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Life Size Lego Car Powered by Air

TheFreak says...

This isn't an exercise in engineering so much as marketing.

The pneumatic motor is limited by the extreme lack of energy stored in compressed air. All inneficiencies in translating that stored energy into motion are failures in the system. The goal is to carefully remove all unnecessary sources of energy loss from the motor.

So there's an interesting engineering challenge in making this work 'at all' using Legos. There are design compromises that must be made, given the restrictions on form imposed by available parts; as well as the stress limitations of the material. It's like someone giving you a pile of reeds and asking you to build a Manhattan 5-Story Walkup. Can it be done? Is there enough stress resistance in the material for something of that scale? A fun challenge with no practical implications. Manhattan low-rises have been built before, you're not innovating architecture and you're definitely not contributing anything to the future of construction.

The question is, does it require a "technology genius" to accomplish? Someone tell me what a "technology genius" is first. Whatever it is...I suspect you don't need one on your team in order to search the internet for pneumatic piston motor schematics and copy/paste a parallel series of 256.

This exercise is inspiring and fun...until you add the marketing entrepreneur, casting hyperbole around and spending other people's money. It is unsettling to think that the new generation of capitalists are chasing the specter of Elon Musk; self promoting egotists who create nothing and take credit for everything. As a longtime member of the internet in good standing, I reject every stealth intrusion of marketing and entrepreneurship into my sandbox.

Hooray for Raul Oaida, engineering buff and hobbyist. Down with Steve Sammartino, marketer, entrepreneur, "brainchild" originator, keeper of secrete locations, crowd funder, project contact and fathead.

enoch (Member Profile)

Trancecoach says...

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

enoch said:

<snipped>

Reinventing Detroit ~ Urban Revival in the Motor City

siftbot says...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'collaboration, entrepreneurship, DIY, community, Michigan, ReMake Detroit' to 'collaboration, entrepreneurship, DIY, community, Michigan, ReMake Detroit, maker space' - edited by brycewi19

NYC Restaurant Sells Parking Spots: Strong Arming Residents

chilaxe says...

>> ^Kofi:

Its this kind of entrepreneurialism that makes America the nation it is today.


This seems more like parasitism, which is the opposite of high-contribution entrepreneurship like Dropbox and Tesla Motors.

China News Confuses Rubber Vagina/Anus for Special Mushroom

vaire2ube says...

perverted, or enlightened!?

"Reporter Ye Yunfeng's amazing rediscovery of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's secret to longevity -- the taisui lingzhi mushroom -- has spurred local entrepreneurship and spawned a whole new industry.
One very enterprising street cleaner who makes additional income by hawking things off the street is now passing off artificial vajayjays as the long lost magic mushroom, and selling them for as much as 18,000RMB (US$2,800)!"

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/06/21/artificial-vajayjay-mushroom-seller.php

TDS: Conservative Minorities vs. Liberal Minorities

TDS: Conservative Minorities vs. Liberal Minorities

chilaxe says...

@longde

The last Silicon Valley event I went to was a startup demo day for an incubator, and about 1/3 of the startup founders were White.

The event before that was an industry event/mixer for which the speaker was non-White, the event manager was non-White, and about 1/3 of the audience was White.

The event before had 5 CEO speakers, and only 2 of them were White. About half of that audience was White.


Perhaps we need affirmative action for these White minorities who are being underrepresented relative to their proportion of the population.

There are endless high profile Chinese and Indian angel investors and venture capitalists, and all Silicon Valley investors regardless of ethnicity have 1 concern: are you or are you not going to achieve our investment objectives?

The first rule of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley is that there are no excuses, and if countless other people can solve whatever problem you believe you have, then you can solve it to.

Fox 12 Reporter to Occupy Portland: "I am One of You"

chilaxe says...

@longde

Careerism is being of service to society. If someone is willing to part with money for something, such as the fruits of our careers, that means they genuinely value it.

I'd include entrepreneurship within the category of careerism.

If someone manages their career well, their peak income and usefulness to society is around retirement age.

Fox 12 Reporter to Occupy Portland: "I am One of You"

longde says...

Careerism is BS. What a completely shallow, meaningless aspiration. And what happens after one reaches 45?

It's better to advocate self-determination via entrepreneurship or any other means.

Interview with Pepper Sprayed Protester Chelsea Elliott

ridesallyridenc says...

I personally believe the only way to turn around this "new economy" is through innovation and entrepreneurship. Manufacturing is gone, we have to accept that. The service industry is hurting too, so we have to evolve.

As far as starting capital, I bootstrapped a business years ago with $2,000 and ramen noodles. It now employs 12 people. We pay better than market wages, provide excellent benefits, and generally treat each other like family. We found a niche and went for it.

