We have been discussing the tax policies of President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government — a record that I have criticized as ruinous from an economic standpoint. A recent report indicates that for some high-earning families — more than 8,000 — the Hollande policies impose a 100% tax. It is the ultimate “eat the rich” policy. Even for those families facing a 75% rate, it is unclear why they would continue to work in the country. Many are not. France is experiencing a flight of both high earners and companies.
The bizarre 100% tax is the result of a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). The surcharge was imposed shortly after Hollande took office on a promise to hit the rich with high taxes. The Hollande 75% direct tax was so unfair that the Constitutional Council struck it down. However, this report states that the one-off levy effectively pushed some families to a 100% tax.
The newspaper Les Echos found that nearly 12,000 households paid taxes last year worth more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues due to the exceptional levy. ($1 = 0.7798 euros).
Putting aside how many families are impacted by taxes above 75%, it is in my view an insane, self-destructive economic policy for France. I just spent an evening with a friend and his parents discussing the situation in France. This is a moderate family politically that has long fished in French waters. My friend is now an American citizen but his parents and family remain in France. They recounted how they had to destroy half of their ships because of taxes. They are seeing other businesses doing the same or simply moving out of France. These a patriotic and proud French people but they are watching their government cannibalize off the economy. The government is getting instant revenue while killing revenue producing businesses. It is like eating the grapes and roots of the vineyards of Bordeaux for food and leaving the fields barren.
As someone who truly loves visiting France, it is disheartening to watch Hollande’s cultural war on the wealthy. I favor higher taxes as part of a comprehensive package of reforms in this country and other countries. However, Hollande’s expressed hatred of the rich resulted in a political success and now an economic disaster. It is also grossly unfair to wealth French who love their country and are not opposed to making sacrifices. Hollande played the class card and told the French that their problems were due to a sinister upper class rather than France’s high labor costs and burgeoning budgets. Even if one dismisses this study and the one-year levy, there are still many thousands of families and businesses who face a government demanding 75 percent tax rates.
These policies however will only lengthen the economic crisis. Indeed, France is already viewed as a hostile country for business and that is likely to continue under Hollande who is fighting the French judges to impose taxes higher than what is viewed as constitutional or fair by the courts.
Source: Reuters
DavidM: For you to claim that the pronoun “that” refers back to roads rather than business smacks of blind dishonesty.
No, David, it smacks of English grammar. And in my post I detailed more than the roads and bridges, I detailed the rest of the “incredible American system” that he talks about, which you take advantage of in your business and in your life. You didn’t build the Postal Service that lets you send letters and packages anywhere in the country in reasonable time at near cost; and if that were private those letters would cost something like the FedEx minimal rates, several times the pittance the Postal service demands.
Try to imagine running your business from Somalia, to get an idea of how much the “incredible American System” contributes to the ease and profit you enjoy. Imagine no taxes, but in Somalia paying out of pocket for every aspect of our American infrastructure you now enjoy because of taxes. The police protection against predators, court protection, the fact that here the worst and most violent predators are kept in jail by your taxes and in Somalia they walk the streets with pride, the roads you can travel without requiring an armored vehicle and armed guards to protect you. And, as Obama alluded to, the public education system that even lets you find employees that are not hopelessly technologically and business ignorant and functionally illiterate.
Your business could not survive in Somalia, it is so heavily dependent upon the infrastructure of the USA that 100% of your profit is a result of getting that infrastructure at very near cost, and 100% of that infrastructure is only possible by mandating that everybody that earns money has to pay their fair share of the cost of this “incredible American system.”
You built your business, but you built it on a foundation laid down by millions of Americans over centuries contributing to a common infrastructure, a machine that lets people and businesses thrive.
That is fine, that is why we built it, and we don’t mind you leveraging that system for personal profit. But unlike you, those of us with the vision to see the whole cloth and how the threads are woven together to reinforce each other, and create a system stronger than any thread alone, understand that we need to maintain the integrity of that system, and our taxes do that, and have to be mandatory in order to work.
Tony C wrote: “You built your business…”
Not according to President Obama. You basically made the same kind of argument that I would make, but you assign the reasoning of it to President Obama instead of me. For whatever reason, you are blind to how President Obama said, “you didn’t build that.”
As far as grammar, you need to parse his sentence. “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.” The antecedent for the pronoun “that” is “business.” Simple grammar. Do you have a reference to a linguist who would parse this in a different way?
You want to reach back to previous sentences and claim he was referring to the highway system? That is nothing but acceptance of the dogma of the Democrats, touting the party line and furthering their propaganda. The highway system is only context that leads people emotionally to accept his sentence that the one’s who own a business did not build that business. If they didn’t build it, then who built it for them? Did society provide an environment making it possible? Absolutely, but without that business owner doing his part, there would be no business (unless that owner bought it from someone else).
