The fact that they all drink the same amount of beer despite their income disparity is a fundamental flaw here, as well. Does the lower 40% go on great vacations, live in giant houses and have cushy, dependable jobs -- and still not pay their taxes? The beer clearly doesn't represent government handouts but overall benefit.
In fact, there's nothing really correct in this e-mail besides a cursory understanding of how one small part of the tax system works.
rekrunner wrote:
Can anyone think of any example, anywhere, or anytime, where the taxpaying burden was an absolute fixed price for everyone? Has any nation, state, or city ever put a fixed price per person on the ability to receive public benefits and services provided by taxes?
The US did it for a long time through the poll tax. A price per person to vote. It was used to prevent blacks from voting.
Your an idiot if you use drug ads to evaluate the drug industry. It is only a small fraction of drugs that it makes sense to advertise. You don't see ads for the new antibiotics, cancer drugs, and so on. As far as people being unhealthy today, you really think that is a result of the drug companies? Is global warming caused by pirates? Is the rise in the national debt over the past 30 years due to the rise of hip-hop and rap music?GPL is very nichey. You can give away your product if you make it hard enough to use that people need to buy support contracts. Or if your selling hardware. List of the number of GPL companies that have made money selling consumer software and compare it to the ones using traditional copyrights. Now patents on software are more questionable. There are some legit ones but most are crap.
rekrunner wrote:
Judging by the number of "new drug" commercials these days, the "new drug" situation seems far from ideal too. I can see how it works for pharmaceutical companies, but wonder if the people are better or worse off today? We don't seem to be healthier.
Their seems to be a healthy economy built around GPL software, which undermines the very tenets that traditional copyright owners deem sacred. Granted, GPL only works when copyright law is enforced, but it's not clear whether copyrights have helped or hindered the software industry, with respect to innovation for the consumer.
asdfasdfas wrote:Almost all (probably all but I am sure there is one exception) of those offshore corporate tricks are designed to avoid Corporate taxes not personal income taxes. The only big tax break a corp gives to rich people is they get paid as capital gains (i.e. 15%) instead of ordinary income (35%). As far as liablity limitations, without it would you invest in any company? How would you like to have put 10k in enron and not only lost all of that money but gotten a bill for another 5k?
As far as getting rid of copyrights and patents, you would destroy our economy. No new drugs. No new movies (i.e. you can't spend 100 million making something and sell one copy). No software industry. And so on. All because you want to steal music and disney cartoons.
asdfasdfas wrote:
Is global warming caused by pirates?
Yes it is (technically by a lack of pirates). I've seen a chart and everything.
I don't see any improvement for the consumer in the existing drug situation. It looks more like the patent system is being abused by pharmaceutical companies, so that they can charge artificially high prices for drugs people don't need. People are unhealthy for a lot of reasons, and taking drugs they don't need is only one of them. Listening to the "small print" side-effects of any drug on TV makes me wonder why anyone would ask their doctor about it.For important drugs like curing cancer or AIDS, I don't see private (or public) companies protected by patents as the best approach for the public. This kind of research is better conducted at independent laboratories funded by the government, who aren't obstructed by some companies bottom line, but have the people's health as their top priority.For what concerns copyrights and patents, the primary goal is bringing benefit to the public. That someone can make money is only a secondary means to achieve this goal. If someone makes money from these government granted monopolies, yet the public doesn't benefit, we must consider it a failure, or an abuse of the system.I don't measure the success of software by how much money it makes its developer. Software is developed for a purpose, and the success of a software is how well it suits that purpose. Most software is not consumer software, but custom software developed for internal use. Most software engineers do not sell the software they write to consumers, but instead are salaried employees for some company, who use the software in house for their own business purposes. If you buy secret software protected by copyright, you are at the mercy of the supplier to fix any bugs, and at the mercy of the most popular demands of the consumers, for any changes and improvements you may want to the software. Software is supposed to be "soft", meaning that it can be customized for individual needs. If you must buy it shrink wrapped, you pretty much have to take it "as-is", and work around its shortcomings.No software patent is legitimate. Software on a general purpose computer can not be reasonably considered an invention.
asdfasdfas wrote:
Your an idiot if you use drug ads to evaluate the drug industry. It is only a small fraction of drugs that it makes sense to advertise. You don't see ads for the new antibiotics, cancer drugs, and so on.
