"Guaranteed minimum income" is just another way of saying "subsidies that avoid the phase-out problem". And the thing is, supposed the GMI is $10k , and then a 20% (marginal) "tax" kicks in at $50k. At $100k income, you're still getting your "minimum income" , but you're also paying the same amount in "tax". Money's fungible, people should not get all hung up about the labels attached to it, just figure out subsidies and tax codes so you have a healthy economy, enough money to run the government, and you avoid pathologies like the way current subsidies getting turned off in a narrow income band provide such a disincentive to work.

There is another way to provide a "guaranteed minimum income" (though it is more of a Pigovian wage subsidy). The poverty line in 2008-9 for a single person was $10,830 per year. At 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, you have 2080 hours, which means the poverty line is about $5.21 per hour for full-time employment. If I remember correctly (it's been awhile since I scribbled out the numbers), that's about 28% of total wages and income in the United States.

If you have add a flat 28% rate to everyone's current tax rate, and give a wage subsidy of $5.21 an hour (up to 40 hours per week) for gainful employment to all American workers, you have a break-even point of roughly $38,700, or a bit below the median income. If you graph out the effective tax rate, it is a smoothly progressive curve. At no point along this curve is there any disincentive to to work* -- there isn't a higher tax bracket to be kicked into. With a such a work subsidy in place, you can remove Federal minimum wage laws and greatly reduce welfare and unemployment payments (remember, every American is guaranteed at least the poverty line for full-time employment, plus whatever wage they can negotiate with their employer).

* Well, okay, above $38,700, you have a higher effective tax rate than you have currently, which may be a disincentive. On the other hand, those earning below $38,700 are getting a lower effective tax rate, so they would have a greater incentive to work, and these are exactly the low-skilled, entry-level workers we want to bring into the labor market to gain marketable skills.

The trick is to vote in opposing crazies.

I'm more worried the RIAA will claim alien copyright infringement.

I wish I had mod points to add a +1 Interesting. Thanks!

This post is long, late, and buried, but proxy voting would work work better than either plurality or cumulative voting. Each person gets a single vote, but each representative (in this case, the six trustees) would get voting power equivalent to the number of people who voted for them. It's no more difficult for voters than first past the post (plurality) voting, and it's much more representative of voters actual wishes.

As an example, let's assume a Zipfian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law) distribution. There are seven candidates -- A, B, C, D, E, F, and G -- the distribution is 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and 1/7. Normalizing, you A=38.57%, B=19.28%, C=12.86%, D=9.64%, E=7.71%, F=6.43%, and G=5.51%.

Since only six can be elected, candidate G will be left out. You are not representing the first choice of 5.51% of the voters, but more important, the first choice of the voters has six times the support as the last seated candidate. How on earth is it fair to give each the same voting power? Both plurality and cumulative ignore this problem.

Completing the example above, let's assume G's supporters have their second choices spread among the remaining candidates in the same Zipfian distribution. Taking out the 1/7 and normalizing, you have A=40.82%, B=20.41%, C=13.61%, D=10.2%, E=8.16%, and F=6.8%. You have the following minimum voting blocks that can pass any legislation they want:

Two people:
A&B = 61.22% of the voting power
A&C = 54.42%
A&D = 51.02%

Three people:
A&E&F = 55.78%

Four people:
B&C&D&E = 52.38%
B&C&D&F = 51.02%

A is necessary in 4 of these groups
B,C, and D in 3 of them,
E is necessary in 2 of them
F is necessary in 1

The remaining possibilities require one of the above subgroups.

This should give an indication of how voter preference translates into the proxy system more accurately than in proxy or cumulative voting.

Or worse, POW!

Who knows what kind of mutations would best preserve human life here on Earth . . . or in Space . . . or on another planet? We're infants playing with power tools!

After a few generations of letting infants play with power tools, who knows what carpentry skills would evolve.

...at what they are looking for in a mate.

What if you asked Santa for some milk for Christmas? Does he bring fresh reindeer milk, or does he just swipe the stuff from the next house over?

...are shaped like spiders. So every time you smash a spider or hit a cobweb on the ceiling with a broom, you lose a toy.

What is "the upper part of a 9212/2212C and the lower part of a 1223?" And I don't believe there's an element known as Oy.

When combined with the element Vey, it forms Exasperatium.

We once took pride in saying we were a melting pot of nations (racism aside).

I've always preferred the image of a multicultural tapestry. Better a colorful display of individual threads than a gray, undifferentiated mass.

The point is that someday, a computer instructed to compute pi indefinitely will simply respond, "Why don't you just go fuck yourself?" Then we'll know that the machine has achieved sentience.

I'd be even more impressed if it said "Sure thing, I'll get right on it!" and then pretended to work while surfing the web.