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Facebook Bans Google+ Ads
Barbara, not Barbie writes "Not content with making it hard for people to export their Facebook contacts to Google+, Facebook has now banned all ads from app developer Michael Lee Johnson, who ran an ad saying 'Add Michael to Google+.' Facebook sent him the following message: 'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"
Even if Facebook really didn't disable this guy's account for running a Google+ ad they have effectively become an ad for Google+ themselves.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
When will companies realize that putting your head in the sand and pretending the competition does not exist will make it go away? This is a stupid move on facebook's part. If you are scared of the new competition, than innovate and make your product better. Otherwise you will end up like Blockbuster, GM, and countless others examples throughout history.
Funny thing is that alot less people would have noticed such a stunt had Facebook just left it alone... Thanks to their decision, I didn't even have to log into Facebook to see the ad, he doesn't have to pay for the impression of the ad to me, and Facebook doesn't get the money for it! ... Sweet Deal
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
Anyone want an invite? Post your e-mail address here, or e-mail gplus@wabbit.com.
If you e-mail me, I promise not to give your e-mail address to any spammers, nor use it myself other than to send the invite.
Certainly better than posting it publicly here!
Facebook is dying
Also in the news, Google bans Facebook from it's search results. Facebook complains, fails to see the humour of the situation.
They tell him they can't identify which part(s) of their own Terms of Service have been violated and then tell the guy if he has any questions he should review their terms of service for the answers. WTF over. The term Sophomoric comes to mind.
At the very least they should have changed their ToS and then notified him of what he's violated.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.
This is such nonsense. If he has violated it, tell him where. Giving a non-specific reason and telling him to try and work it out for himself is ridiculous.
(Yes, obviously this is a "we are banning you but not explicitly saying why, mwahaha!" but it is still bullshit)
At this rate I bet that $1B valuation and IPO will be all smoke.
A lot of companies have ads set to display when a user searches for their company name. That's not apparently the case for Facebook.
But has anybody seen a Facebook ad in the context of any other search terms on Google?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The Facebook is doomed. They understand that and they are trying to do anything possible to stop people running away. But it is inevitable: Google+ is much better place to do things like that.
In a nutshell: "Your account has been disabled, we won't do business with you anymore, and we can't tell you why." Did I miss something? Did Verizon buy out Facebook? Or are we simply seeing the beginning of a pattern in the way business is going to be conducted in the future to avoid the expense of having to pay a human being to deal with customers, and to avoid the possibility of writing anything specific that could be used in court or the media?
What ever happened to being blunt and frank, like when the Cleveland Stadium Corp responded to a complaint with a reply on company letterhead that read:
This article and summary are unclear about how the advert was posted--presumably it was a wall post.
The article lists various places in the terms of use that he might have violated, but this excerpt seems most likely:
""We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users."
Which seems overly-broad and anti-competitive. What exactly constitutes an ad? Can I express my interest in something only if facebook isn't developing a competing product?
Source please?
Last report I saw said that is cost 278,000 to create every job that was created from the stimulus bill. I'm not disagreeing with you, since I have no numbers on how much consumer spending it costs to create one job. I would be interested in learning more.
21st Century Renaissance Man
In the linked story, the ad is still being pulled from a server that adblock will remove, so disable it to see it.
The horseshoe industry has forbidden all its workers from mentioning the word "automobile". Said their representative, "Then and only then can we endeavor to preserve a way of life we have all come to know and love".
This is an interesting strategy on the part of Facebook. Their fear is that Google+ will grow large enough to reach critical mass and then they will have to compete based upon merit instead of their already established position. This move adds fuel to the fire of Facebook being inferior to Google+, but at the same time reduces the visibility of Google+ to the market of people on Facebook. Facebook seems to be betting on the strategy of making it hard to migrate away and keeping as many users as possible ignorant of the existence of Google+. It is probably good business, although Google ill probably be smart enough to buy the needed marketing on television and through their own ad distribution channels.
But that doesn't really matter because Facebook is already reviled for its privacy policies and poor customer service. One more instance is a drop in the bucket. And if Google+ does gain critical mass, Facebook will have to do a "turning over a new leaf" campaign anyway. So in my assessment, this is scuzzy and underhanded and probably a smart thing to do.
Sean Hannity? What are you doing on Slashdot?
hopefully he will get the judge that ruled in favour of the customer in the Verizon case
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/204218/Customer-Asks-For-Itemized-Bill-Verizon-Tells-Her-To-Get-a-Subpoena
We're not talking about taking tax money and spending it in the US, we're talking about taking tax money and spending it on paying off China so they keep lending us money so we can become even more indebited to them.
Right now, China (and perhaps the Saudis) are financing $0.46 of every dollar the US government spends. When it creeps past $0.50 we might very well see someone from China sitting down with the President and Congress to decide how the money coming from China is going be spent - after all, they will pretty much own over 50% of the budget. Does this really sound like a good idea?
Sure, raising taxes would be great. We should also consider a "wealth tax" not just a income taxes. Right now, the folks making the most money aren't receiving it as a salary subject to income taxes but they are getting it as capital gains which is taxed at a much lower, fixed rate. That means that an income tax increase isn't going to affect capital gains income at all and would therefore be totally non-productive. I really want to see someone proposing that it should be illegal to have more than a couple of million dollars and the government should just take it all. That would really fix the economy, now wouldn't it? Make the US the home of poor people once again. Eliminate wealth in the US and give it all to the government to spend.
So how come Obama hasn't pushed any of his WPA-like programs that he was talking about during his campaign? Instead of spending over $200,000 per job with his stimulus program, how about some real government-paid jobs for millions of people? Fix unemployment by hiring people, not paying four times as much to someone else to hire someone.
Come on, if what we want is a real government-sponsored economy where the government actually supports people, then bring it on! Let's see it happen and see the results.
Most of you are giving this "story" way too much credit. This incident was probably just a single person in Facebook's terms of use violations department who saw an ad for a competing product (which IS against Facebook terms of use), sent a form letter to the guy and thought nothing else of it. Also, the number of people who aren't already on Google+ who will notice & care about this story is not far from zero. The average Facebook user spends their time playing Farmville, not trolling Slashdot.
jeremy.firefox.addon@gmail.com. It's my public addy for my Firefox plug-in, so I don't mind posting it here. Thanks! :).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When will some organizations learn... stuff like this is best ignored, not banned.
Willie...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know you're trolling but I also know there really are people who think what you post. You see capitalism works best when money moves around. Right now money is consolidating into large corporations and the wealthy. Profits are at all time highs. Cash on hand for corporations is at all time highs. The theory that more money in the hands of corporations and other 'job makers' is failing. Job growth is abysmal. Corporations are cutting back as profits climb. The system is becoming more fragile. Socialism is a symptom of failed capitalism.
If the wealthy do not want society to take their money from them (taxes are the nice way) then they need to decide to reinvest in the society that made them wealthy. Food and shelter are what matters to society. History has shown that this can be achieved with a healthy capitalist system. However, current events is showing that system is sick. My hope is that the wealthy remember that a high tide lifts all boats. So to all that are reading this, remember, a hungry neighbor is a potential enemy. Care for your fellow man or we will all suffer.
That's not really how that works. You're supposed to obey the law without the government having to go in and enforce it.
As stated, they are not a monopoly. There is freedom of speech, but there's not a REQUIREMENT that if you are a service you are required to take any advertising, no matter the content. It's perfectly legal to refuse to carry any ad, on whatever grounds.
