Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Corporate Taxes

7 Comments

I’ve been saying this for years as well:

corporations don’t pay taxes — they collect them. Any taxes are actually paid by customers (higher prices), employees (lower wages), shareholders (smaller returns), etc. The ideal corporate tax rate is therefore zero, but politically that would never fly. Instead we have a tangled mess of corporate tax law, which benefits large corporations with their armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Small corporations which can’t afford all that are put at a competitive disadvantage, not to mention sole proprietorships which pay through the nose on everything.

But since we can’t get an ideal corporate tax rate, a flat and transparent corporate tax would be the next best thing. Our current system is the worst of all possible worlds: It diverts resources and manpower away from investment and innovation, and stifles entrepreneurs to the benefit of established interests.

On the other hand, our system creates endless possibilities for corruption and graft. So it has that going for it. Which is nice for Washington.

One other point: People are saying that most of the benefits of the tax bill go to the upper percentage. Ignoring the fact that you can’t cut taxes without cutting them on the people who pay the most taxes, cutting corporate taxes in fact effectively reduces indirect tax costs for all the people above, who are in all income brackets (particularly the employees and customers). As I wrote years ago, we can’t cut taxes, we can only cut (or increase) tax rates.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

About That Federal Climate Report

4 Comments

It’s “the usual mix of half truths, exaggerations, omissions and outright lies.”

In other words, what we’ve come to expect from government climate reports.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Oops, Naomi Oreske caught with biased numbers on “Exxon knew.”

Gee, it’s almost as thought they have a political agenda.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Scott Pace

9 Comments

Lee Billings has an interview with him. This is Scott’s (whom I’ve know well for 35 years) standard response when asked about SLS:

Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers. There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn’t hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more “commercial” than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be.

He never explains how a rocket that almost never flies, and costs billions per flight, if and when it does, is a “strategic national asset.” It seems more like a liability to me, in the modern age of commercial spaceflight.

[Update Tuesday morning]

More thoughts from Eric Berger.

[Late-morning update]

NASA’s safety Kobayashi Maru.

This is insanity.

[Update mid-afternoon]

Bob Zimmerman righteously rants. I really find it hard to believe that this thing will ever fly with crew.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Middle East

7 Comments

Things are heating up there, and I don’t think it’s being covered much, particularly given all the coverage of the Texas shooting. First, the Huthis fired a Scud missile at Saudi Arabia from Yemen, which the Saudis shot down, and are blaming on their puppetmasters in Iran, declaring that it may be an act of war.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Prime Minister has resigned. In Riyadh. Because he fears for his life and that Iran is now effectively in control there. And there’s a huge shakeup going on in the House of Saud. The ancient rivalry between the Arabs and the Persians may be reaching a boiling point.

All this as Israel has been engaging in the biggest war games in almost two decades.

But nothing to worry about. No more peaceful, stable region in the world, historically, than the Middle East.

[Update a few minutes later]

And the deputy governor of Asir province was killed in a helicopter crash. Could be a coincidence, but there’s a lot going on over there.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Idiot Conservatives

21 Comments

Eric Berger has the story on how, in attacking SpaceX, they’re ripping off the taxpayer and actively damaging national security.

[Update a while later]

Meanwhile, the target launch date for Falcon Heavy is now late December.

Business, Technology and Society

Libre Office And PDF

8 Comments

So, I’m trying to convert a Libre Office Writer document to PDF. When I do so, it loses the right justification. Microsoft Word does a better job of it, but when I save the document in Libre Office as a *.docx, and reopen in Word, it loses the page templates. Anyone have any ideas?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I played around with the export settings, to preserve document structure, and it’s better now.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, I found the problem. It exports it just fine. The problem arises when I try to edit the PDF with Libre Office. It undoes the justification when it pulls it into Draw, and then it re-exports it that way.

[Update]

Here is my real problem. I wouldn’t have to edit it if I could make it do what I want in the first place. I’m trying to start the first page of the document in a certain style, and it refuses to do it. I can only start that style on the second page, with a blank first page. If I had a good PDF editor, I could just remove the first blank page after the conversion, but apparently I have to lay out money for that. It may ultimately be my only solution if I can’t get Libre Office to do what I want, though.

[Update late morning]

Someone on Twitter helped me figure out how to do it. I’ve finally got the document looking the way I want.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Mike Griffin

6 Comments

The guy who ignored the advice of the Aldridge Commission and industry to utilize commercial providers for the Vision for Space Exploration, instead issuing no-bid cost-plus contracts for Constellation, that were overrunning and slipping more than a year per year when it was canceled, seems like an odd choice to be put in charge of reforming procurement at the Pentagon.

Administrative, Business, Technology and Society

Computer Problems

17 Comments

Did a kernel upgrade in Fedora yesterday. Rebooted today. Wouldn’t boot, had errors. Rather than simple reboot, I decided to shut the whole machine down, then turn it on again. Now it’s dead.

Guess I’ll try swapping the power supply first. If that doesn’t work, sounds like a motherboard or CPU problem.

[Update a few minutes later]

Aaaaaaand, I can’t find any spare supplies. Have to run over to Fry’s to buy one, that probably isn’t the problem…

[Update after returning from Fry’s]

Welp, before I opened the new PS, I tried firing it up again. It booted without complaint. I guess I scared it with the new PS. #HappyHalloween

Seriously, though, it’s probably still a symptom of an incipient problem, probably from overheating.