Just give everyone a different test. Or, more practically, make up 5-10 tests, and randomly distribute them to the students. Let them ask their friends in class for the answers -- they'll just get them wrong more likely than not.
Your fallacy here is that you're assuming that extra income should be tax free, and also that you're counting child care as a tax, and not an expense (and a tax-deductable expense at that). You're also not cutting off the SSN tax at $106,800, which adds a few grand back into your pocket. And the child care, which, if we assume $20k for that and a marginal tax rate of 28%, nets you a little over $5k in tax refunds. Now it is true that the second job is taxed roughly 13% higher than the first, but that's not really a big difference in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you're getting diminishing returns, but that's why the marriage clause was put in place -- to account for single-income families. The marriage clause was not designed with dual incomes in mind. And the low taxes at the bottom were designed to give everyone a "free pass" on the basic essentials of life. Yes, it sucks to make $120k and only keep $80k, but it sucks a lot more to make $25k and only keep $20k of it. If you really feel the wealthy are getting the short end of the stick in life, you've forgotten (or never learned) what it's like to be poor (and just for the record, I'm not poor at the moment, just middle class).
But you should be looking at the effective tax rate. Because of the way the graduated tax system works, it's impossible to pay the full marginal rate in a tax bracket (unless you're in the first bracket). Thus, if you calculate how much of the $160k is paid at each bracket, the total federal tax rate is 21.41%. Then account for the fact that SSN isn't taken out over $106,800, and you're coming out ahead. This calculates the total federal taxes, including SSN and Medicare, to come out to $42,000, assuming the couple has no deductions (which they almost certainly would, lowering their taxes further). That's less than 21%. Add that 9.3% for state taxes, and you're still hovering around 30%. And again, that's assuming they have no children, no house, and donate nothing to charity. If they have a house payment with $1500 interest per month (easy to do in SF), then they would get their marginal tax rate times that money back, so that would reduce their taxes by 0.28 * 12 * 1500 = 5040, which reduces their total taxes by about 3%, bringing them in at a cool 27%.
The effective tax rate for our hypothetical couple making $160k per year is 21.41%. That's well below 50%. If you're having problems with the tax rate or cost of living in a particular place, move somewhere cheaper; my wife and I lived in an expensive part of the country, but when she got pregnant we made the decision to move to a place with a lower cost of living. If you're living in the Bay Area, that's a voluntary expense. Yes, it's where Google is, but you don't have to work for them to have a high-paying job. I would be willing to entertain the idea of federal tax rates being adjusted for cost of living in particular areas, though, as that would be more fair.
Also, making it harder to earn ridiculous amounts of money does something neat with the economy -- it keeps money flowing. Wealthier people tend to hoard money, whereas the less wealthy tend to spend more of what they make (generally because they have to in order to survive). This means that more goods and services are exchanged, and less capital is locked away where it doesn't benefit society as a whole. Not to mention that any money that's spent gets taxed a second time, through sales tax. Thus the government is getting more out of the less wealthy than just income tax. From a pragmatic standpoint it just makes more sense to tax the wealthy more.
No, you're obviously the one that failed math. If not, you'd know that it would take a 10% increase in taxes for you (with your claimed $35k per year.. which I highly doubt, given your level of greed), as compared to a 1% increase in taxes for someone making $350k per year, to make the same amount of tax revenue. So here's the dilemma -- we need to raise taxes to pay for shit. Who pays it? Apparently you think the poor should pay it, since they have SO MUCH extra money sitting around. I say the rich should pay it, since they CAN. Also, if you weren't such a fucking twit you'd know that you don't have to pay social security tax on earnings over $106,800, so that's actually a 12.4% tax cut for people making over that amount. Having to pay a bit more in federal taxes is not much to ask, especially since the graduated tax brackets ensure that they only get taxed heavily on the portion of their earnings that are within that tax bracket (so they still get taxed at ~25% for the portion of their income belove $80k or so).
