Megalextoria
Retro computing and gaming, sci-fi books, tv and movies and other geeky stuff.

Home » Digital Archaeology » Computer Arcana » Computer Folklore » What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend 
Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97800 is a reply to message #97523] Fri, 19 July 2013 06:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Walter Bushell is currently offline  Walter Bushell
Messages: 1834
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <ks9cbt$6ld$2@dont-email.me>,
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 7/18/2013 10:31 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:

>> Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

>>>

>>>

>>> there was some articles on how hedge funds lobbied congress to get their

>>> income reclassified to unearned ...

>>

>> I hadn't heard about that.

>

> Well, it *is* unearned, in'nt it? They usually don't do a d@mned thing

> to earn it.


The persuade other people to give them money to gamble with under the
heads I win tails you lose rule. *That* takes some fancy dancing. You
bet.

--
Gambling with Other People's Money is the meth of the fiscal industry.
me -- in the spirit of Karl and Groucho Marx
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97802 is a reply to message #97539] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 3:32 PM, Andrew Swallow wrote:
> On 17/07/2013 23:47, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>> On 17-Jul-13 16:23, Peter Flass wrote:

>>> On 7/17/2013 11:24 AM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>>> There's one serious problem with your theory: 1.5 million women per

>>>> year choose abortion. That shows they _don't_ want to have a kid,

>>>> despite the supposedly wonderful life of a welfare queen. So why

>>>> did they get pregnant in the first place? Because birth control is

>>>> simply too expensive for someone without health insurance.

>>>

>>> Abstinence is free.

>>

>> And, in practice, it doesn't actually work.

>>

>> Sadly, my state mandated the oxymoronic "abstinence-only sex education",

>> and within a few years our teen pregnancy rate went from the middle of

>> the pack to the highest in the country. Gov. Perry declared the program

>> a "success", which makes me wonder what his goal really was--or if he's

>> so stupid that he doesn't realize being #1 is a bad thing in this case.

>>

>> S

>>

>

> The ban on abortion and contraception do feel like the slave breeding

> programs that the southern states introduced when the slave trade was

> banned. Similar rules.

>


The origin of Planned Parenthood was the Eugenics movement. The idea
was to stop the undesirables from breeding.


--
Pete
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97803 is a reply to message #97541] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 3:38 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>

> Guest Post: Is America's Social Contract Broken?

> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-18/guest-post-americas -social-contract-broken

>

> from above:

>

> The Social Contract is broken not by wealth inequality per se but by the

> illegitimate process of wealth acquisition, i.e. the state has tipped

> the scales in favor of the few behind closed doors and routinely ignores

> or bypasses the intent of the law even as the state claims to be

> following the narrower letter of the law.

>


I like this quote: " America is now dominated by scammers, cheaters,
grifters and those gaming the system, large and small, to increase their
share of the swag."


--
Pete
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97804 is a reply to message #97554] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 4:25 PM, Andrew Swallow wrote:
>

> The modern poor spend their money on goods from China. The modern

> problem is reducing the goods we import from Asia and increasing our

> exports to them.

>

By that logic you're bnetter off cutting taxes on "the rich." Few of
them shop at Wal-Mart. Their mansions and yachts are made here in the
US, and they can employ "the poor" as gardeners, maids, etc. (except
that illegals do a better job cheaper).


--
Pete
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97805 is a reply to message #97565] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 5:12 PM, Lawrence Statton wrote:
> Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

>

>> Now there are so many skills involved, and they change so fast, I

>> can't keep up with them. There's a limit to how much one person can

>> be proficient in, but if you're a Python expert and the job requires

>> Ruby on Rails [substitute your own here] you won't be considered.

>

> When I was a younger man, an engineer (hardware design) told me "90%

> of what I know today will be useless in ten years, and 90% of what I

> will be doing in ten years does not yet exist today."

>

> My super-wizard level of skill at Z80 assembly programming, the great

> tracts of brain real-estate given over to 4000 and 7400 series part

> numbers, the wiring of a small town TV station thirty years ago -- all

> of these things that were, at the time, very valuable but are of

> absolutely zero commercial value in 2013.

>

> The tide is going to do its thing, and King Canute can do nothing to

> stop it.

>


Probably engineers had problems similar to programmers today. If you
were an EE working with discrete logic you were competing with kids just
out of college who had worked with ICs. Of course back in those days
there was still enough of an employer-employee bond that your employer
would retrain you (AFAIK). Today they just fire you and hire the kids.

--
Pete
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97807 is a reply to message #97642] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 6:52 PM, John Levine wrote:
>> That doesn't explain the millions of _open_ jobs.

>

> Could you tell use where these millions of open jobs are advertised,

> posted, or can otherwise be seen to exist?


India, most of them. I suppose if you're willing to emigrate...

(Nearly every programming job I've seen advertised is in the country of
curry and elephants)


--
Pete
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97808 is a reply to message #97644] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 7:16 PM, 127 wrote:
>

>

> "Patrick Scheible" <kkt@zipcon.net> wrote in message

> news:86ppufdamo.fsf@chai.my.domain...

>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:

>>

>>> Peter Flass wrote:

>>>> On 7/17/2013 9:16 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:

>>>> >

>>>> > Why is profit such a swear word?

>>>> >

>>>>

>>>> Everyone likes to see a company produce something useful that people

>>>> want to buy, sell a lot of them, and make a fair profit. Most of those

>>>> things are not part of current business practices. They're all weasels

>>>> these days. They fire people and move stuff overseas, play games to

>>>> avoid paying taxes, try to cheat everyone in sight, and usually

>>>> don't do

>>>> anything useful in the first place.

>>>>

>>> Why do you assume that 100% of business is doing this?

>>

>> Because the businesses that don't do this have been eaten by the ones

>> that do.

>

> That has not happened with all of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, News,

> Intel, Seagate, AMD, Western Digital etc, all which do quite a bit of

> what is useful.


What the hell does Facebook do that's useful? Or Twitter, Instagram, ...

--
Pete
Re: What Makes Medical Economics Bizarre? [message #97852 is a reply to message #97655] Fri, 19 July 2013 08:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 7/18/2013 8:57 PM, 127 wrote:
>

>

> "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote in message

> news:ksa0j6$46s$1@dont-email.me...

>> On 18-Jul-13 17:28, 127 wrote:

>>> "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote in message

>>> news:ks91u1$5u4$1@dont-email.me...

>>>> Also, there is at least one country that _does_ have a competitive

>>>> individual market for health insurance with compulsory coverage; if

>>>> you don't buy your own, the govt will buy it for you and bill the

>>>> cost to you via deductions from welfare payments or tax refunds.

>>>> It does work in practice, and there is no reason it couldn't work

>>>> here as well.

>>>

>>> But that country has the second highest % of GDP spent on health

>>> care in the entire world, after the US. So while that approach does

>>> certainly work, it is clearly much more expensive than the single

>>> payer alternatives.

>>>

>>> Presumably because of the inevitable extra overheads any multiple

>>> insurance system must have.

>

>> Are you sure about that?

>

> Yes.

