Mileage-Based "income"? tax. (Government Motors)
 

And he has the audacity to call this the Transportation Opportunities Act?!

An opportunity to put lipstick on before he fucks us? Taxing the same middle class you campaign on helping...smart.

How will this work, the logistics are crazy. I would just roll back my odometer anyway. I forsee them trying to implement some form of GPS tracking due to people like me.

I can see mileage implemented as a road tax in lieu of fuel taxes, but income taxes? Whatever happened to presidents who understood the basic principles of macro and microeconomics?

Hey, I've got an idea - how about implementing a law that limits how high credit card companies can raise interest rates on their cards - sounds good if you're a retard president, doesn't it? Unfortunately, as soon as you implement it, base interest rates on credit cards are going to skyrocket because of the increase in financial risk to the lender.

That's the proposed idea. It'll never happen, but this is your Gov't at work.

Just wait till they are able to tap into your drive by wire, when they track you through GPS and stop your car as you wait for the MP to come arrest you for speeding.

Soon enough I fear that will be the reality of this country.

Everyone should just form a LLC and write off mileage to compensate.

Just like the "Potential Black Farmer" tax credit?

You will also have to pay a fee for closing your throttle too fast, because this damages the environment.

lol.

well played.

I actually kind of like the idea. I know plenty of folks who choose to buy/rent in areas which are 30, 40 miles or more from where they work every day, for reasons which they are unable adequately to explain. Those folks are directly responsible for the daily congestion on all the major highways around here, and for consuming a significant percentage of the gasoline sold in this area, which translates to more vehicle emissions, which translates to stricter CARB regulation.

Fuck 'em. Live where you work, or work where you live.

I work 5 miles from my job. It's one of the most expensive zip codes in the nation. I'd rather live 20 miles out where the prices drop off significantly. In my price range I cannot afford a house with a garage or even a driveway with a carport. I cannot afford a house with a yard, I cannot afford a house with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. I cannot afford a house built later than 1920. I cannot afford a house that isn't in a neigborhood with chain linked fences and lowered pickup trucks.

If I move 20 miles west I could afford something with a 3 car garage, 6 bedrooms 4 baths, acres of land, etc etc etc.

living in/near the city sucks dick.


Why not improve roadways that were built in 1920? or increase speed limits? or increase oil refinery production?

an unconsitutional national tax to be able to drive you car is rediculous. I mean fuck, I already pay .38c/gallon in taxes to state/fed. Each time I fill up the miata it's $3.8 in taxes. They want to tax me twice now?

hell in connecticut you pay .70c/gallon in taxes. LOLZ.



Here's a question, why does the state of CA impose a tax of $0.85/gallon on Diesel, but only 68.9c/gall on gasoline?

There is just too many people. No way around this. Something will have to even everything out. I vote a massive world war.

I drive 11.6 miles each way to work and back.

Tax the shit out of gasoline.

I drive about 8 miles each way to work. I could move closer, and actually plan to, and then ride my bicycle.

I vote a time machine. We could get rid of two facist presidents: Wilson and FDR.



all taxes will do in increase your costs and slow the economy. people will still be on the roads and the gov't will use the extra cash to buy more votes, not improve roads.

the federal gov't spends jack shit on infastructure. it's up to state and local gov't. yet the fed government makes up what 40% of our economy? way to go!

Most days I can get to all the important places I need to be within a matter of miles. In the miata I can get from home to the shop in under 5 minutes. In the Taurus its closer to 10-15. lol

I think that our whole fucking government needs to be refurbished. We need to step back and look at whats going on and do something about it before it continues to spiral out of our control.

I try and stay out of the political threads on this board because although I respect a lot of the guys on here in a "fellow enthusiast" sort of way, I just cant fathom some of the views expressed by the same people regarding our government.

All the stores near me are complete shit.

I used to live across the street form the "good" store, Harris Teeter. Completely overpriced food, seafood and meat department with shitty food, congested as hell cause its the only nice store in the area, never have stuff on shelves.

There's a Safeway across the street that no one goes to. Shit is creepy, dark and dirty. No self checkout and the lines are typically longer than the isles.

All the bigger stores are in the mixing bowl areas. So they are nicer store in tashy locations. I make sure never to leave anything inside my car that could get stolen when I go there. I have to travel out of my way to go there, but the Giant I do shp at is large, newly renovated and always has what I need in stock. I just have to deal with all the mole people.

The Target is the only real "super" store. But it's small and overwhelmed with people who do not buy deorderant.

If I want to go to Walmart, I have to drive about 15 miles south (getting on a horrible highway or driving through multiple cities. or 20 miles west, getting on another highway.

Nothing new can be built here, there's no real estate. everything is old, everything is overrun by shady people popping out more shady people.

This is what I deal with to live close to the District. If I had my way I wouldn't live in VA anymore, or at least west of the Beltway where there is still developing areas, nice strip malls and every sort of store you can think of. Problem is, all the real jobs are back east in the city, so you have to commute.

See, there's a problem already. I work 0 miles from my job. :D

I live about 5 miles from it, in a one bedroom apartment (with a garage). I could choose to buy a house a very long distance from where I work and commute every day. Actually, for a couple of months I shared a house w/ a fellow about 20 miles from here. It was significantly cheaper ($800 a month vs. $1,500) however the commute drove me nuts, so I moved.


Same here. Well, technically I could afford it, but it would be ridiculous for me to do so. Hence, I rent an apartment which suits my needs and is close to where I work.


Sounds like somebody needs to move to SoCal. We didn't even have roads in the '20s. :)

I'm quite happy with the condition of the roads here. 55 MPH indicated (60-65 actual) on El Camino Real and Palomar Airport Road is perfectly satisfactory, and the traffic flows smoothly. The only time Palomar really gets congested is when traffic is backed up onto it from people waiting to get onto I-5 or CA-78, said people being the folks who choose to live a great distance from where they work and thus need to burn several gallons a day getting between the two places.



Here is the first paragraph of Article 1, Section 8 of the US constitution:
I'm pretty sure that a federal tax is not unconstitutional.



They don't.

The current (effective July, 2011) CA tax rate on gasoline (excluding AVgas) is $0.357 / gal, and on diesel it is $.13 / gal. (The diesel tax was recently decreased from $.18 / gal.) Source: http://www.boe.ca.gov/sptaxprog/spftdrates.htm

Now, the Federal government does tax diesel more than gasoline. The most recent data I have here is from Jan 2010, which puts gasoline at $.184 and diesel at $.244.

So the combined effective (CA + Fed) tax would be $0.541 / gal on gasoline, and $0.374 / gal on diesel. Note that this excludes local sales tax and the State Underground Storage Tank Fee, which is a uniform $.02 / gal for all fuel types.

the source I used shows more: http://www.api.org/statistics/fuelta...ry%20pages.pdf


I say unconstitutional because I doubt it will pay debts AND provide common defense AND general welfare. That and I'm a big haterz.

Well, for one, that chart combines the state and federal taxes together. You'll note that the green portion of each bar is the same for every state? That's the Federal tax (the so-called Excise tax).

Also, the rates in CA recently changed, which is not reflected in that chart. 3

And last, the bars include an average figure for things like general sales tax, county and local tax, and other fees which are not, strictly speaking, fuel taxes. If you include sales tax in this argument, for instance, you might as well cry about how CA levies a tax on shirts and personal lubricant.

Still, the basic trend in the chart is accurate, and should not be surprising. California always ranks towards the upper end when it comes to taxes related to carbon-emitting devices including motor vehicles. The CARB bureaucracy doesn't pay for itself.

the rent is too damn high.

I live about 10 miles away from work, it is about the closest I can get and have peace of mind that my wife will be fine, and be able to walk the dogs and not get robbed/raped/murdered, then I would have to go kill someone. I could live closer for cheaper. Somethings are worth more than the illusion of reducing green house gases.

I live zero miles from work.

But I drive around 25-30k miles a year to play.

I'm against production and sales taxes. Period.

Late to this thread, responding to first post.

This is ridiculous. I live on the outer edge of the suburbs of the Twin Cities. I live 24 miles from school and 8 miles from work. I drive more than 60 miles a day out of necessity.

Now, unless the Obama administration subsidizes McDonald's wages and I start making twice as much, this is mighty irritating.

EDOT: Oh, and I'm not to worried about this passing. The sheer amount of effort required to make this work is immense. As Top Gear pointed out, it would just be too much work.

you honestly think youd get paid what you do without federally mandated minimum wage? sounds like youre okay with it then?

Wow, just wow :facepalm:

What's next? Air tax? Daylight tax?

I'm a traveling salesman who drives 45k+ miles a year. I would be out of a job.