But if you want a good reason why people aren't entitled to make more after a certain point, here's one -- rich people don't contribute to the economy. That's right, they save/invest/gamble their money. Middle class and poor people, on the other hand, spend the majority of their money buying goods and services that allow businesses to thrive. The more you make, the more you hoard. The more you hoard, the less that flows through the economy. It's simply bad economics to let people get too rich. And spare me your treatise on trickle-down economics. The only ones that believe that crap are you, your friends, and Bush Jr. (Bush Sr. even pointed out that it was BS). Ronnie Ray Gun believed it too, but he's dead, and he was full of shit even when he was alive.
Jesus, what is with the fucking retards today? I wasn't complaining, nor was I saying I should get a tax break. I was saying that the hypothetical couple, despite what they might do for a living or the fact that they both work, are well into the top 10% of wage earners, and should be treated accordingly. Yes, that means more taxes. And yes, if I made that much, I would still advocate for more taxes. In fact, not that long ago my wife and I totaled around $95k/year before our child was born. The taxes, much to the contrary of all these BS Republican claims, were not crushing us, destroying our livlihoods, or otherwise creating an unnecessary burden. I don't get the kind of mentality that can only sympathize with the people who make a LOT of money about not having enough money.
I'm pretty sure child care is not $63k/year. Also, the graduated tax means that everything i would make up to the end of my tax bracket is taxed at my current rate. ALSO, because social security taxes are not taxed above $106,800, that would offset the minor increase in tax bracket.
On to your second point of deincentivising work.. I don't think it's a bad thing to encourage people to work less. There's more workers in this country than there are jobs, and if those of us that have jobs didn't work 60 hours a week, there would be plenty of jobs to go around. And if companies could no longer get away with abusing salaried employees, we'd have less stress, less heart attacks, and a generally healthier society. Money is not the only metric of success, and I wish more people understood that in this country.
I don't see how $63k is more than $126k, even adjusting for the cost of rent in the bay area. And yes, if my wife made as much as I do, we'd be wealthy, and should pay more in taxes because of that. What's your point? We need more tax revenue to pay for roads, schoos, police, and our enormous debt. Who should we tax to get it? You'd have to raise taxes mych more on the poor to get the same amount as a small increase for the rich. And the rich can afford it. It only makes sense.
What I'm complaining about is people complaining about the plight of the $160k income household.
Make whatever excuses you want - you were complaining that people who make more than you aren't punished with insanely high taxes to rape them for being better off than you.
Dude, you make more, you pay more, that's the way it works. Back in the "good 'ol days" in 50s when we had the highest standard of living in the world by far, the tax rate for the top 10% was way higher than any tax proposal currently being passed around. Living in a country like this allows people to make that kind of money. Once they make that much, it's time to give something back. Maybe it'll de-incentivize the modern 60 hour work week, and people will be willing to make a bit less to work a lot less. And then maybe we won't have such a wound up, stick up the arse society.
No, the only thing you're not a tard about is the fact that you realize you're not cut out for kids.
It was pointed out earlier in this thread that $140k brings you into the top 10% of household incomes in the US. If you consider $160k/year to be "middle-middle class" then you have a very, very skewed view of what middle class is. I made roughly $70k per year when I was single and living in a fairly expensive place (expensive side of Portland, OR). I can't even imagine having a household income of $160k.. I wouldn't know what to do with it (well, actually I do.. I'd quit my $80k part and go back for my Ph.D). If you're making $35k/year, then by your standards, you're impoverished, and that's ludicrous. Adjusting for the cost of caring for a family, you and I probably have a similar standard of living, and I'm far from impoverished.
Also, I'd like to point out that I wasn't complaining about my situation. I'm actually fine with it. What I'm complaining about is people complaining about the plight of the $160k income household.
First off, you're a tard. I like having kids. In fact I like it so much that I'm willing to make less money in order to spend more time with my family, and to allow my wife to stay home with our son.
