Would sound good to the music of Hello Mother, Hellow Father.

Hello mother, hello father, here I am at Camp Grenada.
Camp is very entertaining,
and they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining...

I went hiking with Joe Spivy.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner;
He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.

All the counselors
Hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators.
And the head coach
Was no sissy,
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.

Now I don't want
This to scare ya.
But my bunkmate
Has malaria.
You remember Jeffrey Hardy...
They're about to organize a searching party.

Take me home, oh mother, father.
Take me home, I hate Grenada.
Don't leave me out in the forest where
I might get eaten by a bear.
Take me home, I promise I will not make noise
Or mess the house with other boys.
Oh please don't make me stay!
I've been here ONE -- WHOLE -- DAY.

Dearest father,
Darling mother,
How's my precious little brother?
Let me come home if you miss me.
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me...

Wait a minute...
It stopped raining!
Guys are biking.
Guys are sailing,
playing baseball... gee, that's better!

Mother, father, kindly disregard this letter!

No, it just seems like the billionth time....

I can't recall a time since I cashed my first paycheck that I wouldn't have preferred it be bigger or include some better benefit. I guess if the media told me constantly that I ought to get steady raises for nothing, and more benefits paid for from thin air (and I believed it was possible) maybe I'd be a bigger whiner on the economy.

We're Americans dammit, we DESERVE constantly rising wages, low prices, free healthcare and a guaranteed retirement benefit.

Not to mention hot chicks in burkhas...

At least it's easier to be a transvestite.

I'm a leg man, mysef.

Me too, but that's getting rediculous.

Off to fantasy football draft and poker. Have a good evening.

Judy didn't say that people are lookiing for something for nothing. What she is saying is that they expect to break even with where they were in the past. When disposable income does not keep up with price inflation for the basket of goods which they are used to purchasing, they correctly percieve that they are losing ground..

They could have at least blended the triple arm repetition.


It looks like she has spines. Bad photoshop.

FJ

This story has gone on forever. I'll give you a case in point from personal experience. When I first entered the USAF as a 2nd Lt I was paid X. 13 years later I was a Major and paid about 5 times what I made as a 2nd Lt. But thanks to inflation, guess what? My actual purchasing power as a Major was lower than when I was a 2nd Lt. This was confirmed by both a DoD and CBO study and widely published in the military press at the time. Now the study did factor in the usual adjustments to lifestyle over that period - having a family, maybe a second car, bigger house, etc. for a Major instead of a new 2nd Lt.

The end result was that there was more paycheck left at the end of the month as a Lt then there was as a Major. Over time things change - paychecks, lifestyle choices, the prices of commodities like oil, gas, entertainment, investments, nothing remains static. To expect that as AV put it ever-risng wages, eternally low prices, no new bills, etc., is a birthright is a fool's dream. It is not reality.

But it does make good political theatre.

Good political theater if one thinks it empowers them to pooh pooh an economic recovery during a presidency by a man they love to hate.

There is also a lot of I got more but someone else got morer out there...

I worked with a guy who thought the upper tax brackets should have really high rates and start just above whatever his salary happened to be...

They're more into capes.

I think the mullahs are gonna have a problem with that outfit...

No burchka.

And what did his salary happen to be?

Only the Rich Pay Taxes!

The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes

The Top 1% Pay More Than a Third: 34.27%

I think we are talking past one another. Thank you for clarifying your views, many of which I find eminently plausible but from which I draw entirely different conclusions. You keep telling me "it's not the producers'" responsibility or problem, etc. I never said it was nor did I imply it. On the other hand, simply because a course of action was 'rational' for an actor does not mean that it was optimal either for him/her or (not by a long shot) for anyone or everyone else. Rational maximization of self-interest, however defined, absent a framework of normative regulation and enforcement, may take the form of force and fraud, broadly defined. As the younger Friedman has demonstrated repeatedly (almost ad nauseam), it does not follow from the axioms of e.g. Ayn Rand that engaging in forceful interference (or as he prefers "prudent predation") will always or usually be 'irrational' from the point of view of the individual.



This is the part, in the final analysis, were you and I disagree.

Once again, thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to engage in this dialog.

He was probably around 60K at the time, early 90s. Just a young pup...rlb


As long as he ain't the one getting forcefully interfered with...

Someday the motor is gonna stop....

That, in itself, makes absolutely no difference, whatsoever.

Look into "prudent predator".

In practice, whether the motor is gonna stop "someday" is entirely irrelevant to the strictly instrumentally rational calculus of an individual actor. That's why there exist, in all societies, all those institutionalized attempts at 'persuasion' and 'activation of commitments' and 'inducements' and 'deterrence' to make it happen that the question of the 'proper functioning of the motor' (or the continuing existence of the goose, to use another metaphor) somehow, consciously or unconsciously, enters into how individuals act in concrete interactions.

