Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 April 8

= April 8 =

Pakistani reserved seats
In Pakistani government, both provincial and federal; they reserved seats for women and minorties. What do they mean "minorities" and who are these "minorities" do they speak of? Hindu? Sikh? Christian? Shi'a Ismaili Nizari? Shi'a Ithna Ash'ari? Shi'a Ismaili Mustali? Shi'a Zaydi? Zoroastrian?
 * The minorities referred to are all non-Muslims. See . Warofdreams talk 13:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

What are the ROI or ROCE for various business sectors?
What are the different average returns on investment or returns on capital employed for the various sectors that companies listed on US or UK stock markets are usually grouped into? 78.151.150.47 (talk) 00:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhapas easier sub-questions to answer would be: What is the most profitable sector? What is the least? Thanks. 89.243.213.58 (talk) 12:16, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It would seem from here (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=196) that the 'services' industries are more profitable than 'manufacturing'. This PDF document (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/economic_trends/ET587_Walton.pdf) has a lot more detail around profitable - comparing nations, then sectors inside nations. There is also an entire section (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nscl.asp?id=5548) dedicated to company profiability. This is all UK-centred as it is the UKs statistics office but similar sites might exist for the country/area you are most interested in. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:17, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant! Thank you very much, Gordon. 78.145.24.168 (talk) 18:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

IPRED effects
On April 1st 2009 Sweden got a law to reduce filesharing. Total internet traffic went down by about 50%. Has anyone seen any reference to any other measured(!) effects of any law that reduces filesharing? Media sales? Internet development? Any other effects? DanielDemaret (talk) 06:08, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * If you don't get any answer here by the time your question is archived in a few days, try asking again on the Computer RefDesk. BrainyBabe (talk) 22:16, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Deal capture
Hi, in finance you can often hear the term "deal capture". It has to do with trading financial securities, but exactly which activities are actually included in this concept? /193.3.225.212 (talk) 13:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

US Senators
Has any US federal judge been convicted of a felony for which he was arrested during his time as a federal judge? If so, when was the last time and who was it?

Same question for US senators.

65.121.141.34 (talk) 16:20, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. See Impeachment_in_the_United_States for a partial list. --Sean 17:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Follow up question, is perjury a felony in the US? 65.121.141.34 (talk) 18:13, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See Perjury, in the US it can be up to 5 years in prison. ny156uk (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So also, yes. Livewireo (talk) 20:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, I looked at the perjury article earlier and it did not say. I have since looked at the article for felony and it says any punishment over 1 year in prison in US will be a felony.  I have edited it so that it mentions that it is a felony crime in the US. 65.121.141.34 (talk) 20:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That is federal law. Remember that the U.S. has many separate law systems, at least some of which include a lesser charge of misdemeanor prejury (or so Google tells me.) Rmhermen (talk) 02:33, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe perjury charges are often pleaded to lower charges, as well, such as contempt of court. StuRat (talk) 18:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Dutch government agency for drug approval?
What is the agency, executive, ministry, etc... of the government of the Netherlands that deals with approval of medical products? In other words, what's the Dutch equivalent of the MHRA? SDY (talk) 17:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be the "College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen - Medicines Evaluations Board". You can check out their website here.  Depending on the status of the medicine in the EU, it may also be relavant to research it's status at the European Medicines Agency.  --Zerozal (talk) 18:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I found what I was looking for, so all I need now is someone who speaks dutch. Oh well, babelfish will get me something...  Thanks.  SDY (talk) 21:34, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

