John Cuthber

Oh come on... can't you do better than that? More money sloshing round will give rise to more money not being collected as tax. So, lets have a look at the corresponding GDP US GDP $16 Tn tax loss $0.34 Tn Brazil GDP $2 Tn tax loss $0.28 Tn Italy GDP 2.1 Tn Tax loss $0.24Tn Russia GDP $2 Tn tax loss $ 0.22 Tn Germany GDP $3.7Tn tax loss $0.22 Tn France GDP $2.8Tn Tax loss $0.17Tn China GDP $9.2 Tn Tax loss $0.13Tn UK GDP $2.7 Tn Tax loss $0.11Tn Spain GDP $1.4 Tn Tax loss $0.11 tn And lets turn those into percentages (assuming I have got the arithmetic right- feel free to check) Brazil 14.00 Italy 11.43 Russia 11.00 Spain 7.86 France 6.07 Germany 5.95 UK 4.07 US 2.13 China 1.41 Suddenly, the US are no longer even close to leading the race. And now, lets look at maximal personal tax rates (from here) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates Country Tax lost as %GDP Max tax rate Brazil 14.00 27.5 Italy 11.43 43.0 Russia 11.00 30.0 Spain 7.86 52.0 France 6.07 75.0 Germany 5.95 45.0 UK 4.07 45.0 US 2.13 55.9 China 1.41 45.0 OK, there is technically a correlation in those data: lower tax rates tally with higher rates of avoidance. But which way does cause and effect work here? Are governments dropping tax rates in the hope of reducing evasion? In any event, the effect is small- most of the variation (about 70%) is due to some other factor(s). More importantly, there is definitely not any sort of clear cut-off at 40% (or any other value). Also there's nothing on that wiki page that indicates some magical significance to the 40% level. Did you just pull it out of your ear? BTW, sorry for the scrambled format of the tables- they were fine in XL.

There is a pretty clear distinction between giving tax breaks to organisations that employ people and giving tax cuts to people who stash it in overseas accounts. There;'s also a clear distinction between "supposed liberals ( President BO ), that throw money at big business if the situation deems it necessary" and those who do it all the time as a means to buy votes and influence. Pointing out that an argument doesn't tally with the rules of cause and effect- the cause has to come first- is an attack on the argument. Admittedly, it doesn't reflect well on the person who advances that argument in the first place.

" It is an attempt to label people and ideas as irrelevant and unworthy of discussion. " Or it's a question based on some observations. "As for 'trickle down' or 'supply side' economics, they seem to have worked rather well in bringing the US out of the Great Depression." Seems like time travel "Supply-side economics developed during the 1970s in response to Keynesian economic policy" From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics

Do you think it's likely that those two people are posting here? (I remind you that's the question I asked)

Borates might be a bit toxic unless the fire is vented outside (and even then it's not ideal). The essential problem is that copper and its oxide are not very volatile. A "solution" to that problem is to add hydrochloric acid to the fuel because that will convert the copper oxide to chloride (which is much more volatile). Clearly, that's a problem because HCl is not nice stuff- it's corrosive and toxic. More surface area of copper might help- try copper gauze, rather than wire.

I should point out something which is raised by Sensei's graph of tax receipts as a % of GDP. It's true that the government is getting roughly the same share as it has since WWII However that tax is increasingly being raised from people who are the "squeezed middle" rather than the very rich. I earn roughly the national average salary (so I'm better off than most- lucky me), but my take home pay is being cut by the government, while the super rich are largely unaffected.

How dry does an area need to be before it is considered agricultural? The question doesn't make sense because the issue of whether an area is agricultural or not is not defined by how wet it is. Perhaps the best answer would be, if it's too dry for people to live there without having to bring in food and water, it's a desert.- of course that would include luxury ocean liners. It's all down to the definitions- pick whichever one you like; but always say what definition you are using.

""Trickle down' economics, ..., is not just a Reagan Conservative policy." Nobody said it was. But the important thing is that it doesn't work. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens " There is no such thing as a 'conservative' or a 'liberal'" Then why worry about them? In particular, why keep using those terms? Incidentally, from my point of view (and, I think that of most of the world) America doesn't have any Left wing politicians actually in office. " IIRC, it was President Obama, a Democrat, who bailed out the bankers and investors who caused the crash of 2008," You seem to have muddled him up with Dr Who. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama "Assumed office January 20, 2009" So, you seem to be saying there's nothing insane about Conservatives (which, you say, don't exist anyway)- the problem is the crash caused by Mr Obama shortly before he became president. Glad we got that settled.

http://xkcd.com/285/

All "A" are "B" doesn't prove all "B" are "A". But if it's true for a large enough sample, it supports the suggestion. I can't check all Conservatives, but I have looked at a sample of them... Can you show me the clearly sane ones please? Can you, for example, show me the ones who don't believe in trickle down economics and who believe that the wealth inequality isn't a good thing.