As far as people being unhealthy today, you really think that is a result of the drug companies? Is global warming caused by pirates? Is the rise in the national debt over the past 30 years due to the rise of hip-hop and rap music?
GPL is very nichey. You can give away your product if you make it hard enough to use that people need to buy support contracts. Or if your selling hardware. List of the number of GPL companies that have made money selling consumer software and compare it to the ones using traditional copyrights.
Now patents on software are more questionable. There are some legit ones but most are crap.
yeah when you go to the hospital with a bacterial infection you sure don't want an antibiotic. And if you do need one, good old penicillin is more than enough for anyone right? You wouldn't want any of the ones developed in the past 15 years or so that fight all the bacteria that are immune to penicillin. The lifestyle drugs you see on TV are a small percentage of the drugs out there.Does the public benefit from movies? Do they benefit from music? If so that copyright system is working. I measure the success of the copyright law in that I am able to found a company and sell my product. Without IP laws, I can't do it. Most software might be used in house if you go by number of packages. Go by number of users and it looks a lot different.Well the patent office thinks it is reasonable to consider software inventions.
rekrunner wrote:
I don't see any improvement for the consumer in the existing drug situation. It looks more like the patent system is being abused by pharmaceutical companies, so that they can charge artificially high prices for drugs people don't need. People are unhealthy for a lot of reasons, and taking drugs they don't need is only one of them. Listening to the "small print" side-effects of any drug on TV makes me wonder why anyone would ask their doctor about it.
For important drugs like curing cancer or AIDS, I don't see private (or public) companies protected by patents as the best approach for the public. This kind of research is better conducted at independent laboratories funded by the government, who aren't obstructed by some companies bottom line, but have the people's health as their top priority.
For what concerns copyrights and patents, the primary goal is bringing benefit to the public. That someone can make money is only a secondary means to achieve this goal. If someone makes money from these government granted monopolies, yet the public doesn't benefit, we must consider it a failure, or an abuse of the system.
I don't measure the success of software by how much money it makes its developer. Software is developed for a purpose, and the success of a software is how well it suits that purpose. Most software is not consumer software, but custom software developed for internal use. Most software engineers do not sell the software they write to consumers, but instead are salaried employees for some company, who use the software in house for their own business purposes. If you buy secret software protected by copyright, you are at the mercy of the supplier to fix any bugs, and at the mercy of the most popular demands of the consumers, for any changes and improvements you may want to the software. Software is supposed to be "soft", meaning that it can be customized for individual needs. If you must buy it shrink wrapped, you pretty much have to take it "as-is", and work around its shortcomings.
No software patent is legitimate. Software on a general purpose computer can not be reasonably considered an invention.
asdfasdfas wrote:Your an idiot if you use drug ads to evaluate the drug industry. It is only a small fraction of drugs that it makes sense to advertise. You don't see ads for the new antibiotics, cancer drugs, and so on.
As far as people being unhealthy today, you really think that is a result of the drug companies? Is global warming caused by pirates? Is the rise in the national debt over the past 30 years due to the rise of hip-hop and rap music?
GPL is very nichey. You can give away your product if you make it hard enough to use that people need to buy support contracts. Or if your selling hardware. List of the number of GPL companies that have made money selling consumer software and compare it to the ones using traditional copyrights.
Now patents on software are more questionable. There are some legit ones but most are crap.
Good let the Rich move over seas and I will take their jobs for them while they are in dispose.
