Um... have you not heard of the welfare system? My solution is similar but without many of the overhead costs, without targeting industries that hire unskilled laborers, and without being subject to corruption and abuse.

I understand that you may have a problem with redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately for you, I doubt you'll ever see it removed from our government. It's political suicide. So wouldn't you at least agree with me that making it better and more fair would be a reasonable goal?

When I first heard the story, enough info had come out to assume it was an accident. The "rebels" had fired at a plane they thought was an enemy military plane. A huge inept tragedy, yes, but not a political maneuver.

But then materials were being withheld from public scrutiny. No admission of guilt. Looting the crash site and taking materials over to Russia. Propaganda. What could have been a simple footnote in the history of this conflict may now be a political turning point of war.

Then again, maybe they are hiding something we don't already know. That's the only competent reason for all of this secrecy.

Additionally, I think X should be supplied on a card showing the person's ID. It could be used only for specific basic needs goods and services, such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, child care, transportation, sanitation, education, and so on.

The government should never have the role of supplying anyone with luxuries, entertainment, and illicit activity. Those would still be bought using the employer-provided wage (so it's not like minimum-wage workers would never get to go to see a movie).

Punishing industries built on unskilled labor is my problem. It makes more sense to place the burden of welfare on the whole economy, via taxes, since the government is the only entity in the position to redistribute wealth.

In my vision, the government would supply the first $X of everyone's wage, and pays for it by increases in income tax. This gives a huge stimulus to unskilled industries founded on a large number of laborers. Now instead of having to pay everyone a minimum of $7.25/hour, they pay $7.25 - X.

I don't think we have to set X at $7.25. That would be no good as many industries would get free labor, and people would be hired on the government dime to just sit around and do nothing for 40 hours a week. Someone smarter in economics than myself would figure out X, but perhaps it would be something like $5/hour.

"Wouldn't Walmart and McDonald's just set their wage to $0 anyway, and make workers suffer with $5/hour? Isn't that going backwards?"

No, they would soon find themselves in a position of needing to compete for unskilled labor. (Whoa, the thought!) So they would add some wage on top of the government subsidy, and that would settle at a natural competitive level. That might be $4/hour or whatever as it fits their business model.

And X would adjust as needed over time to balance the economy.

You totally missed the point of my post.

I don't know why you got hung up on the word "the", when the point was to refute the assertion that a middleman is worthless. I never said it was a currency middleman or an asset middleman... and I don't disagree with your analysis... but that makes no difference to my argument.

From what I'm seeing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M..., the Federal Reserve did appear to create a larger amount of money than normal during that period, but not on the scale I meant with "enormous". I was talking about doubling the money supply in a year or two (or worse).

I agree that inflation helps the economy by driving people to spend money instead of hoarding it. A little more inflation during a depression is needed to offset the effects of the depression. But that only works to a certain degree. At any time if the currency inflates too much, other currencies will become more attractive (at least in the bank).

Are you seriously comparing the length of time most government currencies have been around to a virtual currency 5 years old?

Besides, government-backed currencies aren't immune to crashing. In particular, if the government thinks it's a good idea to create itself an enormous amount of new money, that currency will likely fail. (Something that doesn't happen with Bitcoin and derivatives because, by design, supply will be limited over time.)

Where is the strawman you are arguing against that said the word "only"?

"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services. So I guess dollars will never catch on either.

And by this, I meant the next one may be another Hitler.

(In before "But Godwin!"... talk of Hitler is perfectly logical when the subject is dictatorship.)

We should never forget: Even if you feel the sitting President is the messiah in the flesh, can never do any wrong, and is sincerely and intelligently capable of making decisions that are the absolute best in every situation...

The powers you grant this President will be provided to the next. And the next one may not be so good.

And yet there are people who believe it so fervently as to dismiss rational thought and criticize those who are not in lockstep with believers. They turn to logical fallacies and hold ideals such as "You can't see it, you can't reasonably measure it, but it's coming and by then you'll be too late and you'll be doomed!"

No, doesn't sound like a religion at all.

Sure, except Microsoft officially announced that the Start menu was coming back.

I guess I shouldn't expect an iOS 8 or Android L either.

Using that analogy, I feel like the question isn't whether the data is currently held on foreign soil, but whether it has ever been on US soil.

Of course, if the data is the subject of a domestic court case then it almost certainly was transmitted to or through a domestic system.

I understand what you're getting at, but I can't think of a single case that adding or increasing a tax has led to more demand (when accounting for other factors such as lowering supply). Your example of gasoline tax is good for showing that percentage of price isn't the only way, but at the same time it is still derived (based on the volume sold). I don't pay the same tax on 1 gallon as I do on 20 gallons. LIkewise, if ice cream were taxed per ounce, more ice cream would have more tax.

I suppose that's not to say it's impossible to have a flat dollar amount tax no matter the amount you purchase, which would lead to the result you mentioned earlier (people would tend to buy as much of the expensive stuff as possible, instead of less of the cheap stuff). This same model is why retailers often have buy-1-get-1 half off sales. They might get the profit off the first item and sell the second at cost, which is better than the customer not buying anything at all. (And it's also better than making things 25% off, which is the same result on 2 items but the customer has the option to buy 1 item resulting in half the profit.)

But coming from a tax? I doubt that would be popular with either consumers or the government. I don't know... I'll credit you that it's an interesting thought experiment at the least.