the property, sales taxes and such, puts him over the 50%.
Even if we make the very questionable assumption that your math is accurate, your example doesn't meet the criteria provided of
Do you actually know anyone who pays a 50% tax rate in the US? By that I mean: They make X dollars, pay Y dollars in taxes, and Y/X > 0.50
As neither property nor sales tax are dependent on income. Your imaginary example could opt instead to live on a rented property and pay essentially zero property tax. Similarly your imaginary friend could drive to a different state where the sales tax is less and pay less in sales tax.
However, since you aren't actually trying to represent - but rather trying to discredit - the fiscal conservatives, you don't see yourself bounded by reason or facts. Carry on. You would, however, do a better job of meeting your aspiration if you did pay more attention to the real world before spouting off your favorite absurd talking points.
Today, a huge number of people would have to see their taxes slashed IN HALF to be elevated to the levels of serfs, which is a sad state of affairs in USA, since it fought the King over just 3% taxes.
Granted, your math is questionable at best, but even if we assume it to be somehow vaguely related to something that might almost count as being fractionally representing reality you still have some huge problems.
For one, serfs generally lived about half as long as the typical American today, especially when you account for the large numbers of people under European serfdom who never lived to their 10th birthday.
Even more so - and you should be aware of this as you claim to be an expert on economics - under serfdom economic mobility effectively goes to zero . Serfs are born, raised, and buried on their master's land. Most of them won't learn how to read or ever have any grasp of the existence of a world beyond the small area they live in. Landowners will stay landowners, serfs will stay serfs.
Is that really what the free market wants - economic oppression of the majority of the population?
the loan forgiveness only applies to federal student loans.
- and this story only applies to the Senate and federally backed loans.
While you indicated that loan forgiveness would wipe all student loan debt, which is simply not true. Just because you made your account to make the ron paul / ayn rand case look foolish doesn't mean you can't use actual facts in your fake argument. Just admit that a very substantial amount of student loan debt is never forgiven, and move on. The rest of your argument is not adversely effected by the fact that your opening statement holds no water.
Second, the bank-supplied loans in particular are notorious for being cruel to those who took out the money.
- that's a nonsense statement, it has nothing to do with how banks operate.
Wrong again, it has everything to do with how banks operate. You should know this by now.
They operate within the limits created by the system, and the system allows them to give out loans with free money the banks get from the Fed and the system 'insures' these loans
You honestly have no idea how student loans actually work, do you? Well, maybe in reality you do, but your persona here does a good job of showing enormous ignorance.
Let me give you a little hint - the fed sets no maximum interest rate for the banks with regards to the student loans they issue. And the banks issue a lot of student loans.
- that's because you don't understand economics.
Another statement you make that you do not back up. Fascinating game you play.
Who in their right mind wants to buy long term US debt?
US debt and student loans are not the same thing. US debt includes things like military spending that never pay back. Student loans, on the other hand, are amongst the best investments the US government ever has or ever will make. Sure some students won't do any better as a result, but many more will. And those students will become middle class tax payers who will pay back their debt and pay far more in to the system in taxes over their working lives. Of course, some will do even better and rise to the top of the regressive tax scale, but they are also in the minority.
In other words, student loans actually do very well for the government and the people. The only federal spending that pays better than that is higher education spending itself, but of course that is also a political football this year.
You think you can buy US bonds and save for your retirement decades from now?
No reasonable person ever bought a US bond expecting to retire on its return. Even the long-term T-notes have never been able to provide for that. That is what social security is for.
See, dumb_register, that's why we are different - I can add.
Hmm. In your persona you can't spell, you don't know history, you don't know politics, you don't understand economics, and you don't understand science. There aren't many skill sets left that you haven't demonstrated yourself you be woefully insufficient in, so I suppose 2nd-grade math might be it for you!
This will not make any difference to those, who are getting the student loans, not at all.
In fact with the latest developments that the student loans are forgiven in 15 to 20 years and that the monthly payments cannot exceed 10% of so called 'discretionary spending', which starts at the yearly amount exceeding 2 minimum 'poverty levels' ($16,000 per person or abou 35K for a family of 4), it means that a person making 50K a year will have to pay maximum of 10% of (50K-32K) per year, or $150/month for 15 to 20 years. If the person makes 100K/year, this goes up to maximum of $567/month.
