Most honey farmers will take out so much honey of the hives that they have to feed the bees sugar water to survive the winter.
I spoke with an bee keeper shortly after the story about the problems with feeding bees HFCS (it often contains small amounts of insecticide, which causes problems with bees navigation). His comment was that it was probably not a significant problem since most beekeepers only fed bees a small amount of sugar water in the late winter so that the bees were stronger when the first blossoms of spring happened. He fed his bees cane sugar in water in late February, early March. Based on what he said, the only reason that beekeepers in the U.S. feed their bees sugar water is so that they are stronger when the blooms of spring happen, not because they took too much honey out of the hive. Nature does not care if the hive can pollinate lots of flowers and start making large amounts of honey in the early spring, so nature does not care if it takes several weeks after the flowers start to bloom for the hive to be up to speed. Commercial beekeepers on the other hand want to get as much productivity out of the hive as they can. Which means that if they can get the hive up to mid season strength as soon as the flowers start to bloom, they can make more money. Beekeepers also tend to actually treat their hives as sort of pets (not individual bees, but the hive as a whole), feeling emotionally attached to the health of the hive. Beekeepers significantly improve the health of bee hives much like cat owners improve the lives of cats.
why do humans have more oral problems compared to other species in nature?
What evidence do you have that this is true? Wild animals with significant problems with their teeth/mouth die in short order, humans get it treated and live on.
FAIL. Zip codes do not follow municipal boundaries. If you use zip code to determine what tax rate to apply, you will get it wrong a significant percentage of the time. Just because someone has a particular city zip code does not mean that where they live is subject to the tax rate of that city.
How exactly is software going to know when a municipality introduces a sales tax holiday for three days? Someone is going to have to keep track of all of the various changes to those sales tax laws and enter it into the software. I really doubt that Paypal will offer it for free (unless of course you are selling through Ebay)..
I worked retail at the time, the law was very confusing. Before the law was changed, it was complicated enough, but some things were clear. If you put it in your mouth and swallowed it, it was not taxable because it was considered food. After the change, if you sold hot dogs cold, they were not taxable, but if you put them on a grill and heated them up, they were. Milk was not taxable, but chocolate milk was. Fruit drinks were not taxable if they were over a certain percentage real juice. Candy was taxable, but granola bars weren't (was a granola bar covered in chocolate taxable or not? I don't remember, but that was a matter of some debate for over a year after the law passed).
The store owner in question in my above example had been in business for twenty plus years.
So, you are in favor of increasing the cost of doing business? Which of course means that you prefer doing business with larger companies, because a larger, established company can more readily absorb an increased cost of doing business.
Quickbooks may only cost $300 retail, but if you want that payroll tax calculator functionality, it is another $29 a month (plus $1.50 per employee per month). What do you think they are going to charge for the sales tax package (which is significantly more complicated than the payroll tax package, very few municipalities institute "tax holidays" on payroll taxes and if they do, it is almost always across the board, not just on certain classes of items). Oh yeah, if you want that payroll tax functionality, you need to buy a new version of Quickbooks every three years. So, you're talking about an additional $600+ for the first year to start up a company that the person has no guarantees will ever be profitable.
That one is easy, the business owner. About 20 years ago my state changed their sales tax laws. In particular, they changed what was and was not taxable. One small business owner gave up trying to figure out which items he sold were or were not taxable and charged sales tax on everything. He remitted the full amount collected to the state. The state prosecuted him for charging sales tax for things which were not taxable. The penalties exceeded his yearly revenue.
Well, let's see. First off I did not say it was an insurmountable problem. I said it the proposed legislation favors large companies over small companies. I am talking about companies that are small enough that buying Quickbooks makes it not worth their time to start the company.
A. It's called a cost of doing business.
B. There's this stuff called "software" that is really good at tracking numbers automatically.
So, how much is it going to cost me to get that software? Who is going to update it every time one of those many municipalities changes their tax laws? How much will that cost me? Do you have a clue how complicated it is to keep track of the sales tax laws all throughout the U.S., with different municipalities charging sales tax on different things? Not everything is taxable in every municipality and what is taxable, or not taxable varies from location to location. In addition, How do I keep track of what tax jurisdiction a customer is in (hint, zip codes won't do the trick)?
Sure, you can say, "That's a cost of doing business," of course when you say that what you are saying is "I don't mind stacking the deck in favor of big business."