Second, nothing you have said gives any reason why a dual income household shouldn't have to pay their fair share in taxes. If you both make $80k per year, and you don't want to be in the top 10% of earnings, then file separately. Any way you slice it, the hypothetical couple making $80k/year each are wealthy, and I'm not going to feel sorry for them for having to pay taxes.
Oh wow, silly me, implying that two married people who make $80k per year should pay as much in taxes as two people single people who make $80k per year!
If the US wasn't filled with people who are so obsessed with acquiring wealth at all costs, maybe we wouldn't have so much crime, violence, stupidity, etc. Guess what? YOU are responsible for raising your child. If you do poorly in that regard, YOU have failed your kid. And pawning them off on a day care at 3 months old until they start first grade, just because you want to drive a Cadillac instead of a Civic, is failure (no offense to those who have to do this, only to those that choose to do this). But if your life revolves around work and money (as it apparently does), then DON'T HAVE KIDS.
Moreover, the point here is that we're discussing marriage in an economic contract sense. It's like incorporating. My family, as a unit, are considered an individual for tax purposes. A married dual income couple are considered one individual with a very large income. You're essentially arguing that a person who lives alone and makes $70k per year (1/2 income, 1/2 expenses, 1/2 taxes) is being taxed to death, and that's just not the case. The tax code is more complicated than this, and the married dual income couple actually comes out far ahead of two single people, but that only serves to reinforce that there's no reason to feel sorry for them.
She's busy taking care of my son, and the amount of pay she could command right now would basically pay for day care (she has a BA in English and will have a MA next year). Besides, it's more important to us that our children be cared for and raised properly than to have a slightly larger house. But my point is that a $140k household income sounds pretty damn wealthy to me, so don't make it sound like such people are the victims here. If you have a dual income, expect dual taxes.
Poor couple only making $140k/year.. I make $63k, supporting a child and a wife with $60k in student loan debt that we'll likely never be able to pay off. And I'm a software engineer (and a rather good one). Not sure why I should feel sorry for your hypothetical couple.
Cooking for computer scientists
on
Cooking For Geeks
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The microwave is usually the optimal algorithm, as it cooks food in logN time.
Sorry, got mixed up in the/. layout. I thought you were the same one who wanted to pay 80k for an engineer and supposedly couldn't find anyone in the US willing to do it.
I see this as well when interviewing. Lots of candidates put down that they have, for instance, ten years of experience of Java. And maybe they do! But depressingly often they can't do trivial tasks, like select a random element from an array. Or they fail at understanding what happens under the hood, eg, they have no idea what garbage collection or a character encoding is.
Well, in all fairness, it's hard to do anything random on a computer without a quantum random number generator or an old woman with grabbing balls out of a bingo selector as an input source.
So... that means I am half-happy... as I earn around USD$35,0000 (in Euros) but live in Germany...
Sure, I am happy enough (no need to pay healthcare, pretty good services, etc) but I definitely could use some more paste:( (I maintain myself and my wife )
What kind of paste is it that you're not able to afford enough of?
Unless you're programming in a purely functional language like Haskell, pass by value/reference is something that will be important to you on a daily basis. If you don't understand the difference, you're going to get unexpected behavior qnd not know why. And I sincerely hope that's not something o ly taught at the top schools these days.
That's essentially what the K&R C book steps you through, and I'd say it's the best programming book ever written (or at least the best I've read). I don't get to do much in C these days, but the stuff I learned 10-15 years ago in C has made me a much better programmer. It's sad how programmers these days give you a blank stare when you ask if you passed something by value or reference.
You're right about small businesses and bonuses.. But small business are also the kinds of places where a few loud and important employees cam block something from happening. The only way around it is to convince the owner of the need to switch. But whose side is the owner going to take between you and her friend she hired on 15 years ago when the company first started?
Slashdot Mirror
Just give everyone a different test. Or, more practically, make up 5-10 tests, and randomly distribute them to the students. Let them ask their friends in class for the answers -- they'll just get them wrong more likely than not.
