alexjrgreen wrote: To tax them effectively would require a world government.
Everyone seems to have their own view of what "effective" taxation is, but you're also denying the antecedent. 'if world government, only then is effective taxation possible.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
Given a choice of jurisdictions, a multinational corporation can always successfully avoid most of its tax liability:
The effective taxation of multinational corporations would thus require a single jurisdiction.
This could initially, of course, be achieved by a multilateral tax accord rather than a world government (if you're not troubled by the democratic deficit), but the arrangement would break down rather quickly.
MSimon wrote:The UN? I guess Oil for Palaces will be the norm then. i.e. taking food out of the mouths of children so dictators can build palaces while the well connected get to skim off the top.
BTW did any one notice that the UN is not full of liberal democracies? In fact dictators and other similar types are in the majority in the UN.
The UN was created and is still largely funded by the US. Go figure...
MSimon wrote: Evidently there are a lot of folks in the world who hunger to be ruled by an iron hand.
This is a straw man. In most sports you need a referee.
Excerpted from a current thread at the Focus Fusion site:
I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) - the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. ... I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CST and former DOE office of science program manager had this to say about it:
2) A spherically symmetric magnetic field is impossible under the laws of physics as we know them, and so Bussard’s PolyWell is essentially based on hokum.
Howcum he thinks it's hokum? Hack 'im!
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Brian H wrote:Excerpted from a current thread at the Focus Fusion site:
I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) - the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. ... I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CST and former DOE office of science program manager had this to say about it:
2) A spherically symmetric magnetic field is impossible under the laws of physics as we know them, and so Bussard’s PolyWell is essentially based on hokum.
Howcum he thinks it's hokum? Hack 'im! :x :evil:
Because it is. Where are the poles? OTOH the Polywell is designed to take advantage of the fact of poles. i.e. oscillation through cusps.
So this Adam guy is criticizing a concept he does not understand. What else is new?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Brian H wrote:Excerpted from a current thread at the Focus Fusion site:
I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) - the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. ... I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CST and former DOE office of science program manager had this to say about it:
Howcum he thinks it's hokum? Hack 'im!
Because it is. Where are the poles? OTOH the Polywell is designed to take advantage of the fact of poles. i.e. oscillation through cusps.
So this Adam guy is criticizing a concept he does not understand. What else is new?
It's amazing how stupid people can be. Someone hears a phrase which thier experiance denies. Without checking on the validity of the term, they discredit a concept. Obvously, spherical magnetic fields are impossible- but where did he get the idea that Bussard claimed this. Bussard's work has been to Aproximate this condition as much as possible, with real arrangements of magnetic fields to come close enough to this ideal condition that the thing will work. Thus the efforts to minimize real cusp and surface geometry effects to within some acceptable limit, or finding some workarounds (like recirculation). Argueing for or against the effectiveness of the methods is reasonable, justifying denial on a selfserving misrepresentation is not.
For someone that suposedly has some expertize and athority in a field to grasp onto a (mis)applied word, and then use that to justify a position is dissapointing.
Brian H wrote:Excerpted from a current thread at the Focus Fusion site:
I contacted the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) - the organization that was tasked with managing the ARPA-E grants. ... I wanted to see if they had any particular issues with aneutronic fusion. It does appear that they hold Aneutronic fusion in low regard. In even lower regard is the PolyWell. Adam Rosenberg, on the professional staff of the CST and former DOE office of science program manager had this to say about it:
2) A spherically symmetric magnetic field is impossible under the laws of physics as we know them, and so Bussard’s PolyWell is essentially based on hokum.
Howcum he thinks it's hokum? Hack 'im!
To reply to a statement made on site A, quoted on site B, and then further quoted on site C (by all rights I should take this to a fourth site...)...
Spherically symmetric magnetic fields are impossible in the absence of magnetic monopoles, true. However, weren't monopoles in the news this week?
alexjrgreen wrote: To tax them effectively would require a world government.
Everyone seems to have their own view of what "effective" taxation is, but you're also denying the antecedent. 'if world government, only then is effective taxation possible.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent
Given a choice of jurisdictions, a multinational corporation can always successfully avoid most of its tax liability:
The effective taxation of multinational corporations would thus require a single jurisdiction.
This could initially, of course, be achieved by a multilateral tax accord rather than a world government (if you're not troubled by the democratic deficit), but the arrangement would break down rather quickly.
I merely was pointing out your logic was out of kilter. If your logic is off, what good is a more thorough explanation? Please follow the hyperlink.
Please explain again why it is wrong for corporations to organize themselves to minimize their tax burden?
Or to put it in an American context: why shouldn't corporations move from California to Texas (they are) to minimize their taxes?
BTW it seems that Texas is doing well in this downturn while California is in the tank.
Differing tax jurisdictions encourage governments to minimize taxes to keep the lower tax jurisdictions from capturing their corporations.
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Currently the American income tax system is skewed so that high earners pay most of the taxes. High earners are having a bad year. So are the tax collectors.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
MSimon wrote:Please explain again why it is wrong for corporations to organize themselves to minimize their tax burden?
The question generalizes: why is it wrong for any entity to maneuver to minimize its tax burden?
I think it is definitely wrong to accuse someone who legally employs the gaps in the law of cheating, when we have tax cheats running the IRS and tax law writing committees of Congress.
Given a choice of jurisdictions, a multinational corporation can always successfully avoid most of its tax liability:
But they don't have such a choice. In the link it says (very correctly) that corporations also end up double taxed.
To tax them effectively would require a world government.
No, it just requires consistent accounting.
It's hard to be worried much about this when
a) Corporations are creatures of statute, and any state can do whatever it wants to them
b) Other countries are using monopsony purchasing power to force the U.S. to carry an unhealthy portion of the R&D that goes into medical innovation
Nothing to do with Polywell or FF, but true. In the EU, e.g., it is generally illegal to charge more for drugs than a small markup over production cost. That means there is no margin for researching and covering the cost of the many failed compounds for each successful one. So they allow the American pharmas to cover all of that. And that wellspring is drying up. There were about a score new drugs approved in the last year, vs. hundreds per year a couple of decades ago.
Golden geese don't produce well on starvation diets.
Help Keep the Planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 Output! Global Warming = More Life. Global Cooling = More Death.
