While we’re at it, though I do oppose inheritance taxes in general, at a minimum I think inheritance taxes should only apply to fungible assets.
Strange for someone who claims they don’t believe in property rights.
Why does one need to be productive in the first place? I’d rather have ten unproductive people who aren’t up in my business than one "productive’ busy body who is running to the government every time I blow my nose.
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@LouMan, I am squishing my replies to your 3 posts into one post, so when you respond, please make one reply for each post. They are separated by horizontal rule tags (<hr/>). I’m doing this because of the reply limit that applies to new posters (me).
I don’t disagree. There are many things that I think are in need of immediate deregulation. Take non-disclosure agreements, mandatory arbitration clauses, and non-compete agreements. The government needs to get out of the business of enforcing those. If someone signs a non-compete agreement with you saying that they will not go to work for a rival company and then they do go to work for a conpetitor, then it’s your fault that you trusted them. You shouldn’t get any support from the government in “fixing” the situation.
Okay, so you’re probably talking about the Clean Water Act or whatever it was about waters.
If these are all of the facts of the case, then this rule sounds stupid and I would not support it.
That’s why I support it. I’ve found myself developing an interest in Scandinavian-style social democracy recently, but at this point, I don’t think I support moving towards it as a goal.
Whenever I hear this opinion, I’m reminded of the exact opposite opinion: the one’s who cannot provide for themselves should not receive welfare while those who can, but are temporarily unemployed, should. Just an interesting thing of note.
If you are saying that like any program there is abuse, then I don’t know why you’d need to say that since that’s a point almost everyone believes. If you are saying that federal programs are have a special property that makes them easier to be abused, then that’s wrong.
I’m not utilitarian, so the “costs” don’t usually interest me. The whole efficiency angle is repulsive, anyway. It’s one reason I prefer Objectivists to the free market economists. Ayn Rand said something to the effect of the economists being just accountants or something. I think that’s a good way to view them. This isn’t to say they don’t study the economy, they just need to “stay in their lane” (an allusion to this) and shut up on any other issue.
This doesn’t address what I wrote (granted, I didn’t write much). I’m questioning the validity of the concept. Listing off those things when I don’t think they mean what you think they mean doesn’t do anything to support your belief that “government dependence” is actually a thing.
What about the individuals and companies dependent on the Copyright Office or the USPTO? That must not count because people like it.
Meh. Inheritance is a good thing because it derives from caring about one’s offspring (or adopted children), but if meritocracy is truly of value, then inheritance taxes of some kind ought to exist. Like you, I think they should be restricted to fungible things.
The EPA has released its Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule critics say would allow the agency to regulate waterways previously not under federal jurisdiction, including puddles, ditches and isolated wetlands.
The rule was referred to as an EPA “power grab” because it extends the agency’s powers to new heights.
No matter how you spin it, the EPA’s WOTUS rule does expand the agency’s authority, and creates new avenues for environmental groups to sue projects they want to stop from moving forward.
“Despite their assurances, it appears that EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have failed to keep their promises to Congress and the American people,” echoed Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe. “In fact, instead of fixing the overreach in the proposed rule, remarkably, EPA has made it even broader.”
Perhaps it should interest you.
KEY FINDINGS
Economic growth in the United States has, on average, been slowed by 0.8 percent per year since 1980 owing to the cumulative effects of regulation:
- If regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012.
- This means that in 2012, the economy was $4 trillion smaller than it would have been in the absence of regulatory growth since 1980.
- This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant amount of money for most American workers.
60 Percent of Households Now Receive More in Transfer Income Than they Pay in Taxes
Government transfers are described on p. 24 of CBO’s report a “cash payments from Social Security, unemployment insurance, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (and its predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children), veterans’ programs, workers’ compensation, and state and local government assistance programs. They also include the value of in-kind benefits, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program vouchers (formerly known as food stamps), school lunches and breakfasts, housing assistance, energy assistance, and benefits provided by Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. (The value of health insurance is measured on the basis of the Census Bureau’s estimates of the average cost to the government of providing such insurance.)” Total transfers do include some state funds, but this is less than 10 percent of the total.
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Where did I put any spin on it? Did I indicate that I supported the controversial measure? I said that I thought you were talking about the Clean Water Act. I thought that that was what the hubbub was about. I was mixed up on a few things.
This is just more question begging.
Why don’t people say that the patent system is an example of “government dependence”?