If you actually knew someone with student loan debt, you would know where your error is in your assumption.
First of all, the loan forgiveness only applies to federal student loans. Most students have a mix of federal, state, and bank-supplied loan money. Hence even if the federal loans are eventually forgiven, the others are still accruing interest.
Second, the bank-supplied loans in particular are notorious for being cruel to those who took out the money. Interest rates are free to change at a moment's notice and some people have seen double-digit interest rate increases in single years.
They shouldn't be paid to do that in the first place, who in their right mind would give a loan to a USA student going to major in sociology? WOULD YOU?
Yes, I would. And I would wager that in reality, you would as well. You don't believe what you present to slashdot, as we have already seen. Would the real roman_mir please stand up?
Here, cars might as well be driverless as a staggering fraction of the drivers should never be licensed any ways. I figure the driverless car is likely a lot less likely to cause the kind of traffic accidents that are caused here every day by the ones with drivers in them, and also less likely to injure me or any actual skilled driver either.
... that air travel is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, you are utilizing a private industry when you travel by air. If you don't like the TSA, you can travel a different way. The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car, and for that matter they don't have jurisdiction over you when you are using a private airport.
The missile defense system was nonsensical when GWB was still in charge. Now we elected someone else (or so we thought) and we are keeping to the same bad plans.
Indeed at lower air pressure a petrol engine has a problem. But couldn't you design your petrol engine to expect lower air pressures (again mostly running at cruise altitude) or add an air compressor in the intake to compensate?
That is why a lot of engines currently in use for aviation are either supercharged or turbocharged.
Internal combustion engines tend to become a lot less efficient at high elevation where the air is less dense. Being as the electric engine isn't burning anything, it might not be as hindered by this (although of course it still needs to move air). If they want to make a gas-electric hybrid, why not use the gas for takeoff, climbing, and landing, and then use the electric for level flight at higher elevation?
I'm not sure why you are trying to get roman_mir's attention. As you see, he did not reply to your message. It appears you wrote to him believing that he actually believes in what he writes; I suggest you re-examine his posts and journal entries and you may come to a different conclusion.
While in his posts, roman_mir is endlessly worshipping ron paul and the ayn rand school of philosophy, the way he behaves when shown the failings of the same suggest that his beliefs are likely not the ones he presents. Yours is one of many, many, many, times when someone has told roman_mir that what he says is not rooted in reality, and as he has done so many times he neglected to reply. This kind of drive-by philosophy suggests that roman_mir may actually be here to make the ultra-right-wing philosophy look foolish, by intentionally spouting its most absurd statements.
From what I have seen, businesses with as few as one employee actively seek out ways to cheat the tax code. Naturally, the larger businesses find even more creative ways to do it, to preserve even more of their own money.
Now, is this a good argument for a "flat tax"? Probably not. In reality, if there were a flat tax implemented at the federal and/or state level, you could count on the congressional powers that be to grant special favors to their favorite sponsors that would make it far less than "flat". Even if the tax code were reduced to fit on a post card, there would still be kickbacks and favors to retain the current system of steeply regressive taxation.
I am disappointed they didn't opt for Platypus. Way more interesting than an anteater. Can a pangolin lay eggs? I think not. Can a pangolin inject venom through its ankle? I don't think so. Does a pangolin have 6 poorly-understood sex chromosomes? No to that as well.
Pangolin. Puh-leeze. So comparatively boring they might as well have opted for penguin.
If you protect the systems on your network, then the security of your router isn't as critical. Sure, there is a chance someone might use your internet access through your router to do something nefarious when you're gone, but if your own local data is protected your situation isn't nearly as bad.
Nope, you must have just stopped your fascist ways.
Nope, that's not it. The same things you called me a fascist for before, I still do in the same way. And I rather doubt you've changed your beliefs on them.
We had the conficker worm run wild at my work not long ago. Even systems that were well secured by passwords ended up falling victim to the worm due to unpatched vulnerabilities. Yes, bad passwords don't help, but Microsoft needs to own up to the fact that a worm such as conficker is perfectly capable of infecting well-secured (password-wise) machines if they are not patched for the vulnerabilities that Microsoft left behind.
And being as some patches and updated break compatibility with critical software, patching is not always a trivial matter. Some systems need to stay essentially frozen in time with regards to updates, while still being on the network. Of course then an infected system is added to the network and away we go again.
