Over the years, various commentators have made various tax comparisons between the United States and European countries on the amount of taxes that are paid, or the tax rates that are paid. Unfortunately, most of the comparisons are anything but “apples to apples” comparisons. For example, regardless of what the various tables say, U.S. tax rates on personally earned income range effectively from 0% to somewhere above 50%. A self-employed person who lives totally on cash, with an income below $20,000, who doesn’t report income can often get away with paying no taxes [yes, I know it’s illegal, but it still happens]. On the other hand, an individual who makes, say, $450,000 in salary and lives in New York City might easily pay more than 40% in taxes and have a marginal tax rate of close to 60% when one includes FICA, state and local income taxes. And those rates are actually higher than those in many European countries that Americans consider “high tax.”

How does this happen? First, because the United States is a federal representative republic, the states can levy income taxes, and in some states, such as New York and Maryland, so can local jurisdictions. That means as much as 8% – 10% on top of federal income taxes. Add to that FICA, which can amount to 17% on approximately the first $100,000 of income earned by self-employed individuals [which averages out to more than an additional 4% on $400,000 of income].

Then add property taxes and sales taxes on top of those.

Canada has provincial taxes, but from what I’ve been able to dig up, most European countries don’t have the equivalent of state taxes, but a number do have the equivalent of FICA/Medicare taxes. Some include that in the individual income tax rate. On the other hand, in places like France, they also have occupation taxes [paid whether you own or rent property] and “wealth taxes” based on net worth, which are also paid annually.

According to an Australian study, Australia has the highest rates for high earners, but the USA isn’t all that far behind if you factor in state taxes [unless you live in one of the few U.S. states that doesn’t have an income tax].

At the same time, the United States now has the highest tax rates in the world on corporate income, not that many corporations are likely to be paying much of it after deducting last year’s losses.

All told, there doesn’t seem to be that much difference between those so-called high foreign tax countries and the United States, not in terms of the tax rates. What the taxes are spent on, though, is another question, and one that would take far more space and time than I have at the moment.

For months all the major stock exchange indices have been plummeting… until the past few days. So have been employment numbers, and the unemployment rate is higher than it has been in 25 years. In the publishing field, not all that large to begin with, more than a 1,000 jobs have vanished in the last few months. So have at least half a dozen “name” imprints, as well as one of the major wholesale distributors. The second largest retail book chain — Borders — is teetering on the brink of financial and sales disaster. Some of the larger newspapers across the country have either closed — like Denver’s Rocky Mountain News — or are threatening to do so.

And everyone seems to be speculating on just how bad things will “really” get. Will the drop in stock prices rival the percentage decline of the Great Depression? Will oil prices get so low that oil companies will stop drilling? Will and should General Motors go bankrupt? What about Citicorp? Will publishers stop buying debut novels for the next year or so… or longer?

Yet, some two years ago, financial pundits were talking about the possibility of the Dow reaching 30,000 [instead of plummeting toward 6,000, as it was early last week], and seasoned homebuilders were hammering out new houses at a record rate. New publishing imprints seemed everywhere.

Now… while I was trained as an economist, and while I do follow the economic indicators and the economy very closely, I’m not about to predict how bad matters will get… or when. The one thing I did learn during my years of doing such things for a living was that the only thing you can be sure of is that the more economists agree on something, the less likely they are to be right. In fact, I actually wrote a short study on that subject at the behest of one employer.

What I am convinced of, however, is that, just as people followed trends “upward” far, far longer than made any rational sense, so too will they follow trends downward far, far longer than makes any rational sense. Already, thousands and thousands of investors are buying Treasury notes which yield almost nothing, because they feel T-bills are “safe.” In a sense, they are, because not much will be worth much of anything if the government collapses, but buying them at such rates guarantees an absolute loss. That’s because, if the interest rates go up, the value of the notes goes down, and when the yield is close to nothing, the only things that rates can do is stay stable or go up. So the best all those investors can do is end up with the same amount of money. That’s the best they can do. In the meantime, the short-sellers in the stock market are betting heavily that investors will overreact and continue to sell short on the downside, exacerbating the pressures for overreaction. The current “up” bounce may very well be another over-reaction, because the basic economic news hasn’t really changed.