Joe, last time I checked your job was in the Europeses, Califlorida, and errywhere in between. I wouldn't call you a homebody.

I keep forgetting the Florida hasn't implemented a daylight tax yet. They'll catch up to the rest of the country sooner or later.

Technically, here in CA we do in fact have an air tax, actually. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is that wonderful agency that likes to make life miserable for anybody who produces greenhouse-gas emissions. Cars, factories, power plants, hell- we even have special CARB-approved fuel cans here, which prevent the release of gasoline vapors when transferring fuel into a car / lawnmower / engine-driven dildo. Ironically, they do seem to promote the spillage of about 50% of the gasoline you were trying to transfer, which winds up running directly onto the body of your car and then onto the ground... :rolleyes:

At any rate, CARB is not a self-sustaining organization, so it gets funded mostly by our state taxes. And as their official task is to ensure that we all have breathable air, we have an air tax.


True, but most of that is by air travel, and the tax on aviation fuel for commercial uses is quite low. Apart from those days when I need to drive to the airport or back (appx 35 miles each way), my average gasoline consumption is pretty damn low.

I work 1.8 miles from my house... living on base rocks! I drive my shitty Mazdaspeed6 every day. The more short-cycle miles I put on it, the sooner it'll break and I can buy a Legacy like I should have. I bought bicycle but spring still hasn't arrived here... still fucking 55* mornings.

Off topic

Why don't you like the speed6? I was thinking about getting one to replace the taurus.

My ex had a 2005 Legacy GT. I fucking loved to drive that car! lol

Obama's vision:
http://unitech-matters.com/unitech/i...-bicycle-3.jpg
Only use what you need.

To a certain extent, I think we Americans could use a bit of that philosophy.

One of the things that I thought was really interesting about the month I spent in Papenburg, Germany last year was the massive number of bicycles. Germany isn't exactly an economically-depressed country, yet there were hundreds (thousands?) of folks who rode their bicycle to work at the shipyard every day, despite the relatively shitty weather you get being that close to the North Sea in October / November. This is such a common behavior that the yard has a parking garage specifically for bicycles, as well as bicycle racks scattered around the place everywhere, most of which were quite full.

Well I "need" to go to the track 10x per year and Obama's bullshit environmental policy of "let enregy prices go sky-high so people leave their house at 85*f, own one car, and bankroll my voters" doesn't work for me.

Germany is an economically depressed country because they tax their people into poverty with their socialist government.

That's just the thing- when I was there, I didn't get a sense of economic depression. Quite to the contrary, in fact; they made me, an affluent Californian, feel slightly poor and backwards.

The town that we were in, Papenburg, has a population of about 35,000 and isn't near anything in particular. They have one large shipyard (Meyer-Werft) and a bearing factory (KS Gleitlager) and are somewhat proximate to the ATP testing grounds, but they're not exactly a happening, high-tech place, nor are they part of any larger metropolitan area. In that sense, it's not unlike many of the small midwestern and southeastern US towns which grew up around a specific industry or market.

And yet the place thrives. Most of the cars I saw were quite a lot nicer than what you'd see here in the states. No beaters at all, and relatively few "cheap" cars. (I did see one Dacia Sandero, but it was definitely the exception to the rule.)

The downtown area was always bustling- shops and restaurants, and while there were a lot of foreigners (contractors like myself- mostly French, British and American), most of the people I saw shopping and dining were definitely locals. Despite the town's minuscule size, it has a small but pleasant shopping mall, a very well-stocked OBI (like Home Depot, but with a nice bakery / deli), a Media Markt (Best Buy) which was always busy, a Kaufland (about the same as a Super Wal-Mart), etc. All the sorts of consumer retail outlets you'd expect to find in a typical American town two or three times the size, and all doing a very brisk business.

And Düsseldorf? Shit- that place is absolutely hopping.


Want to know what's really interesting? Most of the stuff that, here in the US, would be made in China or Mexico, was all made right there in Deutschland. I'm talking everything from refrigerators and washing machines down to little shit like power strips and hand tools. They all cost more to buy than they would here (basically, just convert the $ to a € but leave the numbers the same) and it didn't seem to matter. Not to mention the fact that they pay 19% VAT (sales tax), slightly more income tax than we do in the US, and the equivalent of about $8 / gal for petrol. (And I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Germany doesn't know a thing or two about racing.)