I don't see why Facebook, or any company, should be required to participate in its own demise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously, does _every_ article have to be about Google+? Sheesh.
The greatest marking job of the past several decades was the one used to get average folks who will never ever have at the very least $500,000+ to their name to vote against their own self interests.
So 40k in a year in jobs that took 278k to create. That's almost 14 years to recoup the loss at 100% tax. This seems inefficient to me.
21st Century Renaissance Man
It was an ad, in the FB ad system (there is currently a screenshot of it in the article), and it was his advertiser account that got blocked for violating the TOS you sign up to as a FB advertiser. This has nothing to do with what you as a user post on your wall.
It is quite common for companies to deny competitors the right to advertise on their site/service. It only becomes a possible anti-competitive case if you are in a monopoly situation (like the case against Google now for prioritizing their own services over competitors in search results).
Terms of Service, section 11 "Special Provisions Applicable to Advertisers" number 13 "We may reject or remove any ad for any reason."
then section 14 "Termination" number 1 "If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement, or otherwise create risk or possible legal exposure for us, we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you."
So the guy ran afoul of section 11 number 13 and was then terminated because he created "risk." Risk of loosing users. Lame.
-- QED
If you use Chrome, it hardly matters whether you type a url, a search term, or a URLish search term. I don't even think about it anymore. Just mash my fingers down on the keyboard and either I get where I meant to go on the first try, or the one more click on the search results and I'm there. Anyone got a problem with that?
"This is the way it was done when we were great."
Actuality taxes used to be a hell of a lot higher beck when America was great.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'll get riled up when I see Facebook ban a legitimate Google+ ad. I don't doubt they would, but I don't see evidence that the ban is because it's for Google+. Suppose I put an ad on Facebook that says, "Hey everyone, Friend me on Facebook!". I have a feeling it might get the same treatment.
As far as raising taxes goes, it seems only rational to conclude that the USA can't keep increasing borrowing forever. At some point, the nation will either have to reduce the deficit or default (hopefully not by triggering a world war and legislating a default). Your taxes don't just magically disappear - they go to pay for operating the county (salaries, construction, defense and federal contracts). And, honestly, you're likely to send the majority of your disposable income out of the country in the form of electronics purchases, fancy German cars and "made in China" purchases.
I sent out some invites and my daughter, and some of my nephews were denied entry to Google+ because they are not yet over 18. So Google is not really trying all that hard to woo people into its fold. But all this antics by Facebook makes it look scared. BTW I hope Facebook permits users under 18 and all these kids playing farmville in Facebook are not lying about their age.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I take it then that Facebook happily stands behind ads for penny auction scams, "consumption loans" with exuberant rates, suspicious herbs etc.?
Google, please get G+ finished so we can ditch Zyngabook once and for all.
Eh, yeah, there's some very stupid going on, but also, taxation inherently harms the economy by destroying value.
Of course, taking that to the absurd extreme, zero taxation would mean a perfect economy.
...that signifies the beginning of the end of Facebook.
Hopefully FB will crumble severely before they can have their IPO.
It will zuck over Markie so nicely.
It's a shame we can't chain Zynga to FB so they can sink to the bottom of the bay together.
Anyhow, whatever.
Job killing tax hikes. That's a laugh. How many jobs were killed under the lowest tax rates ever since the 1940s? Wait, I'm sorry, history for you doesn't exist prior to January 2009... (And you thought creationists were easy to make fun of with their 6000 years of history...these folks whitewash the day they were born from the map!)
Here's another fact your side loves to trot out: 47% pay no federal income tax.
You know WHY that is?
Well, once they pay for little things like food, shelter, clothing...there's nothing left to tax. Fancy that... So all those evil evil welfare programs are in place so they're able to survive without having to riot for food. Provide a living wage, people can get off welfare programs AND have disposable income to buy new iFruits. The economy MOVES.
Course, I think it's a good thing when the population as a whole has money to spend rather than 1% hoarding it all in Scrooge McDuck like towers...but I only had 4 weeks of economics class in high school...
Facts? We don't need no steenking facts!!
*nm*
Or, taking it logically, in that 100% taxation would mean no growth in the economy, and 0% would mean less than the optimal due to war and raiding, there is an optimum between 0% and 100% taxation. Look for the Armey Curve.
In a pure economy, you can't spend money you don't have. But in a credit-economy, that unfortunately doesn't hold true...
and in a fiat currency credit-economy where losses are hedged by government bailouts, that extremely fortunately doesn't hold true.
fortunately for me.
History contradicts your assertions.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:MarginalIncomeTax.svg
Tax rates for the rich were high through the "golden age" of the 50's and 60's: in fact, in 1953, when unemployment was lowest, the tax rate on the rich was close to its highest.
Jobs are created when money is in circulation. High taxes on the rich take money out of hoarding and put it into circulation. When taxes are low, the rich hoard money: sure, there's some investment in enterprise, but there's far more speculation in commodities, real estate, currencies, metals, etc. Except for real estate, these don't create jobs: commodities do fine without speculation, and real estate only produces jobs when it's residential or commercial and new and not-bubbly, not when it's about buying up farmland in central Africa (like some major funds now do).
Tax rates haven't been as low as they are now since the beginning of the Great Depression. It's periods of low taxation that sequester money and deprive free enterprise of demand for its products (that is to say, of the supply of money). Under low rates of taxation, only the super-wealthy gain, while the economy rots away, whereas under high rates of top-bracket taxation, the entire country grows richer, including the ultra-rich, but they just get richer more slowly.
Sell fb stock in secondary mkt
Socialism is a symptom only of those who require labels that could never be completely correct be placed on everything that only theoretically affects them. if efficient capitalism leads to robotic farm hands, and automated commerce, then the system utilized to create and distribute your stated claims becomes more fragile.
the US has had farm subsidies and social security and numerous medical programs for the elderly and disabled for as long as i've been alive... so when exactly did capitalism fail?
you're an idiot.
But this guy himself was not advertising a competitor per se any more than if he advertised his company site which linked to a Google Site. Or am I not understanding it correctly?
of course that will probably chance once stupid "game" i use quotes as they are just time farming tools so you see more ads, get started on google+
LOL that's the cutest lefty logic I've ever read. Taxes create jobs, and I suppose wealthy investors just hoard the money like Scrooge McDuck?
You're fucking retarded. No need to gild that particularly lily.
MySpace honchos thought they were safe and wouldn't be affected by Facebook because "everyone was on Facebook." That worked out well for MySpace didn't it. Same with American car manufacturers, "Everyone buys American, who would ever by Asian?"
If google+ is perceived as cooler, more useful or whatever then Facebook is going to take a significant hit. Fatal? Who knows.
What does this have to do with Facebook or Google+?
I've found 'logical' arguments to not work in this sort of debate.
We could lower taxes to 1% and people would STILL clamor for 'lower taxes.'
Maybe the lower taxes side needs to come out and give us an actual number. How much is this 'optimum'?
Businesses are sitting on $2 trillion in cash.
Government spends everything it brings in (and then some).
Who's the retard, again?
*But this guy himself was not advertising a competitor per se any more than if he advertised his company site which linked to a Google Site [google.com]. Or am I not understanding it correctly?* he's a social networking whore who wanted to get some buzz to his name. if you think about it a second. advertising with money to get social networking contacts, on the service of the day, he doesn't seem like a real user, but more like guerilla marketing shill.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Scrooge McDuck - exactly. Large corporations are interested in only a few things:
Shareholder value
Sending jobs offshore (where it's cheaper to do things)
Paying themselves massive salaries and bonuses
Purchasing laws to let them keep everything
This concentrates all the money with the wealthiest people. The more money one entity has, the less money everyone else has. Nothing flows - "Trickle Down Economics" has proven not to work. We think corporations are all about creating wonderful products to make our lives easier and a pleasure to live; no, it's about making money.
