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So which country do you wish to murder? India? China? Because to get to the numbers they are claiming we need to reach you will have to kill a couple billion because they will have to live in conditions similar to what cave people lived in, with all the disease, starvation, and mass culling that implies.

Of course the REAL reason many are against those preaching AGW is NOT because they don't believe we have a problem, its because their "solution" is nothing but snake oil designed to enrich a few 1% insiders by pulling a reverse robin hood on the poor and middle class. Its actual effect on the climate? Will be about as much as buying my "climate fixing rocks" which I will be happy to sell you for the low low price of $10K per person.

Is dumping more carbon in the air bad? Yep, dumping too much of anything is bad...and the alternative is? Unless someone comes up with fusion technology or some other near limitless energy? You have several countries with billions of people that aren't gonna happily die in squalor just so you can keep your iCrap. They want to live in nice homes, have electricity and phones and laptops and fridges...you know, all the things your first world behind takes for granted? And to give them those things WILL require ever increasing carbon.

So unless you are willing to go "final solution" on the third world? Not really any more we can do than what we are doing now, in fact what we have done now is simply cripple our own country to benefit a handful of global elite. after all you can pass all the climate laws you want, they can simply go to a third world country and have their widgets made, dump as much toxins in the air and water there as they please (because to the locals its better than starvation) and then simply slap the widgets on a ship and sell it your your little green flag waving self. All these laws you pass? Not gonna cost them a dime because they are not gonna follow them, as long as your government allows so called "free trade" they can always find another country they can pollute.

So all you are buying is snake oil and bullshit designed to make you feel better about yourself, while screwing the poor and enriching the elite...all so you can put a "hastag i'magreen" on your tweets.

New York Times isn't a mainstream site?

http://www.dailyfinance.com/20...

Yes, this. energy drink and Starbucks. People aren't drinking fewer caffeinated beverages, they're generally drinking stronger ones. Whether it's carbonated or not doesn't really matter.

My favorite commercial of course, is 5-hour energy. "Get five hours of energy with only 4 calories!" I got a news flash for those guys... calories == energy. No calories means it's a drug, not energy. I wonder if I could sue them for blatantly false advertisements?

Well, you have *some* income tax..
From http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/05/05/the-5-states-with-no-sales-tax/

With the moniker "Live Free or Die," New Hampshire gives residents a double-tax break, with no sales tax and an income tax that applies only to interest and dividend income.

Wow, usually interest & dividend income is what has a LOWER tax rate..

But still, how does the state pay for things, with low income tax and no sales tax?

Plus, you've got snow in the winter.. I like the weather here better.

New Hampshire resident here (happily a s/w engineer too)... high property tax, high registration fees on cars, toll roads, and some taxes on things like prepared meals.
Overall it averages out that we don't really pay much less tax than (say) neighboring Massachusetts. If you are a home owner.

The state is also, in general, very hesitant to spend any money.

For example... on a $500,000 house I pay $12,000 a year in property tax. But that $500k gets me 3000 square feet in the second largest city in the state with only 50 minutes to Boston. And I pay $600 a year on two cars worth roughly $40k.

With that said, I love living in New Hampshire! I moved here from Boston and it is so much better. In Boston I'd be lucky to buy a 50 year old two bedroom home with no yard for the same price (and that's in the suburbs). I've considered moving to California a few times but I like Boston and New Hampshire too much (I don't mind the snow... buy a snow blower).

Back to the article since...
I made $72k straight out of school in Boston after paying $80k+ in tuition and hit $100k in less than three years and Greater Boston is lower cost of living (barely) than San Fransisco. So to hear that 13% of students make over $100k doesn't seem that odd to me.

Well, you have *some* income tax..
From http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/05/05/the-5-states-with-no-sales-tax/

With the moniker "Live Free or Die," New Hampshire gives residents a double-tax break, with no sales tax and an income tax that applies only to interest and dividend income.

Wow, usually interest & dividend income is what has a LOWER tax rate..

But still, how does the state pay for things, with low income tax and no sales tax?

Plus, you've got snow in the winter.. I like the weather here better.

Which checks would those be? The checks from Goldman Sachs for pushing the AGW reverse robin hood credit default swaps...err I mean ":carbon credits". Or would those be the checks from Al Gore who is in bed with Goldman Sachs and has set himself up to become carbon billionaire if he and GS get their giant scam that won't do shit but make them even richer made into the law?