Give me all the latest drugs. Just have them funded by government research rather than companies looking for patent protection. It will be cheaper for the public, and the public will be better off for it, by having greater access to the drugs they need.I agree that the copyright system works for movies, music, books, and even software. I only said lots of business models rely on this kind of government protection. Seems you agree with me here.Making money off software, by forming a company, and selling your product, is a rare exception rather than a rule. How many users of e-mail? How many users of internet browsers? Software is a strange market that can rarely follow a "traditional" business model.Patent offices are paid by how many patents they approve. When it goes through the court system, software patents are usually found invalid, due to prior art, or lack of novelty, or lack of implementation. However, invalidating them is costly, creating a barrier for competition in software markets.
asdfasdfas wrote:
yeah when you go to the hospital with a bacterial infection you sure don't want an antibiotic. And if you do need one, good old penicillin is more than enough for anyone right? You wouldn't want any of the ones developed in the past 15 years or so that fight all the bacteria that are immune to penicillin. The lifestyle drugs you see on TV are a small percentage of the drugs out there.
Does the public benefit from movies? Do they benefit from music? If so that copyright system is working.
I measure the success of the copyright law in that I am able to found a company and sell my product. Without IP laws, I can't do it. Most software might be used in house if you go by number of packages. Go by number of users and it looks a lot different.
Well the patent office thinks it is reasonable to consider software inventions.
Any evidence it will be cheaper or more effective? And would be any more efficient or cheaper than the government running the auto industry, the utility companies, broadcast companies, and so on? If your a socialist the answer is clearly yes. If your a capitalist, the answer is no. The rest of us look at them at a case by case basis. As far as selling software being a rare exception, depends on your definition of rare. There a tens of thousands of companies selling software today. The browser market isn't free for 95% of the people out there. Mozilla makes a crap load of money selling search traffic. Email isn't free. Outlook costs a boatload of cash and gmail sells ads. 99% of games are paid (either by ads or straight cash). If you buy a system for your medical practice, you pay a shitload of cash and then have to buy a maintenance contractI have no idea of the percentage of software patents found to be invalid but given the amount of money RIM and Microsoft had to pay for very flimsy patents, I don't think the standard is as high as you think.
rekrunner wrote:
Give me all the latest drugs. Just have them funded by government research rather than companies looking for patent protection. It will be cheaper for the public, and the public will be better off for it, by having greater access to the drugs they need.
I agree that the copyright system works for movies, music, books, and even software. I only said lots of business models rely on this kind of government protection. Seems you agree with me here.
Making money off software, by forming a company, and selling your product, is a rare exception rather than a rule. How many users of e-mail? How many users of internet browsers? Software is a strange market that can rarely follow a "traditional" business model.
Patent offices are paid by how many patents they approve. When it goes through the court system, software patents are usually found invalid, due to prior art, or lack of novelty, or lack of implementation. However, invalidating them is costly, creating a barrier for competition in software markets.
asdfasdfas wrote:yeah when you go to the hospital with a bacterial infection you sure don't want an antibiotic. And if you do need one, good old penicillin is more than enough for anyone right? You wouldn't want any of the ones developed in the past 15 years or so that fight all the bacteria that are immune to penicillin. The lifestyle drugs you see on TV are a small percentage of the drugs out there.
Does the public benefit from movies? Do they benefit from music? If so that copyright system is working.
I measure the success of the copyright law in that I am able to found a company and sell my product. Without IP laws, I can't do it. Most software might be used in house if you go by number of packages. Go by number of users and it looks a lot different.
Well the patent office thinks it is reasonable to consider software inventions.
notice anything about the picture for this article?
Y'all are smart!!!