The Germans do not seem to be suffering. To be quite honest, I kind of wish I was fluent in German. Of all of the non-communist nations, they may well be the last economy standing when it's all over.

i love gov't

^Worker's paradise according to Marx.

In Soviet Amerika, government controls you!


Joe,
Germans buy domestically manufactured goods because there are exclusionary tariffs on foreign goods. They pay 40-70% more for manufactured goods to keep manufacturing jobs in-country. It could be the difference between a $400 expense for a new dishwasher and a $700 expense. The German one might be made better but if both clean dishes and last ten years so what? It all effects the cost of living in ways that housing prices alone don't often reflect.

If driving a 16 mpg truck wasn't bad enough - I put 45-50K miles a year with work - and I'm self employed. If I get taxed for mileage - I'll have trickle it down in travel/fuel charges. If the customer complains, I'll tell them to thank Obama... bunch of fuck-tards.

Exciting news!





Really, though, how can you compare actual affluence just by noting the apparent economic activity? What matters to the dude on the bicycle is his actual buying power -- can the guy working a particular job in Germany buy as big and nice a house as a guy working a similar job in America? Can he afford a similarly nice car (and afford to put gas in it)? Does the apparent absence of "poor" people or older, cheaper cars actually mean that everyone is rich, or that the poor have been priced out of that area? Have older cars been legislated out of existence, thus forcing the poor to ride bicycles for lack of affordable used cars?

There's too many variables involved to simply spend a couple weeks over there and develop a case of social democracy envy.

I'm convinced that Canada posions the air in order to keep everyone sick, thus dependant on their free healthcare. (kinda like how China censors all references to freedom/democracy)

I'm going to write a book about it, chances are I might not survive - they don't want this information leaked, and will go to lengths to stop me.


No joke, Rick is sick every other day.

And the feeling I'm getting here is that you don't see this as a positive thing...?


The "so what" is that the majority of the $700 stays within Germany. Ok, so some of it goes to OPEC nations to pay for the fuel required to transport the machine, and some of it goes to other places to buy semiconductors and other little trivial things. But these costs would be there regardless of whether the dishwasher was built in Koblenz or Korea. The bulk of the money goes to pay the salaries of factory workers, administrative personnel, all sorts of people within Germany who participated in the building of the dishwasher. Those people then use the money to buy other things made in Germany, to pay their mortgages, hire hookers, etc.

It keeps people employed domestically.

When we buy a dishwasher made in China, sure, we save $300. And we can use that $300 to buy an air compressor made in China as well. All of that money exiting the country strengthens the Chinese economy while simultaneously depressing the American economy. So now, not only do we have people within the US who are out of work, defaulting on their mortgages, and collecting unemployment (all of which I have to pay for through my taxes) but we also have Chinese banks and corporations who are able to purchase controlling interests in US companies while simultaneously raising their own standard of living and increasing the value of their currency.

Eventually, a break-even point will be reached. The value of Chinese labor will grow to the point where the dishwasher costs $700 to buy, except I won't be able to afford the damned thing any more because I'll be broke just paying for everyone else's unemployment checks.


Crap... I'm starting to sound like Jason...


Maybe I'm just a werido, but I don't personally have a need for excessive consumption. I have no debt of any kind, and I tend to just stockpile money away rather than spending it. I have an old car, and old TV set, live in a modest (relatively speaking) apartment, and I'm actually quite comfortable with this lifestyle. What makes me uncomfotable is when I do go out and purchase something (no matter how trivial) and I literally have no alternative but to buy something that was made in China or some other east Asian nation.

I know, this sounds hypocritical given that everyone on this forum, by definition, is choosing to drive a Japanese car. But hey, GM decided to discontinue the only US-made equivalent to a Miata, so fuck them right in the ear.

I'm being completely serious, though. When I go to the store and purchase a shirt, or a LiMn battery, or a computer mouse, or an ethernet router, or whatever small thing it is, it actually makes me feel slightly guilty. As in "well, here I am making my small contribution to the exodus of wealth from America."


To be totally honest, I kind of wish we were back in the 1960s, from a economic standpoint. Ok, so your typical middle-class family only had one car and one TV set, instead of 3 and 5 of each respectively. And the refrigerator didn't have forty-seven zone humidity control and an ice dispenser in the door. But the car, the TV set and the fridge were all made in the US, and more than likely also exported to other nations. And we also weren't teetering on the brink of a socialist government.





No, it doesn't. What matters to the dude on the bicycle is what the buying power of his children and grandchildren will be.


