What makes you think that temperatures haven't increased in the last 15 years? 2010 was tied with 2005 for the hottest year in the GISS record. It's looking like 2012 will set a new record if an El Nino develops.
But there 10's of thousands of times less CFC replacement gases in the atmosphere than CO2 so they are a minor component of GHG warming. By themselves they wouldn't cause enough warming to worry about. Adding them on top of CO2 and methane they don't help.
The only problem with Social Security is the question of whether the federal government is going to pay back what they've borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund or not. Social Security itself is in fine shape until sometime in the 2030's when the trust fund runs out and even then it will still be able to pay 70-80% of scheduled benefits. An easy fix would be to raise the cutoff point where you don't have to pay FICA from it's current $106,000 (approximately) to something like $250,000. Social Security will only fail if people like you get their way.
Nuclear power is good for base load but not much good for peak or periodic power. You can't just power up a nuclear plant in a number of minutes, it takes hours at least. I suppose you could just keep them running at full power and shunt the steam around the turbines when you don't need power but that's not very efficient.
The sun rains down more energy on this planet in less than 12 hours than the human race uses in a whole year. I don't think us drawing off a small part of it for renewable energy is going to affect the natural world enough to notice except maybe a bit in the immediate vicinity of the power station.
In the US in the 1960's nuclear power plant containment domes were designed to survive a Boeing 707 being flown into them. Of course there are other parts of the plant outside of the containment dome that could be affected.
Of course not. The 90%+ rate only applied to income over something like $2 million (which in 1960 was equivalent to something like $20 million in 2011). Also there were lots of loopholes. I don't have a problem with people who reap above average incomes paying more. Would they have the same opportunities elsewhere?
Consult the table. Its %x over $y. People on the top end are paying %10 more than in that bracket.
I don't get your point.
Who said anything about Amazon being a charity? The situation now is that Amazon is getting the charity in the form of a competitive advantage over local businesses that have to collect and remit the sales tax.
I know it's lame to reply to myself but this is a blanket reply to HellYeahAutomaton, demonlapin and Score Whore.
When I was growing up the country had a top tax rate over 90% and we did fine. In the mid 60's it was reduced to 70some% and we still did fine. If there is enough demand for a product or service and someone decides they don't want to work so hard because they're paying too much tax then someone else will fill the void. Taxes don't have that much to do with it.
No, I support people paying the taxes they owe regardless of the method of taxation. If you don't like the taxes you have to pay then work to get it changed but don't avoid paying what you owe by sneaking around the back door. I compare that to the moral people who honestly pay their taxes in spite of being able to take advantage of the same situation as someone who avoided the taxes. I imagine you consider them to be stupid for being that honest.
I paid 8.3% of my taxable income (7% of total income) in Oregon income tax for 2010 and another 4.3% in property taxes to local governments and school districts. I wouldn't mind it being lower but I also think most of the money is spent in ways that improve my quality of life so I don't begrudge the taxes much. I consider it the cost of a civilized society and my dues for being part of the club.
The fact is the tax is due in the various states whether it's the purchaser who is supposed to report it or the retailer. I think what the various sales taxing authorities need to do is get together and create an internet clearing house for sales taxes that can determine the sales tax owed based on zip code. Then when an order is placed with an online retailer they send off a data packet to the clearing house with the UPC, amount and zip code and the clearing house returns the amount of sales tax to add to the bill. Once the sales transaction is completed the retailer sends a confirmation message to the clearing house. Then weekly or monthly the retailer sends a check to the clearing house for the amount of sales taxes it has collected (I'd even be willing to let them keep a small portion of it as a service fee) and the clearing house takes care of disbursing it to the appropriate taxing authorities. The clearing house would be paid for by taking a small cut of the money it collects.
I live in Oregon which has no sales tax but it seems unfair to local businesses in sales tax states that they have to compete with on-line businesses that don't have to collect the tax. You may argue that it's ok to avoid taxes when you can but it just shifts the burden to others when you avoid it, not a moral position that I can defend.
The reason "tax the rich" doesn't work is because it creates incentives for people becoming underachievers.
I have never understood this. If taxes are increased for you you're not going to be able to increase your total take home by reducing your tax bracket. For example say they increase the tax on income over $250,000. You still pay the same in tax rate as everyone else under $250,000 on your first $250,000 but now on income over that amount you pay an additional tax. You're still going to take home more than if you were under $250,000, just not quite as much as before.
And rich people don't create jobs just because they have money sitting around to spend. Jobs are created by demand for products and services. It does no good to be rich as can be if there are no people with enough disposable income of their own to buy the stuff you produce. The US economy is something like 70% consumer spending and when you increasingly polarize the income disparity it further reduces the ability of those on the lower end of the scale to spend which doesn't help the situation.
