Because most people don't even look at the itemized portion of their bill, they just pay it. I have on a few occasions purchased a service online using my phone bill (it has been a few years, so I don't remember what). I did it because I did not have a credit card at the time. I have, also, had a few "mystery" charges turn up. When I called the telephone company and challenged them,they immediately took them off of my bill (and told me they would flag that vendor for abuse of the system). Of course, it does not help that there are several routine charges on the telephone bill that are hard to decipher. These are government mandated charges, or taxes, that appear on the bill in a manner that is hard to decipher because the law implementing them requires that (the legislators don't want people to realize that it's thier fault those charges are there).
Self professed atheists have been responsible for more violence and death than self professed religious people of all faiths throughout history (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro). Second on the issue of child abuse, if during the high point of child abuse by priests you were a Catholic parent who sent your child to public school and your child was an altar boy, the odds were higher that a teacher in the public school would sexually abuse your child than that a priest would.
I am not a Catholic, but the incidence of sexual abuse of children is higher among teachers than it is among Catholic priests.
The fact remains that the true purpose of microtransactions, like worms, is malicious.
Sorry, he gave you an example of where the use of microtransactions in a game is not evil. You respond, that while some companies may not use microtransactions in an evil way, since the majority do, microtransactions are inherently evil. Sorry, if something is inherently evil, there is no way to use it in a non-evil way.
No, it's like being arrested for drunk driving when you come out of the bar and the police tell you to get in your car and drive away or they will shoot you. She was given two choices, let her daughter be scanned by a device that emits radiation and has been reported (quite possibly erroneously) to potentially cause health problems or let a stranger run his/her hands all over her daughter. Leaving the airport and not flying was not one of her choices.
Throughout history the market has consistently done a better job of prioritizing economic activity than central planning by a margin that is not even close. This has been proven more often than your claim.
I have been following this story and I can only see two explanations for this program. One: Giving guns to Mexican drug traffickers in the hope that those guns would be found at the scenes of crimes in order to drum up support for tougher gun laws and regulations. Two: Absolute and complete incompetence. Once the straw purchasers handed the guns over to the people they had purchased them for, the BATFE stopped tracking them, but even if they had, how were they going to track them once they entered Mexico? And even if they had, how were they going to arrest and prosecute the criminal masterminds they claimed they were after, when those criminals were in Mexico?
Read up on the story, there just doesn't seem to be any explanation for this project that does not lead to some high level people being eligible for accessory-to-murder charges.
It was not an attempt at a sting that went bad. It was attempt to increase the number of guns from the U.S. used in crimes in Mexico in order to stir up demand for stricter gun laws and regulations in the U.S.. There is no rational explanation of how the operation was supposed to lead to higher up criminals when the BATFE agents were told to not follow the guys who got the guns from the straw purchasers.
OK, that is the existing system. Some states are trying to change that so that they can get businesses outside of thier jurisdiction who ship it to people in their jurisdiction to collect sales tax for them.
For the most part, the people I have read who publish opposition to raising taxes do not oppose raising taxes because they are inherently opposed to raising taxes. They oppose raising taxes because the only reason to raise taxes is because the government is spending more than it is taking in and they believe that the government should be spending less.
One thing I have seen over my lifetime is that every so often some big problem happens and people demand that the government "do something" (or, even more likely the politicians say, "See, this bad thing happened and now we are "doing something" to make sure it doesn't happen again."). The problem is that usually the thing that happened was a result of bad government policy in the first place. Right now the BATFE is implementing new regulations on gun sales in states bordering Mexico because "too many guns are going from the border states to Mexican criminals". What they aren't saying is that the reason those guns are going from gunshops in border states to the Mexican drug cartels is because the BATFE (and several other federal agencies) have been sending them.
Yes, I am saying that requiring businesses to collect sales tax disguises the cost of actually collecting the tax. I certainly agree that your idea is a sound proposal taxes should go from the individual/business that is paying them directly to the governemnt.
However, the problem with your system is this, how do you enforce your tax against a business that does not have a presence inside your jurisdiction?
OK, I will grant you that. The important point is that the poster I replied to thought the guy who refused the plea deal (and who hacked into his neighbor's network) was the father of the child, when in fact it was not.
I am aware of this. Just because it has always been done this way, doesn't mean that it is not a bad idea. One reason that some problems are so hard to fix is because a new development reveals a flaw in the system. People have a tendency to study the new development to find the solution to the problem, even when the actual source of the problem is in the way the system was structured before the new development occurred. This is actually part of the problem with dealing with sales tax in the Internet age. The assumption is that we just have to tweak the sales tax system to address this minor glitch, when the "minor glitch" may be the result of a structural problem that was there all along.
The way the IRS defines it, I'm not sure how you would not derive income from the barter. If I come work on your computer in exchange for you doing carpentry work on my house, the IRS wants us both to pay income tax on that transaction.
The problem is that government spending has increased faster than inflation for my entire life, both when the economy is doing well and when it is doing poorly. At some point, we have to say, we cannot afford to continue expanding the government. Very few of the people who are arguing against Internet taxation are arguing "Keeping MY money is the most important thing." Most of them are arguing that the government is consuming too large a portion of our economy and if this does not stop there will not be any economy left to support any government at all.
