I run a small business and we get nothing but 1099s (from our clients and for our contractors). It's not that hard to pay quarterly taxes. 'How hard' is it to pay quarterly taxes 4 times a year rather than just once? I know roughly what my tax rate is and I set that aside. I don't need Big Brother to run a payment plan for me.
Ah, nothing like actually having to know anything about taxes before you post about it.
You can't 'work on the way' and deduct a driver. I can't deduct my car because I occasionally make (hands-free!) phone calls from it. You have to use the vehicle for actual work - like delivering something - before it's an expense. To have a 'company car and driver,' the company must own and employ both and that means either a) it's a privately held company and you're sufficiently high up such that you can direct funds toward such frivolous expenses -- and as someone who owns a privately held company, Hell will freeze over first -- or else it's a public company and you're 'vital' enough to the organization that allowing you to conduct business instead of driving is worth it to the company. In the case of most multi-million or -billion dollar firms, that's usually true of a CEO or a CFO.
In theory, the graduated, progressive income tax is fine. In practice, it sucks. The appeal of the flat tax is that nobody can fuck with it. There are no loopholes, few or no deductions, and no tax havens. There are, however, usually 'tax floors' in most flat tax proposals -- most likely your 20k example would pay 0%. I'm pretty sure that Forbes' flat tax proposal didn't actually kick in until slightly above 20k. Finally, most flat tax proposals are nowhere near 33%, as that's astronomically high by US standards. The ones I've seen are between 15 and 18 percent.
A few years ago, I met Steve's daughter Moira (or Mora...can't recall) as my dad knows him. Steve's kids aren't inheriting jack and have no trust funds. They did get their educations paid for and in some cases they got jobs, but even in those cases they answered to people who were free to give them the boot.
I've known plenty of trust fund babies, but Steve and his kids know what 'work' means. They earn their money. Whatever your opinion of capital gains taxes, keep your ignorant accusations to yourself.
Bought an iPhone 3G at the Apple Store last year in Manhattan and a 3GS at an AT&T store here in Brooklyn a few months ago. Works well enough for me - certainly not 20% dropped calls.
Uh, I don't know about you, but if they released attack dogs and helicopters, I think I could summon the willpower to make sure that I never visited isoHunt.
How many of you expressing outrage at this shell out $15/month for some MMO, where you get very little new content for that $15 (as you have to pay for your expansions -- OK, EVE people can get a pass...)
The idea that they had a whole pie and cut a piece out of it and are now charging you extra for a pie plus what was once part of the pie is indeed upsetting. Some people seem outraged that this is being done on the release date.
Remember that the PC release date was originally last Spring, and delayed so they could release it for the consoles around the same time. By all accounts, the game has something like eighty hours of content. It doesn't sound like anybody's being ripped off.
I can't imagine that the game will be inadequate without this DLC (or, at least, if it is, it will be with the DLC as well) and it's seven dollars. Still cheaper than the standalone game for the console.
I'll happily pay an extra $7 for some good content (that isn't, say... horse armor) and I hope Bioware has done a good job and so earns a bundle for their product. The DLC model is certainly rife for abuse, but if the DLC sucks, don't buy it! zOMG!
This is somewhat OK, but one of your points is grossly understated and you're missing one. The 'oh the banks are greedy and everything is their fault' is a very popular line these days, and certainly they have their share of responsibility.
#0: A lot of people who can't afford expensive mortgages buy them. This happened before #1 and was, indeed, at the behest of the Federal government (both Clinton and Bush). Fur further information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?scp=8&sq=federal%20housing%20clinton&st=cse. I don't know about you, but even if the Feds decide that the national rate of home ownership should be closer to 75-85% as opposed to 50% (to say nothing of why such a number should be arrived at by fiat rather than by, I don't know, what people can afford), and even if banks then begin falling all over themselves taking advantage of government policy that both enables and encourages them to begin (at best) foolish or (at worst) predatory practices, this still required buy-in from untold numbers of individual, real, human beings, who looked at their mortgage like most people look at their credit cards these days: free money! Nobody held a gun to their heads, and obviously a huge squadron of trained, pushy mortgage brokers can have a field day with a chunk of the population that suddenly has access to large dollar amounts and isn't familiar with how everything is going to work 1, 2, or 10 years from when they sign the papers -- but the idea of living according to your means isn't a new one, or even a difficult one.
#7: 'A few people default on their mortgages.'
A year ago, there were 500,000 foreclosures in the two months alone -- (source). It's interesting that you would choose a word like 'few' to play down the impact of the average, everyday joe in this equation. It's as if you feel more comfortable blaming banks and businesspeople (oh noes! they make money so they are evil!) even though you've got quite a few other facts in order here. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to line up some of these mortgage brokers or the execs who issued the AAA bond ratings and do terrible things to them, but the government opened the door for all of this to happen. Your description of banks issuing bad mortgages because they don't own them is not really accurate. If the banks actually had no exposure to these mortgages, then WaMu and Countrywide wouldn't have gone under. They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them. If the market establishes that half of Americans can afford homes and half can't, and then somebody in Washington decides that that number should be 75%, then you are fairly rapidly entering the area where somebody is going to be issuing a mortgage to somebody who can't afford it. No bank in their right mind would do that in a free market -- and even in our market, some banks went hog-wild with the false sense of security and the thought of collecting interest from so many new mortgages, while other banks still got into the deep end but realized a little sooner that you can't wave a magic wand and cause nearly a hundred million people who previously couldn't afford a mortgage to afford one.
The Government waved that wand and so the blame in this picture is theirs in that they opened the door, but it took a lot of self-important bankers and brokers to complete the disaster. It does seem ironic that 'more government regulation' is somehow the answer.
"Entitlement" suggests reward without effort, or at least reward 'just because.'
I stand by my assessment of removing control of DNS from the USA as a punishment, simply because what other reason would there be? You can take the position that, as some other posters have said, you should limit the power of any national agency before it abuses it, and that's not necessarily punishment, but in this isn't a case of granting a national government a potentially-abused power. It's a case where the government both subsidized and managed the service from the get-go. IANA was not 'granted' to the USA.
Nobody has a 'right' to something like DNS, and that includes the US, even if we subsidized and manage it. DNS, like much of the Internet, ought to have as little as possible to do with national governments, and (miraculously) that's the attitude that the US has taken about it so far. Let's look at your own Germany, which has some very specific laws constraining free speech -- hardly the worst, of course, but they're there. What happens when those laws come into conflict with something the IANA has to deal with? Even where the US does have limits on free speech, the IANA doesn't seem to care, or else we probably wouldn't have let people register things like 'killthepresident.com.'
The emotional persuasion argument here seems to be 'the US is bad! let's give it to the UN because the UN is impartial and not bad!'
Most of the responses to this thread are along the lines of 'don't fix it if it ain't broke.' I don't care that the US runs DNS. I care that whomever does isn't looking at it like a political tool. If you want to argue that the US is, by all means, help yourself. I'll take TFA's thin rational argument over your total absence of one.
