PaRa$iTe

Renewable energy.. basically, using the energy that is produced regardless of mankind (as opposed to for example fossil fuels, which contain the energy).

FTW. Also, it's just about possible that Picard is being sarcastic

The thing is, US is their main market, and also an area with oil resources. They simply can't outsource everything. And yeah, I agree that giving tax breaks to domestic companies could be a good idea. Not increasing them for the outsourcers, though; they would just solve the problem by outsourcing even more. The problem is, this kind of protectionism could cause similar reactions in other countries, limiting export. The multinational companies would no doubt do their best to prevent that kind of legislation; limiting their export possibilites and at the same time punishing them for abusing cheap labor?

However, there's no need for that many rubber duck salesmen. Since most tasks are becoming increasingly automated, need for human labor decreases (except for those who can handle automated systems). The solution to the problem for the people who have no place in work life would be to invent something new, but not everyone is capable of doing that, and they'd still need to get money from somewhere while they make plans.

I don't think the system we have here would help the McDonalds person. And if it does, it fails. I definately don't think that welfare should support anyone working under 35 hours a week if they have an option, unless all the options pay less. Defining "decent living" would probably go off topic, but I basically agree with you, except I wouldn't include the car public transport ftw. However, I would also include affording health care and suchlike.

Nice post I'm not sure why revenues would be the same if you tax more. O: Unless I don't understand the word revenue, which is possible. The problem with your village picture is that there's no compe!@#$%^&*ion. If we expand the picture.. sure - all ESSENTIAL people in a branch will get paid. However, even if Adam and 1000 of his friends are able to sell their corn, there might quite possibly be 100 other people who also have corn, but nobody to sell it to. What could they do? Well, they can lower prices. Finally, prices will hit the bottom, and 100 of the farmers will be out of business. Unless they sell all of their corn at a below-market price and try to find another job, living on their one-time profit for a while. The thing is, most people need a job more than others need the job they do. A majority of the people will have no problems, but there will always be some who do. Veg: I support regulations on welfare. Without regulations, it wouldn't be affordable. We just have different opinions of what parts of welfare are essential. I just think that everyone should be able to live a decent life by doing a decent amount of work. Ultimately, as I see it, it's all about whether it should be hard to live a decent life, but easy to advance once you've reached that, or whether it should be easy to live a decent life, but very hard to advance. I support the latter.

Compe!@#$%^&*ion is good My main point was that, even though profits might be the same in percentages, there's a vast difference between $8,000 and $8,000,000,000. I agree with you on the 50 million vs 100 million thing, since the profit volumes aren't that different. Just ask yourself: what do they do with the money? On a sidenote, I don't think "It's against government policy" is a problem as such if the whole discussion is about doing something the government hasn't done before.

Not everyone can have those, either. The thing is, there are jobs that don't pay enough. Nevertheless, someone has to do them. So !@#$%^&*uming everyone in the world had the motivation and direction (which can be PRETTY hard to define, since it's all about doing hard work anyway, and if your boss hates you you're screwed) someone would be out of luck. Quite a lot of someones, actually. So either we just assume that some people will be lazy no matter what, and point out that the laziest X% or so deserve to live in poverty.. or we decide that the fact that those X% won't be able to do anything about their situation, except by dragging someone else into the pit, is a problem. Just because someone works harder, longer, and with less work safety, it doesn't, in my opinion, mean they don't deserve a decent life. That's what welfare is all about - guaranteeing that even if you're out of luck, you can at least stay on your feet. In the hypothetical situation about the single 25-year-old with 2-3 kids and no education.. well, I don't think that your entire life should be ruined, as short as it may becone. And what about the kids - they'll suffer too, yet the situation is in no way their fault.