That's one of the huge reasons why Democracy leads to destruction of freedoms and many people here don't understand it and argue against that point. Democracy is a gateway towards tyranny.
Tyranny comes out of ignorance, greed and stupidity or short-sightedness of general public combined with democracy. It's when people can VOTE against freedoms in order to get some sort of a short term fix that tyranny is born and freedoms are destroyed.
Presumably that is why you keep trolling on about Ron Paul. Of course we know well that you very clearly do not actually support him, you just run around spouting off his most ridiculous material to show how detached from reality the hordes of slashdot paullowers are. While ron paul is off his rocker on the majority of what he talks about, he does not actually speak directly of the hatred for democracy that you try to express in his name.
In other words, ron paul is a nutjob. A nutjob who creates plenty of material on his own that you don't need to fabricate shit for him. It will be some time before everyone figures out your game, but you can extend it by being less obvious.
They have their official politician email address that you used, and that is it. If you want a personal response from your politician, you need to contact their staff and see if you can arrange to meet them in person. In fact, there are generally rules prohibiting politicians from using other email addresses for official business (remember the Bush white house lost GOP email controversy?)
The fact that retractions are up is not inherently indicative of more fraud, it could just as well be indicative of more pressure and more thorough peer review.
I would hope that the people who wrote the study took that into consideration. Oh look, in the article it says they did. Lovely thing, that article.
And strangely enough the graph you linked to shows that the last year whose data they looked at actually had fewer retractions due to fraud than the year prior. Hence the article does not support the headline that slashdot went with.
I can say that you're wrong. Do you even know what "conservative" means?
In this country the conservatives are often looking for excuses to further decimate the already very lean scientific research budget. This article provides another one of those excuses.
Slashdot Mirror
the property, sales taxes and such, puts him over the 50%.
Even if we make the very questionable assumption that your math is accurate, your example doesn't meet the criteria provided of
Do you actually know anyone who pays a 50% tax rate in the US? By that I mean: They make X dollars, pay Y dollars in taxes, and Y/X > 0.50
As neither property nor sales tax are dependent on income. Your imaginary example could opt instead to live on a rented property and pay essentially zero property tax. Similarly your imaginary friend could drive to a different state where the sales tax is less and pay less in sales tax.
However, since you aren't actually trying to represent - but rather trying to discredit - the fiscal conservatives, you don't see yourself bounded by reason or facts. Carry on. You would, however, do a better job of meeting your aspiration if you did pay more attention to the real world before spouting off your favorite absurd talking points.
And people said I was crazy for holding on to an old AOL disk. If someone needs it for the hunt, I will provide it ... for a nominal fee, of course.
Today, a huge number of people would have to see their taxes slashed IN HALF to be elevated to the levels of serfs, which is a sad state of affairs in USA, since it fought the King over just 3% taxes.
Granted, your math is questionable at best, but even if we assume it to be somehow vaguely related to something that might almost count as being fractionally representing reality you still have some huge problems.
For one, serfs generally lived about half as long as the typical American today, especially when you account for the large numbers of people under European serfdom who never lived to their 10th birthday.
Even more so - and you should be aware of this as you claim to be an expert on economics - under serfdom economic mobility effectively goes to zero . Serfs are born, raised, and buried on their master's land. Most of them won't learn how to read or ever have any grasp of the existence of a world beyond the small area they live in. Landowners will stay landowners, serfs will stay serfs.
Is that really what the free market wants - economic oppression of the majority of the population?
the loan forgiveness only applies to federal student loans.
- and this story only applies to the Senate and federally backed loans.
While you indicated that loan forgiveness would wipe all student loan debt, which is simply not true. Just because you made your account to make the ron paul / ayn rand case look foolish doesn't mean you can't use actual facts in your fake argument. Just admit that a very substantial amount of student loan debt is never forgiven, and move on. The rest of your argument is not adversely effected by the fact that your opening statement holds no water.
Second, the bank-supplied loans in particular are notorious for being cruel to those who took out the money.
- that's a nonsense statement, it has nothing to do with how banks operate.
Wrong again, it has everything to do with how banks operate. You should know this by now.
