fascist powers stopping massive trade world wide.
I am more in the camp of low taxation and moderate regulation. I believe some thing needs to be there but it shouldn't be over bearing to the point of suffication. lower taxation brings in more money this is a proven fact and has been proven.
There's moderate taxation and too low taxation, both have been proven. Paying about 40% of your income to Uncle Sam is about right.
I agree there is no reason that our tax system can't be 1 page. which is why i am for either a flat tax at 10% or a consumption tax of some kind while getting rid of the income tax.
A hybrid system would work, but a 10% consumption tax will never work. Consumption taxes are not stable enough as compared to income taxes.
I remember the last time this was in effect there were companies that were started just for the purpose of buying and selling carbon credits. bid/ask price and they made millions off the spreads.
of course they went away when the last one was done away with.
we haven't had a smaller government since reagan. since then government has done nothing but expand.
Reagan maintained government, reduced some of it, and expanded other parts of it. Reagan never supported hyper low taxation.
yes they understand. they understand that it means they just have to work that much harder to make what they did before the VAT tax. all taxes do is hurt the working person and keep them further down in the hole.
It's all about free choice, if you want to pay higher prices and drive an SUV over a Prius. Then you pay more. The market adjusts itself to the higher prices. It puts an accelerator on the elasticity of demand.
What a VAT tax also does is make it more difficult to trade in oil and makes it unattractive as a commodity to act as a middle man in. This would also in part correct the bubbles in fuel prices that we are so prone to now. The next bubble is being built right now in oil and perhaps stock if this is a sucker's rally from the banks recapitalizing.
Business engages in risk assessment and profitability. If you have a VAT tax then people go into other businesses and commodities to invest in.
Either way, the middle class be damned either way we go. Government going with tax credits and creating a whole new system of financial hegemony, or we increase taxes on oil once we're out of the recession.
The whole goal of getting off oil is to make it more expensive. Once you make it gradually more expensive and allow time for industry to catch up to changes from pressure, there is a rise or return to old living standards. However, habits are also changed.
Stick=taxation
Carrot=avoid taxation by not touching oil
Either that or we face the wrath of oil instability and cartels worse than what the Ukraine faced against Russia.
On the plus side we also make people want to save money and therefore invest it. When we invest, banks have more stability and can make more loans, these loans are then used in the business cycle to expand and so forth.
But Reagan didn't decrease spending. If he did the debt would not have tripled. Congress didn't run around entirely willy-nilly and many were sympathetic to him or at least to their constituents who voted for him (if you're a jerk to Mr. Popular you won't get re-elected, after all).
As for your other points, yes, those sound nice enough to me. I don't know if the opportunity to decrease the debt was there but cutting military spending and putting it to decent use instead while rooting out corruption and setting up a strong financial watchdog to guard against shenanigans would have done a world of good. It would also have had Republicans screaming about "Big Government" more so than they ever have done before but w/e, that's more of a curiosity than any real drawback.
What matters isn't that government spends money, it's what the government spends money on and how it gets that money.
In a word, no. Reagan argued quite a bit with a Democrat controlled Congress. It's part of the reason why America had a better government during the 80's and most of the 90's when the social spenders and the fiscal conservatives clashed.
The problem really with Europe is that it's not America in size. A socialist country works on the small scale. It works in Japan, it works in other small countries. America is a much larger system than even Canada. However, that doesn't mean systems used in Canada and the like can't work here with some modifications. There is also the issue of having the burden of a large military engaged in two wars, simply stated NATO and China are not carrying their weight internationally.
The problem with Republicans is that they are too far right and believe that the market can solve all the problems. Democrats believe that through taxation and spending they can solve problems. It's a combination of the two that truly does anything. Taxes are good, individual choice is good. However, they can both be corrupted.
The thing you have to remember with America is that with its size comes more places to hide corruption. We'll never get past that with independent boards, because our boards have become controlled by corporate interests. Business experience is great, but it has to be counterbalanced by being independent of employment against those businesses as well.
Government spending is a compromise right now between conservative tax cuts and liberal spending. The thing you have to remember is that the president of the US is not the Prime Minister. Congress does what Congress wants to do when Congress wants to do it. They control spending, give war powers, and everything else. The President only has as much power as enforcement goes with legislative or judicial backing, which is still great. However, Congress or the judicial branch still has no problem saying no out. It's the way the system was built.
Who should control the distribution in your opinion?
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"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Inflation is not tied to wages but the cost of making a product. It goes up and down based upon how expensive it is to get that product. During the housing boom building materials suffered from hyper-inflation.
Huh? Inflation is based on the money supply relative to the "real" value of a product.
sorry nuclear power is the next generation whether you like it or not. there is nothing more efficient.
I... tentatively disagree. Not that nuclear power isn't a viable option, but remember that it takes time to build new plants, so by the time we build some more nuke plants other techs might be just as efficient.
I just recently read two articles about emerging technologies: In one, a group at MIT made this insanely efficient natural-gas turbine. 90% thermal efficiency or something. In the other, someone else invented a process where you can turn carbon dioxide emissions back into syngas. For the win.
Of course, in the long run I can totally see wind/solar/hydro being used where effective, but that's a large-scale building project that will take time.
marking up oil costs does nothing but hurt people instead. You can't get a faster transition it will happen as those product prove viable and sustainable not until then.
I agree there is no reason that our tax system can't be 1 page. which is why i am for either a flat tax at 10% or a consumption tax of some kind while getting rid of the income tax.
If that's the case then we also need a second page detailing an earned-income tax credit for the lower incomes, since a flat/consumption tax will be regressive against them (poor people spend more income on consumption).
Maybe a third page on capital gains. But you're right, it doesn't have to be brain surgery to figure out the tax code.
I remember the last time this was in effect there were companies that were started just for the purpose of buying and selling carbon credits. bid/ask price and they made millions off the spreads.
of course they went away when the last one was done away with.
"The last time this was in effect"? We had a carbon cap-and-trade system once?
Anyway, cap-and-trade is no different than a carbon tax, in effect. The difference is who gets the money and how much corporations like the idea. Personally, I don't care what we do as long as it happens, and isn't severely neutered by special interests.
yes they understand. they understand that it means they just have to work that much harder to make what they did before the VAT tax. all taxes do is hurt the working person and keep them further down in the hole.
Well, that's kinda the point of a tax on carbon emissions and other pollutants. Currently there's next to no penalty for doing so, even if there are obvious and well-documented concerns about it (and these are short-term and local damages, not necessarily global climate change). Therefore, there's over-production, retention of crappy underpriced production methods, and overconsumption. Stuff needs to cost more if it has external costs, because people won't readily change their behavior just because some "expert" tells them to. (which see: uh, the climate change debate. :p)
Don't believe me? Mount Pinatubo and recent solar activities. The former released more CO2 than man ever has in one collosal eruption
Source? Cuz while Pinatubo released tens of millions of tons of SO2 into the atmosphere, I can't find solid numbers on CO2. I saw a citation of a research paper that claimed about 42-45 million tons, which seems about right given 20 million tons of SO2... *shrug*
But the only mention I could find of the "more than all anthropogenic emissions" claim was Lew Rockwell's blog:
In 1991, the volcanic eruption at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines put more carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere than did the whole human race during the most recent century of the industrial era. Notwithstanding all the heat and fury released in the neighborhood of the volcano, the event had a cooling effect on the world as a whole.