I don't speak of costs to develop, but more about the direct costs to the end user. Patents give a company a temporary monopoly, were there is a temporary lack of competition to drive prices down. For certain "revolutionary" drugs, like cancer cures, the price will be artificially high, because there is no alternative. The demand will be driven by the "will to live", and poor people will be excluded from treatment since they can not afford it. Affording commodities like a computer or a car (tough luck if you can't), is not quite the same as affording drugs you need when you are terminally ill.With regards to utility companies, I think privatizing them is a mistake and a failure. No utility company could ever fail as big as Enron did. Every company, given the chance, has the same motivation as Enron to generate shareholder value.Things that require a big upfront investment, of general interest to the public (e.g. mass transportation, railroads, highways, utilities, internet), are best handled by government funded agents, with a focused mandate on the end result. Look at the internet. If it weren't developed by DARPA, we would have something analogous to the mobile phone chaos in the U.S., where single providers can not give complete coverage.You spoke of setting up a company, and selling a product; not generating advertising revenue. More companies fail to make money selling software, as a product, by the copy, than those that make money. Software is not a traditional commodity, because there are too many exceptions. We've already mentioned developed for in-house use only, bundled for free with h/w for sale, bundled for free with OS (anti-competitive behavior to eliminate your competition), and now you mention given away to the user, generating ad revenues. Not to mention "free" software, where revenue can be generated by customization and support, or revenue is not generated at all. I said the "traditional model" is rarely followed, because there are so many alternate business models. You don't see this diversity in the auto industry.Sure some markets exist. Games are probably the best example of software that can be sold to the general public for profit. Maybe some industries (i.e. medical industry, beer industry) have a large enough audience, and well defined problem, to create a market.There are no valid software patents, because it doesn't fit the definition of invention required for patents. Software is essentially mathematical algorithms and algorithms are not supposed to be patentable. So lawyers usually "invent" some s/w, h/w, process combined description, and call that an invention. There was a recent ruling (Bilski) where the software patent standard got much higher.
asdfasdfas wrote:
Any evidence it will be cheaper or more effective? And would be any more efficient or cheaper than the government running the auto industry, the utility companies, broadcast companies, and so on? If your a socialist the answer is clearly yes. If your a capitalist, the answer is no. The rest of us look at them at a case by case basis.
As far as selling software being a rare exception, depends on your definition of rare. There a tens of thousands of companies selling software today. The browser market isn't free for 95% of the people out there. Mozilla makes a crap load of money selling search traffic. Email isn't free. Outlook costs a boatload of cash and gmail sells ads. 99% of games are paid (either by ads or straight cash). If you buy a system for your medical practice, you pay a shitload of cash and then have to buy a maintenance contract
I have no idea of the percentage of software patents found to be invalid but given the amount of money RIM and Microsoft had to pay for very flimsy patents, I don't think the standard is as high as you think.
Got to be a joke wrote:
You're kidding or trolling, right? You... you really don't think the point of the last line was that our rich are going to literally move overseas, do you? I saw this in the other thread too... I hope you people are messing with everyone.
Ahh, but when you give the rich the tx breaks they "invest" their money in really cool things from overseas for themselves.
Look, the country is in trouble, we need money. We need jobs and we need people spending money on American made things.
The cost to develop is all that matters for drugs and software. The fact that it cost a buck to make pill that sells for 1000 dollars is irrelevant since without that billion dollars of fixed cost, you can't make any pills.DARPA takes way too much credit for the internet. They did a lot of fundamental research but that was because they came across the problem 20 years before everyone else. When it came time to deploy to the world, all the cash came from private companies.Advertising revenue and direct sales are the same. Just a different customer. Both depend on copyright.
rekrunner wrote:
I don't speak of costs to develop, but more about the direct costs to the end user. Patents give a company a temporary monopoly, were there is a temporary lack of competition to drive prices down. For certain "revolutionary" drugs, like cancer cures, the price will be artificially high, because there is no alternative. The demand will be driven by the "will to live", and poor people will be excluded from treatment since they can not afford it. Affording commodities like a computer or a car (tough luck if you can't), is not quite the same as affording drugs you need when you are terminally ill.
With regards to utility companies, I think privatizing them is a mistake and a failure. No utility company could ever fail as big as Enron did. Every company, given the chance, has the same motivation as Enron to generate shareholder value.