Your fallacy here is that you're assuming that extra income should be tax free, and also that you're counting child care as a tax, and not an expense (and a tax-deductable expense at that). You're also not cutting off the SSN tax at $106,800, which adds a few grand back into your pocket. And the child care, which, if we assume $20k for that and a marginal tax rate of 28%, nets you a little over $5k in tax refunds. Now it is true that the second job is taxed roughly 13% higher than the first, but that's not really a big difference in the grand scheme of things. Yes, you're getting diminishing returns, but that's why the marriage clause was put in place -- to account for single-income families. The marriage clause was not designed with dual incomes in mind. And the low taxes at the bottom were designed to give everyone a "free pass" on the basic essentials of life. Yes, it sucks to make $120k and only keep $80k, but it sucks a lot more to make $25k and only keep $20k of it. If you really feel the wealthy are getting the short end of the stick in life, you've forgotten (or never learned) what it's like to be poor (and just for the record, I'm not poor at the moment, just middle class).
But you should be looking at the effective tax rate. Because of the way the graduated tax system works, it's impossible to pay the full marginal rate in a tax bracket (unless you're in the first bracket). Thus, if you calculate how much of the $160k is paid at each bracket, the total federal tax rate is 21.41%. Then account for the fact that SSN isn't taken out over $106,800, and you're coming out ahead. This calculates the total federal taxes, including SSN and Medicare, to come out to $42,000, assuming the couple has no deductions (which they almost certainly would, lowering their taxes further). That's less than 21%. Add that 9.3% for state taxes, and you're still hovering around 30%. And again, that's assuming they have no children, no house, and donate nothing to charity. If they have a house payment with $1500 interest per month (easy to do in SF), then they would get their marginal tax rate times that money back, so that would reduce their taxes by 0.28 * 12 * 1500 = 5040, which reduces their total taxes by about 3%, bringing them in at a cool 27%.
I mean, why do they really need to have TWO locked down Linux-based operating systems?
The effective tax rate for our hypothetical couple making $160k per year is 21.41%. That's well below 50%. If you're having problems with the tax rate or cost of living in a particular place, move somewhere cheaper; my wife and I lived in an expensive part of the country, but when she got pregnant we made the decision to move to a place with a lower cost of living. If you're living in the Bay Area, that's a voluntary expense. Yes, it's where Google is, but you don't have to work for them to have a high-paying job. I would be willing to entertain the idea of federal tax rates being adjusted for cost of living in particular areas, though, as that would be more fair.
Also, making it harder to earn ridiculous amounts of money does something neat with the economy -- it keeps money flowing. Wealthier people tend to hoard money, whereas the less wealthy tend to spend more of what they make (generally because they have to in order to survive). This means that more goods and services are exchanged, and less capital is locked away where it doesn't benefit society as a whole. Not to mention that any money that's spent gets taxed a second time, through sales tax. Thus the government is getting more out of the less wealthy than just income tax. From a pragmatic standpoint it just makes more sense to tax the wealthy more.
No, you're obviously the one that failed math. If not, you'd know that it would take a 10% increase in taxes for you (with your claimed $35k per year.. which I highly doubt, given your level of greed), as compared to a 1% increase in taxes for someone making $350k per year, to make the same amount of tax revenue. So here's the dilemma -- we need to raise taxes to pay for shit. Who pays it? Apparently you think the poor should pay it, since they have SO MUCH extra money sitting around. I say the rich should pay it, since they CAN. Also, if you weren't such a fucking twit you'd know that you don't have to pay social security tax on earnings over $106,800, so that's actually a 12.4% tax cut for people making over that amount. Having to pay a bit more in federal taxes is not much to ask, especially since the graduated tax brackets ensure that they only get taxed heavily on the portion of their earnings that are within that tax bracket (so they still get taxed at ~25% for the portion of their income belove $80k or so).