You were right to say “you built your business” because you are looking at it the way the President should have been looking at it, but President Obama said “you didn’t build that.” If it was a gaff, like we all have made from time to time, especially in an emotional campaign speech, it would be easy to forgive and move on. President Obama should have come out afterward and said, “what I said came out a little clumsy. What I meant to say was …” and then relayed what you said, which was summarized in this sentence:
“You built your business, but you built it on a foundation laid down by millions of Americans over centuries contributing to a common infrastructure, a machine that lets people and businesses thrive.”
If he did that, then everyone would be pretty much in agreement. As it stands now, however, we have a leader who does not condescend to men in society of lower estate, to the experience of those who built a business and made a small contribution to the American experience. He would rather the rest of society be misled to think that as long as we have big government, private enterprise will flourish because people will become owners of a business through the efforts of other people, especially government. Wrong message my friend. Wrong message.
DavidM: However, if you keep making me the object of your ire rather than the actual philosophy presented, then do not expect a response.
You are not the object of my ire, the idiotic philosophy to which you subscribe IS the object of my ire. You are the object of my pity for having been deluded by it. You just confuse the two, because you identify so closely with the philosophy.
That said, feel free to walk away at any time. I can do this all week, but I have never expected to convince you, I presume that like most ideologues your false platitudes and “if only” imaginings make you feel better, and you have a lot of emotion invested in this false “explanation” of your life circumstance and its difficulties. You certainly present yourself as a put upon victim, despite apparent reasonable financial success.
That emotional investment in false belief is not easy to give up. It is as if complaint and anger ‘at the system’ have become a form of reward, this kind of simplistic formulaic venting is a way to salve the pain of frustration at not making progress.
However, that in itself can stand in the way of progress, by relieving that pain and frustration we diminish the motivation to find a real solution, which would be actually doing something different and making some bets, without going all in, that could lead to progress.
DavidM: despite President Obama’s silly comment, “you didn’t build that.”
That wasn’t silly, he prefaced that by talking about the roads that transport goods and businesses get to use for free, and “that” referred to the highway system. You have been watching too much Fox News, which misled you by purposely editing out the comment about roads to which “that” referred.
He is right, you did not build those roads. Or the utility lines, or bridges and tunnels you use for free, you did not hire the police that provide security for your goods on the road and ensure relative safety from crazy driving, you did not pay for the inspections of cars that prevent them from falling apart on the road or losing control and creating hazards.
There are many things for which the government requires you to be a responsible citizen and pay for, to ensure that there are virtually no free riders and virtually everybody is acting responsibly with their vehicles. That has an effect that is largely invisible because it is an effect of absence: Less chaos on the road, fewer fatalities, less destruction of property and a greater chance of irresponsibility or bad luck being covered by insurance.
Tony wrote: “That wasn’t silly, he prefaced that by talking about the roads that transport goods and businesses get to use for free, and “that” referred to the highway system. You have been watching too much Fox News, which misled you by purposely editing out the comment about roads to which “that” referred.”
Your bias made you say that. I heard the speech as it was given and it immediately came across as a blindness toward the roadblocks that government puts in the way of those who attempt to build their own business. I never felt more distant from my President than at that moment in time when he spoke those words.
Here is the quote from the speech:
President Obama said:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
For you to claim that the pronoun “that” refers back to roads rather than business smacks of blind dishonesty. I understand Obama’s point that our lives are built upon the works of others in society, such as our teachers, or those who build roads and bridges, or we might add the people who pick up our trash or who drive the school bus or city bus, or whatever. Nevertheless, when he adds a person’s own business, and claims that somebody else made that happen, he is attacking the contribution and sacrifice of the individual himself. I honestly thought this man knows nothing about my life or the struggles that I have with government interference. How can the situation get better if he doesn’t understand this simple segment of society. Obama distanced himself from people who have created a business from nothing. It is amazing that you are blind to this self evident truth. The amount of outcry about his comment should give you pause to reconsider that your experience in life must be different than all the American’s who felt slighted by what he said.
For what it is worth, I later came to somewhat excuse Obama because as I examined how it was possible for my President to have this perspective, I realized that throughout Obama’s life, others made it happen for him and so it is natural that he assumes others have made it happen for all business owners. He probably has in mind midsize and large businesses anyway who generally work with other people’s capital rather than small business owners who use money they earned themselves working regular jobs. It would have been nice if President Obama had reconsidered and come to understand how others heard what he said. It would have been nice if he retracted his statement, but he did not. That decision on his part not to understand perpetuates a polarization in this country. Like you and Mike, he prefers to demonize people who have opinions different from those of the elitist club who are in authority over society, whether in authority as a government official, or as a teacher, medical doctor, or other figure that people in society look up to and trust by virtue of their position and rank.
DavidM: Sorry about that trailer, a stray keystroke of paste…
DavidM: Are you going to apply your same method of reasoning to assume that theism = intelligence?
