What the Government Pays To Snoop On You 174
transporter_ii writes "So what does it cost the government to snoop on us? Paid for by U.S. tax dollars, and with little scrutiny, surveillance fees charged by phone companies can vary wildly. For example, AT&T, imposes a $325 'activation fee' for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Congressman Edward Markey."
certainly restoring the fourth amendment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Actually (Score:5, Funny)
AT&T Introduces Privacy+ Tier (Score:5, Funny)
It's funny. I wrote this in 2006 and originally posted it to Slashdot. Turns out, it was a fairly prophetic piece. It got posted to Slashnot, google finance picked it up, and listed it as a blog post under AT&T's stock!
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AT&T Introduces Privacy+ Tier for Consumers and an NSA Turbo-Speed Tier for the government, at Market-Leading Prices
Wednesday April 26, 6:00 am ET
For $24.95 a month extra, the new Privacy+ Tier offers consumers the ability to feed all data to the NSA at the slowest speeds available. However, for an extra $28.95 per month, per customer, the NSA can override the Privacy+ Tier and spy on Americans at Speeds of up to 6.0 Megabits per Second
SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2006--AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T - News) today announced a new, higher-privacy tier for its AT&T Yahoo!® High Speed Internet service that meets consumers' growing outrage for allowing the NSA full availability to its backbone. At the same time, it announced a new NSA Turbo-Speed Tier that, for a fee, allows the government to override the newly introduced Privacy+ Tier.
Beginning Monday, May 1, new residential customers who order AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet service online through www.att.com can purchase the Privacy+ Tier -- offering data to the NSA at speeds sometimes as slow as 56k. (other monthly charges and a 12-month term commitment apply). Effective today, the new Privacy+ Tier is available for $24.99, when it is ordered with a qualifying service bundle. Existing AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet customers can upgrade to the Privacy+ service through the company's Web site and take advantage of the current pricing promotion beginning Monday.
"Consumers are craving greater privacy, and now with the AT&T Privacy+ service, they can at least get the satisfaction that the government is going to get their private data at the slowest speeds possible; "Consumers could easily get more privacy from a company that doesn't offer the NSA a fat pipe right onto its backbone, but with the incredible amount of money that the government paid us for that pipe, we just couldn't pass it up. The new Privacy+ Tier, tips the scales back just a little bit in favor of the consumer," said Scott Helbing, chief marketing officer-AT&T Consumer.
Also effective Monday, May 1, the NSA can sign up for the new NSA Turbo-Speed Tier, which for an extra $28.95 per month, per customer, allows the government to override the newly created Privacy+ Tier. "The NSA is craving greater speed to American's private communications, and now with the NSA Turbo-Speed Tier, they can at least get the satisfaction that they can resume domestic spying at the highest speeds possible; "The NSA will be hard-pressed to find this speed at a better price, for a full 12 months, from one of our leading competitors," said Scott Helbing, chief marketing officer-AT&T Consumer.
AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet also announced that with the NSA paying an undisclosed, but very large amount of money for access to its backbone data, and with a higher than expected demand from consumers, that it has decided to ask popular web sites, such as Google and eBay to also pay a monthly fee to insure a speedy deliver of all consumer data to these web sites. In that regard, AT&T Yahoo introduced the new Extortion-racket Tier.
Also, in a move that is sure to stun Wall Street, AT&T has announced that they will soon enter the "garbage collection" business.
About the New AT&T
AT&T Inc. is one of the world's largest telecommunications holding companies and is the largest in the United States. Operating globally under the AT&T brand, AT&T companies are recognized as the leading worldwide providers of IP-based communications services to business and as leading U.S. providers of high-speed DSL Internet, local and long distance voice, and directory publishing and advertising services. AT&T Inc. holds a 60 percent ownership interest in Cingular Wireless, which is the No. 1
Re:AT&T Introduces Privacy+ Tier (Score:5, Funny)
For $24.95 a month extra, the new Privacy+ Tier offers consumers the ability to feed all data to the NSA at the slowest speeds available. However, for an extra $28.95 per month, per customer, the NSA can override the Privacy+ Tier and spy on Americans at Speeds of up to 6.0 Megabits per Second
You can't stop them from giving the NSA your data, but for an extra $29.99 a month you can have AT&T re-class your data as Privacy+ tier which costs the NSA an extra $599.99 in monthly surcharges to obtain. For the extra-privacy-conscious, you can name your price ($50 or greater) for PrivacyUnlimited and whatever you spend per month will cost the NSA 30 times as much to obtain.