It isn't taxes that don't create jobs, it's the behavior of the people who are supposed to create jobs. They have no obligation to make the economy run. The Republicans represent the wealthy lords and are learning how to bully everyone to get what they want - money. The Democrats represent the people who are supposed to earn a wage and can't, so they over compensate with public programs and fail to make corporations and the wealthy pay the same percentage of tax the middle pays. The Democrats also represent the people who WON'T earn a living - people who have gamed the system into paying them to make babies and not do anything (I actually worked with a single mother of three who became pregnant again and exulted that she was going to have another Government baby - we all wanted to slap her. She made a ton of dough off that).
Corporations aren't going to pay people they don't employ, but sending jobs overseas leaves a lot of the workforce on the Gov't dole. Someone has to pay for that. Either bring the jobs back to the homeland or use some of those billions in profit to help the people survive. Why should a corporation which inhibits the economy get a tax break? Conversely, make the people living on the Gov't dole actually WORK. Make them work on infrastructure projects or something. Don't show up for work, you don't get paid. It's very WPA, but that's about where we're headed.
There was a move to make a "Flat Tax" at one time. What happened to that? Pay 15% of what you earn. Period. Whether you're a corporation or an individual above a certain poverty line, you pay. No deductions.
Thomas Jefferson, where are you? We need you now.
Most of the stuff on
Apparently it's somewhere between 6 and 11%, but I believe it can vary, and is different for different countries.
I wonder how many Slashdot people actually think that people who work at Facebook should be arrested and hauled off to prison for not advertising Google Plus?
Google seems to be really good at drumming up sympathy from people with a totalitarian ethic.
I hope that you sir, are a perfect typist and never ever make typographical errors, especially when entering a URL. Thus you will never have to take advantage of the fact that if you enter the incorrect address into a Google search first it will direct you to the correct address and/or warn you of most malicious phishing sites that you may inadvertently visit via your much praised "address bar".
Furthermore, if you use most browser's "address bar" to incorrectly enter a URL and wind up at a phishing site, it will bring you back to the same phishing site automatically when you enter the partial URL via auto-completion search.
However, now Firefox and Chrome (unsure about IE) coordinates with lists of phishing sites in order to bring this functionality to their respective "URL / search bars" (they have no plain "address bar" available, even FF searches your history). Note that this feature most likely provides the anti-phishing provider with a list of every URL you visit online... Conversely, everyone can take advantage of the Google URL search features (including quick links to subsections of the site) regardless of the browser they are using.
Finally, I would also like you to shove your helpful suggestion into the previously recommended place considering that you do not seem qualified to be suggesting either against or for either URL entry technique, and I would recommend that you yourself follow the technique your insightful friend rightfully remains using before you make more uninformed suggestions.
Oh... forgot a hundred other variables, but make people accountable for the work they do. Labor unions were invented to keep powerful corporate lords from abusing the workforce, and boy, did they ever abuse the workforce. Quite often, Unions turned into a bludgeon to protect workers who are doing a bad job, or to artificially inflate the labor force with way more workers than needed. No wonder jobs are going overseas. Cause and effect.
If an Automaker is making cars that fall apart, something has to be fixed. You can't export a car like that. Sometimes you have to fix the workforce and it becomes Automaker vs Labor Union which deflects workers' accountability. Sometimes you have to fix the Automaker deciding to use a cheap fuel pump which makes the car explode on impact because it's more profitable. Either way, both of these groups need to realize that making bad cars kills exports. Exports is the only way to make money. Japan, Inc. realized this a LONG time ago and the Gov't holds the Corporations and Workers accountable for product quality.
Replace "Automaker" with any other entity.
Don't get me started on Banks.
Most of the stuff on
Those subsidies are a perfect example of where capitalism fails. Without the government "interfering" with unrestricted capitalism by providing subsidies, food costs would increase substantially and the poor would starve. Same goes for Social Security: many more people would be homeless without it.
Because the whole system of having multiple extensions confuses most people. Was that GreatStore.net or GreatStore.com or GrateStore.com (all made up obviously, although those probably link to somewhere)? Pick the wrong one and you could find a malicious site. Much easier to just put GreatStore in Google and have confidence you are going to the correct site, with the correct extension and spelling. It is now very common for people to use Google more or less as the address bar.
There are two kinds of people who are against tax increase. Selfish, rich people who couldn't care less if a million people died as long as they got a million bucks more, and dumb poor people who swallowed the hype and think that by paying 10% less tax they could afford anything and would be better off.
It's actually that simple.
The only entity in a country that is interested in creating jobs for the sake of getting people employed is the government. Nobody else benefits from someone being employed as directly, aside of the employed person himself. They, and only they, have the ability to create a job and an interest in creating one. The "rich people creating jobs" myth is just that. A myth. Imagine you're rich. Now where would it cross your mind to "hmm... I should create jobs, ya know..."? You might want something accomplished, but that means you will try to create as few jobs as possible. Why? Because that costs your money. DUH!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A flat tax on disposable income, maybe, but it is unconscionable to take away a poor family's food money in the interest of not having higher taxes on the rich. A simple flat deduction for modest living expenses could work, though, and wouldn't be open to gaming the system (because there would be few or no parameters that would affect the amount of the deduction).
Such a change could bring about all sorts of other problems, though. Rich people donate lots of money, but not solely for the sake of being charitable. Oftentimes the tax deduction is a consideration in making the donation. Most of the deductions exist for a good reason, and I fear that eliminating them all would do more harm than good. A simplification of the tax code certainly is necessary, though, and in the process should eliminate the loopholes that corporations and wealthy people use to avoid paying the taxes that they should.
Allow me to introduce you to a wonderful "new" feature supported by almost every browser ever created by mankind: The Bookmark. (Maybe you should google that.)
It's a perfect example of where government fails. Farm subsidies include price floor support, which keeps prices higher than they would be otherwise. Ethanol subsidies divert crop land to industrial corn land and increase food prices. Sugar import quotas double the price of sugar and lead to industrial use of corn syrup, raising prices. p You pay for it twice - once as taxes, once as higher food prices at the store.
|'Your account has been disabled'
|
|"Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use |and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"
And it only took one mouse click.
B.O.F.H. -- without a keyboard
Cash isn't cash. Even cash reserves are in a bank, which lets the bank lend against them. So cash being cash doesn't mean it's doing nothing. And I've worked for a Fortune 100 where the "cash" account was in liquid securities as well, so they considered stock and bonds to be "cash." So I read reports of the levels of cash hoarded with a grain of salt, until someone shows me pictures of CEO mattresses stuffed with cash.
Unethical != Illegal. You can think (as I do) that Facebook is acting unethically without thinking they're acting illegally.
Maybe the lower taxes side needs to come out and give us an actual number. How much is this 'optimum'?
Here in Sweden we're at 56% percent tax and the left STILL calmor for 'higher taxes'.
Maybe the higher taxes side needs to come out and give us an actual number. How much is this 'optimum'?
History contradicts your assertions.
Gotta love /. where people say 'you're wrong' and then go on to state exactly the same thing.
Unfortunately (or fortunately for some) there is no jail time for being stupid. :) They aren't being unethical in a business sense. But they are doing exactly what Google wants. What better way to drum up buzz for a new service than to have the established service ban new-guy's ads? Make established social media site look like they're afraid of upstart (never mind that it's not really the point of their original suspension).