Along my journey, I've met literally hundreds of young entrepreneurs that have similar success stories. It's not impossible, it just takes the willingness to work. You have to see problems as opportunities to make things better, and then take action. Sitting around talking about the problems doesn't do a whole lot of good. It's up to us to present solutions as well.

Just my $0.02.

Keynesians - Failing Since 1936 (Blog Entry by blankfist)

quantumushroom says...

The Big Lie About The Great Depression

Ben Shapiro

In her vital and fascinating new book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes tells a story about national icon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after FDR took office, Shlaes explains, he began arbitrarily tinkering with the price of gold. "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more," writes Shlaes.

One particular morning, Shlaes relates, FDR informed his "brain trust" that he was considering raising the price of gold by 21 cents. His advisers asked why 21 cents was the appropriate figure. "It's a lucky number," stated Roosevelt, "because it's three times seven." Henry Morgenthau, a member of the "brain trust," later wrote: "If anybody knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened."

Ignorance of basic economics — and the concurrent attempt to obfuscate that ignorance by employing class-conscious demagoguery — remains the staple of the Democratic Party. For over 60 years, Democrats and their allies in the media and public school system have taught that the Great Depression was an inevitable result of laissez-faire economic policies, and that only the Keynesian policies of the FDR government allowed America to emerge from the ashes. The Great Depression, for the left, provides conclusive proof that when it comes to economics, government works better than business.

This point of view has a sterling reputation. That reputation, unsurprisingly, was created by FDR himself. FDR turned the Great Depression into a morality play — a morality play in which those in favor of individual initiative were the sinners, while those who relied on government were the saints. "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," Roosevelt intoned in 1937. "We know now that it is bad economics."

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

Nonetheless, the myth of a grinning FDR leading America forth from the soup kitchens remains potent.
And today's Democrats rely desperately on that fading falsehood, hoping to bolster their bad economics with worse history. Hillary Clinton routinely hijacks Rooseveltian language, most recently disparaging the "on your own society" in favor of a "we're all in it together society." John Edwards' "two Americas" nonsense drips of FDR's class warfare. Never mind that Keynesian economics does not work. Never mind that it promotes unemployment, discourages investment and quashes entrepreneurship. For Democrats, the image of government-as-friend is more important than a government that actually protects the rights that breed prosperity.

"The impression of recovery — the impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-out — mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics," novelist-cum-economist John Updike recently wrote, defending FDR from Shlaes' critique. "Business, of which Shlaes is so solicitous, is basically merciless, geared to maximize profit. Government is ultimately a human transaction, and Roosevelt put a cheerful, defiant, caring face on government at a time when faith in democracy was ebbing throughout the Western world. For this inspirational feat he is the twentieth century's greatest President, to rank with Lincoln and Washington as symbolic figures for a nation to live by."

For Updike and his allies, image trumps reality. The supposed harshness of the business world matters more for Updike than the fact that profit incentives promote economic growth, efficiency and creativity. The "caring face" of government is more important for Updike than creating a framework that produces jobs and affordable commodities. Updike's sporadically employed father liked FDR because FDR made him feel "less alone." No doubt Updike's father would have felt less alone if he had been steadily employed by a private enterprise — the kind of enterprise stifled by Roosevelt.

"We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal," FDR announced in 1937, as unemployment stood at 15 percent, "and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world." Today's Democrats continue to embrace the vision, even at the cost of a prosperous reality.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

blankfist says...

Lyrics:

“Fight of the Century” Lyrics.

Written by John Papola and Russ Roberts

KEYNES
Here we are… peace out! great recession
thanks to me, as you see, we’re not in a depression
Recovery, destiny if you follow my lesson
Lord Keynes, here I come, line up for the procession

HAYEK
We brought out the shovels but we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!

KEYNES
Are you kidding? my cure works perfectly fine…
have a look, the great recession ended back in ’09.
I deserve credit. Things would have been worse
All the estimates prove it—I’ll quote chapter and verse

HAYEK
Econometricians, they’re ever so pious
Are they doing real science or confirming their bias?
Their “Keynesian” models are tidy and neat
But that top down approach is a fatal conceit

REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
…the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from the ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

KEYNES
we could have done better, had we only spent more
Too bad that only happens when there’s a World War
You can carp all you want about stats and regression
Do you deny World War II cut short the Depression?