They operate within the limits created by the system, and the system allows them to give out loans with free money the banks get from the Fed and the system 'insures' these loans
You honestly have no idea how student loans actually work, do you? Well, maybe in reality you do, but your persona here does a good job of showing enormous ignorance.
Let me give you a little hint - the fed sets no maximum interest rate for the banks with regards to the student loans they issue. And the banks issue a lot of student loans.
- that's because you don't understand economics.
Another statement you make that you do not back up. Fascinating game you play.
Who in their right mind wants to buy long term US debt?
US debt and student loans are not the same thing. US debt includes things like military spending that never pay back. Student loans, on the other hand, are amongst the best investments the US government ever has or ever will make. Sure some students won't do any better as a result, but many more will. And those students will become middle class tax payers who will pay back their debt and pay far more in to the system in taxes over their working lives. Of course, some will do even better and rise to the top of the regressive tax scale, but they are also in the minority.
In other words, student loans actually do very well for the government and the people. The only federal spending that pays better than that is higher education spending itself, but of course that is also a political football this year.
You think you can buy US bonds and save for your retirement decades from now?
No reasonable person ever bought a US bond expecting to retire on its return. Even the long-term T-notes have never been able to provide for that. That is what social security is for.
See, dumb_register, that's why we are different - I can add.
Hmm. In your persona you can't spell, you don't know history, you don't know politics, you don't understand economics, and you don't understand science. There aren't many skill sets left that you haven't demonstrated yourself you be woefully insufficient in, so I suppose 2nd-grade math might be it for you!
This will not make any difference to those, who are getting the student loans, not at all.
In fact with the latest developments that the student loans are forgiven in 15 to 20 years and that the monthly payments cannot exceed 10% of so called 'discretionary spending', which starts at the yearly amount exceeding 2 minimum 'poverty levels' ($16,000 per person or abou 35K for a family of 4), it means that a person making 50K a year will have to pay maximum of 10% of (50K-32K) per year, or $150/month for 15 to 20 years. If the person makes 100K/year, this goes up to maximum of $567/month.
If you actually knew someone with student loan debt, you would know where your error is in your assumption.
First of all, the loan forgiveness only applies to federal student loans. Most students have a mix of federal, state, and bank-supplied loan money. Hence even if the federal loans are eventually forgiven, the others are still accruing interest.
Second, the bank-supplied loans in particular are notorious for being cruel to those who took out the money. Interest rates are free to change at a moment's notice and some people have seen double-digit interest rate increases in single years.
They shouldn't be paid to do that in the first place, who in their right mind would give a loan to a USA student going to major in sociology? WOULD YOU?
Yes, I would. And I would wager that in reality, you would as well. You don't believe what you present to slashdot, as we have already seen. Would the real roman_mir please stand up?
Here, cars might as well be driverless as a staggering fraction of the drivers should never be licensed any ways. I figure the driverless car is likely a lot less likely to cause the kind of traffic accidents that are caused here every day by the ones with drivers in them, and also less likely to injure me or any actual skilled driver either.
... that air travel is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, you are utilizing a private industry when you travel by air. If you don't like the TSA, you can travel a different way. The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car, and for that matter they don't have jurisdiction over you when you are using a private airport.
You are welcomed to opt not to travel by air.
The missile defense system was nonsensical when GWB was still in charge. Now we elected someone else (or so we thought) and we are keeping to the same bad plans.
Indeed at lower air pressure a petrol engine has a problem. But couldn't you design your petrol engine to expect lower air pressures (again mostly running at cruise altitude) or add an air compressor in the intake to compensate?
That is why a lot of engines currently in use for aviation are either supercharged or turbocharged.
Internal combustion engines tend to become a lot less efficient at high elevation where the air is less dense. Being as the electric engine isn't burning anything, it might not be as hindered by this (although of course it still needs to move air). If they want to make a gas-electric hybrid, why not use the gas for takeoff, climbing, and landing, and then use the electric for level flight at higher elevation?
I'm not sure why you are trying to get roman_mir's attention. As you see, he did not reply to your message. It appears you wrote to him believing that he actually believes in what he writes; I suggest you re-examine his posts and journal entries and you may come to a different conclusion.
