$$ Taxes $$ What's right?

Zhelana said:
Yes, I know the Soviets were human. That doesn't mean their government cared about individual people - even individual cosmonauts. Whether individual people cared about each other or their children (required to create children) is entirely unrelated to whether their government cared about the people (a definitive no).
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This is one of the definitive traits of the russian institutional mentality -- that people are just cogs in the machine, and matter only inasmuch as they affect the said machine, but not as individual persons.

IIRC soviet government started caring about pencils in space when those started causing equipment malfunctions.
 
here when you die your estate is liable for your debts if the estate doesnt cover it the debt dies with you.
I had a brother in law with a terminal diagnosis he spent his last years living life to the full on his credit card when he died he left nothing but debts having already liquidated the capital in his house so the house went to the bank.

If you have a mortgage one of the conditions is that you have sufficient life insurance to pay it off should you die during the term of the mortgage
 
Nice story but doesn't address the point -- that in a complex society with complex social and economic institutions, future generations inherit the works of the previous generations (good or bad) all the time.

There's nothing special about "debt" in that respect. It's just another aspect of our society and governance that we leave to future generations. Of course we want to leave them as good a world as we can, but Sear's reaction -- ZOMG they didn't sign up for this! -- is silly.

Sure, they didn't sign up for ANY of it, but so what? That's how the world works when things persist rather than being re-created anew every time. They didn't sign up to being born, they didn't sign up to live in USA (or wherever), they didn't sign up for inheriting our society or political system, they didn't sign up for inheriting our technological achievements or the climate change, etc.
 
"I actually have a masters degree in the subject." Z
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In what, precisely? What does it say on the diploma?
"Do you?" Z
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No. I barely got through high school.
But without the sheepskin I understand the difference between institutional culture, and personal relationships within it. Based on my understanding of applied statistics (I have decades of experience with that, do you?) and psychology, though I don't know how many cosmonauts followed Uri Gregarin into LEO, I suspect SOMEone on the ground developed an interest in at least one of them. Be sure to pat Leica on the head for me, please.

I still believe personal relationships in the Soviet Union would have had elements in common with that of other cultures.
For example, in the Soviet Union, one would have to be cautious about exercising candor when criticizing the politburo, for fear of being reported to KGB or whatever.
The U.S. didn't have exactly that. BUT !! We had a Drug War. And so there was a broad black market network, and drug users had to exercise caution about who was "cool", and who was not.
In Northern Ireland Catholic could not distinguish Protestant, and vice versa. There too, self-censorship was the order of the era.
But they still filtered Guinness, somewhat like Russians filtered vodka.
"Never understood why a weightless person in space would benefit from a memory foam bed" m
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So they could wait less?

Z #18
You're making a -the road not taken- argument. We'll never know what inventions, or even more valuable progress (cancer cure?) would have been made with that amount of money, if spent / invested elsewhere.
So while not conclusive, your -one side of the coin- world view raises more questions than answers.
"Nope. Still wrong." D #19
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You're arguing mathematics, with inerrant precision. It's correct, but entirely immaterial.

The ones that take the mortgage want to take the mortgage.
The heirs that inherit the mortgage that don't want the mortgage can leave it to government to put on estate sale for $amount $due.

Mr. D:
Buckle your thinking cap. We're taking a ride to enlightenment CV.

It's a Founding principle of the United States that we not have taxation without representation.
The unborn can NOT vote.
So 20 year old tax payers that are tasked with paying down debt that accrued to spending 25 years earlier is debt accrued before those 20 year olds selected their representation.
It is in most literal sense taxation without representation. Your mortgage analogy isn't.
"Our children will have to live with our debts in the same way they have to live with our laws" D #19
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No. The starting gun fired in 1776. I can't name a year from that year to this that laws didn't change in America / the U.S.
"Because they had nothing better."
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My point precisely.
 
sear said:
No. The starting gun fired in 1776. I can't name a year from that year to this that laws didn't change in America / the U.S.
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Of course. But they still inherit their ancestors' laws, and have an opportunity to do something about them -- some easier (statute), others harder (Constitution).

