McCain Presidency Would Be a Disaster

[Plane]

2. The only times the theory of cutting taxes has led to increased government revenue in this country, the tax cuts where also met with massive increases in government spending and huge increases to the public debt. The United States has never attempted what economists term "shock therapy" which is a massive cut in taxes, large scale privatisation, and sharp and quick cut to actual government expenditures. Nations that have have experienced absolute economic disasters, which doesn't lead much credence to your theory.


Truely that sounds like a bad idea. Gram - Rudman was a good idea and so would a long term spending freeze be a good idea , gradual change is easyer for most people to cope with , we just have to ensure that the trends are gradually in a positive direction because gradual negative trends also can be coped with with little alarm ,untill breaking points are reached.

[_JS]

To my knowledge, human beings are not gods, therefore productivity cannot possibly be infinite. It can be increased and it can be decreased, but it is still finite.

Leaving aside your misapprention to the nature of finite, you do assert here that  productivity is malleable and can be increased or decreased.  So can you imagine a rate of taxation being so high that it causes a decrease in productivity?

I can assure you that the misapprehension is all yours.

Laffer was right about the two endpoints of 100% taxation and 0% taxation both leading to $0 in government revenue. The problem was that he had no idea what lay between. The right wing seems to think that getting closer to 0% produces infinite ( ) revenue - but of course that isn't true.

[Plane]

Productivity is most certainly finite. I have no idea where y'all get these notions that wealth and productivity are infinite. To my knowledge, human beings are not gods, therefore productivity cannot possibly be infinite. It can be increased and it can be decreased, but it is still finite.

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We really need to get past this notion that everything is either finite or infinite , finite is the opposite of infinite the way that the nort pole is opposite the south pole , but does the north pole being truely the opposite of the south pole mean that everything is either Arctic or antarctic and nothing is on the globe but the polar opposites?

Your thinking is in a box so tight and a rut so deep that you can't see out of the rut , there are several things between the poles and several states of number that are neither finite nor infinite.

The economy could be viewed as an equation with many functions , so is a function infinate or is a function finite?

Funny thing about mathematics, you can't just MTSU ("make that shit up") anything you like. You call it a "tight box" of thinking. I call it math.

The simplest definition of a finite number is that it is not equal to +/- infinity. I'm not going to get bogged down in the semantics again and call on an Oxford theoretical methematician. If you can't comprehend what finite means and you find math to be too closed-minded, then I can see why economics is causing so much grief.

Now, try and follow-up on the other points, please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite


I know how you feel , I have been wrong before , this time it is you.

Because the north pole is the opposite of the south pole everythinng is either north pole or it is south pole .

I presume that you do not live at the north pole ,therefore I must presume that you live at the south pole.

This is an example of false sillogism , as is your assertion that because the amount of value , or productivity extant is not infinite it must be finite.

A curve can be either finite or infinite and it can also be neither.

The amount of produtivity or the amount of value availible to the economy is most certainly not infinite , but it is a product of many functions , "adjustable" might be a good way to state the size of the value availible to the economy.It would be finite if it had a fixed value , which it does not.

[_JS]

I'll leave you with a point to consider.

Half of the economic output of Denmark goes through the government (compared to roughly 30% in the United States). Denmark has high taxes including a 63% top rate on the wealthiest, it is the largest welfare state in terms of percentage of GDP, it has a massive public sector. It has been this way for roughly fifteen years (and even before then it spent far more as a percentage than the US).

Yet, it has a lower unemployment rate than the United States. The economy has continued to grow, many years growing faster than the U.S. economy. Denmark spends 4% of her GDP on worker training and education programs, nearly 20 times more than the United States. The Danes are considered one of the top educated workforces in the world and the country is considered to have one of the best infrastructures of any nation on the planet.

By your economic theory and statements and others I've heard on this forum, Denmark should be broke, starving (that's one I hear a lot), massively unemployed, buildings crumbling, horrible hospitals with terrible conditions, and perhaps a few gulags thrown in for fun.

Yet, the opposite is true! It is a thriving economy, extremely low unemployment, national healthcare, mass transit, and great schools. Why? Why aren't your prognostications of gloom and doom proving true in Denmark? Sweden? Norway?

[_JS]

Productivity is most certainly finite. I have no idea where y'all get these notions that wealth and productivity are infinite. To my knowledge, human beings are not gods, therefore productivity cannot possibly be infinite. It can be increased and it can be decreased, but it is still finite.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]



We really need to get past this notion that everything is either finite or infinite , finite is the opposite of infinite the way that the nort pole is opposite the south pole , but does the north pole being truely the opposite of the south pole mean that everything is either Arctic or antarctic and nothing is on the globe but the polar opposites?

Your thinking is in a box so tight and a rut so deep that you can't see out of the rut , there are several things between the poles and several states of number that are neither finite nor infinite.

The economy could be viewed as an equation with many functions , so is a function infinate or is a function finite?

Funny thing about mathematics, you can't just MTSU ("make that shit up") anything you like. You call it a "tight box" of thinking. I call it math.

The simplest definition of a finite number is that it is not equal to +/- infinity. I'm not going to get bogged down in the semantics again and call on an Oxford theoretical methematician. If you can't comprehend what finite means and you find math to be too closed-minded, then I can see why economics is causing so much grief.

Now, try and follow-up on the other points, please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite


I know how you feel , I have been wrong before , this time it is you.

Because the north pole is the opposite of the south pole everythinng is either north pole or it is south pole .

I presume that you do not live at the north pole ,therefore I must presume that you live at the south pole.

This is an example of false sillogism , as is your assertion that because the amount of value , or productivity extant is not infinite it must be finite.

A curve can be either finite or infinite and it can also be neither.

The amount of produtivity or the amount of value availible to the economy is most certainly not infinite , but it is a product of many functions , "adjustable" might be a good way to state the size of the value availible to the economy.It would be finite if it had a fixed value , which it does not.

If I'm wrong I will freely admit it. In fact, it was either you or Prof that corrected me on our soldiers having NBC gear in the initial invasion of Iraq.

But I went to your link and all I see are definitions proving me correct.

Still, I see no sense in an argument on semantics.

[Plane]

To my knowledge, human beings are not gods, therefore productivity cannot possibly be infinite. It can be increased and it can be decreased, but it is still finite.

Leaving aside your misapprention to the nature of finite, you do assert here that  productivity is malleable and can be increased or decreased.  So can you imagine a rate of taxation being so high that it causes a decrease in productivity?

I can assure you that the misapprehension is all yours.

Laffer was right about the two endpoints of 100% taxation and 0% taxation both leading to $0 in government revenue. The problem was that he had no idea what lay between. The right wing seems to think that getting closer to 0% produces infinite ( ) revenue - but of course that isn't true.

No one has ever, at any time, asserted that infinite productivity is avalible through any means.

To you we seem to think this , we do not think this.

The space between the endpoints of the laffer curve are probably an example of chaos , in which limits can be stated but a value cannot be firmly predicted , the circumstance that causes chaos is called "sensitivity to initial conditions" which is certainly applicable to the condition of a normal economy.

Near the end points the limits probably narrow down so that a load of 90% taxation very likely has the same result as a tax rate of 100%. But a tax rate of 10% (if that were too low) would not have the same ill effect as a high  rate that crashed the economy it would just be a lighter load than the economy was capable of handleing and not the "optimum" skim .

So given that the consequences of a tax rate being too high are more serious than those of  a tax rate being too low, error on the side of benefit to us all, would be to error on the low side.

Money in the productive part of the economy is like gas in the tank , it is better to have more than you need to make it to the next gas station than to try to guess exactly the amount that will allow one to coast in to the next stop on the last drop in the tank.

[Plane]

Productivity is most certainly finite. I have no idea where y'all get these notions that wealth and productivity are infinite. To my knowledge, human beings are not gods, therefore productivity cannot possibly be infinite. It can be increased and it can be decreased, but it is still finite.

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]



We really need to get past this notion that everything is either finite or infinite , finite is the opposite of infinite the way that the nort pole is opposite the south pole , but does the north pole being truely the opposite of the south pole mean that everything is either Arctic or antarctic and nothing is on the globe but the polar opposites?

Your thinking is in a box so tight and a rut so deep that you can't see out of the rut , there are several things between the poles and several states of number that are neither finite nor infinite.

The economy could be viewed as an equation with many functions , so is a function infinate or is a function finite?

Funny thing about mathematics, you can't just MTSU ("make that shit up") anything you like. You call it a "tight box" of thinking. I call it math.

The simplest definition of a finite number is that it is not equal to +/- infinity. I'm not going to get bogged down in the semantics again and call on an Oxford theoretical methematician. If you can't comprehend what finite means and you find math to be too closed-minded, then I can see why economics is causing so much grief.

Now, try and follow-up on the other points, please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite


I know how you feel , I have been wrong before , this time it is you.

Because the north pole is the opposite of the south pole everythinng is either north pole or it is south pole .

I presume that you do not live at the north pole ,therefore I must presume that you live at the south pole.

This is an example of false sillogism , as is your assertion that because the amount of value , or productivity extant is not infinite it must be finite.

A curve can be either finite or infinite and it can also be neither.

The amount of produtivity or the amount of value availible to the economy is most certainly not infinite , but it is a product of many functions , "adjustable" might be a good way to state the size of the value availible to the economy.It would be finite if it had a fixed value , which it does not.