AT&T: We're Listening
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Re:It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it costs us twice. First, to get cell phone service (acceptable though whether the amount is fair is arguable) and second to send our data to the NSA without our approval (definitely NOT acceptable). And the phone companies get paid twice by us (well, once by the government using our tax money). So they aren't likely to argue too strenuously against this unless the potential for bad PR is too high. (In other words, they'll work doubly hard to keep the whole thing secret.)
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You happen to be wrong because you are forgetting the multiplier effect. Every dollar the government spends is spent repeatedly before it ends up stopped in a savings account or cash horde somewhere. This is why income/wealth is taxed in the first place, to force it back into circulation.
Taking money and then just spending it immediately IS wealth generating, it is the driver of inflation and all that stuff.
Savings and interest payments have the opposite effect, money that is hoarded is a drag on the econom
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I can't believe anyone could be that ignorant. Piles of printed paper, digital records in computers, lumps of shiny metal, various crystals are all completely and totally valueless with economic activity defining their wealth. It is the trade in goods, resources and, skills that define value and hence wealth. Your simpleton view, that somehow you can survive in a capitalistic world sitting on your meaningless hoard without spending it and creating economic activity, is just so unfathomably ignorant.
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Piles of printed paper, digital records in computers, lumps of shiny metal, various crystals are all completely and totally valueless with economic activity defining their wealth.
No. Such things are considered wealth because they either have value to someone or they can be exchanged for things that have value to someone.
It is the trade in goods, resources and, skills that define value and hence wealth.
No. It is the goods, resources, and skills that have value to someone and hence, are wealth. Trade expedites the matching of the providing of such things to those who need such things. Yes, it does create wealth by enabling cooperative behavior that wouldn't exist in the absence of the trade. But the trade itself is not the wealth.
Your simpleton view, that somehow you can survive in a capitalistic world sitting on your meaningless hoard without spending it and creating economic activity, is just so unfathomably ignorant.
Well, you're clearly not the person
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No. Let me guess, you `invest' your money into gold. *snicker*
No, I was merely stating the obvious.
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This is so ridiculous that I can't tell whether you are trying to make fun of Keynesian economics and progressivism or whether you are that ignorant.
Just on the off-chance that you are actually serious...
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Savings and investment are also wealth generators because it's money being loaned out to people who have some sort of track record of knowing what to do with it, otherwise there wouldn't be any interest payments.
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That's only true if your "savings" is stuffed in your mattress. If your "savings" is in a bank "Saving Account", Money Market Account, Certificate of Deposit, or similar, it's quite beneficial to the economy, as the bank then loans the money out, giving you a cut of the interest.
This should be something you learn when you are 5 years old... The same bank you use for your savings and checking accounts, is where you go to get a mortga
Re:It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually many of the activities of the government are wealth producing, including science, education and infrastructure.
The funny thing is that obviously false FoxNews talking point gets modded +5 Insightful because it appeals to people to be told that money was unjustly taken from them.
p.s. By the way people out there reading this with mod points, you are all extremely handsome and you pay too much taxes, and you deserve a raise.
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The government able to pay for crap like this is proof that we are over taxed, and the government get's too much funding.
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We are undertaxed. How can we tell? because we are running a deficit. As simple as that.
Say if you go to a restaurant and start paying by installments. How do you go about finding out if you have over or underpaid? well you check to see if you still have a deficit on your tab, if there is still one you haven't paid enough. It is no different with the government,
What you are trying to say is that the government is overspending and I might or might not agree with you (in fact, I agree with you: it overspends
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Say if you go to a restaurant and start paying by installments. How do you go about finding out if you have over or underpaid? well you check to see if you still have a deficit on your tab, if there is still one you haven't paid enough.
The issue isn't about overpaying, it's about over-ordering. You have $10. The restaurant charges $8 for a burger, and $12 for steak. You order the steak. The deficit is most directly caused by your ordering decision, not the fact that you didn't bring enough cash, because the ordering decision happened after you had full knowledge of your cash on hand and the price on the menu.