>

>> Here's the top 15 from the World Bank's stats

>> on health care costs as a percentage of GDP[1]:

>

>> Country name 2008 2009 2010 2011

>> Liberia 11.8 18.1 16.4 19.5

>> Sierra Leone 18.1 22.2 20.8 18.8

>> United States 16.6 17.7 17.6 17.9

>> Tuvalu 13.8 13.3 14.5 17.3

>> Marshall Isls 18.8 18.9 17.1 16.5

>> Micronesia, FS 12.8 13.3 13.6 13.4

>> Lesotho 9.5 10.5 11.5 12.8

>> Netherlands 11.0 12.0 12.1 12.0

>> France 11.0 11.7 11.7 11.6

>> Moldova 11.4 12.5 11.7 11.4

>> Canada 10.3 11.4 11.4 11.2

>> Denmark 10.2 11.5 11.1 11.2

>> Germany 10.7 11.7 11.5 11.1

>> Costa Rica 9.3 10.3 10.3 10.9

>> Switzerland 10.3 11.0 10.9 10.9

>

> I prefer the figures from

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal th_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita

>

> because the very low GDP countries aren't really relevant to this

> discussion.

>

>> Which country(ies) are you basing your claims on?

>

> Switzerland.

>

>> IIRC, the one I was thinking of was Germany,

>

> It has rather more than just an compulsory insurance system.

>

>> but it might have been Switzerland,

>

> Yes.

>

>> both of which have a _lower_ percentage of GDP going to health care

>> than the most commonly cited single-payer systems, France and Canada,

>

> Yeah, that claim was about 2000.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_systems_by_country#Switz erland

>

>> though the difference isn't consistent enough to draw a conclusion

>> about which is clearly "better", even assuming % of GDP is the only

>> metric that matters--and it's not.

>

> Never said it was.

>

> It Switzerland does not in fact have anything like a truly competitive

> insurance system because the government does not allow the insurance

> companies to vary the insurance premiums based on health risk, just on

> age and does control what can be charged for basic cover too.

>


I would suggest that the US pays such a high percentage because we've
gone overboard on high-cost high-tech equipment and procedures to the
detriment of basic health care, which is also why we don't rate so
highly on the effectiveness front.

There are limited restrictions limiting a hospital from buying the
latest scan-o-mat, which than has to be used to recover its cost,
regardless of whether or not it's really the best technology to use in
many cases.

You certainly get a much better ROI in prenatal care, childolld
vaccinations, etc., which don't cost that much, but there are a lot of
forces causing the money to be spent elsewhere.

I believe that at the top end we *do* have the best health care in the
world. If you want to get plastic surgery, the US is the place to go,
but it's obvious why we lag in some measures. We need a "millionaires
health-care index" that ignores those inconvenient poor people and looks
at the health care only of the people who count ;-)

--
Pete
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97853 is a reply to message #97528] Thu, 18 July 2013 18:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
Messages: 3286
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In <ks9d6t$ci9$1@dont-email.me>, on 07/18/2013
at 01:52 PM, Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> said:

> .... except, even under Clinton, we had some of the lowest tax rates

> in the civilized world.


The tax rates under Clinton were a lot lower than under Eisenhower.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
Re: What Makes revisionist 19th century history Bizarre? [message #97854 is a reply to message #97457] Thu, 18 July 2013 18:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
Messages: 3286
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In <ks94ck$nlr$1@dont-email.me>, on 07/18/2013
at 12:22 PM, Alan Bowler <atbowler@thinkage.ca> said:

> And was clearly just an excuse.


It's not clear that enslaving US sailors was only a pretext, and I
doubt that it is true.

> The attack on Washington was in retaliation for the burning of York

> (Toronto).


I used to believe that, but it turns out that slow communications made
it impossible. They made the decision to attack Washington before they
knew about York.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97855 is a reply to message #97456] Thu, 18 July 2013 18:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
Messages: 3286
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In <8738rb7t27.fsf@cluon.com>, on 07/18/2013
at 11:04 AM, Lawrence Statton <lawrence@cluon.com> said:

> Those who *can* do it, already have jobs and aren't looking, but

> there are more jobs than people who can fill them.


Not in my experience. As for the headhunters, most of them seem to
throw it at the wall and see what sticks. I'ce had people walk into my
office for an interview and after I described the job tell me that
they didn't know why the agency sent them. I've also had inquiries
from agencies with jobs that didn't remotely match the profile that I
had on file with them.

> Music Major from Weaselpiss State College,


My experience suggests a positive correlation between musical skill
and programming aptitude.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97856 is a reply to message #97392] Thu, 18 July 2013 17:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
Messages: 3286
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In <PM0004E1C9CC596856@ac81348a.ipt.aol.com>, on 07/18/2013
at 02:31 PM, jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> said:

> Then why is the US on the brink of bankruptcy?


The republican policy of borrow and spend. Between the bush tax cut
and two off-budget wars, it was predictable.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97857 is a reply to message #97171] Thu, 18 July 2013 17:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Shmuel (Seymour J.) M is currently offline  Shmuel (Seymour J.) M
Messages: 3286
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In <proto-A7B034.18311217072013@70-1-84-166.pools.spcsdns.net>, on
07/17/2013
at 06:31 PM, Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> said:

> "UL"?


Urban Legend.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org
Re: What Makes Medical Economics Bizarre? [message #97858 is a reply to message #97852] Fri, 19 July 2013 09:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Sprunk is currently offline  Stephen Sprunk
Messages: 2166
Registered: March 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 19-Jul-13 07:44, Peter Flass wrote:
>> "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote in message

>> news:ksa0j6$46s$1@dont-email.me...

>>> Here's the top 15 from the World Bank's stats on health care

>>> costs as a percentage of GDP[1]:

>>> ...

>

> I would suggest that the US pays such a high percentage because

> we've gone overboard on high-cost high-tech equipment and procedures

> to the detriment of basic health care, which is also why we don't

> rate so highly on the effectiveness front.


Medicare has done a bunch of pilot programs with different treatment and
compensation models. Several of them managed to bring down costs
significantly but without improving outcomes.

However, one program stands out for doing both--and all they did was
send a nurse out to visit chronically ill patients (78% of Medicare
spending) in their homes once a month. No fancy technology at all, just
the most basic of human care.

> You certainly get a much better ROI in prenatal care, childolld

> vaccinations, etc., which don't cost that much, but there are a lot

> of forces causing the money to be spent elsewhere.


It's an issue of diminishing returns; with one major exception, we're
already doing all the cheap stuff and have been for years. However,
each further improvement in outcome costs more and more money.

In a (probably futile) attempt to get back on-topic, I'll point to a
rule of thumb that says for each additional "nine" of availability, the
cost of the system goes up by an order of magnitude:

Availability Cost
90% 1*N
99% 10*N
99.9% 100*N
99.99% 1000*N
etc.

Almost nobody achieves better than five nines in practice (and most
don't do better than four nines) because that's where the incremental
cost:benefit ratio drops below an acceptable level.

I suspect a similar rule operates in health care, though I've never seen
it put in such succinct mathematical terms.

> I believe that at the top end we *do* have the best health care in

> the world. If you want to get plastic surgery, the US is the place

> to go, but it's obvious why we lag in some measures. We need a

> "millionaires health-care index" that ignores those inconvenient poor

> people and looks at the health care only of the people who count ;-)


The 15% of our population that doesn't have access to basic care, due to
lack of insurance, is probably dragging down our "system"'s score
despite its allegedly high effectiveness for the insured.

