h a l f b a k e r yContrary to popular belief
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I think I get it -- there's a crisis or something going on
with the US government running out of credit.
I keep hearing that we borrow 40% of every dollar spent.
I am also hearing that the deadline is somewhat fuzzy
given that money is coming in to the Treasure every
day.
The short term
solution seems obvious. We don't need
to
raise anything. Instead, everyone who really, really
wants
an agreement -- which appears to be about half the
country, perhaps more -- , can take matters into their
own hands by sending in their estimated taxes through
the
end of the year.
Since we're at about the halfway point of the year, if all
those people send in their entire tax receipts now, it will
fill in the 40% without any need to borrow more money.
Perhaps Uncle Sam would even be willing to throw in a
bit
of a discount for those that send taxes early?
This obviously will not work indefinitely, but should
create a nice 5, 6 months buffer.
Dr. Strangelove
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb ... [8th of 7, Jul 29 2011]
In England's green and pleasant land.
http://en.wikipedia..._Locomotive_Firemen
[mouseposture, Jul 31 2011]
Computer analysis of cancer tumors
http://www.popsci.c...ancer-better-doctor
[theircompetitor, Nov 10 2011]
Google's Nevada license
http://www.theregis...license_google_car/
[theircompetitor, May 09 2012]
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Annotation:
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The day the drug dealers in Mexico or the oligarchs in
Russia or the bankers in Singapore, or the oilmen in
Saudi have an option other than the dollar is the day
I will start worrying. |
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Until then, I've learned to love the debt bomb |
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But have you stopped worrying ? |
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Unnecessary link; those who get the joke, get the joke.
Those who do not are horrible human beings. |
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// horrible human beings // |
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Tautology. There's any other type ? |
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After a week in a warm environment, even dead humans get pretty yucky. |
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There are approximately 5M professional drivers in
the United States -- that's bus, truck, taxi drivers,
not Nascar circuit drivers |
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Figure another ten to twenty years until self
driving cars are routine. |
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Then look at current structural unemployment and
what's been happening to it. |
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Any forced changes in the retirement age are a
pimple on a horses ass in terms of the dislocations
that are coming -- the growth of structural
unemployment we've seen will be dwarfed by the
coming years. |
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The social fight worth having is not over safety
nets, but in changing education |
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I think self-driving cars are a little further away than most people beleive . Yes, I know they already exist in the development phase, and there are 'self-parking' cars on the market, but I mean widespread use. It may take a country boy's perspective to see this (a well-traveled country boy), but there are a lot more variables to driving rural roads than driving in the city. In terms of square mileage made accessible by road, the US and Canada's roads are mostly rural. |
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I was thinking "For rural roads, sure, but it'll take
more than a couple of decades to replace the New
York or London cabbie." |
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Consider rural roads in the American West.
Perfectly
straight from horizon to horizon, and hardly a
tree
or another vehicle to collide with. There's a
*reason*
Nevada was first to legalize autonomous vehicles. |
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[theircompetitor] Excellent point. But shirly
that's nothing new? Why is the problem more
acute in the coming years than it has been in the
past century? |
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Yet consider the rural roads in the American East, of which there are more; twisting, winding, often lined by trees and great bloody rocks, and often subject to the whims of Teleporting Deer. |
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I'll believe in autonomous cars after we start getting autonomous airplanes. |
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// I'll believe in autonomous cars after we start getting autonomous airplanes.// |
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<...considers mentioning UAV's, but then thinks better of it...> |
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[mouseposture] I guess my point is that the
structural issues facing the economy from its
transformation are much larger than even the
structural issues facing the deficit, e.g. self-
driving cars are a bigger impact on the
employment of drivers than the impact of the
housing bubble on construction workers. |
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Similarly, the increasing longevity of the baby
boomers created structural problems within Social
Security and Medicare, but we actually have no
idea how the transformation of medicine will
impact longevity and health level of seniors. My
bet is that as personalized genetic medicine takes
off, no amount of retirement age adjustment
would be able to keep up. |
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State planners love to talk high speed trains when
a laptop with Google Plus already gives you free,
immersive videoconferencing -- other than human
communication, not even clear to me why one
goes to the office now, much less in 20 years. |
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The venture economy is both showing signs of a
bubble but is also showing signs of an upcoming
surge similar to the surge of the 90s. |
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And I'm not even going to bring up the upcoming
Singularity :) |
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So, worrying about actuarial tables looking out 30
years seems pretty silly to me. |
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[theircompetitor] there have been self-driving light-rail vehicles for decades, but each still requires a human fail-safe for safety concerns. We'll never see a self-driving bus full of passengers as something commonplace in our lifetimes. |
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My guess is that a self-driving bus would be safer for
passengers. |
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And as to light rail, my guess would be that those
drivers are driven by union concerns |
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[theircompetitor] like I said, excellent point. But
planners are paid to plan, and so they build
models containing only the known unknowns.
Like the subprime debacle, really. If you were
World Dictator, would you A) abandon the
attempt to plan ahead, or B) fire the actuaries and
hire futurists instead? |
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For unrelated reasons, I've been reading about
Extended Kalman Filters, and y'know, a simplified
model that
fails beyond a short time horizon, is surprisingly
accurate in the longer term if it's continuously
updated from new data. |
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Don't mention Railroad Unions! If anybody mentions
Railroad Unions, [The Alterother] will put a bag over his
head, and then we all have to stand in the tea chest and
sing "Jerusalem!" |
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//still requires a human fail-safe// <link> |
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[mouseposture], I make my living by convincing VCs
to believe in hockey stick plans :) |
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So yes, I would go for the futurists. |
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As silly as those old PopSci posters look, they're not
wrong in the sense of wonder that the current world
would have invoked in those that saw those posters,
then |
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The link talks about computer analysis of cancer
cell images starting to beat human radiologist
readings. Radiology jobs already shift outside of
western markets to some extent to save money. |
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No amount of "protectionist" policy can keep any
industry or job type safe long term. The focus has
to be on creating new job types and new
industries, and a population that thrives on
change rather than on stability. It's a bitch when
it affects you, but pretending that it can be
handled by putting your head in the sand is the
surest way to create more Detroit style
failures. |
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The above mentioned license has been granted to
Google in Nevada (see link) |
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/if all those people send in their entire tax receipts now/ |
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I wonder if one could use casino-like odds to figure out how to do this. For example: guess for the year and send in now. If you overpay you will get 85% of it back after the first $200, which Unca Sam keeps. If you underpay same thing in reverse. |
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// the dislocations that are coming -- the growth of
structural unemployment we've seen will be dwarfed by the
coming years.//. |
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I doubt that there can be a structural change as big as
we've already seen over the past decades with 10s or even
100s of millions of women entering the workforce when in
prior eras it "wasn't the done thing". I know unemployment
is a serious issue in many parts of the world right now, but
in Australia at the moment the unemployment rate is just
barely above 5%, with twice as many citizens in the job
market than there would have been predicted in the 1950s or 60s. |
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Fair point on the fair sex, AusCan531. |
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Ummm... I'm confused. How is this idea different
from the way things are now? My income taxes are
regularly withheld from my paycheck, and sent on to
the government (I believe quarterly). When you file
your taxes for the year, you're really just resolving
accounts, and you either have to pay an additional
amount or get a refund for the difference between
your withheld amount (based on income projection
for the year) and your actual tax liability. Failing to
accurately adjust your withholdings such that they
grossly differ from your actual tax bill can actually
subject you to penalties, and theoretically is
punishable as a criminal offense. |
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>self-driving cars are a little further away than most people beleive |
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Yes, they do tend to keep a bigger safety gap than most human drivers. |
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