We, my generation, are the children of business leaders who decided to mortgage our future in exchange for instant gratification and conspicuous consumption 30 years ago. And we don't seem to know anything but how to continue down that same path.

I betcha all those hurting for a job right now would love to get paid under minimum wage, just to get paid something.

hell maybe, the manufacturing jobs might even start rolling back here in the US.


Oh wait, no, an employeer has no say in where it can open a plant anymore, let alone what it can pay its employees (read: Boeing and SC)



at least 13 and 14 year olds can access porn at the library...

now it all makes sense:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...s-by-2050.html


the NWO at work.

Right. Except these rich masterminds will still be able to drive their cars as they can afford to. So pollution is ok as long as you can pay for it.

But it helped the middle class?


meanwhile: 47% of Detroiters are “functionally illiterate.” That means about one out of every two people in Detroit can’t “fill out basic forms, for getting a job, …[read] a prescription [to know] what’s on the bottle [or] how many [pills] you should take.” In short, they can’t read well enough to do “basic everyday tasks.”

Let's be clear, however -- your personal ability to live within your means and be emotionally satisfied doing so does not solve the ultimate economic problem, which is scarcity. People have always, and will always, individually want more than they can have, and collectively want more than there is to be had.

I'm having trouble reconciling these two claims -- you're telling me that your generation is fixated on immediate gratification at the expense of future stability and wealth, and simultaneously claiming that the guy on the bike's greatest concern is the future buying power of his children and grandchildren?

At the risk of sounding arrogant, it most certainly would "solve the ultimate economic problem" if everyone were like me. From a purely monetary standpoint (eg: assuming that money is functionally equivalent to productivity, which is of course not entirely true, but is close enough for this argument), I produce far more than I consume, so the result is a net surplus.

Surplus is the opposite of scarcity.


And that's not a bad thing. If everybody were just completely satisfied with the status quo all the time, we'd still be living in caves.

But there's a difference between aspiring to have more and then working toward that end, and simply being greedy and impatient.

At an individual level, the former results in hard work and productivity, while the latter results in credit card debt and mortgage foreclosure.

At a national level, the former results in economic growth and an increase in GDP, while the latter results in both internal national debt and external trade deficit.


Yes, with the assumption that I am an American (or Canadian, or Brit, etc) whereas the guy on the bike is German (or Chinese, etc).

So, the EU wants to eliminate gasoline-powered cars from operating inside major city centers 40 years from now.

This sounds unreasonable to you?

Again, you are adjusting your desires to fit the current scarcity of a given resource. It's a surplus derived from self-imposed limitations on your desires. And that does not solve the economic problem -- because there's no ultimate solution to scarcity, only trade-offs. You've made the decision that not carrying debt and making do with what you have gives you greater satisfaction than mortgaging your future wealth for passing pleasures right now -- but the fact that you have chosen one form of self-limitation (in the present, for future gain) instead of another form of self-limitation (in the future, for present pleasure) does not mean you still aren't operating within a market of scarce resources.

Sure, but it's not as black and white as you make it sound. If my ambition is to own a house, the ideal would be to save and purchase in cash, delaying the gratification for a more advantageous financial situation. The most risky choice would be to put no money down, which would put me in the house immediately but cost me a lot more in the long run. But there's a whole host of options in between those two extremes that are just trade-offs. The traditional 20% down is a somewhat arbitrary number -- it works, but would anyone be surprised if 19% or 21% was proven statistically to be a more important tipping point between immediate gratification and financial security?

I'll nitpick a bit with you about GDP -- it can be increased (temporarily) by mortgaging the future, just as we've seen successive market bubbles boost the American GDP through over-leveraged market sectors only to finally burst, revealing that no real wealth was actually being created (or, at least, not nearly as much as the GDP indicated). But if you simply referenced GDP as a shorthand for the overall national economic health (which I'm assuming you did, since you paired it conceptually with "economic growth"), then sure, I'd agree with your sentiment.

I see what you mean here. And yes, you are correct, at least according to the bits of information I looked up -- the German household's debt to income ratio has stayed relatively level over the last 60 or 70 years, whereas the UK and the USA have risen sharply.

no, because they want you to use their public transportation system and high speed rail and make you dependent on the state.

We should have been working harder to rid ourselves of the internal combustion engine a long time ago.

Who doesn't look sexy on an electric scooter??? :makeout:

and if the govt didnt monopolize the railway system, we'd probably have high speed rails by now.