Dude if you believe EITHER side gives a single fuck about the environment? I have some genuine Arkansas anti global warming crystals I'll be happy to sell ya, only $499.99 so act now! BTW if you actually DO give a shit about the environment? DO NOT BUY THE SCAMS, talk to somebody that actually walks the walk...Ed Begley Jr. unlike Rev Al who lives in a McMansion whose indoor basketball court uses more AC than a family home? He lives in a modest 3 bedroom, Rev Al drives a fleet of SUVs to his one man Lear jet? Begley drives an electric car to a commuter flight.But if you were to look up Begley's thoughts on the subject? You'd find an overdose of COMMON SENSE, make it easier for folks to use electric cars, promote renewables in places like AZ where solar works really well, invest in tech that will let us do more with what we have and recycle easier...its ALL common Goddamned sense!

But of course you can't become a billionaire with sensible logical approaches which is why you are getting pounded with "ZOMFG teh sky is fallin! You HAVE to do this thing (which won't do a damned thing because we filled it with more loopholes for our 1% pals than a Coke has HFCS) because we have to SAVE TEH EARF!"

funny you bring up SS, SS would be fine if the govt stopped raiding it.

Ah yes, the conservative myth about Social Security that just will not die: "Social Security is broke because government's been raiding it!"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...

http://www.dailyfinance.com/20...

http://money.cnn.com/pf/featur...

Social Security benefits are not paid out of a "trust fund". They are paid out of payroll taxes on an "as-you-go" basis. The "trust fund" represented the massive overpayments that were made in preparation for the large number of baby boomers who are now retiring. And by the way, in case you're worried, they aren't making any new baby boomers, so every year, their number shrinks.

Social Security is not only perfectly fine, but is without a doubt the most popular and successful US government program in history. It's one of the main reasons the US has had such high standards of living since WWII. And the GOP/libertarian desperation to undo Social Security is the best proof that they are too dangerous to be allowed to govern.

Well, they assemble them. They paid GlobalFoundries $1.5B to take away their chip division last year. The same chip division that advanced the state of the art in semiconductor design to help get the industry to where it is today.

Really though, what "business machines" does IBM make anymore? pSeries? zOS / System390? AS/400? What's the volume on those?

The rich have robust retirement savings accounts AND pull social security once they've turned 65.

It most definitely is worth something to them, otherwise the cap would not exist.

The option of a class action lawsuit is being removed here in the US as fast as companies can rewrite contracts to do so, in favor of forced arbitration

Just noticed today.

That happened back in October:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on...

Companies are sitting on an historically mammoth pile of cash (in general) :
https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub...
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on...
http://bgr.com/2013/10/02/appl...
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

Why are they being so stingy?

They have realized that it is far more profitable to invest in CONGRESSMEN, than it is to invest in their own labor-pool.

Aereo is an online streaming service - among its offering, it enables people who stay very far away from NYC (for example, Sydney Australia) to watch TV stations from NYC.

The argument from the teevee stations is that by allowing the streaming of their broadcast content, Aereo is violating the "copyright".

I dunno about you, but I find this argument utterly preposterous !

Legally speaking, true, the way the copyright laws has been stipulated by those "legal experts" is that a copy of whatever copyrighted content (be it sound, image, book, or the combination of any form) can only be used one time, in one place.

Aero addresses this the same way Slingbox does. They argue that by having one physical receiver per active subscribed user, that they are not in violation; this is the same way it would work if you had a Slingbox at home in your NYC apartment, and were traveling in another country. The major difference is that advertisers that you see for NY products on your Slingbox have a reasonable expectation that you will be returning to the regional purchase market where your Slingbox is located at some point in the future, after your trip is over, while there's no similar expectation that you'll go to the roof where the Aereo receivers are located at some point, and then proceed to "buy local".

But c'mon !

People living in Sydney Australia don't get to watch teevee station beaming from NYC anyway - and by allowing them to watch it via online streaming, how the fuck this going to make the NYC teevee station losing money ?

ABC objects to this because they license content, and make money on commercials.

Commercials tend to be related to a regional market (i.e. you are unlikely to have a Big-O tires or Chick-fil-A or Trader Joe's or other locale centric food chain specific to the U.S. in Australia). Because of this, advertisers in the NY market don't see any benefit to ABC stations streamed outside the NY market, since they aren't applicable in remote markets; the thing that bothers ABC about this is ads tend to get paid by region, an by Nielsen ratings for the broadcast station within the region. So they don't get a higher income for their licensed content for their franchisees.

