Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

Quote from: JorgeStolfi on May 21, 2014, 09:34:52 PM

Quote from: hmmmstrange on May 21, 2014, 08:40:34 PM

How many years of salary have you taken by force from the public? [ ... ] If your work is so important, surely you can find some private funding.

There are some professors in our public universities who think that they should be privatized, and then charge fees that only the rich could pay. But they stand no chance of prevailing, because that would require a change in the Constitution which was written by a popular Assembly, and would have to go through Congress whose members elected by the people would not risk their voters' wrath by doing that. On the contrary, politicians who improve and expand public education have had a big advantage in elections.

Guess what: most intelligent people understand that government and public services are a good thing, and that taxes are necessary to have them. Even if each man would rather pay no taxes himslelf, usually he wants other people to pay taxes, votes for candidates who are in favor of taxes in general, and has no sympathy at all for those who try to evade taxes, no matter how technolgically clever are their tricks. It is the tax evaders, not the government, who are stealing from the (tax-paying) people.

Quote from: hmmmstrange on May 21, 2014, 08:40:34 PM

You are a smart guy, maybe it's time you either do something productive in the private sector or at the very least find someone in the private sector that values your work and get them to fund your "scholar" ventures.

Well, I believe that my work as teacher, as bad as it is, is infinitely more productive than running internet gambling sites, writing computer games, and many other "private industry" things.

And, by the way, I did work in industry too (during my undergrad years, and after my Ph.D.) And industry did fund some of my research.

Oh yeah - Brazilians love there tax regime - it's so efficient!
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/04/22/study-finds-brazils-state-to-be-tax-guzzling-inefficient/

You cannot stay one day in Brazil without hearing someone complain about high taxes and poor public services. According to this narrative, the prices of everything from cars to beauty products are inflated by opaque taxes even as the nation struggles with sub-standard hospitals, inadequate public transport and other services.

Now a study from a consulting company, Brazilian Institute of Planning and Taxation (IBPT), seems to bear out the common perception about Brazils tax burden. It ranked Brazil last in a list of the 30 countries judged by taxation versus quality of services.

Topping the list was the US, Australia and South Korea. Among emerging markets, Slovakia ranked 11th and Uruguay 13th. Surprisingly, even Argentina, with its problems with inflation and chaotic economic policies, ranked higher than Brazil.

The IBPT based its study on figures measuring the tax burden (government revenue relative to gross domestic product) from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) against the latest findings for the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme.

When Brazil returned from dictatorship to democracy in 1986, its tax burden was 22 per cent of GDP. Today this is over 36 per cent. Among its peers in the so-called BRICS group of large emerging nations, Russias tax burden is 23 per cent, China 20 per cent, India 13 per cent and South Africa 18 per cent.

Brazilians say they work five months a year to pay their taxes to the government. Now they are beginning to demand a return for their money. Last year, during nation-wide protests in June, citizens demanded Fifa standard hospitals, mimicking the international football organisations demands that Brazil build state-of-the-art stadiums for this years World Cup. But to some extent it is not only the governments fault that Brazilians pay high taxes.

The problem is cultural. Its a problem of the government and the society. There is a mindset here that public resources belong to nobody. Brazilians dont realize how much tax they actually pay, says Carlos Melo, a political scientist at Insper.

Last year, the government passed a law forcing companies to spell out for consumers on receipts each tax included in their bill. In a receipt at a gas station at March this year, for example, from R$100 paid for the petrol, R$28.63 was taxes. The state is too big and very inefficient, it raises a lot and ends up doing little, says Melo.

The danger for the government will be when more Brazilians wake up to the problem. If the information on the receipts is not enough, the IBPT spells it out even more plainly in another initiative, the impostômetro - an electronic display in the centre of São Paulo that shows in real-time the amount of tax collected at any given moment for that year.

If Brazils government keeps growing at this rate, one wonders how many more 0″s the impostômetro will have to add to keep pace.