poli-sci@ucbvax.ARPA (06/27/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Poli-Sci Digest Thu 27 Jun 85 Volume 5 Number 28
Contents: BR
GC
War
Seatbelts
Space
Taxes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Book review, "Breaking with Moscow", by Arcady Shevchenko
[nb: I may not have the author's name quite right; if so, apologies]
It may be a bit brazen to review a book of which one has read only
16 pages, but here goes. Shevchenko was a high-ranking Soviet official
who defected to the West fairly recently. This is his story.
Quite frankly, I had gotten it expecting to puzzle, mull, and
bull my way through dense and opaque material in order to gain
some insight into the mentality of high-ranking Soviet officials.
I was surprised. It is smooth and clear reading, not exactly
gripping but perfectly engaging for a non-fiction work. 16 pages
into it I figured I had already gotten my money's worth (hardcover
at that) and the rest was pure profit. Shevchenko alternates
between narrative (how the contact, espionage, and ultimate break
was done) and reminiscence (why he did it) in an unobvious way.
It seems important to him to make the reader understand his
motives, and does this well enough that one feels one knows him.
The single great luxury America affords him (he was rich in Russia)
appears to be the opportunity to be honest, to say what one
truly thinks and feels.
I hereby cut this review short so I can go home and finish reading
"Breaking with Moscow."
--JoSH
------------------------------
Date: 20 Jun 85 12:34 EDT (Thu)
From: _Bob <Carter@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Gun Control?
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS at USC-ECL.ARPA>
An example
of a simple problem: Gun control--should people be allowed to possess
instruments capable of destroying the entire society? If not, how can
that be reconciled (or enforced) within a free society?
Hmmn. Maybe it is time for some more gun control flamerei. It's
been quite a long time since POLI-SCI last turned its attention to
that subject, and things have gotten pretty slow lately.
A beginning topic: Congress last year passed legislation instructing
BATF to redefine the "curios and relics" exception to the foreign
trade sections of the Gun Control Act of l968 to allow importation
(from Free World countries) of most not-full-auto-capable World War
II military small arms. Seventy-five-dollar Mannlicher-Carcano's are
back. That should raise some pro-gun-controller's temperatures.
Another, for the anti-control faction: C. Ray Arnett (former deputy
undersecretary of Interior) handily defeated Neal Knox (for director
of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action) for a five-year term as
executive director of the National Rifle Association. For the
non-cognoscenti: Arnett favors Stalinist control over the
organization and compromise in Congress (he supports the "Cop-Killer
Bullet" bill, for instance). Knox is for democratic governance of
the NRA and against supping with the devil however long the spoon.
Takers?
_B
[Please no takers! I'm going on vacation in July and if the gun
issue gets loose again I'll find 17 meg of flames awaiting me
upon my return. Seriously, I will be away most of the month
but I'll try to get out a couple of issues in there somewhere.
If you want quick responses to your responses, cc: the interested
party in your message.
--JoSH]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 85 8:11:31 PDT
From: Pandya.pa@Xerox.ARPA
Subject: Re: Public reaction [JoSH's footnote]
Granted, I am not particularly well-informed about such matters, but
your statement about the superpowers gradually moving from
people-destroying weapons to weapon-destroying weapons is something I
haven't heard before (or at least never inferred from what I heard.) It
is a heartening sign. Do you have any detailed information (or
references thereto) about this process and related issues of how
military strategists view the current standoff, and what approach they
are taking to problems of security, defence, &c. in light of it?
Thanks.
--ravi
[Luttwak, one of whose books I reviewed here earlier, seems well-informed
and readable. Get anyone you like however, any competent defense
commentator will have the same underlying structure of facts
regardless of the interpretation. I only caution you to read
books, not magazines; and if you must buy periodicals, avoid the
ones with pictures on the covers (Slime, Newspeak, etc).
--JoSH]
------------------------------
From: ihnp4!mtfmt!ccw@Berkeley
Date: 20 Jun 85 12:58:11 CDT (Thu)
Seatbelt laws.
Seatbelts are a definite aid to AVOIDING accidents and
controlling an automobile. A driver locked into the seat can
regain control of a sliding or spinning car, whereas a drive who has
been slid over on a bench seat into the passenger side is no longer a driver.
This is an extreme example, but look up any good book on driving,
high performance or not.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 85 19:30:37 edt
From: Paul V. Torek <dual!lll-crg!flink@maryland.ARPA>
Re: Seatbelts
It is not true that seatbelts help the driver drive only during/
after an accident. Seatbelts help the driver cope with any
sudden change of velocity (e.g., turning, braking). Whether the
helpful effects of seatbelts on driving ability are a sufficient
reason for seatbelt laws depends on their magnitude. My own
opinion is that seatbelt laws are justifiable on the ground of
protecting drivers from their own stupidity (libertarians, dry
up).
