|
Post by graybeard on May 21, 2012 5:36:32 GMT -6
Prop 13 has encouraged homeowners to stay put, creating more neighborhood stability. That can't be bad.
Corporations benefit from Prop 13 more than individuals. When Boeing bought McDouglas in about 2000, it was a tax-free transfer, as corporations do so cleverly. You can bet Boeing is paying 1978 taxes on the properties.
The value of something is really important for only two days: the day you buy, and the day you sell. Why should taxes jump because a house has increased in assumed value between those two days? No profit is realized until the sale.
GB I voted against Prop 13, and have benefited from it ever since.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 20, 2012 13:58:53 GMT -6
There's nothing to keep an anti-spyware pgm from installing its own spyware.
I use XP, and recently installed Windows Defender "free" anti-spyware, and it has found nothing. I hibernate the confuser between sessions, and re-boot when it gets slow. That speeds it up again. I also go to system tools and do a defrag check once in awhile.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 20, 2012 13:36:24 GMT -6
Hurrah for them.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 20, 2012 13:34:20 GMT -6
I tried to point out the difficulty of tariffs. Let's try a different product:
ChiCom Apple sells US Apple Ipads at $1 each, and 100% tariff is $1. US Apple sells them for $800 each, and the profits go to Apple Panama. Due to banking secrecy laws, the US govt has no way to prove Apple Panama is paying ChiCom Apple another $500 each for the Ipads sent to the US. How do you fix that?
High import inspection costs make US labor more competitive, and it's productive.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 20, 2012 6:43:50 GMT -6
Let's take Heparin as an example and walk through that:
Baxter Labs US pays ChiCom Baxter for the drug. They can set the price at whatever gives them the most advantage.
Say Baxter US pays $1 per dose to ChiCom Baxter for the drug, and sells each dose for $800. The tariff is $1. What then?
Baxter Labs US is probably a division of Baxter Cayman Island, which reports all the profits, and pays zero taxes.
Big oil evades US income taxes by owning every step from the Nigerian well head to the gas hose. They shift the profit to where the tax is lowest.
It's an accounting shell game.
Hiring inspectors and all the other accounting and logistics disciplines puts Americans to work doing real good - 100% inspection of imports, starting with food and drugs.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 19, 2012 19:35:10 GMT -6
100% of what?
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 18, 2012 14:01:55 GMT -6
On SoCal PBS 50 "Real Orange" the other night, they said a person has to make $26/hr to afford a single bedroom apt.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 17, 2012 12:24:52 GMT -6
Tariffs are not easy to levy fairly. How do you establish the value of an item before it sells? I think wiki covers the history of tariff shenanigans in CONgress.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 17, 2012 11:07:29 GMT -6
My semi-liberal neighbor, who drags me out for a hurried hike and pushups every morning, recently parroted the current Reptilian chant about taxpayers and tax takers.
As we were hiking through the gumtree grove a few days later, I pointed out the 5 acre park was a tax taker, and the city could sell it for $5 Million and get tax revenue from the houses that would be built. That changed his attitude a bit.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 16, 2012 12:58:27 GMT -6
This gives even more urgency to the need for 100% inspection of imports - paid by the importers. That creates jobs at the ports and inland points, and pushes the cost of contaminated products back to the importers, instead of final user.
There was another recent batch of parrot food contaminated with poisonous melamine, an intentionally criminal act, as melamine resembles protein in simple testing.
The ChiComs don't care whether people live or die, except how it affects their profits.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 15, 2012 5:12:06 GMT -6
Astute observation, Spudbuddy.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 13, 2012 10:53:21 GMT -6
Conclusion: high tax rates cause prosperity.
Your business is faced with gambling on a new product, hiring, or whatever:
At a 10% tax rate, you are saddled with 90% of the risk.
At a 50% tax rate, you are saddled with only 50% of the risk, and much more likely to take the risk. The govt is taking the other half of the risk.
I wish there were an easily understood way to show this. It is important.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 12, 2012 5:22:08 GMT -6
"The 2nd Amendment was designed as a means to protect the 1st & 4th Amendments from Government infringement. "
That's all out the window now. If you can't organize a group without being caught, you are just a lone gunman.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 12, 2012 5:13:10 GMT -6
Was JPMorgan's shorting of silver a big part of their $2 Billion loss just revealed?