In Darwin’s time, theism (including for Darwin) was a plausible alternative given their state of understanding of the world, biology, physics and chemistry. Darwin himself moved from theism to non-theism as a result of discovering an abstract pattern that provided an explanation and mechanism that was a real, testable, plausible alternative to simple magic.
Magic (or religion) is best viewed as the ramifications of refusing to admit what one doesn’t know. In that sense religion is hubris, it is the denial of ignorance. But it is worse than pointless pride; the insistent claim that an explanation for a phenomenon exists and is something inherently not comprehensible, like God, or Karma, creates an obstacle to finding the real explanation, like bacterial infection, or a vitamin deficiency.
In the culture of the 1800s, people had already been brutalized for centuries over religion, and ignorance had won. The church was still strong, reinforced by a culture of violent reaction to any rejection of faith. We weren’t far beyond the burning and drowning of witches. I don’t think academics were religious because the church funded them, I think that was more akin to Stockholm Syndrome; identifying with and embracing the cause of one’s captors due to long term immersion and dependence.
I think academics in the 1800’s were religious because, before Darwin and later genetics and modern physics, creationism was the only game in town to explain the origins of the universe, life, and the primacy of man’s intelligence, which seemed to them (rightfully so) uniquely orders of magnitude greater than that of any other animal.
Academics at the time were raised religious and despite their individual intelligence, failed to invent for themselves any plausible alternative to creationism, they bought the false (but alluring) argument that complex design was impossible without a creator.
Until Darwin came along and with clear eyes was able to put aside his hubris and figured out a mechanism by which it could be done. And thereby revolutionized our understanding of the biological world from viruses to humans, and removed a central support of the religious tent in the bargain. A creator is not necessary for complex life, chemistry and probability distributions will suffice.
That is a good thing, by weakening religion one weakens an obstacle to progress, both in one’s self and in society in general: As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
DavidM: Did I mention I have run three businesses? I have been in business for myself; and I am no stranger to the 90 hour week. This seems typical of shallow and projective thinkers like yourself, you assume if I don’t agree with you I just haven’t had the hardship you have had. That is you being just as condescending as me, you think your intelligence is so high that your understanding must be infallible, and therefore my take on it must necessarily be the result of extreme ignorance.
That is not the case, my understanding of the world is simply superior to yours, despite having boostrapped myself as much or more than you did.
You obviously are not capable of thinking like me, since my thought has led me to reject as infantile what you continue to believe on faith.
Well I’ve been through it, and I came to different conclusions, because I am
DavidM: You want to pretend that liberalism = intelligence,
I do not pretend any such thing. The statistics show indisputably that liberalism and intelligence are highly correlated; and my hypothesis is that is a result of intelligence leading to liberalism. Perhaps that is because intelligence is highly dependent upon an ability to comprehend and exploit nuanced states of equivalence and inequality that can be exploited to produce information, and happen to also inform the distinction between what is fair and what is unfair.
Neurons are individually predictive machines, and collections of neurons are predictive machines, that is the function of intelligence: To recognize patterns from the past that can be used to predict what will happen in the future, because that anticipation of what is imminent allows organisms to avoid danger, find mates and food and water, and survive. At the height of intelligence, humans can see alternative realities and sometimes even bring them to realization.
That is why the super-majority of professors profess liberalism, not because they are selfish, but because their intellect tells them it does more good, and preserves more life with less predation than the conservative alternative.
As for the word “sociopath” I suggest you look it up and stop relying on your “sense” of what it means. A sociopath is a person that does not care about others, they lack empathy, sympathy, and care only for themselves and their own selfish interests. They do not have to be killers, they can be entirely law-abiding, they just do not care who gets hurt, starves, is bankrupted, or devastated or dies as a result of their actions; as long as they will not personally be subjected to punishment. Which is why smart sociopaths, meaning those that can predict the consequences of their actions with good accuracy further into the future than the average person, will choose legal means of predation upon the public instead of ways that might end in prison. Serial killers enjoy killing, sociopaths do not necessarily enjoy harming others, they just do not care, they feel no guilt or remorse and do not give their victims a second thought. For them, the ends justify the means.
Whether you use the word or not, this is what you claim liberal professors are doing, espousing and promoting liberalism because one tiny aspect of liberalism includes the public funding of their research, which typically (like my research) will benefit the public many times over.
Tony C –
During Darwin’s time 150 years ago, the leaders of educational institutions were dominated by theists. Are you going to apply your same method of reasoning to assume that theism = intelligence? It makes more sense to me that their funding originated with the church and therefore it created a bias that led them that direction. It is just human nature, and it is not a conscious choice. It is the same reason why public school teachers and the teacher unions won’t even begin to consider a school voucher system. It is the reason that the people in the IRS think they are helping President Obama if they target the tea party and conservative groups.