That's one possible interpretation.

Another would be to posit that by the year 2050 (when the proposed legislation would go into effect) it's entirely practical to expect that cars which operate on a form of energy other than petroleum will be the dominant form of transportation anyway, and these vehicles would not be prohibited, thus making that portion of the law effectively meaningless.

Just look at what's happened over the past decade. Putting aside the GM EV1, which was a colossal failure for many reasons, we've gone from 100% dependency on gasoline / diesel to having both pure EVs (Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i MiEV, Renault Fluence, etc) as well as extended-range plugin hybrids (Chevy Volt, Prius w/ conversion, etc) which are starting to become genuinely practical primary cars, and at a cost premium which declines towards parity over time.

I want a Z06.

I'm tired of mingling with the poor people. I need a helicopter.

A countrywide MagLev system would be nice, but how much would a ticket cost. I'm sure it would never come close to being profitable because the US is too big, making construction cost too prohibitive.

By your definition, all resources are scare, as no resource is infinite in supply.

This is technically correct. However, as with many theoretical observations, it is no more applicable to the real world than is the observation that the earth's orbit will ultimately decay until it falls into the sun. Yes, it's true that in this sense, even time is a scare resource. However the supply of time available until the end of the world is sufficiently large as to not impact our day-to-day decisions. It is, from a practical standpoint, not a scarce resource.


Consider, for instance, the stereotypical flashy billionaire tycoon who owns two private jets, a large yacht, eight Lamborghinis, and four homes, one of which is on an island which he also owns.

Why, we might ask ourselves, does he not own a third jet, a fifth home or a ninth Lamborghini? What trade-off is he making? It is certainly within his means to purchase any of these things without incurring debt or significantly depleting his assets to the point where his future security or happiness would be in jeopardy. And there is no scarcity of Lamborghinis, summer homes or Learjets relative to his means to acquire them.


It is the same for me. I could easily afford to purchase a 70" LCD TV or a late 90's / early '00s vintage Porsche 911 Carrera or an apartment-full of stylish, name brand furniture. Buying these things would not significantly impact me financially; quite to the contrary, I wouldn't even need to verify the balance in my checking account beforehand.

So why don't I? I guess it's just not in my character. I don't need these things, and owning them would not significantly increase my happiness.


You can apply whatever terms you want to describe this "self-limiting" behavior, and I won't be able to intelligently rebut your argument. I damn near failed macroeconomics in college, and that was over 15 years ago. It's not really a subject which interests me.


I guess it's just something in my character which separates me from the stereotypical American consumer. Some people derive pleasure from the act of purchasing things which is separate from any pleasure they might gain from actually possessing them. My maternal grandmother was very much this way- right up until the day she died, her many closets was full of clothes which she had never worn. She enjoyed the act of going to the store, selecting clothes, and purchasing them. That was an end unto itself for her. I think my sister has an element of that in her as well- there are way too many damned mail order catalogs in her bathroom. She doesn't use debt to finance her spending, but people like her keep Hammacher Schlemmer in business.


Other people seem to feel a need to possess things. For some, it's competitive. The old story about keeping up with the Joneses, where you can't let your neighbor upstage you by owning a newer car or a fancier robotic lawnmower- what kind of image would that project?

For others it seems to be purely internal. They feel that if they own this One Specific Thing then they will be happy, and perhaps they are, right up until Specific Thing 2.0 is announced, followed by another company taking preorders for Other Specific Thing, both of which they must now also own, etc. A good friend of mine from high school drive himself straight into foreclosure doing this. (I must admit, however, that he owns an impressive collection of obsolete phones, laptops, DVD/HDDVD/Bluray players, GPS navigators, videogame consoles, tablets, wristwatches, etc.)


Whatever the reason, I just don't seem to suffer from these phenomenon. I genuinely do not care about owning an iPad2 or a 2012 Hondasaki Stradabusa, or a device which ensures that my toast is cooked to within an evenness of of 0.5% across all surfaces including the edge in under six seconds.

It just does not matter.


So why, precisely, do 84% of African-American households and 54% of white households in the US feel the need to spend more money than they make (source), with the amount of credit card debt per family tending to sharply increase with income (source)?

It's not because of scarcity of resources.

Meh, we're at an impasse. You say it's not because of scarcity; I say scarcity is always the underlying primary economic problem that forces people to either deny themselves their every desire, or to mortgage their future (to the point of bankruptcy) in order to satisfy their desires. Or some combination or trade-off in between those two extremes.