No, fact checking would point out that Gore never claimed to invent the internet. What he did do is write and introduce the legislation that opened up ARPANET from an academic/DOD network to a countrywide network open to all and sponsored research that lead to Mosaic among other things. Gore didn't invent the internet but he was instrumental in helping it get going as a nationwide resource and he did say that. See here for a more complete exposition on Al Gore and the Internet.
I don't even care that much that he cheated on his sick wife. That's between the two of them. But serving divorce papers to her while she's in a hospital bed for chemo is pretty cold.
Those were quotes from two different people. I wasn't responding to the quote from David Viner but to the quote from David Parker. But I don't think events from the last few years necessarily put the lie to Viner's quote either. The rate of climate change is pretty slow in human terms but it's continuing with no end in sight yet.
If you think climate models are even attempting to predict snowfall then you have no idea what they do.
... said that eventually British children could have only "virtual" experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
Note he said "eventually" which is pretty open ended. It could mean 100 years from now. Same thing applies to the DC comment. That's the problem with talking about future effects of global warming. Everyone wants to interpret it as something that happens in the next 5 or 10 years instead of something that changes over several/many decades.
One thing is for sure, the approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures we have seen so far has raised the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by about 4%. That means more water is available for precipitation. Also, the snowiest years are the warmer winters. The colder air is the less water vapor it holds and so the less water is available for precipitation. Ever notice how it doesn't really snow much when the temperature is below 0F (-18 C)?
Sea level rose about 10 inches in the 20th century and current projections are for at least 1 meter (40 inches) by 2100. It's not going to rush in and flood people out in a few years but that's enough to cause issues with a lot of infrastructure we've built along the coasts.
Can you give me a reference for sea level rise being debunked (other than some well know global warming denier site)?
It's funny you should bring that up. I see creationism and global warming denial as two sides of the same coin. Both are allowing their ideological biases to override what the science says. Science isn't always right but it's self correcting.
Yes, I saw the earlier post and knew it was wrong. And I was only talking about federal taxes. I took a look at your link. Those again are the nominal rates. I'm more interested in the effective rate which is considerably lower for many if not most corporations. But I wasn't really replying directly to you so much as making a general comment.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that's in insightful comment.
That just shows that it's too complicated for your simple mind to understand.
What makes you think that temperatures haven't increased in the last 15 years? 2010 was tied with 2005 for the hottest year in the GISS record. It's looking like 2012 will set a new record if an El Nino develops.
But there 10's of thousands of times less CFC replacement gases in the atmosphere than CO2 so they are a minor component of GHG warming. By themselves they wouldn't cause enough warming to worry about. Adding them on top of CO2 and methane they don't help.
The only problem with Social Security is the question of whether the federal government is going to pay back what they've borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund or not. Social Security itself is in fine shape until sometime in the 2030's when the trust fund runs out and even then it will still be able to pay 70-80% of scheduled benefits. An easy fix would be to raise the cutoff point where you don't have to pay FICA from it's current $106,000 (approximately) to something like $250,000. Social Security will only fail if people like you get their way.
Nuclear power is good for base load but not much good for peak or periodic power. You can't just power up a nuclear plant in a number of minutes, it takes hours at least. I suppose you could just keep them running at full power and shunt the steam around the turbines when you don't need power but that's not very efficient.
The sun rains down more energy on this planet in less than 12 hours than the human race uses in a whole year. I don't think us drawing off a small part of it for renewable energy is going to affect the natural world enough to notice except maybe a bit in the immediate vicinity of the power station.
In the US in the 1960's nuclear power plant containment domes were designed to survive a Boeing 707 being flown into them. Of course there are other parts of the plant outside of the containment dome that could be affected.
Of course not. The 90%+ rate only applied to income over something like $2 million (which in 1960 was equivalent to something like $20 million in 2011). Also there were lots of loopholes. I don't have a problem with people who reap above average incomes paying more. Would they have the same opportunities elsewhere?
Consult the table. Its %x over $y. People on the top end are paying %10 more than in that bracket.
I don't get your point.
Who said anything about Amazon being a charity? The situation now is that Amazon is getting the charity in the form of a competitive advantage over local businesses that have to collect and remit the sales tax.
I know it's lame to reply to myself but this is a blanket reply to HellYeahAutomaton, demonlapin and Score Whore.
When I was growing up the country had a top tax rate over 90% and we did fine. In the mid 60's it was reduced to 70some% and we still did fine. If there is enough demand for a product or service and someone decides they don't want to work so hard because they're paying too much tax then someone else will fill the void. Taxes don't have that much to do with it.
No, I support people paying the taxes they owe regardless of the method of taxation. If you don't like the taxes you have to pay then work to get it changed but don't avoid paying what you owe by sneaking around the back door. I compare that to the moral people who honestly pay their taxes in spite of being able to take advantage of the same situation as someone who avoided the taxes. I imagine you consider them to be stupid for being that honest.