There are, in principle, and have been empirically innumerable cases wherein the question of whether one's actions NOW will "someday make the motor stop" have been of, and been treated as having, negligible importance.

In the long run, we're all dead.

I seem to be needing a couple more words in that sentence to draw any sort of conclusion....

Can the prudent predator control the arrow once released?

What a long-winded and borderline incomprehensible way to rationalize waving a gun in another's face to "persuade" him to "do what's best for society".

This of course begs the questions: If people need forced be forced into "doing the right thing" because of some human failing of compassion or comprehension, how would those same failings not also apply to those doing the forcing?? And at that, what evidence is there that the forcers are at all interested in what "the right thing to do" is?

"Prudent predators" indeed.

And the comprehensible part was stolen.

Was I supposed to have CITED Lord Keynes for that?





Persuasion has nothing to do with 'waving guns in another's face'. That's compulsion and deterrence.

Your 'questions begged' are entirely plausible and I concur with you that they are extremely serious problems. On the other hand, an 'it is what it is' response appears not be in the the cards. Human beings have never taken such an approach unless forced to by either superior physical force, material deprivation, or symbolic persuasion and 'punishment'.

The general answer to the problem of how the 'enforcers', persuaders', 'inducers' etc. are themselves to be 'controlled' is by the same combination of methods, at the appropriate level. That's the whole idea of 'rule of law' and all that good stuff. "institutionalization' of the use of force is quite a significant advance over the 'mere use of force'.

You call it nearly incomprehensible. At least it wasn't completely incomprehensible.

So while we await the prudent predators loosed arrow's transmographication into a boomerang...

...we still have the price of gas comin' down, investment in other than fossil fuel alternatives drying up, and a gubment that can not, should not, will not make any difference...

The good news is there is always another oil crisis just around the corner...

No need to cite him. If you sight him, call Ghostbusters.

No but perhaps you could have cited.

Thanks. Edited above. If I didn't need to cite him, in what way was what I wrote 'stolen'?



Indeed. Edited above.

Thanks.

Right. But them "prudent predators" aren't in the persuasion business.

If the questions are "plausible"(?), then wouldn't you think that they may deserve a little deeper exploration than a mere limp acknowledgement.

That, itself, is no answer.


Calling someone a "sanitation engineer" doesn't mean that they do something more or better than collect the trash.

But the do feel better about themselves...

I am a massively underemployed recreationalist...

Joe Sixpack, you remember him, the whiner from last year who was upset about not getting a raise when the employers productivity increased due to automation... Well he's at it again.

You see Joe works for an auto part manufacturer out in the midwest now. He moved out in the country when he took the job so he would have room to drive his big old pickem up. Sure he has a long commute to the job and the pickum up don't get very good gas mileage but that Joe, he's got it covered. Well he did have it covered til gas went to $3/gallon. So Joe leaps into action and contacts his Congressman and Senators. He tells them they just got to do something about them gas prices. So his Congressman and Senators work to pass through the Congress a bill that sets the price of gasoline. They also take on an increase in the CAFE standards. Wouldn't you know about the time Joe thinks he's all set with cheap gas again, all the folks buyin up that cheap gas creates shortages and when Joe goes back for a fill up on his way to work, they're all out of gas. Joe decides he had better call in to let them know he'll be late. When he gets ahold of his supervisor he gets some more bad news. You see the increase in CAFE has caused the automaker to stop manufacturing the low mileage cars and trucks that they can no longer sell without being fined. Joe happens to make some of the parts for those cars and trucks and so the parts line is being shut down too. His supervisor informs Joe that he is being layed off indefinitely.

Sometimes the predator becomes the prey...

I guess I'm a recreation engineer.




Good story. Don't forget the part about the CEO getting a big bonus package even though the company is going down the tubes. Might as well toss the lefties a bone.

Well, maybe "bureaucrat" does, if but only marginally, sound a tad better than "freebooter".

The evil of inheritance tax lies in punishing the thrifty
By Janet Daley



Which of these households is the most deserving: two spinster sisters who have spent their lives caring for their parents, a married couple without children, a married couple with children, a gay couple in a civil partnership with children, a gay couple in a civil partnership without children?

Depending on your personal scale of values, you might rank these cases variously, but I doubt that many of you would feel comfortable with the peremptory arbitrariness of the Government's order of merit. Under the present rules of inheritance tax, the households without children – both heterosexual and homosexual – are the only ones that escape untouched. When either of the partners in such a ménage dies, the other inherits the entire estate, including the shared home, without having to pay a penny to the Treasury. The savings that the childless couple has accumulated (which are likely to be considerably more than those of the couple with children) will be untouched by the state. The childless are the outright winners in the Treasury's inheritance lottery.