"A life is a terrible thing to waste."
With apologies to the United Negro College Fund,
--Paul V. Torek, aspiring iconoclast
[I may dry up, but I won't blow away. Why then do typical state laws
*prohibit* four-point harnesses, the kind used in auto racing?
And why hasn't someone tried to outlaw car radios, which I claim
are a much greater cause of accidents than unbelted drivers?
And why don't some of the government studies try to *measure*
the risks of each kind in quantitative terms, rather than just
show that one exists to prove a political point? You have a
risk of being hit by a meteor, why not require armor plate on
top of all cars? How many people drown each year from cars
going off bridges? Why not require emergency scuba gear for the
driver and front-seat passenger? It could *demonstrably* save
100 or so lives per year!
--JoSH]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 85 15:57:22 CDT
From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI <wmartin@Almsa-2>
Subject: Space Living
Re "the old bod starts to degenerate after [6 months in space]":
My body is degenerating right here and now. I'd prefer it to degenerate
in zero-G, where I could ignore a lot of the nonsense I now have to
put up with due to gravity. The old Heinlein story about "Waldo" (the
origin of the term "waldo" for mechanical manipulators operating by
mimicking body movements, by the way) depicts a person with a degenerative
muscular condition who can live and work productively in zero-G but
would be bedridden if subject to Earth-normal gravity. Ever since I
read that [decades ago] I wanted to live in that environment. Since I have
contempt for the body, and consider it nothing but a life-support system
for the mind, which is the *real* person, I have no particular interest
in maintaining enough musculature to return to planetary surface -- I'm
willing to make any such move into space permanent.
Will Martin
PS -- By the way, I am not suffering any such disease, nor am I weak;
I'm large and rather strong -- I just don't regard physical strength and
condition as very important. After all, my mind can design a machine
that can outdo any single task my body can perform. I accept that the human
body is a wonderfully *versatile* machine; I doubt that I could build or
design a more flexible device that could do the many things biological
organisms do. Many robots would be needed to replace one human, in terms
of capabilities, after all. Now, if I can do genetic engineering, there
are some *interesting* possibilities..... WM
------------------------------
From: ihnp4!utzoo!henry@Berkeley
Date: 21 Jun 85 23:06:49 CDT (Fri)
Subject: costs of space colonization
> 1) The problem with the American west analogy is that the amount
> of capital required, in constant dollars, was several orders of
> magnitude less (probably less than $10-20K in 1984 dollars)...
Don't underestimate the magnitude of investment the early settlers made.
Freeman Dyson has documented the magnitude of some of these investments.
The Plymouth Rock colony needed the entire life savings of all its members,
plus enough borrowed money that it was deep in debt for twenty years after.
The Mormons merely spent their life savings to move to Utah. Note that
these were both religious colonies, where saving money to facilitate the
proposed emigration was a matter of strong personal belief.
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
------------------------------
Date: 24 Jun 1985 5:21-PDT
From: knapp%usc-cseb%usc-cse.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: Gravity and space colonies
Is this list poli-sci or sci-fi? In any case the following points
come to mind.
1. Gravity and health: I would hate to be the guinea pig who
finds out what long-term zero-g life does to the human physique.
I think the most recent issue of IEEE Spectrum is the one with
an article that discusses electrical effects on bone structure;
evidently bone is piezoelectric, and bone stresses lead to bone
growth. I would not be at all surprised to find that lack of
stress could not be made up for by any dietary supplement.
2. In any case I think that the numbers and some clever engineering
could substantially reduce the cost of `gravity'. Suppose we consider
a minimal centrifuge to live in: two balloons and a length of wire
rope, rotating in a dumbell configuration. The cost of the rope and
the facts of rotation and two-balloons-instead-of-one are what
separates such a system from a `gravityless' system. As far as the
issue of rigidity goes, consider a sausage casing thirty feet in
diameter, supporting an air pressure of 5 psi and a `weight' of
1200 pounds per linear foot. Thus if the sausage casing was 60 feet
long, the total people+capital plant weight would be 72000 Lb, which
I do not think unreasonably optimistic. To compare, the Uniform Building
Code specifies a rating of 40 lb/ft^2 for residential floors.
Now the circumferential tensile stress on the skin of the casing
due to air pressure is around (360 in)(5 lb/in^2) or 1800 Lb/in.
