Your post sums up my problem with this article. I am not a developer, but I am a proponent of Open Source Software. I am not religiously a proponent of OSS, I use proprietary software for many things.
you obviously never seen how much does it make a farmer or someone working at a fabric,
I have no idea what you are trying to say there. However, I know several farmers and they all make a good living. It is a tough living because not only does it tend to be hard work, but the cash flow is not spaced out through the year.
There may be other reasons why someone is only making minimum wage, but if you are working fulltime continuously for more than a year at no more than minimum wage, you either aren't capable of doing a job where you are worth more than minimum wage or it is your fault for some other reason.
I worked a number of minimum wage jobs when I was in high school
There are three possibilities about your co-workers in those jobs. One, they were making more than you were. Two, they had no skills that made them a more valuable employee than a high school student. Or three, they had done something in the past that made them appear to employers as questionable employees (they had a felony conviction, they had a history of leaving jobs after only a short period of time). Until the last few years there was a demand for good workers. I managed a convenience store in the 90s, we paid better than minimum wage and we could not find enough decent employees to fill all of our positions. In the early 00s, I worked for a company that hired just about anyone, they paid better than minimum wage and most of their employees couldn't have held down a job anywhere else. They, also, had trouble finding employees when they needed to replace someone. Their best employees worked there for 6 months to a year, long enough to get a decent reference, and then got a better paying job somewhere else (or got promoted within that company).
Illegal immigrants don't count (they are by definition criminals).
I do not misunderstand. He wants to make it harder for those with little money to accumulate more. Currently most savings accounts pay less than 1% interest. So, because he has enough wealth to get a 5% (or better) Return on Investment, he thinks that those who don't should be penalized.
You are proposing to drop property tax, which is levied by a different government body than the one he is suggesting collect a wealth tax (the federal government). You are correct that under his program saving makes no sense. Your best bet is to spend all of your money on consumables or place it out of reach of the tax man. If you turn it into cash, the tax man will have no way to identify how much you have left.
If you are working at minimum wage it means that you are not productive enough to be hired for a decent job. The mean income in the U.S. is slightly above $30,000 a year. That is enough for a person to save some money.
OK, so what you are saying is that you want to tax wealth that is invested. I only get interest on my wealth if I have invested it. Under current tax law, my money gets taxed when I earn it (whether that is through income tax, capital gains, or dividends--there may be other ways to earn money as far as tax law goes, but I am unaware of them) and then it is mine. You are proposing to change that to taxing the money I have and you are proposing to continue taxing it as long as I have it. The fact of the matter is that for most people they would not be getting 4%, they would be breaking even, or losing money (the interest paid on most savings accounts is slightly less than 1%). This means that your tax would make it even more difficult for people to accumulate enough wealth to actually accumulate significant wealth.
So, you are planning to tax it yearly. For purposes of showing you the problem with the idea, I am going to use a yearly tax of 10% (it could be higher or lower, the principal I am trying to demonstrate would still hold true). If someone had managed to save $10,000, you would tax it $1,000. They would have $9,000 after taxes. The following year, your plan would tax them $900, leaving them with $8100. This would continue until they had nothing saved (whether they had spent it or it had been taxed away). Under your tax program, it would be counter productive to save money. Additionally, I am going to assume that you would tax goods that people own as well as any cash they have (otherwise the wealthy would just buy a lot of big ticket items and thus not have any "wealth" to tax). In that case, there would be significant disincentive to investing in anything as well.
My understanding is that the domain seizure by the U.S. government works by requiring DNS servers to resolve the domain name to a government IP address in cases where the domain is registered/hosted outside the U.S.. I really don't think it makes much difference what tld you use.
No, you would be taxing it at an infinitely higher rate. Currently wealth is not taxed, only increases in wealth. You did not answer the most important question, how often would you tax wealth?
I disagree completely. The current problem is a result of people NOT saving enough. The savings rate in the U.S. was much higher in the 50s and 60s than it is today. If people were not so badly overleveraged, the financial crisis would never have happened. People should not need to borrow money to buy a car, they should have sufficient savings to do so out of thier savings. While there may be occassions where the financially prudent thing to do when buying a car is to finance it, ideally one should not be in a position of needing to finance it.
You are completely disregarding the fact that the federal government is not the only government authority that taxes people. So while $1,000 is not that big of a bite for most people with a normal income, the tax bite would be considerably more than that when you factor in state and local taxes. Additionally, there are nowhere near 200 million people in the U.S. with a "normal" or higher income. The median household income for the U.S. is around $50,000 and there are fewer than 120 million households in the U.S..