charity vs government
Hello Wikipedia,

I was debating the ethical side of charity with a friend of mine - whos argument was essentially charities that address homelessness, ecucation etc let the governement 'off the hook' and mean that they get away with not taxing the wealthy appropriately. I think, in cases like these, he has a point. Anyway, it got me thiking, has any goverment ever said, instead of increasing the top rate of tax, mandated giving money to charity? Obviously, you need money for things like collecting the dustbins, but if say, people had to donate 50% of all earnings over £100,000, it could both solve a number of social ills and remove the (ever increasing) resentment people have of extremely wealthy individuals. Has this ever been done? Have i discovered a utopian dream?82.40.246.228 (talk) 20:47, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * A few points: charities are corruptible; they are not necessarily effective (witness the long-standing debate over whether even well-run African aid - both private and public - is a net gain for Africa); they typically aren't long-term or large-scale (by which I mean on the scale of public infrastructure; I can't remember the last Hoover dam-sized task a charity did); and they are typically focused on glamorous, easily advertised tasks (when was the last time you saw an ad for a charity asking for money to iodize salt for the Third World, one of the most effective possible health interventions per dollar spent; versus an ad for surgery for a hare-lipped African orphan?).
 * So it's not at all clear that diverting expenditures to charity instead of government would be superior. Further, this is to a large extent already happening. Charitable donations are treated very favorably by the tax code. This is why the extremely wealthy make such large bequests in their wills, in part to minimize the estate tax. --Gwern (contribs) 21:23 8 April 2009 (GMT)

