You misunderstood. Top 5% of earners (in 2007 that meant whoever earned over $160K/year) pay 60% of the total federal income tax revenue that the IRS collects. It's nothing to do with the tax rate.
It's their resource, sure, except they could live on it for another thousand years, memorizing Koran and stoning women, and never even realize it's there. Hopefully it won't be like Saudi oil all over again. We discover it, we find use for it, we develop the technology and build the infrastructure, we extract it, we process it, we ship it, their leaders keep most of the money and use it to build gold palaces while keeping their population imprisoned in worst darkness and ignorance and then use that same oil to blackmail us.
Not really. The money you put in is just another tax, the money you get out is just another welfare payout. How much you put in has very little relation to how much you get back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCdgv7n9xCY
We could have a decent space program for rounding error money in entitlements budget. Medicare alone wastes $60 billion a year in overpayments and fraud.
Wars are a different matter, you gotta fight wars.
If you have a some kind of a periodic performance review coming up (you do have those?) that would be a good time, but there is nothing wrong with just walking up to your boss and asking for a raise. Be professional and realistic about it, after all whatever the answer is you'll still be working there so you don't want to be hostile. Understand that your relationship with your employer is just about supply and demand, nothing personal. If they can pay you less or else replace you with an equally qualified person at a lower cost they should, and they will. If you can find another employer who will offer you a higher salary, you should etc. I remember during the dot com boom, I could practically change my job monthly and get a higher salary each time. In this economy though, they are probably in a stronger position than you.
Chinese products are cheaper because the workforce is abused....[the rest of your post follows from that assumption]
Bleeding heart liberal answer: No it is not
In fact the recent boom in manufacturing has created the greatest improvement in the living standards of Chinese people since...well, since ever. Why on earth do you think they leave the countryside by tens of millions to come and work in factories in the cities? Because they are worse off or better off by doing so? It follows the same pattern as the industrial revolution in Britain which improved the lives of average people more than anything since the invention of agriculture. You can't compare the living standard of Chinese worker to the US worker. You can't jump from a third world nation to a first world nation overnight. You have to compare the living standard of Chinese worker 10, 20, 30 years ago etc to today. Google some charts to see, per capita GDP, average wage growth etc.
Stone hearted conservative answer: So what if it is?
We as a nation benefit from having access to goods for a lot lower price than the price at which we can produce them ourselves. What do we care how they do it, by abusing their workers, polluting their cities or subsidizing their industries. It would all amounts to the same thing, benefit to us at their expense (see youtube video in the previous post). Sure we lose some of the jobs in a specific industry but we gain more jobs and more wealth overall.
No, I was only addressing one half of the point which I thought might appeal more to the bleeding heart liberals. Tariffs are bad for us too. They might for a short time protect some of the union jobs in a specific industry but they are harmful for the wider economy because they deprive our industry and consumers of cheaper products. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0pl_FXt0eM&feature=player_embedded As an exercise, think about what would have happened to the USA computer industry if from the start we had laws that ensured that all computer components had to be made by unionized factories in Michigan.
I hope you are trolling and, if so, good job. If not, then I don't think you realize that your "proposal" is more extreme than even the most fanatical left wing crazies would dare make these days. Imposing tariffs so that the products make in third world countries which are imported in the USA match the price of those produced in the USA? You do realize that such tariffs would bring instant death to the economies of dozens of developing countries, and that the only reason for the incredible rise in standard of living of ordinary workers in China in the last three decades was due to the fact that they are able to produce and export goods more cheaply than those in the countries who import them? Why else would developed countries import third world goods if by law they cost the same as those locally produced?
This type of day-trading provides absolutely no value to the economy and should be regulated to death.
Apart from the issue of whether this is true or not, I am curious why are people so quick to support sacrificing economic liberties (such as my freedom to buy and sell whatever I want, whenever I want) the moment the first hint enters their head that a specific activity somehow "provides absolutely no value to the economy". Are you really 100% sure that it doesn't? I think you are not, but even if you are I think you need to consider how low your standards are when it comes to liberty if the only things you would allow people to do are those that are beneficial to the economy.
I saw the video and it is tragic and disturbing, but that is simply saying that war itself is tragic and disturbing, which is something people should realize without needing a video. Whether this particular soldier made the right call or not is meaningless because you cannot expect thousands of soldiers in thousands of situations like that to make the right call every time. Things like this are unavoidable, they have happened in every war so far and will continue to happen. Btw, if I was standing next to a guy with an RPG and US helicopters were circling above I wouldn't be casually walking about.
In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
Really, did _you_ vote on it, will your vote be reaffirmed every generation or so to ensure its still what the people want ?
