1) Your link seems to just prove my point. 45% average tax rate across EU is much lower than that damn 60+24 VAT of Finland. QED.
2) 3 out of the 10 best high schools in US are in my area. I don't think I picked specifically a place with the lousy education system. Who should I have picked? Kansas?
3) I mean they are lacking electricity, running water, hospital within 4 hour driving distance,... basics even rural places in EU have.
You stop being an authoritarian control freak fascist and let them live freely and learn from experience. If you never let your kid ride a bike, because he fell once, he will never learn to ride a bike. It is that simple.
Czech Republic has been a socialist state. Do you want to tell me they are not welfare enough yet? They started from a full welfare state and move gradually away to a less welfare state. Finland is quite an outlier in EU, there are about 10 states in EU that are very similar to Czech Republic, but none that are like Finland, even in Scandinavia they are out there. California is not representative of US, but it is what I know and as it is 1/6 of US population wise, let's just say forget the rest of US for now, why cannot California do what EU does?
Well, there are places that are dragging the rest of the country down. If you wanted to average tax rates across the whole of EU, you would also got them much lower. I specifically choose California because it is closest to EU in living standard. I have not lived on east coast to be able to compare it with New England for example. Some parts of the other parts of US I visited are often more like Ukraine, Uzbekistan or Romania from what I could see.
Half of the population of California lives in the two massive population centers around SF and LA, hardly atypical. Median income here is 75k-90k depending on area, 20k more for families. So I am in the +- 50% of the median belt. Further the middle class is not defined by income, but as: "the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business workers and their families" so as a professional worker, I am clearly part of that group. Again, my situation is fairly common in this area.
As for that fool, I would like to know exactly what it is that I am getting extra. Compared to Czech Republic where I grew up with 23% top tax rate and 21% sales tax for example? Healthcare is the same level as far as I can tell, maybe better dental care here, but they got universal coverage. Roads are better here, Internet access over there (sad considering I live in Silicon Valley), Social conditions way better over there, Safety better there, Society is more liberal there, Xenophobia is lower here, Crime is lower there, K12 Schools are better there. Universities better here, but they got free education. There they got 4-5 weeks vacation, 2 years maternity, sick leave. Unemployment is 5% in both places. Salaries are higher here, but in my field only about 50% higher, matching the cost of living so that is a wash. Culture is better over there (theatre, opera, museums, galleries, historical buildings). I don't see something standing out here so much I could call it a clear advantage.
Look, you are right that although some of my income is in 28% bracket, it is not all of it and so the effective rate is lower, but I simply calculate all the money I paid in taxes, added sales tax on spendings, added property taxes and divided them by all the money I made and my employer paid for me. Maybe I need better tax advice still the taxes are just pretty high.
But even if I were to accept that I got no idea about my own taxes, and they are actually lower, let's say those 40%. Still that does not put the EU countries in "massively higher taxes" category. Some of them, for sure. But in most countries the max tax rate plus vat are under 60%, in at least 10 of them it is around 40% and the effective rates are lower as those are max rates. There are exceptions in Scandinavia the max rates go as high as 60% and VAT to 24%, but again the effective rate is hardly anywhere over 60% and in most places around 40% just like in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The point here is that we have places in US with rates similar to those of the EU countries, but we don't have nearly close to the advantages the citizens of those countries are getting for those taxes. If they can do basic income to repace welfare, maybe we should be in position to do the same, with just a bit better governing.
And I forgot, the property tax is only theoretically 1%. Most counties have extra property tax, so it is 1.1% in most places and as high as 1.7% is some.
You have not been to Sillicon Valley right? $1M barely gets you a roof over your head, for $100-200k you get doghouse at best. And someone making $61k a year is nowhere near middle class, I've got friends making this much here. I don't care what the rates are for others, I know what they are for me. As for FICA, you forgot that it is paid twice, once by you and once by employers, which means the employer will not give you that amount in salary. So even in your example you miss 7.65% so you would be at 41.13%. But again, I talk about my situation. Sales tax where I live is 10% and I spend sadly most of my income, it is pretty expensive to live here. You will find that in SF Bay Area that is quite common in single income households. And someone who is not in the highest tax bracket clearly would not be the worst tax situation possible. So maybe you should stop accusing other people who's situation you got no clue about of lying when you yourself are spreading misinformation.