I would jump off a bridge if Obama asked me to.

This might explain a little more clearly how I'm using the term "scarcity."

Thomas Sowell:

I think that I really do understand the tenet of what you're saying. I even agree with the underlying logic in some, but not all cases.

I'm not 100% certain, however, that I've adequately conveyed the actual simplicity of what I'm trying to get across as it relates to my own life in particular. So I'll try to do that here.


If I'm reading you correctly, then your point is that I make a conscious decision not to buy certain things which I might want, as a result of having weighed the opportunity cost of spending that money now vs. saving the money for future use.

Now, I'm not going to deny that I do tend to be conscious of the future, but there's more to it than that. Where we differ is that your argument presupposes that we are all hard-wired to want / spend as much as possible, being constrained only (and not even always) by the possible negative consequences of such consumption to our own future. This is the only possible interpretation of the idea that scarcity of something is the "underlying primary economic problem" behind all purchase / not-purchase decisions. The article that you posted to even spelled it out: "people want more than there is"


But it just isn't true. At least, not universally.


I understand, and am sympathetic to, the notion of scarcity. Right now, for instance, there is a tremendous scarcity of Panasonic 18650 LiMn batteries, and I very much want about a dozen of them. But this sort of thing does not control my life. I will wait until the factory in Sendai, Japan resumes production, or until Samsung gets off their ass and starts shipping them from the plant in Korea, or whatever. It's not driving me crazy, or making me feel inadequate about my life. It is simply the way that things are right now. I don't mean to sound like some hippie Zen jerkoff, it's just how I work.

Yeah, the idea of owning a 911 sounds cool, but the reality is that it'd just be another car to have lying around, and I'd get bored with it quickly. A larger, newer TV isn't actually going to make all of my Divx-encoded video look any better than the 11 year old rear-projection set I have now. And what the hell am I going to do with a bunch of designer furniture? I can only sit on one thing at a time, and my ancient sofa (which I actually stole out of a college dormitory many years ago) is about the most comfortable sitting implement that I can possibly imagine owning, despite the fact that it has a few tears and is, quite literally, the color of diarrhea.


And that's really the point I'm trying to express. It's not so much that I find myself having to consciously choose not to buy a bunch of crap I don't need- I do buy needlessly expensive beer rather frequently, in fact. It's quite simply that I don't actually want all that crap that most people seem to buy in the first place. I am, for lack of a better word, content with what I have, neither wanting much else nor having to feel that I am deprived of more.


Why is this? And why does it apparently make me totally unique amongst Americans? I have utterly no idea. I'm sure that there's some deep explanation which posits that it must be the result of upbringing or social conditioning, although my catalog-addicted sister was raised in the same house I was.

Any why is it that, as you pointed out earlier, members of some highly wealthy and industrialized nations (eg: Germany) have not, over the course of entire post-WWII period, exhibited a tendency towards greater excess consumption (as measured by household debt to income ratio) while members of other, similarly wealthy and industrialized nations (eg: the US and UK) have?

I expect that it must be social conditioning to some extent. In some cultures, there is a deep-rooted sense of honesty and personal responsibility- witness the difference in looting rates and other property crimes in post-Katrina N'Orleans vs. post-Tōhoku Japan. I posit that some people simply don't suffer from perpetual want, and thus, the notion of economic scarcity is simply not relevant to them.

America Fuck Yeah!

That's like requiring me to get digital cable. Remember the good ol days when you could plug a TV in the wall, get a few channels and flip through them instantly? Now I need a tracking device just to watch Conan late at night in my bedroom and I have to wait 15 minutes everytime I want to flip a channel. I really REALLY hate the digital TV law.

Why not let old technology phase out on its own...It worked for the Blue Ray, it worked for the DVD, it worked for the VHS, it worked for the Beta Max, etc.

The Gov't shouldn't force innovation, our forgien counterparts researched and developed innovations that their customers were looking for. GM has a long standing history of ignoring them, so they ask our gov't for the research money to keep up.

The trend is already starting to go towards alternative methods, so why force it, why ban the old stuff? I realize it's 40 years out, but there are people that can't afford a brand new alternative fueled car, why force them out of the city, why force them onto the gov't monopolized rail? What is the local gas station owner going to do? What is going to happen to all the old cars? Why does something have to be banned, and who has the right to say it should be?