It's elementary really. Google just troll-baited Facebook and they took it. Now, like the Streisand Effect, they have drawn attention to Google+ while simultaneously looking like giant, whiny douchebags (or sandy vaginas... depending on your perspective.)
Funny you should mention that. Insert any corporation in there (besides, maybe Oil companies)... and it fits for some reason. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
We take this as a serious competitor/
That would require the government to only spend 6-11% of GDP. We're a long way away from that. Government spending The 90's were in the right direction but still way off.
That's why I said "individual above a certain poverty line", so someone earning less than $18,000 a year (just saying) pays 0% tax. Even some sliding scale where you kick in gradually more % until you get to 15% at some income breakpoint would smooth that out.
Yes, donations are mostly influenced by tax advantages rather than philanthropy. How many of those donation accepting organizations only send 2% of the take to the advertised beneficiary anyway?
The deductions... you're right, that's sticky. If I pay 33% tax now and have the home mortgage deduction taken away in exchange for 15% flat tax, I think that's about a wash. The other deductions - and there are a ton - need to be addressed or accounted for so it's not a punishment to the individual. Corporate tax incentives also need to be addressed to encourage construction of factories in places that need work. Otherwise, corporations the size of GM, CitiCorp or Bank of America which (or "who" since they're considered an individual now) pay no taxes goes away. Corporate brass with gazillion dollar salaries, benefits and bonuses also pay 15%.
Yes; eliminate the loopholes. People would rather burn money than pay any portion of it as taxes.
Most of the stuff on
If there exists $2 trillion in cash, somebody has to be "sitting on it" -- it doesn't cease to exist when someone spends it, so at any given time it has to be in the possession of some entity. If the government collects money in taxes from businesses who are holding it and "spends" it so that it ends up in the hands of defense contractors who continue to hold it, it has done nothing for the economy but to transfer money from a company that earned it to a company that knows how to get a no bid contract, thereby creating a disincentive to earn money legitimately and an increased incentive to lobby for government contracts.
The problem with arguing about whether government spending is better for the economy in the abstract than lower taxes is that the details are what determines the answer. If the government provides medical services to the public, the economic effect is basically neutral -- it doesn't make a lot of difference whether the doctor gets paid by a private insurance company that collects premiums or a public agency that collects taxes. However, if you raise taxes on a bunch of doctors who then have to fire their landscapers and the government gives that money to defense contractors who stick the money in their Evil Company Mattresses, the economic consequences are negative: The landscapers lose their jobs and the defense contractors don't create any. And if you increase taxes on the defense contractors so that they have to pay the government with money from the Evil Company Mattresses and then the government gives it to a bunch of highway construction workers who go out and fix potholes, you create those jobs. The details are what matters -- you can't say in the abstract that private spending or government spending is better.
The thing that kills it for government spending is how the government gets the money: Let's say the government decides there should be government single payer healthcare. That requires high taxes, but in theory that isn't a problem, because they just take the money people would otherwise have spent on private insurance. The problem comes when the CEO realizes how much money he can save if he opens a factory offshore where they have much lower taxes because they don't have government healthcare, all while he can still go see the doctor here for free. The high taxes drive capital flight, tax avoidance and off-shoring. Then you have to raise taxes even more in order to continue providing the same services with the smaller tax base. The thing expected to be economically neutral in actuality has caused the local factory to be shut down and shipped off to China and has caused the doctors to have to fire their landscapers in order to pay the higher taxes to cover healthcare for the now-unemployed factory workers (and unemployed landscapers), etc.
Job killing?
What jobs?
This I completely understand. That does not make it wrong, just unlikely to happen, two vary different things.
... gave people an easy way to stay in touch, too. And that darned AOL IM client ... it was a monopoly! I remember!
Just this morning a typographically-challenged friend of mine sent me a broken URL (obviously he didn't test it). The obvious answer is to let Google sort it out.
My point, in a nutshell, is government spending creates more jobs than business lack of spending.
You could have a 0% corporate tax, but it wouldn't do any good for the economy as a whole if they simply keep it in liquid assets instead of expansion and hiring. (Fine, anon coward, I'll use the longer term that, for the common plebe, means the same thing.)
Indeed. Though also remember about a third of that stimulus was in tax cuts.
I'd really like to know where the 56% figure comes from, and who actually pays that much.
I've lived and worked in Sweden for nearly 5 years, I'm in the top income tax bracket, I don't take any significant deductions, and my rate's only about 40%.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
so when exactly did capitalism fail?
Define failing. Socialism failed because it claimed to provide for everyone and yet most of the countries that try it end up starving millions to death, so it was incapable of providing for everyone. WIth capitalism, if millions starved to death, well, that's just how it works: if you can't pay, you can't eat.
If you go with the literal definition of capitalism, that it encourages capital development through ownership of profits from that capital, then capitalism failed when people started bulldozing houses in order to save the value of their remaining properties. Once you start intentionally destroying capital for profit, it's over.
Facebook will finally face the same fate as Myspace, in two years Facebook will just be a faint memory and the creators broke and in dept! And I tell you why - how many uses the facebook mail address? ;) No one I know of anyway! ;) All are using gmail and why have Facebook when Google+ integrates to that?? And you don't have to face the fear of being bitten by a vampire or grow crops in FB. No, FB is childish and mark my worlds - in two years they're gone!
You can think (as I do) that Facebook is acting unethically ...
Really? There's an ethical code somewhere that requires companies to sell advertisements to (or for) their competitors? How so? Does Facebook have to sell them ads at a discount? At a loss?
Why should they?
Odd, I can't seem to share the linked article on Facebook.
You gotta read the previous post which it replies.
we have an easy way to cancel our FB accounts
My name is Jared and I work on Facebook's Ad Policy team and I wanted to chime in and correct some facts. In this situation one user maintained multiple ad accounts, one of which triggered an independent safety mechanism that resulted in that one ad account being temporarily disabled. Out of respect to user privacy, that is all I can really share. Here is how it works - as long as an ad is not illegal or violent in any way or as a result of repeat offenses we disable the ad not the advertiser or user account.
when you make a typo, you wonder what happened.
she's far ahead of you.
Barbara called. She wants her ad back.
1. Employer-tax of ~30% (15% for people younger than 26 and older than 61 only have ~10%)
2. normal tax of ~31%.
So, income of 10000 - 30% = 7000, 7000 - 31% = ~4800 = ~52% tax...
'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"
Facebook is an American company. Since when did any American ever use the term "advert"? Seriously, Americans do not say this. The shortened form of "advertisement" in the U.S. is "ad," not "advert." Any claim otherwise makes me want to see the actual text of the original email, if one did indeed exist. Furthermore, companies do not let random employees write emails about corporate policy and send them out without having them reviewed and vetted for language. This sounds like someone (from the UK) is using the press to hype up his own business at Facebook's expense.
Breakfast served all day!
Facebook gave Michael Lee Johnson a withering stare.
"You know what you did," she said.
"And if you don't know what you did, that's even worse. Pig."
think so...
Now wait a minute.
Assume I am that developer and running those ads. Now Facebook comes and says "listen dude, we have blocked your ads. We are sorry. We feel your ads are negatively impacting us. Please either change them or run them elsewhere. Yes, we know it's not nice; yes, we know we might lose a bit of cash; but please understand our motives". Now I would be a bit pissed at them but I would understand.
I would even appreciate their approach.