Nobody says that it never happens. But it does not happen enough for lost money to outweigh the amount of money you need to spend on checking that it does not happen. Your anecdotes do not help and you are suggesting that what you said in your anecdotal evidence is a problem, no matter how much you try to deny it. You are using exactly the same arguments every opponent of UBI is using: "Even one fraudster would be too much, we must not let those people steal, that would be the end of the world!" UBI might have drawbacks, but not what you are suggesting. We give them the money. If they don't buy food, they will be hungry. Next month their primary need will be food, not shopping. So they will go eat. If they keep getting the money, eventually they will learn to balance their spending on their needs.
Another point is that once you have a bunch of guys getting money on a regular basis, there is opportunity for someone to help them out, as the unreliability of those guys and the uncertainty of them being able to get the income is lifted. Maybe all they want to do is sit around and play console games. Fine, if 4 of them get together, they might have enough money to get an apartment, big TV, xbox and play games all day. I don't mind. Good for them. At least I don't have to work with some stupid unmotivated punk at my workplace that will just slow me down. And at least they are not in the streets stealing. It is a win win win. In few years some of them maybe get bored and learn some useful skill, do something productive. Who knows. It is a small price to pay for the other benefits.
For example in US mothers often go back to work as early as 2 weeks after giving birth. Can you imagine that? I cannot. How much better would those kids do in life if they could stay home with them on basic income for a year or two? Can you imagine how much smarter those kids will be in 20 years? How many problems that can lift in just one generation? What about the fathers? Not finding a job is no longer a reason to join gang, sell drugs, go to jail. So maybe you got almost no money and live on basic income, but you got now two people raising that kid.
What about veterans? What about disabled people? What about mentally sick? There will always be some punk like you arguing with that one kid that bought xbox. FFS. I've had enough of you guys.
At least SFO and few other airports no longer require to take off your shoes.
BTW If you want a check to be deterrent you can simply just use it on 10% of the passengers. Like the shoe check for example. Uncertainty is still sufficient deterrent and it will speed up the lines quite a bit. I would even go as far as simply just screen 10% of the passengers for anything. The checks could be much more thorough, just like we do with the customs. There is no reason why the model that works for customs should not be replicated for the security checks.
Baloney, I live in California, effective tax rate is over 50% on middle class. (28% federal, 10% state, 10% sales, 15% medi/ss me&employer + $10k property tax - deductions). That is higher than many EU countries.
EU countries can cover everyone with universal healthcare on 9% of the budget. So the 27% of federal budget just for medicare is overpaying by a huge margin. You can get everyone on basic income and universal healthcare for less than 50% of the budget. Less than what you today pay in SS and medicare. The reason is that you can do it all automatically, no people are needed to administer the programs when everyone is covered. You would pay it to everyone, including people who work. For the ones who work it would replace the standard deduction and they would pay taxes from all they earned above the basic income. You would not need any unemployment insurance, any maternity leave, paternity leave, medical leave,... it would be all covered by the basic income. The number of salaries in administration that would be saved would more than cover it. It would also replace a lot of the subsidies and incentives we give to poor regions as the people there would simply get the basic income. Some people could choose to live on the basic income and do work benefiting their community.
What if he used the money that way? Who cares? That is the point of basic income. Make people responsible for their own future. You give them the money, you don't care. Let them blow it all on shopping spree one month and starve the rest of it. They will get the picture soon enough. If you will coddle them all their life, how are they supposed to learn?
The major reason why you don't want to check how the money is used is that: 1) It just cost more money to check. More money than how much is "misused". 2) If you make them jump through hoops for the money, it feel like work and they feel like they deserved it by doing that work. It creates dependency, addiction.
I watched the interview by Jo Becker with Julian Assange live on Facebook based on which this article was seemingly done. It seemed strange as the journalist seemed to be trying to get Julian to say or agree with some things she had pre-written in definitely not conversational form, she was ready her notes a lot. Anyway, as she was failing, she tried again and again. Weirdest fucking interview I have seen. Then it got all clear when one hour after that interview an article that took weeks to write got published. NYT journalism at its finest.
Next thing, you will be telling me, that you can actually vote in a fair election or that most Americans will know on election day who the US presidential candidates are and names like Jill Stein won't be a huge fucking WTF when they see them on the ballot. Or that 95% congressmen being selected in primaries, not elected in the general election is a good thing for democracy.
Do you realize that if documents were leaked from the Russian government, they would be in Russian, written in Cyrillic? As wikileaks only leaks original documents, those would not be quite as useful to their English reading audience. Just saying...