Unfortunately this is extremely wrong, since Pinatubo released SO2, ash, and aerosols that contributed to a global layer of haze; THAT cooled the planet by about 0.5 degrees Celsius, as it has been shown to do. Rockwell made a stupid correlation error.
Another nice thing that could be done is, hook up exercise bikes in gymnasiums to the power grid, so that, when people exercise, they coincidentally generate electricity.
That would incentivize both better health and energy independence.
Aaand back on the sanity bandwagon? (I agree, btw.)
EDIT: The states are in the best positions to deal with climate change effectively.
I agree, since there's really no one measure that could possibly address all the different vectors of pollution/eco-screwing without being 1000 pages long.
Who should control the distribution in your opinion?
Large infrastructure, the federal government. Local infrastructure local and state control. Energy production should be in the private sector and encourage more "John Wayne" jargon for people to begin to produce their own energy. Megascale projects, I prefer government.
Furthermore, when I look at a legal document I'd like to not think "WTF do I do?" Try starting a small business, it's not fun. Larger scale projects, my goodness from what I've heard and read it takes months. It's plug and play economics, government needs to get off people's back. If you need to get my signature, get it once or twice. Not 40,000 times in triplicate in response to some made up space language.
Well, that's kinda the point of a tax on carbon emissions and other pollutants. Currently there's next to no penalty for doing so, even if there are obvious and well-documented concerns about it (and these are short-term and local damages, not necessarily global climate change). Therefore, there's over-production, retention of crappy underpriced production methods, and overconsumption. Stuff needs to cost more if it has external costs, because people won't readily change their behavior just because some "expert" tells them to. (which see: uh, the climate change debate. :p)
Trust, but verify.
Truthfully, Americans only understand things through a binary set of lenses. They want a simple fix, and they want it to work now. On top of that we have to whip ourselves into a frenzy to get anything done and declare it a "war." Experts? They're in the same boat as any other American. Even Dawkins, a British intellectual, sets his sights on religion as some sort of moral war.
Science also has another issue with the public. It requires too damn much education to engage it. There's a real lack of plug and play applicability to it. The same with mathematics. Even if you achieve a relative level of success with math, there's an entire mountain to climb still yet with definitions and so forth. If its gold, lets call it gold. English is the lingua franca right now for trade, not Latin. Latin is dieing out even in the Catholic Church.
It's all about plug and play. A person should be able to analyze the science behind these works with only a high school diploma. Over technical language has people lost if the framework is not transmissible to the language of others. If I say supply side economics, people know what I'm talking about. If I say vacuole, then people go to a diction and look it up within a few minutes. If I use complex language like math steeped in chicanery symbols that are too advanced for the average person. I question whether if there is a simpler way to manipulate that abstract thought and have it more accessible to others.
Furthermore, knowledge is not about complexity its about the ability to engage. People understand human desires, and climatologists are a nascent science and need funding in order to survive. I don't believe it's necessarily a conspiracy theory, but the climate change fears are normative. Our climatological models suck, period. We need to model the climate of Mars, Venus, and other nearby planets to have something to check against Earth's climate. Geology is the only reliable science I believe right now in terms of climate change, because we have a much more massive collection of data and years of study that climatology lacks.
What people do understand is economics. It's a soft science, it has a bad predictability rate like climatology, but people deal with it everyday. Right now people say "I get taxed more, government wastes more." and "other such things. Yet, it's perfectly fine for Republicans to want some grandiose megamilitary. We don't need as big of a military as we have right now if we start using engaging in economic warfare. There's also a national security risk with our dependency on oil and the future with peak oil and a decaying Middle Eastern oil extraction infrastructure. Tie oil with national security without having to pay a blood tithe to Allah, then you win over Republicans. Although, Republicans like "drill baby drill" as an idea as if since we engage in international trade that we won't export that oil anyway?
We need nonexportable jobs and industry. Energy consumption is the future along with water and food. We need another revolution in infrastructure like we had in the 50's with agriculture, water use, and energy. Government and corporations paved the way forward with small businesses forming the spine of that initiative. Today, the money is held by the view and stupid.
There is no debate in the scientific community about whether global warming exists.
When you say you don't believe in global warming, what exactly are you saying? Do you not believe in the greenhouse effect? Do you not believe that carbon atoms absorb IR? I'm confused. The relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature is so close to 1:1 its stunning.
LogicX, what you said is completely untrue. While there may not be a debate as to whether or not global warming exists, there obviously is debate in the scientific community as to whether or not man is at the center of it; or furthermore whether we are in fact currently in a warming phase or a cooling phase. The debate comes from suspicious methods of gathering, interpreting, and checking data (and these suspicions have been around since long before these emails were leaked)
And what exactly do you mean 1:1? Yes, there is a causal relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature, however, the thing you're overlooking(read ignoring) is sheer amounts. It takes a LOT more carbon gathering in the atmosphere to significantly alter the overall climate of the planet than is currently being emitted by mankind.
As others have said, the climate changes on its own, with or without mankind, so arguing whether or not the climate is changing is pointless. Of course the climate is changing. What remains to be seen is how much man is influencing that change. If you had paid even an ounce of attention to the thread, then you should have already seen literally everything I said.
/recap
On a side note, when did this become a thread about economics?
LogicX, what you said is completely untrue. While there may not be a debate as to whether or not global warming exists, there obviously is debate in the scientific community as to whether or not man is at the center of it; or furthermore whether we are in fact currently in a warming phase or a cooling phase.
And most people in the scientific community would tell you that we are in fact making changes to the earth that will cause or have caused the earth to warm.
The debate comes from suspicious methods of gathering, interpreting, and checking data (and these suspicions have been around since long before these emails were leaked)
Where do you get this stuff?
Scientists interpret data, and then they publish it in peer reviewed journals. The entire debate doesn't stem from whether or not scientists are using suspicious methods. The debate is from non-scientists trying to instill political will on a scientific issue.
And what exactly do you mean 1:1? Yes, there is a causal relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature, however, the thing you're overlooking(read ignoring) is sheer amounts. It takes a LOT more carbon gathering in the atmosphere to significantly alter the overall climate of the planet than is currently being emitted by mankind.
Right and we are putting a LOT more carbon into the atmosphere. I would like to see the peer reviewed study that was your source for the claim that humans do not emit enough carbon to change the earths temperature.
As others have said, the climate changes on its own, with or without mankind, so arguing whether or not the climate is changing is pointless. Of course the climate is changing. What remains to be seen is how much man is influencing that change. If you had paid even an ounce of attention to the thread, then you should have already seen literally everything I said.
So... the climate changes naturally so therefore man cannot influence it at all in a negative way? What kind of reasoning is that?
It does not remain to seen if we are changing the climate. All the data points to the fact that we are changing it. I love how you deniers cherry pick some out of context emails as if it cancels out the hundreds of other studies that confirm that global warming is being influenced by man.
Its just like holocaust deniers. They will point to a picture and say "SEE LOOK, the Holocaust can't have happened because in this picture the concentration camp couldn't have been in this spot!" and then they ignore the thousands of other pictures that show the holocaust actually happening.
Good lord. So now people that disagree with you are the same as holocaust deniers?
