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Re: shuttle disaster



On Sat, Feb 08, 2003 at 11:53:26AM -0600, DvB wrote:
> > As far as "essential goods", who decides this?
> > 
> 
> The commonwealth of Pennsylvania currently (unless things have changed
> since I last heard) doesn't tax goods classified as "foo" and
> "clothing." I support this despite the obvious drawback that people
> don't pay taxes on the purchase of designer clothing and caviar.

Oregon lacks a general sales tax because there's no good way to make
it not screw the poor, and Oregon has a lot of poor.  Revenue that
other states collect with sales tax instead come largely from property
and income tax and the state lottery.  The only items that have a
sales tax are vices or luxuries, like tobacco, alcoholic beverages and
gasoline.  

When I move to Canada, I'll probably move to either Edmonton or
Calgary, since in Alberta there is no provincial sales tax.  It would
be nice if there was no national sales tax there, but I respect the
fact that I have no say in the matter until I get Canadian
citizenship.[1]

> > I'd rather not live in a society where people tell me what I do and
> > don't need based on some  economic model.
> 
> People need food to live and are required by law to wear clothing. I'm
> sure the vast majority of other goods can be classified fairly
> accurately based on the same criteria.
> Also, and this is just my personal opinion, taxing things that things
> that aren't deemed to be "necessities" isn't telling you what you do or
> don't need. You're still free to purchase those things.
> 
> 
> > > > > > What kind of idiot was your economics prof?
> > > > > > 
> > > > > More of an idiot than your fuzzy math prof, apparently.
> > > > 
> > > > You must have really hated your economics prof.
> > > 
> > > I only ever took one economics class and often missed half of it because
> > > my Numerical Methods prof's tests took two hours to complete instead of
> > > the one allotted, so I wouldn't really know :-)
> > > Besides, the class didn't cover much in the way of stock investment.
> > 
> > It's difficult to find good economics professors in my experience.  I
> > had one really good one in college but he was not given tenure, mostly
> > because he gave honest grades 
> 
> I've learned most of my economics by reading. I already knew, to some
> extent or other, most of what the class covered before I took it.
> 
> 
> > (the school was/is a farce).
> > 
> 
> That would explain a lot of things if your school was/is a farce ;-)[1]
> 
> 
> 
> [1] Note the smiley. Your arguments aren't totally bogus, even if I
> don't agree with the vast majority of them.
> 
> 
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[1] Pet peeve: When you move into another country, you don't get to
try and change public policy until you're eligable to vote.  You'll
only accomplish annoying those around you.  In a perfect world, you
wouldn't be allowed to vote or use public services beyond incidentals
(like roads, fire and police, this excludes health care and education
for your kids) for 5 to 7 years after moving into a new state, IMHO,
to give you time to pay in some revenue before you start tapping it
(Oregon likely wouldn't be in the mess it's in if half of California
didn't move themselves and thier families here).

-- 
 .''`.     Baloo <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org>
: :'  :    proud Debian admin and user
`. `'`
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than to fix a system

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