The loading due to weight would be 120 lb/in. Depending on the
nature of the connection between the rope and the balloon, a
certain amount of out-of-circularity could be expected, but how
much? I don't see stiffness as a problem. As to the question of
getting into and out of the thing, the question would be one
of matching spins at the center, and having a symmetric dumbwaiter
arrangement. But the cost of adding or subtracting spin would almost
certainly be small by comparison to the cost of moving around in the
first place.
I think that the real barriers to space colonization will be in the
realms of radiation and economics. How does one make money up there?
And not get fried in the process? Going up for a week is one thing, but
for a lifetime is another. A nice place to visit, but take along your
leadenwear... and some of the locals look d__d strange.
David
[I'd love to be said guinea pig--in fact, I hereby volunteer.
Electrical biases can be created or counteracted artificially,
too; who knows what's necessary? Let's get up there and find out!
Two bags on a string are indeed cheaper than an O'Neill spacecan,
but you still need rigid internal partitions--it's hard to stand
on a balloon even if it will support you. You'd have to wear
snowshoes. EVA remains a pain. And you can't build incrementally.
I think I remember that there is no economy of scale in building
inflated spheres big-- the broader the curvature at the wall,
the heavier the material has to be to withstand the same pressure.
That was years ago, though: I'll redo the math and let you know.
--JoSH]
------------------------------
Date: Sat Jun 22 16:55:32 1985
From: mcb@lll-tis-b (Michael C. Berch)
Subject: Yet another tax plan: the HEAD TAX
OK, here's MY tax plan. Let's call it the HEAD TAX, since it is
basically a per capita tax with a couple of modifications to make
it actually feasible (rather than an abstract ideal). Criticism
and flamage are expected and encouraged.
Proposition-- Government services come in two flavors:
those that cost the government an identical amount regardless of the
income or wealth of the recipient of the service, and those that vary
proportionally in cost depending on the income or wealth of the
recipient. A good example of the former is government support of
health care R&D; a good example of the latter is government
efforts to protect the investments of its citizens in foreign
countries. A line-item examination of government expenditures
shows that the vast majority of federal spending falls in the
first category. (Remember, the principle of taxation is that each
taxpayer is, in theory, paying for the benefits conferred upon himself;
thus items like social programs fall into the first (per capita)
category. If taxpayer X pays $1 to support the education of disadvantaged
citizen Y, the benefit CONFERRED UPON X is identical regardless of the
wealth or income of X. We're talking economics here, NOT 20th century
liberal social engineering.)
OK. Each of the government's expenditures are then classified as to whether
they are per capita or proportional. It isn't tremendously important to the
tax process how this decision is made--presumably it would be made according
to the normal rules of political decisionmaking. Next, the government
decides how much revenue it needs for the per capita class of expenditures.
This decision is made in the normal budgetary manner. The procedure is
repeated for the proportional class of expenditures.
All right, it's tax time. Take the lump sum for per capita class
expenditures and divide it by the number of taxpayers. (I.e., those
persons with an income over a threshold level.) This gives you
the PER CAPITA QUOTIENT amount that each taxpayer owes. Problems? Well, first
of all, a non-trivial number of taxpayers are going to have incomes less
than or near to the per capita quotient itself! Never fear; my intent is
not confiscatory taxation of the poor. So what we need is a social welfare
cash payment system that would (in determining welfare payments) take into
account the huge tax bills of lower income classes, and fund them. (What
do you think the Zero Bracket Amount is, anyway? Why not combine the
welfare/income redistribution parts of the tax code into the welfare
programs where they belong?). The money necessary to fund this would be
added into the per capita portion of the budget, just like every other
social program. We are simply de-coupling the welfare part of the tax
program and accounting for it elsewhere.
The proportional class of expenditures would be funded by a simple flat
tax on income, with the percentage determined by revenue requirements.
This part is relatively simple, and we don't need any exemptions,
deductions, and adjustments. Just tote up your income, apply the
percentage, and that's the proportional part of your tax bill.
The per capita quotient amount would be published and each taxpayer
would receive a bill for it, with a space for calculation of the
proportional amount. The existing withholding and estimated tax plans
could be used or modified as desired. Additionally, the tax bills of
welfare recipients could be set off against the (increased) welfare
payments in order to simplify accounting and cash-flow problems.
In a future article, I'll post some case studies based on U.S. federal
expenditures and income for the present tax year. This will show
what variously situated citizens and families would pay under the
HEAD TAX plan.