Any respect I may have had for you is swirling down the toilet fast. You do not want to participate in any sort of discussion, just feces throwing.
Quote from LogicX »
Where do you get this stuff?
Scientists interpret data, and then they publish it in peer reviewed journals. The entire debate doesn't stem from whether or not scientists are using suspicious methods. The debate is from non-scientists trying to instill political will on a scientific issue.
That is just the first link I found when googling "climategate emails". There is a scandal and coverup going on. How much and to what extent remains to be seen. But are you a denier that the science has been tampered with, or fudged? OMG?!??!1/1/111:o
On a side note, when did this become a thread about economics?
If you put in carbon controls with a carbon trade, you invent a new form of economic redistribution that is controlled by the financial industry. I don't want them to have more power. I don't trust them, we need them to put their money into business not playing with something fictitious like carbon credits.
Furthermore, some folks want us to pay reparations for climate change to other countries. I fairly much draw the line at reparations. Places such as Africa have been drying out for centuries.
Its just like holocaust deniers. They will point to a picture and say "SEE LOOK, the Holocaust can't have happened because in this picture the concentration camp couldn't have been in this spot!" and then they ignore the thousands of other pictures that show the holocaust actually happening.
Climatology is a nascent science, history is an ancient humanities that at times can be a soft science. Furthermore, comparing anything to the Holocaust, Nazis, and the like just detracts from your argument.
You also presume that people that come to a different conclusion are some how inferior to you. Climatology is a nascent science, where as geology shows a violent, and ever changing Earth. What is necessary before I'll even consider climatology anything outside of a nascent would require us studying the atmospheres of other worlds a lot more. We need more data, otherwise the predictions are laughable.
Furthermore, with Climategate it proves that scientists are just as fallible as any other people. These academics want financial control for research and their livelihood. Science is not free from avarice and ambition.
Now if you want to talk about something that's provable, you can talk about running out of oil or having economies hamstrung by competition over oil itself.
I'm a supply sider conservative that also believes in simplicity of thought. Climatology requires overspecialized thinking about a system we barely understand. People understand supply and demand and money. While economic predictions do suck, there is no doubt we're running out of oil. With Middle Eastern decaying infrastructure we might not be at peak oil, however we will accelerate towards it in the coming years with the awakening ancient empires of the east.
Cut down oil consumption, you cut down emissions. You also make something a national issue by tying it to national security and showing up that evil Iranian President. Americans need an enemy and whip themselves up into a frenzy in order to do something about something.
Making oil consumption a social justice and national security issue binds the feet of both liberals and conservatives to the idea. Consumption is also tied to other bad environmental effects other than just emissions, period.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Cut down oil consumption, you cut down emissions. You also make something a national issue by tying it to national security and showing up that evil Iranian President. Americans need an enemy and whip themselves up into a frenzy in order to do something about something.
Making oil consumption a social justice and national security issue binds the feet of both liberals and conservatives to the idea. Consumption is also tied to other bad environmental effects other than just emissions, period.
I agree with this 100%. Where is America's "moon landing" or "WWII". In other words, America needs a national project to rally behind. Green energy, nukular energy, paper clips that speak to you, I really don't care what it is, but put America on track towards something.
There is a little more to it than just hacked emails. Scientists have now deleted raw data. So there is something fishy going on. Like I said earlier to what extent, who knows.
Scientists interpret data, and then they publish it in peer reviewed journals. The entire debate doesn't stem from whether or not scientists are using suspicious methods. The debate is from non-scientists trying to instill political will on a scientific issue.
I mean never mind the scientists who believe that the sun has more to do with our climate change then we do.
Right and we are putting a LOT more carbon into the atmosphere. I would like to see the peer reviewed study that was your source for the claim that humans do not emit enough carbon to change the earths temperature.
I never said that we weren't changing the Earth's temperature. What I said was that our carbon emissions aren't enough to significantly change it. What that means is that at our current levels of emissions, we can't directly cause this cataclysmic climate change that is being 'predicted'. However, if our emissions do continue an exponential increase, then we will be in trouble in the future. That's something which needs to be prevented.
So... the climate changes naturally so therefore man cannot influence it at all in a negative way? What kind of reasoning is that?
It does not remain to seen if we are changing the climate. All the data points to the fact that we are changing it. I love how you deniers cherry pick some out of context emails as if it cancels out the hundreds of other studies that confirm that global warming is being influenced by man.
Okay okay, well then just show me this data....Oh wait, you can't. It's been destroyed. Results != Data.
Its just like holocaust deniers. They will point to a picture and say "SEE LOOK, the Holocaust can't have happened because in this picture the concentration camp couldn't have been in this spot!" and then they ignore the thousands of other pictures that show the holocaust actually happening.
I want you to realize that this single statement just tossed out all of your other points. For one, calling people who don't believe in human-centered climate change 'deniers' as if it were 100% fact. For two, comparing them to holocaust deniers. There are people who survived the German concentration camps who can attest to the things that happened there. Denying that it happened is basically saying that they just made up all of those things. That's not how it is with climate change.
Quote from "Tuss" »
Scientists aren't even required to store raw data, merely to record where they got their data from and what they have done with that data.
Yes, but storing raw data makes your results much easier for others to repeat using the same method you used.
The fact that many (not all) scientists agree about something doesn't necessarily mean it's a hundred percent true. Especially with something as huge as climate change.
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It's come to my attention that a few key areas have been neglected in this discussion, namely:
The thickness of sea ice, in addition/contrast to it's area and in relation to historical values. Especially with the recent openings of the NorthEast and NorethWest passages due to less/thinner ice.
The extent of the permafrost and the change in it's area in recent times.
Because people tend to like references:
NASA on Ice thickness (some good points, if you ignore the condescending tone :-/)
GP on Permafrost (video)
NOAA on Permafrost.
Positive feedback loops =
3+ feet of snow in most places.
I talked with a friend of mine in dallas the other day it was snowing.
Anyway it use to be greenland was green and there were no glaciers on it. in fact there are a lot of glaciers where there wasn't any before.
That is like people love to bring up polar bears. according to the actual data.
1-2 species were in a minor decline
3-8 of them were holding steady
9-15(or 16) actually are thriving.
People the earths climate changes when it wants to. we are talking in spans of 100's of years at a time.
No human activity could have caused those changes then either no difference then than now. earth is going through another warming and cooling trend just like it always has.
Different weather patterns such as EL nino and LA nina have huge impacts on world temperatures and weather patterns as well. We have just left a very strong la nina and are headed into an el nino pattern.
which we will see warming ocean which leads to more co2 being released as well.
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So in other words simply appealing to authority as a baseless claim that everyone that "denies" human effects on climate in the face of a nascent science is uneducated. There's enough pseudo sciences in the realm of history to fill multiple textbooks, ironically some of us conservatives have read some of them.
If you think that college is going to give you all the world's answers, you're wrong. Ultimately the best students search out for their own answers and take up the challenge to defend their positions with new knowledge. Actually if anything, if you're in an environment without opposition your education is stifled. It's great to learn from people that dedicate themselves to a field their entire lives, but also realize that there are other clusters out there that do not share that point of view.
There are also internal politicking in academia when it comes to tenure and resource allocation. Depending on how the department is ran, there are also egos that are larger than the moon that can stifle intellectualism. So, be warned academia isn't without its problems of pristine feats of intellectualism.