To go back to the analogy above, it's like we're applying expensive
tools normally used to go from five to six nines while ignoring the
cheap tools normally used to go from two to three nines.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97859 is a reply to message #97567] Fri, 19 July 2013 09:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Sprunk is currently offline  Stephen Sprunk
Messages: 2166
Registered: March 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 18-Jul-13 16:16, 127 wrote:
> They are all cheaper than cigarettes let alone the illegal drugs they

> use.


Oh, you're _that_ troll. *plonk*

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97860 is a reply to message #97805] Fri, 19 July 2013 09:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
Messages: 326
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
> Probably engineers had problems similar to programmers today. If you

> were an EE working with discrete logic you were competing with kids

> just out of college who had worked with ICs. Of course back in those

> days there was still enough of an employer-employee bond that your

> employer would retrain you (AFAIK). Today they just fire you and hire

> the kids.


Butter ullshit .... you don't get fired, you adapt to keep up with
changing technology. There is no rule that says just because you left
school you get to stop learning new things.

When I first started programming, everything that I learned that was
new I immediately absorbed and rejoiced, and went on a search to find
a place I could use it effectively and get practice with it. Ten
years later - I was "fat, dumb, and happy" and anything new was "the
latest fad" and "the solution to a problem that nobody was having" and
I scoffed and drug my feet. I had a major epiphany one day -- the new
stuff I scoffed at was just as powerful, interesting as the things
that were new when I was young, and they were *not going to go away*
just because I mocked them.

When I became a ham, I was elmered[1] by an older guy who was stuck in
the 50s. "Bah - the 6146 works just fine at VHF ... these new transistors
are too much trouble, they use funny voltages, they're unstable, and
cost way too much." Fast-forward forty years -- I've got sitting at
my left elbow three radios none of which has any tubes in it, all of
which use MOSFET finals. I saw him then as just moaning about the
world having passed his skills by, because he was afraid of change. I
was lucky that I had that awakening twenty years ago, when bitching
about something as being "a passing fad", that I had turned into that old elmer
longing for his 807s and 6SN7s, and made a conscious decision to never
be "that guy."

This really is *PRECISELY* the buggy-whip metaphor -- when hiring
managers like me are looking for "qualified applicants" we mean
"qualified for the technology of 2013, not 1973." I don't mean
"young", I mean "someone who has kept up." Honestly, I'd love to be
able to hire just ONE person who remembers the same decades that I do,
but they all seem to be sitting here in a.f.c. bitching about how "the
demmycrats done stole my job!" and wishing the 029 had never gone out
of fashion.

You are doing the world no service by sitting on your haunches and
bitching that nobody uses OS/360 any more and everything you see sucks
if you aren't in there learning the new technology and helping build
things that don't suck.


1: Ham slang for mentored - a ham who takes someone who shows an
interest by the hand, and gets them involved is called their Elmer,
and the noun has since been verbified. Verbing weirds language.

--
NK1G - Lawrence
echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97861 is a reply to message #97807] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
Messages: 326
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
> On 7/18/2013 6:52 PM, John Levine wrote:

>>> That doesn't explain the millions of _open_ jobs.

>>

>> Could you tell use where these millions of open jobs are advertised,

>> posted, or can otherwise be seen to exist?

>

> India, most of them. I suppose if you're willing to emigrate...


I hate to rain on your parade of gloom with facts, but ...

You're not looking in the right place. Jobs advertised this week on
the site for specialists in my pet platform:

The US had four from Texas (two from IAH, two from DFW) Michigan,
Memphis, Bloomington (IL), Flordia, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and one
"any US-based telecommute".

The foreign gigs were 1 from Amsterdam, five from the UK, two in
Germany, one in Israel, and one in Dublin.

Number from India: Zero.

That's just this week's new listings.

> (Nearly every programming job I've seen advertised is in the country

> of curry and elephants)


Stop looking for work in the Times of India, then.

--
NK1G - Lawrence
echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97862 is a reply to message #97390] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Sprunk is currently offline  Stephen Sprunk
Messages: 2166
Registered: March 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 18-Jul-13 09:31, jmfbahciv wrote:
> 127 wrote:

>> "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote in message

>> news:ks7bdm$935$1@dont-email.me...

>>> Ironically, _after_ they have a kid, the govt is willing to give

>>> them free birth control. But not before, when it would save the

>>> government literally trillions of dollars.

>>

>> I doubt many of those who do end up pregnant would bother to use it

>> even if it was free.

>

> The males sure don't. There's myths out there which say that using

> condoms doesn't give full satisfaction.


It ain't a myth. I assume you're female?

> so birth control is usually left up to the female.


RISUG, when it finally gets approved, will be the first real option to
change that. Whether it actually does, though, remains to be seen,
especially now that so many states have banned telling kids the truth
about birth control (and STDs).

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97863 is a reply to message #97855] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
Messages: 326
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
[I'm trying to trim comp.arch out of all this thread as I go along --
I'm 99.44% certain they are sick-to-death of our rants in their group]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:

> In <8738rb7t27.fsf@cluon.com>, on 07/18/2013

> at 11:04 AM, Lawrence Statton <lawrence@cluon.com> said:

>

>> Those who *can* do it, already have jobs and aren't looking, but

>> there are more jobs than people who can fill them.

>

> Not in my experience.


Your experience differs from mine. I've still got two open reqs.

> As for the headhunters, most of them seem to

> throw it at the wall and see what sticks.


Yeah - after that one trip into that quagmire (which I had advised
against) my boss realized that head-hunters were expensive and
useless. Which is why I now spend more of my time talking to idiots
than writing code, which makes me very, very, sad. The sad reality
is: The best results we've gotten so far is to have a senior
programmer do the culling, because any other way you end up with
candidates who can't do the work, but have the correct keywords, or
candidates who get lost because they didn't put the right keywords,
but used synonyms that I would immediately recognize.

>

>> Music Major from Weaselpiss State College,

>

> My experience suggests a positive correlation between musical skill

> and programming aptitude.


I really did pull Music Major out of my ass, but I concur -- thinking
of the five BEST programmers I know (a group in which I oh-so-modestly
include myself) all of us have musical aptitude and talent. Three of
us formed a band once and played at a couple of trade-show parties.

--
NK1G - Lawrence
echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97864 is a reply to message #97808] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
Messages: 326
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
> What the hell does Facebook do that's useful? Or Twitter, Instagram, ...


Or the NFL or the NBA or the Yankees?

Pragmatic utility is not the sole measure of value.

--
NK1G - Lawrence
echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: What Makes revisionist 19th century history Bizarre? [message #97865 is a reply to message #97854] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
> I used to believe that, but it turns out that slow communications made

> it impossible. They made the decision to attack Washington before they

> knew about York.


there is the story that they spared burning the marine barracks at 8th&I
since they were the only ones that acted with integrity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Barracks,_Washington,_D. C.

burning washington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

mentions the patent office was only bldg left untouched.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: What Makes an Unemployment Myth Bizarre? [message #97866 is a reply to message #97466] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Sprunk is currently offline  Stephen Sprunk
Messages: 2166
Registered: March 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 18-Jul-13 13:07, George Neuner wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 15:31:30 -0500, Stephen Sprunk

> <stephen@sprunk.org> wrote:

>> I get calls from desperate headhunters every week. They're

>> offering good money for good jobs, but ones I'm overqualified for

>> and/or am not interested in. I'm quite happy where I am anyway.