While in his posts, roman_mir is endlessly worshipping ron paul and the ayn rand school of philosophy, the way he behaves when shown the failings of the same suggest that his beliefs are likely not the ones he presents. Yours is one of many, many, many, times when someone has told roman_mir that what he says is not rooted in reality, and as he has done so many times he neglected to reply. This kind of drive-by philosophy suggests that roman_mir may actually be here to make the ultra-right-wing philosophy look foolish, by intentionally spouting its most absurd statements.
From what I have seen, businesses with as few as one employee actively seek out ways to cheat the tax code. Naturally, the larger businesses find even more creative ways to do it, to preserve even more of their own money.
Now, is this a good argument for a "flat tax"? Probably not. In reality, if there were a flat tax implemented at the federal and/or state level, you could count on the congressional powers that be to grant special favors to their favorite sponsors that would make it far less than "flat". Even if the tax code were reduced to fit on a post card, there would still be kickbacks and favors to retain the current system of steeply regressive taxation.
Does geeknet, Inc. pay accountants to minimize their tax burden?
Are you assuming slashdot still brings in enough traffic to make money?
I am disappointed they didn't opt for Platypus. Way more interesting than an anteater. Can a pangolin lay eggs? I think not. Can a pangolin inject venom through its ankle? I don't think so. Does a pangolin have 6 poorly-understood sex chromosomes? No to that as well.
Pangolin. Puh-leeze. So comparatively boring they might as well have opted for penguin.
If you protect the systems on your network, then the security of your router isn't as critical. Sure, there is a chance someone might use your internet access through your router to do something nefarious when you're gone, but if your own local data is protected your situation isn't nearly as bad.
Nope, you must have just stopped your fascist ways.
Nope, that's not it. The same things you called me a fascist for before, I still do in the same way. And I rather doubt you've changed your beliefs on them.
We had the conficker worm run wild at my work not long ago. Even systems that were well secured by passwords ended up falling victim to the worm due to unpatched vulnerabilities. Yes, bad passwords don't help, but Microsoft needs to own up to the fact that a worm such as conficker is perfectly capable of infecting well-secured (password-wise) machines if they are not patched for the vulnerabilities that Microsoft left behind.
And being as some patches and updated break compatibility with critical software, patching is not always a trivial matter. Some systems need to stay essentially frozen in time with regards to updates, while still being on the network. Of course then an infected system is added to the network and away we go again.
That sounds more like the AK Marc I remember. Now you just need to make up a reason for using that label.
And here I was wondering if your account was compromised. I guess I need worry no longer.
That's one of the huge reasons why Democracy leads to destruction of freedoms and many people here don't understand it and argue against that point. Democracy is a gateway towards tyranny.
Tyranny comes out of ignorance, greed and stupidity or short-sightedness of general public combined with democracy. It's when people can VOTE against freedoms in order to get some sort of a short term fix that tyranny is born and freedoms are destroyed.
Presumably that is why you keep trolling on about Ron Paul. Of course we know well that you very clearly do not actually support him, you just run around spouting off his most ridiculous material to show how detached from reality the hordes of slashdot paullowers are. While ron paul is off his rocker on the majority of what he talks about, he does not actually speak directly of the hatred for democracy that you try to express in his name.
In other words, ron paul is a nutjob. A nutjob who creates plenty of material on his own that you don't need to fabricate shit for him. It will be some time before everyone figures out your game, but you can extend it by being less obvious.
Hey, you forgot to call me a fascist - are you feeling OK?
That's pretty cold to send a termination email and not bother including their name in the message.
The story about the previous attempt at creating real-life Frogger links to a story that no longer exists.
They have their official politician email address that you used, and that is it. If you want a personal response from your politician, you need to contact their staff and see if you can arrange to meet them in person. In fact, there are generally rules prohibiting politicians from using other email addresses for official business (remember the Bush white house lost GOP email controversy?)
The fact that retractions are up is not inherently indicative of more fraud, it could just as well be indicative of more pressure and more thorough peer review.
I would hope that the people who wrote the study took that into consideration. Oh look, in the article it says they did. Lovely thing, that article.
And strangely enough the graph you linked to shows that the last year whose data they looked at actually had fewer retractions due to fraud than the year prior. Hence the article does not support the headline that slashdot went with.
I can say that you're wrong. Do you even know what "conservative" means?
In this country the conservatives are often looking for excuses to further decimate the already very lean scientific research budget. This article provides another one of those excuses.