Businesses do pay taxes, because otherwise they wouldn't be lobbying Congress to try to make tax loop holes that seem small on paper that translate into millions of dollars. If the Congress ever takes up rewriting the tax code this century, it'll make health reform look like a paper cut to the blood bath that will ensue.
"Profit" is relative. Profit for who, what, and where the money is allocated towards. Right now wages have risen for management exponentially and outstripping the lower end players. Management also increases their shares of the company in order to gain windfall from dividends. These actions are dynamically opposed to the interests of stockholders. The more stock in the pool, the lower value your stock is. The more management earns, the less stockholders receive in dividends or future earnings based on reinvestment into the business.
Administrative costs are out of proportion to what is profitable from bad contracts with management. Also, with American corporate taxes you have to factor in actual paid taxes versus what is preserved through loopholes. Every time a business sets up shop it gets tax incentives from the surrounding community and state and sometimes the Feds. At the federal level there are multiple loopholes exploited and continually created by lobbyists and government to increase net profits. So before you begin to talk about tax rates being too high for business, look at the resource allocation and the effects of those resource allocations.
Looking at the issue of taxation, let's look at Ireland. For a while it supported free immigration and very low corporate taxes. Conservative heaven. Except reality has now hit the Emerald Isle and the massive spike in home prices, speculation, and businesses are packing up shop and leaving areas destitute. This boom/bust scenario does not help out to make a stable society.
Predictability in an unstable system can be controlled some what. The Irish are also have issues with government financing. Why? Because of the other section of the Laffer Curve where you have taxes too low. Ireland is having issues paying for its expenses because it collected too few taxes to keep up with infrastructure and basic social services with the population explosion.
This creates a cascade effect on small businesses such as S type corporations and other such thing. The small business lacks the agility to spar with stealth taxation that their corporate counterparts do. Therefore, when new taxes are made with the ideal of increasing the actual taxation we get from corporations they instead use Super Lobbying powers to stifle the effects of that taxation. The tax then falls to lower ranking business, this is also part of the strategy of corporations to gain small economic advantages over their competitor corporations and small business counterparts.
What in short we have is two fold:
1. Unstable rules and unfair rules system to which he who has the gold makes the rules
2. Stealth taxes that are not fully comprehensible.
The reason I support a VAT tax is because its simple to calculate and can be used to pay off the deficit and increasing infrastructure. It would also pressure the market into using less fuel. It works in Europe, however Europe also in successful countries has a more diversified economy.
In a test tube for economics 101 sure, in the real world not quite. Really look into more concepts of transactions between business and politics.
Proportionality and wage power has declined. Why do we have the Gini Coefficient at all if those computations aren't useful for something? When wage power declines and housing prices increase, or our warped Bizzaro world scenario, you have created a proletariat class of people.
That is in part of what its supposed to do, it is to make the consumer consume less. The corporations and businesses panic and place money into research that consumes less oil or alternative energies.
Quite the contrary, they aren't lending to anyone that really matters. The investment banks are utilizing capital to buy stock, which is nothing more than an M:TG card, and recapitalizing through these stock run ups. The issue is that it doesn't create any jobs. No jobs, stock market crashes again in a sucker's rally, and banks sit on their hoard.
Still the wage proportionality is not what it used to be post Labor Movement to the relative decline of the unions during the 1980's. The question is how the company deploys its capital to try and increase its relative power through LBO's and so forth.
I'm looking at the long term trends of businesses, not the short term trends with the financial mess we're in right now.
Like likes like. Profit motivated people enjoy profit. The issue with the structural changers that boomers placed into the system were to make business more cut throat for middle management. However, we still reward mediocrity in many corporate top brass.
The issue with the 60's 70's was the massive spending through the Great Society projects and the Vietnam War. War triggers inflation; always. LBJ's Great Society was also not deficit neutral. It did create some good projects that we still benefit from today, but without it being deficit neutral it also triggered economic issues.
Keynesianism hasn't ever been really tried to be honest, since we rarely if ever run a surplus in government. This mostly has to do with us being over promised, and underfunded.
Yes, people will make less money sometimes. The question is agility and resourcefulness. Economically right now we're like a smoker trying to run a marathon. We have to quit smoking in order to beef up our economy. The question people don't agree on is what do we quit, where do we train, and how do we train to get back to "normal."
We'll see, Congress is a fickle mistress. Congress has a habit of doing what Congress wants to do when it wants to do it.
We have the wealth to do so, but not the will power. When you try to shoe horn everything into a Sigma Six approach for too many industries, you're going to short change innovation.
It returns back to my point about law and contract. It's too screwed up. We need a framework that is so simple a caveman could do it.
Lack of political will in both business and politics.
Which is why we need microeconomics back with convection of money to support local, small businesses. The convection of macroeconomics has to be diverted towards the telos of jobs and getting off oil. Sounds easy, but its not. Government needs to lead with an energy policy, a regulatory framework, simplified regulation (simplification=!deregulate everything), and fiscal policies of the 1990's institutionalized. Business needs to begin to realize that rising wages are good for business and unions aren't Satan. Low prices mean low wages and that means poverty.
Then why did Reagan screw around and not lead us with a superior energy policy? The best chance we had for a comprehensive energy policy was after 9/11. Bush played footsey with the concept, but did not follow through like he did with the wars. I'll give the Democrats this much, at least they tried. The only issue with Democrats is that demand-side economics means squat.
It goes back to will power. We have technology sitting on the side lines that would revolutionize multiple industries, but we don't use it because it's not cool enough. Businesses with money can sit on patents as long as they wish to do so.
Except we're coming out of an interglacial period and warming up as a part of that trend. You're also neglecting that stuff happens pretty fast with the Earth, it's not going to stand still because of a few tribesmen remembering what it was like "back in the day."
There's also evidence and so forth that shows how during the Medival Warming Period about the trees in those cold regions began to grow larger and bigger. These places are specifically adapted to these kinds of changes. A warmer environment also triggers the growth process and migratory of larger land animals. Our land animals today dwarf the ancient animals that were killed off from in part a changing climate and the cascade effect it had on the wild life.
You also neglected cloud power in the cycle with CO2, plant growth, solar reflection with snow, and clouds that rain and reflect sunlight. It's a self regulating cycle with the planet warming and cooling without us involved. Stratospheric cooling is also not completely nugatory either to compensate for heating or cooling of the planet as it fluctuates as a part of this cycle.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
"Stealth" taxes are actually good, in certain situations. Namely when they're used for the public interest.
It's not that it's not "cool" enough; it's that the dirty, old stuff is cheap enough. With an effective pricing system (carbon tax, cap-and-trade, doesn't matter) on coal and other inefficient, high-social-cost methods of energy production, companies will jump to natural gas, wind, solar, solar-thermal, solar-hydrogen, etc. in droves.
I mean, and also @mystery, consider the position of a business. Given a government tax on a certain production method, with others available, would you rather
a) Keep your current (and now taxed) production methods and raise prices, thereby lowering demand for your product; or
b) Switch to the cheapest alternative and keep prices the same (or even lower them?) and see no negative change in demand, at the very least
?