But what they did is piss-poor judgement and reaction. Disabling the account altogether for clouded (yet duh!-style obvious) reasons? "We can't tell you why"? That's utter bullshit.
See, that's the difference between "some company nicely trying to protect their business" and "some company stomping on you head-on to protect their business".
Many, many EULAs say "we can disable your account for any reason or no reason" (anyone playing World of Warcraft? Yes? read it: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/termsofuse.html - "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."). Sorry for caps, guys, it's the original shit.
And guess what. They actually DO it. Whether you hear of it or not is a different story. Most people don't publicly complain, and if they do, they don't gain momentum unless they're celebrities.
I was playing a rather crappy MMO and in our group's internal chat we were typing in Romanian. Now the game masters had no issue with private chatrooms using non-english languages; but they had a problem with their filtering bots. See, Romanian has a word (translated to English, it means "How") which is spelled "cum". And their filter reported me numerous times for abusing this word. So my account got banned (one game master actually was pressed enough to mention why). Needless to say, the account never got reactivated.
Anyway, the point is that companies AFFORD to be unethical. And they got your agreement to be so. Kinda sad if you think about it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Facebook gave Michael Lee Johnson a withering stare.
"You know what you did," she said.
"And if you don't know what you did, that's even worse. Pig."
You dated her, too?
Google CAN'T afford to act against Facebook because Google makes money from appearing to a fair advertiser... So the damage to Google's good will would be worse than messing with Facebook. Frankly, Facebook is only worth a few Billion, and most of that "stock value" not revenue... Google has that kind of CASH in their piggy bank.
Facebook CAN'T be sold to anybody now, they have too many conflicting companies with "buy in" like Microsoft but that have more interest in seeing Facebook "NOT" go to somebody else... not in seeing Facebook necessarily do WELL.
Who's really more scary here? After all Google (ok or maybe Apple) is now the new Microsoft with more cash than GOD right now.... they can "casually" wipe out out 25% of Facebook users in 60 days or less... Ouch! Over-active 20% project here.
You can't just line up a bunch of people and tell them to fix a road, you have to provide them with the supplies to repair the road.
The 278k figure is for jobs directly created by the spending program, it does not include private sector jobs that were indirectly created by orders of raw goods, as you cannot easily directly correlate when surplus capacity was exceeded and more labor was required.
The stimulus program was not as successful as hoped because the people who got the jobs spent a much greater percentage of their money on paying off debts and retirement accounts than expected by the economists.
Work bio at MMWD
vision:
"Whiny douchbags + sandy vj" somebody should eventually be happy about it.
That is almost never a talking point, fairness and other ideals tend to make it into the talking points, especially the talking points of West Coast US Union leaders.
Work bio at MMWD
Lol... "cower in my shadow". Says the moron with a 2 million + ID. Oh god that's hilarious. What is it with the arrogant teens on Slashdot? Why don't you get out of your parents' house and live in the real world a bit?
Half the people I know have gone to Google+ now.
I'm the laggert... again.
Best case, Facebook's ad revenue drops by a third-- social networking becomes fragmented.
Worst case, better privacy features does much worse damage to Facebook. There's a lot of pent up resentment at Facebook.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
When some app developer has found a new way to get around the "hide this app" feature, say by posting pictures with the user tagged or otherwise posting as the user but not "via the app" so you can't block the message without blocking the user, facebook has no problem letting these apps carry on.
I agree, the only time a business will create jobs is when they feel they will get a reasonable return on their investment. If they don't feel they can get a reasonable return today then it doesn't matter if you give them a bunch of money. They will keep the money because they have already determined that it's not profitable to hire more people.
It's even worse in this type of economy because the poor labor market means they can extract more work out of less people. This further reduces the value of keeping people employed. Just look at the recent record profits made by some corporations. They aren't using this money to hire because they don't think it's profitable to expand their business.
Chris Mesterharm
Mostly the money's in non-cash assets: commodities markets, precious metals, etc. When gold is at a historic high, money's clearly being hoarded, since gold has traditionally been a "mattress" investment due to the perception (whether valid or not) that its value is secure. Likewise, when you can dump the strategic petroleum reserve on the market and barely dent prices, you know there's not a supply-demand relationship underlying the commodity price, but a massive amount of money being tied up in commodities speculation. Speculation's even worse than stuffing money in a mattress, since the profits added by each middleman in the chain of speculative transactions eventually become a cost to the consumer, so it pulls more money out of circulation and into the hoards.
Yes, please keep voting Republican... I'm so close to buying my own Boeing 747 and would hate to also have to forgo buying another Bentley for my daughter if my taxes are raised back to pre-2001 levels.
And someone wants to sell you that 747 and bentley. And someone wants to sell the parts and tools to make them, etc. It's called trickle down, my friends. And a trickle is better than unemployment.
But, since I'm a heterosexual adult male, I have to ask "What is 'Facebook' and 'Twitter'"?
All of you who love shows such as 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' should be able to answer the question.
There's this cool thing called supply and demand that raises and lowers market prices until supply matches demand. You do realize that there's not whole lot you can do with cash itself, sitting on money doesn't actually make anyone richer in the present, yes? So if someone's saving money, it's because they're expecting it to be worth more in the future than it is worth to them right now. Taxing it away and then having the government spend it only hurts private investment.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'
what the FUCK does that even mean ?
you asswipes are banning a USER for advertising another device of communication, because you are afraid of competition ?
i am not able to bring myself to even start seeking for reasons that could justify such a preschool-level behavior.
Read radical news here
The more money one entity has, the less money everyone else has.
So what? Money is not wealth. The richest person in the world in 1800 still couldn't afford air conditioning. What does it matter who is getting how much wealthier, so long as everyone is? Someone can't become rich without benefiting someone else in the process, so I don't see the problem.
"Trickle Down Economics" has proven not to work
What part of "Hey let's not tax away the assets of the producers of our society" has been proven not to work? "Trickle down" (hey let's not take money from people who are profitable) is not the same as government subsidies (hey let's take money from people and fund unprofitable ventures instead).
Wonder what the public key field is for?
> Where do the anti tax hikes people think the money goes?
The question is not: where the tax money goes. The question is: where does it come from. Answer that and you will get the real reason why the gap between the poor and the rich is increasing.
Poor people don't pay tax. Rich people can afford the little tax they pay once their accountant has been on their case, or they can afford to move their business in a fiscal paradise. Who's left? The people who used to be in the middle class, the one paying for the $46 trillions that the government will spend over the next 10 years (including the $8.7 additional trillions that the current administration is proposing).
It's a complete shame that someone wants to increase tax when even the GAO can't give an estimate of how much money is wasted in the current budget.
lucm, indeed.
STREISAND EFFECT!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
last month I was in the hospital. while there, I posted a picture and a write up of what happened on my wordpress site, expecting it up be pulled to facebook. A month later, facebook decided to finally post the acrticle, and my mom called me concerned that I was back in the hospital.
After spending half an hour trying to remove the useless wordpress updates, I finally said hell with it and created this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7626534@N03/5943080381/in/photostream
That's now my facebook profile pic. Feel free to reuse it.
And, beyond that, illegal != criminal. Lots of things are illegal and don't result in anyone going to jail.
My point, in a nutshell, is government spending creates more jobs than business lack of spending.
My point is that you can't say that in the abstract. It depends on what the corporations being taxed would do with the money and on what the government would do with it instead, and on how much capital flight the increased taxes will cause (which is determined by what and who taxes are increased on), etc. It just isn't as simple as "government spending > private spending" or the reverse.