>>

>> What bothers me is that everyone is getting the same calls--and

>> turning them down for the same reasons. Ten years ago, I would

>> have taken any of these jobs in a heartbeat. Five years ago, I

>> would have at least sent a résumé. Today? I'm just not

>> interested. The problem is that I don't get any calls for a

>> _better_ job, which means people below me aren't getting a call for

>> _my_ job, etc. We're all locked in place.

>

> That's been called the "Purple Squirrel" syndrome: companies - or

> at least their HR people - looking for candidates whose experience

> precisely matches the job requirements rather than looking for

> someone with sufficient experience to do the job.


Thanks; I found an excellent article about this, though they call it the
Home Depot Syndrome:
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0113/feature2_1.html

> Companies are wary of hiring obviously overqualified people because

> they believe those people will jump ship if/when the economy

> improves. FWIW, in most cases they are correct.


Indeed, and they don't seem able to accept that sometimes, a candidate
has a valid reason for _wanting_ a job they're overqualified for.

For instance, my mother was a teacher. She got fed up with the idiocy
in public schools, though, and looked for a job designing and testing
educational games, which would have been both less stressful and more
personally satisfying. She did get a few interviews, but they all said
that despite desperately needing her skills and experience, they didn't
believe that she'd stick around for what they were able to pay her.

The irony was that the low pay, by tech industry standards, was actually
more than she was making as a teacher.

> But on the flip side, HR often passes on people who can do a job

> because the resume don't have the right keywords and they don't

> understand how other experiences may qualify a candidate.


You'll also get a lot more loyalty from an employee if you give them a
chance to grow into a new and challenging job, rather than force them to
keep doing a task they've already mastered and is now boring.

Of course, identifying people who are _able_ to grow into a given job is
not easy, and it's certainly not the kind of thing you can put into a
résumé search engine, which is how HR departments select candidates
these days. Headhunters are a little better, but they still have to
deal with ridiculously over-specific requirements from clients.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Re: What Makes revisionist 19th century history Bizarre? [message #97867 is a reply to message #97854] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andrew Swallow is currently offline  Andrew Swallow
Messages: 1705
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 18/07/2013 23:17, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
> In <ks94ck$nlr$1@dont-email.me>, on 07/18/2013

> at 12:22 PM, Alan Bowler <atbowler@thinkage.ca> said:

>

>> And was clearly just an excuse.

>

> It's not clear that enslaving US sailors was only a pretext, and I

> doubt that it is true.

>

>> The attack on Washington was in retaliation for the burning of York

>> (Toronto).

>

> I used to believe that, but it turns out that slow communications made

> it impossible. They made the decision to attack Washington before they

> knew about York.

>


You win Chess by taking the king. Capturing the enemy's capital causes
him major damage.

Andrew Swallow
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97868 is a reply to message #97802] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andrew Swallow is currently offline  Andrew Swallow
Messages: 1705
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 19/07/2013 13:06, Peter Flass wrote:
> On 7/18/2013 3:32 PM, Andrew Swallow wrote:

>> On 17/07/2013 23:47, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>> On 17-Jul-13 16:23, Peter Flass wrote:

>>>> On 7/17/2013 11:24 AM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>>> > There's one serious problem with your theory: 1.5 million women per

>>>> > year choose abortion. That shows they _don't_ want to have a kid,

>>>> > despite the supposedly wonderful life of a welfare queen. So why

>>>> > did they get pregnant in the first place? Because birth control is

>>>> > simply too expensive for someone without health insurance.

>>>>

>>>> Abstinence is free.

>>>

>>> And, in practice, it doesn't actually work.

>>>

>>> Sadly, my state mandated the oxymoronic "abstinence-only sex education",

>>> and within a few years our teen pregnancy rate went from the middle of

>>> the pack to the highest in the country. Gov. Perry declared the program

>>> a "success", which makes me wonder what his goal really was--or if he's

>>> so stupid that he doesn't realize being #1 is a bad thing in this case.

>>>

>>> S

>>>

>>

>> The ban on abortion and contraception do feel like the slave breeding

>> programs that the southern states introduced when the slave trade was

>> banned. Similar rules.

>>

>

> The origin of Planned Parenthood was the Eugenics movement. The idea

> was to stop the undesirables from breeding.

>

>

Then the southern states must desire lots of blacks and Latinos. (The
slave owners did.)

Andrew Swallow
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97869 is a reply to message #97805] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andrew Swallow is currently offline  Andrew Swallow
Messages: 1705
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 19/07/2013 13:24, Peter Flass wrote:
> On 7/18/2013 5:12 PM, Lawrence Statton wrote:

>> Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

>>

>>> Now there are so many skills involved, and they change so fast, I

>>> can't keep up with them. There's a limit to how much one person can

>>> be proficient in, but if you're a Python expert and the job requires

>>> Ruby on Rails [substitute your own here] you won't be considered.

>>

>> When I was a younger man, an engineer (hardware design) told me "90%

>> of what I know today will be useless in ten years, and 90% of what I

>> will be doing in ten years does not yet exist today."

>>

>> My super-wizard level of skill at Z80 assembly programming, the great

>> tracts of brain real-estate given over to 4000 and 7400 series part

>> numbers, the wiring of a small town TV station thirty years ago -- all

>> of these things that were, at the time, very valuable but are of

>> absolutely zero commercial value in 2013.

>>

>> The tide is going to do its thing, and King Canute can do nothing to

>> stop it.

>>

>

> Probably engineers had problems similar to programmers today. If you

> were an EE working with discrete logic you were competing with kids just

> out of college who had worked with ICs. Of course back in those days

> there was still enough of an employer-employee bond that your employer

> would retrain you (AFAIK). Today they just fire you and hire the kids.

>


It was not just the engineers but the entire company that had problems
with new technology. Few valve firms survived the introduction of
transistors. Integrated circuits killed off the discrete components firms.

Andrew Swallow
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97870 is a reply to message #97803] Fri, 19 July 2013 10:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
GreyMaus[1] is currently offline  GreyMaus[1]
Messages: 1140
Registered: February 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2013-07-19, Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> wrote:
> On 7/18/2013 3:38 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

>>

>> Guest Post: Is America's Social Contract Broken?

>> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-18/guest-post-americas -social-contract-broken

>>

>> from above:

>>

>> The Social Contract is broken not by wealth inequality per se but by the

>> illegitimate process of wealth acquisition, i.e. the state has tipped

>> the scales in favor of the few behind closed doors and routinely ignores

>> or bypasses the intent of the law even as the state claims to be

>> following the narrower letter of the law.

>>

>

> I like this quote: " America is now dominated by scammers, cheaters,

> grifters and those gaming the system, large and small, to increase their

> share of the swag."