Additionally, considering that the current U.S. budget is in the vicinity of $3 trillion dollars, you are looking to reduce the Federal budget to something around 10% of its current state. When one considers the fact that reducing the amount the budget increases by 1% is considered a big deal by politicians, why don't we just figure on running our country on tarriffs on extraterrestrial imports?
Except that we only have Warren Buffett's word for that (he has not released his tax returns). When we look at the numbers from the IRS, we discover that the high earners do indeed generally pay a larger percentage of their income (even when capital gains are calculated in) than those who earn less.
The problem with the original poster's idea of a flat amount that everyone pays is that if it is set at an amount that everyone can pay, it does not add up to anywhere near enough money. The federal budget is somewhere around $3 trillion a year. That means the tax bill in order to get a balanced budget would be about $10,000 for each American (including children). If we were looking to just match current income tax revenue the tax bill for each American (still including children) would be about $3,000. For a balanced budget that would mean a tax bill of $40,000 for a family of four. For a tax that just matches income tax revenue it would mean a tax bill of $12,000 for a family of four. Considering that the median household income in the U.S. is somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000, I think it is pretty obvious that there are a large number of people who would be unable to pay the tax..
So, how often do you plan on taxing that wealth? Say, somebody has $10 million, are you going to tax it every year? At what tax rate?
The problem with taxing wealth is that that makes saving impossible for everyone, even those who do not have very much.
I am aware of the reasons that manufacturers sell PCs with Windows for less than they sell PCs with Linux (or no OS), although I believe that for the most part the first reason you give is obsolete.
My point was that there are reasons to buy a PC with Windows installed, even though you intend to run Linux.
The article may be somewhat excessively inflammatory, but it is important that people be made aware of this new practice so that they know to ask for the key when buying a PC. My suspicion is that most manufacturers will not give out the key by default, but will give it to you if you ask for it when you buy the PC.
You need to learn the difference between a conspiracy (which is a group of people secretly plotting to do something--usually something illegal) and a group of people working together to accomplish some goal, each for his, or her, own reasons. Just because I believe that Warren Buffett and other wealthy individuals support increased taxes for ulterior motives does not mean that I believe they are conspiring to raise taxes in order to make more money.
And that is my point, there are a lot of rich guys calling for rich guys to be taxed more, yet there is no evidence that any of them put thier money where their mouth is.
You are making the mistake of thinking that the AT&T of today is the AT&T that was broken up. It isn't. Today's AT&T is no more the original AT&T than Verizon is. It is actually an interesting comparison. The parts of Verizon that were not part of the original AT&T are less significant in the formation of Verizon than the parts of current AT&T that were not part of the original AT&T (and those parts became part of current AT&T before it bought the carcass of the original AT&T and became AT&T).
Absolutely, if a site I want to visit requires me to give it my email address in order to look at its content and does not give me the option to choose not to recieve emails from them (and they are not a site I want to receive emails from), if I get emails from them, I click on the spam link. On the other hand, unlike many people I work very hard to remember that I intentionally asked a company, or organization, to send me email before I click spam. If I chose to receive email from a company and realize that they are sending me more email than I want to receive from them I will clik on the unsubscribe link in the email. The one exception to my rule about using the unsubscribe feature for emails I signed up for on purpose are emails from companies that offer a discount for giving them my email address.
Well, let's see. How about we look at the U.S.? The U.S. has steadily implemented more and more progressive policies starting in the early 20th century, over that same time period, progressives have been constantly harping about the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
If he voluntarily pays more, he will suffer unduly when his competitors do not.
If he can afford to give 30+ billion dollars to charity without suffering unduly to his competitors, surely he can afford to give an additional billion or two to the government without suffering unduly. HIs publicly stated logic for giving the large sum to charity was to encourage other billionaires to give large sums to charity, wouldn't the same logic apply to taxes (publicly overpay his taxes in order to encourage other wealthy individuals to do the same).
Money is still the way he keeps score. Additionally, the money he "gave" away went to an organization that he has significant say in how it uses the money. The fact of the matter is that Warren Buffett says that the government should take more of his money, yet he does not take advantage of the several methods available to him to give the government more money. If Warren Buffett took the opportunities he has to give additional money to the government, we would know that he genuinely believes that the government is spending tax money wisely and that it was deserving of receiving more money. Since he does not do this, one must conclude that he does not really believe that his tax bill should be higher and is making this statement for some other motive.