But if you want a good reason why people aren't entitled to make more after a certain point, here's one -- rich people don't contribute to the economy. That's right, they save/invest/gamble their money. Middle class and poor people, on the other hand, spend the majority of their money buying goods and services that allow businesses to thrive. The more you make, the more you hoard. The more you hoard, the less that flows through the economy. It's simply bad economics to let people get too rich. And spare me your treatise on trickle-down economics. The only ones that believe that crap are you, your friends, and Bush Jr. (Bush Sr. even pointed out that it was BS). Ronnie Ray Gun believed it too, but he's dead, and he was full of shit even when he was alive.
Jesus, what is with the fucking retards today? I wasn't complaining, nor was I saying I should get a tax break. I was saying that the hypothetical couple, despite what they might do for a living or the fact that they both work, are well into the top 10% of wage earners, and should be treated accordingly. Yes, that means more taxes. And yes, if I made that much, I would still advocate for more taxes. In fact, not that long ago my wife and I totaled around $95k/year before our child was born. The taxes, much to the contrary of all these BS Republican claims, were not crushing us, destroying our livlihoods, or otherwise creating an unnecessary burden. I don't get the kind of mentality that can only sympathize with the people who make a LOT of money about not having enough money.
I'm pretty sure child care is not $63k/year. Also, the graduated tax means that everything i would make up to the end of my tax bracket is taxed at my current rate. ALSO, because social security taxes are not taxed above $106,800, that would offset the minor increase in tax bracket.
On to your second point of deincentivising work.. I don't think it's a bad thing to encourage people to work less. There's more workers in this country than there are jobs, and if those of us that have jobs didn't work 60 hours a week, there would be plenty of jobs to go around. And if companies could no longer get away with abusing salaried employees, we'd have less stress, less heart attacks, and a generally healthier society. Money is not the only metric of success, and I wish more people understood that in this country.
I don't see how $63k is more than $126k, even adjusting for the cost of rent in the bay area. And yes, if my wife made as much as I do, we'd be wealthy, and should pay more in taxes because of that. What's your point? We need more tax revenue to pay for roads, schoos, police, and our enormous debt. Who should we tax to get it? You'd have to raise taxes mych more on the poor to get the same amount as a small increase for the rich. And the rich can afford it. It only makes sense.
it's a buffer overflow vulnerability. so it has nothing to do with the scriptability of pdf this time.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. How hard is it to code a damn strncpy?
What I'm complaining about is people complaining about the plight of the $160k income household.
Make whatever excuses you want - you were complaining that people who make more than you aren't punished with insanely high taxes to rape them for being better off than you.
Dude, you make more, you pay more, that's the way it works. Back in the "good 'ol days" in 50s when we had the highest standard of living in the world by far, the tax rate for the top 10% was way higher than any tax proposal currently being passed around. Living in a country like this allows people to make that kind of money. Once they make that much, it's time to give something back. Maybe it'll de-incentivize the modern 60 hour work week, and people will be willing to make a bit less to work a lot less. And then maybe we won't have such a wound up, stick up the arse society.
No, the only thing you're not a tard about is the fact that you realize you're not cut out for kids.
It was pointed out earlier in this thread that $140k brings you into the top 10% of household incomes in the US. If you consider $160k/year to be "middle-middle class" then you have a very, very skewed view of what middle class is. I made roughly $70k per year when I was single and living in a fairly expensive place (expensive side of Portland, OR). I can't even imagine having a household income of $160k.. I wouldn't know what to do with it (well, actually I do.. I'd quit my $80k part and go back for my Ph.D). If you're making $35k/year, then by your standards, you're impoverished, and that's ludicrous. Adjusting for the cost of caring for a family, you and I probably have a similar standard of living, and I'm far from impoverished.
Also, I'd like to point out that I wasn't complaining about my situation. I'm actually fine with it. What I'm complaining about is people complaining about the plight of the $160k income household.
First off, you're a tard. I like having kids. In fact I like it so much that I'm willing to make less money in order to spend more time with my family, and to allow my wife to stay home with our son.
