Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Realmfighter]

Responding to the last part of your post.

For math education, here at least, if you don't think your future career requires Calculus level mathematics, you can take a essential mathematics course that instead of focusing on abstract mathematics and concepts instead gives you skills in measurement, mental math practice, estimating item costs and calculating the tax rate. These are not useless things that people forget once the course is over.

For PE and English, you say that kids want to run, jump, read and write. These claims are false. Obesity rates in kids are sky rocketing, no one reads books for fun anymore, and text messaging does not count as writing. Without schools there to force kids to do these things, none of them would do it

You say that schools are inefficient, and thats true. Most of what is taught is never utilized in future careers and kids spend years they could be doing other things beneficial to society in the work force learning pointless things. But you can't pick and chose what lessons to teach them. Pointless bullshit to one kid is invaluable information to another. Even if you knew what career a kid would go to in the future, you couldn't fix a educational portfolio for each one. And you really can't know.

And not going to school is not really an option in our society these days.

I just wrote my first Semi-Essy post. Thanks alot.

[Aqizzar]

Regarding the current public education system in the United States, I have two criticisms of the criticisms.  First, the purpose of public gradeschool is not teaching informational skills.  Maybe it was several decades ago, but it's not now.  Are you ever going to use anything you learned about fractions or To Kill a Mockingbird or dodgeball (in the few districts that still allow dodgeball) in adult life?  No, of course not.  That's not the point.

Half the purpose of gradeschool is to teach people how to go along and get along in an interpersonal society.  Y'know, functioning around and with other people.  Not necessarily make friends, just know how to deal with people in a nonextraordinary fashion, and to some extent remember to respect authority figures.  Oh, I'm sorry, you think it's authoritarian brainwashing to teach children to do what adults tell them and not fight with the other children?  Go cry about it in your dark efficiency apartment.  If you want school to teach children life-skills for the adult world, that's about as important as it gets.  Slightly more important is the other half of gradeschool, not learning specific facts and data, but learning how to learn.  If you grew up in a cave (or a farm, or whatever), you'll probably be a caveman/farmer/whatever other shut-in upbringing you care to choose the rest of your life.  You may never use fractional multiplication again, but you gained some critical-thinking skills you'll take for granted forever after.

And as for my second criticism of the criticism, like so many other public institutions, public schooling would probably work a lot better if it wasn't so tied to local property values, and wasn't always the first thing on the chopping block when governments have to thin their budgets.  The privatization crowd loves to crow about what awesome results private schools produce compared to public schools.  Yeah, when you spend ten grand a student with classrooms of a dozen kids each (and have virtual freedom to fudge your grades), no shit you'll produce better results.  A lot of public schools act like overblown daycares, as a place to stick adolescents and keep an eye on them so they're not roaming the streets all day, because they can't afford to be anything else.

[Glowcat]

Let me rephrase to help me understand. Under this proposal, we tax the rich until they are relatively close to the working class (whatever that is arbitrarily set at). This money is funneled into government programs to improve the financing of health care, education, and "other programs". Since the poor and middle class (also arbitrarily defined) no longer have to pay for these things?

No, my argument is for progressive taxation but not so much that there's no benefit for producing a lot of wealth. As I recall this argument started over how unfair it was for the wealthy to pay more in taxes than somebody who was lower/middle class.

And that is a huge problem for me, because innovations rarely come from collective efforts. If it was up to teh collective efforts of society, we would have innovated our way to breeding a better horse, and not into a world of cars. Woudl cars be invented? sure, but the car industry took off because of entrepreneurs who organized the car-making model and refined it to be more profitable, marketable, and easier to make. Diud someone else make the car? sure, but they never would have if the entrepreneur didn't set up the company and the system to allow that to happen in teh first place. Jobs are rarely done without a motivated leader to push it, and one of the biggest motivators for efficiency is money.

