[OT] Sci-Fi Tax ?!

[William Ronald]

There are times when I wonder if NASA uses the Three Stooges to provide their publicity. As I write this, a South African is in space performing experiments to help with the AIDS crisis. (Immune system research.) This should be played up by NASA.

If anything comes out of this research, then the space program will have saved MILLIONS of lives on Earth.

 

[Zappo]

A claim I have heard many times. Funny thing is, nobody is ever able to support it.

If the government is giving more to the high producers, why don't they just stop?

"Giving"? Who talked about giving? There's more to a government than just providing services (including police, welfare and military). Any government spends a very large share of its resources to control its economy so that it benefits its industry. Also, the most costly infrastructures (large motorways, for example) are usually built for economical reasons... if the motorway passing through my city vanished, to me it would mean having to drive fifteen more minutes to reach my university, but it would be a major disaster for the whole Italian economy.

And, friend, when a country's economy prospers, everyone benefits, but the high producers benefit proportionally more, since it's that economy that allows them to be high-gainers too.

A SF tax to fund NASA, OTOH, is unfair because everyone benefits from NASA research in the same way.

You try to convince those who prefer social service that space exploration can benefit them.

Honestly, if it weren't for the military and the intelligence community, space exploration would just be a memory of our victorious race to land on the moon before the Soviets.

I never said you should cut the military to fund NASA. Honestly, I thought so, but I didn't say it. Ooops, I said it now.

Seriously, the military and intelligence is important, but often the funds given to military are so overwhelmingly more than those given to research, that moving a 1% from military to research would mean a major boost for science.

Since the original ideas was to raise taxes, however - for adding a tax on SF is simply raising taxes for a minority of population - I would suggest to cut nothing and raise taxes equally instead. A few dollars per year more for each person in every first-world country would give a hypothetical global space research organization some billions per year. With careful spending and some other sources of income, that could be enough.

 

[Mistwell]

I would personally really like to see NASA completely cut and ended.

Now before y'all go off half-cocked and flame me, hear me out.
I am a huge supporter of missions to space. I just don't think NASA is a good vehicle for those missions anymore.

NASA subsidizes all space missions. That means if a company wants to launch a satellite, NASA will fund part of the launch. This makes it impossible for private space companies to compete against NASA for these jobs.

Unfortunately, NASA is a bunch of screw-ups at this point. The whole reason their funding keeps getting cut over and over again is because they are constantly screwing up missions. And not little mistakes, or accidents. I mean real screw-ups, like forgetting to convert between metric and american measurement systems, forgetting to convert between time-zones, and other really amateur mistakes that cost the U.S. taxpayers Billions of dollars. The government just isn't as good as private industry when it comes to doing things with intelligence.

In addition NASA appears completely out of touch with what the american people want them to do with their tax money. NASA has voted to spend it's only projected long-term budget right now on a mission to Pluto, rather than a mission to Europa. Never mind the fact that there is good evidence that there might be life on Europa (no, not little green men, just some potential sea life), never mind the fact that all of the polls of the american people were to explore Eurpoa next, no, NASA is sending a probe on a decade long mission to a ball of ice that they know, with some confidence, really is just a big ball of ice. Nice. And let's not even talk about their anti-space-tourism policy.

There are some very good American private space companies out there right now, who are fighting to get support primarily because NASA's subsidies block their attempts to compete in the Space industry. Right now one of the only ones that seems able to make a go of it is XCOR (you can check them out at http://www.xcor.com/ ). And that company is having to run VERY lean and mean in order to make it (though I think they will).

Life would be better all around for the prospects of ordinarly people making it to space if NASA were a thing of the past.

 

[Ranger REG]

I never said you should cut the military to fund NASA. Honestly, I thought so, but I didn't say it. Ooops, I said it now.

Actually, I mean to say that military and intelligence agencies rely on NASA and their expertise -- as well as their spacecraft operation -- to launch "seeing eye" and communications satellites.

But as someone said, there are other companies willing to step in NASA's place and fulfill that role.

 

[Zappo]

Actually, I mean to say that military and intelligence agencies rely on NASA and their expertise -- as well as their spacecraft operation -- to launch "seeing eye" and communications satellites.

But as someone said, there are other companies willing to step in NASA's place and fulfill that role.

Oops.