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them.
That's a very interesting suggestion. It sounds like you want thought police.
How about 'the time to punish someone is after they've done something wrong, or when in possession of ample evidence that they are in the process of doing something wrong.'
The notion that the UN is impartial is a far-fetched one, though perhaps no more than the notion that the US is. The article is making the case that, whatever US government's current agenda, they have thus far been apolitical, refusing to get involved in exactly the kind of murky questions that the UN loves to deal with. You don't hear the US going around threatening countries with which it has disagreements to pull the plug on their TLDs.
I'm no expert on the subject and would be happy to read an argument to the contrary, but I do accept the premise of Rabkin's thesis, which seems to be 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
So let's a) see some cases where the IANA was in the wrong in such a manner that its status as subject to the Department of Commerce bears responsibility, and b) see some convincing evidence that the UN would do a better job.
The chief problem I would have arguing in favor of a UN solution (which, in theroy, I agree sounds like the best one) is that you cannot be 'impartial.' Deciding on cases of civil war or Taiwan vs. China cannot be done without value judgments. Obviously it's possible for any national government to make biased value judgments (one might even say that it's necessary some of the time) because they are elected/appointed/whatever to serve their own people. It just so happens that, in the case of the IANA, we've taken what appears to be a relatively hands-off approach where, rather than try and make impartial judgments on everything, we either don't make judgments (see TFA's comments on referring most matters to national courts) or make purely technical judgments.
Like anything else I'm sure there's room for improvement. I'm not convinced that the IANA or the US Department of Commerce deserve pre-emptive sacking just because they're the US DoC and IANA.
As an NYC resident (and small business owner), I'm certainly in agreement that New York taxes the bejesus out of everyone (though not as much as California).
It's also true that there is a local New York City tax, but we're hardly unique in this respect. Lots of cities have local taxes.
New York is a grossly inefficient state; one of the few things that keeps us out of the same hole as California is that we don't need to hold a referendum every time we want to do something major, and we also don't have to duplicate every effort in our schools in another language (at least, not on nearly the same scale as CA).
Once my business reaches a certain size, I'll probably headquarter it in Delaware, where I'm originally from anyway - not for tax reasons (everyone thinks DE has low corp taxes - that's not true) but for efficiency. If you need something done for your business, whether it's a license, a permit, or any sort of transaction between you and the state, it gets done very quickly (and usually cheaply) - relative, at least, to many other states.
This was one of my chief complaints when I bought my girlfriend a Kindle for Christmas.
Then I looked into it - you can have up to six Kindles on one account. If I buy one of these for myself, and she buys a book, or I buy a book, we both get it.
Of course, if we split up we have to haggle over who gets Kindle Account Custody, or else see what one another is reading for eternity.:) And for $659 between the two (I paid $300 during the 'Oprah' sale on the Kindle 1 in November), it's still not cheap.
My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
You've just described life under private insurance, which clearly sucks. I'm not proposing that Obama will necessarily make all of these problems go away, but I find it hard to criticize the guy for wanting to make things better.
It isn't private insurance that makes medical practices like that - it's medicare.
Private insurance as we have it now is certainly not 'the solution' but neither is socialized medicine. I can match your anecdotal evidence with several anecdotes - including a Scottish godfather of mine who, in order to receive excellent care for cancer, had to move to Lichtenstein for six months (for tax purposes) and then come to the Mayo clinic for treatment - otherwise it would've bankrupted him due to the relationship between healthcare and taxes in the UK.
I'm hardly a healthcare expert, but we have a system right now that pretends healthcare is a responsibility on the monetary side while not actually making it one on the health side - until there is a method to distinguish between healthcare expenses that are brought on by bad behavior versus those that 'just happen,' I doubt a real solution is in sight. A few states are starting to go down this path, though, but very tepid steps - I heard of a program in Alabama where, if you are categorized as 'morbidly obese' and you work for the state, then your GP gives you advice & recommendations for one year - and if you don't follow them, your premiums go up about 15% the next year.
I pick this example simply because it's one of the few to tie premiums to behavior (rather than simply history) and not because I think fat people are responsible for the state of US healthcare (if I had to make a baseless judgment, I'd say old people were probably as much at fault).
Obama's solution, while pleasing to my checkbook in the short term, is philosophically abhorrent to me because - like many Democratic programs - it absolves everyone of having a stake in the system. McCain's solution was more of a band-aid than a solution - rejiggering how premiums are taxed to provide a credit (which would have been a net positive for me) - but I found it less objectionable, even if it was less ambitious.
I have two foreign roommates - an Italian and a Canadian. Both are left-leaning moderates (as best I can tell - and I'd characterize myself as a right-leaning moderate) and to hear them tell it, Canada and Italy (and the UK - the Italian's girlfriend is Scottish) are absolutely wonderful for day-to-day needs; it's no contest with the US on that score. It's the big stuff, the serious medical attention and care, where the US is better, and every doctor I've ever talked to (which is about a dozen - hardly a significant sample) has said that, as bad as things are in the US, they would never in a million years wish to practice in Canada or the UK.
I think Obama's gotten a pass only in the recent sense that some of the media is behaving as though the hardest part is behind us now that we've done this difficult thing in electing Obama rather than focusing very specifically on what Obama really plans to do. Now that he's the President-Elect, presumably he has less to fear about saying what he really thinks, and I'd like to see some effort going into that rather than just platitudes.
I don't think McCain was victimized by any kind of bias. I think McCain shot himself in the foot with the way he allowed his campaign to be run and he paid the price. It's a sad thing for a guy like that to go down that way, but he deserved to lose.
I could care less if McCain used the term 'gook' once in 2000. In his heyday everybody did, and I think his subsequent actions toward Vietnam and the Vietnamese demonstrate what he really thinks and feels about them far more than precisely the type of 'gesture' that the article you link to is using to draw conclusions about the sort of person he is. I can go outside my door here in Brooklyn and hear racial slurs about my own race or two or three others without walking a couple blocks. Let's not pretend that we as a culture have somehow transcended them - and even so, you're talking about something the guy said once, eight years ago.
The media loved McCain in 2000 because he really did talk straight much of the time. That was an amazing thing, and why it made it so hard to watch as he clammed up this time around and caved to the Rovian elements of his campaign.
That would have been a mistake. Unless your business is insanely profitable, you would've gained nothing from McCain
My business is not insanely profitable (though it is profitable) and you are incorrect. I stand to benefit considerably in the short term from Obama's policies - I'll get a tax cut and my health care will be cheaper, but I'm not convinced that it will be better, as I'm leery of government stepping in to the health care arena even more than it already does. I believe that healthcare is a responsibility and not a right and my lowest point with respect to Obama came when he gave the all-to-easy 'health care is a right' answer during one of the debates. I pay $320/mo for moderate (not great) health insurance right now and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to that going down, but at what long-term cost? I don't want Canada's health care system, or the UK's, and I don't buy Obama's assertion that we can provide a single-payer national system while still keeping private insurance -- sooner or later the Dems are going to make it even more difficult to be a doctor in this country than they already have. My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
If Obama's tax plan passes then it will create a dis-incentive for me to perform beyond a certain point. Right now I deal exclusively with contractors. As a NYC-based business I already have very little incentive to grow a business with full-time employees -- and I'm originally from Delaware, where the opposite is true.