Ethically speaking your friend is making the assumption that a primary role of government is wealth redistribution - it is by no means a given that the wealthy are expected to fund social-welfare programs (even if most countries are progressively taxed). The difference between tax and charity, of course, is enormous. You don't decide how your tax dollars are spent (or how much is collected), but with charity you decide A) who you donate to and B) how much. There are certainly tax-incentives for donations to charity and there is plenty of variety in the world of charity that exists beyond the realms of those that advertise on tv, but as Gwern notes - the charitable sector is hugely fragmented so the cost-sharing/scaling methods a well-ran government can implement are currently unattainable in the charity sector. As for your solution - If you 'require' people to donate it no longer becomes a donation, it becomes (in effect) a tax. What your proposal allows, that much government doesn't, is definitive input from the individual into where their tax dollars are spent. In all honesty I don't believe that will bring about particularly good results, as Gwern points our the 'glamourous' stories get the cash, but the simple/uninteresting issues will be overlooked. ny156uk (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As Gwern notes, governments already recognize that charities are good for society, as existing tax policy shovels a lot of money over to charities already. If this weren't the reference desk, I would require you to cite verifiable sources for your claims that "a number" of social ills would be "solved", that your plan would "remove" resentment of the wealthy, that this resentment is "ever increasing", and also the underlying, unstated claim that there should not be a large wealth gap between the richest and the middle class.  These four claims of yours are by no means settled; they are all controversial and there are many people who contest them.  Tempshill (talk) 22:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If the government did what the OP says, while being a good idea in principle, it would not work, because the wealthy would just put all of their money into offshore bank accounts in tax havens such as Switzerland or Jersey or somewhere else where the money can't be touched. Most rich people are not very altruistic and generous. That's why they are rich.--KageTora (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * To go back to your first question (Has this ever been done?), I've not been able to find a case yet of a government mandating charitable donations by its citizens (i.e. a step beyond providing incentives, which as the other answerers point out is common). That doesn't mean there isn't one, I hope better googlers will keep trying. I did find instances of private firms that require this of their employees: Salomon Brothers investment bank in the '60s and professional baseball teams in America. In addition, numerous governments designate a percentage of their revenue to be used for humanitarian purposes, though that's not quite the same either. You might also be interested in claims that new US tax proposals would in effect give the government 100 per cent of executive's bonuses and this economics textbook discussion of "100 per cent tax". Best, WikiJedits (talk) 15:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I had a similar idea of letting people choose to allocate at least a portion of their tax dollars to whichever government programs they prefer. This would hopefully make people more willing to pay their taxes rather than hide them off-shore, and would also bypass much of the problem of special interests bribing the legislature to spend money on "pork" projects.  This would be a step away from representative democracy, and toward direct democracy. StuRat (talk) 18:17, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That is a good one. If you could choose which government department you spent your tax on, not only would it make people feel better about paying taxes, it would also improve areas which badly need improvement in certain localities. Education in inner-city areas, for example, would benefit from this, as I am sure that people would rather pay for their kids to go to a good school in their local area, than watch their money get spent on some bone idea in a totally different area. The only problem with this is that practically nobody would want to pay for social security or prisons or certain other things. It may be better if you could choose a proportion of your tax to go to a certain area. Good idea, though.--KageTora (talk) 19:45, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * And that is exactly what you said, so it looks like I am agreeing with you wholeheartedly. :) --KageTora (talk) 19:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, not exactly the same, I said "portion" and you said "proportion". :-) But yes, I also thought that there are a few essential programs (and far more nonessential programs) which are so unpopular they'd never be funded if 100% of taxes were taxpayer allocated.  I'd also start low, maybe allocating 1% of each taxpayer's dollars this way, then ramp up to whatever max percentage we decide upon.  This 1% wouldn't be enough to make much difference in major programs, but could make a huge diff for small, perennially underfunded programs (like Head Start). StuRat (talk) 00:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I was thinking more about the education system, and the NHS, both of which, here in the UK, are so massively underfunded they are even understaffed, and have taken on people who are not qualified. As for organizations like Head Start, that would be good, but we need to get down to the fundamentals first before we address the more finer issues like that. I would advocate giving people the choice to allocate a proportion (this percentage can be set by the local council) of the council tax to whichever government department they think needs it, and on a council level, not a national level, so the money stays local and funds local government services. This way, we all know what's happening.--KageTora (talk) 01:51, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds reasonable. StuRat (talk) 06:16, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The question is of course whether you're likely to actually make any meaningful difference or could in fact make things worse. As you've acknowledged, people are not necessarily going to make the best decisions. We can debate for ever whether politicians and public servants make the better decisions (although clearly not here) but it seems to me at the very least we could expect a greater focus on the shortterm at the expense of the long term, which I think many would agree is already a problem as well as a focus on 'selfish' behaviour i.e. does this benefit me and also an increase in emotional rather then logical/rational thinking. For example of what I mean by the final, while it may seem cold to give a cost to a life, most people are going to agree when they actually think about it that $10 million to save a single life is usually not worth it and I thik many would agree we do need our politicians and public servants to think of cost effectiveness etc whether we like it or not. But people are notoriously bad at applying that thinking when you have images of sick kids or whatever so it seems easily possible that you'd get an increase expenditure in areas that cost a lot but benefit only a few because the obvious benefit and emotional appeal is there whereas programs which benefit a lot of people but lack the obvious emotional appeal may go in the cold. Again this is already a problem but it seems to me it will just get worst if you allow people to allocate some of their tax dollars. And about the selfish behaviour, it seems to me it applies to head start as well. I'm not convince a program like that would benefit at all. It seems to me easily possible few people would be willing to fund it, even less then what we have now. Sure those who's communities would benefit a lot might be willing (I emphasise might because sad to say, many of the people involved do make the wrong choices in life, it's a vicious cycle that's difficult to break which is one of the problems) but they are not likely to actually have much money since it's mostly coming from the richer people. If you're talking about a percentage of total budget available to a country allocated on per head/voter instead of percentage taxpayer dollars, then that would be different but it sounds like your not that in any case that opens a whole new can of worms. Further, I wonder how the programs are going to reach out to convince people to fund them. We already see this with charities how they need to spend a fair amount of their time and resources on advertising and fundraising efforts and government departments and programmes already likewise spend some time and resources on reaching out to politicians etc but it seems to me they'd need to do what charities are doing under your proposal which is likely to raise costs further and so easily all your funding increases could be lost here. Finally I wonder how willing people would actually be to spend the time and effort to participate. IMHO we've already seen this with various attempts at increasing voter choice where a substanial percent don't bother to participate and of those that do they spend very little time actually making the choice because they can't be bothered spending their time to adequetly research. And in general of course, it's well accepted that too much choice is often a bad thing although what's too much is not clear. This does vary from country to country and perhaps it would work in the US where you already vote for what seems to me and I think many others like insane things like judges and school boards and other strange stuff and perhaps for something like Swizterland but I'm definitely not convince it would work everywhere. Nil Einne (talk) 12:07, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding selfishness, it seems to me that with representative democracy you get a double effect. The selfishness of the voters still comes through in their reps supporting projects which are indefensible boondoggles, but in their district.  Such useless projects seem more likely to be approved with reps, though, since they can make deals with other reps ("I'll support your bit of pork if you support mine").  In addition to this, you also get the selfishness of the reps themselves.  For example, they are more likely to support a wasteful project if the lobbyist supporting it gives them enough money to get re-elected. StuRat (talk) 15:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * What's the difference between a yarn an old woman spins and a yarn a politician spins? One's a ball of wool.--KageTora (talk) 00:32, 11 April 2009 (UTC)