Michael C. Berch
mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA
{akgua,allegra,cbosgd,decwrl,dual,ihnp4,sun}!idi!styx!mcb
------------------------------
Date: Fri 21 Jun 85 17:28:08-PDT
From: LUBAR%hplabs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Subject: tax proposal
I second JoSH's criticisms of Mr. Leff's tax proposal. I think the goal
of mixing in social engineering with tax law will inevitably lead to
complicated tax laws as more and more social goals are championed and
existing ones do not seem to result from tax incentives. I don't think
the government ought to be in the business of social engineering in the
first place, and the IRS surely shouldn't. In fact, I'm frightened of
the power your proposal places in the hands of the IRS. That organization
was formed as an emergency act and is effectively above the law --- much
of what we normally consider "due process", including basic tenets such
as "innocent until proven guilty", do not constrain the IRS. As much as
I think the government should be lessened, I feel even more strongly
about the IRS. I'd like to see it abolished, or reduced to a couple of
low-paid clerks who shuffle papers and punch adding machines. I would
especially like to see lawyers excluded from the whole business; if the
tax law can't be completely defined in a way that a 12-year-old can
understand (and I mean completely, with nothing open to interpretation),
I think we're just going to end up where we are now in a few years. The
thought of the IRS legislating... well, I don't want to spoil my dinner.
You also commented a couple of times that your proposals would be
popular because they reduce personal tax for most people. I doubt
this, based on the reaction I see to the flat tax rate. First of all,
the people who stand to lose by your proposal are the rich, and they
are the most powerful, influential, and aware of the implications of
any proposed change to tax law. I suspect that laws aimed at business
would be strongly lobbied against, and lobbies have a whole lot more
power than a random group of individuals. But even among the poor and
middle class who presumably gain, I'd expect to see dissent. Many
people do not evaluate a situation in total. They would see, for
example, that you have eliminated their precious deduction for mortgage
interest. Lots of homeowners out there. I'll make an analogy: most
people complain about the government always being in their pockets, yet
those same people go to public school, get government loans, ride
public transit, expect social security, etc. Most lower- and middle-class
people complain about tax loopholes, but I doubt they would react
favorably to you taking away *their* loopholes. I think any change in
the tax law (short of eliminating taxes completely) will require a
carefully thought out campaign to educate people, to make them see the
advantages of the change.
Personally, I would welcome a flat tax, such as the 3-tiered system you
suggested (without all the social engineering). And I would prefer to
see it stay flat, with no loopholes, including home mortgages. I think
the market (or other means) could address the issues these tax laws
intend to address, *in the long run*. But I wonder how such a flat tax
could be implemented without severe disruption in the short term. For
example, what happens to the many people who would suddenly not be able
to afford their mortgage payments without the tax deduction? What would
be the result of the sudden shifting of numerous portfolios as investors
move out of old tax shelters? Does anyone out there have any ideas?
annette
------------------------------
Date: Mon 24 Jun 85 16:23:52-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Let's hear it for sales tax as the only tax! Benefits derived from
the "social overhead" are more directly proportional to consumtion
than they are to anything else.
TCS
[Hip hip Hooray! Hip hip Hooray! Hip hip Hooray! --j]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1985 17:29 PDT
From: DAVIES@SU-SIERRA.ARPA
Subject: Leff's Simplified Tax Package
In response to the tax package proposed by Leff%SMU@CSNET-RELAY:
I agree with Josh: tax simplification is good for its own sake, but no
"simplification" scheme will be "society-neutral". Each will have
economic impacts, not all of which can be predicted beforehand. In
spite of the questionable morality of one group of people taking the
earnings of another group of people for their own purposes, taxes are
apparently, as many have suggested, inevitable. If the government
didn't exist, another mafia would come along to fill the vacuum.
Given that taxes are inevitable, it seems likely to me that either a
sales tax or a flat tax would have the least impact on the way society
would operate in the absence of taxes.
Let's take a look at some of the technical and political problems in
your proposal. Your consumption tax (I find your use of the modifier
"excess" only inflammatory) is founded on the belief that investment
is good and consumption is bad. The free market doesn't hold either
belief: it lets individuals choose what amounts of investment or
consumption are appropriate to their circumstances. Animal species,
human individuals, and human societies have found that savings (nuts
for the winter or IRA accounts) are critical to long-term satisfaction
if not survival. This amounts to a fundamental law of economics,
which unfortunately may occasionally be suspended at governmental
whim. The government may make savings look unnecessary, through the
pyramid scam called Social Security, or it may make them look stupid,
through another scam called inflation. Your proposal to "encourage"
investment is unnecessary; people can think for themselves, if the
government would get out of the way.
One technical flaw: would you make an investment if you couldn't later
sell it? Your scheme to favor first purchasers over later purchasers
of an investment means that such investments will be highly illiquid.