>

>


Like a quote from here (.ie)

"Illegal immigrants are swindlers, crooks, and work the system, so they
should be completely at home here"


--
maus
.
.
....
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97871 is a reply to message #97089] Thu, 18 July 2013 13:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <m37ggpoz43.fsf@garlic.com>, lynn@garlic.com
(Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:

> One some of the visits, some of the electronic companies couldn't

> help but brag about what they were doing in conjunction with their

> auto companies and various parts of the technology.


Shortly before I met the lady who is now my wife (1987), she had
gone on a trip to Japan with a friend. While there they toured
one of the large manufacturers (Mitsubishi IIRC). The tour guide
declined to show them much of their electronics development,
claiming that much of it was still under wraps. "I'll show
you our automotive department instead," he said, exuding the
confidence that came from knowing they were so far ahead of
U.S. manufacturers that they had nothing to worry about.

Japanese auto makers have a good reason to be confident - they
build good cars that just feel right. My wife was driving a
Honda Civic when I met her. We're now on our second Honda after
that one: a 1998 CR-V that has 450,000 km on it and still runs
like a dream. Part of that is due to the dealer; we still go
there for regular maintenance because they show another quite
un-American trait: they've never ripped us off.

--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97872 is a reply to message #97870] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Ibmekon

On 19 Jul 2013 14:44:29 GMT, greymausg <maus@mail.com> wrote:

> On 2013-07-19, Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> wrote:

>> On 7/18/2013 3:38 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

>>>

>>> Guest Post: Is America's Social Contract Broken?

>>> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-18/guest-post-americas -social-contract-broken

>>>

>>> from above:

>>>

>>> The Social Contract is broken not by wealth inequality per se but by the

>>> illegitimate process of wealth acquisition, i.e. the state has tipped

>>> the scales in favor of the few behind closed doors and routinely ignores

>>> or bypasses the intent of the law even as the state claims to be

>>> following the narrower letter of the law.

>>>

>>

>> I like this quote: " America is now dominated by scammers, cheaters,

>> grifters and those gaming the system, large and small, to increase their

>> share of the swag."

>>

>>

>

> Like a quote from here (.ie)

>

> "Illegal immigrants are swindlers, crooks, and work the system, so they

> should be completely at home here"


Oh well, is is Friday.

On an episode of "Quite Interesting" the English host Stephen Fry
asked Irishman panellist Dara O'Briain, "Why is the grass so much
greener in Ireland ? "
Dara looked suitably puzzled and Stephen answered "because you are all
over here walking on ours !"

Carl Goldsworthy
Re: What Makes an Unemployment Myth Bizarre? [message #97874 is a reply to message #97635] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stephen Sprunk is currently offline  Stephen Sprunk
Messages: 2166
Registered: March 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 18-Jul-13 17:10, Lawrence Statton wrote:
> If someone can find a way to cheaply solve the Purple Squirrel

> problem, they'll make a mint - right now, it costs us several thousand

> dollars each time we go through the "advertise, sift, talk,

> reject-99%" cycle for hiring.


After being pointed in the right direction, I had a revelation.

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible.
Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it
is only yourself.

We (and many others) are looking for a Purple Squirrel and frustrated
that we are not finding one. The only way out of this problem is to
realize the truth: there are no Purple Squirrels.

This means we have to change the way we evaluate candidates: seek not
someone who has _already done_ exactly what we need but rather someone
who can _learn to do_ exactly what we need.

How to do that, of course, is left as an exercise for the reader.

S

--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97875 is a reply to message #97869] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
Messages: 326
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
> It was not just the engineers but the entire company that had problems

> with new technology. Few valve firms survived the introduction of

> transistors.


I realize you're in the UK, so things were a little different there
(What ever happened to Mullard? EMI's engineering divisions got sold
off, in part to Thorn ... )

On the left-side of the pond, things were nothing like that.

Thinking of "big" US-based tube manufacturers.

RCA. They made transistors as well, but ended up getting swallowed up
by GE. The quintessential "middle of the road" power transistor, the
2N3055 was developed at RCA in the sixties, and you can still buy them
new today from basically every manufacturer in the field (although the
process has changed slightly - there is a brisk secondary market in
"pre-1974 3055s" on eBay for ...quirky... engineers.)

Sylvania. They successfully sold transistors during the decline of
the vacuum tube. Swallowed by GTE in the sixties, still manufactures
electric lamps in some parts of the world, that division owned by
Osram.

General Electric. Still here.

> Integrated circuits killed off the discrete components

> firms.


Yeah, right [sarcasm]. Name *ONE*. The "big ones" I can think of....

Burr-Brown - they got bought by TI just a few years back.

Sprague Electric - got swallowed by Vishay in 1993.

Ohmite. Still going.

Motorola - broke up into a few parts along business-group lines, the
semiconductor group going strong as on Semi. Want a new MRF150 - call
up your local rep and he can sample you one.

All the myriad Japenese names from the 60s are still going strong. I
can buy a new transistor today made by Toshiba or Mitsubishi.

Hell, one of the biggest names in discrete components, Texas
Instruments, is arguably credited with *inventing* the integrated
circuit. Do you think they killed themselves by breaking new ground?


> Andrew Swallow


Do you never get tired of being wrong?

--
NK1G - Lawrence
echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97876 is a reply to message #97533] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Walter Banks wrote:
>

>

> jmfbahciv wrote:

>

>> You think health insurance is a right?!!!!

>

> I think health care is a right in a civilized society.

> A healthy population makes a country far more

> competitive on the world stage.


That's doesn't make it a right where other people have
to pay for the expenses.

/BAH
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97877 is a reply to message #97458] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> On 18-Jul-13 09:31, jmfbahciv wrote:

>> Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>> On 17-Jul-13 08:16, jmfbahciv wrote:

>>>> Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>>> > On 16-Jul-13 07:22, jmfbahciv wrote:

>>>> >> the now-delayed medical insurance sosts,

>>>> >

>>>> > You mean Obamacare, which by House Republicans' own admission

>>>> > will actually _save_ the govt money?

>>>>

>>>> You don't get it. If money is "saved", Congress will spend 3x

>>>> the "saved" money. That's how they write their bills. They add

>>>> riders which will "take care" of the savings. When two or more

>>>> of these riders are added to a bill and then it becomes law,

>>>> there is no savings but a triple increase in expenditures.

>>>

>>> The Affordable Care Act as passed and signed into law _reduced_

>>> the federal deficit.

>>

>> That was the day it was passed. There are extra laws being passed

>> after that which takes care of the pieces which would have caused the

>> ACA to cause a huge deficit. IIR the first one passed was paying the

>> doctors.

>

> Um, what? Under Obamacare, the federal govt doesn't pay doctors, except

> for those under the existing Medicare program who were already getting paid.


There was something about paying doctors which didn't make it into the
original because of the cost; it was added to another bill about 2 months
later and nobody in the news noticed that it made the medical insurance
edict go into the red.

>

>>> Now you're claiming that they increase spending $3 for every $1 in

>>> savings, which is also patently untrue and easily disproven.

>>>

>>> Congress is a bunch of incompetent buffoons, to be sure, but

>>> they're not quite as bad as you're painting them.

>>

>> Then why is the US on the brink of bankruptcy?

