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Restaurant Owners Use Zapper To Cook the Books
Hugh Pickens passes along a NYTimes report on software programs called "zappers," which allow even technologically illiterate restaurant and store owners to siphon cash from computer cash registers to cheat tax officials. In the old days, restaurant owners who wanted to cheat kept two sets of books. But because cash registers make automated records, hiding the theft requires getting into the machine's memory and changing that record. "...the Canadian province of Quebec may be the world leader in prosecuting zapper cases. Since 1997, zappers have figured in more than 230 investigations, according to the tax collecting body Revenu Québec... In making 713 searches of merchants, Revenu Québec found 31 zapper programs that worked on 13 cash register systems. Only two known zapper cases have been prosecuted in the United States... The cash register security industry is focused on protecting patrons and owners from theft by employees, which may be one reason so few zappers are uncovered in the United States. No one hires security experts to protect the government from devious businesses... As hard as zapper software is to detect, it is easy to make, said Jeff Moss, organizer of the annual hacker convention Def Con. 'If it runs on a Windows system and you are a competent Windows administrator, you can do it,' he said."
Just one more example of how physical access to a machine can often circumvent any sort of software based security.
I can see why zappers are used, heck, before being a computer consultant, I, too, in my early years, worked in the food industry as a cook, so I know all about dual book systems :).
The taxmen are so greedy, one has to do what one can in order to keep afloat these days.
there would be a way to avoid this, but who am I to say it and spoil the fun! :)
There are cash registers that run Windows? I would have thought that people would be smarter than that. I guess not.
Cutting off the governments money is a moral imperative.
Income tax = police state.
Why should the gov be looking through our stuff like registers?
Should they also have nosy investigator come to your house with cameras and video cameras to spy on you?
Everything the founding fathers DID NOT want.
Thanks Abe Lincoln you commy a-hole.
Sure Windows might be more popular but I'm pretty sure it's got very little to do with this issue.
Why are they running the cash register software in an Administrator login? If they were able to run the software as a limited login, this would prevent most employees from being able to steal from the owners by not being able to run any program if properly configured. We all know if the employee had enough knowledge and alone time with the machine, passwords can be reset, and the zapper program installed/run, but this should subdue most employees with limited IT knowledge.
Anything and Everything about the Net
Would keep stealing money from people this kind of shit wouldn't be as prevalent. I for one, am sick of giving 28% of my cash to the government assholes.
The article makes it sound as if it's mostly super rich businesses that are doing this when it's probably mostly people just struggling to make it. Business aren't cheating the government out of anything. Really the only thing businesses owe goverment for is the use of their currency because as the current state of affairs stand citizens don't exactly get to decide what they want to pay for in government, and politicians think they can get a away with spending hundreds of billions of dollars for things most people simply don't want. I wouldn't really say that the government has the moral high ground here.
Except to show that it is easy to do. Most Average Joes can run a Windows program with very little outside help.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't know why you were modded insightful. This ought to have been modded -1 what the hell were you thinking.
The reason why the taxmen are greedy is because they know that a lot of people and businesses cook the books or otherwise defraud the government of taxes. The government spends a certain amount and in order to cover that there needs to be income. Ideally it comes from taxes but particularly in recent years there's a lot which is borrowed via bonds.
Now the problem is that restaurants and businesses which cheat on their taxes, not to mention individuals, get the same benefits that those that pay their share without having to pay all of the money due.
I'm not sure what the exact amount is, but the figure I've seen some fairly large numbers thrown around. I'm not sure what the real number is, I suspect that nobody really does, but it is a significant amount of money due to people like your former employers cheating the other taxpayers.
The taxmen are so greedy, one has to do what one can in order to keep afloat these days.
You've seen nothing yet. Wait til Obama gets into office. You think socialist programs are cheap?
The fact you suggested printing money to cover debts proves you wouldn't be one of those "best and brightest". Can you say rampant inflation? Study economics and history, particularly Weimar Germany. Beyond which, even if it wasn't bad economics it would be a poor idea- using taxes caps government spending by providing a maximum dollar amount, and makes the citizens aware of what it truly costs. These are good things.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Ah, yes, the dirty little secret of small business in America - everybody skims. Everybody. As my dad used to tell me, "If I didn't take cash off the top, I couldn't afford to stay in business. Nobody could. The taxes are too high." It wasn't a matter of wanting to cheat the tax man. It was a matter of survival for him.
I always make a point of paying in cash at local family-owned businesses whenever I can. Times are tough for those folks, and I can assure you that they appreciate a cash transaction.
We use remote systems in our franchise stores (Django-based). Things run in Firefox. Even the touch screen PCs run Firefox full screen mode (and soon to be tablets). Makes deploying new versions a breeze.
Many vendors would issue rebate checks in teh business name if you purchased certain quantities of food and supplies. These rebates never appeared on the invoices.
I would substitute the checks for cash in the daily deposit. Everything balanced and essentially undetectable.
I also would void large guest checks as if I was giving a refund and "refund" the cash to my pocket..
I would "comp" meals to complete strangers and pocket the money.
And I always ate well and never reimbursed my business for it.
If I sold inventory to another restaurant, the money went into my pocket.
So nothing to see here. Move along. Plenty of ways to steal without some damn "zapper". The secret is to never be greedy; greedy people get caught.
This seems thoroughly unsurprising. The higher the tax rate, the higher the incentive to cheat. Quebec has a sales tax rate of 12.875%, which is pretty high by south-of-the-border standards. The top marginal income tax rate in the U.S. from WWII until 1964 was 91%. Does anyone believe that rich people really paid 91% of their income to Uncle Sam? Of course not. They just hired people to find ways to avoid the tax. Action and reaction. Actually, Canada at least has made some efforts to harmonize their tax rates. If states in the U.S. wanted to increase the rate of collection of sales taxes, they would figure out ways of harmonizing their laws, and then it might be more practical to get rid of use tax, which is a joke, and charge the normal sales tax on interstate transactions. As it is, it's crazy. Every state may have dozens of different sales tax rates, and the list of taxable and nontaxable items is different in every state. For a small internet business with customers in all 50 states, it would be a prohibitive amount of work to pay taxes to all the states; you'd have to fill out 50 different annual tax forms, and calculate taxes on according to literally hundreds of local laws and rates. If they did that, they'd level the playing field, which currently treats bricks-and-mortar stores unfairly, and they'd also be able to lower their sales tax rates while still maintaining the same revenue.
Find free books.
...what the hell were you thinking.
Ill tell you what he was thinking. He has a job, hes making a paycheck, hes living by that paycheck. He found it easier to just go along then to not go along. When Enron and all those companies started collapse in 2001/2002, the people that helped cooked the books knew what they were doing. But they kept their mouths shut cause they were getting paid to.
Point is, put a bag of money in front of someone and watch their ethics and morals go out the door.
I've been asked by two retailers to reduce the amount reported by the point of sale software I was writing. One of them tried to tell me that because he owned the business it wasn't illegal. I told him that I'd just finished writing an enforcement system for Customs and Excise and would he like me to have them contact him to explain the situation?
--
E_NOSIG
> otherwise defraud the government of taxes
I think you misspelled "the government cheats, lies, wastes, misappropriates, loses, scams, porkbarrels, or otherwise defrauds the restaurant of THEIR money". The government didn't make that money. The restaurant did, by providing goods and services that people were freely willing to pay for.