McCain's tax and health care plan made quite a lot of sense to me. I am always delighted to hear people who do not run businesses tell me what I would or would not have gained, though, but the reality is that you don't know until you run the numbers. Because I support just myself right now, I'm in the clear - but the last thing I want to do is to be running a small business that does gross over a million or so a year (gross, not net, and that's still 'small') because then I'm squarely in the crosshairs of the 'big business' that liberals love to hate and love to tax, regardless of how big a business I think I am.
'Just invest that surplus money into expanding the business' sounds a bit pithy and easy, like there's some magical button I press to keep my capital expenses up and my profits down. It's not always up to me.
Finally, I have read Obama's web site (and McCain's). I want to do the best that I can and I have no problem paying taxes - but I could've planned much more for what McCain planned to do than I can from what I know about Obama's initiatives. Both guys have a big problem telling us how they're going to pay for any of their plans, but I had confidence that McCain is going to be a, well, conservative spender, based on a clear record. Obama's simply unproven.
If I'd voted just in the interest of my small business then I would've voted McCain. But there's more to being an American than my bottom line, even if that's my only source of income. I'd consider myself a 'Republican Reptile' ala PJ O'Rourke - fiscally conservative (in the 'small government' sense) but socially liberal - and neither party has represented my views for so long as I've been eligible to vote. The McCain of 2000 was probably the closest I've seen.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not an ideologue - I really do respect both Obama and McCain and I think either one is fundamentally better for the US than Bush. I try to deal in day-to-day stuff that affects me while not losing sight of the shape the country and its finances are in. I saw just as much (if not more) anti-White racism during the campaign as I did anti-Black, and right now I'm looking through the congressional record to find the exact votes between 2002 and 2004 wher
To the US, much of Western Europe (minus perhaps the BBC) appears hilariously liberal - this coming from a regular reader of the NY Times (and who lives in New York) and someone who voted for Obama.
I do emphasize 'appears,' though, because I don't think this necessarily means there is a bias on the part of the reporters or the editors. By any objective measure I can think of, Obama was incredibly newsworthy. I wanted to vote for McCain (I'm a small business owner) but I couldn't stomach Palin; still, McCain received plenty of coverage around here. I think that the newspapers do their best to report stuff that they think is newsworthy, and having some arbitrary rule like 'we must publish an equal number of pieces about each candidate' is the type of gesture-laden but meaningless decision that is all too regular these days -- and it would ultimately result in fluff pieces or lowering the standards of what makes the news just so you get an even count.
My biggest beef with the NY Times is that, particularly since Obama was elected, it's been piece after piece about the 'barrier-breaking' historical significance of the event; the guy has gotten a big pass on making substantive policy statements just because he's such a 'game-changer.' I don't mean to take away the gravitas of the historical situation, but I think we've been congratulating ourselves so much on our enlightened stance that we've indirectly said that, had we elected McCain instead, it would've been nothing more than backwards racism at work (since electing Obama was so forward-thinking of us). We get quotes from people around the world like 'There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader' (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/reactions-from-around-the-world/?scp=3&sq=america%20president%20rest%20of%20world%20follow&st=cse) and similar comments praising the basic fact of the event itself.
So it comes as no surprise to me that McCain would have to work twice as hard to get attention from such a 'landmark' event. I like and respect Obama, and I'm very interested to see how he'll do - but I think we let him skate by, particularly in the debates, with a lot of vague promises. I'll celebrate him being a game-changer once the game has actually changed.
As for your original point, though, a (more liberal) friend of mine pointed out that, even in spite of the semi-regular absence of substance -- these were campaign promises, after all, and he's hardly alone in making vague ones -- there is an unavoidable perk in our reputation abroad not because Obama is a proven diplomat (he isn't) but because he's not George Bush and not a Republican.
That's not being good with credit - that's being paranoid. You might be very good with money, but having no proof of it doesn't tell your employee anything.
No matter how many articles the NY Times publishes on predatory lenders or bad debt, the fact remains that everyone who borrows money does so at their own peril and signs their name to the dotted line. It's a fair subject for debate as to how much the credit markets should be regulated (personally, I fall in the middle of that spectrum) but your credit scores are (arguably) the direct result of your behavior - your 'medical score' is only partially that inasmuch as your medical condition is only partially a direct result of your behavior.
Borderline scam, at least, as they're honest about it.
I was riding into Manhattan today on my bicycle and thought I'd swing by a couple of AT&T stores on the way to see if any lines were short enough to get myself an iPhone (never had a 1st gen). The one on the Fulton Street Mall had a line out the door but not too long - I should've stayed there, as they were out of stock by my trip home.
I went by the one on Montague street in Brooklyn Heights - only a few people in line. An AT&T rep came out and said that their stock was running low (this was at noon) and that they would only sell their remaining phones 'at full price' - with no guarantee that AT&T would credit you the difference, even if you then signed a 2 year contract.
Not one person stayed in the store. It's certainly their right to sell them however they wanted, but I'll never go back to that store - seems like a pretty dumb business decision.
You're forgetting a key component of 'pay me because I work so little.'
Actors don't sit on their ass 95% of the time and then work 5% of the time and demand a lot of pay for that 5% of the time -just- because they don't know when they'll work next. The investment - the barrier to entry - to be a professional actor is huge. Training, professional head shots, voice reels (if you're in this guy's business). Then consider that, for most actors, you can't get a real 'career' job because you have to be able to skip out and go audition.
In other words, you've invested a huge amount in the idea that, when you do get hired, you're going to be damn good. You had better be. The producers expect that you will be, because there's no 'on the job training' - you don't get paired with some senior guy for a month while you learn the ropes.
I'm sure he has a second, part-time job, and I'm also sure he doesn't want sympathy for his situation. He wants what other actors get. For better or worse, that's how things go: actors fight for whatever they can get (just like any other union) and in some cases that's residuals. A guy who does an AOL commercial - maybe a few days of work - will easily earn a few hundred grand in a year if it's a national, long-running commercial. That's wildly out of sync with the amount of work he put in, but not out of sync with the amount of money involved. A national, long-running commercial costs millions and millions of dollars. The actor thinks he should be paid more if it's going to be a commercial with huge exposure versus one with tiny exposure. The production company doesn't necessarily know ahead of time which it's going to be - or maybe it tests well in a local market and then they make it national. Without residuals the actor gets paid the same, because his work was the same.
I disagree that voice acting is the very last thing that impacts a game. You don't notice it as much when it's good. You notice it when it's bad.