Russia had other allies: Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Somalia besides Syria and Iran. Oh and remember BRICS? We bribed India, intimidated South Africa and organized a coup in Brazil. Syria will fall as soon as Hillary is president and Iran will go down in a 48 hour Blitzkrieg with the help of cyberwar (watch Zero Days).
We have systematically destroyed every ally that Russia had or turned them against them through bribery or regime change. We do not have any official restraint against using nukes in defense only either. They asked presidential candidates, nobody would commit to it either. Missile Defense Shield is an offensive only weapon, effective only AFTER a first strike. Everyone knows that including the Russians, but we all pretend it is for defense.
Stop playing a fucking victim. We are done with Russian allies by 2018 and by 2020 there is a civil war in Russia, we already bribed half of the original Russian oligarchs from the 90s. Once it is underway we'll ask UN to mandate securing their nukes. Then we'll suggest China disarm itself. Then Hillary will proclaim herself Empress, Pax Americana, yada yada yada. That is the plan.
Russia maybe isn't stupid, but our allies are and so we'll do whatever we want and Russia cannot do shit about it.
Unless, of course, she will declare that half of the GOP lawmakers are Russian agents and asks the FBI to lock them up for investigations under some weird legal concept she makes up.
Actually they are doing it because of continuous integration. You will find out very quickly that there is no patching possible with continuous integration. There is only one path and only one direction, forward. No branching, no exceptions. Companies that switch to it always get to this point very quickly.
EnterpriseDB already makes compatibility layer for Oracle over PostgreSQL. Paradoxically it helps Oracle, because as soon as EnterpriseDB stops scaling, it is easily replaced by Oracle Cluster.
I don't think you quite understand this case. Oracle is trying to utterly and thoroughly to lose this case, but to litigate it in every single possible angle. They are trying to do the same thing Google did to them to Amazon in the Cloud and they want to make sure that there is an ironclad precedent. Oracle even hired a team of former Amazon people to do a reimplementation of AWS API for them.
This case is not about Java at all. In fact it is going to hugely benefit both Oracle and Google. But oh well, keep your emotions high if you like.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Your link seems to just prove my point. 45% average tax rate across EU is much lower than that damn 60+24 VAT of Finland. QED.
2) 3 out of the 10 best high schools in US are in my area. I don't think I picked specifically a place with the lousy education system. Who should I have picked? Kansas?
3) I mean they are lacking electricity, running water, hospital within 4 hour driving distance, ... basics even rural places in EU have.
You stop being an authoritarian control freak fascist and let them live freely and learn from experience. If you never let your kid ride a bike, because he fell once, he will never learn to ride a bike. It is that simple.
Czech Republic has been a socialist state. Do you want to tell me they are not welfare enough yet? They started from a full welfare state and move gradually away to a less welfare state. Finland is quite an outlier in EU, there are about 10 states in EU that are very similar to Czech Republic, but none that are like Finland, even in Scandinavia they are out there. California is not representative of US, but it is what I know and as it is 1/6 of US population wise, let's just say forget the rest of US for now, why cannot California do what EU does?
Well, there are places that are dragging the rest of the country down. If you wanted to average tax rates across the whole of EU, you would also got them much lower. I specifically choose California because it is closest to EU in living standard. I have not lived on east coast to be able to compare it with New England for example. Some parts of the other parts of US I visited are often more like Ukraine, Uzbekistan or Romania from what I could see.
Half of the population of California lives in the two massive population centers around SF and LA, hardly atypical. Median income here is 75k-90k depending on area, 20k more for families. So I am in the +- 50% of the median belt. Further the middle class is not defined by income, but as: "the social group between the upper and working classes, including professional and business workers and their families" so as a professional worker, I am clearly part of that group. Again, my situation is fairly common in this area.
As for that fool, I would like to know exactly what it is that I am getting extra. Compared to Czech Republic where I grew up with 23% top tax rate and 21% sales tax for example? Healthcare is the same level as far as I can tell, maybe better dental care here, but they got universal coverage. Roads are better here, Internet access over there (sad considering I live in Silicon Valley), Social conditions way better over there, Safety better there, Society is more liberal there, Xenophobia is lower here, Crime is lower there, K12 Schools are better there. Universities better here, but they got free education. There they got 4-5 weeks vacation, 2 years maternity, sick leave. Unemployment is 5% in both places. Salaries are higher here, but in my field only about 50% higher, matching the cost of living so that is a wash. Culture is better over there (theatre, opera, museums, galleries, historical buildings). I don't see something standing out here so much I could call it a clear advantage.