>

> Because Congress is a bunch of incompetent buffoons, as stated above.

>

> Bankruptcy does not require spending 3:1; 1.3:1, which is where the

> federal budget is actually at right now, does that too.

>

>> Take a look at how the money which the US took in from the auto

>> bailout. They spent it three times over and the original money

>> was borrowed; it didn't come from revenues.

>

> All of the bailout money was borrowed. But that doesn't prove, as you

> have claimed, that Congress spent $3 for every $1 it receives.


I listened to speeches. The money Congress got back from the auto makers
(which was lower than what was given to them) was spent in one way by
Congress and spent in another way by Obama. That's two. The third
is repaying the original debt.
>

>>>> Where is funding for Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac coming from?

>>>> They are still in deep shit.

>>>

>>> They've been in deep shit for a long time.

>>

>> And the policies which got them there are still active. Those toxic

>> CDOs have not gone away.

>

> Nor has Glass-Steagal been put back in place. Congress has done pretty

> much _nothing_ to stop the recent implosion from happening again, and

> there are already signs that another housing bubble is starting up.


They dont' intend to solve those problems.


>

>>>> Consider the losses created with the S&L crisis in the 80s. Have

>>>> those debts been paid off?

>>>

>>> I thought that the FDIC and Federal Reserve, which are _not_ part

>>> of the federal government, were the ones that bailed out the

>>> FSLIC?

>>

>> Not the FDIC. but even so where did those entites get their money?

>> The US taxpayer.

>

> Wrong. They get it via inflation, which steals wealth from everyone who

> holds dollars. That is a disjoint set from "US taxpayers".


The debts incurred were paid by inflation? I'm on my edge of understanding
finacne and economics now. this sounds so wrong.

>

>>> My state legislature recently passed a balanced budget--as required

>>> by state constitution. I've heard other states have similar

>>> requirements, but I don't know how many.

>>

>> There is a difference between a yearly balanced budget and borrowing

>> against future income thrice over. Only the interest is shown on

>> the yearly budget.

>

> My state's constitution also prohibits the govt from issuing debt,


Your state can't issue any bonds?!!! How do they get monies for
infrastructure? I can't believe they operate on cash-only basis;
states aren't that rich and don't usually allow extra cash lay around.


> though we've still got some lingering from before that was enacted;

> there is no requirement that it be paid off, just the interest, and the

> buffoons in office never pay a bill they don't have to.


any outstanding bonds will be due at some the future :-).

>

>>>> But your proposals are requiring that profits be "controlled" to

>>>> a low level or none.

>>>

>>> No, I just want mega-corporations to pay (at least) the same taxes

>>> that small businesses are required to pay--similar to how I want

>>> the rich to pay (at least) the same taxes as the middle class.

>>>

>>> I favor progressive taxes for fairly obvious and logical reasons,

>>> so I'd like the former to pay more than the latter, but right now

>>> we haven't even worked our way up to merely regressive.

>>

>> The annual reports I receive show companies paying income tax and

>> other taxes. I have yet to see one which has reported paying

>> US$0.00. Maybe I should be asking about the myth that big

>> corporations pay 0 income tax.

>

> The usual example cited is GE, but there have been dozens of others

> reported widely in the press. Congress even held hearings on the

> matter, but as usual they did nothing to address it.


I don't own GE stock so I can't check their reports.


>

>>>> Then the corruption has infected the CBO. It's complete

>>>> nonsense.... or the term "spend" means not investing.

>>>

>>> You call it corruption, but they've produced reports on exactly how

>>> they calculated that effect, which to date no economist in the

>>> world has even refuted, much less disproven.

>>

>> Economists don't seem to know how work is done. Very few seem to go

>> beyond the book learning.

>

> They measured what actual people _do_ with additional income. The poor

> spend it all to improve their standard of living. The rich, who don't

> need to improve their standard of living, spend some on conspicuous

> consumption but speculate with most of it, which means _less_ economic

> activity per dollar of additional income.


that is a middle-class mindset; they are not the rich. Those high
wage earners who simply spend lots of money on useless things don't
know how to create wealth. WE are talkking about two different
grouops of people.

>

> Ergo, if the goal is to increase economic activity (and therefore

> wealth), cutting taxes on the poor is better public policy than cutting

> taxes on the rich.

>

>>>> I agree. However, the problems are not because someone doesn't

>>>> pay taxes. The problems are cuased by Congress spending money as

>>>> if there was an infinite supply. Once wealth creation stops,

>>>> the supply will disappear within 50 years.

>>>

>>> As long as you're buying the Reagan-era trickle-down propaganda

>>> that only the rich can create wealth, you're hopeless.

>>

>> Why do you think I'm doing that? I'm not.

>

> You're the one saying that cutting taxes on the rich is the only way (or

> at least the best way) to generate wealth.


When I say rich I mean the really rich. You've been talking about an
upper middle class who have a large disposable income. Tax the shit
out of those people if you want. I'm talking about the people who
create wealth. those exhuberant middle class types don't create
wealth although they are working for those who do.

>

>>> Actual economists agree they create wealth, sure, but they _also_

>>> agree that the working classes create _more_ wealth given the same

>>> amount of money. That's because _spending_ is what creates real

>>> wealth, while speculation merely creates the _illusion_ of wealth.

>>

>> You are using the term welath in a very different manner than I am.

>> You are talking about expenditures and disposable income. I'm not.

>> If I find a way to describe what I'm talking about, I will post it

>> here.

>

> Wealth is the accumulated fruits of labor.


that's an individual thing. Creating wealth on a a larger scale is
more like prosperity but that word has lots of baggage so I didn't use
it.

>

> Labor is the production of goods and services. Obviously, the demand

> for labor depends on the _consumption_ of goods and services.

>

> Ergo, it is spending that creates wealth.


This gets complicated; it's not that simple. Ford created wealth because
his company caused oodles of other companies, businessses and trade to
be created. Those companies, in turn, caused other businesses and trade
to be created. and this was even in the days when Ford insisted that
the company do all its own processing.

I'm using this example becuase I recently read a biography and it's
fresh in my mind. DEC created wealth because people who bought
DEC products made new kinds of businesses which begat other new
kinds of businesses...


>

> Capital, which you seem to be calling wealth, is the _subset_ of wealth

> which is devoted to producing more wealth.



Maybe capital is a better term but I usually associate that with an
entity and not an entire sector and its related sectors.

>

> Capital extracts economic rent from labor, transferring wealth from the

> worker to the capitalist. That is fair if the capital makes labor more

> productive (e.g. by investing in machines) by a large enough margin to

> offset the rent, but such is not guaranteed.


I would not call that a transfer of wealth. I would call it an
exchange of money for work-done. It's a contract, not wealth.

/BAH
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97878 is a reply to message #97451] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:

>> I hadn't heard about that.

>

> re:

> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#94 What Makes an Architecture

Bizarre?
>

> most of the lobbying money has been spent since 2007 keeping carried

> interest loop-hole

>

> this is recent article about undoing hedge fund tax as capitable gain

>

> House Votes to Eliminate Hedge Fund Tax Break

> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/business/29carried.html

>

> from above:

>

> The plan approved by the House, which overcame strong lobbying pressure

> from Wall Street, amounted to a compromise that would tax 75 percent of

> carried interest as ordinary income and 25 percent as capital gains. It

> is expected to raise more than $17 billion in tax revenue over the next

> decade.