I paid 8.3% of my taxable income (7% of total income) in Oregon income tax for 2010 and another 4.3% in property taxes to local governments and school districts. I wouldn't mind it being lower but I also think most of the money is spent in ways that improve my quality of life so I don't begrudge the taxes much. I consider it the cost of a civilized society and my dues for being part of the club.
... and the US came to resemble the USSR, or whatever totalitarian state you'd prefer to compare it to ...
Of course the US would become a fascist state. We're already halfway there.
Nah, then the Saskatchewanders would just become the new Palestinians.
The fact is the tax is due in the various states whether it's the purchaser who is supposed to report it or the retailer. I think what the various sales taxing authorities need to do is get together and create an internet clearing house for sales taxes that can determine the sales tax owed based on zip code. Then when an order is placed with an online retailer they send off a data packet to the clearing house with the UPC, amount and zip code and the clearing house returns the amount of sales tax to add to the bill. Once the sales transaction is completed the retailer sends a confirmation message to the clearing house. Then weekly or monthly the retailer sends a check to the clearing house for the amount of sales taxes it has collected (I'd even be willing to let them keep a small portion of it as a service fee) and the clearing house takes care of disbursing it to the appropriate taxing authorities. The clearing house would be paid for by taking a small cut of the money it collects.
I live in Oregon which has no sales tax but it seems unfair to local businesses in sales tax states that they have to compete with on-line businesses that don't have to collect the tax. You may argue that it's ok to avoid taxes when you can but it just shifts the burden to others when you avoid it, not a moral position that I can defend.
The reason "tax the rich" doesn't work is because it creates incentives for people becoming underachievers.
I have never understood this. If taxes are increased for you you're not going to be able to increase your total take home by reducing your tax bracket. For example say they increase the tax on income over $250,000. You still pay the same in tax rate as everyone else under $250,000 on your first $250,000 but now on income over that amount you pay an additional tax. You're still going to take home more than if you were under $250,000, just not quite as much as before.
And rich people don't create jobs just because they have money sitting around to spend. Jobs are created by demand for products and services. It does no good to be rich as can be if there are no people with enough disposable income of their own to buy the stuff you produce. The US economy is something like 70% consumer spending and when you increasingly polarize the income disparity it further reduces the ability of those on the lower end of the scale to spend which doesn't help the situation.
No, fact checking would point out that Gore never claimed to invent the internet. What he did do is write and introduce the legislation that opened up ARPANET from an academic/DOD network to a countrywide network open to all and sponsored research that lead to Mosaic among other things. Gore didn't invent the internet but he was instrumental in helping it get going as a nationwide resource and he did say that. See here for a more complete exposition on Al Gore and the Internet.
I'll give Boner (Boehner) the respect of pronouncing his name the way he prefers it once he learns the proper name of the opposing (Democratic) party.
Thanks for the information. It's still pretty cold.
I don't even care that much that he cheated on his sick wife. That's between the two of them. But serving divorce papers to her while she's in a hospital bed for chemo is pretty cold.
Those were quotes from two different people. I wasn't responding to the quote from David Viner but to the quote from David Parker. But I don't think events from the last few years necessarily put the lie to Viner's quote either. The rate of climate change is pretty slow in human terms but it's continuing with no end in sight yet.
If you think climate models are even attempting to predict snowfall then you have no idea what they do.
... said that eventually British children could have only "virtual" experience of snow via movies and the Internet.
Note he said "eventually" which is pretty open ended. It could mean 100 years from now. Same thing applies to the DC comment. That's the problem with talking about future effects of global warming. Everyone wants to interpret it as something that happens in the next 5 or 10 years instead of something that changes over several/many decades.
One thing is for sure, the approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures we have seen so far has raised the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by about 4%. That means more water is available for precipitation. Also, the snowiest years are the warmer winters. The colder air is the less water vapor it holds and so the less water is available for precipitation. Ever notice how it doesn't really snow much when the temperature is below 0F (-18 C)?
Sea level rose about 10 inches in the 20th century and current projections are for at least 1 meter (40 inches) by 2100. It's not going to rush in and flood people out in a few years but that's enough to cause issues with a lot of infrastructure we've built along the coasts.
Can you give me a reference for sea level rise being debunked (other than some well know global warming denier site)?
It's funny you should bring that up. I see creationism and global warming denial as two sides of the same coin. Both are allowing their ideological biases to override what the science says. Science isn't always right but it's self correcting.
Yes, I saw the earlier post and knew it was wrong. And I was only talking about federal taxes. I took a look at your link. Those again are the nominal rates. I'm more interested in the effective rate which is considerably lower for many if not most corporations. But I wasn't really replying directly to you so much as making a general comment.