When they talk about high US Taxes

The right is always talking about high US corporate tax rates.  You could compare us to places that have legalized slavery and always make us look uncompetitive.  Instead lets compare us to a successful industrialized country, one that is essentially eating our lunch in the marketplace.  Let's look at Germany.

First let's start with the VAT (Value Added Tax).  That is essentially a sales tax, that is tacked on to each transactions at each level.  The rate is generally 19% but for certain foods, books, magazines, flowers, some transportation, it is 7%.  And some things are exempt.  Doctors do not charge VAT tax, nor do public theaters, museums.  This is not a complete list of things that have a reduced or waived VAT tax, but you get the idea.

The tax is charged by the seller. The manufacturer pays it on the raw materials they buy.  The distributor pays it on the finished goods they buy, the consumer pays it.

Let's take the case of the manufacturer.  On a quarterly basis they will pay the tax that they charged to their distributors, minus the tax they paid buying raw materials.

Then there is the corporate tax rate.  According to taxrates.cc the combined (federal and local) tax rate for corporations is 33.3%.  This is actually a rough summary of three different taxes applied to corporate income.  And unlike US corporations, German corporations are taxed on their world wide income, minus of course any taxes paid on income in other countries.  So they cannot hide their income in low tax countries.

Now let's talk about the other two facets of this.  How are German companies doing under this burden, and what do the German people get for their money?

Well, you know that in manufacturing and exports, they are beating us in the marketplace and have been for years.  So paying employees a decent wage, a mandatory 25 vacation days, and taxes on their world wide income does not seem to have stoped them from doing well.  And look at CEO salaries, well in 2009 Deutches Bank CEO Josef Ackermann had a total compensation 9.55 million euros.  He was the higest paid CEO in Germany that year.  It does not compare to some of the packages US CEOs were getting in that same year, but he is still getting rich.

And what do the people of Germany get for these taxes?  How about universal health care, pensions, and tax-funded child care, housing, and educational allowances?

So our taxe rates are not, and never have been what is killing our manufacturing, destroying our middle class.  Rather it is the blind faith that if you only appease the oligarchy that owns this country enough, that they will eventually share a few crumbs with the rest of us. 

You want to see jobs moving back to this country?  Stop giving businesses a free ride to hide their profits overseas forever. When you give them economic incentives to send your job overseas, what do you expect?

Lenovo - How Slow can you Go

 In my lifetime I have owned 2 Macintosh computers, two Windows laptops, and two Windows workstations.  That is until my last Windows workstation died.

Fortunately, I was taking a break from work, so there was no immediate need.  Having a functioning laptop, I didn't feel the need to rush out and replace it.  When I did get around to it, I went looking with some very specific criteria.

• Plenty of USB ports
• Support for dual monitors
• Dual disk drives

Not a really challenging list of requirements.

 I ended up at Office Max, where I found a Lenovo desktop that seemed to meet all my criteria.Just in case it means something to anyone, the product number is 90T2000SUS.  I picked up a couple of reasonably priced monitors at Costco and proceeded to assemble my workstation.

I didn't have a lot of software to add.  I use UEStudios (UltraEdit, UltraCompare, UltraFTP), Oracle client software, Peoplesoft client software.  I also added LibreOffice.  Not a big load for what seems like a reasonably beefy workstation.

From pushing the start button to being presented with a logon page takes somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes.  It seems to vary.  Once logon credentials are entered (it asks only for a passcode, no user id/password combination), it is going to be at least another 3 to 5 minutes before you get either your desktop, or about 25% of the time, the black screen of death.

With the black screen of desth, all is not lost.  Clicking on that page give you a drop-down list   offering to log out, launch task manager, or restart.  If you select task manager, and then close that window, you finally see the you desktop, and are able to actually use your computer.

Did I mention, Lenovo keeps trying to sell me shit? The app where you would check for updates to any of the Lenovo installed software is essentially a come-on to sell you a service contract, software to 'enhance your performance' (so they admit that they deliberately slowed down the machine) and software to help locate the machine if it is lost or stolen.  For a desktop?

Because I have a network file server, I do not have a whole lot of data saved on this machine.  So I won't have a lot of reinstalling to do when I wipe down the hard drives and install vanilla windows, rather than the ad-ware version of Windows 11 that came on this machine.

This morning's emails

As usual, I had a lot of emails waiting for me this morning.  Of the first 13 emails, 12 were asking for money.  One was from Doctors without Borders, to whom I already donate monthly, and the rest were from political candidates. 