>

> ... snip ...

>

> more recent on trying to close carried-interest tax rate

>

> A Costly and Unjust Perk for Financiers

> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/opinion/carried-interest-a n-unjust-privile

ge-for-financiers.html
>

> from above:

>

> Of the many injustices that permeate America's byzantine tax code, few

> are as outrageous as the tax rate on "carried interest" -- the profits

> made by private equity and hedge fund managers, as well as venture

> capitalists and partners in real estate investment trusts. This huge tax

> benefit enriches an already privileged sliver of financiers and violates

> basic standards of fairness and common sense.


ARe you talking about K-1s and REITs? those things were so complicated
I didn't even try to learn about them.

/BAH
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97879 is a reply to message #97553] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Charles Richmond wrote:
> "Peter Flass" <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> wrote in message

> news:ks4oh0$r0m$5@dont-email.me...

>> On 7/16/2013 11:38 AM, Walter Banks wrote:

>>>

>>>

>>> Peter Flass wrote:

>>>

>>>> On 7/15/2013 7:57 AM, Walter Banks wrote:

>>>> >

>>>> > Tax and government polies could easily change wealth distribution

>>>> > significantly with changes in those area's.

>>>> >

>>>> > The latter may very well make Obamacare ineffective and

>>>> > certainly inefficient compared to many other countries but

>>>> > it will make many companies very rich.

>>>> >

>>>>

>>>> I just read an interesting analogy. Most people have two good kidneys

>>>> and really only need one. while some people have kidney problems that

>>>> harm their quality of life and significantly shorten their lifespans.

>>>> Maybe the government needs a policy to redistribute kidneys from the

>>>> healthy people to the sick?

>>>

>>> I am not sure that I understand your point.

>>

>> The government has as much business redistributing body parts as it has

>> redistributing income. It's none of their business.

>>

>

> The government "decides who gets what of value"... that's the reality of

> it.


Only in socialism.

/BAH
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97880 is a reply to message #97456] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Lawrence Statton wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:

>>

>> CBS radio news reported a list of skills which are missing. IIRC,

>> IT work was 4th or 5th on the list. Somehow I can't believe that

>> one.

>>

>

> I don't know why you don't believe it.


BEcause it's so odd. I would have thought that there are plenty
of people with those skills. I'm just simply utterly surprised.
I wasn't trying to challenge your veracity.


> I see it, Sprunk sees it.

> Other people I've worked with see it. I'll say it again in short

> words that even you can understand: Qualified candidates are getting

> to be as rare as hen's teeth.

>

> Those who *can* do it, already have jobs and aren't looking, but there

> are more jobs than people who can fill them.

>

> Yes, everytime we post an ad looking for developers, I drown in a sea

> of résumés, but the staggering majority of them are either

> exaggerations, half-truths, or bald-faced-lies. I've stopped even

> BOTHERING to check academic references, because I've found near-zero

> correlation between education and ability.


that's always been a problem.

>

> Disturbingly - since I started trying to quantify these data, I've

> found the very slight correlation to be negative. Masters in Computer

> Science from Stanford; can't write ten lines of code in a week. Music

> Major from Weaselpiss State College, but who learned BASIC on his MSX

> system in 1984; HIRE THIS GUY NOW!


<grin> that means things never change; we always had a disaster when
we hired a CS flavor. They were so sutck in their little black box
that they couldn't develop a way out of a push down list call.

>

> The way I see it is thusly: There was a time, during the darkest days

> of the "first internet bubble" where anyone who could successfully

> lift and open "HTML For Dummies" got a job as a "Web Developer", and

> these people were often able to jump from job to job earning good

> money doing very little or nothing, but building an impressive list of

> sites they worked at. Fast forward a decade, and now clients realize

> that the ability to rattle off a fistful of buzzwords at an interview

> is no substitute for actual ability.

>

> If this is the sea of "qualified applicants who can't find work", I

> feel no pity for them. The advice I have for them is: Actually

> *learn* your craft, and in the mean-time, learn to ask "would you like

> fries with that?"

>

> There was a recent article on Slashdot [A light-weight news/

> information site for the geek set] about the poor quality of

> candidates. They link to the following six-year-old blog piece:

>

> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmer s-program.html

> http://tinyurl.com/cant-program

>

> One of the quotes:

>

> Like me, the author is having trouble with the fact that 199 out of

> 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I

> repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever.

>

> Read the article - it goes on to posit a trivial programming exercise

> that (according to author) the MAJORITY of candidates (that is in

> excess of 50%),who were already prescreened to have at least a degree

> in Computer Science, CANNOT COMPLETE.

>

> FWIW: It took me about 45 seconds to write a solution, that worked

> with zero defects on the first attempt.


this is unbelievable. Every school which had a PDP-10 had lots
of kiddies who could code. Everyone wanted to play with the "toy".

GUI and PC have a lot to answer for. people who buy a system todya
have no idea and receive no hints about what's underneath. Even
the Unixes of this world hide basic computing skills.

I said it once and I'll state it again with stronger lanugage.
Every kid should have a copy of DEC's _Introduction to
Programming_.

/BAH
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97881 is a reply to message #97539] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Andrew Swallow wrote:
> On 17/07/2013 23:47, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>> On 17-Jul-13 16:23, Peter Flass wrote:

>>> On 7/17/2013 11:24 AM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

>>>> There's one serious problem with your theory: 1.5 million women per

>>>> year choose abortion. That shows they _don't_ want to have a kid,

>>>> despite the supposedly wonderful life of a welfare queen. So why

>>>> did they get pregnant in the first place? Because birth control is

>>>> simply too expensive for someone without health insurance.

>>>

>>> Abstinence is free.

>>

>> And, in practice, it doesn't actually work.

>>

>> Sadly, my state mandated the oxymoronic "abstinence-only sex education",

>> and within a few years our teen pregnancy rate went from the middle of

>> the pack to the highest in the country. Gov. Perry declared the program

>> a "success", which makes me wonder what his goal really was--or if he's

>> so stupid that he doesn't realize being #1 is a bad thing in this case.

>>

>> S

>>

>

> The ban on abortion and contraception do feel like the slave breeding

> programs that the southern states introduced when the slave trade was

> banned. Similar rules.


Of course it is. And all women become chattel.

/BAH
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97882 is a reply to message #97524] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass wrote:
> On 7/18/2013 10:32 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:

>> Peter Flass wrote:

>>> On 7/17/2013 9:16 AM, jmfbahciv wrote:

>>>>

>>>> Why is profit such a swear word?

>>>>

>>>

>>> Everyone likes to see a company produce something useful that people

>>> want to buy, sell a lot of them, and make a fair profit. Most of those

>>> things are not part of current business practices. They're all weasels

>>> these days. They fire people and move stuff overseas, play games to

>>> avoid paying taxes, try to cheat everyone in sight, and usually don't do

>>> anything useful in the first place.

>>>

>> Why do you assume that 100% of business is doing this?