Incidentally, if businesses are for some reason hoarding cash, the government has a much better alternative than tax-and-spend: The government can control the level of inflation by printing more or less money. If businesses are hoarding cash, the government can print more money which a) allows the government to do spending without raising taxes and b) sets a fire under the private interests to keep the cash flowing, because hoarding it will incur a loss of real value as the currency is diluted.
Is there really anything sinister about this? So they blocked him from running ads. They didn't remove his account. One could argue Facebook could have managed this thing better. But is Facebook obligated to run ads for a directly competing service?
The real problem is that neither side is right. Tax hikes on the 'rich' and cutting some pork out of the budget is akin to using a 5 gallon bucket to bail out water while on the titanic. At this point neither will do much. The only way out of this is really a complicated plan no one wants to hear.
First, tax rates across the board need to rise some. Back to Clinton levels would probably be okay, but the government would need to be careful to not kill growth. Revenue growth is key. People like to rip on Reagan, and rightly so for his spending, but if you look at his second year as president once his tax cuts went into place, the federal revenue went way up over the Carter years. The entire economy grew and lower rates led to more revenue. Of course this only works to a point and we're likely below that point right now.
Second, pork while fun to point out is ignoring the elephants in the room - all of the government entitlement programs and military. These have to be scaled back. We have pushed the can down the line too long at this point. Obviously people want more programs when they are essentially free. Well it's time for the frank conversation that they are in fact not free.
The final piece is healthcare costs. This has to also be addressed in order to do any real problem solving because they tie into item two.
Without the three above pieces in place any talk of fixing the deficit or budge is basically bullshit rhetoric, and both sides are equally guilty of spouting this nonsense.
and the rest will be history.... seriously.
It just isn't as simple as "government spending > private spending" or the reverse.
I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing "government spending > private hoarding."
If they're sitting on two tril, pass out some bonuses down the line. Wouldn't hurt morale either, I bet.
Oh, and the gov has been printing money...and in one of their usual not-so-bright moves, though, they've been giving THAT to the businesses as well.
An obtuse answer. Montecello actually had passive air conditioning in the late 1700's early, 1800 with air intakes outside and hundreds of feet of buried tunnels to cool the air entering the building. It didn't work too well.
What part of "spreading the burden" don't you understand? The rich get richer because, somehow, they escape paying even a fair share of what it takes to support an entire society. They're still rich, eeking out a meager living on $2million a year - oh boo hoo.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Price floors ensure stability. Without them we'd see food costs plummet and then shoot back up and then down, and then up. Over the medium term the average price may be lower than without subsidization, but in the short term the instability would create disruptions in the food supply, and over the longer term the instability would produce market consolidation that inevitably results in higher average prices. The choices is short to medium term average lower prices with some seasons of starvation among the non-wealthy.
THank you for a totally reasonable,interpretation.. I find it VERY disturbing that so many slashdotters, most of whom are probably programers themselves, don't see the inherent danger in allowing this kind of poor and monopolistic behavior.. Perhaps because I live in an over-regulated, monopolistic, competitively crippled country, that i'm sensitized to the issues.. haven experienced firsthand the damage.. But folks better wake up and realize that crippling a developers account for what amount to no more than sour grapes is a BAD thing... DONT take the 'Devils' side in this!
Even better: only on Slashdot can someone get to +5 informative by replying to the wrong post.
YHBT. HTH. HAND.
Boo fricken hoo. It's their house, they make the rules.
Isn't it just as unethical to run the ad for Facebook's competitor in the first place? Facebook has to follow some ethical code and be nice, but their advertisers can't be asked to be considerate in return?
Maybe if the advertiser says he's sorry and he won't do it again, then they can make up and resume a working relationship.
I try not to spend too much time on Google discussions because their googlebots always mod me down if I say anything anti-Google and it just irks me. But what irks me even more is people assuming I'm male.
Anyway, I'm just saying Facebook doesn't need Google. Google doesn't need Facebook either. It just doesn't matter if Google removes Facebook from its search. I am sure there are people out there who will not be able to find Facebook if not for Google. But they probably can't use Facebook anyway because they're stuck on some guy's blog, trying to figure out why they can't log in.
And seriously, if you can't type Facebook.com, how are you going to type Google.com? I think if the web browser's address bar wasn't programmed to turn into a Google bar automatically, the numbers would look different. And honestly, if Google can kill Facebook by removing Facebook from the search index, then they should just do it already, instead of making apps to harvest Facebook information and running ads on Facebook.
While they're at it, maybe they can run an ad to the people searching Google, explaining how inefficient it is to go to a search engine and type a full website address. I understand it will correct the addresses but the web browsers have the anti-phishing built in, you know.
That would require the government to only spend 6-11% of GDP. We're a long way away from that. Government spending The 90's were in the right direction but still way off.
Not exactly. We'd be OK spending up to about 18 of GDP. For the past ~60 years, tax revenue has been about 18% of GDP, regardless of the rate of taxation.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wait, people were RESPONSIBLE!? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Why does it feel like we're desperately climbing up a rope that's already been cut?
Isn't it just as unethical to run the ad for Facebook's competitor in the first place?
Facebook just banned him for no reason. They didn't actually say "we're banning you for advertising a competitor".
If Facebook isn't willing to admit the reason why they banned him, then Facebook doesn't get the benefit of being able to claim the reason is ethical.
If Facebook wants to get in to the search game they are going to need to hire a few more PhD. Zuckerman is not PhD level and given his attitudes doesn't stand a chance of ever getting one. He isn't as smart as he thinks based on some of Facebook's obvious screw-ups that were so bad I just cringed when they were announced as new "features". Ignoring your users complaints and calling them stupid and then doing whatever you want including things the users don't want, clearly says Zuckerman isn't smart at all, just arrogant. He wasn't the first to invent a social media web site or even a social media web site for college students. He just happen to get lucky.
Isn't the whole reason for this article the fact that they DON'T have a monopoly? They can do whatever they want with their property, as long as the government doesn't guarantee them a monopoly then it isn't any of my business.
Ethical companies generally perform better, regardless of how the market is doing, compared to unethical ones. (I don't have an exact source for this, but I've seen stock market studies before)
...Well, that's not exactly true. Companies whose users actually like the company perform better. Usually that means that the company is ethical (e.g., Atlus, XSeed Games, Valve), but not always (e.g., Apple).
What goes around comes around. A company that respects its fans and is loyal to its fans will, in return, receive loyal fans that respect the company. A company that doesn't care about its customers will, in turn, receive customers that dump the company as soon as something better comes around.
While big companies can afford to be unethical in the short term, it is bad long-term policy.
Barbera Streisand effect anybody?
i love how, given the context of the current situation between Google and Facebook, 'loosing' users is more accurate than a non-typo. although it wouldn't be practical to be loosed from FB just yet. maybe some day.
How many people here are being paid by Google to hype Google+?
And I'm still wondering what the fuss is about Google+? What's better about Google+ compared to Facebook, cause I don't see it.. personally you really are just a moron if you are jumping on the Google+ bandwagon because it would be the new thing.. There must be real reasons to yet switch again between social networks, especially since there will never be one which will be THE ONE.
so if a judge decides that you just need to pay a fine for a dui incident, you did not commit a criminal act? i thought illegal was something that made you a criminal.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
this is quite informative, but strangely at '0' right now.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
the stopped someone from running ads they had a deal with. They site a vague 'look at the terms' statement.
THAT"S why it's unethical..and possible illegal.