Assuming they could get franchisees in the local markets in Australia to pick up and license ABC programming, then there would be advertising for the local market in the broadcast area, and they'd see income for those programs within that region.

So Aereo breaks their regional marketing models by moving content + advertisements. This also devalues their properties, unless they agree to simultaneous release in various regions, and it erodes their leverage position of getting a franchisee in another region where there is no franchisee, because they are unable to hold them hostage to in demand content, which would (effectively) blackmail the local stations into taking a full content package, rather than one or two programs, and would cause income sharing for regional advertising back to the parent network (ABC).

This effect is, incidentally, the same reason that various networks have been going after cable and dish networks to get a larger programming package payout (with the exception that the cable and dish networks do regional advertising substitution on the fly into program packages, rather than taking all the advertising from the network). This was the basis of the CBS (network)/Time Warner (cable provider) dispute last year: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/09/02/cbs-time-warner-resolve-dispute/

If Aereo wins, the networks are going to need to revise their business model, so the most likely outcome is actually that there will be a loss for Aero, with a time period for them and the networks to agree to an implementation of a fetch-model for advertising, at which point Aero doesn't end up actually losing, and the network gets part of

So without their violation of our rights terrorism would rank behind drug abuse [wikipedia.org] and we don't seem to care that much about drug abuse. Even if all 50 attacks happened this year and each one killed ~3000 people the body count would only be 150,000 and terrorism would come in at #2 between being a fat ass and being a smoker.

So you think there are no problematic aspects to comparing the results of willful, planned human action resulting in violence with events of random chance or personal choice leading to death or disease? Lets continue that line of thinking. Americans lost about $92 billion in gambling in 2007. In 2012, there were 3,870 bank robberies in which the robbers managed to steal $29.5 million, or $7,600 per robbery. Surely by your thinking that must make gambling a much larger problem. Therefore society should totally abandon enforcing laws against bank robbery until it has reduced gambling losses from $92 billion to something close to $29.5 million. Do you think bank robbery would remain static at that level if that were to occur?

Abandoning enforcement of bank robberies (as a proxy for terrorism) will have little effect on the level of gambling (as a proxy for disease or accidents), but will almost certainly result in increased incidence of bank robberies. Bank robbery is a problem that is being kept in check by enforcement - there are people sitting in jail for bank robbery, just as there are for terrorism. Increased enforcement and longer sentences have helped significantly reduce the level of bank robbery. Do you think you would make that much of a dent in gambling as long as it remains legal since it is both enjoyable and addictive as are drugs? The answer is no.

That fact that statistics exist for terrorism and heart attacks doesn't mean that any particular comparison is necessarily valid. Your comparison isn't a reasonable comparison from a public policy perspective, and doesn't account for the secondary affects from those choices. Your argument is largely nonsense.

Amazon has been fighting against having to collect individual sales tax, while endorsing a Federal framework like The Marketplace Fairness Act.

Amazon wants this for at least two reasons:

1) they don't have to employ a legion of tax specialists / lawyers for sales tax (which cuts at the bottom line)
2) they're betting the Federal framework will result in a lower overall rate (which keeps their competitive price advantage over brick-and-mortar)

No, actually, Amazon has been fighting tooth and nail against sales tax for years.

Amazon has been fighting against having to collect individual sales tax, while endorsing a Federal framework like The Marketplace Fairness Act.

I guess I confused this for them being in support of sales tax collection.

No, actually, Amazon has been fighting tooth and nail against sales tax for years.

Amazon has been fighting against having to collect individual sales tax, while endorsing a Federal framework like The Marketplace Fairness Act.

I have a hypothesis

You're a few years too late.

Thus at one time westerns were popular, Americans saw themselves as these cowboys, fighting for something, standing for something, whatever

Now zombie movies are all over the place, everybody is into them. People see themselves for what their society is - a bunch of zombies, from the zombie economy, which is really no longer alive, it's dead and it feeds on other economies and turns them into zombies, to these war machines, which are not dead nor are they alive, but they are out there, searching for people to feed upon.

Except most zombie movies are about the people who are still alive. That's what Americans see themselves, as the survivors, who are still smart and resourceful and use capital (that chainsaw, that shotgun, that car that still works) to overcome obstacles, and have no problem maiming and exacting violence upon the zombies who are no longer human.

The zombie apocalypse survivor is the modern age cowboy, but instead of shooting bandits and Indians (who are seen as subhuman, since it's totally ok to disregard their freedom and chase them off the land) they're shooting looters and zombies (who are also seen as not human). Americans didn't change in their violent ways, they just ran out of acceptable politically correct targets to shoot, so they turn to shooting zombies. Or robots. Or zombie robots.