He doesn't 'have to get paid this much;' he -wants- to get paid more. He has an argument he can make for it. I'm not a union rep or a contract lawyer so I couldn't tell you where 'fair' stops and starts, but I can tell you that residuals exist for a reason and that when you have a game that makes more money than a lot of films, the system for paying actors on films is going to be used as a basis for analysis.
Again, I'm not championing either side, I'm just providing a bit of perspective about the acting business that a lot of people don't necessarily understand. Actors do get paid a lot when they work. They have to work for nothing a lot of the time when they're trying to get work (auditions can take all day if you aren't union, or they can take all day if you are and they just decide to play around with you). It's an extraordinarily difficult business to break into and a lot of actors who are educated or otherwise skilled look at themselves when they're 30, 35 and wonder why they gave up all the stuff they'd have if they'd had a regular career to do what they do.
Most don't have to wonder for long, but it's a huge sacrifice. Residuals are a way of saying 'nice job, dude, you made it.'
Disclaimer: I am a member of one of the acting unions (a sister union to SAG, which is who this guy is blaming).
Before all of you hate this guy for wanting more than $100k, consider one very important aspect of actors' salaries that is usually why they get both a high daily rate and a percentage on a big project:
They don't get a salary. Once the project is over, so is their income. Their health insurance and retirement only gets contributions while they're working, and in the case of health insurance, if you don't work enough weeks out of the year (and it's a lot right now, since the health insurance funds are all in the toilet) then your boss is still paying for your heath insurance (money he could be paying you with) but you aren't getting it.
The saying goes that Actors work about 1/4 as much as regular people, but in that 1/4 of the time, they work 8 times harder. There is absolutely zero 'veg out at your desk' as an actor. You probably think it'd be a blast to have a job like voicing Nico Bellic, and in a lot of ways, it probably was - but you will tear up your voice doing the same dialog over and over again, particularly the pages and pages of 'you are caught on fire' and 'you fall off a building.'
This guy earned $100k for 16 months of work. That's pretty good, but not great. This isn't a young noob, either. He's mid-career. $75k a year for Nico Bellic?
Several people have rightly pointed out that people don't buy video games 'because of an actor' like they go see movies because of an actor. This is partially true. You don't buy a video game because a particular actor is involved (usually, though I expect Splinter Cell would be wildly unpopular if they axed the gravelly voice dude, Ironsides?). You do buy a video game because the acting & storytelling is extraordinary. Most games suffer from bad writing AND bad acting; a game that has both will review & sell well.
Obviously it's not such a large factor that these guys should get the same slice a movie star is going to get, and I'm not even sure if residuals is the way to go for video games - there's a very good case to be made that the 3d artist/lead programmer or whatever is just as important or more important. In some studios, I imagine the lead guys have shares of stock in the company and so do get residuals in their way - but even if they don't, they get a salary. They get to work on every game. The actor doesn't.
Having said all this, the unions will probably ask for too much. The actor who did Nico sounds like he's got his head on straight - he doesn't want to piss off Rockstar and he's not personally whining about it; he's allowing his case to be used to bring attention to the subject, which is pretty harmless. The question of 'when GTAIV makes a bazillion dollars, who should get what?' is a tough one and it -should- take a lot of haggling to figure that out. Even if you give Nico residuals, what about Roman? McLeary? Where do you stop?
However you solve it, keep in mind that actors typically make a crapload of money on a daily basis because they work so little of time. Last I checked, at any given time, under 5% of my union is employed.
There have been a couple of comments to the effect of 'Extras don't cost THAT much, do they?'
No, Extras don't cost that much. A non-union extra gets paid about $75 for a day's work, where a day can be half an hour or 14 hours. A union Extra might get $125 and a better sandwich.
The problem is that it takes forever to organize and shoot scenes with a lot of extras, particularly where even a couple of people acting like douchebags can wreck the whole scene. The last film I did any extra work on was 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' and there were about 200 of us in the small park at 72nd and Broadway here in NYC. Our job was to gawk at a building on fire. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Yeah, until you realize that 3/4 of the extras think that being an extra is their ticket to fame. I happened to get 'placed' right near one of the lead actors as he emerged from the subway, and as we shot and re-shot one minute of that scene 5 times (over the course of 7 hours), other extras would elbow me out of the way because they wanted to be 'near the star.' There is a whole sham community around being an extra where you attend a class outside of New York or LA and some local agent in your nearest mid-size city (say, Philadelphia) 'signs' you and just sends you out on a bunch of extra calls. The agent gets a fixed rate for every warm body they send, you spend a day doing very little, and your agent hopes you never realize that real actors don't work that way.
If I were producing that or any other movie with extras, I'd use as few extras as possible. Not to save money. Just to save the people I am actually employing full-time a lot of aggravation.
Since most of the discussion has been about flying cars (And not driveable airplanes) there are a couple relevant details about the category of Light Sport Aircraft.
Firstly, while you do have to be a licensed pilot, getting an LSA certification takes (around) half as long and costs half as much. Private pilot certification requires a minimum of 40 hours flight time (nat'l average is around 75) and costs anywhere from $5000 to $10000 if you go to a private flight school. That lets you fly something like a Cessna 172 prop plane during the day and in good weather. You cannot fly at night or in bad weather; that requires an additional certification called IFR (i.e. you are 'instrument rated' to fly just off the instruments). For a long time in the US, the Private Pilot cert was the "lowest" level you could get.
As of last year or so, the FAA introduced the LSA category. This applies to one- and two-seat aircraft under 1200 or 1300 pounds (can't remember which) and with a top speed of 120 knots. These aircraft have been around for a while but regulations were more friendly to that kind of thing in Europe than in the US.
LSA is a big deal because they are less expensive to fly and maintain and you only need half as many hours to get your certification. It's still not something you're going to do in a weekend, but it makes general aviation much more accessible. Most LSA aircraft cost around $100,000 as opposed to $300,000 for traditional "light" aircraft -- and aircraft lose their value as quickly as most recreational vehicles, so you can pick up a decent small airplane from the 70s or 80s for the cost of a new Toyota. A nicer Toyota.
Between LSA, GPS devices, and some of the great simulator stuff out there, getting yourself in the air is a lot easier than it ever has been. Hopefully it will never become so easy that everyone does it.
That is not entirely accurate - the 'whole neighborhood' does not get a single 30/5 pipe. I routinely get actual speeds of 30 (or over) down and 4-5 up, even during "prime time." I am quite satisifed with my service.
I'm not saying it's superior to Verizon's, I'm just saying that it does come pretty close to what Verizon offers and may have other perks (static IPs, ability to run servers, etc.)
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I run a small business and we get nothing but 1099s (from our clients and for our contractors). It's not that hard to pay quarterly taxes. 'How hard' is it to pay quarterly taxes 4 times a year rather than just once? I know roughly what my tax rate is and I set that aside. I don't need Big Brother to run a payment plan for me.
Capital gains goes up quite a lot next year (in the US).
Ah, nothing like actually having to know anything about taxes before you post about it.
