North Pole Movement

Me thinks you do not really know Europe...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-guide-to-europes-tax-havens-790860.html

 

What's the tax rate in the UK these days?

 

You'll still pay double for every consumer product or service, which cuts your spending power in half. This seems to be the most difficult concept for leftists to grasp, but I'll try one more time. If your earnings are 100K a year, but power, fuel, food, rent, gas, electronics, etc, all cost twice as much then you are really only earning 50K a year. Do you understand?

You can test this yourself. Google around and find the cost of food, shelter, fuel and other basic commodities anywhere in Europe and then compare them to US prices. Test specific products - a 1000 sq foot apartment, a pound of chicken, a specific model of car, a gallon of gas. You'll have to convert to metric equivalents, but you'll find that costs are roughly double anywhere in western Europe.

 

0% income tax (as in a few of those tax havens) is still lower than 4 or 5% tax...

As to those prices, let's compare:

http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index (Euro Area as a whole, 3.3%)

Health Insurance? 9 million self employed workers (8% of the US work force) pay a combined average of 15.3% of their net earnings. Insurance premiums have been climibing in the US from 1999 to 2009 131%.

Sending your kids to university? Since the 1970's, the average cost of tuition has steadily outgrown the income of the Average American household income. Combined with steady rise in the interest rates for student loans, leave more and more people unable to afford education, or struggling to pay after graduation.

OECD Price levels:
(USA =100)
Finland = 136
Sweden = 135
New Zealand = 134
Italy = 113
Greece = 99
Estonia = 86
Hungary = 63

So as you can see, "Europe" covers quite a large span. So before you condemn an Entire Continent, and arrogantly declare "Do you understand", maybe you should take the time to examine some more facts? Just as the USofA not one large homogenous clump, neither is Europe.

 

That puts you in a majority of one, since no-one in the UK believes a word the BBC says on anything to do with climate. They've been exposed as the British version of Pravda too many times. Not that Channel Four is much better.

 

This is how much you're allowed to earn before being liable to pay tax.

Income Tax allowances table 2013 - 14 and 2014 - 15

Income Tax allowances 2013-14 2014-15​

Personal Allowance (1) N/A N/A​

Personal Allowance for people born after 5 April 1948 £9,440 £10,000​

Income limit for Personal Allowance £100,000 £100,000​

Personal Allowance for people aged 65-74 (1)(2) N/A N/A​

Personal Allowance for people born between 6 April 1938 and 5 April 1948 (1) (2) £10,500 £10,500​

Personal Allowance for people aged 75 and over (1)(2) N/A N/A​

Personal Allowance for people before 6 April 1938 (1) (2) £10,660 £10,660​

Maximum amount of Married Couple's Allowance (born before 6th April 1935) (2) (3) £7,915 £8,165​

Income limit for age-related allowances N/A N/A​

Income limit for the allowances for those born before 6 April 1948 £26,100 £27,000​

Minimum amount of Married Couple's Allowance £3,040 £3,140​

Blind Person's Allowance £2,160 £2,230​

The actual tax rates

Income Tax rates and taxable bands Income Tax rates and taxable bands 2013 - 14 and 2014 - 15

Rate 2013-14 2014-15​

Starting rate for savings: 10%* £0 - £2,790 £0 - £2,880​

Basic rate: 20% £0 - £32,010 £0 - £31,865​

Higher rate: 40% £32,011 - £150,000 £31,866 - £150,000​

Additional rate: 50% N/A N/A​

Additional rate: 45% from 6 April 2013 Over £150,000 Over £150,000​

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/it.htm

 

Hmmm.... that did not format well. But I think it's safe to say, I'm glad I don't pay tax in England. It's just too complicated!

 

Aye, it didn't turn out too well, I'm afraid.
I'll stick to working out what I'm personally due in tax, that's complicated enough!

 

The issue you're avoiding is how much money do you have left to buy that insurance or pay for that university education?

You mentioned the low tax rates in Andorra? Perhaps, but if you look at the costs (the indirect taxes), it's hard to imagine how a family of four survives on an average income. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Andorra

 

The proglobal warming faction has been claiming "there is no doubt" for ages now they just haven't proven it. I'm leary of taking a journalist word for things in any case. For matters related to science even more so but I'll take their word/opinion over that of elected officials just about any day.

Consider this. Weather is widely accepted to be a chaotic phenomena. This rather implies that climate is also. In a chaotic system how do you tell which contribution is dominant? Indeed does it even make sense to ask that question?

But of course we are not talking about "poisoned" food. In the US there is a choice and as far as overall health goes that choice may result in better health than if it wasn't available. Furthermore looking at the charts in your school of public policy document the US rates better than Finland by a substantial amount in most areas. Indeed the document makes a good case for US food being safer particularly when you look at the food born pathogens. Then consider that the amount of pesticide used per hectacre is hardly a good measure of food safety unless you take into account the crops, the pesticides, and the processing.