It works the same with debt.
 
sear said:
Victor is the expert on the culture.
And I absolutely won't deny there were elements within Soviet culture that presented the Klingon style of -trust no one- culture (the fictional Klingon culture likely modeled on stereotype of Soviet culture).
But if they were entirely loveless wouldn't their society have died off in a generation?
The ratio might have been a bit lower (maybe not). But I suspect there were work relationships in the former Soviet much like work relationships in the U.S.
The Soviets were human don't cha know.

It contributed to their bankruptcy, their self-annihilation. They spent themselves into oblivion.


For you see Z, the genius of the Cold War for the U.S. & NATO was instead of direct active military combat, the military competition of the Cold War was with arsenals not on the battlefield, but available.
The U.S. had a thriving middle class which it taxed, and easily funded its win in the Cold War.
The Soviets were totalitarians. They had no thriving middle class cash cow to tax. So the Soviets may have spent multiples of what the U.S. spent, hundreds of % more, and still spent less in nation to nation comparison. They both spent big. But the U.S. had much much more to spend, and so won the spending competition.

That applied to U.S. / U.S.S.R. relations on military spending, space race spending, and most else. It's not so much that the U.S. won, as the Soviets simply lost. Their meager economy simply could not compete against the U.S. economy.

It's a mistake to conflate an imagined Soviet hatred for U.S. with Soviet self-hatred. Might very well have been the opposite, the more they hated U.S. the more they loved one another.

Ockham's Razor: if they'd wanted the pen thing they could have spent it on that, but then might have fallen short on their spending on something else.
The tighter the budget, the more difficult the decision-making process on what to cut. I think they cut orbiting pens. And I've never heard an angry cosmonaut story about all the trouble they had do to pencil lead fragments.
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in my own experience, a slightly blunted pencil will translate through at least 4 pieces of carbon paper with no tearing or smudging, but a pen barely manages 2 without tearing the paper, causing smudges. which translates to doing it again for the head shed's\s viewing pleasure, lol!
 
Victor Danilchenko said:
This stupid "russians used pencils" urban legend is illustrative in so many ways...
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I've never been to space with cosmonauts. I don't know for a fact what if anything they used.
I've read but have not corroborated, the Soviet orbiters ceded more control to the ground, whereas NASA's was more by internally executed pilot command.
None of that may matter.
And a squabble over the orbiting pencil anecdote is historically accurate or not obscures the larger truth. That is:

For NATO the genius of the Cold War is instead of hot war it substituted competition by production and innovation. The U.S. / West easily won that one. For obvious reasons. If you were going to buy a brand new car, which would you prefer? A Datsun? Or a Trabant?
Economically it works like this. The U.S. had a thriving, prosperous, broad middle class that was taxed, funding the Cold War. The Soviets had to leave the victims of their totalitarian spending binge to lives of mediocre adequacy and subsistence.
The fact is it's not so much that the U.S. / West won the Cold War. The Soviets lost it. They simply couldn't keep up, and spent themselves into oblivion. Even if the pencil anecdote is fiction, does it really matter to the broader picture?
Victor Danilchenko said:
This stupid "russians used pencils" urban legend is illustrative in so many ways...
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Perhaps on that sir we can agree, even if the pencil story is apocryphal. The Soviet defeat in the Cold War due to financial suicide (does it technically qualify as "bankruptcy"?) is the explanation I will continue to accept, until it is superseded by a more plausible explanation. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that one.

PS
I qualified with the M-16-A1. And I've held an AK-47 in my hands. I imagine the Soviets had a progression of small arms during the Cold War as did US. Did they ever have anything better than the AK-47? I prefer the M-16-A1, not only a formidable combat weapon with reliable kill range out to 250 meters at least. It's lighter to carry on patrol and in mortal combat. It doesn't kick as much, and a pound of ammunition goes a lot farther with the M-16-A1 than the AR.