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I agree, that's exactly my point: We are not overtaxed.
Depending on your political preferences we are either overspending or undertaxed (or both). But we most definitely are not overtaxed. This is follows from basic accounting definitions. As simple as that.
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Accounting is a very poor indicator of tax increase/decrease. If you say we had a tax rate of 20% and took in $2b that doesn't mean that a 30% tax rate will bring in $3b or that a 10% tax rate will only bring in $1b.
Otherwise the government could just say, "Look there are 100 Million movie goers every year, lets just add a $1000 tax to movie tickets and we'd be out of debt in no time." Obviously at this high tax rate they will get almost no income from movie ticket sales, also they will get no income from
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High taxes from the government can only be used to punish unwanted behavior not to increase revenue.
Not so. Higher taxes during the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations increased revenue. Look it up. In fact data suggests that revenue will continue increasing, albeit progressively more slowly, until somewhere around 60-70% of GDP. Of course at that level we are getting rather diminishing returns, so it is not worth chasing the last 10-15%. However from a purely revenue perspective collections would increase rather nicely until around a net tax rate of 50%.
As I said, there might be many other reasons why w
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Yep, looked it up, higher taxes killed the economy just before the lower taxes spurred it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/07/16/the-dangerous-myth-about-the-bill-clinton-tax-increase/ [forbes.com]
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No, i said high taxes result in lower revenues. Of course taxes of zero don't produce infinite revenue. If you're looking for the opinion part of my post it's that the government should hover in the point below where revenues go down and error on the too low side.
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I agree, that's exactly my point: We are not overtaxed.
That's true, but it's not the issue. Nobody is concerned with whether the amount of tax collected is equal to the amount of tax that is supposed to be collected.
Just like your restaurant example, you're focusing on something that nobody is concerned about (overpaying your bill, versus over-ordering your food). I guess this is a technically a strawman argument even though you are literally correct. It's just that when people say they're overtaxed, they are not talking about what you're talking about.
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It's just that when people say they're overtaxed, they are not talking about what you're talking about.
So it's they which are equivocating and selling a false bill of goods. This actually suggests that the arguments for tax cuts are not very good, and hence they have to rely on misstatements such as "we are overtaxed" to support them.
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So it's they which are equivocating
"Overtaxed" means you feel that you are paying too much for what you get from the government. Going back to your restaurant analogy, it's like saying the food is overpriced. Since the tax an individual pays is his price for government it's a pretty good analogy.
In some hypothetical literal sense of "overpriced", nothing is "overpriced" because the price is what it is. That type of reasoning seems a bit silly. We know what "overpriced" and "overtaxed" mean and I don't think it's an equivocation to use these
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"Overtaxed" means you feel that you are paying too much for what you get from the government.
Nope. Republicans have re-written the definition to mean that, but it is incorrect.
Going back to your restaurant analogy, it's like saying the food is overpriced.
Correct, there is a term for that which is "overpriced", yet republicans on purpose are using the term "overcharged" in an attempt to muddle the issue.
A place might charge you $2K for a burger which is waaay overpriced, but it you knowingly go in and order the two-grand burger you cannot complain about being overcharged.
Similarly with the government, every year we elect representatives who spend like drunken sailors, particul
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Nope. Republicans have re-written the definition to mean that, but it is incorrect.
If the definition has been rewritten, then now it is correct and you're incorrect. Do a search for "the rich are undertaxed" and you'll find that Democrats are in full agreement with Republicans about what under/over taxed means, and it has nothing to do with whether they were taxed what they were supposed to be taxed. It means the taxes are too low. Overtaxed means the taxes are too high.
Correct, there is a term for that which is "overpriced", yet republicans on purpose are using the term "overcharged" in an attempt to muddle the issue.
Overcharge:
Verb
Charge (someone) too high a price for goods or a service.
Noun
An excessive charge for goods or a service.
S
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Yet it has been proven time and again that lowering high taxes increases revenue for the government due to increased economic activity. getting $100 from 10 transactions is not as good as getting $10 form 1000 because people aren't being charge $100 per taxable transaction they will do significantly more of them. This is not theory it is proven with actual tax rate changes, both raising and lowering throughout history and in every country that kept records.