It really boils down to the contract.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What is it with people and this overly simple view of the world? Are we really getting so simple minded?
It wasn't even an ad for Google+.
Of course, you want to jump right out there and make some statement to make up for your tiny penis size you didn't bother to take the time to read the article.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and crime != jail. You can be guilty of a crime and not go to jail.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and jail != prison. Jail is where people are held awaiting trial or sentencing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It seems that currently there is only room for one big player on the social networking market.
That is strange. It would be like AT&T being the only telephone company. I just hope that somehow, if google takes over, facebook remains a big player, because lack of competition will just be a very bad thing for consumers, even if google runs the place.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Yeah well we're not discussing whether they can or can't make the rules; we're discussing whether the rules could have been better. And furthermore, whether the way of enforcing the rules could have been better.
When someone bans your account and don't leave you any method to get your account back - then they are abusing their power and frankly I would negatively advertise them pretty much anywhere. Sure, probably nobody would care, but when enough dissatisfied people do it, who knows?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing "government spending > private hoarding."
Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character. The CEO's of the fortune 500 companies do not have vaults of cash they go swimming in. When a company has "cash" it isn't a pile of notes in the basement, it's in a bank. If you got a loan for your home or to start up a small business, that's the sort of place the money you got loaned came from.
Corporations do not hoard cash in a way that takes it out of the economy. Only Grandma with her bundle of cash hidden in the flower pot does.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
The only entity in a country that is interested in creating jobs for the sake of getting people employed is the government.
The government can only pay a wage by taxing someone else. Since it is obviously impossible to tax public employee's enough to pay all the public employee's wages, ultimately that wage money has to be taxed from the private sector. So the government can only thrive to the extent that the private sector thrives first.
The dependent is not superior to the provider.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
That would be all nice and good, except the way to generate revenue in government from taxes is to grow business. If business isn't growing because they're hunkering down waiting for the tax hike, if they aren't growing because no one has any money to buy, the tax revenues at the government level will not grow. You can't draw blood from a turnip (or however that saying goes).
I know the whole idea is completely alien to someone in the US, but the government could run a business that sells its service instead of taxing people for it. Like, say, you want a passport, you pay for the service. You want a permit, you pay for it. And government could even run businesses and sell products for profit. But I guess that's too freakish for the US to even fathom the possibility. Government actually running a business... that's soooo communist!
The funny thing is that a lot of infrastructure in my country was actually government run. Gas, water, power, phone... and in general it was quite good and also affordable. Now most of it is private owned. Prices didn't drop as promised, but at least the service is crappier now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am old to computers but new to social networking. Got an invite form a respected techie buddy to join Google+. So I did. Now I am free to share all the inane BS associated with my life just like any 13 year old school girl. It's kind of cool. We just swap cutsie pie crap from the net and a couple of techy articles.
One thing I will say, google+ does have pretty open privacy standards (for now) and a page called Data Liberation. You can pretty much down load anything you put out there on your + page. Then you are free to take your data where ever you want to go.
Sounds like the makings of a buddy cop show, doesn't it? :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Maybe they can do so legally. However, it's still terrible customer service and blatantly unethical. It's just one more reason I'm going to delete my Facebook account and move to Google+ at the first chance. It has everything I really want.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Pfft. Yeah, but saying Facebook acts unethical isn't a news story. That hasn't been news since Zuck was in college.
I'll switch If the games on Google+ doesn't force me to add gazillions of peoples I don't know as "friends" just to be able to play. Then those peoples have access to my pictures and all my personal Information. I'll be very happy if there is a provision if the ToS for that. It's relatively easy to do: just allow us to seperate gaming "friends" from our real-life friends.
People sure do love to bitch about a service they get for free.
Facebook claims to be the 800 lb Gorilla in social networking. Doesn't this seem to be the response of a monopoly power? Can they actually ban ads for other social networks? If so, do they have to ban ALL ads for ALL other social networks?
Sounds like a sticky situation.
What a load of crap.
Taxes go sky high before the 1920s... great depression happens. Lowered taxes, great depression ends just as the first war starts... There were also high taxes during the 70s and I wouldn't call them "enlightened years." Economic condition has little to do with the amount of taxes on the rich and you are disingenuous to try to pin the worlds woes on the richer part of the community. According to only the information on that chart, jacking up the taxes on the rich will only put us into another great depression.
Why would you assume that the wealthy hoard because of taxes? They hoard when they estimate lows. It has little to do with income taxes. If I have money in hoard and the government jacks up taxes, I'm not going to go spend all that money. I'm going to keep it in hoard until taxes go down so I can get more for my money. Jobs and money circulate when people feel good about the stability of the country. Lately, people haven't been feeling stable. They've been feeling robbed.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Rich buy fancy houses with fancy windows, fancy decks, fancy pools, fancy furniture and all kinds of fancy stuff. Who makes that stuff? They created jobs. They didn't have to think about doing it. They just did it.
Granted, there would be more jobs to create fancy stuff if more people had fancy houses, but that's not the point of my post. To state that the rich don't create jobs is a misnomer. You make it sound as though the rich don't buy expensive stuff to show off and they hoard all their cash.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'm late to the party, but this seems like a pre-adolescent game of "Hot or Not" where you prove you've got what it takes by stealing someone else's lunch money while carefully gauging the group reaction, then scanning it's periphery for insecure girls in disclosure mode. At least, that's how it was played back in the day when the human body still had secrets.
What's the point of power if you don't test the boundaries? Especially if you're stuck with a tree fort business model.
I hope that you sir, are a perfect typist and never ever make typographical errors [...] malicious phishing sites that you may inadvertently visit via your much praised "address bar"
I'm trying desperately to come up with a realistic scenario in which I'd mistype the letter "f". I'm not having much luck. (And the possibility of somehow being inadvertently sent to a phishing site, which I've never before visited, instead of Facebook, which is always at the very top of the Awesome Bar auto-complete suggestions... frankly, it boggles the mind.)
You must be a simply horrible typist, or really drunk. And in the latter case... I hope you have more, and you're willing to share.
Furthermore, if you use most browser's "address bar" to incorrectly enter a URL and wind up at a phishing site, it will bring you back to the same phishing site automatically when you enter the partial URL via auto-completion search.
Verily, may I introduce you to the dark magick of the History deletion... most useful for removing teh pron sites from your auto-completion results so your mom doesn't find them, but equally effective to get rid of a phishing site that you accidentally visited.
I have no argument with that, it was more about an optimum, which is argued in the style of a laffer curve argument by Richard Armey that it's 11.42 of GDP, a misremembering on my part. I'm not really arguing what it is, but where it would be best. I'm sure it's possible to reduce tax to that level.
http://www.house.gov/jec/growth/govtsize/govtsize.htm
For a couple of reasons this is still by no means any better than a lot of "poor" people having enough money to spend. Actually, the whole "rich spend more money" myth is another myth waiting to be debunked.
First of all, they have a choice. And in an economic downturn, do you think they go on a vanity spending spree or start to hold onto what they got in case times get worse? Rich people already have a lot, and they are more likely to use the vanity items they have already rather than buying new ones when the economy looks bleak and the chance for more riches isn't that great. Do I need another yacht? Not really, the old one still looks great and it does what it has to do. Yes, I'd like that bigger one, but ... that can wait a year. And that pool house isn't really something I need right now either. Someone who is "poor" but wants to have some fun has to spend now. There is little entertainment of lasting value he has. What does a "poor" person have in terms of lasting entertainment items? A TV and maybe a console. The moment he wants to see a movie on the big screen, it's the movie theater. He doesn't have an entertainment system for 5k bucks at home. The moment he wants to engage in any sport at all he has to pay to play. He doesn't have a tennis court behind his house and can just invite his friends over for a game.
