Archive for December, 2008
What You Really Pay
While I am on the topic of tax it is interesting to look at the massive tax burden we actually have. You are probably well aware of the tax you pay directly. But have you considered how much money out of what is left ends up as tax paid by the person you buy something from?
Lets assume you earn say $100. Out of that lets say for want of argument that $40 is tax leaving you with $60. From the $60 that is left you then pay a 10% goods and services tax which will add another $6.
Consider the remaining $54. If you buy something lets say that 50% of that goes on salary and wages of the retailer and staff so we can add another $10.80 in tax revenue assuming that the guy in the shop is taxed at 40% and of course we can add another 10% of what he has left on GST which is $1.62.
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December 30 2008 | Economics | No Comments »
Transaction tax versus the current tax system.
Don’t you hate it when the people who come up with “simplified” tax systems are the very people who make money out of the complexity of tax? That is the tax lawyers, tax agents and accountants who stand to loose millions if we made things easier.
The idea behind a Goods and Service Tax (GST) is to put in place a simpler tax system that is driven by economic activity. The higher the circulation, the more transactions, the more revenue is raised. In theory it is done across a broad base to stop people bypassing tax.
Unfortunately in Australia we ended up with a GST and an income tax and a company tax and excise driven economy. To make it worse the GST had a whole variety of different politically driven exemptions. This increased the overhead associated with managing the tax which meant that not only is more money being diverted to the government, but that even more effort is being taken away from productivity simply on tax management.
When the primary job of a businesses accountant is managing tax rather than revenue streams and business development then the tax system becomes your business.
Tax itself is a burden on the population. To place the additional burden on the population of collecting the governments tax is one problem. Combine this with the issue of directing the population’s effort away from the business of doing business and you have found yet another way to shoot yourself in the foot.
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December 29 2008 | Economics | No Comments »
The Path To “What Is Red”
For now I will close down this chain of thought but do need to put down some closing comments. Key amongst these is that I think the reason we are unable to solve the “Red” problem is very similar to the problem of finding the solution to
Which if you remember your math only has an imaginary solution.
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December 28 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
Which One Is You
This post will probably be the last in the awareness thread for a while as I have hit a conceptual brick wall trying to work out a non circular qualitative description of such a simple thing such as red. None the less for now lets assume that somewhere between your ears is something that associates what you and I call “Red” to some form of nervous activity.
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December 28 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
Not Good. Those of you who dabble in the market a useful site I find is Kitco. It provides a pile of information on base metals, which from an Australian view is pretty important. The key thing to look at are inventory levels. At the moment production is exceeding demand by a large amount which is causing the massive drop in share prices.
So until the inventory levels drop we have a problem. Interestingly the Shanghai copper inventory is dropping, unfortunately this is not making much of a dent in the London Metal Exchange inventory levels. Shanghai has been dropping consistently for two years and probably simply reflects Chinese growth.
By the way the charts below are pulled from Kitco so I expect them to change with time. Do if you troll back here in a few months, this post may be out of step with the market.
The only good news, which is one I can’t at the moment work out is that Lead inventories are low. I am not sure. Car Batteries? Bullets? I am not sure what is driving the demand. Electric vehicles? A bit weird.
Lead prices are not particularly strong so we have dropping demand and supply. Perhaps a reduction in Copper and Zinc production (where Lead is often found) is causing the drop in inventories, but no demand is keeping the price down. The economics is a little strange here.
December 28 2008 | Economics and Market | No Comments »
The Bloke’s Bill Of Rights
Another post from Doug turned up, this one is perfect.
Finally a male has taken the time to write down the guys side of the story. We always hear “The Rules” From the female side, well this is how they are for us. So members of the shoe fixated gender; read and memorize. This is the Blokes Bill of Rights. You will be expected to know this. It will be referred to.
Please note. these are all numbered “1″ ON PURPOSE!
1. Men are NOT mind readers.
( FIRST & FOREMOST RULE)
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December 27 2008 | Humour | No Comments »
Life’s A Bitch And Then You Die.
Well Winterfest is over which means I can stop annoying the christians who keep trying to claim they invented the festival. Well at least until the Northern Spring when I can start a Springfest rabbits and eggs thread.
Rather than continue my exploration of thought, which I must admit has hit the brick wall of being unable to explain what such a simple thing as Red is. I will wind up the year with my summary of why 2008 sucked for me.
This one is a personal post by the way, which means it makes sense to me, but for anyone else it is most likely introspective navel gazing. But hey that’s what blogs are for. Same as therapy, but without the bills.
With that said, the suckiness began at the end of Sept 2007 when I left work to wind up a thesis that I had been working on for years and was going to live off the market for a while. If you want a real laugh have a look at when the Dow started falling. It was twelve days later….. I kid you not.
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December 25 2008 | Personal | No Comments »
Why Not?
Should be the answer, but I will go a bit further. Humans like to believe that they are different to everything else and that their awareness somehow transcends the physical universe. This does give us a form of status. It makes us special in our own minds. Some would say legends in our own lunch times, but it also introduces severe problems with the laws of physics. In simple terms it violates conservation of energy and momentum to have this “external transcendence” interact with physical particles without an energy transfer. To have an external agency affect your thoughts or actions implies an energy transfer. So unless the laws of physics adapt themselves specially around you we have a situation where “Awareness” and thought are things that have a physical explanation. The question is where?
Another reason is from an artificial intelligence viewpoint. If we assume that we are physical creatures rather than metaphysical, the that thing we call awareness exists somewhere between our ears and as such can be modeled physically. If we can model it we can program it. To do that we need to know what “it” is.
Perhaps the best reason of all is that we don’t know what awareness is. It is virgin territory, the great unknown.
So why not.
December 24 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
How would you know if you lived in virtual reality?
This post follows on the thread on awareness that I have been playing with over recent weeks. Once again it is fairly philosophical. This time drawing in some concepts from the cyber punk world. Ideas you are probably familiar with from science fiction books and movies such as The Matrix, Neuromancer and the like.
What we are going to do is abstractly separate your brain with a very clean surgical knife from your body, and then see if you notice it.
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December 24 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
Grasshopper; Time to Test Your Wisdom.
With apologies to Blind Master Po.
A tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it. Does it make a sound?
The answer: No
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December 21 2008 | Philosophy | No Comments »
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