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
"Stealth" taxation should be able to be done in your head when you know how much of a certain resource you use. The problem is when Bob's Corporation lobby's Congress for tax exclusion for their area of influence, but Jane's small LLC doesn't have the same advantage that is not covered by the law because of her sector being slightly different but still competing with Bob's Corporation.
A clear precise game field without any lobbying shenanigans that are kept in place and simple enough that a caveman could do it is necessary for economic stability. It's all about plug and play rules.
The problem is supply side, not demand side. When regulating it at a macro level with something subjective like carbon emissions you have people:
1. Making a whole new financial infrastructure for the financial industry to mess with reallocating funds around. We already do this with Wall Street as is and we're still in trouble, why give the financial industry a new product when they can't manage the current ones?
2. A VAT tax on oil products is superior:
A. A child can calculate VAT
B. It's been shown to impact cars in Europe and other vehicles of emission
C. Higher gas prices has always encouraged less consumption of resources in builds
D. It does not add any new levels of regulatory committees to government and restricts the power of government
So give me a reason why we need bigger corporations, bigger government, and bigger frameworks to screw with carbon emissions when a VAT tax that could be used to pay down the deficit and invest into infrastructure could be used instead?
Tell me, can you explain the entire stock market interactions with the banking industry and government to a small child? How about a VAT tax in comparison?
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
the biggest reason is return on investment. they get a better return on old reliable and new and shiny.
I use to be a sales person and doing quotes for people. I can tell you that everytime i did a quote it factored in everything. time, materials, tax etc...
the company might have wrote a check for the taxes but someone else paid it.
wages have declined as much as prices for items have exceed the raises. why because we keep raising the bottom line. which increases cost for everyone and thereby lowers pay even if it goes up.
all of which are highly inefficient at produce mass amounts of energy. natural gas not so much but the rest yes.
in the mean time we get stuck paying huge taxes on things. you are looking at an economic disaster.
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And where does the money originate at? What begins that transaction cycle? Where does the velocity of money begin at? By your definition with transaction there is no originator for money.
Which is only part of the equation, you're ignoring the effects of solvency and liquidity coupled with currency manipulation from China and an array of other factors. I mean do you even look at any other transactions than taxes?
The way to produce energy isn't so much at a massive scale, but on a microscale. It's better in the hands of locals rather than massive projects. Localism is more efficient than federal level projects when the needs of the community are met.
What disaster we're looking at now is with corporations redistributing capital offshore and into industries that do not create American jobs. The law in America is also convoluted and screws over the plug and play ability for microtransactors.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Really has nothing to do with what i posted. sure there is it begins with the person coming in an wanting goods or services.
I didn't ignore anything. wages have gone up but the price increase on goods and services has wiped out what increase there was. I am not ignoring anything you just didn't read what i posted.
You are not understanding what i mean by massive. I am talking massive in terms of energy produced. solar and wind etc are great on a very small scale they will not support the needed infrastructure though. Nuclear power on the other hand can and does.
I understand that but we are talking about a national overhaul in how we produce power.
why do you think they are doing that? because it is cheaper. there isn't an incentive to keep jobs here. when it is cheaper to ship it overseas.
You want to create jobs you have to give a reason to do it. With your VAT tax you would only increase that rate rather than lower it.
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Not to mention all the money in it.
Don't believe me? Mount Pinatubo and recent solar activities. The former released more CO2 than man ever has in one collosal eruption, and the latter would seem to largely account for the temperature rise, as it had been quite active.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
It does, the point you brought up was inflation. Inflation is tied to wages, and wages are tied to the credit market. Taxation is inherently tied to wages and the credit market. All are tied to the currency market. You have to account for the whole system to analyze transactions by which to comprehend demand and supply.
The question is whether we want or need centralized power stations any more or move towards a decentralized power grid with redistribution centers. I'll agree with you that we have to use transitional technologies, and the bugaboo about nuclear power is a hogwash.
The thing we need is two fold:
1. Energy consumption to go down
2. Energy distribution mechanics increased
The thing is we need new architecture, retrofitting services, and various other endemic issues to be corrected as well. However, the reason to mark up oil costs is to transition faster to conservative practices and technologies as well.
It's the framework we basically use. For starters our regulatory framework sucks. Our contracts and legal system are dominated by elites and becoming more and more unintelligible to even the lawmakers themselves. We have an overly centralized financial system that is taking wealth and concentrating it into a single institution.
Furthermore, China is messing with their currency to keep it low. When they have our money, they buy American property and bonds with it. This gives them economic hegemony over us to an extent but also leaves them vulnerable to our own endemic problems. The issue right now with trade is that China is gaming the system. You have to stop China from playing with its currency through devaluing it, since it's not only sucking American manufacturing jobs but also Asian manufacturing jobs like in Japan.
So let's take the classic conservative incentive approach to easy taxation and low regulation. Case in point: Ireland. There was rampant speculation within various markets that created several bubbles. The population outpaced the basic social services provided by government such as education and so forth, but they lacked funding because of the low wages and lack of business taxes. So when the economy start to sour, businesses and the buildings started to back out and leave. Immigrants also went home or abroad to other economic opportunities.
So what's Ireland like now? Well, they're in a big crunch without much stability. You want slow, periodic growth with some planning for infrastructure and financial regulations. Without it, you have economic desolation. Too much growth creates problems, too slow growth also creates problems as well as no growth at all.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0403/economy.html
The point is for a country you need "plug and play" based economics. You need people to understand the rules of the game and able to quickly interact with the market. This does not mean deregulate everything, it means simplify and codify the rule set so anyone with a high school diploma can understand law without the need for some interlocutor.
Increasing complexity increases the want for a black market system where people ignore rules. People like simplicity with their "shalt nots" and "shall do's," let's go back to that?
The issue with conservatives is that we only look at incentives rather than disincentives coupled with incentives. Equal distribution of punishment and reward is an ancient political concept. We want to:
1. Lower oil consumption
2. Increase conservative fiscal practices and technologies
3. Pay off the national debt
Now what Liberals want to do with Cap and Trade is to stimulate new technologies. What that does though is partially good with the system used in Europe. Businesses took the stick as a threat, and changed behaviors. The plus side was less reliance on imported fuels, and new technologies and systems cropped up.
The downside was the creation of a new reallocation of wealth with traders that trade in something inherently worthless; Carbon Credits. Carbon Credits are prone to bubbles and everything else like the stock market (it is the stock market 2.0). It centralizes power into the hands of a few and takes money out of the pockets of common folk and gives it to the hands of a few people adept at trading something inherently as worthless as a Magic the Gathering card. However, with a complex framework that MTG card/credit now has significance to multiple industries and many lives. If manipulation and bubbles occurs, we'll need a cycle of more regulation and so forth.
A VAT tax on the other hand does increase government, but smaller government is not the way to go as seen by the last several years. You have to have plug and play economics available to everyone. This requires a nightwatchman or the government to have a regulatory framework in place. Everyone understands the basics of taxes, and try to go great lengths to avoid them. Everyone can also understand a VAT tax.
Furthermore, a VAT tax has no centralization. Actually, it decentralizes taxation to an extent depending on how it is allocated. If allocated to different infrastructure projects or lowering the deficit, it would have a positive feedback loop to the nation at large. Businesses use infrastructure, period. The national debt right now is helping to trigger inflation and lowering the amount of property available to the United States citizen.