I want surveys that are informative on the matter at hand. Unfortunatly most are poorly designed for that. Pretty much independent of the results by the way.

Unfortunately that doesn't mean that the survey is well designed or even credible. They are often badly flawed and usually in a way that reflects the biases of the researcher. When they occasionally bias it the other way the flaws are usually found. Works on both sides of just about all issues. The exact wording can even have considerable impact if it is an opinion survey.

Or not. I'm pretty sure I could design a survey that would be as or more valid and scientifially sound than the average one out there on most topics. Credibility is beyond the controll of the author except over time and by association.

 

Consider this: An ideal Gas is a chaotic hodge-podge of gas molecules, all bouncing around in a very chaotic manner.

By your assumption, we'd expect to garner little to no knowledge about such a gas, purely on the basis of it "being chaotic".

And yet we have plenty of Physical "Laws" we can use to determine characteristics and behaviour, such as

Boyle's law

which states: the volume of a given mass of gas is inversely proportional to its pressure, if the temperature remains constant. Mathematically this is:

where k is a constant of proportionality.



Luckily for us, things can be chaotic on one scale, but (relatively) ordered on another (larger) scale. It'd be really irritating having to deal with quantum uncertainties on a macro scale.

 

Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist I note that the coporation has a declared political position that is often an indicator of balance. The article didn't give much in the way of details of how they derived their values which is another red flag to me. In addition one area, specifically "political influence of foreign powers" is very hard to measure and could be taken both ways depending on how one looks at the topic.

This to me indicates a very flawed defintion of prosperity. If I elect to save my left over income of spend it doesn't really make any difference in how prosperous I am. It's a matter of what I wish to do with my cash. There's also a question of what is included in saveings (do social security and retirement plans count?).

When one starts refering to opinons (satisfaction) as "more qualitative measures" it a huge red flag. For one thing expectations can vary considerably from one country to another. This could litteraly invert the rankings in those areas.

 

Not so. Chaos doesn't imply that no structure exists. However it may be difficult to find that structure. In the case of gases one can isolate the various factors and determine the overall impacts of various variables. Without a sealed container coming up with Boyle's Law would have been impossible. With climate we don't have a sealed container. Furthermore if you say pump more gas into a sealed expandable container increasing the temperature at the same time what is the dominant effect on the change in volume?

 

Indeed, but that is what makes them interesting: they can never be nor are they intended to be definitive yardsticks with which to measure objectively. Instead, they are intended to gender debate, discussion, and question what exactly do we mean by these very questions. Hopefully, through such debate, we can get closer to some commonly accepted measure (but there will always remain contentious issues).

 

I just wish more people realized that.

 

With climate we do have a reasonably sealed container, when considering the scale of the system involved. It's not a large amount of gases that escape from the Earth over a decade.

We don't see (for example) temperature fluctuations of anywhere near the same scale on a global level (climate), as you do with locally (weather). Weather is, say an hourly phenomenon. Climate is measured over decades. Even discussing "This summer was the warmest on record: Global warming!" or the opposite "This summer wasn't the warmest on record: global warming is debunked!" (as I've witnessed) is incredibly naïve and shows a complete lack understanding of the scope and scale of the issue. These are not trivial difference in scale. Furthermore unlike the ideal-gases-in-a-bottle, we can't step outside and experiment.

 

When I say "sealed" I mean that the various parameters can be well defined and controlled. In the case of weather we don't even know all the variables much less what their relations are. Also while there may not be a large amount of gas escaping from earth both energy and mass are being accumulated from outside and energy is exiting the atmosphere and the evidence is that these are very important contributers to both weather and climate on earth. Indeed the failure of the climate prediction models is pretty clear evidence that our knowledge of the system is not yet anywhere near the level of that used to derive Boyle's Law. Indeed those who push the concept of anthropomorphic induced climate change actually use this sort of rational to explain the fact that we haven't seen much global warming in the last 20 years while failing to acknowledge that the same argument may apply to a somewhat longer period and negate their position.

I should make it clear that I am not saying there is no climate change. Clearly climates change almost as a mater of definition. Nor am I suggesting that humans don't impact both the weather and the climate. Such things as urban heat islands make it quite clear that we do. What I am saying is it is not really clear just how much we are impacting climate change and that picking CO2 as the primary culprate is very premature. Better to look at overall measures of how we are impacting the environment and try affect those that we can with the most efficency of resources provided. The Freon ban is a good example. Reducing air polution is another.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Not sure if that's good or bad.

 

Oh hell, he wants it explained too?!

 

If it's not too much trouble ole boy....