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Yet it has been proven time and again that lowering high taxes increases revenue for the government due to increased economic activity
Actually not at all. FoxNews and the GOP repeat this all the time hoping that naive people will fall for it, but if you look at actual evidence there is no support for this claim.
All present evidence by economists from all sides of the political spectrum suggest that we are on the other side of the Laffer curve, the one where increased taxes means increased revenues. See for
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I checked on Clinton tax policy and most definitely his reduction of taxes in Capital gains significantly increased revenue.
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You cannot look at isolated taxes, some go up, some go down. The tax take as percentage of GDP went up steadily for all of Clinton years in office.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205 [taxpolicycenter.org]
So did revenues. That was the only time in recent memory that the USA posted a budget surplus.
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How stupid did you think AC was?
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The government isn't a producer of wealth. Every penny it spends is taken from us.
Whereas the private sector just pulls money out of thin air, huh?
What exactly does it mean to produce wealth in your mind? Please explain in a such a manner that accounts for both inputs and outputs and yet explains how the government's use of money doesn't meet this definition.
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With that logic every penny we all spend is taken from our employers?
To answer your question... with that logic, no.
Perhaps you don't understand that logic?
The fact of the matter is that you, in collusion with your employer, create wealth.
Spending is not wealth creation. Adding value is wealth creation.
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You might want to get a new introductory economics book. Yours sounds like it was written to promote a political view rather than actually, ya know, teach economics.
The government is just as capable of producing wealth as any other entity. If the government spends money on a program that adds more value to the economy than the cost of the program (such as food assistance, which has close to a 2:1 return), then the government has produced wealth. Whether the entity is public or private doesn't figure into it
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Bzzt! You lose. For your "theory", lets say the government buys a $1000 widget. It didn't produce that widget, it spent the money to buy that widget. It didn't spend $1000 for that widget, it spent $1200 because the government has its overhead. The best part is it took that $1200 from wealth producers and it cost the government an additional $100 to run the IRS for that. On top of that it will probably spend $400 in interest on loans for that original amount.
So, by your example, being generous the gov
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Bzzt! You lose. For your "theory", lets say the government buys a $1000 widget. It didn't produce that widget, it spent the money to buy that widget. It didn't spend $1000 for that widget, it spent $1200 because the government has its overhead.
Bzzt! You lose. The government pays at least 400% markup on anything it buys.
Re:It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, that's the most oversimplified attempt at discussing economics I've seen for a long time. Hint: economics is complicated - if it were easy we'd have a simple working system that everyone could agree one (or, at least, the people who worked out out would get very rich by betting on the economy 100% correctly and other people would notice) - and any explanation that simple is likely to be wrong.
Consider the following counter example:
The government builds and maintains a road between two places. This employs people, taking them out of the labour pool where they could be doing other things, so it's a cost. But it also allows the two places to trade more cheaply, which increases wealth production. Similarly, employers at either end of the road would have access to a wider pool of employees and potential employees to a wider pool of employers and so people would end up in more productive employment.
Now, would the same apply if private industry built the road? This is where it starts to get more complicated. First, who would build the road? It might be some consortium of businesses at both ends who wanted to use it. If so, then they might charge money to anyone not part of the consortium to use it, which would give them a competitive advantage, but be less healthy for the economy as a whole by producing a barrier to competition (and, most specifically, a barrier to entry for new companies).
It might be a third party that thought that the road would be profitable, who would run it as a 'common carrier' toll road. This, however, would provide a disincentive for people to use it. If they priced it too low, then they'd go out of business (which would discourage future road-building companies). If they priced it too high, then they'd make it unprofitable for some users to use it, however given that the cost of the road is now a sunk cost the economy as a whole benefits if as many people as would gain any benefit at all from it use it.
In some cases, the benefit to the economy may be significantly lower than the cost of the road, so it would not make sense for the government to make the investment. It's often difficult to make that call, however. In the UK, be Beeching Report identified a large number of unprofitable railway lines and, to save taxpayer money, the nationalised railway service closed them. Unfortunately, it turned out that a lot of the unprofitable lines were ones that got people from near where they lived to a more profitable line. When they were closed, people at the edges ended up having to buy cars, which meant that they no longer used the larger lines either, and so pushed those into unprofitability (and so there was a second Beeching Report some years later which repeated the entire mistake). The cost to the economy of no longer having a widespread, cheap, railway network is widely agreed by economists to be significantly greater than the savings from closing the lines.