What you fail to understand is that not all states have a sales tax. If Amazon was required by a particular state to collect sales tax on sales shipped out of that state, they would simply close any presence they have in that state and move it to a state without such requirements (quite likely one with no sales tax at all).
You mean the way that mail order houses do. No, wait, mail order firms do NOT collect sales taxes in states they are not located in.
Maybe the problem here is requiring private businesses to act as tax collectors.
You missed the fact that the hacker was the kisser, not the father of the child (not really a big deal, so did I on a first read through of the summary).
This looks to me like a case where the prosecutor felt that a two year sentnece was a sufficiently harsh sentence to be worth letting the guy skate on the rest of the criminal violations. When the guy refused that, the prosecutor said, "Well, if we have to go through a trial anyway, we might as well go for everything." There is some legitimacy to that in this case, although it is often scary how prosecutors use the threat of massive prosecution to secure plea deals for what are really very minor offenses where there is significant question as to the suspect's guilt. On the other side (and just as bad of a use of plea deals), are cases where people who have committed rather heinous crimes are allowed to plea down to something minor (this might actually be a case where such a deal was offered and rejected).
You appear to have missed the fact that the person who said 'I decided to "get even" by launching computer attacks against him,' is the guy who kissed the other guy's son, not the guy who reported it to the police (which by the way, I did as well on the first read through of the summary).
Correct, the fact that Google offered to license the patents does not,in and of itself, indicate that Google thought the patents were valid. All it means is that Google was aware that they existed. It is distinctly possible that they thought it might be cheaper to license the patents from Sun than to challenge their validity in court. When Sun wanted more than that, Google decided to go ahead and let Sun/Oracle take them to court.
I am confused as to how the failure of the ISPs to keep a log of their users' Internet usage could cause health problems for their users (or others). This law is not intended to protect the general populace. It is intended to allow law enforcement to prosecute people after the fact.
The laws and regulations governing food safety are not in any way equivalent to laws covering the ISPs retaining a record of their customers' activity.
Why should the government be concerned about "costly upgrades"? Shouldn't that be the concern of the utilities that will profit from selling the electricity? The fact is that historical evidence suggests that as the devices people use become more energy efficient people use them more, usually consuming more energy with the more efficient devices than they did with the previous less efficient devices.
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Because most people don't even look at the itemized portion of their bill, they just pay it. I have on a few occasions purchased a service online using my phone bill (it has been a few years, so I don't remember what). I did it because I did not have a credit card at the time. I have, also, had a few "mystery" charges turn up. When I called the telephone company and challenged them,they immediately took them off of my bill (and told me they would flag that vendor for abuse of the system). Of course, it does not help that there are several routine charges on the telephone bill that are hard to decipher. These are government mandated charges, or taxes, that appear on the bill in a manner that is hard to decipher because the law implementing them requires that (the legislators don't want people to realize that it's thier fault those charges are there).
Self professed atheists have been responsible for more violence and death than self professed religious people of all faiths throughout history (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro). Second on the issue of child abuse, if during the high point of child abuse by priests you were a Catholic parent who sent your child to public school and your child was an altar boy, the odds were higher that a teacher in the public school would sexually abuse your child than that a priest would.
I am not a Catholic, but the incidence of sexual abuse of children is higher among teachers than it is among Catholic priests.
The fact remains that the true purpose of microtransactions, like worms, is malicious.
Sorry, he gave you an example of where the use of microtransactions in a game is not evil. You respond, that while some companies may not use microtransactions in an evil way, since the majority do, microtransactions are inherently evil. Sorry, if something is inherently evil, there is no way to use it in a non-evil way.
Canceling the trip was not one of her options.
No, it's like being arrested for drunk driving when you come out of the bar and the police tell you to get in your car and drive away or they will shoot you. She was given two choices, let her daughter be scanned by a device that emits radiation and has been reported (quite possibly erroneously) to potentially cause health problems or let a stranger run his/her hands all over her daughter. Leaving the airport and not flying was not one of her choices.
Throughout history the market has consistently done a better job of prioritizing economic activity than central planning by a margin that is not even close. This has been proven more often than your claim.
I have been following this story and I can only see two explanations for this program. One: Giving guns to Mexican drug traffickers in the hope that those guns would be found at the scenes of crimes in order to drum up support for tougher gun laws and regulations. Two: Absolute and complete incompetence. Once the straw purchasers handed the guns over to the people they had purchased them for, the BATFE stopped tracking them, but even if they had, how were they going to track them once they entered Mexico? And even if they had, how were they going to arrest and prosecute the criminal masterminds they claimed they were after, when those criminals were in Mexico?
Read up on the story, there just doesn't seem to be any explanation for this project that does not lead to some high level people being eligible for accessory-to-murder charges.