PPS
Many tax payers expected a "peace dividend", a reduction in U.S. military spending after we won that War. I gather that substantially never happened. MEANING: for all those decades of the Cold War the U.S. & U.S. economy took it in $stride. For the Soviets, simply competing against us (economic attrition?) proved fatal.
 
b23zombie said:
in my own experience, a slightly blunted pencil will translate through at least 4 pieces of carbon paper with no tearing or smudging, but a pen barely manages 2 without tearing the paper, causing smudges. which translates to doing it again for the head shed's\s viewing pleasure, lol!
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My most recent Carbon paper experience is probably a factory production form, printed in the factory and glued above the perforations at the top of the page. Too distant a memory to recall the layers.
 
sear said:
I've never been to space with cosmonauts. I don't know for a fact what if anything they used.
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They did use pencils, at first. They simply realized that pencils in space suck. That decision wasn't a sign of innovation or pragmatism or anything like that, it was a sign of their lack of attention to detail and to the well-being of their people.
sear said:
I've read but have not corroborated, the Soviet orbiters ceded more control to the ground, whereas NASA's was more by internally executed pilot command.
None of that may matter.
And a squabble over the orbiting pencil anecdote is historically accurate or not obscures the larger truth. That is:

For NATO the genius of the Cold War is instead of hot war it substituted competition by production and innovation.
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That was not some special genius. Modern war is war of the economies. This has been the case for something like two centuries now, with the development of advanced high-tech arms; and the more technology developed, the more it became competition between economies rather than armies.
sear said:
Even if the pencil anecdote is fiction, does it really matter to the broader picture?
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Of course. Because that anecdote usually gets told as a story about how stupid americans overcomplicate things and throw money at the problem, while smart russians figure out the clever solution.

That anecdote generally gets told by the same people who worship bare-chested putin (the bold, decisive master strategist) as their ideal leader, as opposed to doddering Biden of mom-jeans Obama.
 
Victor Danilchenko said:
They did use pencils, at first.
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Perhaps the same for NASA. Wouldn't surprise me if the first astronaut used whatever was handy, and found that in LEO ballpoint ink cohesion wasn't enough.
Then pencils?
Then the space pen? "Necessity is the mother of invention."
"That was not some special genius. Modern war is war of the economies." D #30
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Precisely my point. I'm confident economics must have played a role, regardless of how it ended up. Whether the Soviets bought a space pen from NASA, or what, who knows? I gather a Sharpie would do just fine in LEO (micro-gravity), in a human-survivable pressurized environment.
"They poured a lot of money into their space program." Z #14
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I'm guessing, a significantly higher %GDP than NASA. I believe the Soviets simply had a smaller budget, and was not only competing against the U.S. (NASA / space race), but all NATO (Cold War / arms race).
"Of course. Because that anecdote usually gets told as a story about how stupid americans overcomplicate things and throw money at the problem, while smart russians figure out the clever solution." D #30
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It's a complex history, unfolding over human generations. It would be a preposterous blunder, a fiction to declare it all one thing. But David and Goliath is an apt metaphor. Not only does statistical analysis suggest the low budget had a few isolated financial victories. I saw a video segment listing examples, including a large equipment decontaminator, liquid jets of decontamination fluid in the thrust of a very small jet engine. Somewhat like a firehose perhaps, but the video segment implied NATO had no such similar jet-powered equipment.
"That anecdote generally gets told by the same people who worship bare-chested putin (the bold, decisive master strategist) as their ideal leader, as opposed to doddering Biden of mom-jeans Obama." D #30
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Obviously ruling me out.
Not easy to find anyone more committed to truth than sear. The worst lie I can recall me telling was perhaps me embellishing a little on my eldest sister's culinary skill. I ate it. Didn't die. Not what I told her.

This enraged backlash against the orbiting Soviet pencil anecdote has reached neurosis level. Does it really matter? They had a smaller budget. They lost the space race. They lost the Cold War. The pencil story makes that point, whether by factual history, or by allegory. Try getting over it.
"That was not some special genius." D #30
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An unsupported assertion.
 
sear said:
I'm guessing, a significantly higher %GDP than NASA.
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Error correction: ... higher %GDP by the Soviets than in NASA. The distinction being, due to the GDP differential, the West simply had more to spend.