A nationally owned private rail operator may have seen further ahead, but most likely they'd have had shareholders making the same demands: sell off the unprofitable lines and concentrate on the profitable ones. A larger number of smaller railway operators would have had similar problems, with the ones operating the unprofitable lines going out of business and reducing demand on the profitable ones.
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Bzzt! You lose. For your "theory", lets say the government buys a $1000 widget. It didn't produce that widget, it spent the money to buy that widget. It didn't spend $1000 for that widget, it spent $1200 because the government has its overhead. The best part is it took that $1200 from wealth producers and it cost the government an additional $100 to run the IRS for that. On top of that it will probably spend $400 in interest on loans for that original amount.
If that's true, then banks and venture capitalist
Re:It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:5, Interesting)
The government is just as capable of producing wealth as any other entity.
Capable != actually doing it. The private world has the profit motive for keeping it productive. The activity has to generate some sort of value to the actor beyond its cost or it isn't generating a profit.
If the government spends money on a program that adds more value to the economy than the cost of the program (such as food assistance, which has close to a 2:1 return), then the government has produced wealth.
Where is this study that claims a 2:1 return? I decided to google for this and came across this study [usda.gov]. The money quote:
SNAP brings Federal dollars into communities in the form of benefits which are redeemed by SNAP participants at local stores. These benefits ripple throughout the economies of the community, State, and Nation. For example:
* Every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates $9.00 in total community spending.
* Every additional dollarâ(TM)s worth of SNAP benefits generates 17 to 47 cents of new spending on food.
* On average, $1 billion of retail food demand by SNAP recipients generates close to 3,000 farm jobs.
Note that $5 in spending produces $9 in spending not wealth. So right there we don't have a 2:1 return. As I see it, we take $5 of someone's money and use it to generate far less than $5 of value - feeding someone who can feed themselves. That's negative return on investment right there.
It's a destructive economic gimmick to conflate spending or economic activity with wealth creation. They aren't equivalent or even correlated. For example, a disaster creates a lot of spending and economic activity (from reconstruction efforts), but it results in a net loss of wealth.
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The private world has the profit motive for keeping it productive.
They have the motive to make profit. That does not necessarily equate to being productive. There are many companies right now that have increased profits with decreased revenues and decreased production. Where's the wealth building in that?
Note that $5 in spending produces $9 in spending not wealth. So right there we don't have a 2:1 return. As I see it, we take $5 of someone's money and use it to generate far less than $5 of value - feeding someone who can feed themselves. That's negative return on investment right there.
You are correct that spending does not equal wealth building. However, there is some correlation. Spending on durable goods is a good indicator of wealth building. The U.S. GDP is somewhere around $16 trillion. U.S. wealth is calculated at over $100 trillion.
It's a destructive economic gimmick to conflate spending or economic activity with wealth creation. They aren't equivalent or even correlated. For example, a disaster creates a lot of spending and economic activity (from reconstruction efforts), but it results in a net loss of wealth.
There
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There is certainly spending that represents a consumption of wealth as well as spending that represents the production of wealth. I think you might be interested in this graph [wikipedia.org] The bottom 40% have .2% and yet we are led to believe that we should tax them more. The government could tax everything they have and it would be almost nothing.
Let us keep in mind that the "bottom 40%" engage in wealth-wasting behavior such as drug use, excessive and financially foolish spending, gambling, etc. Even if they don't have wealth, they do get an income. If we're going to spend more money, might as well get more from the people who aren't using it.
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Which is a demand that's absolutely impossible to meet, so you can sleep comfortably that nobody will ever "defeat" your argument.
Opportunity cost is always very difficult to show. It's not so funny now when you have to do that rather than me.
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See also: slave labor.
Re:It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:5, Interesting)
That money the government spent was taken away from someone who then couldn't invest it in something else. So, in order to show a net benefit to society, it's not sufficient to show that the government produced a positive return, it's necessary to show that it produced a positive return that was larger than the person the money was taken away from would have gotten, and that these benefits are large enough to compensate for the additional negative effects that taxation and government spending have.