Small businesses will suffer because the expense of keeping track of the sales tax they need to collect from every municipality around the country will add one more cost of doing business. For Amazon, that cost is minimal. For a company that is run out of someone's basement by that single individual, it will likely be the difference between being profitable and a waste of time. Small retailers who think that this will make it easier for them to compete with Amazon are dreaming. It will mean that they will never be able to afford to open a website to sell their goods directly to consumers at a distance.
This is a trick question, right? Well, of course it is, you called a reporter for the NYT a legitimate journalist...which of course he is, in the fine tradition of Jayson Blair and Walter Duranty.
I think they would just wire the cars with a speed limiter based on the current street's speed limit... just so long as the car doesn't suddenly slow down to 25 on a freeway overpass because the road under the bridge has a lower speed limit.
Why would they do that? When the OP's suggestion would allow the government to generate revenue with a reduced expenditure, while yours would reduce the amount of revenue the government gets from traffic law violation tickets.
They tried this once before. That's why GM went from being the dominant car company in the world to a division of the Department of Labor and Chrysler went from being the third largest car company in the world to a division of Fiat.
The bureaucrats hope you are correct. It will be much easier to control people who do not have their own means of transportation that allows them to go where they want when they want. In the world you envision, you will only be able to go to places that the cars are programmed to go to and only when they are programmed to allow you to go there. That world would be distinctly divided into three classes: the elites, who for the most part can go where they want and get to decide where the second class are given access (these would be mostly government functionaries); the common folk, who are expected to meekly accept the limits established by the elites; and the criminal class, who hack the transportation system (or pay someone to do it for them) in order to go to places that are otherwise off limits to them.
We would get there incrementally.
Yes, but what connection are you going to want in 2018? I would be almost willing to bet (I have a rule, if I place a bet with you, you may as well just give me the money, I already know the outcome--not think, know) it will not be a USB port.
The question you have to ask is, why have all attempts to do this on a larger scale failed completely? I would argue that the reason is that such a program is too readily gamed when it is done on a large scale (either by bureaucrats padding their numbers, or by participants who should not be eligible, or by other forms of scam). On a small scale such things might work because people are shamed for being free loaders unless they have a good reason (new mothers caring for their children, students who are still in school, etc). On a large scale people are able to either disguise the fact that they are abusing the system, or they are surrounded by people abusing the system (the former is especially true of those who are able to gain an income from the system because of political connections).
Personally, I believe that I can more effectively provide for the needy by choosing where my money is used to help those in need than a bureaucrat can. I, also, believe that it is immoral to force others, who do not share my moral convictions, to help the needy.
So, you think that in addition to paying for police, the roads, etc, the government should tax those people who work in order to feed and house the remainder of the population?
Well, when your lawyer contacts them they will quickly explain that you misunderstood and arrange for an activation code to allow you to install it. In all probability if you jump through enough hoops they will do that before your lawyer contacts them, but they will count on most people giving up and switching to the subscription model.
Actually, my problem is with me being required to help pay for someone else to murder their child.
Basically, you are saying that the First Amendment does not mean anything. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,..." You will notice that there is no difference between the wording protecting the free exercise of your religion and the wording preventing Congress from abridging your freedom of speech. If Congress can require me to pay for someone else to have an abortion, they can require me to make statements supporting policies that I think are wrong.
the problem is that you don't have a right to food, health care, or housing.
Exactly what do you mean by a "right to food, health care, or housing"? What does that mean? Do you mean that you have the right to have someone provide you with those? If so, who is forced to do the work necessary to provide you with them?
Alternatively you can obstruct him at every turn and show that you are hypocrites that talk democracy and freedom
So, what you are proposing is that Congressmen prove that they are in favor of democracy by voting the opposite of the way their constituents elected them to vote and that they are in favor of freedom by voting to support a man who believes that the government can order you to act against your religious beliefs?
Considering that polls consistently show that more U.S. citizens oppose Obama's policies than support them, I am not sure how you get the idea that voting for his policies represents democracy in action.
As I said, the difference is so great that using the German reunification as a model does not provide much useful information. There is one important difference that is often overlooked. East Germans had a fairly accurate understanding of West German lifestyle and expected to rapidly attain it after unification. It is unlikely that North Koreans have any idea what the South Korean lifestyle looks like and thus is less likely to harbor expectations of reaching it quickly upon reunification. Personally, I have no idea what a post reunification Korea would look like, except to believe that the improvements for North Koreans (except for those who are among the elites there currently) would be much greater than the losses for South Koreans.
Slashdot Mirror
Most honey farmers will take out so much honey of the hives that they have to feed the bees sugar water to survive the winter.
