Actually, it is even more basic than not having something to readily invest in. It is that there has to be a single "currency" that can be used no matter where my trading partners are based. Before the Bretton Woods Conference after WWII, it was mostly gold. Since WWII, that currency has been the U.S. dollar. The reason that BRICS did not go further was that none of them wanted to agree on one of the other country's currency as the new standard (even for trade just between them). If the BRICS countries could agree to accept one of their country's currency as the standard for trade (or even some other country's), it would be a serious blow to the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency for world trade. None of the BRICS countries trust the others enough and/or are willing enough to give up the power advantage to make one of the other country's currency the reserve currency between them.
The U.S. dollar is no longer trustworthy enough to be made the world reserve currency, but no other currency is any more trustworthy, so a replacement has not been (and will not be) made. That may change at some point in the future and many people are looking for a replacement, but none are currently viable. If the U.S. dollar was not already the world reserve currency, it would not be made such today.
I thought the purpose of income tax was to raise money to pay for government programs. I think that using the tax laws for social engineering is a mistake and leads to widely disparate wealth distribution (those with political connections/power get very wealthy, those without those connections get poorer overtime).
You are apparently unaware that most of the money earned by the "super-rich" is not subject to income tax. Basically, what it comes down to is that you want to discourage people from earning more than you think is appropriate. Of course, this means that you want discourage people from maximizing their productivity. Yes, some of the people who you would call "super-rich" are not really productive, but many of them are. Additionally, the burden of a 90% top marginal tax rate would fall on those who are productive, because the others have the political connections to either get special exemptions carved out for themselves or to get away with it when they fail to actually pay the tax (Timothy Geithner, among others).
A while back Warren Buffet complained that he did not think it fair that he only paid 17% income tax, well, if he really thought that, why did he not pay more? The answer is that he didn't think that it was unfair that he only paid that amount, he thought it was unfair that someone else who made as much money as he did might only pay that much.
When the rich paid 90% income tax, they paid a smaller portion of the total tax bill. The poster I replied to wanted the rich to pay "a reasonable amount" and expressed the opinion that the middle and lower classes pay excessive taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay 2.7% of all federal income tax revenue. Is the OP suggesting that they should pay even less?
Considering that James Madison (the primary author of the Constitution) explicitly rejected expenditures similar to the ones you are saying are allowed because he did not believe that they were allowed under the Constitution, I think it is quite clear that, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, you are mistaken.
So, you would like the top 1% to pay over 35% of all federal income tax collected? Or maybe you think the top 5% should pay over 50% of all federal income tax collected?
Of course, the fact is they already do. So, exactly what do you consider a "reasonable" amount?
My point was that most people who find GIMP hard to use do so because it does not work the same as Photoshop. They think of the Photoshop method as the "right way" to do something, therefore when GIMP does it differently, it either does it the "wrong way" or it is harder to figure out. Often times when someone has used a particular interface long enough they come to believe that it is "intuitive" to do things that way.
I agree that that is intellectual laziness, but it is human nature to not want to learn a new way to do things when the old way works.
I found GIMP no harder to use than Photoshop when I first started. Of course, I first started using Photoshop and GIMP at about the same time, so I did not have any expectations from Photoshop to overcome when I was trying to learn GIMP.
I have come across several websites that use silverlight. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they are, since I promptly navigated away and never went back.
If speeding saves you time, the lights are timed wrong. On the other hand, if traveling at about the speed limit allows you to hit each light on green, you are doing what I am talking about. Of course, what I am mostly talking about is that I know the timing/traffic patterns related to most of the lights I go through.
That is exactly the point I was trying to make. I knew when I finished the post that I had failed to say it as clearly as I would have liked (but I didn't feel like taking the time to fix it).
Actually, a bigger problem with this sort of government centralized identity database is when the data about who you are becomes corrupted. When one database becomes the central arbiter of who you are, how do you get it corrected when it is wrong?
It will be possible to hack an identity. Whether it will be possible to convince a jury that your identity was hacked is another matter altogether.
There are other problems with this system as well. What happens when the system says that you are not you? Not that someone else is you, just that you are not you?
With this system in place, they will know the identity of everyone who posts online, except of course those who have hacked the system so as to appear as someone else. Once this system is in place it will be much easier for the government to gain convictions when crimes are commited. Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
If you hit each light while still moving, you do not lose time to acceleration. It is not much for a single stop light, but several spread out over several miles becomes significant. I first realized this when I travelled a stretch of four lane road with stop lights about every eighth to quarter mile. On several occassions, I got to a stop light next to another car that sped out when the light turned green. When I approached the next traffic light, they were stopped. I did not have to stop and rolled through the intersection passing them. At the fourth light, they were just catching up when the light changed behind me and they had to stop again.
I, also, used to speed a lot. However, I have learned that going really fast only to have to stop at the next traffic light does not get me to my destination any faster. In fact, if I can time it right going a little bit slower so as to reach the next traffic light on green actually gets me to my destination faster
I was going to say that Ken Rutkowski was like those guys who said that the dotcom bubble would never pop because it was a "new" economy and the boom and bust cycle was over. Then I googled him and read his wikipedia page and realized that he was almost certainly not just "like" those guys but actually one of them. He sounds like somebody who is always talking about how technology has made everything different. That the old rules about the economy aren't true anymore. Every now and again, you come across someone who manages to make money despite being consistently wrong about just about everything. Ken Rutkowski appears to be one of those guys.
Why do things differ so much from England to France? Both are part of the EU. When you answer that question, you will have at least part of the answer for why things differ so much from state to state in the US. Of course, the fact that the six largest EU states have larger populations than the largest US states contributes to some of the differences between EU and US centralization of authority. Comparing US laws to those of Great Britain is like comparing the laws of France to those of the East Midlands. Currently the only other country in the world, that I am aware of with anything close to the same sort of structure as that of the U.S. is Canada (Australia may also be similar, but I am less familiar with the Australian structure).
No, it won't work that way. Technically, when you buy something out of state, you are supposed to report it on your state income tax return (in those states with both a sales tax and an income tax, I'm not sure about those with just a sales tax) and pay your state sales tax on it (I think most states allow you to deduct the sales tax you paid in the other state). The problem with this law is for small Internet companies. Some states have sales tax that varies by local municipality. You cannot determine what the sales tax rate is from zip code because zip codes do not follow municipal boundaries. You have to actually know the local municipal maps. This is a significant cost in effort to comply with this for an Internet business that is not located in that particular state. Yes, there will be companies that will provide that service for you, but it is one more additional cost. I am helping a friend set up an internet business right now and as it is, it is more complicated than it ought to be. Every time we complete a step that we thought was the last one before we can take it live, we get informed of "one more step" we need to take.
Government agencies are required to place most purchases out for bid (and this is one that must be placed out for bid). What would you think of a government agency that put its need for vehicles out to bid in the following manner, "We are requesting competitive bids to replace our fleet of vehicles. All vendors are encouraged to submit bids. We are looking for 10,000 vehicles. Here are the specifications: GMC Yukon."
Except of course that it is worse than that. They put out a list of specifications that included things that MS Office does not have (FISMA certification). Now while according to this article Google Apps for Government does not yet have FISMA certification, Google Apps Premier (upon which Google Apps for Government is based) does. On the other hand, according to earlier postings here, no version of MS Office has FISMA certification. If this latter is not true, then Google's lawsuit is dumb. If on the other hand, it is true, then Google has a valid point.
On the other hand, Google appears much more savvy at greasing the wheels of government than Microsoft was at a similar stage of corporate development, which is cause for concern.
They will probably write and mail you a ticket for having an illegal junk yard with a fine for each of the 4320 "cars" parked in your driveway, that you wil have to go to separate court dates in order to fight.
His handler told him to go ahead and clear the debt, "just don't get caught." I think that makes it clear that the Secret Service was telling him that they would not go after him for anything he did, but that they would be unable to protect him from other law enforcement organizations. Of course, the other problem with his use of this defense is that he turned out to be one of the two biggest sources of credit card numbers for the guy they were after (or at least one of the guys they were after). In other words, if not for him, the crime they were using to try and solve would have been much smaller.
Sorry, but the theory of evolution did exist at that time. Darwin published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859 and LaMarck published in the early 1800s. In addition, there are roots of the theory of evolution that go back to the ancient Greeks.