>>

>

> Because enough are that it's unusual to see otherwise. Apple invents

> good products that people want; they're even moving some manufacturing

> back to the US. M$ sells (mostly) cr@p and uses monopoly power to try

> to force people to buy it. All of Wall Street are crooks; everyone has

> their hand out for government money.

>

>

Small business isn't on Wall Street yet. Nor are they bought out unless
they're doing something somebody else wants.

The computer biz has this model. STartups create a foobar; if it works
well and is useful, the big companies buy out the FOOBAR Corp. Then
the previous owners of FOOBAR startup another company with another
idea.

A gal at Howard Miller saw a business opportunity and created a service
which did a piece of work which HM had to have done. She offered a good
price, cheaper than the labor HM was already spending, and outsourced
that particular function to her, a former employee.

Do you think that's bad?

with the stoftware business, the possibilities are almost infinite
these days. You don't even have to deal with distribution.



/BAH
Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre? [message #97883 is a reply to message #97520] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> On 18-Jul-13 09:32, jmfbahciv wrote:

>> Robert Wessel wrote:

>>> On 15 Jul 2013 12:55:00 GMT, jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> wrote:

>

> Please, folks, trim the quotes on your posts to just the minimum

> necessary to provide context for your comments.

>

>>>> this is just plain flat out wrong. Unearned income such as

>>>> interest, capital gains, and dividends are the primary source of

>>>> income for the retired middle class. ...

>>>>

>>>> Sheesh!

>>>

>>> Tax deferred* 401k and IRA distributions, as well as SS income

>>> (above a certain total income limit)

>>

>> which is very low.

>

> Not necessarily; you can sock away a lot of money in 401k/403b and IRA

> accounts. SS benefits are generally pitiful, though.


But the amount you can extract each year without paying taxes is
small. You can't even extract the interest/dividends the fund pays.

>

>>> and pension and annuity income (less any tax contributions in the

>>> basis) are all taxed as ordinary income - not unearned income.

>>

>> Are you telling me that most people will not have bought their own

>> stocks and bonds, reinvesting dividends, for their retirement? Are

>> you telling met that most people are not doing any saving for their

>> retirement but are depending on the US government and their employer

>> for income after retirement?

>

> From what I've seen, that seems to be the norm.


OHGODDFUCKINGGRIEF. No wonder I'm having trouble in this thread.

> Most people don't even

> really understand what stocks and bonds _are_, much less invest in them.

> If they do invest in the "market", including via 401k/403b and IRA

> plans, it's likely to be through mutual funds or money market accounts.

>

> If you think stock/bond ownership is "normal", that says a lot about the

> lack of variety in your social circle.


I have no social circle. you are it.


>

> The _average_ American is struggling to make the minimum payments on

> their consumer (and/or student loan) debt. The only assets they have

> are a car and (maybe) equity in their home. A savings account for a

> rainy day might be able to cover expenses for a month or two.

>

>> If you are, then I'm beginning to understand why none of you

>> understand what I'm talking about.

>

> Saying what is normal doesn't mean that we're normal as well.


<GRIN>

>

>> If you are, then people are really in deep shit and don't know

>> it yet.

>

> Actually, most of them _do_ know they're in really deep shit; they just

> don't understand how to _get out_ of their situation because they also

> see that the entire deck is stacked against them.


WEll, it's called don't spend money. But that's like spitting into
the wind and not getting wet.

/BAH
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97885 is a reply to message #97803] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
> I like this quote: " America is now dominated by scammers, cheaters,

> grifters and those gaming the system, large and small, to increase

> their share of the swag."


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#4 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#10 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?

past two days in (linkedin closed) financial, crime risk, fraud and
security risk:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#6 Barclays, Traders Fined $487.9 Million by U.S. Regulator
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#14 Barclays, Traders Fined $487.9 Million by U.S. Regulator

Barclays, Traders Fined $487.9 Million by U.S. Regulator
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-16/barclays-traders-fi ned-487-9-million-by-u-s-regulator.html

Blythe Masters' "Get-Out-Of-FERC-Jail-Free" Card May Cost JPMorgan $500mm
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-17/blythe-masters-get- out-ferc-jail-free-card-may-cost-jpmorgan-500mm

from above:

Following Barclays' fine of $453 million by FERC for manipulating
electric energy prices in California (and other other Western
markets), it seems the price of infamy is weighing heavy on Blythe
Masters' overlords at JPMorgan in yet another derivative debacle for
the "I invented CDS" queen. As we discussed in great detail here,
FERC's investigations into JPMorgan's actions saw them pursuing
actions against the firm and Ms. Masters.

.... snip ...

can't anybody say "ENRON" anymore????

and now the "ENRON" comment: Chase, Once Considered "The Good Bank,"
Is About to Pay Another Massive Settlement
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/chase-on ce-considered-the-good-bank-is-about-to-pay-another-massive- settlement-20130718

from above:

Chase is about to pay yet another ginormous settlement for cheating
and stealing from the public. According to the Wall Street Journal,
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will fine Chase "close
to $1 billion" for manipulating energy prices in Enron-esque fashion
in Michigan and California

.... snip ...

What happened to Sarbanes-Oxley? ... rhetoric in congress getting SOX
passed was that it would prevent future ENRONs & WORLDCOMs and top
executives and their auditors were guaranteed to do jail time. Of
course it needed SEC to do something (SOX also had SEC doing something
about the rating agencies ... which played major pivotal role in the
financial crisis).

With all the talk about captured regulatory agencies ... falling back
to token fines (even when they sound large ... they are trivial
compared to amounts involved) and nobody doing jail time. Seen on the
internet: "ENRON was dry run and worked so well that it has become
institutionalized"

Apparently even GAO thought that SEC wasn't doing anything and started
doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings ... even
showing uptic after SOX.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: What Makes a Tax System Bizarre? [message #97886 is a reply to message #97565] Fri, 19 July 2013 11:27 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Lawrence Statton wrote:
> Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

>

>> Now there are so many skills involved, and they change so fast, I

>> can't keep up with them. There's a limit to how much one person can

>> be proficient in, but if you're a Python expert and the job requires

>> Ruby on Rails [substitute your own here] you won't be considered.

>

> When I was a younger man, an engineer (hardware design) told me "90%

> of what I know today will be useless in ten years, and 90% of what I

> will be doing in ten years does not yet exist today."


And I was told every 5 years. This was in 1985 or so.


>

> My super-wizard level of skill at Z80 assembly programming, the great

> tracts of brain real-estate given over to 4000 and 7400 series part

> numbers, the wiring of a small town TV station thirty years ago -- all

> of these things that were, at the time, very valuable but are of

> absolutely zero commercial value in 2013.

>

> The tide is going to do its thing, and King Canute can do nothing to

> stop it.

>


/BAH
Pages (231): [ «    153  154  155  156  157  158  159  160  161  162  163  164  165  166  167  168    »]  Switch to threaded view of this topic Create a new topic Submit Reply
Previous Topic: Next SCCAN meeting - Saturday, January 18
Next Topic: Most Americans still own a VCR
Goto Forum:
  

-=] Back to Top [=-
[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [ RSS ] [ PDF ]

Current Time: Thu Mar 28 13:13:45 EDT 2024

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.17906 seconds