More important, though: Poor people have to spend their money here. Rich people don't. Actually, for rich people it's far more a question of a "standard of living" to not spend their money domestically. They don't go on a shopping spree in the local mall, they go to Paris for that. They don't buy a table in the local furniture store, they have it designed by some Italian crafter, and not from local wood but from exotic one. They don't buy the local refreshments (from water to wine), they want imported goods. And most of all they don't spend their vacation somewhere where they can drive to. They fly to the currently "fashionable" locations around the globe. Poor people don't have the choice. They have to spend their money here, simply because going somewhere else is already blowing the budget.
So please, stop with the myth of rich people creating jobs by spending money. They don't. Or rather, only if they want to. Poor people have to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For a couple of reasons this is still by no means any better than a lot of "poor" people having enough money to spend.
Thus when I said:
Granted, there would be more jobs to create fancy stuff if more people had fancy houses
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
That's not even necessary. We don't need "more" money. We just need more people with enough money to spend it. That's all. It is actually that simple. If we both have 1000 bucks, we both buy a DVD player. If I have 2000 and you have nothing, I buy one DVD player but I won't buy two. You might notice that there ain't more money going around, it's the same amount of money pooled, but still more goods get sold in the former example.
The optimum for the economy is reached when everyone has as much money as he'd need to satisfy the needs he has. Surplus money is actually wasted money, since it will be stockpiled and does not get into circulation. And that's what spins the economy. The economy is dependent on buying and selling of goods, and the more is bought and sold, the stronger the economy gets. If I have more money than what I'd spend on goods and services, that money is pretty much useless for the economy.
Oh, I could invest it? Yes, that would be even worse. Worse? Yes, worse. At least in the current situation, it's about the worst thing that I could do. Because investing means that I put my money into supply, not demand. I put it into the production aspect of the market, not into consumption. And if we don't have a shortage of one thing right now, then it's a shortage of supply. There's plenty of supply, what's lacking is demand! Adding to the supply side will only worsen the problem but not solve it. Because if I invest my money into production of goods and services, what I'll want is interest or profit. There isn't any other good reason to pump my money into the supply side. Putting money into demand satisfies one or more of my needs, putting it into supply does not do that. This increases the pressure on the supply side to generate revenue, only adding to the current problem where revenue isn't really something that comes easy.
If you look around the globe and check which nations got hit by the recession, and how hard they got hit, you will notice that countries that tried to level the amount of money in its population are usually not feeling the downturn as badly as nations with a big rich-poor bracket. The reason is very simple: In the former countries, the demand didn't plummet with poor people unable to even satisfy their bare physical needs anymore. There, the demand did of course diminish, but by no means in the same extend as in countries that subscribe to the "let the market sort it out" point of view.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah... that's what I said. I don't know why you feel the need to argue. If more people had fancy houses instead of just a few, more people would buy fancy things for those fancy houses and create even more jobs.
But to blatantly say the rich don't create jobs is a fallacy.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Did you even read what I wrote? It's kinda disheartening to elaborate on a topic only to be misunderstood. The point is not that more people should be rich. The point is that the money needs to be better distributed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, I did. I don't disagree, but I don't agree that money should be "taken" from the rich and given to the poor either. Money just handed out will be mis-appropriated and fall right back in the hands of those that don't "need" it and we'll be right back to where we are today. Sure, there may be a few "glory years" but eventually it will come crashing back to what it is now. I do not know of a good way to "resolve" the problem though besides a thorough revamp of the system along with a mass re-education (fat chance) of the people who don't spend wisely. If you establish a poverty line where there are no taxes and you have enough to live, people will live on that line and do no more than they need to continue living. They'll be struck by a natural disaster (planning is for chumps!) and be screaming on the news on how some President hates them. If you don't have some barrier, you'll have people who don't want to or can't work living on the streets asking for handouts. Now you have the people that feel the need to help others spending their "allotment" helping them and reducing their overall net worth... again, crashing back into the same routine.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Spend wisely? Fuck no! People have to squander and spend without thinking! That's actually what drives the economy, as stupid as it sounds: Stupid people with money are a godsend for a demand side fixing attempt. Those who don't know anything have to hire someone who does. Those that can't fix their car need a mechanic. Those that can't fix their plumbing need a plumber.
And while I'm not a big friend of handouts, giving people enough to live on will at least do something against crime. People who want to enjoy their soma and don't want anything more will not do more either way. If you don't give them what they need to survive, what do you think they'll do? Go and starve to death? No. They'll break the law if necessary to get what they need. If I neither have a home nor food, do you think I care too much whether I mug you for the 20 bucks in your wallet? If you want people to stay within the law, give them something to lose. And very obviously the threat of losing your liberty isn't one that keeps people on this side of the law.
But on the other hand, make working worth it. Let's be honest here: If I had to work 40 hours a week to get 400 bucks at the end of the month, I won't work. I'll go and hack servers. Or if I can't do that, I'll mug you. I won't work for those pennies, and neither do a lot of people. Working has to pay. I want honest money for honest work, it was possible in the 50s to sustain a family on a single income, today you often have people working 2 or more jobs, each, husband and wife, to just get by. And that's bull. Sorry, that's bull. If someone is as dedicated to work that he can and wants to work 80+ hours a week, he should get rich that way. Even if he isn't top qualified Ivy-League material, investing that much time of your life should pay!
Back to the point.
How do you think money would be mis-appropriated if you handed it to the poor? What would they do with it? Save it? Very obviously, you don't (unless I read that wrong). They will spend it! They will buy services for it! They'll get a haircut, they'll go and squander it at the mall, they'll buy something. And that's what's missing today. We can stop it when the economy is back on track, but right now what we need is money in people who want to spend it. And that's the poor. Or rather, the "stupid". Because, as you rightly analyzed, they don't plan. They spend. In today, gone tomorrow. They want bling and crap, and they'll spend their money on that. Most of all, these are the people who need services because they're unable to do anything by themselves. And services are about the best thing you could sell. Because selling a service means that you have someone employed who gets money for work without spending resources. It's generated GDP without expenditure.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, DUI is a crime (at least, AFAIK, in all U.S. jurisdictions), independently of whether or not jail time is involved. All things that send you to jail* are crimes, but not all crimes send you to jail.
All things that are crimes are illegal, but not all things that are illegal are crimes (while a crime might have a fine, civil offenses which might result in damages or a civil monetary penalty that looks a lot like a fine are not criminal, despite being illegal.)
Things that send people to jail are a subset of crimes, and crimes are a subset of illegal acts; it is an error to equate the argument that "X should be illegal" with "X should result in people going to jail". The latter may imply the former, but the former does not imply the latter.
* actually, there are some exceptions such as being held as a material witness, etc., but they are tangential to the basic categorization of ways of breaking the law here.
** except that it doesn't, either, as explained in the immediately previous point.
Or where they go after sentencing for minor crimes with relatively short terms of incarceration in most U.S. jurisdictions (under 1 year is, as I recall, a fairly common rule.) Or where they go after sentencing for most crimes under California's plan to meet the federal court order to reduce the population in its overcrowded State prison system. There's not really a consist, bright line -- even among U.S. jurisdictions -- between what "jail" and "prison" are used for.
I'm not sure why you think your guns are relevant to this discussion. Sounds to me like you're looking for trouble. Are you?