Is this just wrong? It lists $55 million US as the figure for the payout. Still half what I assumed but pretty good pay for being an 'owner' that contributes basically nothing (unless you count tourism, and I know that matters).

That figure sounds about right (since the monarch's slice is only about 8 million), but note that this is 15% of the total revenue. The rest goes to the government.

Still half what I assumed but pretty good pay for being an 'owner' that contributes basically nothing (unless you count tourism, and I know that matters).

Then the argument gets uncomfortably close to "property is theft" and that's not a good avenue to go down. The republican argument breaks down here. They argue that the Royals shouldn't get special treatment because privilege is wrong. Also, those few republicans who even know what the civil list is might argue that all income from the Crown lands should go to the state because the monarchy contributes nothing to the Estate. However, if they admit that there's no true difference between the Royal family and any other family (they usually insist on this point and call the queen "Liz", to back it up) then why shouldn't the same rules apply to any inherited property? The arguments they're using to stop the Civil List are basically plain old communism.

I've never really suggested we get rid of them (I don't think we have the power) I just want to use the gov't the same way they do: to improve my lot. The only difference is I want to improve everyone elses lot too while I'm at it. Like I said, socialism.

No, I didn't think you were suggesting that but a lot of people are. I think socialism is good too, but I don't think having a modern monarch obstructs this. Tony Blair and Thatcher--the people the UK *voted* into power--obstructed socialism; the Queen just sits and watches. I think the Queen has a lot of diplomatic value abroad, which a president (or similar) would never have. It's hard to quantify how much that's worth, but $55 million doesn't seem a bad deal to me. Furthermore, if you look at systems of government over time you will see that they're in constant flux. We might not want have use for the monarch now, but with parliament (the cabinet particularly) slowly accruing more and more power there might come a point where the monarch will regain political relevance for the people.

Is this just wrong? It lists $55 million US as the figure for the payout. Still half what I assumed but pretty good pay for being an 'owner' that contributes basically nothing (unless you count tourism, and I know that matters).

I've never really suggested we get rid of them (I don't think we have the power) I just want to use the gov't the same way they do: to improve my lot. The only difference is I want to improve everyone elses lot too while I'm at it. Like I said, socialism.

Okay, your not helping yourself or anyone else like you think you are. I'm not writing this response for you personally, I'm writing it before other people follow your advice and get themselves in legal trouble.

You have rights if your a fraud victim and you should exercise them, which you haven't done. In order to protect yourself and your credit rating you have to file a fraud complaint and send it to the and credit agency and company.

If you don't do that the company can continue to report against your credit report and you can be sued by the company in the jurisdiction that they have on file and get a judgment against you. Without a fraud dispute the company has no way of knowing your right address and the fraudulent address will be used for the jurisdiction you are sued under. Once a judgment is issued against someone you can have your wages garnished, credit ruined, tax refunds seized and property sold at auction.

You'll have hell to get an judgment overturned that was issued in another jurisdiction and than your in a position of explaining why you couldn't be bothered to write a simple affidavit and mail it in. Someone following your advice could well get a judgment against them that they couldn't get rid of - even after proving they didn't take it out. With a lot of jurisdictions allowing people to be arrested in order to enforce payment of judgments your advice could well put someone in jail.

* Before I worked in IT I made a living performing large balance credit card fraud investigations ($5000+). I was the one of two people in a well known company that would track down situations like yours. Please stop giving legal advice when you haven't got the slightest clue what your talking about.

Or perhaps, the mobile business is a very stinky place to be in right now, if you're not Apple, Samsung or a cheap Chinese OEM.

Between iPhone at the high end and Chinese OEMs at the low end, and Samsung in the middle, every other company is suffering.

Motorola switched to Android and is increasing it's losses bringing down Google's earnings.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/19/google-earnings-ad-rates-motorola-losses/

HTC's profit is down 98% and is barely ekeing out a profit.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/11/htc-profit-slump-samsung-apple-smartphone

LG isn't doing that well either.

The less said about Blackberry, the better.

Meanwhile, MS partners like Dell, Sony, Compaq, HP, Acer, IBM/Lenovo etc. have made billions of dollars in profit in the past three decades by selling Windows PCs. Or take even HTC which started off as a Windows Mobile OEM.

The details are of no interest to anyone in power, but patterns are.

It has already been made public that huge volumes of email, actual phone conversations are recorded.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/15/yes-actually-the-nsa-says-they-can-eaves
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/irs-audit-emails-warrant-aclu/

And further, the NSA leaks content to local and state law enforcement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/

So the this whole discussion about meta-data is moot. When you can archive, transcribe and catalog content, who needs metadata?

And in 2010, Mark Hurd took a $37 Million payoff to leave HP: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/08/09/why-did-mark-hurd-hps-disgraced-ex-ceo-get-37-million/

If you would like to know what sort of communicator Jeff Bezos is, look at Amazon.com. It's an annoying mess.

But maybe Jeff Bezos has a plan? No: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post for $250 Million. Quote: "I don't want to imply that I have a worked-out plan, ..."

I joked with my wife about her criticism of me for buying something at a dollar store for $1 without a good plan of how I would use it.

Something about being a billionaire makes people crazy. I guess it's because they have no friends, or they think everyone wants to be with them because of their money.

Another quote from Bezos: "This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation."

It's a sad, sad day for the employees at the Washington Post. It's a sad, sad day for the United States. I love the U.S., and I'm sad.

US auto production, both "foreign" and "domestic" global brands, is massive. We even export BMWs to China.

Efficiency means we don't need a vast number of workers to do that.

The rest of the world figured out how to MAKE THINGS, and the decades-long post-WWII boom (WWII was the best thing to happen to the US in the last century) finally petered out.

Now we must compete, and in many cases the US competes effectively.

Have some Lincoln:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/12/13/for-the-63rd-straight-year-at-least-this-remarkabl/

Have some Hypertherm:

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120617/NEWS02/706189908

they tried Ubuntu on the HP Touchpad, wasn't very popular despite over a million cheap touchpads in the public's hands.

Problem with Surface RT is the same problem the HP Touchpad had: few developers. Apple sells well because they're Apple, Android sells well because it's the phones are free and the tablets are cheap. Microsoft can't even get people to buy Windows 8 tablets much less Surface RT tablets. So, you want to sell them, do what you did with the Xbox for several years: sell the Surface RT at a colossal loss like the Xbox was sold at a huge loss.

Why sell at a loss? Windows RT has a Microsoft store built into the OS, so Microsoft will make their money back on the store just like Google makes up for giving way Android from Google Play. And since the Surface RT doesn't run windows software good luck to anyone trying to install software from anywhere but inside the Microsoft store.

I am usually skeptical when people want to take a company away from the person who founded it. For more fun stories about private equity, look here http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/15/dividend-recaps-how-private-equity-is-sucking-the-life-out-of-g/

or some hook worms http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/05/30/hookworms-a-cheap-treatment-for-autoimmune-diseases/

TAX CHURCHES
(Posting as Anonymous Coward)

I wondered if churches are taxed in the U.S. and asked Google.
Here are the top 3 hits.

According to the first link below, Taxing churches would bring in $71 billion.
$71 is enough to send an Opportunity rover to Mars once every 2 weeks forever, to put that in perspective.
It could buy a lot of science and space. Could buy a good deal of longetivity and anti-cancer research too.
If you are 25 to 35 years old now, it might very well make the difference whether you live an extra 10 years or not.

$16 billion of the tax should be spent on charity if we want to replicate what the churches are doing.
(Though I would guess it could be done at least 40% more efficiently by buying in bulk, using the army organization, and not having to do proselytizing. Well, the army might proselytize at that.)

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/22/should-uncle-sam-tax-churches/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/20/us-churches-tax-exemption-faithbased-politics
http://churchesandtaxes.procon.org/

$71bn is nothing compared to the trillions destroyed through financial manipulations. Probably it is small compared to what could be gained by taxing financial transactions or gains that are as a matter of business stored outside the U.S., like hiding it in the Caymans, or apparently by doing business in Singapore or Luxembourg. But aside from Christmas and the Christian concept of charity which I like a lot (no I happen to be Jewish, though not practicing hardly at all), I haven't seen much good from religion.

Assorted name calling when I was little, my temple refusing to marry my sister in a mixed marriage, those are personal things. Muslim extremists and the President or TV preachers blessing troops, these are pretty sick. I figure religion is a personal thing and am very uncomfortable about when huge amounts of money and special treatment get tied to it. And fundamentalist religion is extremely scary, no matter what the religion.

So [personal opinion] these are just my anonymous (I hope.. hey this is a good reason for encryption which it would be nice if this site was SSL...) two cents, but it seems to me that Americans particularly tend to enslave themselves to pseudo-religious tricksters such as TV evangelists, and that this is a cancer on society, clearly so in the case of state legislatures attempting to legislate fundamentalist religion into the biology classroom when America needs to step up to becoming strong once again at biology and engineering in order to have a real future. Where churches are a spiritual force that is wonderful. But where they enforce ignorance, prejudice and insularity they are utterly evil. There is some connection between the apparent ascendancy of fundamentalist religion in America and the malaise of America.

[More personal opinion] I believe individuals who are brought up to make their own decisions based on the heart, logic, and common sense would probably believe in evolution and the scientific method, and the matter of religion they can also decide for themselves (though they probably will not be as extreme as their parents, being able to see the world through the Internet not just the local church and say Fox News). The point being that if you want to have a successful country, you cannot afford to maintain a parallel government that enforces ignorance, and you should not tax reasonable (non-extremist, non-ignorant) people to support evangelists and their zombie armies. So tax them, please. Thank you.

If you think that's fun, just combine with this:

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/02/23/cell-phone-radiation-temporarily-affects-brain-study/

Wrong.

You don't even have numbers to back that up.

Xbox is a failure in your own mind, MS has actually made billions

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/05/29/xbox-beyond-the-box.aspx

All I found in the link you provided was retail sales. We'll ignore that it is the "Official Microsoft Blog" posted by the "chief marketing officer" and assume it's true anyway, but I don't see where they say they have recouped all their development cost and the XBox is actually in the red for its entire lifetime. They certainly have sold a lot and have a large market share, but have they actually turned a profit against all their spending, R&D, and operating costs? most places say "no". The best I found with a few minutes of searching was here. They state that it looks like XBox is still $4.1 billion in the hole overall from creation to current. Of course, they admit that MS had swapped the way things are reported by MS at least twice and it was a best estimation they could do. Now, we're looking at a new console which will have similarly large development costs and probably be sold at a loss again till component costs come down, so current profits may not last long enough to cancel out that $4.1 billion plus new costs.

If you have better links, I'd be grateful if you posted them.

I think the linkage here is that nobody reads a fricken book anymore in this country and wants everything spoon fed to them in 10 second clips on youtube.

Okay, here's a little history for the anonymous poster of this article?. The US has had students from other countries going to school here for a very, very long time. We have also had students go and study abroad. I have a co-worker who went to University in East Germany (Yes, Trabant driving, commie loving East Germany). For example, one of the most famous Harvard students was Isoroku Yamamoto. You remember him, he led the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Our Education system should be available to people all over the world but we shouldn't subsidize it nor should we give preference to an exchange student over a citizen wanting to get into a graduate program or even regular admissions, which is now becoming a more common occurrence because all higher education institutions love money. To a point thoug, espionage is a bigger problem for us competitiveness and trade secrets/technology are always getting stolen. We need to be keenly aware that there are foreign governments who don't like us and have targeted our industries, our universities and our societies with friendly faces leveraging our "open" society. There's not one US industry that has had wholesale theft of technology and that's a sad state of affairs for all of us.

Except some banks are also charging you to use a debit card (trying to push you to push credit at the register). http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/08/16/wells-fargo-3-debit-card-charge-a-sign-of-more-bank-fees-to-co/

So, now, you're screwed no matter what.

the fine is in addition to the proper criminal penalty for manslaughter, murder, or whatever is appropriate. arguably, the fine for killing a highway worker should be $0, since they aren't any better than anyone else.

for p2p, the fine is all there is. it's still a fucking ridiculous amount (and it will eventually be found as such), but it's purely a civil matter. well, sort of.

This article disputes your general premise. Government workers make more than private sector for the same education level.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/29/federal-state-workers-overpaid/

Do you have any references to support your claim?

Thanks

The 47% figure is rather misleading because it only refers to the percentage of people paying federal income tax. It turns out there are multiple federal taxes on income, only one of which is called the federal income tax. Most of those 47% pay the payroll tax which is a regressive income tax. For detailed numbers see this chart which Google image search found on this CNN Money video. For those that don't want to click the link, the breakdown according to CNN is 53.6% pay income tax and the rest not paying income tax are split up as 28.6% pay payroll tax, 10.3% elderly with no income tax, 6.9% non-elderly with income under $20,000, and 1% other.

Once you eliminate people paying income/payroll tax and the retired elderly, that leaves at most 8% not retired but not making enough money to owe federal taxes. Some of those are unable to work. Some of those are unable to find a job. Some small proportion might really be lazy and leeching off the system like you are worried about... but that is almost certainly much less than 8% of the population and definitely a lot less than 47% of the population.

On top of that, remember this entire discussion is only about federal taxes. There are also state taxes, which are pretty universally regressive. Particularly, most states have a sales tax which hits the poor much harder as anyone earning so little they aren't paying income tax is probably buying necessities with all the money they do earn and therefore immediately paying sales tax on a large proportion of their income.

This article that I came across while searching for those figures tells a similar story with more exposition and citations.

Most of the people who pay no federal income tax are still paying FICA tax if they are working. Any they also pay sales taxes and various other state taxes. Another substantial chunk of them are retired and receive so little income they pay no federal income tax. Surprisingly it includes around 160,000 people who are in the top 10% of earners. I Googled "who are the 47% not paying taxes" and found a number of articles. Here is one of them.

The government shouldn't fund telescopes - or ideally even exist (although this transition will inevitably take many decades, and the government will need to sustain itself to manage its gradual decline).

If it provides practical benefits, then a business model can be built around it. If it's just a hobby that some people enjoy - let them pay for it through donations.

In grand total, Uncle Sam only spends $225 / year per-capita on all "scientific / medical research". (Let's forget for a moment that much of this is wasted due to the corrupt and inefficient nature of gov monopoly spending, and that some of it would be funded by for-profit institutions if government money hadn't crowded them out.) Don't you think Americans could handle donating this much (on average - many would donate zilch, a few would donate billions) to their favorite research causes on a voluntary basis?!

Without the "let the government worry about that" mentality and the distractions of the political circus, we would see a cultural evolution where people would be judged by their philanthropic associations. Scientific projects can do many things to give recognition to their sponsors. Being a patron of a telescope project would be seen as cool and civilized, while buying a Porsche would be seen as lame and boring in comparison!

--libman

SS takes in more than they make, you fucking moron. Which is where as these IOUs come from...the rest of the government borrows from them.

- hey, fucking moron, that's how it used to be, not anymore, dumb fucking piece of human excrement.

Jesus Christ on pogo stick, it's completely astonishing how many people are complete and total idiots.

- my thoughts exactly. That is YOU - total and unyielding idiot.

Actually, that's average. It's survivable, and usually what entry level workers are paid in the cities, but not "quite a bit of money." You definitely won't be owning anything bigger than a TV on this salary. That the CEO of a non-foreign company gets a foreign-level salary should be the real issue here. 14 million yuan would be just compensation relative to the 25000 yuan earned by factory workers, but 14 million DOLLARS is about 100 million yuan. If we assume that the average US worker is paid 35000 a year, then a comparable American CEO would have to make $140 million a year. Only one CEO in the US made close to that amount last year, and it was due to a one time bonus. http://www.dailyfinance.com/photos/highest-paid-ceos/#photo-10

Here you go

Global pharmaceutical sales are expected to grow by 5% to 7% in 2011 to around $880 billion, compared with a rise of 4% to 5% this year, thanks to robust growth in emerging markets, especially China, as well as new innovative treatments, according to IMS Health. The headwinds pushing back against that growth include budget pressures in the developed world and patent expirations.

The 17 so-called "pharmerging countries," which include such nations as Brazil, Russia, India, Venezuela, Poland and the Ukraine, are forecast to see their pharmaceutical spending grow at a 15% to 17% rate in 2011, to between $170 billion and $180 billion overall. Especially impressive is the rise in what is now the world's third-largest pharmaceutical market: China. Spending there is predicted to grow by 25% to 27% to more than $50 billion next year.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/guess-what-walmart-raising-food-prices-faster-than-competitors/
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/08/10/walmart-raises-prices/

Walmart sells everything in one store. They can jack up prices of groceries and people still shop there because it's still the one-stop-shopping place. Or they keep grocery prices low but raise the prices on electronics, and the people buying groceries will pay a few dollars for the misc goods rather than drive somewhere else. Or they put the strong arm on their suppliers to cut costs on some goods which can be sold at a discount which other goods are kept at the same price.

Once something becomes a monopoly in a region and has a massive amount of capital to back it up it becomes nearly impossible to dislodge it. The only thing that will really dislodge a Walmart is if the town's economy fails so badly that the population declines.

And he has a MIG fighter jet. No, seriously, he really does. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/09/10/larry-ellisons-endgame-buy-hp-to-fight-ibm/

Maybe he's going to take out Koni in 2012.

If he sold off his shares, then I might believe you were anything but a piss-poor Troll. But he hasn't.

Funny you should mention that.

I'd say that Billy has been selling off Microsoft shares as fast as he possibly can without people noticing too much.

So whoever modded this +1, kindly go unfuck yourself before attempting further moderation.

Ah yes. I think we know why you don't have mod points.

Tax driving, because it can kill you.

Uh, I think a lot of counties and states do tax driving. Property taxes on vehicles, taxes in the form of registration, fines if you're caught without insurance (to pay for said deaths), the list goes on and on in that respect. So that's already been taken care of.

Tax running because it can cause joint problems.

In this case, I think any study would find that the benefits of running (on average) far outweigh joint problems. I'm pretty sure runners live a lot longer than non-runners and experience far less negative health effects than sedentary individuals.

Tax all non-"organic" foods because they contain neurotoxins.

It's for our own good.

You are so full of shit, it's hilarious. All non-"organic" food contains neurotoxins? Bananas? Potatoes? Horseshit. You know as well as I do that the FDA and a number of other watchdog groups keep their eyes on what you will actually find in a supermarket and that those pesticides and crap they do find are put through rigorous tests on other mammals to ascertain their safety. And, yes, the company responsible will find a very steep "tax" should that link ever arise -- just look at what happens in the cases of tainted produce that somehow make it through the processes involved to ensure they are safe.

What you don't seem to understand is that sweeteners have enjoyed an artificially low price due to subsidies and these subsidies are the reason why you can buy a big gulp at 7 eleven for pennies when there are 744 calories in that thing. Just like smoking, cities should be able to decide what measures need to be taken when lobbyist groups cause soda to be less expensive than water and this "tax" is actually an adjustment to reflect the true cost of these products. If you think that you're not being taxed already to pay for subsidies to make people fat that in turn drives up health care costs to everyone, you just can't comprehend the big picture.

Don't even get me started on how US corn subsidies and NAFTA have destroyed Mexico's farming and forced millions to turn to other crops like drugs.

Also, as Foxconn showed us, providing an incentive for people to commit suicide is counterproductive unless you want them to commit suicide. If you give people the power to have their enemies locked up for 10 years by committing suicide, you can look forward to such suicides happening more and more often.

Perhaps you should familiarize yourself where tax dollars are being spent. We are not over spending on maintenance of government facilities (see the article), we are over spending by spending 20% of our budget on defense and even more out of budget. Instead of investing in infrastructure, a time proven way to stimulate long term growth, we are neglecting it and talking about cutting taxes when we are not taking in sufficient fund to pay the current budget.

As US citizens we live in one of the most affluent countries in the world and pay one of the smallest tax rates. While I disagree with how we spend some of the Federal budget I find it difficult to imagine how I am not getting far more than I pay for in taxes from my government. Living in a democracy requires that we compromise; that we accept that some things will be done that we disagree with; that we will not be happy with every decision our government makes. We, as citizens, have a duty to hold our elected officials accountable for their failing and to seek better representation when they do fail. We also have a duty to call out those within government who see it as a cash cow, as is the case with the GSA spending, as well as those outside government, as in the case of oil companies being given tax subsidies. Regardless of these few failings, hampering our government further will not lead to some magical land of plenty but to a cyberpunk dystopian brubdom.

Adam Melroy who works here with me at PayPal. Though it would be pretty rude of me to distribute his contact info publicly.

However, since you are trusting Best Buy over me, I'd rather give you documented evidence of Best Buy paying to train their employees to lie.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-yep-we-teach-best-buy-to-trash-linux/

Feel free to apologize to me as necessary.

Even God wants you to fail.

Another thought; since this was a put together deal by a bunch of investors to sell off at a later date, (or so it seems) it reminds me of the late 90's when groups of "investors" were buying up mom and pop dial up ISP's bundled them under the same name then selling them off, they had no intention of doing anything for the customer, the individual accounts were just a body count.
Lightsquared seems like a similar deal:
"The legal team now includes Theodore Olson, who helped George W. Bush secure the presidential election win in 2000"
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/03/14/lightsquared-gathers-lawyers-goes-to-war/

Ole Teddy seems like a guy that should be sent to prison for a rectal refit considering the Bush presidency was one of the single worst things to ever happen to this country.

Republicans urge FCC to allow Lightsquared: Really why? Would this have to do with their having insider knowledge and profiting from it?
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/216273-republican-urges-fcc-to-approve-lightsquared

Congress insider trading:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-14/politics/30396448_1_stock-market-market-moving-information-trades

Scumbags...