Of course, your claim of a "2:1 return" is unsubstantiated to begin with. The USDA study where this number seems to come from (you fail to provide sources for your ridiculous statement, so you leave your readers guessing) claims an economic multiplier of 1.79. An "economic multiplier" is not a "return". You can have "economic multipliers" with no net benefit to society at all, or even negative "returns". And even that number is based on a single report, using an economic model (rather than empirical data), created by single person at an organization with a strong interest to make SNAP appear in a positive light.
I happen to think SNAP is one of the better welfare programs and should continue, but your statements about it border on fraud.
Re: It costs the government NOTHING. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I think then the government should take all the money you earn and reallocate it. You can live in public housing and get SNAP for food. According to you, it's clear that that would produce the greatest societal benefits, since the government according to you knows better what to do with your earnings than you do.
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Ya know what would be weird?
If, say, there were actually a gradual curve between pure capitalism and pure communism, and the optimal point along that curve were somewhere in between the far ends. That would be really strange. But the world is a very simple, black and white place, and everything is completely straightforward, and there's no middle ground, which is why slippery slope arguments are always true and correct.
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It was Ohnocitizen who saw the world in black-and-white, arguing that any positive return by the government whatsoever was better than any profit. Since SNAP has a positive return, according to his criteria, it would be best for everybody if we took away all his money. I simply said that taxation and social programs need to be justified by clearly demonstrating that the societal benefits outweigh the costs.
As for "slippery slope", that's not my idea. In fact, it's the idea of Marx and Lenin, who argued (in
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As for "slippery slope", that's not my idea. In fact, it's the idea of Marx and Lenin, who argued (in effect) that taxation, social programs, and other such progressive favorites are the road towards the realization of communism.
It was just as fallacious when they used it. Marx and Lenin, much like Ayn Rand and her ilk, are wrong about all sorts of things.
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Also, I noticed you're avoiding my actual point.
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I gave clear criteria for when government programs are economically justified. What more do you want?
I suppose I can say one more thing. You wrote:
There is no such thing as "pure capitalism" or "pure communism". You're babbling in meaningless ideologies. There are economic policies, and some of them benefit society while others don't accordin
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Well, there you have your answer: you can't have a "gradual curve" between communism and anything because Marx and Lenin didn't know what they were talking about and communism is not a logically sound economic theory.
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People like you have never shown that increasingly transferring these functions to government or spending more money on them even achieve their stated goals. In fact, it's clear they don't: we're spending far more than European nations and getting no better results.
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It's not intended to be an argument; it's cynicism and ridicule. For the argument look up in the thread.
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How would we know how it would work out? Since WWII, we have had a nearly constant rise in government spending and entitlements. Yet if you listen to progressives, poverty, racism, lack of health care, and other problems are rampant. And despite spending much more per capita on health care and education than other nations, we're doing no better. Government spending is nearly 40% of GDP now; how much higher does it have to go according to you before the utopia you promise will arrive? And where is the evide
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Okay, I'm convinced.
The existence of this single data point disproves research and statistical analysis.
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And the receipt you linked a screenshot to is highly biased due to selection bias (look here, I found a receipt that makes my point!), and contains no research or analysis whatsoever. You provide no data at all except for a single cherry-picked receipt and then criticize the source of mine because you think there might be bias in it, based on your perceptions of the source?
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There's a difference between ignorance and a self-evident truth that you happen not to like.
slightly off topic (Score:3)
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It's not quite that bad. [wikipedia.org] The current rules are complex and stupid, but not necessarily more evil than any similar complex bureaucratic regulation.
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You can export and offer all the strong encryption you like and present it internationally.
The text or voice or data entry would be on MS or some other US OS/hardware.
The cloud 'key' better turn it back to plain text on a US server.
You data is safe in transit, never safe at each US end.
Think CALEA with extra "illegal weapon" jail time if you or your company does not want to sit down and play nice.
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Now we have a no papers needed to fly plot, in the past you just watched some property burn.
Its about the money. (Score:1)
Once again, its all about the money. As bad as it is for the companies to sell this information, I find it much worse that that the government is secretly spending our money on spying on us. A warrant will get them access for free if its justified, right?
Sequester the NSA's funding please. Congress, really, how unpopular would it be to take that money away and spend it on some other stupid program or maybe even a good one?