You're looking at too small a scale. The society provides the infrastructure necessary for cars to have come about. There wouldn't be need for cars without roads, there wouldn't be engineers without Education, there wouldn't be production without workers, and there wouldn't be many consumers without a powerful middle-class.

Innovation is great when people of wealth actually pursue it, but being wealthy doesn't necessarily mean they're putting the money to productive use. By easing the pains of the lower-classes they also have a better chance of upwards mobility and become the kind of rich people who do put wealth towards innovation.

And so forth, over and over again. the first website is complete bull. The second link isn't even about the Fair Tax at all, it's about the Value Added Tax, which is practically the opposite. The Fair tax only taxes once, at the end, the same percentage for everything. The VAT taxes at every little interval, and is still graduated like the income tax based on what you earn. It accomplishes none of the goals of the FairTax, nor does it claim to.

By the way, we'll continue to see it debated the more it's well known, up until it's passed. There have already been several proposals for it.

Perhaps I should have just linked you to http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html where you could have seen the graph source I was using from page 213 of the report (as I noted by the link). The figure I was referencing was figure 9.4 which dealt with the full replacement of the current system with a Retail Tax.

Facts Check (using the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform's findings) backs up some points made by the first author such as:

More significantly, however, the panel found that FairTax supporters were employing questionable accounting. In calculating federal revenue, proponents assumed that purchases made by the federal government would be taxed at the full 30 percent rate. But when calculating federal expenditures, FairTax proponents did not factor in the additional costs of the 30 percent sales tax. The Advisory Panel thus threw out the revenue from federal purchases, noting (correctly) that increased revenue from taxing federal purchases is exactly canceled by increased costs in the federal budget

I guess that's all BS then? Because it sounds to me like the people advocating for a Fair Tax haven't been quite honest with their numbers.

[malimbar04]

<snip>

Holy crap. A very good point on social agendas on the US vs China. It's easy to forget how big of assholes the CIA is (most of those operations were done by the CIA in america), and it's easy to forget how much they play god around the world.

I think it's interesting that you say China is often nearly unanimous on some of the issues that the US is split dead even on. While I disagree with a lot of those positions you mentioned (more guns among the population is a good thing for example), it does make it convenient. I wonder a lot about a system where people are unanimous (how much of that is fear or propaganda or social pressure, etc), it's not really all that relevant if we're looking for a government that conforms to the will of the the people.

There are stores where you can buy children now?

Well yes actually, they're called adoption agencies.

Regarding schooling, well, firstly, it's not particularly expensive, and secondly, I don't see a problem with someone living next to a school, and not sending their children to it, and not paying for it. If they think schooling is not important, let them see how they fare without them. As it is, I can see plenty of good arguments for why schools in their current form should be abolished.

First of all, schooling is EXTREMELY expensive. It's hard to see if the government pays the bills, but if you compare the rates to those of private schools the difference becomes obvious. Sending a child to school with earned money is enough to make a lot of people go broke or nearly so.

The other problem with this is that they're still reaping the benefits and drawbacks of a nearby school. The crime rate, education of work force, traffic, and so forth all correspond to the policy.

As for being abolished, I think that might be throwing out more than you want to. I think we agree that education as a whole is useful to a society, though not perfect. However, in what ways would you remake it? Making math interesting sounds good, but that can be done by changing a single curriculum. PE classes also are more effective than playing, and older students often don't play with physical activity. You can modify PE classes to be more play like, or add play time to encourage physical play,b ut that is again just changing a single curriculum. English classes are extremely important I think, especially in the day when kids prefer to read Twilight and talk "lik dis. its lik u not now wat me sayen dawg". People have horrendous grammer, and I think can barely form a sentence to save their life a lot of times. If we had them write poetry and stories and read interesting books, that could work, but that is again a change in curriculum, and maybe testing procedures.