I see it's dropped to $29, from the $32 it held for quite awhile.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 11, 2012 10:00:52 GMT -6
Elliot Spitzer had three NSA whistleblowers on his pgm Monday, along with other commentary on the eradication of the First and Fourth Amendments. It had me wondering if Spitzer himself hadn't been caught with a hooker due to govt spying.
Our Fascist corporate govt has taken over America without firing a shot, and all the billion guns in private hands don't matter.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 11, 2012 9:52:21 GMT -6
How else could someone not brainwashed to despise the great unwashed masses (the American people) rise so high?
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 10, 2012 15:01:25 GMT -6
Oh, part of the deal was giving them permission to record with your own computer's camera and microphone...
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 9, 2012 8:38:44 GMT -6
Every time I do a computer restart, I get a popup advising I need to update my Adobe Flashplayer to the latest. I started to do it once not long ago, until I read the EULA, then canceled out of the "upgrade." Since then, I am unable to watch any emailed videos I receive.
The EULA, as most, is a nightmare of privacy invasions, and I think now Adobe is part of gOOgle. It would take an English major and a lawyer hours to understand what is being offered on a "Take it or Leave it."
Seems like there is less room for privacy on the net all the time. How do you feel about it?
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 9, 2012 8:21:11 GMT -6
It's a sad day for America.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 3, 2012 15:36:29 GMT -6
How much have ChiCom imports increased?
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 2, 2012 8:02:55 GMT -6
Heard an Egyptian woman on NPR the other day saying over 90% of their women get genital mutilation.
Islamic countries will never thrive until Islam goes through a reformation and abandons many interpretaions of the Koran.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 2, 2012 7:57:43 GMT -6
The Chickenhawks dodged the draft, AWOLBush by joining a country club NG unit, due to political pull. Cheney got seven deferments for college and whatever, then had a child exactly nine months after they announced the resumption of drafting married men.
The list goes on. Most Repubs were draft dodgers, along with Clinton, and the Dems had the likes of John Kerry and Bob Kerry.
Since the end of Vietnam, the draft was no longer needed, numbers wise, but it has hurt us. Where did Romney serve? He wants to increase the criminal military budget.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on May 2, 2012 7:21:19 GMT -6
Even in desired concoction, that stuff is hazardous. Find dried Coke on something? The only solvent is more Coke.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 27, 2012 7:51:36 GMT -6
The options are so poor, I expect the majority to stay home. I didn't care much about Gore vs. Bu$h, until it was too late...
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 25, 2012 8:16:43 GMT -6
Stemming from personal experience, I have come up with a unique specialty product for parrot owners. The wood and pvc parts can be had from retail stores, and thrifty bird owners will likely make their own. That's fine with me.
What concerns me, and will limit my investment in economy of scale, is the specter of ChiComs copying and undercutting my costs. My younger son says I should contract the manufacturing to the ChiComs, and just be a wholesaler and online retailer. Screw that.
Right now, about 40% of the cost of my materials comes from the ChiComs, because I have not found a competitive source. I could insource that with a US injection molding company, but the startup costs could be $100K; far more than expected annual revenue.
I don't favor tariffs, because they are hard to do fairly. I would welcome 100% inspection of imports, to assure my customers' birds cannot be poisoned by hidden ingredients, like the melamine in pet food of a few years ago.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 25, 2012 7:54:17 GMT -6
Watch Romney's lips: if they're moving, he's lying.
I was taught in econ class a hundred years ago: "There are two sources of wealth - farming and manufacturing."
That hasn't changed.
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 24, 2012 23:59:22 GMT -6
This will probably simmer along until a whistleblower in the US details bribery here. Then maybe MaoMart will get a dose of justice.
Spitzer (currenTV) interviewed the author of the book, "Walmart, the High Cost of Low Price." He says their only goal is profit.
GB
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 20, 2012 23:15:02 GMT -6
Do corporations deserve a greater right to privacy than real people?
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 19, 2012 22:18:07 GMT -6
A lot of doctors are set up as corporations. Does that make them immune from prosecution for accidentally or intentionally maiming patients?
|
|
|
Post by graybeard on Apr 18, 2012 6:25:58 GMT -6
"It does not incentivize any more investment. To the contrary, it detracts from the tax incentive to re-invest in capital expenditures, since there is less advantage to re-investing."
Why aren't the economists making this point? It's the crux of the whole tax situation. If a business is taxed at 50%, then re-investment costs only half, the other half being "subsidized" by taxpayers. Why aren't the rich loving that?
We need to spread the idea far and wide.
GB
|
|