When I use Lynx, I get offers of campgrounds and tents.

This will be buried at the end of 600 comments, but hey, I might as well throw in my two cents.

Make the calendar:

Five days per week.
Six weeks per month.
Three months per quarter.
Four quarters per year, plus one five-day week at the end of the year.
Add a leap day to the end of every fourth year, except years divisible by 128. In other words, 128 years would be exactly 46751 days, and each year would average out to 365.2421875 days.

Then start the year at the autumnal equinox (in the northern hemisphere). The seasons would roughly align with the quarters. Of course, the phases of the moon would fall out of synch, but 30 days is pretty close to a lunar cycle. You can have the quarters of Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer, with each quarter divided into Early, Mid, and Late.

For example, the months would be:
Early Fall, Mid Fall, Late Fall
Early Winter, Mid Winter, Late Winter
Early Spring Mid Spring, Late Spring
Early Summer, Mid Summer, Late Summer.

And no one will ever read this, but here is a little ditty:

The First of Autumn, to make it clear
Is the first day of the year.
Every week has just five days
Six weeks per month, plus one that stays.
Thirty days hath Mid Winter
And all the months that you remember.
Fall and Winter, Spring and Summer
The seasons are just four in number.
At years end, across the nation
Add a week of celebration.
Every four years, you may note
Add another day to vote.
Except for the years 1-2-8
Don't leap ahead, and you'll stay straight.

I would mod this up if I had points. Plurality voting sucks. At least go with Approval for single-winner races, if you think Condorcet is too complicated.

Hey, it's what killed Aeschylus.

That's what happens when you are bald. Eagles think your head is a handy rock to drop turtles on.

There are two general arguments you can make with regards to the preferred method of taxation, one based on morality, and the other based on efficiency.

For morality, it depends on what you consider to be the most fundamental property we can claim ownership of. Is it our labor? Is it our labor applied to land to produce capital? Is it land, which is a factor of production not produced by anyone's labor?

My argument would be that our labor is the primary thing we can morally claim ownership of. An income tax takes away part of that labor directly. The harder you work, the more you have to pay to the state. Hard work is thus penalized and discouraged.

A capital gains tax takes away labor applied to land (in the economic sense of a natural resource of fixed supply) to produce capital. Like the tax on labor, a tax on capital reduces the incentive to save a portion of what you produce, discouraging capital formation and encouraging current consumption (eating your seed corn, rather than saving it until the next planting season, for example).

Only a land value tax does not take away labor directly -- we can, for example, imagine a gypsy tinker who wanders from place to place, working on pots and pans brought to him, but holding no land title. An income tax would reach out to take a portion of the labor from such a person, no matter where he roamed, whereas a land value tax would not. The reverse of this, a rent seeker who does not labor, would seem to be morally more suspect. A person who does not work, but merely expects the state to use force to protect his or her property without payment in taxes, would seem to be at best a parasite on the community. Land tenure secured by the state would seem to be the one thing that -- well, call it a tax, or a user fee, or a rental fee, or anything you like -- could be morally levied. If you control an expensive piece of property, and expect the police to show up when you call, a tax would to reimburse the the state seem to be reasonable.

And as for efficiency, land is fixed in quantity, and a tax does neither encourages nor discourages the amount available. If we tax it at or below the rental value of land, it will continue to be productive, without any reduction in use. Only if we tax high enough that people began abandoning land would we have to worry about negative effects. In addition, since land is fixed in quantity, we do no have to worry about deadweight losses from the tax. This is unlike taxes on labor (income taxes), capital (capital gains taxes), or trade (sales taxes). A tax that doesn't reduce economic activity would seem to be the holy grail of public finance.

Finally, if you think that the community does not have the right to levy a land value tax, do you think that they can use eminent domain to take a piece of property after paying a fair price? Because true ownership by an individual would seem to preclude a superior claim by the state.

A sound property tax system (unlike California under Prop 13) is probably a much better idea for most state governments, housing bubbles notwithstanding.

Actually, a sound property tax system would not only provide a much more stable source of funding than income and sales taxes, it would eliminate housing bubbles (which are really land value bubbles). See Land Value Tax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

For fans of progressivity, land value is even more concentrated than income, plus it is much harder to hide in Swiss bank accounts or buy on the black market.

It is a mountain kingdom, lots of hydro potential and very few people. Why would they want the infinite expense and risks involved with current nuclear?

Because the valley people might ask for treasure, tons of gold for which they'd kill.

Interestingly, the article says much the same. If you're going to get pissed off about an article, shouldn't you at least read it first?

But I'm angry now!

IMHO, postal votes should be reserved for those who can't get to the polling station because of some disability or travel. The problem with postal votes is that, for a family, or anywhere that has a shared postal address, you simply don't know who is completing the ballots and returning them.

Oregon has universal vote-by-mail, and it works very well. Plus, it pretty much eliminates vote caging.

I approve of all three methods, especially for single-seat elections. :)

For proportional representation, I like some form of proxy voting, where each legislator casts a vote equal in power to the number of first-place votes he or she received in the last election. Far fewer wasted votes that way, and it pretty much eliminates any reason for political parties.

(Nice mention of Kemeny-Young. Excellent method despite being NP-Hard.)

"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.