Children will quite naturally teach themselves if you make the information they want accessible to them, and, what's more, when they teach themselves, they will never forget. A a quarter of most people's lifetimes are wasted because so much of the information they learn is uninteresting to them, and immediately forgotten. If they spent all of their time learning whatever they became curious about, they would remember all of it, and they would be much better off for not having had their curiosity destroyed by institutionalized schooling.

Do you spend much time aroudn children? People of all ages forget a crapload of things. If you know much about how the brain works and develops, I think you'd realize this is mostly just wrong. People who ONLY follow their interests miss all sorts of supporting knowledge, and they still often forget things that they were itnerseted in. There is more to learning than interest, a lot more.

Most of your taxes go to war.

Just plain false. It's a big expense, but it's not "most" by a long shot. In the US "defense" is less than a quarter of spending. A lot of that is home defense as well, having little to do with war.

[malimbar04]

Let me rephrase to help me understand. Under this proposal, we tax the rich until they are relatively close to the working class (whatever that is arbitrarily set at). This money is funneled into government programs to improve the financing of health care, education, and "other programs". Since the poor and middle class (also arbitrarily defined) no longer have to pay for these things?

No, my argument is for progressive taxation but not so much that there's no benefit for producing a lot of wealth. As I recall this argument started over how unfair it was for the wealthy to pay more in taxes than somebody who was lower/middle class.

Then we would have to decide at what point there is enough benefit to producing a lot of wealth, versus too much benefit. "I have a great idea that could make me a billionaire, but instead I'll be forced to be a millionaire" is what this says to me. Thus, for efficiency sake, it would be easier to aim lower. Unless you're very lucky, it's extremely hard to become that rich, and a whole hell of a lot easier to aim lower.

And that is a huge problem for me, because innovations rarely come from collective efforts. If it was up to teh collective efforts of society, we would have innovated our way to breeding a better horse, and not into a world of cars. Woudl cars be invented? sure, but the car industry took off because of entrepreneurs who organized the car-making model and refined it to be more profitable, marketable, and easier to make. Diud someone else make the car? sure, but they never would have if the entrepreneur didn't set up the company and the system to allow that to happen in teh first place. Jobs are rarely done without a motivated leader to push it, and one of the biggest motivators for efficiency is money.

You're looking at too small a scale. The society provides the infrastructure necessary for cars to have come about. There wouldn't be need for cars without roads, there wouldn't be engineers without Education, there wouldn't be production without workers, and there wouldn't be many consumers without a powerful middle-class.

Innovation is great when people of wealth actually pursue it, but being wealthy doesn't necessarily mean they're putting the money to productive use. By easing the pains of the lower-classes they also have a better chance of upwards mobility and become the kind of rich people who do put wealth towards innovation.

The infrastructure was designed for horse drawn carriages, not for cars. The infrastructure for cars came from their being a demand for cars at the quality and price set by early entrepreneurs, which only existed because they switched to the assembly-line (borrowed from gun makers). If you follow the infrastructure history, it was never designed for the innovations it was later used for.

I would mostly agree on the education front, as that's a great place for innovation to start. If you don't have education, you have to do it on your own though. And if the idea hasn't come up before, there is no starting point for the education to work on. Motivation is another factor in major advances in engineering as well though. Thus it makes sense to me when I read (in entrepreneurial books) that the A students work for the C students, and the B students work for the government.

Perhaps I should have just linked you to http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html where you could have seen the graph source I was using from page 213 of the report (as I noted by the link). The figure I was referencing was figure 9.4 which dealt with the full replacement of the current system with a Retail Tax.

Facts Check (using the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform's findings) backs up some points made by the first author such as:

More significantly, however, the panel found that FairTax supporters were employing questionable accounting. In calculating federal revenue, proponents assumed that purchases made by the federal government would be taxed at the full 30 percent rate. But when calculating federal expenditures, FairTax proponents did not factor in the additional costs of the 30 percent sales tax. The Advisory Panel thus threw out the revenue from federal purchases, noting (correctly) that increased revenue from taxing federal purchases is exactly canceled by increased costs in the federal budget

I guess that's all BS then? Because it sounds to me like the people advocating for a Fair Tax haven't been quite honest with their numbers.