It was not an attempt at a sting that went bad. It was attempt to increase the number of guns from the U.S. used in crimes in Mexico in order to stir up demand for stricter gun laws and regulations in the U.S.. There is no rational explanation of how the operation was supposed to lead to higher up criminals when the BATFE agents were told to not follow the guys who got the guns from the straw purchasers.
Under your system, Amazon would still have a competitive advantage.
OK, that is the existing system. Some states are trying to change that so that they can get businesses outside of thier jurisdiction who ship it to people in their jurisdiction to collect sales tax for them.
For the most part, the people I have read who publish opposition to raising taxes do not oppose raising taxes because they are inherently opposed to raising taxes. They oppose raising taxes because the only reason to raise taxes is because the government is spending more than it is taking in and they believe that the government should be spending less.
One thing I have seen over my lifetime is that every so often some big problem happens and people demand that the government "do something" (or, even more likely the politicians say, "See, this bad thing happened and now we are "doing something" to make sure it doesn't happen again."). The problem is that usually the thing that happened was a result of bad government policy in the first place. Right now the BATFE is implementing new regulations on gun sales in states bordering Mexico because "too many guns are going from the border states to Mexican criminals". What they aren't saying is that the reason those guns are going from gunshops in border states to the Mexican drug cartels is because the BATFE (and several other federal agencies) have been sending them.
Yes, I am saying that requiring businesses to collect sales tax disguises the cost of actually collecting the tax. I certainly agree that your idea is a sound proposal taxes should go from the individual/business that is paying them directly to the governemnt.
However, the problem with your system is this, how do you enforce your tax against a business that does not have a presence inside your jurisdiction?
OK, I will grant you that. The important point is that the poster I replied to thought the guy who refused the plea deal (and who hacked into his neighbor's network) was the father of the child, when in fact it was not.
I am aware of this. Just because it has always been done this way, doesn't mean that it is not a bad idea. One reason that some problems are so hard to fix is because a new development reveals a flaw in the system. People have a tendency to study the new development to find the solution to the problem, even when the actual source of the problem is in the way the system was structured before the new development occurred. This is actually part of the problem with dealing with sales tax in the Internet age. The assumption is that we just have to tweak the sales tax system to address this minor glitch, when the "minor glitch" may be the result of a structural problem that was there all along.
The way the IRS defines it, I'm not sure how you would not derive income from the barter. If I come work on your computer in exchange for you doing carpentry work on my house, the IRS wants us both to pay income tax on that transaction.
The problem is that government spending has increased faster than inflation for my entire life, both when the economy is doing well and when it is doing poorly. At some point, we have to say, we cannot afford to continue expanding the government. Very few of the people who are arguing against Internet taxation are arguing "Keeping MY money is the most important thing." Most of them are arguing that the government is consuming too large a portion of our economy and if this does not stop there will not be any economy left to support any government at all.
What you fail to understand is that not all states have a sales tax. If Amazon was required by a particular state to collect sales tax on sales shipped out of that state, they would simply close any presence they have in that state and move it to a state without such requirements (quite likely one with no sales tax at all).
If you quit getting paid in US dollars, the US government will quit asking for them.
That is not true, the IRS demands that you pay income tax on barter.
You mean the way that mail order houses do. No, wait, mail order firms do NOT collect sales taxes in states they are not located in.
Maybe the problem here is requiring private businesses to act as tax collectors.
You missed the fact that the hacker was the kisser, not the father of the child (not really a big deal, so did I on a first read through of the summary).
This looks to me like a case where the prosecutor felt that a two year sentnece was a sufficiently harsh sentence to be worth letting the guy skate on the rest of the criminal violations. When the guy refused that, the prosecutor said, "Well, if we have to go through a trial anyway, we might as well go for everything." There is some legitimacy to that in this case, although it is often scary how prosecutors use the threat of massive prosecution to secure plea deals for what are really very minor offenses where there is significant question as to the suspect's guilt. On the other side (and just as bad of a use of plea deals), are cases where people who have committed rather heinous crimes are allowed to plea down to something minor (this might actually be a case where such a deal was offered and rejected).
You appear to have missed the fact that the person who said 'I decided to "get even" by launching computer attacks against him,' is the guy who kissed the other guy's son, not the guy who reported it to the police (which by the way, I did as well on the first read through of the summary).
Correct, the fact that Google offered to license the patents does not,in and of itself, indicate that Google thought the patents were valid. All it means is that Google was aware that they existed. It is distinctly possible that they thought it might be cheaper to license the patents from Sun than to challenge their validity in court. When Sun wanted more than that, Google decided to go ahead and let Sun/Oracle take them to court.
I am confused as to how the failure of the ISPs to keep a log of their users' Internet usage could cause health problems for their users (or others). This law is not intended to protect the general populace. It is intended to allow law enforcement to prosecute people after the fact.
The laws and regulations governing food safety are not in any way equivalent to laws covering the ISPs retaining a record of their customers' activity.
Why should the government be concerned about "costly upgrades"? Shouldn't that be the concern of the utilities that will profit from selling the electricity? The fact is that historical evidence suggests that as the devices people use become more energy efficient people use them more, usually consuming more energy with the more efficient devices than they did with the previous less efficient devices.