I'd like to point out that there's not enough management spots for everyone, no matter how educated they are. In fact, managament jobs are a minority. This means that no matter what they do, a majority of the people will NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO fail to get a good job, unless someone else fails. The hard-work-leads-to-profit system that you like so much is based on an !@#$%^&*umption that most people are too lazy to try - so if I were you, I wouldn't be too angry at them Anyway, a base fact of economics: tax cuts for everyone helps no-one, except those who sell things. Exactly the same as a general raise. Everyone having more money than before leads to increased consumtion. This in turn is a MAJOR booster of inflation, causing prices to go way high - just what happens when the government prints more money. It only leads to people having more things than before, while their savings lose value. Which is a problem for both the rich AND the poor - the rich lose more, while the poor probably end up not having enough money to buy food, not to mention paying the rent. That's what happens in a liberal economy.

There are lots of abusers. But there are also lots of people who put a LOT of effort in, and work three shifts, and never get OUT of that stage. Maybe they just don't get picked among those 100 applicants, though they try again and again and again. At one point, people will start wondering why they don't have any previous experience of anything, and they're out of work for good unless they get lucky. Or maybe you have a typical two-child family, and the father dies, the children being too young for a job. Those are people who need the support. On a sidenote, I believe that here in Finland, you need to apply for jobs to get the unemployment support thingy. Also, university is free. But then again, a degree means !@#$%^&* here, since 25% of the population has a post-secondary diploma. There's a downside to wide-spread education, too

Thinking in percentages doesn't always work, though. $8,000 isn't that much; $8,000,000,000 is VERY much. Sure, the percentages might be the same - but $8000 a year wouldn't do anyone any good, while $8,000,000,000 a year could be split between 200,000 people and STILL be a decent yearly income (well, semi-decent). Of course, once everything goes downhill, percentages are important. But unless some very remarkable technological progress is made, oil companies will keep being profitable. I agree that a 25% profit margin is higher. But how does Google get profits? As for the oil companies? There's a difference there. Also, oil is primary production (or whatever it's called in English), while a search engine is tertiary. Profit margins don't always work properly for those sectors - for example, the guy in the street corner who plays on the guitar with a hat upside down in front of him might have a 100000000% profit margin in case someone gave him the guitar.

Beating up another kid then lying about what I'd done in the fight Well, that was like 10 years ago, but meh. It's the lie that bothers me.

FOR: The oil industry can - unlike many other industries - be safely taxed, since the US is so big a market for it. They can hardly abandon ground. (Yeah, "because we can" is hardly a good argument, but here I think it's fairly valid) AGAINST: It is very possible that taxing them would just inspire them to up prices even more, in order to keep profits stable. Sure, this would further increase the taxes they pay, giving the government more money; on the other hand, that increase wouldn't cost the company any money, since all of the money paid would be directly from the higher prices.

Well yeah, debates like this rarely end before empirical experiments are conducted (and often not even then). I am well aware that a lot of people have to work unreasonably hard to earn their living; my point was that ideally, they shouldn't have to, or at least, conditions should be as humane as possible. Oh well. People being people, I guess no taxation would truly work, except in some kind of utopia. It's all about priorities. I'm aware that welfare can be abused; nevertheless, I prefer the system, knowing that at least some of the people really need the aid they recieve, and if some of the taxes I pay go to parasites - so be it. Others might prefer the legislation to allow for individual success if you work hard, and think that paying for leeches conflicts with their views of justice. Can't say which one is correct, but in the end, the principles seem to be mostly about this. Or then again, I may be wrong.

According to the original meanings of "the grand three" - conservatism, liberalism, and socialism - socialism is WAY more extreme than welfare. Also, liberalism advocates free market, so I don't see the irony, unless I failed to understand the quote, which is possible considering my weak English. Classical liberalism promotes the freedom of the individual. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism) I don't know which country you have on mind. The system I live in is nowhere near what you describe. Progressive taxation, and some economic health !@#$%^&*uming you fulfill certain requirements, sure. Now, saying this will probably label me as a leftie, but I think there's something wrong with having to work your !@#$%^&* off in a hot kitchen fryer for no benefits and a bad living style, especially considering Since the above sentence would SUPPORT lowering taxes for the fryer worker. I'm a middle-class person in a welfare country, at least that's what I like to think of myself as. Yet I don't think the system hurts me. We have universal health care, and I don't mind it, though at the moment bureaucracy has caused a failure. I'm not sure where you put the limits for the middle class, but if you mean that it's unfair not everyone will be able to have a private island and two private jets, I don't see the problem. Even with this system, it's possible to lead quite a luxurious life. That said, I think you should earn something for working more. Totally agree with this. Optimally, the progressive taxation should be aimed at THESE people, rather than, say, doctors or lawyers or suchlike (who, I suppose, are among those who you meant with "people who actually work"). Sure, he might have had a good idea, but I don't think one of those should be able to buy you and everyone in your vicinity everything for the rest of your life regardless if you do something anymore ever. It's possible that I've misunderstood a thing or two, and in that case, you have my apologies.