You can't 'work on the way' and deduct a driver. I can't deduct my car because I occasionally make (hands-free!) phone calls from it. You have to use the vehicle for actual work - like delivering something - before it's an expense. To have a 'company car and driver,' the company must own and employ both and that means either a) it's a privately held company and you're sufficiently high up such that you can direct funds toward such frivolous expenses -- and as someone who owns a privately held company, Hell will freeze over first -- or else it's a public company and you're 'vital' enough to the organization that allowing you to conduct business instead of driving is worth it to the company. In the case of most multi-million or -billion dollar firms, that's usually true of a CEO or a CFO.
In theory, the graduated, progressive income tax is fine. In practice, it sucks. The appeal of the flat tax is that nobody can fuck with it. There are no loopholes, few or no deductions, and no tax havens. There are, however, usually 'tax floors' in most flat tax proposals -- most likely your 20k example would pay 0%. I'm pretty sure that Forbes' flat tax proposal didn't actually kick in until slightly above 20k. Finally, most flat tax proposals are nowhere near 33%, as that's astronomically high by US standards. The ones I've seen are between 15 and 18 percent.
A few years ago, I met Steve's daughter Moira (or Mora...can't recall) as my dad knows him. Steve's kids aren't inheriting jack and have no trust funds. They did get their educations paid for and in some cases they got jobs, but even in those cases they answered to people who were free to give them the boot.
I've known plenty of trust fund babies, but Steve and his kids know what 'work' means. They earn their money. Whatever your opinion of capital gains taxes, keep your ignorant accusations to yourself.
Bought an iPhone 3G at the Apple Store last year in Manhattan and a 3GS at an AT&T store here in Brooklyn a few months ago. Works well enough for me - certainly not 20% dropped calls.
Uh, I don't know about you, but if they released attack dogs and helicopters, I think I could summon the willpower to make sure that I never visited isoHunt.
How many of you expressing outrage at this shell out $15/month for some MMO, where you get very little new content for that $15 (as you have to pay for your expansions -- OK, EVE people can get a pass...)
The idea that they had a whole pie and cut a piece out of it and are now charging you extra for a pie plus what was once part of the pie is indeed upsetting. Some people seem outraged that this is being done on the release date.
Remember that the PC release date was originally last Spring, and delayed so they could release it for the consoles around the same time. By all accounts, the game has something like eighty hours of content. It doesn't sound like anybody's being ripped off.
I can't imagine that the game will be inadequate without this DLC (or, at least, if it is, it will be with the DLC as well) and it's seven dollars. Still cheaper than the standalone game for the console.
I'll happily pay an extra $7 for some good content (that isn't, say ... horse armor) and I hope Bioware has done a good job and so earns a bundle for their product. The DLC model is certainly rife for abuse, but if the DLC sucks, don't buy it! zOMG!
This is somewhat OK, but one of your points is grossly understated and you're missing one. The 'oh the banks are greedy and everything is their fault' is a very popular line these days, and certainly they have their share of responsibility.
#0: A lot of people who can't afford expensive mortgages buy them. This happened before #1 and was, indeed, at the behest of the Federal government (both Clinton and Bush). Fur further information: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19cisneros.html?scp=8&sq=federal%20housing%20clinton&st=cse. I don't know about you, but even if the Feds decide that the national rate of home ownership should be closer to 75-85% as opposed to 50% (to say nothing of why such a number should be arrived at by fiat rather than by, I don't know, what people can afford), and even if banks then begin falling all over themselves taking advantage of government policy that both enables and encourages them to begin (at best) foolish or (at worst) predatory practices, this still required buy-in from untold numbers of individual, real, human beings, who looked at their mortgage like most people look at their credit cards these days: free money! Nobody held a gun to their heads, and obviously a huge squadron of trained, pushy mortgage brokers can have a field day with a chunk of the population that suddenly has access to large dollar amounts and isn't familiar with how everything is going to work 1, 2, or 10 years from when they sign the papers -- but the idea of living according to your means isn't a new one, or even a difficult one.
#7: 'A few people default on their mortgages.'
A year ago, there were 500,000 foreclosures in the two months alone -- (source). It's interesting that you would choose a word like 'few' to play down the impact of the average, everyday joe in this equation. It's as if you feel more comfortable blaming banks and businesspeople (oh noes! they make money so they are evil!) even though you've got quite a few other facts in order here. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to line up some of these mortgage brokers or the execs who issued the AAA bond ratings and do terrible things to them, but the government opened the door for all of this to happen. Your description of banks issuing bad mortgages because they don't own them is not really accurate. If the banks actually had no exposure to these mortgages, then WaMu and Countrywide wouldn't have gone under. They 'chose' to give out crap mortgages because the government (via Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) was guaranteeing quite a lot of them. If the market establishes that half of Americans can afford homes and half can't, and then somebody in Washington decides that that number should be 75%, then you are fairly rapidly entering the area where somebody is going to be issuing a mortgage to somebody who can't afford it. No bank in their right mind would do that in a free market -- and even in our market, some banks went hog-wild with the false sense of security and the thought of collecting interest from so many new mortgages, while other banks still got into the deep end but realized a little sooner that you can't wave a magic wand and cause nearly a hundred million people who previously couldn't afford a mortgage to afford one.
The Government waved that wand and so the blame in this picture is theirs in that they opened the door, but it took a lot of self-important bankers and brokers to complete the disaster. It does seem ironic that 'more government regulation' is somehow the answer.
Sincerely,
A dimwit
Your comment implies that initiating a war is automatically a bad thing. That's quite a blanket statement to make.
You're also simply incorrect as to who 'initiator of the most wars for six decades in a row:'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1945%E2%80%931989
I'm sorry, you were saying something about arrogance?
"Entitlement" suggests reward without effort, or at least reward 'just because.'
I stand by my assessment of removing control of DNS from the USA as a punishment, simply because what other reason would there be? You can take the position that, as some other posters have said, you should limit the power of any national agency before it abuses it, and that's not necessarily punishment, but in this isn't a case of granting a national government a potentially-abused power. It's a case where the government both subsidized and managed the service from the get-go. IANA was not 'granted' to the USA.
Nobody has a 'right' to something like DNS, and that includes the US, even if we subsidized and manage it. DNS, like much of the Internet, ought to have as little as possible to do with national governments, and (miraculously) that's the attitude that the US has taken about it so far. Let's look at your own Germany, which has some very specific laws constraining free speech -- hardly the worst, of course, but they're there. What happens when those laws come into conflict with something the IANA has to deal with? Even where the US does have limits on free speech, the IANA doesn't seem to care, or else we probably wouldn't have let people register things like 'killthepresident.com.'
The emotional persuasion argument here seems to be 'the US is bad! let's give it to the UN because the UN is impartial and not bad!'
Most of the responses to this thread are along the lines of 'don't fix it if it ain't broke.' I don't care that the US runs DNS. I care that whomever does isn't looking at it like a political tool. If you want to argue that the US is, by all means, help yourself. I'll take TFA's thin rational argument over your total absence of one.