Look, you are right that although some of my income is in 28% bracket, it is not all of it and so the effective rate is lower, but I simply calculate all the money I paid in taxes, added sales tax on spendings, added property taxes and divided them by all the money I made and my employer paid for me. Maybe I need better tax advice still the taxes are just pretty high.
But even if I were to accept that I got no idea about my own taxes, and they are actually lower, let's say those 40%. Still that does not put the EU countries in "massively higher taxes" category. Some of them, for sure. But in most countries the max tax rate plus vat are under 60%, in at least 10 of them it is around 40% and the effective rates are lower as those are max rates. There are exceptions in Scandinavia the max rates go as high as 60% and VAT to 24%, but again the effective rate is hardly anywhere over 60% and in most places around 40% just like in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The point here is that we have places in US with rates similar to those of the EU countries, but we don't have nearly close to the advantages the citizens of those countries are getting for those taxes. If they can do basic income to repace welfare, maybe we should be in position to do the same, with just a bit better governing.
And I forgot, the property tax is only theoretically 1%. Most counties have extra property tax, so it is 1.1% in most places and as high as 1.7% is some.
You have not been to Sillicon Valley right? $1M barely gets you a roof over your head, for $100-200k you get doghouse at best. And someone making $61k a year is nowhere near middle class, I've got friends making this much here. I don't care what the rates are for others, I know what they are for me. As for FICA, you forgot that it is paid twice, once by you and once by employers, which means the employer will not give you that amount in salary. So even in your example you miss 7.65% so you would be at 41.13%. But again, I talk about my situation. Sales tax where I live is 10% and I spend sadly most of my income, it is pretty expensive to live here. You will find that in SF Bay Area that is quite common in single income households. And someone who is not in the highest tax bracket clearly would not be the worst tax situation possible. So maybe you should stop accusing other people who's situation you got no clue about of lying when you yourself are spreading misinformation.
Nobody says that it never happens. But it does not happen enough for lost money to outweigh the amount of money you need to spend on checking that it does not happen. Your anecdotes do not help and you are suggesting that what you said in your anecdotal evidence is a problem, no matter how much you try to deny it. You are using exactly the same arguments every opponent of UBI is using: "Even one fraudster would be too much, we must not let those people steal, that would be the end of the world!" UBI might have drawbacks, but not what you are suggesting. We give them the money. If they don't buy food, they will be hungry. Next month their primary need will be food, not shopping. So they will go eat. If they keep getting the money, eventually they will learn to balance their spending on their needs.
Another point is that once you have a bunch of guys getting money on a regular basis, there is opportunity for someone to help them out, as the unreliability of those guys and the uncertainty of them being able to get the income is lifted. Maybe all they want to do is sit around and play console games. Fine, if 4 of them get together, they might have enough money to get an apartment, big TV, xbox and play games all day. I don't mind. Good for them. At least I don't have to work with some stupid unmotivated punk at my workplace that will just slow me down. And at least they are not in the streets stealing. It is a win win win. In few years some of them maybe get bored and learn some useful skill, do something productive. Who knows. It is a small price to pay for the other benefits.
For example in US mothers often go back to work as early as 2 weeks after giving birth. Can you imagine that? I cannot. How much better would those kids do in life if they could stay home with them on basic income for a year or two? Can you imagine how much smarter those kids will be in 20 years? How many problems that can lift in just one generation? What about the fathers? Not finding a job is no longer a reason to join gang, sell drugs, go to jail. So maybe you got almost no money and live on basic income, but you got now two people raising that kid.
What about veterans? What about disabled people? What about mentally sick? There will always be some punk like you arguing with that one kid that bought xbox. FFS. I've had enough of you guys.
At least SFO and few other airports no longer require to take off your shoes.
BTW If you want a check to be deterrent you can simply just use it on 10% of the passengers. Like the shoe check for example. Uncertainty is still sufficient deterrent and it will speed up the lines quite a bit. I would even go as far as simply just screen 10% of the passengers for anything. The checks could be much more thorough, just like we do with the customs. There is no reason why the model that works for customs should not be replicated for the security checks.
Exactly. This and the lock on cockpit door is all that was needed.
Baloney, I live in California, effective tax rate is over 50% on middle class. (28% federal, 10% state, 10% sales, 15% medi/ss me&employer + $10k property tax - deductions). That is higher than many EU countries.
Why should it disappear? Just give it to everyone. For those who work, it is standard deduction. You just get taxed from whatever you make above it.