Interestingly, although not surprisingly, most of the government’s “high-error programs” are social welfare programs, which are fairly well-known for having low administrative costs in part because of poor oversight. The highest dollar amount of improper payments comes from Medicaid. The program registered $36.2 billion in improper payments, or almost 10 percent of the $370 billion paid out to beneficiaries in 2018 in total. Second-highest is Medicare’s fee-for-service program, with improper payments totaling $31.8 billion (or 8.12 percent of that program’s total payments). If you add the $15.6 billion in improper payments under Medicare Advantage (Part C)to the other two health care programs, you get 60 percent of all improper payments on the list.
Traditionally, the highest rate of improper payments comes from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program. Not this time. In 2018, the distinction goes to the Veterans Health Administration VA Community Care Program, with an error rate of 105 percent! Basically, all of this program’s $8 billion in payments were improper. The tremendous level in this program’s improper payments (and the program wasn’t on the list of high-error programs before) isn’t the result of a sudden increase in payments going to the wrong parties, or paid in the wrong amounts, or paid twice or more for the same service. Instead, it seems to be the result of changes made in what the VHA is counting as improper payments — for instance, all the “transactions that did not follow acquisition regulations.” Nevertheless, such a stupendous error rate should make us wonder what’s going on.
The EITC is hardly off the hook, though. The $18.4 billion in improper EITC payments represents a substantial portion — 25.06 percent — of the EITC’s total 2018 spending of $73.6 billion. That’s right. A full quarter of the program’s payments were improper.
If in fact government programs are not prone to abuse why do we have 137 billion in over payments in social programs. I suspect it’s probably higher but these are the over payment s they know of.
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Patents are not free.
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/how-much-does-a-patent-cost
As it says you could try going it alone however if you mess up you may find someone else using your idea.
I’ve never heard that saying.
America, the land of multiple opportunities to steal other peoples’ hard work and money.
I didn’t say you supported it. This was clearly a regulatory over reach by the PA.
This is another example of PA’s over reach:
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/idaho-couple-challenges-power-epa-say-they-cant-build-home-their-own-land
I personally had a run in with the EPA. I was managing a fiber installation in Washington state several years ago. The conduit had been installed a few years prior to our fiber install. A 4000 ft. section of the installation went 20’ under a wetland area. The conduits were tested to ensure there was no leakage and they were dry. The EPA jumped in ad demanded a 250K assessment be done as it crossed a wetland. The reality is it was 20’ below the wetland in existing conduit. The access points are 0ver 1000 ft from the wetland with no seepage. It was shown to the EPA representative to no avail.
The things you write read like case studies. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way.
I didn’t say they are not prone to abuse. I think that there is no special property of federal programs that enables a disproportionately higher amount of abuse.
If you click on the blue it’s a link which will take you to supporting documentation.
That is true enough. Others incur costs from them in the form of euphemistically-labeled “royalties” and “licensing fees”.
My snark aside, I know what you are talking about (i.e., lawyer fees, fees paid to the USPTO, etc.).
“Your idea” begs the question when the legitimacy of a patent or patents in general is being disputed.
There is a faction of free market economists (and other types of economists) that say patents are interventionist grants of monopoly that distort the market. With the exception of the monopoly part, I find this particular suggestion easy to dismiss because its premised on accepting some arbitrary state of affairs as a baseline that lacks “distortions” and from which all deviations are labeled “interventions”. It isn’t any sort of purely technical, value-free notion that everyone finds uncontroversial. Winning debates is simple when all you need to do is say someone’s deviations from your own ideal are “distortions” of it. It’s frustrating to me to see so many others cede this ground without a fight and then argue the benefits of some “distortions” outweigh the drawbacks instead of rejecting the premise entirely.
Most hard-core libertarians are not sympathetic to intellectual property and are not averse to calling patents “welfare” or “subsidies”. The arguments between them and the pro-IP libertarians are bizarre. The opponents of IP often push the idea that property rights resolve conflict over physical things (as if they’ve never conceived of theft). They then go on to say that since IP is not physical, there is no conflict to resolve. The pro-IP side just repeats the same question begging arguments about theft that all libertarians do.
I once read an exposition by one libertarian about the similarities between a communist regime and the system of copyright royalties in place for recording companies and musicians. He was writing this as a way of explaining why opposing copyright makes sense. It was absolutely beyond my comprehension.
Average cost for attorney fees for a patent:
Imagine the cost if you used a big boy lawyer firm.
Preparation and filing of an original application of minimal complexity by a small patent firm (10 page specification, 10 claims) = $8,548.00.
Relatively complex biotechnology/chemical cases = $15,398.00
Relatively complex mechanical cases = $11,482.00
Relatively complex electrical/computer cases = $13,684
Seems reasonable to me.
You’re not going to comment on the more interesting things I’ve said?