La Tortue Cynique / The Cynical Turtle

Why are they leaving home?

Two days ago (I didn't manage to post before, freeroller.net was down when I tried), the departure of GI's for the gulf struck me. The weapons inspector say their work is far from finished, and they have not shown evidence yet. So why send people now? Is it urging? Has the security council more facts than two months ago to take the opportunity to slaughter Iraqi civilians? In North Korea they say they have the nuclear weapon, that they want more nuclear weapon and they are going to get more... but they've got no OIL of course, the Holy Grail of America, the thing that justifies 'collateral dammages' and starvation.
A little cartoon in order to start the day with a little smile...(Regional news, 2003/01/16 02:16) lien permanent

Regarding fiscal pressure...

Keith Devins says that France is a socialist country because we have some laws he doesn't grok and some high tax rate figures... Well, on this basis I would say that the USA are an oiligarchy, and it's not much better. Regarding the high tax rates, USA are taxed mainly on the capital, and France on the labour, that's perhaps why they are true capitalist Last thing, OECD did a survey of fiscal pressure with redistribution taken in account. The results (figures date from 2000, sorry, I can't find a link, this data come from a printed source):

(Regional news, 2003/01/11 09:40) lien permanent

Fiscal pressure, second approach

Keith Devins posted a link to an OECD Observer article regarding top marginal rates. What is the top marginal rate? I'll try with a simplified example. Paul earns 1000 units a year, he's among the top earners in his country. Regarding taxes, this income can be divided like this:

Paul should pay 400×tax level 1+...+100×tax level n. Considering that tax systems are always more complicated than we hope, there are other factor to be taken in account. The considered article just does this, and we obtain the top marginal rate, which is the tax rate applied on the last slice of your income when you earn more than a lot. Here are the results (figures from 1999):

Disclaimer: I'm neither a lawyer nor an economist (and I was pretty bad when I studied those topics). All feedback welcome kame@cinemasie.com.(Regional news, 2003/01/11 09:40) lien permanent

To Prague

I'm going to Prague this afternoon until sunday. Forecasted weather: snow and -2°C...(Regional news, 2003/01/10 15:41) lien permanent

Back from Prague

Cold week-end. Prague (Praha) is a very touristic place, with a really nice old city, and some less nice things like abandonned buildings and tagged buildings as soon as you leave the center. There are a lot of small and medium sized shops with overpriced typical items. What's impressive is there is very little to remind you it was a communist country. The first thing you look at is the cars, and no, no old car, recents german, french and japanese cars. I suspect we should go in the country to see some relics. There sell some chapkas with the red star, or some watches with Lenin or Stalin, but it's lost among the others thing in the tourist-gogo shops.

The tramway works like a charm and allows you to go in almost all interesting places of this city. There are still some subway stations closed after the last flood, but still, with only three lines, the tramway is more useful. The city is not very big for it's 1 million of inhabitants. I guess with a bike it could be quite enjoyable to make some tours in spring or summer, bu I didn't see any one over those two days.

All in all it's been a very short period over there, and apart the touristic place, I haven't really seen anything. Perhaps the countryside is really poor, but looking at Prague it's really not the given impression. And this is the disappointing part, everything in Pragues remind you that you're still in Europe (and soon perhaps in the European Union), and there is no exotism to go there...(Regional news, 2003/01/06 19:44) lien permanent

It is snowing on Paris

A long time we've not seen that.(Regional news, 2003/01/04 10:42) lien permanent