Yes, quite honestly, it is. I trust FactCheck.org, but I don't think they understand it as well as they think they do. The taxes that the FairTax is replacing are also measured inclusively. If your job pays you 30,000 a year, they take out 6,000. They don't measure that as "your wage is 24,000, and we're taxing your workplace another 25% on top of that". Instead, they measure it as "your wage is 30,000, and 6,000 of that goes to taxes".

Then, there is the end price. The things you buy now ALREADY have sales tax, but it's hidden along the production line. On everything you buy, you're also paying for the income taxes and business taxes and tariffs and whatever else went into putting that product at that store. If you're going to measure honestly what the end price will be, you need to subtract those costs first. Not doing so is simply a mis-characterization, whether intentional or not.

That inclusive tax from production already exists on everything you buy btw, even the things that the article complains about. Doctors bills are hidden in the wages of the teachers, the wages of the workers of the school, the wages and taxes on the equipment, on teh drug companies, and so forth. While "taxign doctor bills" may seem excessive, you're already paying it. That already exists on Gasoline and Legal fees, new purchases on homes, and so forth.

when it says "A $150,000 new home would run $195,00 - plus teh 30% tax the buyer would pay on the interest on the mortgage" they're forgetting to subtract the cost that the company is saving first. The company building your home would no longer be paying any taxes on the lumber, the workers, the paint, and so forth down the line. If they want the same profit margin, the prices come back down for you. How much? almost as much as you're paying in the FairTax. However, remember, you're bringing more money home. How much more home? the entire amount that you saved on the federal income tax.

And so forth down the line.

That graph, btw, is just as misleading.This graph shows that they're giving the prebate to ONLY the poor, instead of to everyone. But the proposal doesn't descriminate. Thus that graph is just plain wrong. Then, they basically ignore their last two paragraphs, which states the other more technical economic benefits - larger purchasing power, long term income increases, and so forth.

And then when they say it makes it "less fair", they're using the alternative definition of fair, which I've repeatedly mentioned. Fair, under their definition, means equal. Fair, under teh FairTax definition, means under the same rules. The current system puts in different rules for everybody, the FairTax puts everybody under the same rules.

[Zrk2]

First off, I am Canadian.

Ok, Education: I am in high school, no matter what you do a large portion of kids I know will never give a shit about school, at the other end of the spectrum are the 'giftees' (from the gifted program) that all honour role without trying, most of them don't care about school, except for ensuring they get a good job. In the middle are those (maybe 40%) that would benefit from a different system, because currently they are drifting towards the 'I don't give a shit, let's go get drunk' section.

Fair Tax: I don't know, it sounds like a con to make the government more money. Like the HST in Ontario.

[Leafsnail]

I dunno... the government is likely to lose out just as much as everyone else when it wrecks the economy.

[Grakelin]

First off, I am Canadian.

Ok, Education: I am in high school, no matter what you do a large portion of kids I know will never give a shit about school, at the other end of the spectrum are the 'giftees' (from the gifted program) that all honour role without trying, most of them don't care about school, except for ensuring they get a good job. In the middle are those (maybe 40%) that would benefit from a different system, because currently they are drifting towards the 'I don't give a shit, let's go get drunk' section.

Fair Tax: I don't know, it sounds like a con to make the government more money. Like the HST in Ontario.

Lawl, all I did in high school was get drunk and play games, and I did pretty well in all aspects of school.

HST's not really a scam, by the way. I moved here (Ontario) from the Maritimes, where we've had HST for ages, and I was lolling at how angry everybody was getting over 'the government tryin' tuh con our moneh'. I can maybe understand if they had set up the HST at the same time as a major pay raise for all the MLAs, but they didn't.