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Your post sums up my problem with this article. I am not a developer, but I am a proponent of Open Source Software. I am not religiously a proponent of OSS, I use proprietary software for many things.
you obviously never seen how much does it make a farmer or someone working at a fabric,
I have no idea what you are trying to say there. However, I know several farmers and they all make a good living. It is a tough living because not only does it tend to be hard work, but the cash flow is not spaced out through the year.
There may be other reasons why someone is only making minimum wage, but if you are working fulltime continuously for more than a year at no more than minimum wage, you either aren't capable of doing a job where you are worth more than minimum wage or it is your fault for some other reason.
I worked a number of minimum wage jobs when I was in high school
There are three possibilities about your co-workers in those jobs. One, they were making more than you were. Two, they had no skills that made them a more valuable employee than a high school student. Or three, they had done something in the past that made them appear to employers as questionable employees (they had a felony conviction, they had a history of leaving jobs after only a short period of time). Until the last few years there was a demand for good workers. I managed a convenience store in the 90s, we paid better than minimum wage and we could not find enough decent employees to fill all of our positions. In the early 00s, I worked for a company that hired just about anyone, they paid better than minimum wage and most of their employees couldn't have held down a job anywhere else. They, also, had trouble finding employees when they needed to replace someone. Their best employees worked there for 6 months to a year, long enough to get a decent reference, and then got a better paying job somewhere else (or got promoted within that company).
Illegal immigrants don't count (they are by definition criminals).
I do not misunderstand. He wants to make it harder for those with little money to accumulate more. Currently most savings accounts pay less than 1% interest. So, because he has enough wealth to get a 5% (or better) Return on Investment, he thinks that those who don't should be penalized.
You are proposing to drop property tax, which is levied by a different government body than the one he is suggesting collect a wealth tax (the federal government). You are correct that under his program saving makes no sense. Your best bet is to spend all of your money on consumables or place it out of reach of the tax man. If you turn it into cash, the tax man will have no way to identify how much you have left.
If you are working at minimum wage it means that you are not productive enough to be hired for a decent job. The mean income in the U.S. is slightly above $30,000 a year. That is enough for a person to save some money.
OK, so what you are saying is that you want to tax wealth that is invested. I only get interest on my wealth if I have invested it. Under current tax law, my money gets taxed when I earn it (whether that is through income tax, capital gains, or dividends--there may be other ways to earn money as far as tax law goes, but I am unaware of them) and then it is mine. You are proposing to change that to taxing the money I have and you are proposing to continue taxing it as long as I have it. The fact of the matter is that for most people they would not be getting 4%, they would be breaking even, or losing money (the interest paid on most savings accounts is slightly less than 1%). This means that your tax would make it even more difficult for people to accumulate enough wealth to actually accumulate significant wealth.
So, you are planning to tax it yearly. For purposes of showing you the problem with the idea, I am going to use a yearly tax of 10% (it could be higher or lower, the principal I am trying to demonstrate would still hold true). If someone had managed to save $10,000, you would tax it $1,000. They would have $9,000 after taxes. The following year, your plan would tax them $900, leaving them with $8100. This would continue until they had nothing saved (whether they had spent it or it had been taxed away). Under your tax program, it would be counter productive to save money. Additionally, I am going to assume that you would tax goods that people own as well as any cash they have (otherwise the wealthy would just buy a lot of big ticket items and thus not have any "wealth" to tax). In that case, there would be significant disincentive to investing in anything as well.
My understanding is that the domain seizure by the U.S. government works by requiring DNS servers to resolve the domain name to a government IP address in cases where the domain is registered/hosted outside the U.S.. I really don't think it makes much difference what tld you use.
No, you would be taxing it at an infinitely higher rate. Currently wealth is not taxed, only increases in wealth. You did not answer the most important question, how often would you tax wealth?
I disagree completely. The current problem is a result of people NOT saving enough. The savings rate in the U.S. was much higher in the 50s and 60s than it is today. If people were not so badly overleveraged, the financial crisis would never have happened. People should not need to borrow money to buy a car, they should have sufficient savings to do so out of thier savings. While there may be occassions where the financially prudent thing to do when buying a car is to finance it, ideally one should not be in a position of needing to finance it.
Expecially when you consider the fact that tax loopholes are written into federal law.
You are completely disregarding the fact that the federal government is not the only government authority that taxes people. So while $1,000 is not that big of a bite for most people with a normal income, the tax bite would be considerably more than that when you factor in state and local taxes. Additionally, there are nowhere near 200 million people in the U.S. with a "normal" or higher income. The median household income for the U.S. is around $50,000 and there are fewer than 120 million households in the U.S..