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Actually, it is even more basic than not having something to readily invest in. It is that there has to be a single "currency" that can be used no matter where my trading partners are based. Before the Bretton Woods Conference after WWII, it was mostly gold. Since WWII, that currency has been the U.S. dollar. The reason that BRICS did not go further was that none of them wanted to agree on one of the other country's currency as the new standard (even for trade just between them). If the BRICS countries could agree to accept one of their country's currency as the standard for trade (or even some other country's), it would be a serious blow to the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency for world trade. None of the BRICS countries trust the others enough and/or are willing enough to give up the power advantage to make one of the other country's currency the reserve currency between them.
The U.S. dollar is no longer trustworthy enough to be made the world reserve currency, but no other currency is any more trustworthy, so a replacement has not been (and will not be) made. That may change at some point in the future and many people are looking for a replacement, but none are currently viable. If the U.S. dollar was not already the world reserve currency, it would not be made such today.
I thought the purpose of income tax was to raise money to pay for government programs. I think that using the tax laws for social engineering is a mistake and leads to widely disparate wealth distribution (those with political connections/power get very wealthy, those without those connections get poorer overtime).
You are apparently unaware that most of the money earned by the "super-rich" is not subject to income tax. Basically, what it comes down to is that you want to discourage people from earning more than you think is appropriate. Of course, this means that you want discourage people from maximizing their productivity. Yes, some of the people who you would call "super-rich" are not really productive, but many of them are. Additionally, the burden of a 90% top marginal tax rate would fall on those who are productive, because the others have the political connections to either get special exemptions carved out for themselves or to get away with it when they fail to actually pay the tax (Timothy Geithner, among others).
A while back Warren Buffet complained that he did not think it fair that he only paid 17% income tax, well, if he really thought that, why did he not pay more? The answer is that he didn't think that it was unfair that he only paid that amount, he thought it was unfair that someone else who made as much money as he did might only pay that much.
When the rich paid 90% income tax, they paid a smaller portion of the total tax bill. The poster I replied to wanted the rich to pay "a reasonable amount" and expressed the opinion that the middle and lower classes pay excessive taxes. The bottom 50% of earners pay 2.7% of all federal income tax revenue. Is the OP suggesting that they should pay even less?
Considering that James Madison (the primary author of the Constitution) explicitly rejected expenditures similar to the ones you are saying are allowed because he did not believe that they were allowed under the Constitution, I think it is quite clear that, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, you are mistaken.
So, you would like the top 1% to pay over 35% of all federal income tax collected? Or maybe you think the top 5% should pay over 50% of all federal income tax collected?
Of course, the fact is they already do. So, exactly what do you consider a "reasonable" amount?
My point was that most people who find GIMP hard to use do so because it does not work the same as Photoshop. They think of the Photoshop method as the "right way" to do something, therefore when GIMP does it differently, it either does it the "wrong way" or it is harder to figure out. Often times when someone has used a particular interface long enough they come to believe that it is "intuitive" to do things that way.
I agree that that is intellectual laziness, but it is human nature to not want to learn a new way to do things when the old way works.
I found GIMP no harder to use than Photoshop when I first started. Of course, I first started using Photoshop and GIMP at about the same time, so I did not have any expectations from Photoshop to overcome when I was trying to learn GIMP.
Yeah, I still can't get over the fact that even low end desktop PCs still cost over $1,000...oh wait, no they don't.
I have come across several websites that use silverlight. Unfortunately, I do not remember what they are, since I promptly navigated away and never went back.
How long do you think this will remain voluntary?
If speeding saves you time, the lights are timed wrong. On the other hand, if traveling at about the speed limit allows you to hit each light on green, you are doing what I am talking about. Of course, what I am mostly talking about is that I know the timing/traffic patterns related to most of the lights I go through.
That is exactly the point I was trying to make. I knew when I finished the post that I had failed to say it as clearly as I would have liked (but I didn't feel like taking the time to fix it).
Actually, a bigger problem with this sort of government centralized identity database is when the data about who you are becomes corrupted. When one database becomes the central arbiter of who you are, how do you get it corrected when it is wrong?
It will be possible to hack an identity. Whether it will be possible to convince a jury that your identity was hacked is another matter altogether.
There are other problems with this system as well. What happens when the system says that you are not you? Not that someone else is you, just that you are not you?
With this system in place, they will know the identity of everyone who posts online, except of course those who have hacked the system so as to appear as someone else. Once this system is in place it will be much easier for the government to gain convictions when crimes are commited. Of course, we will never know how many of the people convicted are the actual criminals, rather than just a victim of a hacker who chose their identity at random.