The previous “up” and “down” trends, as well as the present short “up” trend, illustrate, to my mind, the fact that human beings in groups always over-react. Teen-aged girls in crowds at rock concerts over-react. Young men in gangs over-react. Bankers in groups over-react. So do groups of politicians linked by party symbols. Young and middle-aged male-investors linked together by the internet over-react.

And while I’ve observed this for years, I don’t have an answer… except to consider that to over-react is clearly human.

While there are a number of variations on the theme, the basic vampire plot is that an old and ageless vampire preys on young and beautiful woman or women, whose blood keeps him forever young. From that point on, the vampire can be indifferent, vicious, fall in love, etc. At the moment, vampire novels are, it’s fair to say, the very big thing in the publishing world, and some readers are under the impression that the theme is relatively new. More sophisticated readers know that’s not true, and that the first vampire book in English dates to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, first published in 1897, while legends of vampires date back at least some six hundred years to Vlad the Impaler, if not before that.

Interestingly enough the first “modern” vampire novel was not Dracula, but Carmilla, published in 1871, about a lesbian vampire who preys on young women, but Carmilla has generally been forgotten, largely, I suspect, because it does not play on the basic trope underlying the Dracula-style vampire myth, even though there are historical antecedents to a female vampire, as well with the reputed blood-bathing of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary. Throughout western history runs a consistent theme, particularly prominent in patriarchal societies, that various forms of contact by an old man with young women improve health and re-create his youth. The vampire myth, thus, is merely a variation on that theme.

Even the Bible notes in the first book of Kings that the aging King David slept with a virgin, without intimate relations, in order for him to keep warm and hold to his health. Today in Africa, the superstition that a sex with a young virgin can cure a man of AIDS is not only a variation on this theme, but one deadly to millions of young women, just as a vampire might be.

Polygamy can be understood as another variation on this theme, particularly when one notes the age differential between the “husbands” and most multiple wives in the recent cases involving Utah, Arizona, and Texas polygamists. Another manifestation of this trope might well be the current trophy wives of older men of wealth and position, women who bolster the men’s self-esteem and create an illusion that such men are younger than they are. But, in a real way, aren’t such men in fact a form of vampire?

Also interesting is the fact that the underlying trope appears not only in strong patriarchal cultures but also at times when there is a struggle over gender roles and power, as was the case at the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. The most recent example of this might well be the “Twilight” books, written as they are by a woman educated in one of the last bastions of male supremacy in higher education and a member of a faith that has institutionalized and rationalized a “traditional” and subservient gender role for women.

And so the vampire trope lives on.

A number of years ago, I found myself in an on-line discussion with a reader who insisted that there was absolutely no need for a manned military perimeter on a colony world to defend against invaders landed from space. As I recall the “discussion,” his point was that either the invader had the high ground of space and could use orbital bombardment to destroy the defense perimeter or that the defenders could do the same. A number of years before that, another author wrote about the idea of smart rocks as an effective military weapon and defense. Just recently, I saw another discussion on the idea, and all of it left me shaking my head.

Orbital bombardment is a wonderful way to destroy a planet or the culture on it. I’ve done just that in one or two of my books. But so far as I can figure, it’s a terrible and cost-ineffective way to conquer or defend anything. To begin with, even small planets are big, and inhabited planets have atmospheres, gravitational fields, and probably magnetic fields. From what we’ve so far determined, for carbon-based life they also need oceans and liquid water. Now that might not be necessary for an extraordinarily high-tech civilization, but any civilization with that level of technology likely wouldn’t be worth conquering. Destroying, perhaps, if it were viciously inimical, but not conquering. And all of these characteristics, plus a few others, make dropping anything from orbit, particularly to a small point, anything but easy or simple… or cheap.

So how does one put together a “targeted” orbital bombardment? First, you need mass, and if that mass is to survive atmospheric re-entry it needs to be compact and dense, and you need enough separate chunks of that mass to reduce the objective, again assuming you’re interesting in merely taking out military targets and not leveling and churning whole sections of the planet. In a planetary orbit, exactly where does one get such mass? If there’s a moon, the mass has to be mined and broken into the right sizes and shapes. If there’s no moon, such mass must be lifted off the surface [highly unlikely, because if invaders control the orbital area, the locals won’t get that far, and if the invaders need bombardment to control the planetary surface, they obviously can’t get to the surface to obtain the mass required for bombardment]. That leaves asteroid or other out-system mining, all of which require yet more equipment and transportation methods, adding time, cost, and yet more technology.