This IRS behavior, by the way, has been going on for years. I heard all kinds of examples during the Clinton administration of people getting audited for being contrary to Clinton or supporting his impeachment. The difference here is they got sloppy and created a list based on keywords which provided empirical proof that they were doing it. Previously they could make up all kinds of reasons why they called an audit on somebody or why they made someone jump through extra hoops to get the IRS letter acknowledging their 501(c)(3) status.
In regards to your other discussion, you are correct that I could live on 50% of my income if I looked for ways to cut back, like perhaps selling my home and moving into something like the 1000 sq foot home that I had when my family consisted of two children. However, if I did that at this time, I would simply be causing my wife and children to sacrifice their opportunities, and the money would just be given away to more people in society or used to hire more employees. I have a problem with leaving money in the bank because in my view it does nothing good there except maybe make me feel more secure. So I have decided to invest in them for the next few years.
It seems to me that you do not understand that owning a small business does not instantly mean that I receive more income than the average worker in my field. It takes a lot of sacrifice. My typical day is 12 to 14 hours. I don’t even think about it. An 8 hour day to me feels like half a day. I easily put in 80 hours a week. Starting a business involves the ability to be motivated and work hard without receiving any pay whatsoever. I do it because I am creating something and can see the result of my labors. Especially in the software business, most of the work involves development for which I am not paid a penny until the product is put into production. Then that product provides a revenue stream for me only if I can get people to buy it. So I have to reach into my own pocket again to advertise and get people to know what I have to offer them. I have to reach into my own pocket to buy an office building where my future employees will work before I have hired a single one. I am responsible for the second electric bill, second water bill, building repairs and maintenance, etc. When I hire someone, again, I am reaching in my own pocket to give that person a chance. When the roof needs to be replaced on my office building, I have to reach into my pocket again. You may have this vision of me swimming in lots of money just because I am a small business owner, but the truth is in stark contrast to that, and when you show such a lack of understanding about that, I just don’t know how to help you see it, especially when you are condescending in your speech toward me.
You mentioned vacations, probably because I previously mentioned one, but you don’t realize that I never was able to take a vacation while building my business because my customers relied upon me. I was over 50 before I took my first vacation, and my vacations over the last few years are focused on education for my children because I only have a small window of time before they are all gone from the household. My wife has learned how to leverage credit card offers, so she gets situations like flying to Amsterdam for $18 and staying in nice hotels for free. She can setup a week long skiing trip to the Swiss Alps where transportation and hotel is all free. We only pay for our food. Yes, I am going to travel around the world in 26 days, and I am taking my entire family. I leave Saturday. The first leg of our trip to Los Angeles from Florida is costing me $5 per person. I think it is the right thing to do for my four children still at home whose ages are 12 to 18, something that will give them a leg up for the rest of their lives. Not everyone gets that opportunity, but it has presented itself to me as a possibility and so I took it.
When my children are all gone in 6 years, my plan is to sell my home and most of my possessions. I plan to downsize and rent lodging for me and my wife. Hopefully we will be able to live on less than 50% of my income at that time, but most likely I will just reduce my wages and hire someone else in my business. Yeah, I wish I could use the money going out to the federal government to hire two more people, but that isn’t going to happen. The success of my business is all up to me, despite President Obama’s silly comment, “you didn’t build that.” He has no idea the kind of sacrifice and uncertainty that is necessary to build a business, because he has been supported by the government system his whole life. In his experience, government has been a constant source of support, but in my experience, government always gets in the way with ridiculous regulations or misinterpretations of their regulations by local enforcers. I recognize that we need government and oversight, but when the government gets too big and the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, it creates many problems for me and my business.
I really am trying to see things from your side and from Mike’s side. This is why I write, and I write antagonistically because I want to see you knock down the ideas I bring up. That is how I test truth, through falsification, and the best way to expose my own biases to myself is to present a strong argument to someone who has a different bias. When you guys get on your condescension tirades to attack me instead of the issues I raise, I get bored. There is no meat to your posts, and my posts turn into a defense of myself which make me feel silly and a little embarrassed. I am a little sorry I typed all this now because it will probably only provoke another attack on me and my alleged inability to think like you do. Well, I took the time to type it, so here it is. However, if you keep making me the object of your ire rather than the actual philosophy presented, then do not expect a response.
“Are you going to apply your same method of reasoning to assume that theism = intelligence?”
David,
Makes sense to me.
“The difference here is they got sloppy and created a list based on keywords which provided empirical proof that they were doing it.”
Tempest in a teapot, because many of those Tea Party organizations were violating the law by partaking in political advocacy, while selling themselves as organizations that should be tax exempt. While you mention it it does seem curious that someone as non-partisan as you claim to be, would go back to Clinton, when he was preceded by 12 years of Republican Presidents and followed by 8 more years of Republican Presidents. Then too there was Richard Nixon.