No, but it is self evident that this is so to any human being with a brain. Ok, what do you think? Would you vote to make the names and locations of our spies abroad public? How about nuclear weapon designs? Post them on the Internet? Military communication encryption codes, nuclear launch codes, military plans, diplomatic strategy etc etc. Of course the government's power to keep secrets from the people can be and has been abused but the idea that there should be no secrets at all is ridiculous.
All he is saying is that if you do release confidential data based on your personal determination that it is a moral thing to do, you should not be guaranteed to not suffer any consequences. What if the Pentagon is telling the truth and releasing these documents would cause "serious damage to national security" and people die as a result of your decision?
I don't understand. The energy is there anyway. We are just converting it from a useless form to a form that is useful to humans. What is wrong with that?
The US isn't one of the best centres of education anymore.
The US is not trying to be the best center of education. It is trying to allow people to pursue their own goals and interests, free from compulsion by those who think they know better. At least that was the original intention. It is probably because of that that it actually is the best center of education at least when it comes to the university level education: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results On the other hand there are countries where the government's explicit goal is to improve education by regulating it top to bottom and making it "free" (ha ha) to the students, like Germany. See how it ranks on the list above.
They are gouging the shit out of taxpayers is more like it. The students in public universities only pay a fraction of the true cost. Taxpayers are the ones who should be complaining, the students should shut up and be grateful.
You are wrong and so are those who modded you up. Free market does not require full disclosure of every price everybody pays, why should it? All that matters is that a willing buyer meets a willing seller and that the transaction is entirely voluntary on both sides. You are completely misunderstanding the free market if you think that it requires corporations to regulate themselves against their interests. On the contrary, the corporations and everybody else will ("should" doesn't come into it) act entirely in their own self interest and that's ok. They are "regulated" by the pressure from customers, competitors, shareholders and tort laws. There is hardly any area of human activity where the historical evidence is as clear cut as in the case of the harm that excessive government control does to an economy and yet people still scream for more and more regulation all the time.
Gosh, one last thing: an internally consistent libertarian would have to reject environmental regulations in favor of torts.
Says who? What criteria do you use to decide who is a consistent libertarian and who isn't? Libertarianism is an ideology that focuses on creating a society in which individual liberty is maximized, not on abolishing all regulation. An ideology does not need to be defined by it's most extreme elements, there is always a continuum. Environmental regulation has long been accepted by libertarians (they don't get much more libertarian than Milton Friedman and he was in favor of it) because of the extreme difficulty of measuring individual harm (the example he would use is absurdity of people suing each factory in the area for a percentage of their dry cleaning bill because the smog made their shirt dirty). I am not a member of the Libertarian party but here is a summary of reasonable mainstream libertarian positions on various issues http://www.lp.org/issues I would also recommend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PaN9M4WwHw Don't listen to the few anarchists around who call themselves libertarian, they are far from it.
That does mean bringing back slavery, as slavery was a core institution at the time the US were founded.Too often people say "but it's not in the constitution!" either as a knee-jerk reaction or as a weak attempt to say that something is not permissible.
I don't know if you realize it but slavery is unconstitutional. I hope you do but it's not clear from what you said there.
We don't want federal programs (except Medicare! And agricultural subsidies! And small-business loans!)
Who is "we"? If you mean "we" the libertarian conservatives then let me clarify: No, we don't want Medicare, we don't want agricultural subsidies and we don't want small-business loans.
We don't want the federal government involved in schools (but we want school prayers! And no evolution!)
I don't think you know what you are saying there. Please think about it.
We don't want environmental regulations (but now the Louisiana governor wants the government involved in cleaning the oil spill!)
We do want environmental regulation because your rights don't involve the right to harm others, including polluting their environment. We don't want this to be used an excuse for the government to intrude in every aspect of our lives though. As for the emergency response to a disaster, of course that is one of the few things government should do. Small government does not mean no government.
Your post pretty much consists of worthless ranting but one term caught my eye: corporate anarchists. I've heard people use it before but what on earth does it mean? There is no wikipedia entry on it. Can you define it? And if you can't, why are you using it?
That may have applied to some earlier versions of Windows but not Windows 7. It hasn't crashed yet even once, it comes with a firewall that works well enough. I don't know what you mean by "spend an hour turning off all the resident scanners so you can use it again", I certainly didn't have to do that. The rest of your list are things I expect to do when buying a new computer anyway.
Punditry sells because people already get the news from the Internet and other sources and what they tune in for is the analysis. Fox gets this and CNN (for example) doesn't, which is why Fox News ratings are through the roof and CNN's are in free fall.
Slashdot Mirror
You misunderstood. Top 5% of earners (in 2007 that meant whoever earned over $160K/year) pay 60% of the total federal income tax revenue that the IRS collects. It's nothing to do with the tax rate.