EU countries can cover everyone with universal healthcare on 9% of the budget. So the 27% of federal budget just for medicare is overpaying by a huge margin.
You can get everyone on basic income and universal healthcare for less than 50% of the budget. Less than what you today pay in SS and medicare. The reason is that you can do it all automatically, no people are needed to administer the programs when everyone is covered. You would pay it to everyone, including people who work. For the ones who work it would replace the standard deduction and they would pay taxes from all they earned above the basic income. You would not need any unemployment insurance, any maternity leave, paternity leave, medical leave,... it would be all covered by the basic income. The number of salaries in administration that would be saved would more than cover it. It would also replace a lot of the subsidies and incentives we give to poor regions as the people there would simply get the basic income. Some people could choose to live on the basic income and do work benefiting their community.
By all means you are suggesting that.
What if he used the money that way? Who cares? That is the point of basic income. Make people responsible for their own future. You give them the money, you don't care. Let them blow it all on shopping spree one month and starve the rest of it. They will get the picture soon enough. If you will coddle them all their life, how are they supposed to learn?
The major reason why you don't want to check how the money is used is that:
1) It just cost more money to check. More money than how much is "misused".
2) If you make them jump through hoops for the money, it feel like work and they feel like they deserved it by doing that work. It creates dependency, addiction.
I watched the interview by Jo Becker with Julian Assange live on Facebook based on which this article was seemingly done. It seemed strange as the journalist seemed to be trying to get Julian to say or agree with some things she had pre-written in definitely not conversational form, she was ready her notes a lot. Anyway, as she was failing, she tried again and again. Weirdest fucking interview I have seen. Then it got all clear when one hour after that interview an article that took weeks to write got published. NYT journalism at its finest.
Next thing, you will be telling me, that you can actually vote in a fair election or that most Americans will know on election day who the US presidential candidates are and names like Jill Stein won't be a huge fucking WTF when they see them on the ballot. Or that 95% congressmen being selected in primaries, not elected in the general election is a good thing for democracy.
Do you realize that if documents were leaked from the Russian government, they would be in Russian, written in Cyrillic? As wikileaks only leaks original documents, those would not be quite as useful to their English reading audience. Just saying...
And that's a bad thing? Have you seen the Russian girls?
Russia had other allies: Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Somalia besides Syria and Iran. Oh and remember BRICS? We bribed India, intimidated South Africa and organized a coup in Brazil. Syria will fall as soon as Hillary is president and Iran will go down in a 48 hour Blitzkrieg with the help of cyberwar (watch Zero Days).
We have systematically destroyed every ally that Russia had or turned them against them through bribery or regime change. We do not have any official restraint against using nukes in defense only either. They asked presidential candidates, nobody would commit to it either. Missile Defense Shield is an offensive only weapon, effective only AFTER a first strike. Everyone knows that including the Russians, but we all pretend it is for defense.
Stop playing a fucking victim. We are done with Russian allies by 2018 and by 2020 there is a civil war in Russia, we already bribed half of the original Russian oligarchs from the 90s. Once it is underway we'll ask UN to mandate securing their nukes. Then we'll suggest China disarm itself. Then Hillary will proclaim herself Empress, Pax Americana, yada yada yada. That is the plan.
Russia maybe isn't stupid, but our allies are and so we'll do whatever we want and Russia cannot do shit about it.
Unless, of course, she will declare that half of the GOP lawmakers are Russian agents and asks the FBI to lock them up for investigations under some weird legal concept she makes up.
Actually they are doing it because of continuous integration. You will find out very quickly that there is no patching possible with continuous integration. There is only one path and only one direction, forward. No branching, no exceptions. Companies that switch to it always get to this point very quickly.
EnterpriseDB already makes compatibility layer for Oracle over PostgreSQL. Paradoxically it helps Oracle, because as soon as EnterpriseDB stops scaling, it is easily replaced by Oracle Cluster.
I don't think you quite understand this case. Oracle is trying to utterly and thoroughly to lose this case, but to litigate it in every single possible angle. They are trying to do the same thing Google did to them to Amazon in the Cloud and they want to make sure that there is an ironclad precedent. Oracle even hired a team of former Amazon people to do a reimplementation of AWS API for them.
This case is not about Java at all. In fact it is going to hugely benefit both Oracle and Google. But oh well, keep your emotions high if you like.
That is why they are preparing. If their economy will grow much faster than ours, we will have every incentive to do so...