I spoke with an bee keeper shortly after the story about the problems with feeding bees HFCS (it often contains small amounts of insecticide, which causes problems with bees navigation). His comment was that it was probably not a significant problem since most beekeepers only fed bees a small amount of sugar water in the late winter so that the bees were stronger when the first blossoms of spring happened. He fed his bees cane sugar in water in late February, early March. Based on what he said, the only reason that beekeepers in the U.S. feed their bees sugar water is so that they are stronger when the blooms of spring happen, not because they took too much honey out of the hive. Nature does not care if the hive can pollinate lots of flowers and start making large amounts of honey in the early spring, so nature does not care if it takes several weeks after the flowers start to bloom for the hive to be up to speed. Commercial beekeepers on the other hand want to get as much productivity out of the hive as they can. Which means that if they can get the hive up to mid season strength as soon as the flowers start to bloom, they can make more money. Beekeepers also tend to actually treat their hives as sort of pets (not individual bees, but the hive as a whole), feeling emotionally attached to the health of the hive. Beekeepers significantly improve the health of bee hives much like cat owners improve the lives of cats.
why do humans have more oral problems compared to other species in nature?
What evidence do you have that this is true? Wild animals with significant problems with their teeth/mouth die in short order, humans get it treated and live on.
and get the tax rules based on zipcode.
FAIL. Zip codes do not follow municipal boundaries. If you use zip code to determine what tax rate to apply, you will get it wrong a significant percentage of the time. Just because someone has a particular city zip code does not mean that where they live is subject to the tax rate of that city.
How exactly is software going to know when a municipality introduces a sales tax holiday for three days? Someone is going to have to keep track of all of the various changes to those sales tax laws and enter it into the software. I really doubt that Paypal will offer it for free (unless of course you are selling through Ebay)..
I worked retail at the time, the law was very confusing. Before the law was changed, it was complicated enough, but some things were clear. If you put it in your mouth and swallowed it, it was not taxable because it was considered food. After the change, if you sold hot dogs cold, they were not taxable, but if you put them on a grill and heated them up, they were. Milk was not taxable, but chocolate milk was. Fruit drinks were not taxable if they were over a certain percentage real juice. Candy was taxable, but granola bars weren't (was a granola bar covered in chocolate taxable or not? I don't remember, but that was a matter of some debate for over a year after the law passed).
The store owner in question in my above example had been in business for twenty plus years.
So, you are in favor of increasing the cost of doing business? Which of course means that you prefer doing business with larger companies, because a larger, established company can more readily absorb an increased cost of doing business.
Quickbooks may only cost $300 retail, but if you want that payroll tax calculator functionality, it is another $29 a month (plus $1.50 per employee per month). What do you think they are going to charge for the sales tax package (which is significantly more complicated than the payroll tax package, very few municipalities institute "tax holidays" on payroll taxes and if they do, it is almost always across the board, not just on certain classes of items). Oh yeah, if you want that payroll tax functionality, you need to buy a new version of Quickbooks every three years. So, you're talking about an additional $600+ for the first year to start up a company that the person has no guarantees will ever be profitable.
That one is easy, the business owner. About 20 years ago my state changed their sales tax laws. In particular, they changed what was and was not taxable. One small business owner gave up trying to figure out which items he sold were or were not taxable and charged sales tax on everything. He remitted the full amount collected to the state. The state prosecuted him for charging sales tax for things which were not taxable. The penalties exceeded his yearly revenue.
Well, let's see. First off I did not say it was an insurmountable problem. I said it the proposed legislation favors large companies over small companies. I am talking about companies that are small enough that buying Quickbooks makes it not worth their time to start the company.
A. It's called a cost of doing business. B. There's this stuff called "software" that is really good at tracking numbers automatically.
So, how much is it going to cost me to get that software? Who is going to update it every time one of those many municipalities changes their tax laws? How much will that cost me? Do you have a clue how complicated it is to keep track of the sales tax laws all throughout the U.S., with different municipalities charging sales tax on different things? Not everything is taxable in every municipality and what is taxable, or not taxable varies from location to location. In addition, How do I keep track of what tax jurisdiction a customer is in (hint, zip codes won't do the trick)?
Sure, you can say, "That's a cost of doing business," of course when you say that what you are saying is "I don't mind stacking the deck in favor of big business."
Small businesses will suffer because the expense of keeping track of the sales tax they need to collect from every municipality around the country will add one more cost of doing business. For Amazon, that cost is minimal. For a company that is run out of someone's basement by that single individual, it will likely be the difference between being profitable and a waste of time. Small retailers who think that this will make it easier for them to compete with Amazon are dreaming. It will mean that they will never be able to afford to open a website to sell their goods directly to consumers at a distance.