NSA budget is classified (Score:1)
i mean, if you want to start talking about leaks of highly sensitive information, you cant get much more sensitive.
whoever put this info out there is basically, legally, the same as edward snowden.
and also a bunch of people on obama's staff who leaked classified info about the bin ladin raid.
Re: (Score:3)
What could this possibly have to do with the NSA budget? This is just what different companies charge the government for wiretaps, that's all.
Wonder what Sprint charges? (Score:5, Funny)
Because they're sure not using it to make their network worth a crap.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They're expanding their direct connections to the NSA. They found out it's a better business model to set up wiretaps than it is to provide good internet connections.
Re: (Score:3)
By having a shitty network it could be argued Sprint is looking out for their customers privacy.
Empower me (Score:3, Funny)
So the NSA is going to do it anyways... at least let me sell my data. Give me a tax break or something...
Telecoms (Score:3)
If the day ever comes, the people in charge of these telecoms need to be the first ones put up against the wall.
Well, maybe the second ones...
Good for Verizon (Score:1)
I' d rather be on the network that charges the government the most to listen to my phone calls...
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
So now we know Skypes business model (Score:2, Interesting)
This must be Skypes business model then. Well do you think Microsoft develops all these backdoors and supplies them for free? No way! The company was never worth $7 billion on it's disclosed revenue, it must have had some other value to Microsoft.
Next big elephant in the room, IS WINDOW BACKDOORED. I mean beyond the NSA certificate, has Microsoft sent down updates that are really NSA spy packages?
How much of Silicon valleys business is a subsidy from the US Gov in the form of a pay-to-spy?
It gets worse. (Score:5, Funny)
For example, AT&T, imposes a $325 'activation fee' for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it.
These are only promotional introductory rates, good for the first 24 months. After that, the charges revert to "standard" rates, the details of which are not available anywhere.
Even the NSA has not been able to find any information on what they will have pay at the end of the promotional period.
Cut out the middleman! (Score:2)
Hell, they could just pay me and I'll conference in a number they provide on every call.
so much money (Score:3)
How about they just pay me $500/month and I'll let them listen to one of my phone lines 0.o That's a lot of money I could use right now. Hell, they can make it $3000/month and I'll let them have one of my email addresses, my skype, and one of my phone lines.. even the text messages for that line... (I'll just then be careful what I say on those specific sources xD )
Re: (Score:2)
my skype
Microsoft [slashdot.org] already gave that up for you
So what you're saying is (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I read The Guardian
So what you're saying is, you've got that perception covered for them?
That big price tag would be more satisfactory (Score:2)
If it didn't come out of your own pocket.
Re: (Score:2)
If it didn't come out of your own pocket.
well, these are just the legit on warrant taps. not the dump taps.
It's not the government that pays, (Score:2)
it is YOU, the tax payers. So, in effect, you are all paying for being surveyed. Yes, me, too.
Why am i suddenly feeling all warm and cosy – not?
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares, most people in this country are statist/authoritarians. I'm glad the govt is sucking them dry, spending $600k on facebook likes and **** like that. They voted these people in, they should reap the misery they produced.
Save Tax Dollars (Score:2)
You don't think those fees get *paid*, do you? (Score:2)
Look at all the tax and right-of-way concessions already being made. It's one of the annoying little things about so-called "deregulation" - some of the regulations
They like to pay for this service (Score:2)
Spying is a profit center (Score:2)
As long as carriers are making good money off snooping, they're not going to strongly oppose it. Make it so they can only charge a nominal fee (say, $20) and watch their opposition increase.
If this DOESN'T piss you off.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A [wikipedia.org] you would only need a few cleared contractors for every packet.
The warrant seems to be more an exchange level log/link/tap just on your line and seems to need hands on efforts or internal legally cleared US admin paperwork.
Roving taps, sneak and peek and other PATRIOT Act fun seems to be lost in the funding mix?
Re: (Score:2)
They will still get you from the numbers you ring and sooner or later get your voice print due to the contacts made.
Say you ring 20 people. 2 could be undercover or turned - all logged. 1 could be known and under active surveillance.
If a 3G data connection was not easy to track it would have never been adopted as a standard.
The standard would have been send back to the developers until the US/UK govs where happy with it ie keep amateur scanners out, gov gets it all.