However, the issue is also fair trade coupled with this. What a VAT tax does is hobble places like Iran without much effort. Less oil money going to the Middle East, the less they get to invest into military arms. This may also trigger a negative feedback loop into making these countries finally diversifying their own economies and getting out of the oil boom/bust scenario. We put up the "no oil economy" signal, and they'll be scrambling to figure out what to do. They do have resources there they do not use though to diversify with, it's just a choice not to.
Anyway, returning back to "equal distribution of punishment and reward." It is the carrot and the stick. If you use the carrot too much, you make people fat and lazy. If you use the stick too much, you make them fearful and therefore inept. If you reward a person properly with the "carrot" they will go where you want them to or find ways to surprise you, but if they go astray you have to use the stick to shoo them in the right direction.
Right now business is not going in the right direction. Trade is not in a good shape right now for many countries because of China's China First policy and currency manipulation screwing over fair free trade. There's also businesses themselves, but I can get into that later. If money centralizes into the hands of the few, then the few can exert hegemony over the many.
In essence, we want plug and play rules with fair trade to allow everyone to participate. We need a framework that offers up less consolidation of power, more property ownership (in the classical sense), and evenly distributed wealth through the capitalist system.
My argument for government involvement in the oil crisis is based on two points of national security:
1. We cannot support rogue nations indirectly through our exportation of American wealth that will be turned on us.
2. We need economic stability in the Americas or else we will not be able to maintain our institutions at all. No middle class, no America.
3. This ties in with the third, by sacrificing now we can live through peak oil and a lower saturation point for oil without much change to our daily lives. Moving away from oil by taking some pain after the recession is over through a VAT tax.
4. We fight fascism and other problems with plug and play economics with a focus on local economies.
5. Boom/bust scenarios invites human suffering, human suffering invites reactions like fascism and communism and to an extent terrorism.
Not to mention the positive feedback cycle that's garnered through people buying less stuff and saving more.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Inflation is not tied to wages but the cost of making a product. It goes up and down based upon how expensive it is to get that product. During the housing boom building materials suffered from hyper-inflation.
That didn't mean wages went up at all. Wages did increase in those years but that was because businesses were making money.
Wages are tied to the ability of the company to pay them. Not the credit market. The credit market goes up and down all the time that doesn't mean my pay does.
The currency market just reflects the buying power of that currency. Right now the US dollar is taking a beating. What that means though is that it is cheaper for other countries to buy our products. Taxation is put at whatever the government decides to set it at.
that in turn can affect other economic functions.
I believe that a centralized system is bad. it has to many single points of failure while a decentralized on won't. remember that black out in NY that knocked out half the north part of the country. all because of a problem in maimi i think.
sorry nuclear power is the next generation whether you like it or not. there is nothing more efficient.
1. isn't going to happen.
2. i agree we need more efficient ways to generate power.
marking up oil costs does nothing but hurt people instead. You can't get a faster transition it will happen as those product prove viable and sustainable not until then.
i agree. I think the fed is screwing this country and no one cares.
they have been doing this forever and have gotten in trouble on more than one occasion by the world banks for it. nothing is done though they still manipulate it.
I am more in the camp of low taxation and moderate regulation. I believe some thing needs to be there but it shouldn't be over bearing to the point of suffication. lower taxation brings in more money this is a proven fact and has been proven.
I agree there is no reason that our tax system can't be 1 page. which is why i am for either a flat tax at 10% or a consumption tax of some kind while getting rid of the income tax.
I remember the last time this was in effect there were companies that were started just for the purpose of buying and selling carbon credits. bid/ask price and they made millions off the spreads.
of course they went away when the last one was done away with.
we haven't had a smaller government since reagan. since then government has done nothing but expand.
yes they understand. they understand that it means they just have to work that much harder to make what they did before the VAT tax. all taxes do is hurt the working person and keep them further down in the hole.
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Reagan has a mixed report card like Jackson. I like some of what these presidents did to the country, but they also had glaring negatives. Reagan also lacked the hindsight we have today. His generation was paranoid about the USSR and wanted it gone. So he utilized the arms race and that useless Star Wars program to run them into the ground. However, people could also argue Karol Wojtyla's work and those of the union in Easter Europe were equally, if not more productive to pick the bones of the USSR empire. There was also Gorbachev that introduced glasnost and perestroika reforms.
However, Reagan's hand forced Gorbachev to the negotiating table rather than allow for him to preen himself under the guise of superiority, though.
What Reagan did right was what Clinton and Gingrich did right. They lowered government spending, lowered the right taxes, deregulated some of the stupid ideas liberals had put in place (price controlled oil being #1), and retained some of the better ideas out of the New Deal.
The issue with us after Reagan and what Reagan had started, was that Bush I raised taxes much to the chagrin of the public. Conservatives got stupid with taxation by increasingly lowering it and increasing spending. The reason I'd excuse Reagan some what for the $3 trillion deficit was because he considered it a war expenditure against an old enemy. I still question though if the $3 trillion deficit was a good idea though, like you. However, during the 80's recession he was also, like Obama and Bush II, spending more on wellfare systems than he or anyone had anticipated. The recessions also contributed to the deficit much in the same way it is now with social spending.
Congress also didn't want to take some of the spending cuts Reagan wanted in order to fund his military expenditures. In the 1990's Congress had a leash on spending up until around Bush II through the work of Gingrich. However, I will give Bush II credit with his attempts at Social Security and trying to get more executive veto power like governors have to slap the legislature silly with more veto power against erroneous spending.
Anyway, with government you need to leash Congresses' spending habits, period. I watched cspan yesterday and some Republican was talking as if Obama had caused the recession. I just find it irritating as a fiscal conservative to see that kind of whining out of a party that helped to bankrupt the country. But you're right, the government deficit spending does increase inflation, especially during wartime.
Anyway in summation:
1. Reagan was fighting communism that he viewed as a threat to freedom and we do accrue debt during war. Congress also did not decrease spending enough to compensate for increased expenditures else where. It's not all Reagan's fault, Congress controls the purse.
2. We had the opportunity to pay off all our debt during the 1990's with decreased military spending, great Congressional fiscal rules, and proper regulations and deregulations. However, this was squandered with over deregulation and crippling spending practices.
3. We need more healthy regulations, a structured way for government to spend, better accounting out of government, and a better financial police force.
4. Getting the hell off of oil.
It's tied to both production and wages. The reason for inflation was because of greater demand, but also a greater money supply for people to build up those prices. This is why we had a bubble with Greenspan's loose money policy.
Yes it is:
1. Wages for corporate workers are paid through short term loans from banks, after they make their profit the banks are paid back.
2. The amount of money businesses can borrow and how much they get hit for is dependent upon the short term interest rates.
If these short interest rates are high, it cuts into corporate profits. If a company cannot borrow for these short term loans, they cannot pay their people, and therefore it shuts down production. I'll say it again: follow the money trail.
That's how it works in a normal world, we're in Bizzaro World. The Chinese buy and sell their currency directly to control its price as it was pegged to the dollar. The Chinese currency should be increasing steadily with its massive exporting build, but its not right now since it's pegged to the Euro and Yen more than the Dollar.
http://imarketnews.com/?q=node/5936
http://www.gocurrency.com/countries/china.htm
The issue is that the yaun is still being manipulated under the guise of reform. It's still depreciating against other strong exporting countries.