The only way to "take money out" of a stock investment is to sell it
to someone else. If no one else can buy it on terms as good as you
got, they won't offer as high a price.
Let's consider also your organizational inefficiency tax. Since no
one is on the side of organizational inefficiency, this might very
well be politically popular, but I don't see that additional
disincentives for inefficiency are necessary. Should a corporation be
taxed on the "unnecessary" time it spends filling out tax forms?
Should a corporation be taxed on the time it spends trying to find out
what products its American customers want before it begins to
manufacture them? Companies already pay a substantial amount for what
you call overhead. Why aggravate the problem by increasing their
overhead expenses?
Expense accounts are bloated now partly because of existing corporate
taxes. Expenses are paid with a 50-cent dollar -- the government
picks up half the tab. The deal is even better than this, because the
recipient isn't taxed on the benefits. If a company wants to give an
employee a 50-dollar dinner, perhaps to make business travel more
palatable, it costs 50 dollars out of an expense account, but it might
cost over 100 dollars to give an employee that much benefit as salary.
A federal sales tax, instead of income taxes, would be a simple
solution to this problem: the same tax would be paid either way. Or,
with a 10% flat tax, the difference would be much less than now. In
either case, incentives could be distributed almost rationally instead
of under (or in this case, on top of) the table.
Shifting more of the burden of taxation to corporations will make U.S.
companies less competitive in world markets, not more so. We should
eliminate the corporate tax, for this reason alone.
I'd like to respond to one quote in particular:
4) Discouraging things such as mergers, corporate jets, etc. the economy
will be more efficient and it will force corporate management to
concentrate attention and money on real problems.
What makes you think that corporate mergers or jets are wasteful? Was
it wasteful for GM to acquire a major software company, EDS, to help
it into the information age? Is it wasteful for oil companies to
undergo restructuring after a decade of unforeseeable changes? Is it
wasteful to be able to make multi-million-dollar decisions earlier by
having a corporate jet on hand? If it is in some circumstances, then
the market will decide and will come up with a solution (e.g., I've
recently seen ads for an air-taxi service which will make unscheduled,
spur-of-the-moment flights). Let the directors and the stockholders
decide what is and what isn't wasteful, hopefully without the
distortions of taxation.
Finally, I would like to comment on your labor import tax. Where is
it written than Americans want to do more work rather than less?
Hasn't the success of the industrial revolution been measured in the
REDUCTION of the work week rather than the EXTENSION? Shouldn't it be
called slavery when we force Americans to work when foreigners are
more happy to do it for the same amount of money.
Another quote from your message:
1) This provides a uniform system for dealing with foreign imports.
We now have a patchwork quilt of various categories. Most of the
foreign duty can be avoided by bring in parts and doing the final assembly
in the U. S.
This doesn't make sense in my book. Do you mean we should convince
the Japanese to do the interesting work of design in Japan, and hire
Americans to do the boring job of assembly? Should we turn the U.S.
into the world's source of assembly line labor?
Why do you -- and many other people -- believe that hiring aliens is
harmful to U.S. interests? U.S. "Labor" interests would have you
believe that this is the case, since this lowers wages for competing
U.S. workers. But where does the money come from to pay higher wages
to U.S. workers, when we restrain the import of labor. It doesn't
come from foreign workers, since they can buy goods made abroad with
cheaper labor. Why, of course it comes from U.S. workers! Most
likely it comes from a different set of workers than the ones who are
pleading for the regulations, but it still comes out of the collective
U.S. pocket. There is no net gain, only a redistribution to those who
squawk the loudest.
If unemployment is a problem in this country now, it is not because
the aliens are after our jobs. In some cases, it is because many
Americans have come to expect a wage larger than their knowledge and
abilities will support -- in the INTERNATIONAL marketplace. In other
cases, it is because the government prevents people -- through the
minimum wage law -- from working for an economic wage. In other cases
(e.g., the steel industry), it is because neither the workers nor the
steel companies foresaw the need to prepare for another line of work.
Labor protectionism won't solve the problem -- it will only extend it.
The market for goods and services can no longer be confined to the
United States. Whether we like it or not, we are all competing in an
international economic environment. The sooner we recognize that
fact, the better for all of us. The longer we take to understand it,
the better for our competitors who understand it already.
The goals for your tax plan are to encourage investment, discourage
inefficiency, and encourage a higher standard of life for U.S.
workers. The free market -- without interference from taxes intended
to mold society -- can achieve these goals much more efficiently.
Let it!
-- Byron
------------------------------
End of POLI-SCI Digest
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