Ten years ago we had been using serial ports since the 1960s, how many have you seen lately?
This is a trick question, right? Well, of course it is, you called a reporter for the NYT a legitimate journalist...which of course he is, in the fine tradition of Jayson Blair and Walter Duranty.
I think they would just wire the cars with a speed limiter based on the current street's speed limit... just so long as the car doesn't suddenly slow down to 25 on a freeway overpass because the road under the bridge has a lower speed limit.
Why would they do that? When the OP's suggestion would allow the government to generate revenue with a reduced expenditure, while yours would reduce the amount of revenue the government gets from traffic law violation tickets.
They tried this once before. That's why GM went from being the dominant car company in the world to a division of the Department of Labor and Chrysler went from being the third largest car company in the world to a division of Fiat.
The bureaucrats hope you are correct. It will be much easier to control people who do not have their own means of transportation that allows them to go where they want when they want. In the world you envision, you will only be able to go to places that the cars are programmed to go to and only when they are programmed to allow you to go there. That world would be distinctly divided into three classes: the elites, who for the most part can go where they want and get to decide where the second class are given access (these would be mostly government functionaries); the common folk, who are expected to meekly accept the limits established by the elites; and the criminal class, who hack the transportation system (or pay someone to do it for them) in order to go to places that are otherwise off limits to them.
We would get there incrementally.
My '12 Challenger R/T has a USB port...
Yes, but what connection are you going to want in 2018? I would be almost willing to bet (I have a rule, if I place a bet with you, you may as well just give me the money, I already know the outcome--not think, know) it will not be a USB port.
The question you have to ask is, why have all attempts to do this on a larger scale failed completely? I would argue that the reason is that such a program is too readily gamed when it is done on a large scale (either by bureaucrats padding their numbers, or by participants who should not be eligible, or by other forms of scam). On a small scale such things might work because people are shamed for being free loaders unless they have a good reason (new mothers caring for their children, students who are still in school, etc). On a large scale people are able to either disguise the fact that they are abusing the system, or they are surrounded by people abusing the system (the former is especially true of those who are able to gain an income from the system because of political connections).
Personally, I believe that I can more effectively provide for the needy by choosing where my money is used to help those in need than a bureaucrat can. I, also, believe that it is immoral to force others, who do not share my moral convictions, to help the needy.
So, you think that in addition to paying for police, the roads, etc, the government should tax those people who work in order to feed and house the remainder of the population?
Well, when your lawyer contacts them they will quickly explain that you misunderstood and arrange for an activation code to allow you to install it. In all probability if you jump through enough hoops they will do that before your lawyer contacts them, but they will count on most people giving up and switching to the subscription model.
Actually, my problem is with me being required to help pay for someone else to murder their child.
Basically, you are saying that the First Amendment does not mean anything. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,..." You will notice that there is no difference between the wording protecting the free exercise of your religion and the wording preventing Congress from abridging your freedom of speech. If Congress can require me to pay for someone else to have an abortion, they can require me to make statements supporting policies that I think are wrong.
NO, the one's run by the Gallup organization.
Perhaps you have heard of a thing called the First Amendment?
the problem is that you don't have a right to food, health care, or housing.
Exactly what do you mean by a "right to food, health care, or housing"? What does that mean? Do you mean that you have the right to have someone provide you with those? If so, who is forced to do the work necessary to provide you with them?
Alternatively you can obstruct him at every turn and show that you are hypocrites that talk democracy and freedom
So, what you are proposing is that Congressmen prove that they are in favor of democracy by voting the opposite of the way their constituents elected them to vote and that they are in favor of freedom by voting to support a man who believes that the government can order you to act against your religious beliefs?
Considering that polls consistently show that more U.S. citizens oppose Obama's policies than support them, I am not sure how you get the idea that voting for his policies represents democracy in action.
As I said, the difference is so great that using the German reunification as a model does not provide much useful information. There is one important difference that is often overlooked. East Germans had a fairly accurate understanding of West German lifestyle and expected to rapidly attain it after unification. It is unlikely that North Koreans have any idea what the South Korean lifestyle looks like and thus is less likely to harbor expectations of reaching it quickly upon reunification. Personally, I have no idea what a post reunification Korea would look like, except to believe that the improvements for North Koreans (except for those who are among the elites there currently) would be much greater than the losses for South Koreans.