The time to take control away from someone is -before- they abuse the power, not after. If there's a world-wide organization that can impartially handle this, and handle it well, then it should be done by them.
That's a very interesting suggestion. It sounds like you want thought police.
How about 'the time to punish someone is after they've done something wrong, or when in possession of ample evidence that they are in the process of doing something wrong.'
The notion that the UN is impartial is a far-fetched one, though perhaps no more than the notion that the US is. The article is making the case that, whatever US government's current agenda, they have thus far been apolitical, refusing to get involved in exactly the kind of murky questions that the UN loves to deal with. You don't hear the US going around threatening countries with which it has disagreements to pull the plug on their TLDs.
I'm no expert on the subject and would be happy to read an argument to the contrary, but I do accept the premise of Rabkin's thesis, which seems to be 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
So let's a) see some cases where the IANA was in the wrong in such a manner that its status as subject to the Department of Commerce bears responsibility, and b) see some convincing evidence that the UN would do a better job.
The chief problem I would have arguing in favor of a UN solution (which, in theroy, I agree sounds like the best one) is that you cannot be 'impartial.' Deciding on cases of civil war or Taiwan vs. China cannot be done without value judgments. Obviously it's possible for any national government to make biased value judgments (one might even say that it's necessary some of the time) because they are elected/appointed/whatever to serve their own people. It just so happens that, in the case of the IANA, we've taken what appears to be a relatively hands-off approach where, rather than try and make impartial judgments on everything, we either don't make judgments (see TFA's comments on referring most matters to national courts) or make purely technical judgments.
Like anything else I'm sure there's room for improvement. I'm not convinced that the IANA or the US Department of Commerce deserve pre-emptive sacking just because they're the US DoC and IANA.
As an NYC resident (and small business owner), I'm certainly in agreement that New York taxes the bejesus out of everyone (though not as much as California).
It's also true that there is a local New York City tax, but we're hardly unique in this respect. Lots of cities have local taxes.
New York is a grossly inefficient state; one of the few things that keeps us out of the same hole as California is that we don't need to hold a referendum every time we want to do something major, and we also don't have to duplicate every effort in our schools in another language (at least, not on nearly the same scale as CA).
Once my business reaches a certain size, I'll probably headquarter it in Delaware, where I'm originally from anyway - not for tax reasons (everyone thinks DE has low corp taxes - that's not true) but for efficiency. If you need something done for your business, whether it's a license, a permit, or any sort of transaction between you and the state, it gets done very quickly (and usually cheaply) - relative, at least, to many other states.
This was one of my chief complaints when I bought my girlfriend a Kindle for Christmas.
Then I looked into it - you can have up to six Kindles on one account. If I buy one of these for myself, and she buys a book, or I buy a book, we both get it.
Of course, if we split up we have to haggle over who gets Kindle Account Custody, or else see what one another is reading for eternity. :) And for $659 between the two (I paid $300 during the 'Oprah' sale on the Kindle 1 in November), it's still not cheap.
My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
You've just described life under private insurance, which clearly sucks. I'm not proposing that Obama will necessarily make all of these problems go away, but I find it hard to criticize the guy for wanting to make things better.
It isn't private insurance that makes medical practices like that - it's medicare.
Private insurance as we have it now is certainly not 'the solution' but neither is socialized medicine. I can match your anecdotal evidence with several anecdotes - including a Scottish godfather of mine who, in order to receive excellent care for cancer, had to move to Lichtenstein for six months (for tax purposes) and then come to the Mayo clinic for treatment - otherwise it would've bankrupted him due to the relationship between healthcare and taxes in the UK.
I'm hardly a healthcare expert, but we have a system right now that pretends healthcare is a responsibility on the monetary side while not actually making it one on the health side - until there is a method to distinguish between healthcare expenses that are brought on by bad behavior versus those that 'just happen,' I doubt a real solution is in sight. A few states are starting to go down this path, though, but very tepid steps - I heard of a program in Alabama where, if you are categorized as 'morbidly obese' and you work for the state, then your GP gives you advice & recommendations for one year - and if you don't follow them, your premiums go up about 15% the next year.
I pick this example simply because it's one of the few to tie premiums to behavior (rather than simply history) and not because I think fat people are responsible for the state of US healthcare (if I had to make a baseless judgment, I'd say old people were probably as much at fault).
Obama's solution, while pleasing to my checkbook in the short term, is philosophically abhorrent to me because - like many Democratic programs - it absolves everyone of having a stake in the system. McCain's solution was more of a band-aid than a solution - rejiggering how premiums are taxed to provide a credit (which would have been a net positive for me) - but I found it less objectionable, even if it was less ambitious.
I have two foreign roommates - an Italian and a Canadian. Both are left-leaning moderates (as best I can tell - and I'd characterize myself as a right-leaning moderate) and to hear them tell it, Canada and Italy (and the UK - the Italian's girlfriend is Scottish) are absolutely wonderful for day-to-day needs; it's no contest with the US on that score. It's the big stuff, the serious medical attention and care, where the US is better, and every doctor I've ever talked to (which is about a dozen - hardly a significant sample) has said that, as bad as things are in the US, they would never in a million years wish to practice in Canada or the UK.
I think Obama's gotten a pass only in the recent sense that some of the media is behaving as though the hardest part is behind us now that we've done this difficult thing in electing Obama rather than focusing very specifically on what Obama really plans to do. Now that he's the President-Elect, presumably he has less to fear about saying what he really thinks, and I'd like to see some effort going into that rather than just platitudes.
I don't think McCain was victimized by any kind of bias. I think McCain shot himself in the foot with the way he allowed his campaign to be run and he paid the price. It's a sad thing for a guy like that to go down that way, but he deserved to lose.
I could care less if McCain used the term 'gook' once in 2000. In his heyday everybody did, and I think his subsequent actions toward Vietnam and the Vietnamese demonstrate what he really thinks and feels about them far more than precisely the type of 'gesture' that the article you link to is using to draw conclusions about the sort of person he is. I can go outside my door here in Brooklyn and hear racial slurs about my own race or two or three others without walking a couple blocks. Let's not pretend that we as a culture have somehow transcended them - and even so, you're talking about something the guy said once, eight years ago.
The media loved McCain in 2000 because he really did talk straight much of the time. That was an amazing thing, and why it made it so hard to watch as he clammed up this time around and caved to the Rovian elements of his campaign.
That would have been a mistake. Unless your business is insanely profitable, you would've gained nothing from McCain
My business is not insanely profitable (though it is profitable) and you are incorrect. I stand to benefit considerably in the short term from Obama's policies - I'll get a tax cut and my health care will be cheaper, but I'm not convinced that it will be better, as I'm leery of government stepping in to the health care arena even more than it already does. I believe that healthcare is a responsibility and not a right and my lowest point with respect to Obama came when he gave the all-to-easy 'health care is a right' answer during one of the debates. I pay $320/mo for moderate (not great) health insurance right now and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to that going down, but at what long-term cost? I don't want Canada's health care system, or the UK's, and I don't buy Obama's assertion that we can provide a single-payer national system while still keeping private insurance -- sooner or later the Dems are going to make it even more difficult to be a doctor in this country than they already have. My SO is altering course from medical school to Physician's Assistant school just so she can get a regular salary and regular hours (even if it's under $100k) rather than establish a Byzantine bureaucracy in her own eventual practice to double- and triple-book patients just so she can run a profitable practice.