It's their resource, sure, except they could live on it for another thousand years, memorizing Koran and stoning women, and never even realize it's there. Hopefully it won't be like Saudi oil all over again. We discover it, we find use for it, we develop the technology and build the infrastructure, we extract it, we process it, we ship it, their leaders keep most of the money and use it to build gold palaces while keeping their population imprisoned in worst darkness and ignorance and then use that same oil to blackmail us.
Not really. The money you put in is just another tax, the money you get out is just another welfare payout. How much you put in has very little relation to how much you get back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCdgv7n9xCY
The poor still pay taxes, dick wad.
No they don't.. Bottom 50% earners pay less than 3% of total taxes collected. Bottom 47% pay nothing. Top 5% pay 60%.
To put things in perspective, some figures from 2009 budget:
NASA: $17 billion
Welfare (SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment): $1.9 trillion
We could have a decent space program for rounding error money in entitlements budget. Medicare alone wastes $60 billion a year in overpayments and fraud.
Wars are a different matter, you gotta fight wars.
Windows
Free: FastStone Image Viewer
Non-free but pretty cheap: ACDSee
Expensive: Lightroom
If you have a some kind of a periodic performance review coming up (you do have those?) that would be a good time, but there is nothing wrong with just walking up to your boss and asking for a raise. Be professional and realistic about it, after all whatever the answer is you'll still be working there so you don't want to be hostile. Understand that your relationship with your employer is just about supply and demand, nothing personal. If they can pay you less or else replace you with an equally qualified person at a lower cost they should, and they will. If you can find another employer who will offer you a higher salary, you should etc. I remember during the dot com boom, I could practically change my job monthly and get a higher salary each time. In this economy though, they are probably in a stronger position than you.
Chinese products are cheaper because the workforce is abused....[the rest of your post follows from that assumption]
Bleeding heart liberal answer: No it is not
In fact the recent boom in manufacturing has created the greatest improvement in the living standards of Chinese people since...well, since ever. Why on earth do you think they leave the countryside by tens of millions to come and work in factories in the cities? Because they are worse off or better off by doing so? It follows the same pattern as the industrial revolution in Britain which improved the lives of average people more than anything since the invention of agriculture. You can't compare the living standard of Chinese worker to the US worker. You can't jump from a third world nation to a first world nation overnight. You have to compare the living standard of Chinese worker 10, 20, 30 years ago etc to today. Google some charts to see, per capita GDP, average wage growth etc.
Stone hearted conservative answer: So what if it is?
We as a nation benefit from having access to goods for a lot lower price than the price at which we can produce them ourselves. What do we care how they do it, by abusing their workers, polluting their cities or subsidizing their industries. It would all amounts to the same thing, benefit to us at their expense (see youtube video in the previous post). Sure we lose some of the jobs in a specific industry but we gain more jobs and more wealth overall.
No, I was only addressing one half of the point which I thought might appeal more to the bleeding heart liberals. Tariffs are bad for us too. They might for a short time protect some of the union jobs in a specific industry but they are harmful for the wider economy because they deprive our industry and consumers of cheaper products. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0pl_FXt0eM&feature=player_embedded As an exercise, think about what would have happened to the USA computer industry if from the start we had laws that ensured that all computer components had to be made by unionized factories in Michigan.
Even since Reagen the real wage of the middle and lower classes has actually *decreased*,
Citation needed
It was *because* of the labor unions' strength pre-1980 that increases in wealth in the US were equivalently distributed across all income groups.
It is unfortunate that people forget that the US economy stagnated during the leftist craze in the 60s and 70s and took off again with the deregulation of the Reagan years: http://www.stockcharts.com/charts/historical/images2/DJIA1900.gif
I hope you are trolling and, if so, good job. If not, then I don't think you realize that your "proposal" is more extreme than even the most fanatical left wing crazies would dare make these days. Imposing tariffs so that the products make in third world countries which are imported in the USA match the price of those produced in the USA? You do realize that such tariffs would bring instant death to the economies of dozens of developing countries, and that the only reason for the incredible rise in standard of living of ordinary workers in China in the last three decades was due to the fact that they are able to produce and export goods more cheaply than those in the countries who import them? Why else would developed countries import third world goods if by law they cost the same as those locally produced?
This type of day-trading provides absolutely no value to the economy and should be regulated to death.
Apart from the issue of whether this is true or not, I am curious why are people so quick to support sacrificing economic liberties (such as my freedom to buy and sell whatever I want, whenever I want) the moment the first hint enters their head that a specific activity somehow "provides absolutely no value to the economy". Are you really 100% sure that it doesn't? I think you are not, but even if you are I think you need to consider how low your standards are when it comes to liberty if the only things you would allow people to do are those that are beneficial to the economy.
