God damn them.

Check out the new movie The Astronaut Farmer - hopefully this will get the private space exploration gospel out.

I may miss the movie as it opens in NYC the day I head back to Belfast from this trip and I do not know if this is a movie which will be shown there.

As to the other sentiment, I take great pleasure in day dreaming of government employees tied to satanic spits screaming in agony for untold millenia upon millenia.

Next question: is there anyone out there for whom this does not make the point of why libertarians hold the state and its defenders in deep contempt?

This one thing? Deep contempt? - Me, unless that was hyperbole. Thought I am sorry to disappoint Dale on something to close to his heart.

Best regards

Nigel: I presume that means you have other reasons for holding the state in deep contempt than I do. That is not surprising. The state gives us so *many* reasons to despise it that I am sure there is at least one for everyone.

"Next question: is there anyone out there for whom this does not make the point of why libertarians hold the state and its defenders in deep contempt?"

No one here.

To reduce the financial burden, winners can argue that they don't owe any taxes until their flight lifts off. Another option is working out an installment plan to pay taxes over time, said Greg Jenner of the American Bar Association.

Disgusting. I think I am going to be sick.

It is a ray of sunshine for those of us in the UK to find something signifcant that is taxed in the UK but not here. The proceeds of competitions, gambling and lotteries aren't taxed here unless the tax-man decides your competing or gambling are part of your 'trade or profession'. I've met the occasional gambler who wholly or partly lives by it and does a tax return on that basis, but never heard of a competition or quiz fanatic who does, even if that's all they do.

Those running competitions and quizzes don't like to admit there are any professionals. It is bad for business. But when I won Brain of Britain the late "Mycroft", Ian Gillies, kindly told me that the quiz world had like cricket had been divided into gentlemen and players, and that I was the last of the gentlemen. When he died, a couple of years later, he was replaced by one of the players.

Why don't they say that the gift is just for the RETURN trip? Thus, the gift is not collected while on earth.

Don't tell me...US extraterritorality extends to the Outer Rim.

He should take the flight and worry about the tax later. Or, rather, let the IRS worry about the tax later.

He could have found a good agent, taken the flight and made the money to pay the damned tax, perhaps on the lecture circuit. There must be many other ways in which he could surmount this obstacle.

The State won't let you do something that is perfectly reasonable? Ignore it and accept the consequences. Don't let anything stand in the way of the achievement of your goals.

I'm with guy here. I'm quite staggered by this difference in UK/US law.

As a technical get-out couldn't they just classify this bloke as "essential ballast"?

Yup, Dale. It sucks. It is absolutely outrageous. And sometimes it's the little things which are the most poignant indicators, Nigel.

A lot of things that go on and get mentioned make me by turns depressed, angry, scared, and so on.

This one just make me feel sad in a distant, powerful way, like my eight-year-old self has just died.

The leviathan crushes dreams. What a fine line to describe the combination of the simple joy at issue and the huge, diffuse animus against it.

Of course, I know the state apparatus bears no particular animus against the winner of the contest, but I think that's what makes it saddest.

Bastards! Bastards, bastards, bastards!

I'd like to see how the liberals defend this taxation. Oh yeah, "taxes are for the good of everybody", so tell me, how does crushing the life-long dreams of one man help the Poor & Starvin?

Don't tell me...US extraterritorality extends to the Outer Rim.

Farther than that, TimC. It extends to you. Whoever you are, wherever you be, to the farthest reaches of the universe, the constitutional government of the United States may act.

If this government be bound by its constitutional constraints, it is a defender of those who seeks its protection. This is a good thing. But as it has broken its bindings and is running rampant, it is bad. Quite bad.

Dale, if government employees were the crux of the problem, it could easily be solved.

The problem is that the IRS is charged with administering such onerous taxes in the first place. Politicians are buying are votes with our own money.

To cut and paste the tagline Perry uses in his emails:

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else

- Frederic Bastiat

I don't get it. The guy (and the people offering the ride in the first place) seem deeply, deeply unimaginitive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, repressive state crushing dreams of you and me, and there's no rational, ethical reason he should _have_ to think up some clever way around this particular unpleasantness but ...

Didn't the people running the contest think of this eventuality ahead of time?

Couldn't they sell it to him for some token amount?

Couldn't he make whatever money he needed on the lecture tour afterward?

I mean seriously, I smell a face-saving excuse here.

How about reclassifying the contest as a hiring process? They were using the contest as an exam cycle to decide who would be the stewardess on the flight.

Unless that risks bringing OSHA into the picture...

Michael and Sunfish,

It bears remembering that the IRS decides what is income and they have their own court system up to a very high level. They have determined that gifts and prizes are to be taxed at their market value. The only legal challange possible would have to be made over the trip's market value. Which equates approximately to it's auction value. I think it may have already been undervalued by IRS standards.

To reduce the financial burden, winners can argue that they don't owe any taxes until their flight lifts off.

When they start raffling off one way trips to space colony Alpha, this may actually work. Hhmmm...

test

In most Western nations even a cash prize is not taxable income. Let alone a free trip somewhere (whether it be to outer space or to somewhere on Earth).

I am reminded of the person who complained that his "million Dollar prize" (in a government lottery) turned out to be X thousand Dollars a year. The government judge said "well, if you do not like it, you can have the price of the ticket back".

Of course the United States is the only nation I know of where judges can impose tax increases that no one voted for.

Say the word "education" is mentioned in a State constitution - judges (elected in non open elections or appointed in a "non political" [i.e. Bar Association controlled] way) will say "the public schools are not good, therefore money money must be raised to improve them" (ignoring the fact that "more money" will not improve them).

There was a time when such judges (who violated the principle of "no taxation without representation") would have been covered in tar and feathers - but Americans have become more "civilized" (i.e. more submissive).

If you want Americans to explore space they are going to have to become a lot less submissive. Otherwise you might as well have stayed under George III and Paliament.