HAYEK
Wow. One data point and you’re jumping for joy
the Last time I checked, wars only destroy
There was no multiplier, consumption just shrank
As we used scarce resources for every new tank

Pretty perverse to call that prosperity
Rationed meat, Rationed butter… a life of austerity
When that war spending ended your friends cried disaster
yet the economy thrived and grew ever faster

KEYNES
You too only see what you want to see
The spending on war clearly goosed GDP
Unemployment was over, almost down to zero
That’s why I’m the master, that’s why I’m the hero

HAYEK
Creating employment’s a straigtforward craft
When the nation’s at war, and there’s a draft
If every worker was staffed in the army and fleet
We’d be at full employment with nothing to eat

REFRAIN REPEATS

HAYEK
jobs are the means, not the ends in themselves
people work to live better, to put food on the shelves
real growth means production of what people demand
That’s entrepreneurship not your central plan

KEYNES
My solution is simple and easy to handle..
its spending that matters, why’s that such a scandal?
The money sloshes through the pipes and the sluices
revitalizing the economy’s juices

it’s just like an engine that’s stalled and gone dark
To bring it to life, we need a quick spark
Spending’s the life blood that gets the flow going
Where it goes doesn’t matter, just get spending flowing

HAYEK
You see slack in some sectors as a “general glut”
But some sectors are healthy, and some in a rut
So spending’s not free – that’s the heart of the matter
too much is wasted as cronies get fatter.

The economy’s not a car, there’s no engine to stall
no expert can fix it, there’s no “it” at all.
The economy’s us, we don’t need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy’s organic

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
so what would you do to help those unemployed?
this is the question you seem to avoid
when we’re in a mess, would you just have us wait?
Doing nothing until markets equil-i-brate?

HAYEK
I don’t want to do nothing, there’s plenty to do
The question I ponder is who plans for who?
Do I plan for myself or leave it to you?
I want plans by the many and not by the few.

We shouldn’t repeat what created our troubles
I want real growth not just a series of bubbles
Let’s stop bailing out losers and let prices work
If we don’t try to steer them they won’t go berserk

KEYNES
Come on, Are you kidding? Don’t Wall Street’s gyrations
Challenge your world view of self-regulation?
Even you must admit that the lesson we’ve learned
Is more oversight’s needed or else we’ll get burned

HAYEK
Oversight? The government’s long been in bed
With the Wall Street execs and the firms that they’ve led
Prosperity’s all about profit and loss
When you bail out the losers there’s no end to the cost

the lesson I’ve learned? It’s how little we know,
the world is complex, not some circular flow
the economy’s not a class you can master in college
to think otherwise is the pretense of knowledge

REFRAIN REPEATS

KEYNES
You get on your high horse and you’re off to the races
I look at the world on a case by case basis
When people are suffering I roll up my sleeves
And do what I can to cure our disease

The future’s uncertain, our outlooks are frail
Thats why free markets are so prone to fail
In a volatile world we need more discretion
So state intervention can counter depression

HAYEK
People aren’t chessmen you can move on a board
at your whim–their dreams and desires ignored
With political incentives, discretion’s a joke
The dials you’re twisting… are just mirrors and smoke

We need stable rules and real market prices
so prosperity emerges and cuts short the crisis
give us a chance so we can discover
the most valuable ways to serve one another

FINAL REFRAIN
Which way should we choose?
more bottom up or more top down
the fight continues…
Keynes and Hayek’s second round

it’s time to weigh in…
more from the top or from ground
…lets listen to the greats
Keynes and Hayek throwing down

Smugglarn (Member Profile)

Porksandwich says...

I totally agree that it's not simple. That's why all of this bothers me so much. Congress members like to see it black and white, what they want (and their contributors want) should be kept or voted in. What they don't want (and their contributors don't want) is communist/socialist/anti-american/against God/whatever. There absolutely no sway with these people, and that's because they are paid to think the way they do. It's not the best interest of the country, it's the best interest of who paid them off.

It's pretty blatant when the people who are making out like bandits during a very bad economic recession if doesn't become a depression and still want more tax cuts and profits, while the food banks don't have enough food and people are literally losing their houses because they won't extend unemployment benefits.

And trust me, unemployment in the US does not pay enough to cover what you would have made with a job. Especially when healthcare is primarily provided by companies and not by a universal health plan, people simply can't afford coverage on unemployment and they are not provided coverage unless they meet stringent criteria.

And it has been shown that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy, for every dollar put into unemployment compensation a 1.60 or some such is generated. Rich tax cuts don't even come close to generating that, not even in the same ballpark. And they are supposedly the people who make the world go round if you listen to the bought and paid for Congress members.


In reply to this comment by Smugglarn:
While I agree with som of waht you say there is a caveat to all those wonderful programs. In my country (Sweden) the model of governance was that the ruling party (Social Democrats) essentially paid their voters with unemployment programs and social security benefits. You could actually earn less working than going on benefits. Immigrants who by nature of their endeavours are quite industrius and hard working quickly became pacified and dependant on the system. The only thing asked of the poorer classes is to vote "correctly" every four years. Remember though - they are only loyal voters for as long as they are not suffering as much . As soon as they get successful they get the full force of the tax system and change alliances. It stifles entrepreneurship and innovation.

