I misread.

They all ought to have a real army, though. Didn't the European armies go home for the weekend during the Cold War in Germany?

Denmark has an army to face off against us Canadians. We have a fierce border dispute over Hans Island. How dare you vikings violate our arctic sovereignty!

Most entertaining war ever! Seriously? That could be a movie!

I have to agree with GodofWar on this one. America has turned into a lazy society. If we would quit giving people money for sitting on their butts at home than maybe they would go get a job. So many of those people don't pay taxes already so on Obama's tax plan the government will be sending them checks. His above the $250,000 mark for raising taxes will affect 90% of small business owners. These are the foundation of the economy. You will see a loss in employment, hours, and pay-cuts. Not what we need.

I'm 100% serious. But its not very big and it takes a long time to get there.

But autiger really? 90% of small business owners have an income of over 250 000? That doesn't sound like small business at all. And if it is, your businesses are doing just fine and can probably just take the relatively small income hit rather than firing people.

The profits of the business is not the same as individual income, the latter being the basis for income tax brackets.

We all get to learn something new today!

Learning! Yay!

autiger, i think you might be getting business Revenue, Profit and Owner/Shareholder Earnings mixed up. any business that has a dividend of 250k a year would have a profit figure much larger than that and a revenue figure 2-3 times(if not more) that.
if a small business owner is smart and uses the tax code to his or her advantage plus throw in things like company cars and other fringe benefits then to still bring in $250,000 a year in pure shareholder returns...... thats not 90% of small businesses.

howver i dont run a small business so if anybody does i would like to hear from them about this matter.

Sean, maybe you should read Joe the Plumber's statements about his imaginary money.

actually, the relatively small scale rorting in any welfare system is a small price to pay for a working class bulwark against the rapacious top 10% that skim the cream, a class that has no compunction about creating a pool of "structural unemployed " to suit their needs

and show me a revolution where the upper class remnant allied with the middle class, didn't screw the working class...

I have to say that in PHPDip, we have a welfare system. No matter how much you loose (If you can get a job or not), you are ensured to have 100 points (are ensured a minimum income), because every user (human being) has the right to play (live) regardless of his skill (capacity to find/keep a job).

Kestas, you communist pig...

xapi, its the future. in a post scarcity economy life will be like this. basics will be free and anyhting more you will need to work for.

sean...you been reading too much sci fi....dfn 'post scarcity'

sean, it's the future where? and when?

I mean, of course, if you live in Sweden, you have that, more or less, right now. If you live in the US, it may be a couple of decades away, not more (This is, of course, if "americans" get over their fear of anything that sounds remotely similar to "redistribution of wealth", "social justice" or, God forbid, "socialism").

But what about India, where people who HAVE jobs are starving. And, of course, those people working yet starving are one of the reasons the "developed" countries are much better off, and the reason most multimillion dollar corporations get to have those multiple millions of dollars.

What about Africa? How much time and effort would it take for the basics to be covered in Africa?

And, will these corporations wich, as I said, owe part of their profits to the low wages they pay thirld world workers, stand idle as someone guarantees the basic (more than they give their employees) to these people?

It could happen, I'm not saying it can't.

I'm saying I've read some History, and every momevent with an intention similar to that was put down like a dog.

We are still a long way from a world where the basic human rights are guaranteed for everyone.

Things get nationalised when the free market fails. Private health insurance has a way of failing to give everyone health care. Because of this western democracies have moved to either nationalised health insurance or entirely nationalised health systems.

At the same time many people are unable to afford to go to university. This has lead to many countries having the government pay for or at least subsidize university fees to allow the best selection of people with higher education.

People vote for partial socialism when the free market fails to look after everyone. If the free market allowed everyone to easily gain health care and pay to get into university the government wouldn't need to intervene.

The truth is that everyone wants many aspects of socialism whether you want to use it as a dirty word or not.

like I said...we all want insurance against the dark side...
on the other hand, the economy is the secret police of our desires

Lets talk when you understand teh difference between "their" and "there".

or can spell the :p

@ trim101 - ZING!

who was it said that it is easier to pass het thread of grammar through the eye of spelling and the needle of syntax, than to reach heaven....oh!... the same guy who was on about throwing the first stone...

DISCLAIMER - The following post speaks about Nordic and Scandinavian countries *in general*. It does not describe accurately the reality of any of those countries, nor it tries to imply that every single citizen from there will have the set of attributes described below. Still, generalising is a good mean to point out macro-differences between countries. [end of disclaimer]

The reason for which welfare works so well in Nordic countries, is that the people living there knows what being a citizen means. They know about their set of duties as much as their set of rights, and they tend to accomplish their duties as much as they tend to make good use of their rights.

One of the most amazing things I experienced in Northern Europe is that people there seem to have got under their skin the idea that there is a "common good", more important that individual "better than good". A few years ago the elections in Norway (according to UN statistics of the time Norway was the country with the best welfare system in the world) saw two main candidates: one was saying "We have the best welfare ever. We can therefore afford to cut some taxes". The other guy was saying "We have the best welfare ever, but it is not perfect, therefore we should keep on investing on it". The second candidate won.

While the story above does not demonstrate anything, it is still a good example of how many Scandinavians and Nordic countries people think.

Sure, people and entrepreneurs over there are pursuing their own dreams, which at times include becoming rich. But they consider the "common good" as a condition without which pursuing the individual wealth/success would makes no sense.

People there do not gamble with the future of their children, nor with the future of their neighbour's ones: they do not think "If I am lucky, I will be wealth enough to pay for their college and health coverage. If my neighbour can't afford that it must be because he did not try hard enough". They rather think: "Access to quality education and health coverage is a right, so the only way to guarantee this right to everybody is that everybody contribute - accordingly to their capacities - to it".

The average Scandinavian understand the notion of social cost. They understand that unskilled labour means less competitiveness, they understand that disenfranchised youth can bring criminality, they understand that sense of insecurity bring less economical transactions, they understand that the choices of today must ponder the problems of tomorrow.

However - while the Scandinavian welfare is legendary - welfare also works well in countries like France and Spain, which have a less developed sense of citizenship. It even works decently in a country like Italy, notorious for having an underdeveloped civil society...

As archonix put it: everyone wants many aspects of "socialism" (I would have used a different word, but that is not the point): pursuing a common goal - though - requires a far much developed civil society than having each individual pursuing his own personal agenda... Some countries have got that already, some countries are realising that right now and - sadly - some countries are forgetting that...

@Xapi: and there is horrible point inflation. users who lose getting free points is just people without jobs being given money by the government that was not earned but printed.

First and foremost, the word "horrible" describing point inflation made me laugh a lot.

Secondly, yes, that is exactly what it is, but I don't see it as a bad thing (in PHPDip). Point inflation is, in my opinion, good, especially as the players base grows. It allows for different "levels" of play, wich is what the system originally intended.

If you play a game for 100 D or less, you know that you may find a novice, or a player that has lost more than he has won. If you play a game for 101 to 300 D you'd guarantee that the players have all, at least in the past games, done fairly well, and so on, untill if you play a game for over 2000 D you know you'll play the best of the best.

Third, if you still want to keep inflation down while giving loosers their points back to 100, you should tax income.

@Xapi - right there with you. I can't see how point inflation matters at all in PHPDip, and... well you outline several possible advantages.

Inflation is only bad when it actually harms people. Here there is really no way for that to happen.

low inflation certainly has become a mantra for our political classes but is it so bad for those with cash investments ?...they after all are getting a higher return...is this offset, all the time by an increased cost of living...? or is there/ their cream to be skimmed there ?