If Obama's tax plan passes then it will create a dis-incentive for me to perform beyond a certain point. Right now I deal exclusively with contractors. As a NYC-based business I already have very little incentive to grow a business with full-time employees -- and I'm originally from Delaware, where the opposite is true.
McCain's tax and health care plan made quite a lot of sense to me. I am always delighted to hear people who do not run businesses tell me what I would or would not have gained, though, but the reality is that you don't know until you run the numbers. Because I support just myself right now, I'm in the clear - but the last thing I want to do is to be running a small business that does gross over a million or so a year (gross, not net, and that's still 'small') because then I'm squarely in the crosshairs of the 'big business' that liberals love to hate and love to tax, regardless of how big a business I think I am.
'Just invest that surplus money into expanding the business' sounds a bit pithy and easy, like there's some magical button I press to keep my capital expenses up and my profits down. It's not always up to me.
Finally, I have read Obama's web site (and McCain's). I want to do the best that I can and I have no problem paying taxes - but I could've planned much more for what McCain planned to do than I can from what I know about Obama's initiatives. Both guys have a big problem telling us how they're going to pay for any of their plans, but I had confidence that McCain is going to be a, well, conservative spender, based on a clear record. Obama's simply unproven.
If I'd voted just in the interest of my small business then I would've voted McCain. But there's more to being an American than my bottom line, even if that's my only source of income. I'd consider myself a 'Republican Reptile' ala PJ O'Rourke - fiscally conservative (in the 'small government' sense) but socially liberal - and neither party has represented my views for so long as I've been eligible to vote. The McCain of 2000 was probably the closest I've seen.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not an ideologue - I really do respect both Obama and McCain and I think either one is fundamentally better for the US than Bush. I try to deal in day-to-day stuff that affects me while not losing sight of the shape the country and its finances are in. I saw just as much (if not more) anti-White racism during the campaign as I did anti-Black, and right now I'm looking through the congressional record to find the exact votes between 2002 and 2004 wher
To the US, much of Western Europe (minus perhaps the BBC) appears hilariously liberal - this coming from a regular reader of the NY Times (and who lives in New York) and someone who voted for Obama.
I do emphasize 'appears,' though, because I don't think this necessarily means there is a bias on the part of the reporters or the editors. By any objective measure I can think of, Obama was incredibly newsworthy. I wanted to vote for McCain (I'm a small business owner) but I couldn't stomach Palin; still, McCain received plenty of coverage around here. I think that the newspapers do their best to report stuff that they think is newsworthy, and having some arbitrary rule like 'we must publish an equal number of pieces about each candidate' is the type of gesture-laden but meaningless decision that is all too regular these days -- and it would ultimately result in fluff pieces or lowering the standards of what makes the news just so you get an even count.
My biggest beef with the NY Times is that, particularly since Obama was elected, it's been piece after piece about the 'barrier-breaking' historical significance of the event; the guy has gotten a big pass on making substantive policy statements just because he's such a 'game-changer.' I don't mean to take away the gravitas of the historical situation, but I think we've been congratulating ourselves so much on our enlightened stance that we've indirectly said that, had we elected McCain instead, it would've been nothing more than backwards racism at work (since electing Obama was so forward-thinking of us). We get quotes from people around the world like 'There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different type of leader' (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/reactions-from-around-the-world/?scp=3&sq=america%20president%20rest%20of%20world%20follow&st=cse) and similar comments praising the basic fact of the event itself.
So it comes as no surprise to me that McCain would have to work twice as hard to get attention from such a 'landmark' event. I like and respect Obama, and I'm very interested to see how he'll do - but I think we let him skate by, particularly in the debates, with a lot of vague promises. I'll celebrate him being a game-changer once the game has actually changed.
As for your original point, though, a (more liberal) friend of mine pointed out that, even in spite of the semi-regular absence of substance -- these were campaign promises, after all, and he's hardly alone in making vague ones -- there is an unavoidable perk in our reputation abroad not because Obama is a proven diplomat (he isn't) but because he's not George Bush and not a Republican.
I live in NYC and have 30Mbits down and 15 up with Optimum Online's 'boost' business class service (+ 5 static IPs) for $70/mo.
Unfortunately, Time Warner still has most of NYC, and at least a year ago they didn't have anything comparable.
That's not being good with credit - that's being paranoid. You might be very good with money, but having no proof of it doesn't tell your employee anything.
No matter how many articles the NY Times publishes on predatory lenders or bad debt, the fact remains that everyone who borrows money does so at their own peril and signs their name to the dotted line. It's a fair subject for debate as to how much the credit markets should be regulated (personally, I fall in the middle of that spectrum) but your credit scores are (arguably) the direct result of your behavior - your 'medical score' is only partially that inasmuch as your medical condition is only partially a direct result of your behavior.
Borderline scam, at least, as they're honest about it.
I was riding into Manhattan today on my bicycle and thought I'd swing by a couple of AT&T stores on the way to see if any lines were short enough to get myself an iPhone (never had a 1st gen). The one on the Fulton Street Mall had a line out the door but not too long - I should've stayed there, as they were out of stock by my trip home.
I went by the one on Montague street in Brooklyn Heights - only a few people in line. An AT&T rep came out and said that their stock was running low (this was at noon) and that they would only sell their remaining phones 'at full price' - with no guarantee that AT&T would credit you the difference, even if you then signed a 2 year contract.
Not one person stayed in the store. It's certainly their right to sell them however they wanted, but I'll never go back to that store - seems like a pretty dumb business decision.
You're forgetting a key component of 'pay me because I work so little.'
Actors don't sit on their ass 95% of the time and then work 5% of the time and demand a lot of pay for that 5% of the time -just- because they don't know when they'll work next. The investment - the barrier to entry - to be a professional actor is huge. Training, professional head shots, voice reels (if you're in this guy's business). Then consider that, for most actors, you can't get a real 'career' job because you have to be able to skip out and go audition.
In other words, you've invested a huge amount in the idea that, when you do get hired, you're going to be damn good. You had better be. The producers expect that you will be, because there's no 'on the job training' - you don't get paired with some senior guy for a month while you learn the ropes.
I'm sure he has a second, part-time job, and I'm also sure he doesn't want sympathy for his situation. He wants what other actors get. For better or worse, that's how things go: actors fight for whatever they can get (just like any other union) and in some cases that's residuals. A guy who does an AOL commercial - maybe a few days of work - will easily earn a few hundred grand in a year if it's a national, long-running commercial. That's wildly out of sync with the amount of work he put in, but not out of sync with the amount of money involved. A national, long-running commercial costs millions and millions of dollars. The actor thinks he should be paid more if it's going to be a commercial with huge exposure versus one with tiny exposure. The production company doesn't necessarily know ahead of time which it's going to be - or maybe it tests well in a local market and then they make it national. Without residuals the actor gets paid the same, because his work was the same.