Next comes the married couple (or the gay couple in a civil partnership) with children, who will enjoy the same exemption as the childless when one of them dies. But the children who have presumably been at the centre of their shared lives – for whom they have worked, saved and aspired together – will be hit, on the death of the second, by a 40 per cent tax on whatever is left to them. No matter that this money was taxed when it was earned, and again when it was invested.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh.../ixopinion.html

Both Inheritance taxes and Death taxes punish the thrifty.

Private company, owner getting tired of all the whinning, considering shuttering the whole operation, cashing out, and heading to the beach...



Freebooters have a better flag...

Putting "the man" out of business is a good thing, isn't it?

Right up to the point you realize he pays your wages...

Unless your a Union goon/thug, then it's always "Full pay to the last day!"

And bennies to the last breath.

Hey, I like that...

Riiiight, You know Republicans are really desperate when they try their fear tactics on homos for a vote instead of using the homosexuals for the fear.

What a nitwit, that davis.

What a two-faced, bloodthirsty phony.

Situational humanity.

How does the thriftiness of the bequeathers translate into the thrifitiness of the inheritors?

Money is -incometaxed whenever it beoomes INCOME. Assets become sales-taxed when they change 'hands', i.e. when it is sold.

Property rights to liquid and illiquid assets can be transferred absent an actual market transaction. If the 'recipient' of liquid and illiquid assets outside of any actual market transaction (i.e. in exchange for nothing productive) is to be exempt from taxation (literally, if those liquid and illiquid assets are to be exempt from taxation) than it follows, from everything from 'fairness' to simple economic efficiency, that any liquid or illiquid assets property to rights to which are 'gained' in exchange for some real economic/productive contribution (wage income, interest, profits, etc) ought to be exempt from taxation, as well.

Between the two, the taxation of the latter ought to be abolished first.

If folks are upset at somebody else other than the kids etc. getting property rights to the deceased property, then a solution can be found in the social magic of the state.

I liked it too. The retirees can cost the company as much as the workers/

You see, it's like this: If you are thrifty and save your money rather than spend your money you are penalized.

For example: If a family has a business and they all contribute to it and the kids work too, the money is reinvested into the businesses rather than spent. When the parents die and the children inherit the business or the money... whatever... they have to pay a huge tax on it.

Had the parents endulged their children with lots of gifts, cars, expensive schooling, clothing, vacations, etc... they wouldn't have had to pay inheritance taxes. But you already knew that, didn't you?

No, Judy, it doesn't work like that IRL.

If the kids are 'unpaid family workers', the business benefits and the kids benefit.

Unless they are made formal co-owners of the family business, i.e. unless their parents trust them enough to become so, they have no direct property interests in the family-business and its proceeds.

Whoever receives money or assets, from 'alive' sources also has to pay taxes on that.

If one wishes to avoid having to pay inheritance taxes, one is free not to accept the inheritance. You know that, don't you?

The good parents can make it so that their children do not have to pay inheritance taxes by transferring onwership stakes in their business while they're still alive.

How parents want to 'indugle' their children is not the state's business.

And, I repeat my question:

How does the thriftiness of the bequeathers translate into the thrifitiness of the inheritors?

I repeat my answer:

If they spend the money on goods and services instead of saving it, they don't have to pay inheritance tax on all the "stuff' they have.

Do you have children?

And yet again it boils down to hiring lawyers, accountants and gaming the system.

How does the thriftiness of the bequeathers translate into the thrifitiness of the inheritors?




If the bequeathers had spent their money on goods and services that they themselves and the future-inheritors to be consumed or owned instead of saving it, the inheritors would not have to pay inheritance tax on all the 'stuff' they have had before the death of the bequeathers?

I hate to repeat this: Dead humans have no property rights on anything. Allowing folks via 'will and testament' to control, after their death, what happens to property rights over liquid and illiquid assets after they are dead is a 'courtesy' afforded by society to the inheritors, not the bequeathers.

Unless you already do or can possess something, you cannot assert property rights over it. Inheritors only become owners AFTER they have 'inherited', i.e. after they have 'taken possession'.

'Inheritance taxes' are the price an inheritor has to pay (or legally commit to paying) in order to take possession and before he/she takes possession.

The 'savings' that your parents 'leave you' when they die is not 'yours' until it becomes yours. In the interim between it being your parents' and it becoming yours, who has property rights over it, do you think?

I guess that's why many of those who inherited large family estates ended up giving/selling them cheap to local municipalities or historical societies for use as museums or places of interest.