It'll be a hybrid system, in some areas the geography allows for power generation to be more effective than nuclear. We also have this nasty problem with Australia having an embargo not to sell us uranium.
I'm a supply sider, it's all about supply. If you reduce the amount of supply used and force the death of the SUV and so forth, then people will adapt like they did in Europe.
A fair trade tariff would basically send the message to China to stop it. Tariffs aren't bad, it's a myth that the WWII tariffs messed with the world economy. It was mostly the fascist powers stopping massive trade world wide.
There's moderate taxation and too low taxation, both have been proven. Paying about 40% of your income to Uncle Sam is about right.
A hybrid system would work, but a 10% consumption tax will never work. Consumption taxes are not stable enough as compared to income taxes.
Reagan maintained government, reduced some of it, and expanded other parts of it. Reagan never supported hyper low taxation.
It's all about free choice, if you want to pay higher prices and drive an SUV over a Prius. Then you pay more. The market adjusts itself to the higher prices. It puts an accelerator on the elasticity of demand.
What a VAT tax also does is make it more difficult to trade in oil and makes it unattractive as a commodity to act as a middle man in. This would also in part correct the bubbles in fuel prices that we are so prone to now. The next bubble is being built right now in oil and perhaps stock if this is a sucker's rally from the banks recapitalizing.
Business engages in risk assessment and profitability. If you have a VAT tax then people go into other businesses and commodities to invest in.
Either way, the middle class be damned either way we go. Government going with tax credits and creating a whole new system of financial hegemony, or we increase taxes on oil once we're out of the recession.
The whole goal of getting off oil is to make it more expensive. Once you make it gradually more expensive and allow time for industry to catch up to changes from pressure, there is a rise or return to old living standards. However, habits are also changed.
Stick=taxation
Carrot=avoid taxation by not touching oil
Either that or we face the wrath of oil instability and cartels worse than what the Ukraine faced against Russia.
On the plus side we also make people want to save money and therefore invest it. When we invest, banks have more stability and can make more loans, these loans are then used in the business cycle to expand and so forth.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
In a word, no. Reagan argued quite a bit with a Democrat controlled Congress. It's part of the reason why America had a better government during the 80's and most of the 90's when the social spenders and the fiscal conservatives clashed.
The problem really with Europe is that it's not America in size. A socialist country works on the small scale. It works in Japan, it works in other small countries. America is a much larger system than even Canada. However, that doesn't mean systems used in Canada and the like can't work here with some modifications. There is also the issue of having the burden of a large military engaged in two wars, simply stated NATO and China are not carrying their weight internationally.
The problem with Republicans is that they are too far right and believe that the market can solve all the problems. Democrats believe that through taxation and spending they can solve problems. It's a combination of the two that truly does anything. Taxes are good, individual choice is good. However, they can both be corrupted.
The thing you have to remember with America is that with its size comes more places to hide corruption. We'll never get past that with independent boards, because our boards have become controlled by corporate interests. Business experience is great, but it has to be counterbalanced by being independent of employment against those businesses as well.
Government spending is a compromise right now between conservative tax cuts and liberal spending. The thing you have to remember is that the president of the US is not the Prime Minister. Congress does what Congress wants to do when Congress wants to do it. They control spending, give war powers, and everything else. The President only has as much power as enforcement goes with legislative or judicial backing, which is still great. However, Congress or the judicial branch still has no problem saying no out. It's the way the system was built.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Who should control the distribution in your opinion?
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
Huh? Inflation is based on the money supply relative to the "real" value of a product.
I... tentatively disagree. Not that nuclear power isn't a viable option, but remember that it takes time to build new plants, so by the time we build some more nuke plants other techs might be just as efficient.
I just recently read two articles about emerging technologies: In one, a group at MIT made this insanely efficient natural-gas turbine. 90% thermal efficiency or something. In the other, someone else invented a process where you can turn carbon dioxide emissions back into syngas. For the win.
Of course, in the long run I can totally see wind/solar/hydro being used where effective, but that's a large-scale building project that will take time.
marking up oil costs does nothing but hurt people instead. You can't get a faster transition it will happen as those product prove viable and sustainable not until then.
If that's the case then we also need a second page detailing an earned-income tax credit for the lower incomes, since a flat/consumption tax will be regressive against them (poor people spend more income on consumption).
Maybe a third page on capital gains. But you're right, it doesn't have to be brain surgery to figure out the tax code.
"The last time this was in effect"? We had a carbon cap-and-trade system once?
Anyway, cap-and-trade is no different than a carbon tax, in effect. The difference is who gets the money and how much corporations like the idea. Personally, I don't care what we do as long as it happens, and isn't severely neutered by special interests.
Well, that's kinda the point of a tax on carbon emissions and other pollutants. Currently there's next to no penalty for doing so, even if there are obvious and well-documented concerns about it (and these are short-term and local damages, not necessarily global climate change). Therefore, there's over-production, retention of crappy underpriced production methods, and overconsumption. Stuff needs to cost more if it has external costs, because people won't readily change their behavior just because some "expert" tells them to. (which see: uh, the climate change debate. :p)
?
There's also a lot of money in global warming denial, so it's not a one-sided issue in that respect.
Source? Cuz while Pinatubo released tens of millions of tons of SO2 into the atmosphere, I can't find solid numbers on CO2. I saw a citation of a research paper that claimed about 42-45 million tons, which seems about right given 20 million tons of SO2... *shrug*
But the only mention I could find of the "more than all anthropogenic emissions" claim was Lew Rockwell's blog:
Unfortunately this is extremely wrong, since Pinatubo released SO2, ash, and aerosols that contributed to a global layer of haze; THAT cooled the planet by about 0.5 degrees Celsius, as it has been shown to do. Rockwell made a stupid correlation error.
Bwuh?
... did you just pull those names out of a "possible co-conspirators for the NWO" hat?
???
???
Aaand back on the sanity bandwagon? (I agree, btw.)
Sarcasm? If anything it's blatant anti-socialism.
I agree, since there's really no one measure that could possibly address all the different vectors of pollution/eco-screwing without being 1000 pages long.
Very Well Then I Contradict Myself.
Large infrastructure, the federal government. Local infrastructure local and state control. Energy production should be in the private sector and encourage more "John Wayne" jargon for people to begin to produce their own energy. Megascale projects, I prefer government.
Furthermore, when I look at a legal document I'd like to not think "WTF do I do?" Try starting a small business, it's not fun. Larger scale projects, my goodness from what I've heard and read it takes months. It's plug and play economics, government needs to get off people's back. If you need to get my signature, get it once or twice. Not 40,000 times in triplicate in response to some made up space language.
Trust, but verify.
Truthfully, Americans only understand things through a binary set of lenses. They want a simple fix, and they want it to work now. On top of that we have to whip ourselves into a frenzy to get anything done and declare it a "war." Experts? They're in the same boat as any other American. Even Dawkins, a British intellectual, sets his sights on religion as some sort of moral war.
Science also has another issue with the public. It requires too damn much education to engage it. There's a real lack of plug and play applicability to it. The same with mathematics. Even if you achieve a relative level of success with math, there's an entire mountain to climb still yet with definitions and so forth. If its gold, lets call it gold. English is the lingua franca right now for trade, not Latin. Latin is dieing out even in the Catholic Church.