I believe the traditional phrase is "don't try this at home".

Says who?

I take it that you accept my point, the guy who really thinks he's Napoleon isn't sane. Do you also accept that the bloke who was on Fox news saying he believed that B'ham was a Moslem city and off-limits to those who follow other faiths, was also either deluded, or lying? Not least because there's no logical route from "The place is totally Moslem" to "It's a no- go area for those who are not"

Whichever one of them is happier.

What you said was ", libel laws are fundamentally flawed in that they presume guilty until proven innocent, which is ridiculous." What I have pointed out is that (almost) every court case presumes guilt. They presume the guilt of the party who is not the party whose innocence is presumed. There are always two sides. You can not have both sides assumed to be innocent (and thus free from the burden of proof). Imagine I slander you, for example, by saying you are a murderer. You take me to court, and accuse me of slander. I stand up in court and say "I don't have to prove I'm innocent- you have to prove me guilty if you want to get anywhere. In particular, you have to prove that what I said was false" You, in turn stand up and say "This is slanderous unless I'm guilty of murder. I don't have to prove that I'm innocent of murder. You have to prove that your assertion is true". So, since both sides can claim that they don't have to prove their innocence, neither side can get anywhere. You have yet to address this problem. Please do so. Perhaps you can then address the fact that the only way you could prove me guilty of slander is to prove that you didn't commit murder. You can't, in general, prove a negative. So you are seeking to put the burden of proof on the party that would be logically unable to prove their point. Also, look up what ad hom means. If you think I'm using an ad hom argument, please point out where. If you think I'm being insulting then say so, or...

What "value" do you think it might have?

The problem is that your "simple" relation to Pascals triangle- with all the exceptions and such, is nor pretty nearly as complicated as the real model. You are making up rules to fit your hypothesis and that's the wrong way round. It's not science it's numerology. Apart from anything else, it has no predictive value, so it has no scientific value.

"My understanding is that slander (or defamation) involves making false claims." Yes, so if I claim that Royston is a murderer then either he is a murderer or I am a slanderer. So? If he sues me for making that claim then with whom does the burden of proof lie? Is it with the person making a claim that his opponent committed slander or is the burden of proof with the person claiming that his opponent committed murder? It's not generally difficult to decide if an allegation was made. The tricky bit is deciding whether it was justified or not. Is it, for example, legitimate to call mr Smith a murderer in the case I suggested? It is a matter for a civil court- but the court still has to decide if I'm a slanderer or he's a murderer. And it's still not obvious who should have the burden of proof.

Did you think there might be someone here who didn't know that?

OK is the burden of proof with the person making a claim that his opponent committed slander or is the burden of proof with the person claiming that his opponent committed murder? The situation is pretty symmetrical, so it's not obvious where that burden should lie. The point remains that it has to be with someone; there are two sides to the argument. Royston seems to think it should lie with nobody since that's what you get if you assume that both sides are innocent. My view is that murder is a much more serious matter than slander so, if there's no strong evidence to prove that it took place, the assumption must be that there was no murder. If that's the case, then there must have been slander. So, slanderers end up carrying the burden of proof. There's also the fact that they chose to start the whole sequence of events by making an allegation in the first place. If you are going to make a defamatory statement then you should be able to back it up.

I'm extraordinarily unlikely to "favorize" anything. I might favour some things. in general I think that, if the consequences of ones actions are not the basis of ones choice of action then one is rather missing the point of having a brain that can deduce what those consequences may be. However, I'm not foolish enough to say I'd never be a hypocrite about these things. If I was in that situation, I might not yell very loudly...

Yell over the wall to see if there's someone there. Count them. Minimise the total deaths. Of course, if you are selfish, you can lie about how many people are on your side.

It's still a problem of definition. Bananas are very convenient, but scarcely processed. Essentially, what it comes down to is that some foods, especially,if consumed in excess, are bad for you- though probably less so than starving to death.

I'd also like to know what's between the green and black croc clips in the last picture. But it won't really help. Stripping the wire will, at least, make a circuit that you can get some sort of resistance measurement of. but the effect of temperature is small and the meter will not be sensitive enough to detect it. Either you need a much more sophisticated measurement, or (more realistically) you need a much longer or thinner wire. Enthalpy, if you look at the meter it only has one resistance range and the display says it's auto-ranging, but overloaded. so it's not meaningful to say it's on a 60 MOhm range.

Do you see why I don't trust you to understand what I have written? You also seem resolute in your refusal to count to two. There are two sides to any case. You can't assume they are both innocent, because they (generally) can't be. In the specific case I suggested, either there's a slanderer or there's a murderer. It's not that you have rebutted the point inadequately, you have not addressed it at all. How do you deal with the fact that you can not assume innocence on both sides? There is a solution for most cases- that's the origin of legal privilege- but it doesn't work for slander.