If I'm wrong I will freely admit it. In fact, it was either you or Prof that corrected me on our soldiers having NBC gear in the initial invasion of Iraq.

But I went to your link and all I see are definitions proving me correct.

Still, I see no sense in an argument on semantics.

It is semantics , it is also conceptual , and I am haveing fun with it .

You can quit and I will have no foil to expound the concept to.

Since you have read something on the Laffer curve already I have brought up the notion of Chaos , in which it is mathmaticly impossible to provide a value even if it is possible to posit limits. Thus a value in chaos has no "finite " nature but is not necessacerily infinite either.

IN the sense that finite means

Having a finite size

there are many things that are neither finite nor infinite and the productivity of a nation is one example of this.

 Haveing the idea that there is a finite size for value or productivity leads to the notion that the rules of a zero sum game apply , such that any gain to any player must be drawn from a loss by other players, and this is certainly not the case. Every manipulation of the value stream has an effect on the size of it so that sometimes every player looses or sometimes more players gain than loose.

Taxation can have negative effects ,and there is not necessacerily a gain somewhere elese that counterbalances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite

[Xavier_Onassis]

Looks like this will be your choice: Hillary or McCain.

This will be the result of your inability to unite more Christians for Less Government (other than yourself and the frog in your pocket, which allows you to claim the plural word 'Christians').

[Rich]

That's not a frog in your pocket BO, so stop playing with it.

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

Nope....at least not in the vain you're portraying.  You ENFORCE the current laws...which includes prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  That works to dry up the amount coming over.  You also work on arresting and deporting about 100-200 a week, sending a clear message to the other 11,999,000 that they could be next.  You finish building a fence along the border, OR put a portion of the military on the border, again giving the would be illegal 2nd thoughts. 

AFTER all of that, THEN we see what we can do to streamline the current immigration process, so that it doesn't take years upon years, but perhaps 1 at the most, but more so a few months, allowing for much more orderly and organized transition into this country, so they can they reap the rewards of coming to America, and not have the stigma of taking away from those immigrants who did come here legally or Americans fed up with the mentality that we're here, tough, now where's mine?, attitude.

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The fact is that you cannot deport 12 million people, even if it is the best idea in the world. You cannot do it gradually, and you certainly cannot do it all at once. I am all for arresting employers who hire illegals, but most of the larger ones (the meat packing industry, the janitorial contractors who swamp out Wal*Marts, for example) either have teams of lawyers to explain how they were DECEIVED by the lying aliens, or will simply dissolve the company and open another with a different name in a couple of weeks. Mostly, these moves will end up screwing the aliens, but without forcing the companies that once hired them to offer living wages to legal American citizens.

There is hardly anything wrong with any American expecting that they have a right to a job that pays a living wage. This country should not have vast hungry armies of unemployed forever on the fringes, never given a chance.

[Xavier_Onassis]

That's not a frog in your pocket BO, so stop playing with it.

===============================================
How does this make sense in any way? Is it your idea of humor?

------------------------------------------------------------------
C4LG is the one who claims he is a plural entity, so I imagine that he might well have a frog (a Christian one, to be sure) in his pocket.
Perhaps he will lend you one so you, too can claim to be a plural entity. Or with two frogs, you could attain the status of a Trinity. Unholy, to be sure, but a Trinity nonetheless.

[Rich]

<chuckle>

Do you really teach?

[The_Professor]

Looks like this will be your choice: Hillary or McCain.

This will be the result of your inability to unite more Christians for Less Government (other than yourself and the frog in your pocket, which allows you to claim the plural word 'Christians').

I am still hoping Obama will get the nod.

[sirs]

Nope....at least not in the vain you're portraying.  You ENFORCE the current laws...which includes prosecuting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  That works to dry up the amount coming over.  You also work on arresting and deporting about 100-200 a week, sending a clear message to the other 11,999,000 that they could be next.  You finish building a fence along the border, OR put a portion of the military on the border, again giving the would be illegal 2nd thoughts. 

AFTER all of that, THEN we see what we can do to streamline the current immigration process, so that it doesn't take years upon years, but perhaps 1 at the most, but more so a few months, allowing for much more orderly and organized transition into this country, so they can they reap the rewards of coming to America, and not have the stigma of taking away from those immigrants who did come here legally or Americans fed up with the mentality that we're here, tough, now where's mine?, attitude.

==================================================================================================

The fact is that you cannot deport 12 million people, even if....

...even if I never said, or even implied such


 

[_JS]

Plane,

I'd rather discuss reality than theory. You've yet to explain to me how Denmark does so well. If you, Sirs, Rich, et al are so certain of your economic principles then a nation like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway should, in theory, not be able to exist - let alone thrive!