Thankfully the Social Democrats were voted out. Regrettably, there is a high unemployment rate, a nationalist party gained a lot of seats in the parliament and violence plagues the projects and large cities around the country.


The left seeing the voters abandon them cry out for expanded immigration and more refugees. At first glance this could be thought of as a compassionate move - but in reality they want more party members to feed the machine. On the other hand the right want to expand immigration as well - for specialists nad other high quality workers - but also for cheap labour obviously.

What I'm rambling about is that it is not that simple.

In reply to this comment by Porksandwich:
Really no one knows what will fix the economy, often times opinion of the economy means just as much as actual changes. If people think the economy is in the toilet, they play safe with their money....if they think it's great they invest in more risky things (to me the tech bubbles demonstrate this, they don't know WTF they were investing in half the time but it sounded good).

But it strikes me as odd when you see a sudden decline in the economy and opinion of it tank....that they don't undo what they changed a few years prior to the economic downturn. Yes there are outside influences and other hard to account for things. But if tax cuts on the rich stimulated the economy in a beneficial way, we would not be in the situation we are in. Yes bank deregulation and other stupid moves, plus a blind payout to people who abused the system really hurt us. But the people who made those decisions also tend to be rich people with rich friends, after all it takes millions upon millions to campaign for any federal level job and you're going to notice the guy giving you a couple hundred thousand versus the guy who gives you 10 bucks.

As for making up the taxes in other methods...sales, consumption, sin tax, whatever you want to refer to. 1% of the population can go day to day without buying as much or can go to lengths to offset or remove the tax burdens they would otherwise face if they have many resources at their disposal. They could simply live somewhere else where those taxes do not effect them. And the rest of the people making, I think it's 250k or less a year to be the non-rich, they simply do not have the resources to avoid living near their jobs and are going to have the basic necessity expenditures as any rich guy.

I mean we all have things we need in common.
Food

Shelter (electricity, gas)

Toiletries (unless we're gonna wipe our asses with tree bark and not wear deodorant or brush our teeth),

Methods of transport (which is usually going to be a car, most places have pathetic public transport and riding a bike in sweltering heat or freezing cold is not going to cut it)

Medical - which at this point in time you have to be pretty destitute or disabled to receive government help with. And everyone at some point in their life is going to need medical assistance whether it's through a fault of their own or not. It's a stupid system where if you can't afford your treatment "RIGHT NOW" you may end up crippled and a burden on everyone else for the rest of your life over a few thousand dollars.

Rich people don't need to eat any more than poor people, they might have richer tastes but they can survive on poor people food. Rich people don't need any more than the minimum shelter. Same with toiletries, fancy colognes and perfumes are frills. BMWs versus 20 year old clunkers, rich can drive beaters too. Medical, rich people are going to have the basic care they need when they need it at every stage of their life....because they are rich and of course luck in genetic lotteries count for a lot.

So unless every rich person lives extravagantly INSIDE the US at all times, taxing them on anything but income is only going to get what they spend money on inside the country...even though they make their money and protect their money and assets utilizing what everyone else helps subsidize - roads, utilities, police, firefighters, etc.

It's the "I got mine, so fuck you." attitude that seems to be popular now. You can see it in a lot of things, unemployment extensions (I got a job, so fuck you.), universal health care (I'm not sick, so fuck you.), public transportation (I own a car, so fuck you.), Visa workers/offshoring (I can get cheaper labor, so fuck you.), etc.

So we end up with absolutely no positive future growth besides what you can afford to do for yourself. And we have more and more people falling onto government welfare programs where they are going to find themselves stuck until the problems become so blatantly apparent that no one can deny that paying your share benefits you just as much as it benefits others.

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chilaxe says...

@mgittle :
Interesting about the Plutonomy Report. It seems pretty straight-forward to say Plutonomies like the US, the British Empire, and the Roman Empire brain-drain the rest of the world. That's why the young creator of Chatroulette recently moved to Silicon Valley, instead of staying in Russia,* same as Google's Sergey Brin.

I remember a study from a few years ago that concluded when human were migrating out from Africa, each group that kept moving to a new location had slightly higher novelty-seeking genes than the group that stayed... fascinating... with the end result being in places at the end of the longest migration paths, like the Americas and the Pacific Islands there were significant differences. However, the paper connected that with higher rates of attention-deficit type learning disabilities in those areas, rather than with higher rates of entrepreneurship.

Ultimately, though, there are myriad differences between groups, so looking at just one trait or theory, as seems to be done in the Plutonomy Report, isn't necessarily very helpful in the big picture.

@mgittle :
Interesting article about time perception. I think it's a good reminder to practice mindefulness in daily life... and I see they mention the Dalai Lama in that article



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