If you are holding a cabbage in one hand over a bowl of dirty water in your kitchen sink, and you are holding a knife in your other hand and using it to trim the bad parts from the cabbage, things may not end well.
Month: May 2010
The Laffer Curve, as Explained in 1377
It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.
The reason for this is that when the dynasty follows the ways (sunan) of the religion, it imposes only such taxes as are stipulated by the religious law, such as charity taxes, the land tax, and the poll tax. They mean small assessments, because, as everyone knows, the charity tax on property is low. The same applies to the charity tax on grain and cattle, and also to the poll tax, the land tax, and all other taxes required by the religious law. They have fixed limits that cannot be overstepped.
When the dynasty follows the ways of group feeling and (political) superiority, it necessarily has at first a desert attitude, as has been mentioned before. The desert attitude requires kindness, reverence, humility, respect for the property of other people, and disinclination to appropriate it, except in rare instances. Therefore, the individual imposts and assessments, which together constitute the tax revenue, are low. When tax assessments and imposts upon the subjects are low, the latter have the energy and desire to do things. Cultural enterprises grow and increase, because the low taxes bring satisfaction. When cultural enterprises grow, the number of individual imposts and assessments mounts. In consequence, the tax revenue, which is the sum total of (the individual assessments), increases.
Read the whole thing.
Via Isegoria.
The trend to cash medical practice
Some time ago, I did a post on my own blog about doctors dropping out of Medicare and many quitting all insurance. I really got thinking about this after the American Geriatric Society meeting in Chicago last year. I met a woman geriatrician, the only fellowship trained geriatric specialist in central Iowa. She had quit Medicare. That sounds a bit suicidal if all your patients are Medicare age. What had happened was she was being harassed by Medicare because she was seeing patients too often. Many of them were frail elderly living at home. She dropped out and began charging her patients cash for services. She was making a decent living after a year and was happy with her decision. I don’t know how many realize that geriatrics, as a specialty, is a university subsidized field. There is no private geriatric practice because the doctor can’t survive on what Medicare pays. She tried and had to quit. She is doing it on her own now.
The Weekly Standard has an interesting article this week on this trend. The doctor is not near retirement , as many of the folks I had previously talked to were. It took a lot of guts for him to start out this way and he explains why.
There are a couple of errors in the article and I will point them out.
Everybody draw Mohammed redux
Well, I drew Mohammed, albeit in a purely derivative way (which makes me an ultra conventional modern artist, I guess). I did it this way to make a very minor point, that one does not have to be disrespectful to stand up for your rights. I will never fall into idolatry over Mohammed. If he is in Heaven, he got there by an extraordinary act of mercy by the grace of God in my opinion because he did many wicked things on earth and led many people astray. Even under a Caliphate run by normal muslims I would retain the right to that opinion as a dhimmi.
But I drew Mohammed today because many muslims are not normal and their more numerous normal bretheren are not keeping these extremists in check. I don’t expect that my blog post will get me any more than inclusion in the generic condemnation by these evil muslim jurists who abuse their powers and shame their own faith through their exaggerated fatwas but it’s the thought that counts. I stand with freedom and against censorship. I’ve done my bit. Now it’s your turn.