Additionally, considering that the current U.S. budget is in the vicinity of $3 trillion dollars, you are looking to reduce the Federal budget to something around 10% of its current state. When one considers the fact that reducing the amount the budget increases by 1% is considered a big deal by politicians, why don't we just figure on running our country on tarriffs on extraterrestrial imports?
Except that we only have Warren Buffett's word for that (he has not released his tax returns). When we look at the numbers from the IRS, we discover that the high earners do indeed generally pay a larger percentage of their income (even when capital gains are calculated in) than those who earn less.
The problem with the original poster's idea of a flat amount that everyone pays is that if it is set at an amount that everyone can pay, it does not add up to anywhere near enough money. The federal budget is somewhere around $3 trillion a year. That means the tax bill in order to get a balanced budget would be about $10,000 for each American (including children). If we were looking to just match current income tax revenue the tax bill for each American (still including children) would be about $3,000. For a balanced budget that would mean a tax bill of $40,000 for a family of four. For a tax that just matches income tax revenue it would mean a tax bill of $12,000 for a family of four. Considering that the median household income in the U.S. is somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000, I think it is pretty obvious that there are a large number of people who would be unable to pay the tax..
So, how often do you plan on taxing that wealth? Say, somebody has $10 million, are you going to tax it every year? At what tax rate?
The problem with taxing wealth is that that makes saving impossible for everyone, even those who do not have very much.
I am aware of the reasons that manufacturers sell PCs with Windows for less than they sell PCs with Linux (or no OS), although I believe that for the most part the first reason you give is obsolete.
My point was that there are reasons to buy a PC with Windows installed, even though you intend to run Linux.
The article may be somewhat excessively inflammatory, but it is important that people be made aware of this new practice so that they know to ask for the key when buying a PC. My suspicion is that most manufacturers will not give out the key by default, but will give it to you if you ask for it when you buy the PC.
I don't know why you're buying a computer with Windows to begin with if you're going to install Linux anyway, you're just throwing away money.
Maybe because many manufacturers actually sell PCs with Windows installed for less than they sell PCs with Linux (or no OS).
You need to learn the difference between a conspiracy (which is a group of people secretly plotting to do something--usually something illegal) and a group of people working together to accomplish some goal, each for his, or her, own reasons. Just because I believe that Warren Buffett and other wealthy individuals support increased taxes for ulterior motives does not mean that I believe they are conspiring to raise taxes in order to make more money.
And that is my point, there are a lot of rich guys calling for rich guys to be taxed more, yet there is no evidence that any of them put thier money where their mouth is.
You are making the mistake of thinking that the AT&T of today is the AT&T that was broken up. It isn't. Today's AT&T is no more the original AT&T than Verizon is. It is actually an interesting comparison. The parts of Verizon that were not part of the original AT&T are less significant in the formation of Verizon than the parts of current AT&T that were not part of the original AT&T (and those parts became part of current AT&T before it bought the carcass of the original AT&T and became AT&T).
Absolutely, if a site I want to visit requires me to give it my email address in order to look at its content and does not give me the option to choose not to recieve emails from them (and they are not a site I want to receive emails from), if I get emails from them, I click on the spam link. On the other hand, unlike many people I work very hard to remember that I intentionally asked a company, or organization, to send me email before I click spam. If I chose to receive email from a company and realize that they are sending me more email than I want to receive from them I will clik on the unsubscribe link in the email. The one exception to my rule about using the unsubscribe feature for emails I signed up for on purpose are emails from companies that offer a discount for giving them my email address.
Well, let's see. How about we look at the U.S.? The U.S. has steadily implemented more and more progressive policies starting in the early 20th century, over that same time period, progressives have been constantly harping about the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
If he voluntarily pays more, he will suffer unduly when his competitors do not.
If he can afford to give 30+ billion dollars to charity without suffering unduly to his competitors, surely he can afford to give an additional billion or two to the government without suffering unduly. HIs publicly stated logic for giving the large sum to charity was to encourage other billionaires to give large sums to charity, wouldn't the same logic apply to taxes (publicly overpay his taxes in order to encourage other wealthy individuals to do the same).
Money is still the way he keeps score. Additionally, the money he "gave" away went to an organization that he has significant say in how it uses the money. The fact of the matter is that Warren Buffett says that the government should take more of his money, yet he does not take advantage of the several methods available to him to give the government more money. If Warren Buffett took the opportunities he has to give additional money to the government, we would know that he genuinely believes that the government is spending tax money wisely and that it was deserving of receiving more money. Since he does not do this, one must conclude that he does not really believe that his tax bill should be higher and is making this statement for some other motive.