Second, nothing you have said gives any reason why a dual income household shouldn't have to pay their fair share in taxes. If you both make $80k per year, and you don't want to be in the top 10% of earnings, then file separately. Any way you slice it, the hypothetical couple making $80k/year each are wealthy, and I'm not going to feel sorry for them for having to pay taxes.
Oh wow, silly me, implying that two married people who make $80k per year should pay as much in taxes as two people single people who make $80k per year!
If the US wasn't filled with people who are so obsessed with acquiring wealth at all costs, maybe we wouldn't have so much crime, violence, stupidity, etc. Guess what? YOU are responsible for raising your child. If you do poorly in that regard, YOU have failed your kid. And pawning them off on a day care at 3 months old until they start first grade, just because you want to drive a Cadillac instead of a Civic, is failure (no offense to those who have to do this, only to those that choose to do this). But if your life revolves around work and money (as it apparently does), then DON'T HAVE KIDS.
Moreover, the point here is that we're discussing marriage in an economic contract sense. It's like incorporating. My family, as a unit, are considered an individual for tax purposes. A married dual income couple are considered one individual with a very large income. You're essentially arguing that a person who lives alone and makes $70k per year (1/2 income, 1/2 expenses, 1/2 taxes) is being taxed to death, and that's just not the case. The tax code is more complicated than this, and the married dual income couple actually comes out far ahead of two single people, but that only serves to reinforce that there's no reason to feel sorry for them.
Not only that, but how hard is it to develop a DOCUMENT FORMAT that doesn't allow arbitrary code to be executed?
She's busy taking care of my son, and the amount of pay she could command right now would basically pay for day care (she has a BA in English and will have a MA next year). Besides, it's more important to us that our children be cared for and raised properly than to have a slightly larger house. But my point is that a $140k household income sounds pretty damn wealthy to me, so don't make it sound like such people are the victims here. If you have a dual income, expect dual taxes.
Poor couple only making $140k/year.. I make $63k, supporting a child and a wife with $60k in student loan debt that we'll likely never be able to pay off. And I'm a software engineer (and a rather good one). Not sure why I should feel sorry for your hypothetical couple.
The microwave is usually the optimal algorithm, as it cooks food in logN time.
Sorry, got mixed up in the /. layout. I thought you were the same one who wanted to pay 80k for an engineer and supposedly couldn't find anyone in the US willing to do it.
So rather than expanding your job posting to, say, Oregon and Washington, you decided to import someone from halfway across the globe?
I see this as well when interviewing. Lots of candidates put down that they have, for instance, ten years of experience of Java. And maybe they do! But depressingly often they can't do trivial tasks, like select a random element from an array. Or they fail at understanding what happens under the hood, eg, they have no idea what garbage collection or a character encoding is.
Well, in all fairness, it's hard to do anything random on a computer without a quantum random number generator or an old woman with grabbing balls out of a bingo selector as an input source.
So... that means I am half-happy... as I earn around USD$35,0000 (in Euros) but live in Germany...
Sure, I am happy enough (no need to pay healthcare, pretty good services, etc) but I definitely could use some more paste :( (I maintain myself and my wife )
What kind of paste is it that you're not able to afford enough of?
Unless you're programming in a purely functional language like Haskell, pass by value/reference is something that will be important to you on a daily basis. If you don't understand the difference, you're going to get unexpected behavior qnd not know why. And I sincerely hope that's not something o ly taught at the top schools these days.
That's essentially what the K&R C book steps you through, and I'd say it's the best programming book ever written (or at least the best I've read). I don't get to do much in C these days, but the stuff I learned 10-15 years ago in C has made me a much better programmer. It's sad how programmers these days give you a blank stare when you ask if you passed something by value or reference.
You're right about small businesses and bonuses.. But small business are also the kinds of places where a few loud and important employees cam block something from happening. The only way around it is to convince the owner of the need to switch. But whose side is the owner going to take between you and her friend she hired on 15 years ago when the company first started?