I disagree that voice acting is the very last thing that impacts a game. You don't notice it as much when it's good. You notice it when it's bad.
He doesn't 'have to get paid this much;' he -wants- to get paid more. He has an argument he can make for it. I'm not a union rep or a contract lawyer so I couldn't tell you where 'fair' stops and starts, but I can tell you that residuals exist for a reason and that when you have a game that makes more money than a lot of films, the system for paying actors on films is going to be used as a basis for analysis.
Again, I'm not championing either side, I'm just providing a bit of perspective about the acting business that a lot of people don't necessarily understand. Actors do get paid a lot when they work. They have to work for nothing a lot of the time when they're trying to get work (auditions can take all day if you aren't union, or they can take all day if you are and they just decide to play around with you). It's an extraordinarily difficult business to break into and a lot of actors who are educated or otherwise skilled look at themselves when they're 30, 35 and wonder why they gave up all the stuff they'd have if they'd had a regular career to do what they do.
Most don't have to wonder for long, but it's a huge sacrifice. Residuals are a way of saying 'nice job, dude, you made it.'
Disclaimer: I am a member of one of the acting unions (a sister union to SAG, which is who this guy is blaming).
Before all of you hate this guy for wanting more than $100k, consider one very important aspect of actors' salaries that is usually why they get both a high daily rate and a percentage on a big project:
They don't get a salary. Once the project is over, so is their income. Their health insurance and retirement only gets contributions while they're working, and in the case of health insurance, if you don't work enough weeks out of the year (and it's a lot right now, since the health insurance funds are all in the toilet) then your boss is still paying for your heath insurance (money he could be paying you with) but you aren't getting it.
The saying goes that Actors work about 1/4 as much as regular people, but in that 1/4 of the time, they work 8 times harder. There is absolutely zero 'veg out at your desk' as an actor. You probably think it'd be a blast to have a job like voicing Nico Bellic, and in a lot of ways, it probably was - but you will tear up your voice doing the same dialog over and over again, particularly the pages and pages of 'you are caught on fire' and 'you fall off a building.'
This guy earned $100k for 16 months of work. That's pretty good, but not great. This isn't a young noob, either. He's mid-career. $75k a year for Nico Bellic?
Several people have rightly pointed out that people don't buy video games 'because of an actor' like they go see movies because of an actor. This is partially true. You don't buy a video game because a particular actor is involved (usually, though I expect Splinter Cell would be wildly unpopular if they axed the gravelly voice dude, Ironsides?). You do buy a video game because the acting & storytelling is extraordinary. Most games suffer from bad writing AND bad acting; a game that has both will review & sell well.
Obviously it's not such a large factor that these guys should get the same slice a movie star is going to get, and I'm not even sure if residuals is the way to go for video games - there's a very good case to be made that the 3d artist/lead programmer or whatever is just as important or more important. In some studios, I imagine the lead guys have shares of stock in the company and so do get residuals in their way - but even if they don't, they get a salary. They get to work on every game. The actor doesn't.
Having said all this, the unions will probably ask for too much. The actor who did Nico sounds like he's got his head on straight - he doesn't want to piss off Rockstar and he's not personally whining about it; he's allowing his case to be used to bring attention to the subject, which is pretty harmless. The question of 'when GTAIV makes a bazillion dollars, who should get what?' is a tough one and it -should- take a lot of haggling to figure that out. Even if you give Nico residuals, what about Roman? McLeary? Where do you stop?
However you solve it, keep in mind that actors typically make a crapload of money on a daily basis because they work so little of time. Last I checked, at any given time, under 5% of my union is employed.
There have been a couple of comments to the effect of 'Extras don't cost THAT much, do they?'
No, Extras don't cost that much. A non-union extra gets paid about $75 for a day's work, where a day can be half an hour or 14 hours. A union Extra might get $125 and a better sandwich.
The problem is that it takes forever to organize and shoot scenes with a lot of extras, particularly where even a couple of people acting like douchebags can wreck the whole scene. The last film I did any extra work on was 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' and there were about 200 of us in the small park at 72nd and Broadway here in NYC. Our job was to gawk at a building on fire. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Yeah, until you realize that 3/4 of the extras think that being an extra is their ticket to fame. I happened to get 'placed' right near one of the lead actors as he emerged from the subway, and as we shot and re-shot one minute of that scene 5 times (over the course of 7 hours), other extras would elbow me out of the way because they wanted to be 'near the star.' There is a whole sham community around being an extra where you attend a class outside of New York or LA and some local agent in your nearest mid-size city (say, Philadelphia) 'signs' you and just sends you out on a bunch of extra calls. The agent gets a fixed rate for every warm body they send, you spend a day doing very little, and your agent hopes you never realize that real actors don't work that way.
If I were producing that or any other movie with extras, I'd use as few extras as possible. Not to save money. Just to save the people I am actually employing full-time a lot of aggravation.
Since most of the discussion has been about flying cars (And not driveable airplanes) there are a couple relevant details about the category of Light Sport Aircraft.
Firstly, while you do have to be a licensed pilot, getting an LSA certification takes (around) half as long and costs half as much. Private pilot certification requires a minimum of 40 hours flight time (nat'l average is around 75) and costs anywhere from $5000 to $10000 if you go to a private flight school. That lets you fly something like a Cessna 172 prop plane during the day and in good weather. You cannot fly at night or in bad weather; that requires an additional certification called IFR (i.e. you are 'instrument rated' to fly just off the instruments). For a long time in the US, the Private Pilot cert was the "lowest" level you could get.
As of last year or so, the FAA introduced the LSA category. This applies to one- and two-seat aircraft under 1200 or 1300 pounds (can't remember which) and with a top speed of 120 knots. These aircraft have been around for a while but regulations were more friendly to that kind of thing in Europe than in the US.
LSA is a big deal because they are less expensive to fly and maintain and you only need half as many hours to get your certification. It's still not something you're going to do in a weekend, but it makes general aviation much more accessible. Most LSA aircraft cost around $100,000 as opposed to $300,000 for traditional "light" aircraft -- and aircraft lose their value as quickly as most recreational vehicles, so you can pick up a decent small airplane from the 70s or 80s for the cost of a new Toyota. A nicer Toyota.
Between LSA, GPS devices, and some of the great simulator stuff out there, getting yourself in the air is a lot easier than it ever has been. Hopefully it will never become so easy that everyone does it.
That is not entirely accurate - the 'whole neighborhood' does not get a single 30/5 pipe. I routinely get actual speeds of 30 (or over) down and 4-5 up, even during "prime time." I am quite satisifed with my service.
I'm not saying it's superior to Verizon's, I'm just saying that it does come pretty close to what Verizon offers and may have other perks (static IPs, ability to run servers, etc.)