If the govt managed a small amount of everyone's money for the overall public good, say no more than 10%, that's one thing and I could believe that to be useful and reasonable. But I wouldn't even know how to overstate how far that is from what actually happens.
Until about 20 years ago, Québec had no sales tax on restaurant meals under a given amount (something on the order of $3.50 -- often, waitresses made two invoices below the cuttoff amount so the client would not be charged taxes). So, light lunches eaten by little worker bees would not be taxed but heavy business lunches eaten by fat executives would be.
Eventually, some very senior bureaucrat very high up in the revenue department became pissed that his premium restaurant food would be taxed and not the lowlives below him in the civil service food chain, so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
This put a bigger burden on smaller restaurants, effectively throwing some out of business, and the non-touristic restauration industry has yet to recover from that downset. So the zapper software came into existence.
Those programs would simply slog through the transactions of the day, discarding most who were paid cash, and had no alcohol (because alcohol sales also have to be tallied precisely).
In a perfect world, all would pay their taxes fairly and the taxes paid would benefit the people as a whole.
In this world, it's not happening. How to fix that? mmmm, simple answer, start all over. Bring the entire political and economic system down and reboot so to speak.
Will that happen? Maybe, maybe not, and certainly not in my lifetime anyways.
But it is what would be required. A clean slate for all, a true bill of rights for human, clearly defined laws which are above any religious practices and a new economy which would be based on that new bills of rights.
What could this bill be made of? the right for all humans to food, water, shelter, education.
What would the economy be like? simple, money as we know it would cease to exist.
As you look upon today's world, could such a goal be achievable? could we actually migrate to such a new system? YES.
How? in stage, obviously, it would take several generations to transit towards such a goal in order for this to be accomplished.
Why? Because many of the new concepts require a relearning of how to live, what to expect, how to interact with others, etc... So, for this to happen, a major part would be in the education that we provide to ourselves and our children, etc.., as they are the ones would continue the process in order to make it happen.
Sounds utopian? Why Not!!
Anything is possible to those who wish it.
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
What's the biggest hurdle?
In my old country - Brazil - the cash register vendor had, as part of their pitch, the section about how at the end of the day you would flip a switch in the machine and it would invent a whole new day of sales for you up to a specified amount.
I worked on a restaurant that, when closing, would have the manager moving the register to some back room and generating a new day of sales.
This came from the manufacturer. It was not an add-on. And it was easy to do, the manager only had to flip the switch, punch in the amount for the day, and let it rip.
This manufacturer was one big american company that was purchased by a bigger company and then spun off with the same name.
The registers, BTW, were pre-audited by the government team - which clearly wasn't savvy enough to find the switch or had been properly compensated for their blindness.
I'm surprised that anyone is surprised... Though I agree that it is wrong.
Awesome communism troll.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
It's not that small business owners are natural crooks. They're just doing what they have to do to survive. If every small business owner paid all his taxes, the tax rate would be low. But if you cheat, and skim part of your income, the chances of being caught are practically zero as long as you're halfway careful. So of course, lots of people cheat, which gives them an advantage over their honest competition.
Consequently, the government raises its tax rates to compensate for the reduced revenue because of the cheaters. This puts the honest businesspeople at an even greater disadvantage. They have to start cheating, too, or they'd go out of business. So now we arrive at the present-day situation where every small business owner cheats, the tax rates are ridiculously high, and everyone plays a guessing game trying to figure out the minimum amount of revenue they can get away with reporting to the government.
It's certainly not a desirable situation, but that's how the game has to be played if you want to stay in business. I suspect the amount of revenue collected is roughly equivalent to what would be collected with lower tax rates and a completely honest citizenry. So the net effect is about the same to the government, but the game is fixed from the start.
That doesn't excuse unethical behavior. We all have to make a living and the vast majority of us understand that there are consequences for our actions, even if those actions were taken to protect ourselves financially.
Yes, and we saw how well that worked out for the lot of them.
As I said above, I think most people will choose to act ethically. IMHO I don't believe that "everyone has their price," but I could just be naive.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Did anyone else look at this title and wondering why restaurant owners were doing something with the NES Zapper lightgun?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Likely the software needs admin to run / build for windows 9x.
When I worked in a restaurant, several of the employees had ways to make it look like they had wrung up a transaction, but never actually entered it.
Cash in their pockets, and no record of the event. No need for software at all!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I defy you to show me how the food-service industry benefits from welfare, or from defense spending. No matter who invades, they all gotta eat when the fighting is over. Maybe the US government should try spending less by:
1:) Stop invading foreign countries for no apparent reason.
2:) Stop giving hundreds of dollars a month to people who are too lazy to work for a living. Welfare may have a new cap on it, but you should take a look at how much the disability spending has increased vs the welfare spending decrease over the last ten years. All of those former welfare recipients now seem to have mental disabilities...
3:) Stop subsidizing stupid energy plans that cant work (See ethanol. If its viable, it'll be financially viable. If the government has to subsidize it, its a bad idea...).
Those are just a few ways to save a bunch of money instead of increasing taxes...
The point of this rant is that there are a huge number of government spending programs from which no-one derives any value, much less those who are paying the bills and maybe we should make a bigger effort to catch welfare and disability abuse than chasing semi-legitimate businessmen.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Say I don't want to pay for cops or national defense, there's no way for me to do that.
To preempt a lot of back-and-forth, I'll refer readers to the Wikipedia article about public goods.
Ever look up Soviet Russia in the history books?
So what you're saying is that small business owners need to skim to survive. The article summary coyly suggests that the only systems insecure enough to allow this are Windows systems (the article would never make it to slashdot without such a reference).
Therefore, what you're saying is that small business owners need Windows to survive.
MOD PARENT DOWN!!
I searched the pirate bay for it but couldn't find it.
Can't restaurant owners buy cash registers which don't make automated records?
Or is there a law covering this in the US of 'Thereisalawforeverything' A?
I used to think about this when I was a kid that money is the problem and people need to work for their own benefit.
I am grown up now and realized that this would never happen.
What your describing is the basis of communism and socialism and it has terrible side effects.
For one the head of state becomes a dictator as he or she holds the jobs which are your family's future in line. If you hate your current job you can quit or be fired and get another one in time. You can't if the state owns all the jobs. But without money this wont be a problem right? Well if I work at a store and only had a limited number of food and you and several others wanted whats left then who am I going to give it too? We have no shortages today as the owner of the store prices everything properly to keep supply down to those who need it and everyone has more. What if your neighbor overbought everything at the grocery store and left you with no food left?
This then creates the dictatorships found in communistic countries. You can argue that we all do not have to be like that but who is going to enforce everyone not to make money but a strong government has to enforce it. ... which leads us to the economic argument agaisnt communism. If money is taken away people do not work and food and goods are not amply delivered. Soviets had to wait hours in line to get things like Milk or pots or pans. This is because the laws of supply and demand dictate the correct amount of goods at the correct price and everyone benefits because we all want money. Why would I want to get up at 5:30am everyday? If I had my choice I would not and who suffers? Not my employer but everyone who depends on me in society.