Of the political candidates, none of them were running to represent me or anyone else in my state, and none of the elections (except perhaps judges, not sure about those races) were going to be held any time soon.  And yet each is written with the false sense of urgency I would expect from a con man.

Then there are the impossible goals.  Constitutional  amendments that would never be enacted and impeaching Trump is just as unlikely.

I made one political contribution about six weeks ago and this is the result of that.  Pissing me off like this is counterproductive.

Suspected drug smugglers

Every article I read about the navy destroying a ship, the article refers to them as 'suspected drug smugglers'.   In no instance have I read that an armed boarding party was sent to the ship to inspect the cargo.  I think that falls into the same category as 'he's black, must be a gang banger'.

They may have intelligence leading them to suspect a specific ship is a drug runner, but without actual proof, destroying the ship and killing the crew is an act of piracy and murder.  

Yes, boarding the ship does expose the crew to risk.  It is the same sort of risk every cop is exposed to when they break down a suspected drug dealer's door.  If the police, who don't have cannons backing them up can do it the right way, so can the navy.

The military has rules of engagement. I was in the army, not the navy, but I suspect that "there's a boatload of brown people they must be guilty of something" doesn't meet the criteria. Of course the draft dodger in chief wouldn't know anything about that. 

 Using the navy to interdict drug trafficking is not in and of itself a bad idea.  By all means board suspected ships, and arrest the crew members if they find contraband.  Those ships found to be carrying illegal drugs should be confiscated and sold, not sunk, with the government retaining the proceeds. 

And the drugs?  Those are the evidence to be presented in a US court, after which they can be destroyed.

A reminder of the greatest generation

On my recent trip to Europe, I spent most of a day at the museum and graveyard on the cliffs above Omaha Beach.  I have always enjoyed museums but this experience was something entirely different.

Some was just a recitation of history while much of it told individual stories of people who not only walked into danger but gave their lives to protect their comrades.  That was walking through the museum.  

This is what I saw as I walked out of the museum.  This photograph doesn't come close to capturing of what I saw,

 Before leaving I took this video to capture a little more of the scale of this place.

 

 

I tend to be stoic about a lot of things, but I spent much of that day holding back tears. A lot of these graves hold teenagers.  During World War II, you could enlist at 17 with parents consent, and be drafted at 18.  Somewhere between two and three thousand died on Omaha beach, and many others on the Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno beaches.

 The next time you watch a World War II movie that includes the D Day assault, like the The Longest Day, give a thought to the sacrifices made that day.  

If we really want to conquer space, then start building the technology there, not on the ground.

To go from earth orbit to the moon or Mars or the asteroid belt requires a conceptually different craft than something that lifts you off from earth.   By that I mean there need be no consideration in the design of those spacecraft for taking off or landing because the sole purpose should be going point to point in space carrying a lot.of cargo, passengers or both .   And it should be intended to repeat that over and over rather than being for a single use.

Because such a craft isn't designed to take off or land, it needs to be built in space.  That is where the planned private space stations should be directing their efforts, on manufacturing the spacecrafts that will be the workhorses of space exploration. 

It may take many years before we develop vehicles that are single stage to orbit and back, but point to point in space is well within our grasp today.  And it is those spaceships that will give us the entire solar system.

They will take colonists and supplies to Mars and prospectors to the asteroid belt.  They will bring back raw materials from the asteroid belt to build more ships in orbit and to supply industries on earth and the moon and the colonists on Mars.

That is how we truly become an interplanetary species, by building the spacecrafts that can become the trucks and busses of space.

Taxes and unemployment

The gospel according to the republican party is, cut taxes on the rich to reduce unemployment.  And the only problem with that idea is that history as shown again and again the opposite is true.  The periods of our greatest prosperity have corresponded to the periods with the highest marginal tax rates.  And not coincidentally, the periods of high unemployment have typically followed lowering the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans.

One explanation I have read is that when tax rates on the high ends of income are lowered, it tends to encourage speculation, leading to bubbles in the economy.  And we know that bubble will eventually burst and there is hell to pay.

Now the correlation between tax rates and unemployment is something you can look up yourself, but I will site a few examples, just to make the point.

In 1980, the top rate for individual taxes was  70% and unemployment was at 6% and it had been falling since 1975.  In 1981 the top tax rate for individuals was cut to 50%.  This began a series of tax cuts for individuals, corporations, and capital gains.  The unemployment rate rose, spiking at over 10% in 1983.

Yes, you can say that's all ancient history,  which is true.  But it is a pattern that has shown some consistency.