^ Also, the government isn't supposed to KEEP the tax money for itself. The government isn't there to earn money - it is there to act as a central system which has the capacity of handling things on a larger scale than the individual citizen could - including such things as infrastructure, health care etc. If the bureaucrats actually keep the tax money for themselves - the "step sidewards" that you mentioned - then the government, not the taxation, fails. Now, since I live in the Communist Welfare State of Finland, my opinion is probably biased (and I expect someone will point this out), but I think that pretty much everything Aileron says basically screams out that there's something wrong with The Government.

Are you guys still alive

I play whenever I see people there, but TBH, I no longer have the patience required to fly around for an hour waiting for someone to enter, like I used to at times.

Possibly a green setting rather than a ship one, but still.. ability for each ship to have their own PrizeWeight would be nice. Individual wall bounce, flag bonuses, weapon alive time, etc. Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about ASSS, so I can't tell if my suggestions are already possible with that. Definately a setting to adjust the BulletUpgradeEnergy (or whatever) for each ship.

We are the borg. We will !@#$%^&*imilate you. And those who don't join us will get owned so hard that they wish they had. Can't prove it though. Me want squadmatch.

Never banned, warned, silenced, anything. I don't break rules. Nearly got netbanned once though, when my connection spiked and a sysop thought I was speedhacking. Also, a mod once thought I was throwing racial slurs when I accused people of negging me, but that was solved.

Farewell. Have a good life (and come back on sometimes and tell us what a life is like). Also, you know you want that !@#$%^&* else you wouldn't have posted.

I'm fairly sure the tax system was made to prevent people from leaving after flag games (which is a major problem in flagging zones) - in fact, I'm far more than "fairly sure", since the "numbers getting too big" is nowhere near the problem that it would seem - everything costs millions of creds, anyway, so you could easily divide them with 10k without losing anything, but while lowering the numbers. Also, about HS, it is WAYYYY more unfair on new players than Devastation, I've been new to both fairly recently so I should be able to tell. However, HS is popular because it has a somewhat unique concept (for a spaceship zone); all Devastation has is its settings, which are no doubt good, but that forces it to compete with every single zone in the game, which makes having low pop pretty much self-explanatory. Larger zones, like TW, EG, or DSB, are invigorated basically by their huge number of players; having a lot of players is a major advantage in gameplay compe!@#$%^&*ion. As a mod, and a developer, I am very much aware that it is impossible to please everyone. However, I think a tax system like the one used has a good chance of annoying players (that said, quitting a zone because you can't look pretty 9-digit numbers is kinda lame); there should be some other way to keep players in the game. Would it be impossible to program the bot to give the players a certain number of credits for every kill they get while jackpot is low? Shouldn't be.. this could be a way to keep players in the game after a large jackpot is won (Credit gains for each kill will be triple for the next 15 minutes!); the credit gain for killing could be removed after the jackpot reaches a certain level, say 50 mil. To prevent the bot from going boom because of too high numbers, you could probably just divide all creds by a certain number; low enough so that you would be able to give a specific number of credits for everything, but high enough for numbers to stay low..? Also, taxation on credit gifts is kinda lame IMO, it discourages players with a lot of credits from helping out newbies with none. -Devastated

Could be done with 4 teams probably, if the 4 unused ships were set to look like the used ones.