If you hit each light while still moving, you do not lose time to acceleration. It is not much for a single stop light, but several spread out over several miles becomes significant. I first realized this when I travelled a stretch of four lane road with stop lights about every eighth to quarter mile. On several occassions, I got to a stop light next to another car that sped out when the light turned green. When I approached the next traffic light, they were stopped. I did not have to stop and rolled through the intersection passing them. At the fourth light, they were just catching up when the light changed behind me and they had to stop again.
I, also, used to speed a lot. However, I have learned that going really fast only to have to stop at the next traffic light does not get me to my destination any faster. In fact, if I can time it right going a little bit slower so as to reach the next traffic light on green actually gets me to my destination faster
Of course the problem is that most criminals are criminals because they indulge in one or more of those sins.
I was going to say that Ken Rutkowski was like those guys who said that the dotcom bubble would never pop because it was a "new" economy and the boom and bust cycle was over. Then I googled him and read his wikipedia page and realized that he was almost certainly not just "like" those guys but actually one of them. He sounds like somebody who is always talking about how technology has made everything different. That the old rules about the economy aren't true anymore. Every now and again, you come across someone who manages to make money despite being consistently wrong about just about everything. Ken Rutkowski appears to be one of those guys.
Why do things differ so much from State to State?
Why do things differ so much from England to France? Both are part of the EU. When you answer that question, you will have at least part of the answer for why things differ so much from state to state in the US. Of course, the fact that the six largest EU states have larger populations than the largest US states contributes to some of the differences between EU and US centralization of authority. Comparing US laws to those of Great Britain is like comparing the laws of France to those of the East Midlands. Currently the only other country in the world, that I am aware of with anything close to the same sort of structure as that of the U.S. is Canada (Australia may also be similar, but I am less familiar with the Australian structure).
No, it won't work that way. Technically, when you buy something out of state, you are supposed to report it on your state income tax return (in those states with both a sales tax and an income tax, I'm not sure about those with just a sales tax) and pay your state sales tax on it (I think most states allow you to deduct the sales tax you paid in the other state). The problem with this law is for small Internet companies. Some states have sales tax that varies by local municipality. You cannot determine what the sales tax rate is from zip code because zip codes do not follow municipal boundaries. You have to actually know the local municipal maps. This is a significant cost in effort to comply with this for an Internet business that is not located in that particular state. Yes, there will be companies that will provide that service for you, but it is one more additional cost. I am helping a friend set up an internet business right now and as it is, it is more complicated than it ought to be. Every time we complete a step that we thought was the last one before we can take it live, we get informed of "one more step" we need to take.
Government agencies are required to place most purchases out for bid (and this is one that must be placed out for bid). What would you think of a government agency that put its need for vehicles out to bid in the following manner, "We are requesting competitive bids to replace our fleet of vehicles. All vendors are encouraged to submit bids. We are looking for 10,000 vehicles. Here are the specifications: GMC Yukon."
Except of course that it is worse than that. They put out a list of specifications that included things that MS Office does not have (FISMA certification). Now while according to this article Google Apps for Government does not yet have FISMA certification, Google Apps Premier (upon which Google Apps for Government is based) does. On the other hand, according to earlier postings here, no version of MS Office has FISMA certification. If this latter is not true, then Google's lawsuit is dumb. If on the other hand, it is true, then Google has a valid point.
On the other hand, Google appears much more savvy at greasing the wheels of government than Microsoft was at a similar stage of corporate development, which is cause for concern.
They will probably write and mail you a ticket for having an illegal junk yard with a fine for each of the 4320 "cars" parked in your driveway, that you wil have to go to separate court dates in order to fight.
His handler told him to go ahead and clear the debt, "just don't get caught." I think that makes it clear that the Secret Service was telling him that they would not go after him for anything he did, but that they would be unable to protect him from other law enforcement organizations. Of course, the other problem with his use of this defense is that he turned out to be one of the two biggest sources of credit card numbers for the guy they were after (or at least one of the guys they were after). In other words, if not for him, the crime they were using to try and solve would have been much smaller.
Sorry, but the theory of evolution did exist at that time. Darwin published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859 and LaMarck published in the early 1800s. In addition, there are roots of the theory of evolution that go back to the ancient Greeks.