Things that require a big upfront investment, of general interest to the public (e.g. mass transportation, railroads, highways, utilities, internet), are best handled by government funded agents, with a focused mandate on the end result. Look at the internet. If it weren't developed by DARPA, we would have something analogous to the mobile phone chaos in the U.S., where single providers can not give complete coverage.
You spoke of setting up a company, and selling a product; not generating advertising revenue. More companies fail to make money selling software, as a product, by the copy, than those that make money. Software is not a traditional commodity, because there are too many exceptions. We've already mentioned developed for in-house use only, bundled for free with h/w for sale, bundled for free with OS (anti-competitive behavior to eliminate your competition), and now you mention given away to the user, generating ad revenues. Not to mention "free" software, where revenue can be generated by customization and support, or revenue is not generated at all. I said the "traditional model" is rarely followed, because there are so many alternate business models. You don't see this diversity in the auto industry.
Sure some markets exist. Games are probably the best example of software that can be sold to the general public for profit. Maybe some industries (i.e. medical industry, beer industry) have a large enough audience, and well defined problem, to create a market.
There are no valid software patents, because it doesn't fit the definition of invention required for patents. Software is essentially mathematical algorithms and algorithms are not supposed to be patentable. So lawyers usually "invent" some s/w, h/w, process combined description, and call that an invention. There was a recent ruling (Bilski) where the software patent standard got much higher.
asdfasdfas wrote:Any evidence it will be cheaper or more effective? And would be any more efficient or cheaper than the government running the auto industry, the utility companies, broadcast companies, and so on? If your a socialist the answer is clearly yes. If your a capitalist, the answer is no. The rest of us look at them at a case by case basis.
As far as selling software being a rare exception, depends on your definition of rare. There a tens of thousands of companies selling software today. The browser market isn't free for 95% of the people out there. Mozilla makes a crap load of money selling search traffic. Email isn't free. Outlook costs a boatload of cash and gmail sells ads. 99% of games are paid (either by ads or straight cash). If you buy a system for your medical practice, you pay a shitload of cash and then have to buy a maintenance contract
I have no idea of the percentage of software patents found to be invalid but given the amount of money RIM and Microsoft had to pay for very flimsy patents, I don't think the standard is as high as you think.
flaws
1) We may cut taxes but that doesn't mean we now can pay for our bills. We still are spending more than we take in.
2)This does not account for the increase in income the wealthy have taken in compared to the poor.
3) The working poor still pay SS and medicare. Sure, the benefits are skewed to help the poor but they do pay taxes.
Another problem nobody has pointed out with the OP. The hypothetical rich man in the real world earns more like $109, not $59. So what if he paid more so that his after tax income came back down to $59? Would Bush tax cut supporters have a problem with this?
I think the cost of developing drugs is the same for a government lab, or a company lab. It's only afterwards, a company will charge more, so it can recoup its investment costs, while the government will deploy the drug more fairly, on an as needed basis. If you develop a vaccine for smallpox, what's the point of deploying it to only 50% of the people who need it?DARPA defined the problem and the solution. They should take all the credit. No company could have accomplished that. Left to companies, there would have been many competing, and conflicting solutions, requiring more engineering to work around incompatibilities.Exactly what cash did "private companies" have to come up with? The internet worked over existing phone lines.Ad revenues and direct sales are the same thing? I would call it a completely different business model. Google earns lot of money displaying copyrighted information of others. Google developed its own copyrightable software, but it's used internally on its own servers, not sold either to advertisers or consumers.
asdfasdfas wrote:
The cost to develop is all that matters for drugs and software. The fact that it cost a buck to make pill that sells for 1000 dollars is irrelevant since without that billion dollars of fixed cost, you can't make any pills.
DARPA takes way too much credit for the internet. They did a lot of fundamental research but that was because they came across the problem 20 years before everyone else. When it came time to deploy to the world, all the cash came from private companies.
Advertising revenue and direct sales are the same. Just a different customer. Both depend on copyright.