“It seems to me that you do not understand that owning a small business does not instantly mean that I receive more income than the average worker in my field. It takes a lot of sacrifice. My typical day is 12 to 14 hours. I don’t even think about it. An 8 hour day to me feels like half a day. I easily put in 80 hours a week.”
David, poor you. When I worked for the City my days were typically 12 to 14 hours, for a pittance of what you probably make and that’s not counting an hours commute each way. Prior to my success as an executive I had to have a private practice as a Psychotherapist in addition to my day job and my wife had to work as an executive for a multi-national and put in 10 hour days. I will bet that with all that combined we still didn’t approach your income. From everything you’ve written you sound like a fairly privileged character to me, who simply doesn’t get how hard most people work. And as Tony tore it apart logically that “needing” 90% of your income to live is nonsense. Respectfully David you seem to me to be a rather privileged character, who believes his personal selfishness is made up for by being a dilettante in charity.
Simply put theism is anti Christ. Theists don’t have the works of Christ nether do they talk like Christ. Therefore how can it be intelligent?
Mike, I never pretended to be non-partisan. I am a registered Republican because I cannot stomach the hatred, bigotry and hypocrisy I see in the Democrat party toward theism. I understand the attitude toward religion, because I hate religion myself, but they support too many issues that I find seriously dangerous to society, such as abortion, homosexuality, and gay marriage.
While I do not support making abortion illegal, their attitude toward abortion in my opinion is just plain uncivilized. I think tax funded abortion is immoral. Whether right or wrong, there are too many people who view abortion as murder, so it is wrong to force them to contribute toward providing abortions. I personally do not believe that a human life exists at the moment of conception, but there are millions of people who do. Forcing them to pay for the abortion of other people is wrong. Forcing them to pay for contraception is wrong if they also view that as immoral. For me, this makes government too large and overreaching, so I am partisan and support the Republican perspective.
We already discussed homosexuality and the gay marriage thing in another thread, so I won’t rehash that again.
I did point out that I have huge disagreement with the majority Republican position on social issues like immigration and helping the poor. However, as illustrated in this thread, my perspective on these issues are not well received by Democrats either, so there really is not much reason for me to be supportive of the Democrat party. That is why I support the Republican party.
DavidM: Unfortunately, I never was attracted to that culture of drinking beer and laughing at crude jokes.
I do not drink, now or in college. I did not socialize with my professors, unless you count blackboard discussions of ideas and questions I had related to their specialties, that were not necessary for the classes. I did not belong to any clubs or fraternities, I did not have the time. Yet somehow I made it through.
DavidM: but my other professors seemed embarrassed because most people publish after the thesis is approved.
That seems unlikely. For a PhD student, most advisory committee members, instead of judging whether a dissertation is original or not, rely on the student having published a few aspects of their work in peer reviewed journals, the more highly ranked the better. That is objective proof of originality. I completed original work as a first-year candidate and with my advisor published it in a peer reviewed journal. That contributed to a Master’s Thesis, and later to a PhD Dissertation, along with a handful of other peer-reviewed publications.
None of the faculty thought that was unusual or embarrassing; it is the way it is done. From a professor’s point of view, the idealized mark of a PhD is that they can conduct original research and get it published in peer-reviewed journals. The PhD is not about teaching; teaching can be done without having done original research, and if a PhD can get funding from outside the university (via a grant) in many universities they do not have to teach at all. I, for example, am a faculty member that does not have to teach.
No faculty member in the three institutions I attended ever looked at me sideways for not drinking, not smoking, not going out to a bar with the gang, not giving a crap about sports or the basketball or football team, or not socializing in general. I did attend innumerable pizza party and cookie receptions after guest talks, dissertation proposals or defenses of PhD dissertations or Master’s theses, that I made a point of attending when possible.
David,
Ever seen a snake with its head cut off…. Or a chicken being wrung…. I’m seeing it full saddle here…
DavidM says: “I need at least 90% of my income to live,…”
I find that an interesting claim.
Do you think a family earning half of what you earn cannot live at all?
You need 90% of your income to live as you like to live, in the manner to which you have become accustomed.
The average income of a computer programmer is $90K, the lowest paid sub-category is web developers, which averages $66K. Chances are you are average or better; and chances are if you own your own business with employees, you earn more than you could AS an employee, otherwise you would find a job and shut it down. So I think it is safe to proceed with an analysis of what an average web developer earns.
80% of working adults in the USA (as of 2012) have incomes beneath $66K, and 60% of those have incomes beneath $33K; half of what an average web developer earns.
If you truly believe you cannot live on less than 90% of your income, then you should likewise believe that those earning half or less of your income need significant material help to live.
The alternative, of course, is to recognize you have made choices in your life that consume all of your money, and like everybody else that makes those choices, you are left looking at the illusion of taxes as a way to relieve the financial stress those choices have created. But those were your choices. I do not presume to tell anybody how to pursue happiness or spend their paycheck, but I will note that people earning half your income, with the same number of children, have somehow managed to survive and be reasonably safe and happy without having whatever you have spent the other half on; be it vacations, cars, home, luxuries, health care, superior education for your children vs theirs, or whatever.
