From: Vadim Kogan (vadim@XCF.Berkeley.EDU)
Date: Wed Mar 16 2005 - 14:40:34 PST
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 04:20:21PM -0500, J. Forster wrote:
> The government is doing exactly the wrong thing in giving tax breaks for these
> big pig vehicles. They should have a progressively larger tax for new gas
> guzzlers to reduce consumption.
There should not be any personal property tax. The tax has already been paid
TWICE: first when I earned the money, then when I bought the item. There
should not be any recurring yearly personal property tax, period. It should
not matter how much the vehicle was when it was purchased or whether it is
capable of consuming more fuel per mile. These facts in no way affect
anybody (a parked gas-gazzling $250K ferrari is much better than a daily
driver POS fuel-efficient $10K honda).
Now, if the real cost of a galon of gas/diesel is $10, let's be fair and
charge this. This way, those who consume more (and that does NOT mean big
vehicles, it generally means any vehicle that is driven more), will pay
more. Of course, trucks will be paying more. Of course this will raise the
cost of delivery and thus the cost of goods, but let's keep it all fair, so
that everybody is paying for what they use.
> In addition, population control programs worldwide should be aggressively
> supported, but not imposed. Only by reducing the world population in a planned
Agreed, there should not be any imposed population control. By fairly
charging for things what they really cost and not trying to shift the
cost/blame to those who work harder and might have better things/earn more
money, you will get into the state where many people cannot afford to have
children and won't.
Of course, the problem is that those who cannot afford to live in a certain
area don't just disappear from the area. They linger around, commiting
crimes, becoming homeless, etc. Also, the less-educated ones would do things
they cannot afford either accidentally or without realizing the whole cost.
The current society in some countries (including the US) is heavily bounded
by christian moral values, though. That, combined with a number of security
and economic factors, results in having the society support all of the above
people, again shifting the cost/blame over to somebody else (generally more
wealthy). Economy, no matter how fair and good it might be, cannot solve
this problem. Nature has only minimal "economy" - "availability of food and
shelter", and those who fail to aquire the required piece die off. Humans
tend to think of humans as something better than any other animal, so those
who fail to get the required resources never disappear from the picture
(e.g. die from starvation or get killed while trying to rob somebody). It is
even worse when it comes to human offsprings: in nature offsprings are the
first to die when the situation is bad, since they're the weakest. Humans
seem to be willing to spend considerable resources to save a child.
This is the reality. Whether you consider it good or bad. BTW, _I_
personally think that if one wants to support, say, a homeless person, one
should be free to do so. It's their money, they can do whatever they want.
I, however, do not think that they should be able to take somebody else's
money, for this is stealing. That is, the government and taxes should not be
involved to support the low-income/etc, it should be nonprofit
organization/private funds, which get their money through donation, not
taxation. The government should really be charging for the services it
provides, more-or-less acording to the usage. A service that is used by
everybody, e.g. military, will be paid for by everybody. A service that is
only used by some group should only be paid for by that group.
As for the original discussion, as time progresses, it is only reasonable to
assume that markets for most goods and services will become more and more
globalized. The physical location will become less and less important. IMHO,
this is _good_. This allows for greater competition and less government
control (multiple governments also form a competition, thus making more
favorable laws uniformly). In such an environment, the cost of your product
is going to be mostly based on the quality of the product and possibly
support. So, in general, if you can't make it cheap, don't bother.
Obviously, as the large-population countries (China, India, etc) develop,
the demand for resources will increase and drive the prices up, whereas the
supply of resulting goods will increase as well and drop the prices. In the
long run, this will cause more-or-less uniform quality of life. USA's would
drop, China's would raise. From the point of view of USA residents, this is
not very sexy and it'd be very interesting to make China disappear
alltogether and not affect us. Same as it would be interesting to make poor
neighbourhoods of large cities disappear. Neither is going to happen, so
deal. Unless USA becomes more efficient in producing goods with higher
quality, it won't be able to compete production-wise with China. Unions and
other forces that retard the progress (e.g. by not letting the companies
replace workers with robots) get nothing in the long run, but result in even
worse state: now the company has to go out of business AND they _still_ lose
their jobs. IMHO, USA cannot compete in many fields. IMHO it'll be down to
limited agriculture, service jobs (things you can't off-load, since you
need a physical person here, and (for a while) R&D. Of course, a good chunk
of the population won't fit into the picture and will have to move
elsewhere (e.g. Mexico) and be like everybody else there.
The above is, obviously, MHO.
Vadim.
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