It's all about plug and play. A person should be able to analyze the science behind these works with only a high school diploma. Over technical language has people lost if the framework is not transmissible to the language of others. If I say supply side economics, people know what I'm talking about. If I say vacuole, then people go to a diction and look it up within a few minutes. If I use complex language like math steeped in chicanery symbols that are too advanced for the average person. I question whether if there is a simpler way to manipulate that abstract thought and have it more accessible to others.
Furthermore, knowledge is not about complexity its about the ability to engage. People understand human desires, and climatologists are a nascent science and need funding in order to survive. I don't believe it's necessarily a conspiracy theory, but the climate change fears are normative. Our climatological models suck, period. We need to model the climate of Mars, Venus, and other nearby planets to have something to check against Earth's climate. Geology is the only reliable science I believe right now in terms of climate change, because we have a much more massive collection of data and years of study that climatology lacks.
What people do understand is economics. It's a soft science, it has a bad predictability rate like climatology, but people deal with it everyday. Right now people say "I get taxed more, government wastes more." and "other such things. Yet, it's perfectly fine for Republicans to want some grandiose megamilitary. We don't need as big of a military as we have right now if we start using engaging in economic warfare. There's also a national security risk with our dependency on oil and the future with peak oil and a decaying Middle Eastern oil extraction infrastructure. Tie oil with national security without having to pay a blood tithe to Allah, then you win over Republicans. Although, Republicans like "drill baby drill" as an idea as if since we engage in international trade that we won't export that oil anyway?
We need nonexportable jobs and industry. Energy consumption is the future along with water and food. We need another revolution in infrastructure like we had in the 50's with agriculture, water use, and energy. Government and corporations paved the way forward with small businesses forming the spine of that initiative. Today, the money is held by the view and stupid.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
When you say you don't believe in global warming, what exactly are you saying? Do you not believe in the greenhouse effect? Do you not believe that carbon atoms absorb IR? I'm confused. The relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature is so close to 1:1 its stunning.
And what exactly do you mean 1:1? Yes, there is a causal relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and global temperature, however, the thing you're overlooking(read ignoring) is sheer amounts. It takes a LOT more carbon gathering in the atmosphere to significantly alter the overall climate of the planet than is currently being emitted by mankind.
As others have said, the climate changes on its own, with or without mankind, so arguing whether or not the climate is changing is pointless. Of course the climate is changing. What remains to be seen is how much man is influencing that change. If you had paid even an ounce of attention to the thread, then you should have already seen literally everything I said.
/recap
On a side note, when did this become a thread about economics?
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And most people in the scientific community would tell you that we are in fact making changes to the earth that will cause or have caused the earth to warm.
Where do you get this stuff?
Scientists interpret data, and then they publish it in peer reviewed journals. The entire debate doesn't stem from whether or not scientists are using suspicious methods. The debate is from non-scientists trying to instill political will on a scientific issue.
Right and we are putting a LOT more carbon into the atmosphere. I would like to see the peer reviewed study that was your source for the claim that humans do not emit enough carbon to change the earths temperature.
So... the climate changes naturally so therefore man cannot influence it at all in a negative way? What kind of reasoning is that?
It does not remain to seen if we are changing the climate. All the data points to the fact that we are changing it. I love how you deniers cherry pick some out of context emails as if it cancels out the hundreds of other studies that confirm that global warming is being influenced by man.
Its just like holocaust deniers. They will point to a picture and say "SEE LOOK, the Holocaust can't have happened because in this picture the concentration camp couldn't have been in this spot!" and then they ignore the thousands of other pictures that show the holocaust actually happening.
Good lord. So now people that disagree with you are the same as holocaust deniers?
Any respect I may have had for you is swirling down the toilet fast. You do not want to participate in any sort of discussion, just feces throwing.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/26269/
That is just the first link I found when googling "climategate emails". There is a scandal and coverup going on. How much and to what extent remains to be seen. But are you a denier that the science has been tampered with, or fudged? OMG?!??!1/1/111:o
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If you put in carbon controls with a carbon trade, you invent a new form of economic redistribution that is controlled by the financial industry. I don't want them to have more power. I don't trust them, we need them to put their money into business not playing with something fictitious like carbon credits.
Furthermore, some folks want us to pay reparations for climate change to other countries. I fairly much draw the line at reparations. Places such as Africa have been drying out for centuries.
Climatology is a nascent science, history is an ancient humanities that at times can be a soft science. Furthermore, comparing anything to the Holocaust, Nazis, and the like just detracts from your argument.
You also presume that people that come to a different conclusion are some how inferior to you. Climatology is a nascent science, where as geology shows a violent, and ever changing Earth. What is necessary before I'll even consider climatology anything outside of a nascent would require us studying the atmospheres of other worlds a lot more. We need more data, otherwise the predictions are laughable.
Furthermore, with Climategate it proves that scientists are just as fallible as any other people. These academics want financial control for research and their livelihood. Science is not free from avarice and ambition.
Now if you want to talk about something that's provable, you can talk about running out of oil or having economies hamstrung by competition over oil itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
I'm a supply sider conservative that also believes in simplicity of thought. Climatology requires overspecialized thinking about a system we barely understand. People understand supply and demand and money. While economic predictions do suck, there is no doubt we're running out of oil. With Middle Eastern decaying infrastructure we might not be at peak oil, however we will accelerate towards it in the coming years with the awakening ancient empires of the east.
Cut down oil consumption, you cut down emissions. You also make something a national issue by tying it to national security and showing up that evil Iranian President. Americans need an enemy and whip themselves up into a frenzy in order to do something about something.
Making oil consumption a social justice and national security issue binds the feet of both liberals and conservatives to the idea. Consumption is also tied to other bad environmental effects other than just emissions, period.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
I agree with this 100%. Where is America's "moon landing" or "WWII". In other words, America needs a national project to rally behind. Green energy, nukular energy, paper clips that speak to you, I really don't care what it is, but put America on track towards something.
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http://themoderatevoice.com/54632/global-warming-data-dumped-as-climategate-intensifies/
There is a little more to it than just hacked emails. Scientists have now deleted raw data. So there is something fishy going on. Like I said earlier to what extent, who knows.
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I mean never mind the scientists who believe that the sun has more to do with our climate change then we do.
I never said that we weren't changing the Earth's temperature. What I said was that our carbon emissions aren't enough to significantly change it. What that means is that at our current levels of emissions, we can't directly cause this cataclysmic climate change that is being 'predicted'. However, if our emissions do continue an exponential increase, then we will be in trouble in the future. That's something which needs to be prevented.
Okay okay, well then just show me this data....Oh wait, you can't. It's been destroyed. Results != Data.
I want you to realize that this single statement just tossed out all of your other points. For one, calling people who don't believe in human-centered climate change 'deniers' as if it were 100% fact. For two, comparing them to holocaust deniers. There are people who survived the German concentration camps who can attest to the things that happened there. Denying that it happened is basically saying that they just made up all of those things. That's not how it is with climate change.
Yes, but storing raw data makes your results much easier for others to repeat using the same method you used.
The fact that many (not all) scientists agree about something doesn't necessarily mean it's a hundred percent true. Especially with something as huge as climate change.
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