If things like housing and food did not have a limited supply we would not need to work or have money but since scarcities exist we need a system that rewards what the market wants by providing the correct work it most desires in the forms of higher salaries.
http://saveie6.com/
They need to get rid of the tipped mini wage loop hole as well.
any ways some places still use DOS based software or even dumb terminals so force people to use singed software will be bad for small restaurants.
... coming to voting machines near you.
Have gnu, will travel.
In Spain, and I have no reasons to believe this doesn't apply overseas, pretty much every custom software development includes separate "cash boxes", unoriginally nicknamed "box A" and "box B". Anyone who's ever written software for a small business knows this and should be prepared to provide the service. Otherwise, your vanilla shelf MS Windows package would do the job just as well, at a much lower price.
To do list for Windows
The govt pisses away money faster than people even begin to pay taxes. I look at this way. The govt has a problem with spending money, so you give them more money? No! Do you give drug addicts more drugs or alcoholics more booze? The more you pay the more you enable. Not to sound like V, but govts should fear the people, not vice versa.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"Study economics and current events, particularly Zimbabwe"
fixed that for you, weimar germany only printed massive amounts of money to repay war repartitions. modern Zimbabwe is printing massive amounts of 100 billion dollar bills to fund and supply their army which is in a protracted civil war with 2 large militia groups as a result of the African war in the Congo.
what happened in germany is minor compared to what Zimbabwe is doing, which is printing money, buying foreign currency and funding their entire army with foreign currencies. that would be like america going out printing 300 trillion dollars, buying euros, yen, etc from banks around the world and then 'using' that foreign non hyper inflated currency to repay the national debt. (yes i realize the national debt is only 9.65 trillion, but to get enough foreign currencies from foreign banks, at least 300 trillion us dollars would have to be printed, if not a few hundred quadrillion, it would be hard to sucker over banks, after the first few large cash transfers they'd start devaluing the dollar in proportion to the reported sizes of unexpected cash purchases)
eventually, if national debt out strips the pace at which our economy grows, the government is going to start using kooky plans to raise the available funds, however, it's pretty clear that we're in no immediate threat of the government pulling any tricks to try and repay debt. a couple lean decades of economic a serious recession, and continued tax cut and spend politics, and America might be in serious trouble finding enough people to buy their debt. for right now though, things aren't critical. although i find the amount of debt, and deficit growth sickening.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
And since purchases must go through only the very small handful of licensed distributors, there's no hiding it.
And as for the people who are saying "If you don't skim you can't stay in business," well, maybe you're right. I went broke.
Years ago, I read a story about a European country, I think it was Italy, mandating the use of state-approved, tamper-proof cash registers in all retail stores. This was due to massive tax fraud at the retail level. Does anyone know if it was successful?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
IMHO I don't believe that "everyone has their price," but I could just be naive.
As much as I wish there were any bit of integrity left in humanity, I have to say you're probably just slightly more naive than average. Those who cannot be bought, can be silenced via threats, which come in many forms, many of them 100% legal in today's environment.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Is there some part of the word "register" that you dont find clear? If it did not make an automated record it would just be a cash draw.
money as we know it would cease to exist
Money will never cease to exist as long as there is any kind of scarce goods/resource/property or skill that is needed by others. Sure, you can dream of a time when that isn't true, but it will remain a dream.
Still, there are many ways that economy could change in the future. A society can be run where everyone gets paid the same or based on effort put in. It may also be possible to remove common house hold items from the equation, and only require payment for "luxury items". Also, having a society where loans/borrowing is illegal is also possible, although that requires all expensive products (cars, houses) to be leased/rented instead of owned.
Sounds utopian? Why Not!!
Anything is possible to those who wish it.
Yes, too utopian. And no, anything isn't possible.
There is nothing wrong with utopian visions, but aiming towards them and thinking you will reach them with just wishes is the act of a fool.
A good visionaire needs three worlds. One is the utopian world that he wishes for. The second is the nightmare world where everything he implements fails. And the third is the real world where he tries to make progress towards the utopia while avoiding the nightmare scenarios.
Communists as well as libertarians both aim for the utopia while ignoring the nightmares, and that is a recipe for disaster.
Also, make sure that the utopia is actually an utopia that everyone wants. The communist utopia is far to restrained to be called an utopia. It is way too much about individual sacrifice, which is a very non utopian thing in my and many others meaning. I much prefer the social liberalism utopia.
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
Yup.
What's the biggest hurdle?
Us the people, which is part being lazy and part resisting and fearing change, and
those who right now, are in power and truly benefit from this unfair world as it is.
I definitly don't agree on laziness. Being lazy is a virtue. It is the lazy people who try to do more with less effort that make the world go forward.
It is the working ants that are satisfied working 40+ hours a week in stressful hierarcical systems, doing unproductive work (bueraucracy, marketing) spending borrowed money on shiny toys (that they only buy because other working marketing ants convince them to do so), while their bosses takes the big profits that are the real problem.
Since the first term of Ronald Reagan, the rich and super-rich have used the Republican party and the religious right to constantly lower their tax rate. Now they pay a significantly less percentage than working people. And that is before all the specialized tax breaks hidden in the 1000-page appropriations bills that no congressman ever reads.
This is never going to change, regardless of who wins what election.
The only way that ordinary people are going to get tax fairness, i.e. the same rates as the super-rich, is to cut corners, zap the books, write in extra kids on their W-2 forms, Yes, to cheat. Have you ever known anyone besides a few limousine-liberals who feel good about paying taxes? Fifty years ago, it was common in the USA.
Not anymore. People realize that they need their money to pay for the things that government used to provide with all the taxes that they take right out of your check. And they're discovering new and creative ways to do protect their money from those who would just give it to Haliburton's permanent endless gravy train.
As the technological elite it would be in our best interest to 'look the other way' when we increasingly find people using technical means to protect their incomes that they need to support their families. If we rat them out, they will hate us. And Haliburton is not going to protect us from their wrath.
On the other hand, if we discover people that are withholding huge sums from the public knowledge, we should use our technical abilities to force them to contribute a reasonable percentage to the public good. These would be people like international drug dealers and other criminals who pay nothing in taxes, either legal taxes or contributions to community charities.
As in so many areas, as the government collapses into insanity or irrelevancy, the burden falls to the us, the technological elite, to decide and enforce the proper balances for the allocation of social resources.
We must do what we can, because we are the only ones with the can-do. This mentality seems weird in 2008, but it will be standard operating procedure in 2028, which is not that far away for most of us.
Thank you,... and be a mensch, stop modding me down to -1, just because you don't like what I say.
... they are collecting taxes from customers and pocketing the money instead of turning it in to their state or local government.
The money they are pocketing is intended to pay for schools, police, fire, roads, and other state and local services. Everybody else has to pay increased taxes to make up for their fraud.
what happens when you just go printing money willy-nilly
do you want to pay 100 billion dollars for 3 eggs?
TIAEAE!
Yeah, they had some good ideas, but, obviously it failed, for reasons which are obvious, certainly the fact that there was (and still is) no freedom of speech, is a big one.
Okay, I realize most of /. is too trigger-happy to actually play devil's advocate, but let's look at the problem here: this article is about Quebec.
Quebec is the most highly taxed province in Canada. Despite this, it's also home of the worst roads and one of the lowest average income levels (competing with the Maritimes). Quebec's government is great to you if you're retarded, pregnant, have a selectively recurring "back injury" or are otherwise unable/unwilling to work, as it will steal from the rich and give to the leeches. Now I'm not saying those people don't need help, but there seems to be a lot more abuse in Quebec than in any other province.