We were on defense.
- There was Soviet expansionism, by military force.
- The West may have expanded too, but by the popular will of the Peoples assimilated. The world had a choice to make. What we had to offer was more attractive.
 
Perhaps the same for NASA. Wouldn't surprise me if the first astronaut used whatever was handy, and found that in LEO ballpoint ink cohesion wasn't enough.
Then pencils?
Then the space pen? "Necessity is the mother of invention."
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BOTH used pencils until 1968.
Pencils were not a good choice. The tips, which were conductive graphite, flaked and broke off, drifting in microgravity where they could potentially harm an astronaut or equipment. And pencils are flammable--a quality NASA wanted to avoid in onboard objects after the Apollo 1 fire.

For a time BOTH also used wax crayons which were less inclined to break and any way werent conductive
 
m #33
That seems to sum it up pretty well m #33. Got a link to corroborate your observations?
IIRC the pencil tips breaking off and flaking, some or all of that may be called "sloughing".
While the lead in pencils surely includes graphite, I believe it also includes clay as a binder.

Graphite can be useful as a low-temperature lube. I used to use it on the hinges on my woodstove. But it didn't adhere to the bearing surface. I couldn't find Copaslip in the U.S., so used a brake lube ostensibly designed for high temp. Not much better.
Don't use pencil lead as a precision bearing lubricant. The graphite may be dandy. The clay binder, not so much.

I hadn't heard the crayon angle to the story, but will consider substituting crayon for pencil next time I share the anecdote.
 
ht tps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/#
That's damn near exactly as I figured.
However:
"That is the stupidest story, and I wish it would go away. The reason Americans didn't use pencils is that graphite and lead break off in little pieces as you write with them, and in 0G the dust particles were dangerous to the equipment and the people." Z #10
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Not merely stupid, but "the stupidest" story? For being 100% factually correct, as corroborated by the link in #35?
 
sear said:
My most recent Carbon paper experience is probably a factory production form, printed in the factory and glued above the perforations at the top of the page. Too distant a memory to recall the layers.
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i ran a catering kitchen the first decade of this century, they were cheapskates, so i wrote everything by hand, since i can't type worth a damn and didn't have a copier. it took me breaking my thumb to get me a computer and printer, lol! life was easier then, and FASTER!
 
Before self-serve gasoline, I raked in a confiscatory $2 / hr pumping gasoline at a Mobil carwash / gas station combination.
We had what the boss called "whizz boxes" mechanical clipboards that dispensed one form at a time. The customer got their copy, the other slipped into a drawer at the bottom of the "whizz box". If not technically Carbon paper, akin to it, perhaps like the duplicate you get when you write a check from your checkbook.

I'm baffled by the talent anyone must have in the food-service industry to survive. I forgot the number, but I think it was over 80% of new restaurants that open shut down within the first 12 months.
"it took me breaking my thumb to get me a computer and printer" b #37
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Way to make lemonade b2 !
 
sear said:
Before self-serve gasoline, I raked in a confiscatory $2 / hr pumping gasoline at a Mobil carwash / gas station combination.
We had what the boss called "whizz boxes" mechanical clipboards that dispensed one form at a time. The customer got their copy, the other slipped into a drawer at the bottom of the "whizz box". If not technically Carbon paper, akin to it, perhaps like the duplicate you get when you write a check from your checkbook.

I'm baffled by the talent anyone must have in the food-service industry to survive. I forgot the number, but I think it was over 80% of new restaurants that open shut down within the first 12 months.

Way to make lemonade b2 !
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2 of the restaurants and one of the bars i helped to open are still in business, i'm pretty proud of that.
 
Impressive.

I rarely get inside a bar. But this Summer when Bruce & I went into the bar on Lush Boulevard, there was a gorgeous young gal behind the bar. Bruce asked her for a double-entendre, so
she gave it to him.
 
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