Second, the bombardment “projectiles” need to be of almost identical size and composition in order for there to be any chance of being dropped into a re-entry path that will get them anywhere near the target. There’s also the problem and the need to compute such paths, and against a series of objects, such as defense installations, that amounts to considerably different computations… and the equipment and software to do so. Even so, in all probability, given all the variables involved, even precisely engineered objects will spread or shift in re-entry and descent so that they’ll be unlikely to land within a kilometer of the target or targets, let alone within yards. An independent guidance system, with the equivalent of steering jets, is most likely required to assure impact near the target — but that’s effectively the definition of a missile, and would require rather large factories somewhere, plus miniature AIs and fuel, etc.

In short, orbital bombardment with “sharp stones” doesn’t look too likely as a candidate for precision ground targeting, either for practical or technical reasons. And if you want to destroy the planet or the culture, you only need one smallish asteroid or comet.

While I’ve oversimplified somewhat, the point is that a number of so-called high-tech solutions advocated to replace more “conventional” weapons really won’t work in practice. Some, of course, do, but that’s when the economics, the technology, and the battlefield environment go hand in hand. When a modern jet costs upwards of $50 million, and when it costs $5 million plus to train the pilot, you can afford to lose a great number of far smaller and less expensive RPVs for the most dangerous missions, but you still can’t afford to use them against individual soldiers or terrorists on a wide-spread basis.

Recent wars and conflicts, including the drug war in Mexico, continue to illustrate the same dichotomy as the orbital bombardment issue I outlined above. Focused military high-technology is extraordinarily good at annihilating discrete objects, often quite large objects, but it is expensive to develop and deploy and has considerable limitations in dealing with smaller targets, particularly those mixed in with objects and people you don’t want to destroy. Also, using expensive high tech indiscriminately against multiple and numerous low-tech targets has a tendency to bankrupt the high-tech user.

While times and technology change, they change equally over time for the attacker and the defender, and several thousand years of military history suggests that every technology runs into limits and that both conquest and resisting conquest require soldiers with weapons, and that many wonderful ideas like targeted orbital bombardment remain wonderful ideas… and little else.

There are several underlying assumptions that all too many internet users have. Actually, there are more than several, but I’m going to discuss one aspect that is both tacitly accepted… and erroneous.

That’s the belief that the content on the web largely is and should be “free.” None of it is truly free. It can’t be, by definition. Now some content is obviously and effectively “pay-to-view.” If you want to access certain services, certain libraries, and the like, someone has to pay. I can’t access the scholarly articles on JSTOR, not without subscribing, but my wife can, IF she accesses them from her university computer, because the university has paid for that service for its faculty and staff. Likewise, because I’ve written a number of stories for Jim Baen’s Universe magazine, I can access the stories there, but she can’t, not without my password and ID. Some library systems have also paid for access to otherwise “pay-restricted” content, and if you use their computers, you also can access that material.

But…doesn’t the rest of the web offer a wide range of “free” content?

Not on your life, it doesn’t. First, there are all the ads, pop-up or otherwise. Every time you access a site with such ads or banners, that site is being supported in part or whole by advertising, and you’re paying with either delays or in reading or watching, even if momentarily, that ad content. Even on this site, which has no overt ads, Tor is paying for the site and the technical maintenance, and I’m devoting probably entirely too much time in trying to intrigue and entertain you so that you will read and buy more of my books. Just how long do you think Tor would do that if no one bought my books? Most sites by professional writers, or writers trying to be professionals, are set up and maintained for the purpose of selling the writer and his or her works. They’re “free” only in the sense that the viewer doesn’t have to come up with payment on the spot.

When the Bush Administration asked for Big Brother powers, and Congress granted them under the Patriot Act, at least some Americans rose up and asked why. Some protested the erosion of long-held civil liberties. But it seems like many of those who did so now have surrendered to the commercialized versions of Big Brother. Yes, indeed, give this advertiser or web merchant your sales profile and your tastes. Provide your address here, and your birthday here. Post all your friends and preferences there…

It wasn’t the government that destroyed the American financial system; it was the banking and commercial interests, as well as the average American, all seeking something for nothing, or for far less than it was worth. Do we have to fear that it will be the government that destroys personal privacy and possibly civil liberties? Or will we do it to ourselves for the lure of “free” content, wanting to “join our friends or online communities,” or for apparent ease of communications and shopping?

Free? Think again.