Now the government takes a chunk of money out of everyone's paycheck... fine. Why do they have to go and take more money out of business income ? Do businesses ever benefit from the Quebec government's activities ? Not really, unless your business involves processing short-term disability assessments or discounted legal aid.
Let's think about it for a moment: these "zappers" had to be written by someone. In some instances, I'm sure it was a friend or relative that quickly hacked up a sloppy script, but many of these owners will have paid someone to do it. What does that tell us ? That means the cost of hiring a hacker is less than the perceived unfairness of the tax system. I don't know about you, but if I were knowingly writing one such "zapper", I'd ask for quite a bit more cash than I normally charge, due to the risk and severity of getting caught. For these black-hat services to be justifiable, that means the tax must be ridiculously high.
Combine that with the insulting practice of taxing wait staff based on 15% tips (yeah, right!), and you'll quickly realize why restaurant owners are fed up with the government. These "digital signature devices" they speak of, that's just not going to happen. Not only are the devices going to be unwieldy and largely incompatible with the large variety of restaurant software, but they will simply not be welcomed in these businesses. You'll either see a lot of restaurants close down and move out-of-province, or they will simply continue to operate without the device, a form of silent protest. Either way, RevQuebec won't be allowed to further their rape of the provincial economy.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Nice business you have there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Taxation by governments is nothing more then protection money, primary difference in a democratic republic is that we demand it from each other as well as the government trying to increase its power. The Federal government was never intended to have too great a power over the states or the people, the greatest resistance put up to attempt to avoid such was the south leaving the union and then fighting to attempt to maintain their independence. Slavery then was used pretty much the way "think of the children" is today, while an admirable idea to free the slaves and protect the children, they were/are no more then misdirection from the actual goals of the government, that is to increase its power. Federal financing was intended to come from the good graces of the state legislatures, now the states are dependent on the Federal government's pork barrels.
"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." Thomas Jefferson
True enough, but being bought and being silenced are quite different. Contrary to what a lot of people fear we are not living in a completely corrupted system, and there is often the opportunity for legal recourse. While not perfect the system does work.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by threats which are legal. Examples? Speaking hypothetically, if you are aware of illegal dealings (such as what occurred in Enron) and your manager threatens you to keep mum that's known as blackmail, which as I'm sure you are aware is illegal in most civilized parts of the world.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
People on welfare (Social Security) do go out to eat. What you think of as "welfare" is tiny fraction of the local, state, and federal budgets but SS is big money much of which is spent in restaurants. But let's talk about real money. The next time you fill up your tank think about the fact that maintaining our highway system costs about 3$/gallon and it's subsidized. We could force the users of the system to pay 7$ at the pump and have it all work out but no we tax people like me who walk to work to pay for parasites who like to drive. etc.
Well, dictatorship is not what I would propose, heck, never give ultimate power to any ONE person. I think the "government" job, would be more a "people" job, where each individual would have a responsibility towards the governing process. Ultimately, you don't elect 1 person, but an odd number of people, in order to keep a balanced perspective on issues.
The world as we know it today doesn't have a shortage of food, we could feed everybody on the planet. But look at what "money" does. If a farmer makes too much milk, he's gotta trash it. Can't even take his extra milk and donate it for the poor.
We need a way to justify luxuries, but not necessities.
The soviet union, and their form of communism was doomed to fail by the way, the people didn't have any real freedom of expression or speech.
This was a case where the state was way too overbearing.
In the end, to create a correct form of government, we must first assert what our basic rights as human beings should be, what we should expect from society and what we should strive for.
Our current form of government don't govern people anymore, they govern budgets.
Big flaw right there.
Right now, we work for the sake of money, nothing else.
What's a country economic goals? what is the economy? hell, even the economists can't explain it to you, it goes up it goes down, they don't even know why!
I'm not going to label my thoughts as communistic, or whatever, I just know that if you get to a point where you wake up, you know the system is there for you, you have confidence in it, and it has confidence in you, then you don't have any real worries.
It's almost a star trek way of thinking, maybe, it is possible, ironically enough.
To live in a world where money is secondary, where your rights as a human are first and foremost important, should be our goal.
When you put the people first, then everything else can be set fairly.
That's my opinion anyway! :)
lol.. yeah, laziness has it's virtues, after all, it got the remote control invented uh? :)
I have a saying that I go by in my day-to-day life: plan for the worst, hope for the best.
Aiming for utopia, is good, but obviously, there would be many hurdles, and I for one, can understand that and obviously if I were to elaborate further my ideas, you must always consider what can go wrong and ensure it either doesn't happen, or at least, have a plan for it.
To me, that's project management 101.
Oh Boy.. I'm a communist troll. Wow. I didn't know that. I don't even agree to that. But hey, feel free to keep believing that. It would be nice if you had something "constructive" to say, but that might require words and thinking, more than 3 words in any given sentence could be hazardous to your brain :) So don't start risking your health on our accounts! :)
Spahs zappin' my cash registah!
Sorry, just got off playing about 2 hours of TF2.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
I wonder why what I wrote is set as "troll". Clearly, I don't understand. Whoever is doing this, isn't fair.
just hope the IRS or state govt doesn't pull your credit card records and find a significant discrepency between reported and received income.
Here in Portland, Oregon, one of the major grocery store chains (Fred Meyer, Inc.) has an automated check-out line that has each station running on Windows. I don't know which version but I suspect that it is Win2000. Each station has a laser bar-code scanner for most items. After scanning the item, the user places it in a bag that is on a scale. The weight of each individual grocery item is in the store's data base. When the weight on the scale matches the bar-code, the system prompts the user to scan the next item. There is a touch screen for entering the type of produce by pre-assigned number. For payment there is a credit/debit card reader, a paper-currency scanner, and a coin-weighing unit.
There is a stand-alone PC running Windows for each station and they are connected to a store LAN. Embedded systems like this running Windows on standard PCs is very common. It's easy to develop for this platform. And when it crashes, and it does more than the robust real-time operating systems used on 32-bit microcontroller embedded designs, then the attendant simply opens the cabinet and reboots the PC.
The automatic bottle return machines that read the bar-codes on empties all use Windows. They are constantly crashing.
You don't find Windows running nuclear powerplants, wafer fabs, international bank transfers, or jet airliners. But you find it nearly everywhere else in embedded-systems. Grocery stores find that it's cheaper to throw together a hack job in Visual BASIC and then run it on a few $250 PCs with $50 Windows licenses than it is to pay a programmer $25/hr to write robust code that runs on $8 microcontrollers.
I'm a microcontroller-systems designer and I run into this situation all the time.
And this leads to Diogenes' Law of Taxation: The more someone should be taxed, the more power they have to avoid being taxed.
I am officially gone from
I'm a business owner. And everything parent says is true. A perfectly honest businessman cannot survive. It is a red queen game. We have to cheat just to break even.
Depends on what's being "purchased".
Many people see tax evasion as a victimless crime, or are happy to do it because they don't like the government. Others, who may realize it's wrong, justify it by telling themselves that "everyone else is doing it".
Now if you were talking about crimes which we all can agree are immoral - murder, rape, Microsoft, etc - then you'd have a point. But when it comes to tax evasion, EVERYONE has their price.