I didn't know the situation with NASA was as Mistwell said. That makes the tax idea even worse! It makes me support even more strongly the concept of a single world-wide space agency which would deal with extremely costly missions. I know that government often is less efficient than privates... but, unfortunately, there's no way a private can have the money (or the desire) to send something beyond the Moon.

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

"Giving"? Who talked about giving? There's more to a government than just providing services (including police, welfare and military). Any government spends a very large share of its resources to control its economy so that it benefits its industry. Also, the most costly infrastructures (large motorways, for example) are usually built for economical reasons... if the motorway passing through my city vanished, to me it would mean having to drive fifteen more minutes to reach my university, but it would be a major disaster for the whole Italian economy.

And, friend, when a country's economy prospers, everyone benefits, but the high producers benefit proportionally more, since it's that economy that allows them to be high-gainers too.

Your claim remains unsupported.

The high producers benefit proportionally more from their high production. Not from anything the government does for them. If the governement is proping up one group or holding another back, it should be corrected. If, on the other hand, it treats ever person the same, then every person should be taxed the same, without bias against their productivity.

If you produce more you are a benefit to the economy, yet the government punishes you for it.

In 1999 in America, 10% of taxpayers paid 66.5% (TWO-THIRDS!!) of the income taxes. (They produced 21.4% of the income.) I doubt many of these people will find the idea of being targeted for funds collection to be a new concept.

 

[Green Knight]

Somebody asked why we haven't gone back to the moon, yet. What, do we just have money to burn on bs? Are Americans supposed to cough up billions of dollars just so we can send a couple of guys up there for no real reason? What're they gonna do, plant another flag? Not as if we're running out of moondirt and are in desperate need for more.

If we ever go back to the moon, it should be for a reason other than "Why not?" A tangible reason which'll produce tangible results. We've already sent people to the moon for the purposes of sight-seeing and to one-up the Russians. Nothing will be accomplished but wasting money better spent elsewhere if we send more people there just for "the hell of it".

And you make some good points, Mistwell. Be nice if private industries were allowed to do whatever they want to do in space without NASA butting their heads in. If some company wants to have a space tourism business then let them. A mission to Europa WOULD be more interesting than a mission to Pluto, that's for damn sure.

 

[PenguinKing]

Your claim remains unsupported.

The high producers benefit proportionally more from their high production. Not from anything the government does for them

Wrap your head around this:

1) The government builds roads.

2) A large trucking company uses the roads more than, say, a guy who designs websites out of his basement.

3) Therefore, the trucking company should pay a larger share of road maintenance than the website designer.

What part of that do you not understand? The point is that high producers generally make use of the infrastructure the government provides more often and represent a larger wear on that infrastructure than low producers; so why should everyone pay equally if they're not getting the same use out of it?

- Sir Bob.

 

[Zappo]

The point is that high producers generally make use of the infrastructure the government provides more often and represent a larger wear on that infrastructure than low producers; so why should everyone pay equally if they're not getting the same use out of it?

...and the same is for less tangible but not less costly "things" the government does for you, like economical maneuvers. As far as I know, every government in democratic countries taxes the high-producers more, and no party that I know of contests this.

Taxing "everyone equally" in the sense that you propose would be deeply unfair to the poor and average people.

You said 10% of taxpayers, who produced 21.4% of the income, paid two third of the income taxes. If they paid 21.4% of the income taxes - the same proportion as their income - it would mean that the remaining 90% would have to pay the 78.6% of the taxes instead of the 33.5% they pay now. I really don't think that more than doubling income taxes for the 90% of the population would be a wise choice, especially since it's the "poorest" (well, least rich) 90%!

 

[Axiomatic Unicorn]

Wrap your head around this:

1) The government builds roads.

2) A large trucking company uses the roads more than, say, a guy who designs websites out of his basement.

3) Therefore, the trucking company should pay a larger share of road maintenance than the website designer.

What part of that do you not understand? The point is that high producers generally make use of the infrastructure the government provides more often and represent a larger wear on that infrastructure than low producers; so why should everyone pay equally if they're not getting the same use out of it?

- Sir Bob.

And the large trucking company pays much higher amounts of gasoline and tag taxes, which go for paying for the roads. User fees such as this for tangible consumption are completely appropriate. A web designer who produces more than the trucker still must pay more taxes.