This is important work, but the idea that the US taxpayer should be the only people paying for it is not reasonable; other countries should be making financial contributions, as should the big tech companies.
A good suggestion.
To give NASA an implicit subsidy is what I'm objecting to. The money for the service which the FAA provides to NASA has got to come from somewhere; it's either explicit by having them charged in the same way, or implicit in requiring the FAA to provide the service to NASA without charge.
Of course I'm assuming a rational response to the need for a NASA budget boost to allow this, and that may well be a mistake. But from first principles...
Cute point scoring about Clinton's record of leaving a surplus at a time of world peace is unhelpful.
The fact that the US economy is continuing to generate jobs at a totally unexpected pace strongly suggests that Trump's tax cuts did the job they promised; it's clear that if the pandemic hadn't derailed the economy, it would have been storming along as a result of his economic policy. The point about stock buy backs is that they release the money stuck in companies with no clear investment opportunities to be reinvested, at a lower cost than would otherwise be the case, in companies that do have expansion plans. Yes, of course that's not the only reason; the appalling problem of the double taxation of company dividends versus bond payments makes financial engineering always a profitable prospect, while foolishly designed executive bonuses based merely on share price also encourage such things. But it's not simple.
Yes, Biden talks the talk on taxing the rich. However the ever expanding number of loopholes (think IRA) means that it is only the relatively little people and careless corporations that will actually pay more tax.
Note I'm no fan of Trump, and the prospect of his getting a second term is terrifying. But it's important to try to spot what is really going on, not just assume a politician is telling the truth for the first time ever. In having the choice of Biden or Trump, the USA is getting what it deserves - at least a bit of it.
Biden is a creature of the American corporations, as proven by his being the Senator from Delaware, which is where a massive proportion of US corporations are registered. Hiding your real intentions by progressive fluff is always a good technique.
The issue is motivation. Do we want to do the best for the children here, or do we want to tick a box that satisfies our priorities?
And what if SpaceX are lifting a payload for NASA ?
do they still have to pay the tax?
It's all about removing hidden subsidies. If the people of the USA want to pay for a space program, that's fine. But let's have them pay for it explicitly without hiding the costs in the budgets of other agencies. So yes, NASA should pay in this situation.
It's clearly fair that something that causes costs to a government agency pays those costs. However hiding a subsidy for NASA by failing to get them to pay as well would be featherbedding the public sector; remember that its NASA's poor record in developing space technology that has led to the private companies getting going.
The easy response - which many have trotted out - is to condemn any form of child labour, and call on Western countries to pressure poor countries to ban it. A specific outworking of this is to prevent ALL child labour in formal sectors of the economy. At its worst this means that the kids get employed in far more dangerous and problematic ways because the parents need the money they can earn.
In this context the kid in the slum earning money on this site is possibly the best type of child employment. Hyperventilating about it being 'child exploitation' without asking harder questions about whether there is any alternative and whether it's really bad is bad for the kids. Remember there is an obvious alternative use of such a laptop in a slum: child pornography.
Where do you see me defending US corps hiring children in the USA. We used to have child labour. We can afford to ban it now. But in a lot of countries that is not a reasonable expectation.
After nine billion views?
Where the inventors of this - along with all advertising executives - where the inhabitants are tied down and forced to watch adverts for eternity.
Yes, we can afford to largely exclude our children from the work place. In poor countries too often they can't, with the result that 'demanding that it doesn't happen merely leaves the kids to be more badly exploited in unregulated sectors of the economy'. In that context the particular form of work this article is about is probably as unexploitative as is possible.
'Saving Mr Banks' shows us Walt Disney talking about his doing paper rounds morning and evening for his father at the age of eight in St Louis when the snow was above his head...
The right answer is that electricity should cost enough to enable the pollution that it causes - including, but not only CO2 - to be fully corrected. Anything else is having wider society pay the costs of the electricity user's choice to use electricity. This, of course, is not going to happen, and on the whole, I'm with Corporal Fraser
Throughout history children have worked on the farms that they lived on; nobody thought anything of it. When industrialisation occurred, it was therefore inevitable that children would be expected to do the same. It slowly dawned on the wider community that some of the new generation of jobs were far more dangerous than farm work, and restrictions on the type and duration of employment for children gradually were legislated.
Given the inevitability of child labour in poorer countries, demanding that it doesn't happen merely leaves the kids to be more badly exploited in unregulated sectors of the economy. By contrast the 'exploitation' of kids in this instance is almost as benign as it's possible to consider. And remember; the families NEED income to live at all.
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener