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US. Why, just yesterday I saw a little old lady getting her ass kicked by 4 "Milk Men" for trying to give a homeless guy some creamer packets. It's horrible, I tell ya ...
I was thinking of star trek when I was a kid wondering if we could just get rid of money as well.
In places such as post soviet union Russia and Columbia people began bartering with cocaine or vodka as a form of currency when a weak governmental currency was widely in use.
People are greedy, lazy and wont work and a farmer probably would not bust his butt from 5am to 6pm in the fields to feed all of us if he didn't have too.
I hate farm subsidies which is why the farmers destroy milk and purposely not grow wheat. FDR did this because the price of milk went low as farmers overproduced in an attempt to make more money due to the dust bowls. It never went away.
If all supplies could be replicated like star trek then perhaps we would not need money and we would all work to better ourselves but our human nature to have more than our neighbor and the scarcity of goods and services makes us work.
In moving out of my parents home I felt the fight or flight syndrome of not having money and becoming frantic over finances. This helped me mature and look at things in a newer perspective. This condition of working hard for ourselves helps others and is the most efficient system that is known to work unfortunately.
http://saveie6.com/
Well at least manufacturers aren't building these features into registers or POS systems sold in the US that I've worked on. Samsung (Sam4s), Sharp, Towa, JCM Gold/Olympia, Royal... none of these brand cash registers have any kind of features like the ones described. It's not mentioned at all the the service manual. Unless there's some uber seceret key combo to get into there that noone knows, I call shens. What I do know of, is a memory all clear, which wipes out all totals, including the Grand Total.
Also, I've never met a POS software that made something like this a feature. Any feature built into the system like this could just as easily be exploited by the employees/management and render the trust of the numbers useless. Since POS systems just store the numbers in a database, and the owner/dealer can access the data at the lowest level, they could always manipulate the numbers. That's not a feature of the POS system though, that's a feature of owning a restaurant.
Even if there were some kind of add on tamperproof "Journal", the owner could simply throw it out, zap it, light it on fire before a audit. Don't laugh, We've had customers throw their registers out before an audit, for fear of the true numbers being discovered.
using taxes caps government spending by providing a maximum dollar amount, and makes the citizens aware of what it truly costs.
You must not live in the U.S.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
As my dad used to tell me, "If I didn't take cash off the top, I couldn't afford to stay in business. Nobody could. The taxes are too high."
So, your dad was fucking over fellow small business owners who were honest, and justifying it by complaining about a problem he was helping maintain.
Next time you talk to your old man about skimming, try pointing out that every tax dollar he avoided was a tax dollar that had to be paid by someone else. Perhaps a supplier, who had to charge him more- or customers, who couldn't buy as much.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
I always make a point of paying in cash at local family-owned businesses whenever I can. Times are tough for those folks, and I can assure you that they appreciate a cash transaction.
I'm so tired of hearing this "pay us in cash" beggar's line. I make it a point not to pay in cash, because it makes it that much harder for the business to hide it (and thus cheat the rest of us, and honest businesses), and the credit card transaction fees are pretty effin' small (generally under 3%, plus 25 cents per transaction.)
Please help metamoderate.
Is this "zapper" the same technology used to remove votes from voting machnes?
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Who moderated that "Troll"? Disagreeing with a post does not make it a troll.
I don't know how accurate your description is here, but flinging around so many passionate adjectives makes you seem biased. You are +5 Informative, so maybe it's just me.
In the past, dishonest restaurant owners kept two sets of books. Do you imagine police often found that second set? Nope. Isn't today's software component more easily detectable?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
People on welfare (Social Security) do go out to eat.
Yes, and some trade food stamps for cash to buy liquor and some fake disabilities and lots of other things that people who are dependent upon others for their survival shouldn't do. There are also people who barely use the system - taking just enough to survive until they can get off it. They sacrifice their own food so their kids can eat. The point is there's a huge gamut of people using this "government money" - and the person coughing it up has NO CONTROL over which type of person receives the benefit. I don't want someone who is taking money from me to survive to be out at restaurants ordering food. That's what people with disposable income do, people who have extra money to waste. But I very much do want to help support those who are actively working to better their situation. The problem is that I can't trust the government to make sure those people get my money.
People in this country are extremely giving of the money they have left even after the government takes their share. There is NO valid reason to suppose that these extremely giving people would turn callous and cruel if they had 35% more of the money THEY EARNED. Then, the people who actually worked for the money they're giving away can choose who receives the benefits of their largesse, at least in part. But then we probably wouldn't end up with expensive marine biology research centers in Idaho or farmers getting paid to ruin our economy by growing corn for ethanol, etc. If taxes were 1%, maybe I'd support them, but I'm with the Founding Fathers on this one. You remember them, the guys who fought a whole war and started a whole new country over a raise from 1% to 2% direct income tax. We routinely pay 35-40%, and what kind of return do we get? Negligible. Screw that.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Again, same poster, definitely nothing justifying the "Troll" moderation here either. Methinks we have a mod with a dim understanding of the moderation rules and/or an axe to grind.
I do believe in the cause of hard work. But I think all form of work should be equally rewarded.
Truth is, I think that in an utopian system, where all would work fairly, the work week could be something like 3 days a week. A few hours a day. I know sounds Star Trekkie, but the truth is, everything about what is right now is 1) non-equal and 2) disproportionate.
Doesn't matter if you are a manager of a nuclear plant or the garbage collector, you are both doing something important.
When a job has an impact in any way in the society, it should be rewarded.
Who is to say which is more important? They both are.
There are people out there who don't like challenges, thus, picking up garbage is fine by them.
Others who strive on responsibility, let them manage if they are good.
Right now, it's really screwed up! So many people holding 2 or 3 jobs, so many with none. So many people making huge amounts of money for stuff that's not even important (actors, sports, entertainment), and others working on stuff which can be vital to society (say, yeah, Teachers, for example, hell Garbage Collectors are important too!) and make pitiful money.
Our value system is skewed.
Everyone should play sports, it's good for you!
But the money (in sports) they make, it's ridiculous!
You know, maybe one day, I should just write an essay on this subject, I could call it, "the world as it should be according to houbou!" :)
It would be an interesting piece to write for sure, I would enjoy this. I would only hope it would be interesting for anyone who gets to read it!
"No one hires security experts to protect the government from devious businesses..."
Devious businesses?! What an awful statement! Aren't governments supposed to fear the citizenry, and not the other way around?!
I applaud the businesses out there meeting consumer demands while avoiding making payments to the machine--especially in the U.S. where the tax money will just go to pay the interest on government debt (those parasitic central bankers) or to fund unnecessary wars and empire building.
Do your part to restore the Republic, avoid paying taxes in whatever ways you can!
Yeah, somehow I know someone is having fun or "has an axe" to grind on my account. It's ok, I don't really care. the Slashdot gods, eventually, will notice and take away that person's privilieges, that's all.
Here in Quebec, we have two revenue agencies. Revenu Quebec and Revenu Canada. Talk about redundant work...
They both operate with basically the same texts of laws but somehow, the Quebec agency manages to interpret its texts differently than the same texts in Canada and completely ignores jurisprudence cases stating the contrary.
They are mean terrorists. I run my businesses clean but not because of them; I do it for myself to sleep well at night. I would love to get some of my money back but I'm to darn honest to do it.
As Canada is lowering its tax rate; from 7% to 5% in a few years, Quebec is considering raising its 7.7% tax rate because it is compounded on top of the Canadian rate and they feel they're loosing money when Canada is lowering its tax rate. Idiots...
Several years ago I was young and like most youth of my time; I was a separatist wanting Quebec to become a sovereign Country. Needless to say as I grew older, I realized that without revenue Canada I would be stuck with those morons from revenue Quebec as my only revenue agency. They would be free to terrorize me and my family as they wanted. I switched sides and I've been a Canadian since!
Well the money would go back into the economy wouldn't it? i.e. be spent elsewhere
This is Slashdot. For fair and balanced reporting, go to the New-York Times.
Cheating on your income taxes hardly qualifies as stealing from honest people. It may qualify as stealing from the government, a body "notably ungoverned" that is full of dishonest people.
Tax rates are not increased as a direct result of the amount of cheating that goes on. They would be this high even if no one ever cheated. So no, you are not paying more because of the cheaters.
Income taxes are quite dubious to begin with. Much greater (and wiser) men than me have made that case that income taxes are unconstitutional at worst, and economically depressing at best.
Abolish income tax and institute sales tax instead. The less necessary, and the more "luxurious" the good in question, the higher the taxes should be. If done right, the government still gets plenty of money with which to do its job, and hard-working small business owners or lower-class workers naturally have a much easier time doing well for themselves. Granted, rich people wind up paying more in taxes just for their personal stuff (the nice cars, mansions, etc...) but that is just fine with me. If they don't like the price, they don't have to buy the product.
When and if that happens, I will have a moral/ethical problem with lower class workers and struggling business owners that cheat on their taxes. Until then, I say more power to them.
Why would a supplier have to charge more or customers not buy as much because restaurants skimmed? Do you have any experience with restaurants or in the restaurant business? Do you know how much money restaurants pay in taxes?
When a restaurant skims, that money goes back into the business, typically in things they can keep off the books. Skimming keeps small businesses. I don't think you understand that taxes for small businesses are killer and benefit large corporations. If you want a solution to this tax issue, how about taxing corporations the same as small businesses are taxed? You would not get that because large corps have enough clout to prevent that. Restaurants that don't skim, don't need to because they cut costs by purchasing the cheapest ingredients, smaller portions, and are run down.
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US.
But nonetheless, it's true. Hint: that extra milk isn't pasturized, that's not done at the farm.
Due to a spate of fires at a local homeless shelter, the local authority requires it to have a 20:1 "guest" to staff ratio. They have a few people who'll take minimum wage (untaxed, cash-in-hand) to do the job (and need the money as well), but if the shelter can't scrape up the extra $100/night then 10-20 hobos sleep out in the cold.
When they run short, one of my clients skims his till and gives the money to them.
I understand the whole roads/schools/hospitals argument, but this case is literally about keeping a roof over people's heads and goes some way towards preventing those poor guys from becoming completely feral.
Where government fails, people sometimes step up to the plate to keep things working and if this "thief" ever got caught, I'd happily stand up in court as a character witness for him.
Boy, kdawson sure has a perverted ethical sense: keeping your money from those who want to take it from you by force is "cheating". I suppose that keeping some money hidden in your shoe and not telling a mugger about it is "cheating" also.
Then kdawson refers to concealing revenue from governmental armed robbers as "hiding the theft". Excuse me? It is the government, not the restaurant owners, who are trying to commit theft. It is the government who are trying to take, under threat of violence, what is not theirs.
Now, kdawson may claim that the restaurant owners somehow owe the government this money. A debt can legitimately be incurred only by committing a tort (causing damage to another's property) or by entering into a contract for some product or service. Neither of these cases hold -- the government have simply unilaterally demanded certain sums of money.
Even worse, if anyone disputes the government's claims about these fictitious debts, they refuse to submit the case for judgment by an impartial, disinterested third party. Instead, they insist that all cases in which they, as an organization, are involved must be tried by their own judges! Whatever happened to the ancient legal principle that "no man ought to be judge of his own case"? It is as if AT&T were to claim you owed it some large amount of money, and when you disputed the claim, insisted that AT&T's legal department would settle the dispute.
I clicked on the link to read the original article and got the NYT registration form. Bah.
This is why I work with Comtrex Odyssey (http://www.comtrex.com). PCI-compilant software for the modern point of sale market. I have had no issues for years with the suite and it keeps getting better and better.
People on welfare (Social Security) do go out to eat.
Yes, and some trade food stamps for cash to buy liquor and some fake disabilities and lots of other things that people who are dependent upon others for their survival shouldn't do.
Yes, and some businessmen take subsidies or "get out of tax free" cards or other bribes from the government. Come back when all the milk and sugar and tobacco subsidies are gone (not to be picking on farmers, I'm sure other industries are as corrupt), when businesses won't accept government bribes to build their factories in a particular place, when private sports team owners don't get the government to pay for their stadiums, when trucking companies don't escape having to pay for the wear and tear their rigs make on the highways.
It's true people game the system (most places these days don't have "food stamps", they have cards like debit cards, so gaming that one is a bit harder). So let's start at the top with the big ticket offenders and work our way down.
No the taxman is greedy. I have a small business in WA state. We have no state income tax -- Olympia just hides the ridiculous taxation by trying to grind all small businesses into the dirt while giving tax breaks to the gargantuan corps. Worse than Oly though, the city I live in charges property tax on personal property. Every year, I have to pay property tax on my desk, stapler, pens, paper clips, paper, etc. -- though I am thankfully "allowed" to estimate the value of the smaller items. Of course, I already paid close to 9% sales tax when I bought that "personal property" -- nice double dip.
So I say kudos to anyone who avoids taxes and gets away with it. Besides, what will the government do with the money aside from blowing things up or bailing out mega-banks. I'd get more value from my tax dollars if I just stacked them up once a year and torched 'em.
The future bodes poorly anyway. 15-20 years out, the favored flat tax of the Democrats (Social Security/Medicare/aid) will have to go from the current 15.3% to something like 80%. How do you think people will react then? Nobody will pay that much tax -- it will either be rebellion at the tax, default, and/or hyperinflation if our government tries printing its way out of it. Why bother investing today in the sinking ship that is the USA?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Together with news that Port Melbourneâ(TM)s Ping has closed (via Epicure) comes, via Ruhlman, the news that 60 per cent of restaurants fail, not the popularly quoted figure of 90 per cent. According to Businessweek, banks perpetuate the myth that 90 per cent of restaurants fail, which justifies the fact that they wonâ(TM)t invest in them because they are high risk businesses.
).
Guess thats why so many chefs I know are getting out of the industry here and in the states. The only place it is even remotely lucrative is europe or places like Dubai.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
In Soviet Russia your career chooses you and, err, your species.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
Maybe it failed because... it was never a good idea?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Only one (modified) set of books is required. Cooking the books has probably never been easier considering the widespread use of bookkeeping programs like Quicken, Quickbooks, Simply Accounting, all of which can certainly be cooked without any trace.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yes, and some businessmen take subsidies or "get out of tax free" cards or other bribes from the government.
Right, which is one reason I'm for smaller, limited government. I think we're in agreement here that this is bad and should not be encouraged, which is what happens when you encourage the growth of governmental power.
Come back when all the milk and sugar and tobacco subsidies are gone (not to be picking on farmers, I'm sure other industries are as corrupt), when businesses won't accept government bribes to build their factories in a particular place, when private sports team owners don't get the government to pay for their stadiums, when trucking companies don't escape having to pay for the wear and tear their rigs make on the highways.
These are all examples of the problem with expecting government to take care of everything for you. It can't, and all you get by believing it can is surprised when everything crumbles around you.
It's true people game the system
Which is why having fewer systems to game is desirable. It doesn't matter what the system is or why it is in place - people will try to game it if it is there.
(most places these days don't have "food stamps", they have cards like debit cards, so gaming that one is a bit harder)
Texas has those. (I live in Texas.) People get around it very easily. How does it work? Easy as pie is how it works! They get their card filled up for the month, someone takes it and goes to the store and buys whatever they want in allowed items, then pays the supposed beneficiary half to two-thirds the amount in cash. I've never seen anyone using one of these cards have their ID checked. Ever. But if they did scrupulous ID checks, it wouldn't matter, because the person whose name is on the card is involved in the scam and could easily go in with whoever and make the purchase. There's essentially no way to get around this problem.
So let's start at the top with the big ticket offenders and work our way down.
How about we stop feeding in to a system which is so easy to game? Why do we want a strong central government when there are so many regional differences in this country? Why not give the power back to state and local governments so that if you don't like the policies, you actually have a chance to move somewhere else without expatriating? How about we limit the abuses of the ENTIRE system instead of just a few big-ticket offenders? The offenders aren't the underlying problem - people will always try to game the system. The system is the problem. Let's get rid of it.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Sadly this very thing is screwing my sister-in-law at the moment. Her boyfriend works as a bartender. They are breaking up but have a daughter together. He's going to have to pay her child support, but since he doesn't claim all of his income (he claims about 20k but makes about 60k after tips) she will get crap for child support payments.
It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part. - Benjamin Franklin
Rebuilding from the ground up sounds good, but there are a lot of problems with it -- the main one being that, while you throw away all your mistakes, you also throw away all your bugfixes. Joel Spolsky has a great article on how this applies to software development, but it's true in other areas too.
Visit the
No, you don't get it. Now get back to class, your third grade teacher would be pissed if she knew you were on slashdot during recess.
the problem with rewarding all work equally is that you get a lot of the same problems that Soviet Russia had, such as people who only did a good enough job to not get fired. What you are referring to will reward laziness more than hard work.
Maybe you need to be thinking of charging *more*? Because seriously, no need to be chasing after downmarket customers. No computer programmer "wins" a contract for $25 an hour -- they're losing by accepting it, and they just don't know it yet. I give them about three days before they're in poor spec "Redo everything the right way this time!" hell, and of course Cheapo Charlie the client does not want to pay a penny for it.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Both the nuclear plant manager and the garbage collector do something important.
If the garbage collector does his job poorly, he can be relatively easily replaced by someone more efficient. Nobody dies.
If the nuclear plant manager does his job poorly, millions die, and the area has no power. (yes, I know, I'm overstating it to make a point)
A very
If the garbage man doesn't feel like doing his job well - he will suffer (due to losing his job and corresponding benefits).
If the nuclear plant manager doesn't feel like doing his job well - the 500 plant employees suffer for it through shitty working conditions, shitty benefits, and their families suffer because they suffer, and so on.
That's why managers get paid more - they are responsible for more, and can effect more change.
Now let's take sports - NBA & NFL players make so much money because they are the focal point of their respective industries, which are run by for-profit assocciations. Anyone can go out and play some hoops.. but the NBA is organized and sells entertainment.
Tens of millions of people subscribe to TV mediums in part because they want to watch NFL games on those channels. TV stations license the rights to broadcast those games to those tens of millions of people for this reason. Because this affects so many people, it's very expensive for the stations. The NFL also makes tons of money in licensing merchandise, advertising, and so on. That is the business they are in.
The players, therefore, being the focal point of all this attention, are important enough to the NFL that they can negotiate some huge salaries.
To put it differently, I doubt billions of dollars would be spent on the NFL every year if people had to watch you and I playing football instead of those big monstrous career NFL guys.
Trade unions generally ensure that their members are treated with adequate benefits. Garbage men tend to make pretty good money, and have solid benefits for this reason.
Teachers.. okay, you have me there. Teachers have always been a bit screwed, more because of how the education system is funded than the job itself. Teachers in private schools get paid quite well - the schools are only interested in good teachers because the school is a business and needs to attract students. Universities as well.
The problem you refer to is generally with public education... and that's the rpoblem - it's not a for-profit business. For the record, I'm not at all saying it should be.
As I said above, I think most people will choose to act ethically. IMHO I don't believe that "everyone has their price," but I could just be naive.
I present to you the Milgram experiment and its variations. In short, no, people do not normally do what their personal conscience tells them to do. And it doesn't even require money, just someone who has more perceived authority than you do.
A lawyer can sort that out rather easily.
True, but hostile occupying forces can be a bit lax about paying the tab.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please explain in detail what your are talking about. What policies of his will cost all this money? How are those policies any different from the status quo and/or the other guy?
Translation: I want to tell you how to live.
And this is why communism has failed and will fail every time it is tried.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
Taxing people and spending that money, and just plain printing it and causing inflation is effectively the same thing. Taxation lets you target who pays, inflation means you target people with savings automatically.
Currently what basically every government in the world has is both. They can tax and they can print money. And borrowing money from foreign sources to spend is the same as printing it, inflation wise - though when it is paid back it's the same as destroying money and hence deflationary.
The US is doing all three, it borrows from abroad. It prints money as fast it can without being called on it (see http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BORROW - when the Fed loans money to banks that's exactly the same as printing money until those loans are paid back). And it taxes the people.
Printing money to cover the government budget is not a stupid idea. It just has one "minor" problem, there has to be some way of stopping the government doing a Zimbabwe. If the US government printed the money it collects in taxes there wouldn't be a problem - people would have higher incomes due to not paying those taxes, and the inflation from the printing would eat up that extra income for a zero sum result (unless you were living on a fixed income/savings, in which case it'd suck, but overall for the entire economy it's the same).
It would, in fact, be a much more efficient system - the cost of tax collection would be removed, barriers to entry in business would be reduced, etc, etc. Printing money these days costs nothing - you don't actually have to print the paper just push some numbers around in a computer.
Of course it will never work, because politicians are retarded and would think "we can just print ten times as much and make the voters rich, so they'll vote for us - the inflation won't bite until after we are out when it will be someone elses problem".
So you would need an educated, intelligent people to stop the government from doing such stupid things. Which obviously is never going happen.
If you think taxes cap government spending, please look at the US, it clearly does no such thing - at least in the short/medium term.
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"Zappers," or automated sales suppression devices, have brought unheard of efficiencies and economies of scale to a very simple tax fraud - skimming cash sales at point of sale (POS) terminals (electronic cash registers). Until recently the largest tax fraud case in Connecticut, also the "largest computer driven tax-evasion case in the nation," was a zapper case. Stew Leonard's Dairy in Norwalk Connecticut skimmed $17 million in receipts and hid the cash in St. Martin (a Caribbean island).
...so he rescinded the tax exemption for cheaper proletarian meals, which actually failed to bring significant additional revenue, given the extra administrative costs.
I'm mssing something here -- how are there extra administrative costs in not bothering to check and keep account of a special exemption? Removing exemptions generally reduces administrative costs.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
"I don't cheat on my taxes, and I have to pay more because of the people who do."
That assumes tax rates have a direct relationship to anything other than what those imposing the taxes decide upon.
So you think your government is hoarding your cash and not using it to pay for public services? Tax rates relate to how many pay because government decides not what percentage of peoples wages it wants but how much money they want [to spend on services, etc.].
[oversimplified] All the departments submit their budgets, add it up, get an astronomical sum, go back and tell them to cut it by X%, new sum is Y Trillion. Look at the shortfall versus last years gross tax income, add on a couple of percentage points to fuel, tobacco, low-rate income tax, inheritance tax, stamp duty ... "Bob's your Uncle" ... Y Trillion.
This year, 6% don't pay 50% of their taxes. You borrow and then next year bump all those percentages some more to pay for the 3% shortfall, +loan and maintenance.
Truer words have not been spoken on slashdot... as a guy who's tried to start and run several businesses, I can attest to the fact that the incredibly high government overhead to keep them legal makes them impossible to run. The payroll taxes alone turned profits into losses and it was impossible to get ahead or even wonder how so many stay afloat without cooking the books.
voting machines. They are much more secure!
In the old days, restaurant owners who wanted to cheat kept two sets of books.
Anybody who is halfway decent at book cooking knows you keep three sets of books, not two.
Book 1: Shows you are loosing money, so you don't pay taxes.
Book 2: Shows you are making a lot of money, so the bank will give you a loan, or investors will invest in your company.
Book 3: Shows how much money you are really making.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If you show no cash transactions [or have no records of cash transactions], the IRS will use actuary tables to "determine" what percentage of your business should be cash, and then use your credit card records to deduce how much cash you brought in -- and they'll tax you on it. And assess penalties. And interest. And so-forth.
If you're going to cheat, just cheat a little. Cheat too much, and you're hosed.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
... defraud the government of taxes.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is what's wrong with the world. How can one defraud the government out of money when the government doesn't rightfully own the money?
When you break it down, the only reason people pay taxes is because they know that if it comes down to it, the government can put a gun to your head and force you to.
An interesting assumption, but in fact, public school teachers tend to be paid more.
Also, National Sports Leagues have been clever about minimizing their capital expenses: they blackmail cities and towns into building their stadiums for them, and demand tax breaks for the privilege!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2008-08-07/
Many people see tax evasion as a victimless crime, or are happy to do it because they don't like the government. Others, who may realize it's wrong, justify it by telling themselves that "everyone else is doing it".
Now if you were talking about crimes which we all can agree are immoral - murder, rape, Microsoft, etc - then you'd have a point. But when it comes to tax evasion, EVERYONE has their price.
Sort of makes having use fees for most government services make sense. If you want fire service or police service, then you've got to pay 'em up front before they'll come to your aid. Cause they know your credit sucks so its not worth it to provide you with any services. That kinda sucks doesn't it? Well, that's the best solution to stop most folks from "cheating" on taxes to evade government services that they don't want. The hard part will be with things like roads that will mean all the sudden most public roads become toll roads since they couldn't be sure to collect gas taxes from you or the gas stations.
Government won't be open source until we invent free labor and not just forcing people into the labor that they don't want to do, but some one thinks is needed.
SOrry - I'm absolutely no expert on teacher's wages - I know that where I live, private teaching jobs are more sought after and better paid than public ones, and it seems logical.
Of course leagues are better about minimizing expenses.. that's business 101. Blackmail? What did they do, put a gun to someon'es head? No.. they threatened to leave. Obviously the city felt that the team's presence was a big enough boon to the city to have the taxpayers foot the bill for the stadium.
Just because someone negotiates well doesn't mean they're evil.
When proof cannot be made of income, I don't see how that is the case. Plus, she's a single mom who makes less than 30k a year. Can't exactly afford an attorney.
Programmers can no longer charge more for their services. There are programmers throughout the world where people make $10-$15 a day. And the cost of living reflects this. Detailed code specs can be attached to an e-mail, and the code can be returned attached to e-mail. Payment can be made through Pay-Pal.
The 20th-century is over; it's a global marketplace for coders. There is no way that contract programmers can just charge more for their services when there are thousands of competent Windows programmers in Asia and Africa willing and happy to work for $10 an hour.
One restaurant owner attempted to use a Zapper to break into his cash register - but he failed... Then, to add insult to injury, a sprite of a hunting dog popped up from behind his taskbar, giggled at him, and then disappeared again.
Bow-ties are cool.
"What could this bill be made of? the right for all humans to food, water, shelter, education."
You are confusing rights with entitlements. Rights are laws that say what you can do, and what you cannot stop others from doing. Entitlements are things others must give you. One day in the far future when we have the technology to provide these things without human labour we could talk about them as rights.
Until we reach that technological utopia, we do have to work, we do have to use a system that takes into account the fact that people are they way they are, not the way we wish they were. That means hard work must be rewarded, and sloth discouraged.
Anarchists never rule
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
Yup.
Nope. Every individual is capable of both great good and great evil, sometimes at the same time. The kindest person you know could at the same time also be the most sadistic, if given the opportunity. And that's the magic word. It's all about opportunity. Society itself is an attempt to protect everyone from the latter group by denying everyone such opportunities. Most modern societies apply this equally. And if you look at history, most historical societies do not.
The idea that people fall in either the "good" or "bad" camp is naieve. The assumption that everyone at heard falls in the "good" camp is foolish.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
It's not that small business owners are natural crooks. They're just doing what they have to do to survive. If every small business owner paid all his taxes, the tax rate would be low. But if you cheat, and skim part of your income, the chances of being caught are practically zero as long as you're halfway careful. So of course, lots of people cheat, which gives them an advantage over their honest competition.
I know several of them who are.
They scream that they're going bankrupt, and can't pay a decent wage, then have a several multi-million dollar homes, always have a new Jag, go on an out of country vacation for a month, or donate tens-hundreds of thousands of dollars to their church.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
A wise man once said, "If the IRS doesn't like your deductions, you pay a penalty. If the IRS finds unreported income, you go to jail."
I report every last penny of business income... but you should see my deductions.
Please don't audit me, IRS!
Communism has failed because it the implementation as we have seen it, they take away your freedom of speech. There are other reasons, but that is definitively a key issue. But I'm not trying to advocate communism per say. I don't have a label for it yet, maybe "houbouism" :P LOL :)
Just because you don't want to call it communism doesn't mean that isn't what you're describing. Some of those guys who messed it up previously probably meant well, too.
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The funny thing about communism is that, not all of it was wrong, the same goes for socialism and capitalism. But in practice, they all have great flaws. So, really, it's finding that middle ground somewhere that's the key to the solution.
And to me, that means, before you set up a governmental structure, first define what your government is meant to do? govern people should be number 1 on the list. people = person and to me, that means, let's start with the rights of the individual.
Define the rights of the individual and go from there. So once they are clearly defined, what would be next you would think? An individual has to function in some form of society. So, what are the requirements to function within this society? What does society offer the individual, what does it expect in return.
That's how I see it anyways. Perhaps this way, one can avoid many of the pitfalls we've seen in our history and our current situation.