It is your right to spend thusly, I repeat I am not judging. I am just pointing out why I sincerely doubt you need 90% of your income to live, and instead suspect you choose to spend 90% of your income. Maybe it does not feel like a choice to you, but there are sixty one million adult Americans earning less than half the income of an average programmer that I think prove otherwise.
DavidM: You apparently did not have the intelligence to figure out how to write a Master’s thesis or complete your PhD without running afoul of the professors there.
For the Bachelor’s and Masters, it is relatively easy to memorize your way to the degrees. Or study, or whatever you wish to call it; the procedures are in the books and all you have to do is pass classes with professors that have all the answers. That is even true for hard science courses, and computer science courses. You do not have to be an original thinker to pass classes and learn to follow instructions to solve standard problems.
If you dropped out, you are no different than many others that couldn’t cut it. Read my post: I said it takes grit and sacrifice to complete the program, you apparently lacked the grit or rejected the level of sacrifice required. I will add that to become a Doctor of Philosophy requires something that cannot be taught, which is to make an original contribution to the field. That is why, at least for science PhDs, many that are good students do drop out: The homework assignment of “create something important enough to get published that the field has never seen before” is not something they can be taught how to tackle.
However, whatever your academic record might be is immaterial, I base my judgment upon what I read from you here, and what I know of the professors with whom I work and collaborate.
I think you are a shallow thinker, I think you are an uncritical thinker that accepts as truth whatever emotionally appeals to you and then tries to crowbar the world into these preconceived notions that make you feel comfortable. Like believing that you are charitable and kind and self-sacrificing, but liberal professors have obviously come to their politics as greedy sociopaths out for only themselves. Because that is the only explanation that comforts you. The obvious explanation, that they are smarter than you and have figured out something you haven’t been able to comprehend, is obviously upsetting to you, so you have to denigrate their motives in order to maintain your own self image, the fiction that you are smart enough to join their ranks but you chose not to, the fiction that your troubles were caused by politics instead of your own refusal to do the work as you were told, I gather because you were too invested in proudly advertising your religion in your academic work, instead of the obvious solution of a truly smart person of just picking a scientific topic or research area that was religion neutral and would get you through the program. So you wanted to buck the system, and the system threw you off, as it should have.
Plus I don’t know what school you attended, but at my fully accredited university a Master’s thesis cannot be published without the signatures of the entire advising committee signing off on it; and neither can a PhD dissertation. A Master’s does not have to be original work, a PhD does.
So I don’t know what you mean by “until I got so tired of it that I went ahead and published it.” That wouldn’t be a Master’s thesis in any school of which I am aware. Even if you submitted it to some podunk journal and they published it, or a publish-for-fee junk journal, that wouldn’t mean anything. No student can force their committee to accept as a thesis something they do not want to sign. What makes something a Master’s Thesis is the signature page, not any action you can take independently.
Tony C wrote: “[you believe] liberal professors have obviously come to their politics as greedy sociopaths out for only themselves. Because that is the only explanation that comforts you.”
This is nowhere close to what I think. I never even used the word “sociopath” in this kind context or any context close to it until you introduced me to its use in this way. In my mind, a sociopath was a criminal like a serial killer. Neither have I ever looked at them as selfish.
My major professor once indicated to me that it was not all about coming to school and doing the academics. He said I was great at the academics, especially the math which most biologists have trouble with. He suggested that I go to the bar with them on a Friday nights and hang out. Unfortunately, I never was attracted to that culture of drinking beer and laughing at crude jokes. So in hindsight I now see that there was a culture divide. At the time I perceived none of this. I just realized that after 9 years of the university experience, working hard and making great sacrifices, and now having a wife who was working on her own Masters degree (and we had a child by then), the prospect of spending another 5 years perfecting my dissertation was unnecessary. I was not going to learn anything new. The diploma was just a piece of paper. I had all the credits needed for a Ph.D. and would be taking no more classes. I decided I needed to get a better paying job to provide for the needs of my growing family. I found doors of opportunity at both a biological consulting firm and working for the university, but I also had the offer of working for a business developing software. Although I had never had a computer class, one of my Ph.D. requirements was to learn two languages, and I had chosen a computer language as one of them. This led to my developing a grade management system that I used for my own classes that I taught at the university, and other professors quickly began using it too. The university claimed ownership to the software because I was their employee when I developed it. I was asked to head their computer learning lab for the students, and it was all this experience that led to the door of opportunity to work for a software company. This business opportunity was so much different than anything I had focused on before, that I decided it would be the most interesting for me. So that’s how I left biology and went into the software business.
When I say I published my Master’s thesis, I mean that I published the work of it, not the actual signed thesis. I had previously published other discoveries that I had made, so I just submitted the work to a reputable scientific journal and it quickly passed the review process and became published. My major professor knew I was doing this and supported me in it (because I added his name to the authorship after mine), but my other professors seemed embarrassed because most people publish after the thesis is approved. It was after this that they expressed amazement to me that I was able to get published “so quickly” and they congratulated me and signed off on my thesis. The actual thesis was published separately later by the university and put into the university library. I have never thought that I forced them to sign the thesis. At the time, I just wanted to add to my list of publications and help my major professor add to his list of publications. I thought the work was ready. I was naive and had no idea why they kept making me rewrite the thesis. I thought I was a really bad writer and had to just keep working hard. As I have become more knowledgeable about the world, I realize now looking back that bias was at play in the same way that bias is at play with the IRS targeting conservative groups to stonewall them in what they are trying to do.
By the way, my thesis was completely original work involving a yearlong process of collecting data in the field. Another student called me after I left the university asking to use some of my data for his own thesis because I collected much more data than what I had published. Also, one of my professors on reading my thesis the first time to give his feedback thought it was my Ph.D. dissertation work until I corrected him.
At the time, I assumed that they were teaching me how to become a better writer and a better scientist. In retrospect, I think I wasted a year and a half doing busy work, digging a hole and then filling it in again. I basically had everything done that was required for Master’s degree in one and a half years, but they kept me there an extra year and a half (3 years total). I could have opted to apply for a Master’s degree that did not require a thesis, but my desire at the time was to be involved in scientific research so I never took that option. When it came to the doctorate, I realized they would stretch it out as long as possible and I decided it was not worth it. I considered my formal education done.
This thread has become about me rather than the high tax burden in France, so I hope you understand if I back off. I have lost interest. But thanks for helping me sort through my personal midlife crisis. You have been a big help. 🙂
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
David,
Even savants can do something’s extremely well….. Some just lack basic humanistic skills….. I’m sure you do what you do well…. Believe it or not…. The tech industry is recruiting candidates with those skills…. Even though they may have other issues…. they are decicated and producers….. So, I am sure you do your job well….
You Got Me –
It is interesting to analyze the history of this person who smugly concludes that I lack critical thinking skills. He made the statement that junior high school children are regularly engaging in sex and drugs. My critical thinking skills jumped into full gear, expressing my disbelief before even looking for what the data said. I then took the time to investigate the statement and found that data from the CDC indicated that only 6% of students under the age of 13 had ever experienced sex. Does this person concede that he overstated the situation? No. He stubbornly stands by his statement. If that type of stubbornness and ideological mindset is the kind of critical thinking skills that he wants me to adopt, I say: NO THANK YOU.
David,
I know exactly why you could not get past Committee. We have seen it here. You are not a critical thinker, you are an ideologue. And you cannot seem to write a complete sentence without stepping into a logical fallacy. Your style is to blame the school and the Committee. You are blind to the log in your own eye. I have seen lots of people who are OK with being able to tease out the correct answer on multiple choice tests, but are not critical thinkers.
Guess I will get back to developing software now, where I can put my non-critical thinking to work. At least with software design and programming computer code, my non-logical ideological mind seems to have no trouble producing results. I only seem to have trouble with powerful, credentialed establishment people like you. Strange how that works.
DavidM: What do you do with your other half?
I live on half my income out of habit; as a consultant I would be highly paid for six months to a year, and unemployed for one to four months while looking for or waiting for another gig. I knew that going in and developed a frugal habit. It has always been important to me, in any negotiation, to be able to walk away. My wife turned out to be similarly frugal, and we don’t spend very much on vacations, cars, clothes, hobbies, sports, or much of anything. My biggest entertainment expense is books, 90% of which are non-fiction, my home is littered with floor to ceiling bookcases.
As I mentioned, we have an autistic child in the family. My income from business ventures is mine to reinvest in other business ventures; so that is a separate account; but not the largest account.
Excess income from work is saved, sometimes used to help our family members, but ultimately, with my daughter’s permission already granted, and barring any unforeseen eventualities between now and our demise, everything my wife and I have (including my business account) will be left in trust for the care of the autistic child; currently seven.
DavidM: I don’t see it as a result of their great intelligence about what is best for everyone but rather what is best for them.
Which perhaps explains why you are not among them, like Bron you seem incapable of thinking anybody does anything against their own self-interest. Perhaps that is just you projecting your own selfishness upon others.
Government hires the best thinkers it can, as it should. It can (and has) given private corporations billions for various projects, but the best thinkers on the planet for doing research have chosen to do it for a living, as university professors. As usual, you have it backwards, government funds them because government wants their research.
I suppose I should have expected you to vomit up some Right wing platitude as your substitute for actual thought.
Tony C –
Do you really want to go there, suggest my intelligence keeps me from working in the university system? I consistently had the highest GPA at my university in biology and received awards for such from my freshman year to my senior year. Working on advanced degrees, it became more problematic because the grading is more subjective and political. Still scored consistently high, but my Ph.D. written exam began to reveal that I would have serious difficulties when I was asked a question about how I would respond to a Creationist while teaching a Vertebrate Zoology class. One of my six professors grading my exam said it was the best answer he had ever heard. Another professor said it was the worst answer he had ever heard. That other professor also claimed that I gave some factually incorrect statements, but when I challenged him on it, he backed down and admitted he was relying on second hand information. It was at that point that I decided my time at the university was over. I had enough credits for a Ph.D. but I realized that they would keep me there at least another 7 years before they signed off on my dissertation. They did the something similar with my Master’s thesis, making me rewrite and rewrite until I got so tired of it that I went ahead and published it. They couldn’t argue that it needed more work then, but they kept me there twice as long as I needed while other students who had no clue what they were doing sailed right on through with their masters. I am sure you will refute all this, but the movie Ben Stein did called Expelled is exactly right. Conservatives and theists are railroaded out of the university system because of the bigots there. You can claim that I am stupid and not intelligent enough to make it there, but if that were true, why would I always score the highest scores over everybody when taking objective tests? I think I do have the intelligence to serve in that capacity, but the bigotry against my independent thinking is just not conducive for it. So, I chose another path in life. You want to pretend that liberalism = intelligence, go ahead. I know better.
Tony wrote: “or you are selfishly demanding that your own creature comforts and hedonistic pursuits are more important than food, education, safety, shelter and health care of people that need it.”
If I lived on less than half my income like you do, maybe taxes would not seem so oppressive. What do you do with your other half? Do you save / invest, or help people with it? What do you do with it?
I need at least 90% of my income to live, and so do my employees. I wish I could pay my employees more, hire some more people, help more people who need it, etc. There are so many things I want to do and I simply do not have the income to do it. It really is not about my comforts or hedonistic pursuits, although I admit that sometimes I do think my household has a little too much comfort. Rather, it is about knowing what I could do with those thousands of dollars and then reading how my government is squandering the money. Also, virtually every politician I know act like wealthy fat cats with plenty of money. When I go to their meetings to watch them make decisions, they make decisions like someone with plenty of money does. They even put money into reserve when the common citizen cannot save a single penny. They will not consider relieving the tax burden for any reason, even when citizens are clamoring for tax relief. They do not understand the kind of sacrifices I make and the things I have to do without, so why do they demand so much of my income? It seems like you and me just live in different worlds and have very different experiences in life.
DavidM: I tend to think that a big central government is needed when the general public is lawless, not responsible, and inept.
I think the opposite, I think a big central government is needed to coordinate and police big collective and ongoing projects. As the general public becomes more responsible, they better realize how much human potential they waste, and how that wasted potential translates into the desperation that breeds crime and wasted lives. Addressing big national or global problems requires big national and global organizations.
Why do you think a super-majority of college professors are liberals? (72% overall, 87% in elite colleges). Do you truly think we are just brainwashed drones? I assure you we are not, we arrive at liberalism as the result of logic applied to see these connections. Then, with the same grit and sacrifice we required to run the gauntlet of becoming a professor in the first place, we conclude the greatest good is accomplished by liberalism.
That alone should not convince you, as I outlined above. But it should give you some significant pause to realize that 87% of the most intelligent people on the planet, the professors of the most prestigious schools in the country, themselves members of the top 1% or 2% in terms of income, and people that themselves will never need any of the freebies liberalism will provide, still put their money where their mouth is and have concluded that liberalism does more good for more people than conservatism.
I know who has a sudo name, aka sockpuppet!
Mike: almost our entire population sees themselves as Americans, not just residents of individual states.
I am certainly in that camp, I have sold product in all fifty, and I have worked in over a dozen states, even today I am doing remote work for a company in another state. The lack of uniformity in state laws bugs me, the idea that I can be doing something perfectly legally one minute and step a foot across the border and be doing something so illegal I can be put in prison for it seems completely ludicrous to me. Most such things are not anything I would engage in anyway, but it is the principle of the thing.
“The lack of uniformity in state laws bugs me, the idea that I can be doing something perfectly legally one minute and step a foot across the border and be doing something so illegal I can be put in prison for it seems completely ludicrous to me. Most such things are not anything I would engage in anyway, but it is the principle of the thing.”
Tony,
It bugs me too, but then I’ve never understood people feeling allegiance for a State. Sure I love New York, where I was born, but having traveled to almost every State in the country there are many places that I could easily call home.
Another expression that I hate along the same lines is “The Heartland” denoting the Midwest. The people there are no more or less American than the people on the coasts.
Tony C.’
Nal has suggested that when wordpress eats one’s post … in the next post asking for help put HELP next to your moniker so that a guest blogger will see it in the “Recent Comments” column