I saw the video and it is tragic and disturbing, but that is simply saying that war itself is tragic and disturbing, which is something people should realize without needing a video. Whether this particular soldier made the right call or not is meaningless because you cannot expect thousands of soldiers in thousands of situations like that to make the right call every time. Things like this are unavoidable, they have happened in every war so far and will continue to happen. Btw, if I was standing next to a guy with an RPG and US helicopters were circling above I wouldn't be casually walking about.
In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
Really, did _you_ vote on it, will your vote be reaffirmed every generation or so to ensure its still what the people want ?
No, but it is self evident that this is so to any human being with a brain. Ok, what do you think? Would you vote to make the names and locations of our spies abroad public? How about nuclear weapon designs? Post them on the Internet? Military communication encryption codes, nuclear launch codes, military plans, diplomatic strategy etc etc. Of course the government's power to keep secrets from the people can be and has been abused but the idea that there should be no secrets at all is ridiculous.
All he is saying is that if you do release confidential data based on your personal determination that it is a moral thing to do, you should not be guaranteed to not suffer any consequences. What if the Pentagon is telling the truth and releasing these documents would cause "serious damage to national security" and people die as a result of your decision?
I don't understand. The energy is there anyway. We are just converting it from a useless form to a form that is useful to humans. What is wrong with that?
The US isn't one of the best centres of education anymore.
The US is not trying to be the best center of education. It is trying to allow people to pursue their own goals and interests, free from compulsion by those who think they know better. At least that was the original intention. It is probably because of that that it actually is the best center of education at least when it comes to the university level education: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2009/results On the other hand there are countries where the government's explicit goal is to improve education by regulating it top to bottom and making it "free" (ha ha) to the students, like Germany. See how it ranks on the list above.
they're gouging the shit out of students
They are gouging the shit out of taxpayers is more like it. The students in public universities only pay a fraction of the true cost. Taxpayers are the ones who should be complaining, the students should shut up and be grateful.
You are wrong and so are those who modded you up. Free market does not require full disclosure of every price everybody pays, why should it? All that matters is that a willing buyer meets a willing seller and that the transaction is entirely voluntary on both sides. You are completely misunderstanding the free market if you think that it requires corporations to regulate themselves against their interests. On the contrary, the corporations and everybody else will ("should" doesn't come into it) act entirely in their own self interest and that's ok. They are "regulated" by the pressure from customers, competitors, shareholders and tort laws. There is hardly any area of human activity where the historical evidence is as clear cut as in the case of the harm that excessive government control does to an economy and yet people still scream for more and more regulation all the time.
Gosh, one last thing: an internally consistent libertarian would have to reject environmental regulations in favor of torts.
Says who? What criteria do you use to decide who is a consistent libertarian and who isn't? Libertarianism is an ideology that focuses on creating a society in which individual liberty is maximized, not on abolishing all regulation. An ideology does not need to be defined by it's most extreme elements, there is always a continuum. Environmental regulation has long been accepted by libertarians (they don't get much more libertarian than Milton Friedman and he was in favor of it) because of the extreme difficulty of measuring individual harm (the example he would use is absurdity of people suing each factory in the area for a percentage of their dry cleaning bill because the smog made their shirt dirty). I am not a member of the Libertarian party but here is a summary of reasonable mainstream libertarian positions on various issues http://www.lp.org/issues I would also recommend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PaN9M4WwHw Don't listen to the few anarchists around who call themselves libertarian, they are far from it.
That's only because he knows that private enterprise will be more efficient in eventually allowing humans to travel to his real birthplace!
How many straw man arguments can fit in one post?
That does mean bringing back slavery, as slavery was a core institution at the time the US were founded.Too often people say "but it's not in the constitution!" either as a knee-jerk reaction or as a weak attempt to say that something is not permissible.
I don't know if you realize it but slavery is unconstitutional. I hope you do but it's not clear from what you said there.
We don't want federal programs (except Medicare! And agricultural subsidies! And small-business loans!)
Who is "we"? If you mean "we" the libertarian conservatives then let me clarify: No, we don't want Medicare, we don't want agricultural subsidies and we don't want small-business loans.
We don't want the federal government involved in schools (but we want school prayers! And no evolution!)
I don't think you know what you are saying there. Please think about it.
We don't want environmental regulations (but now the Louisiana governor wants the government involved in cleaning the oil spill!)
We do want environmental regulation because your rights don't involve the right to harm others, including polluting their environment. We don't want this to be used an excuse for the government to intrude in every aspect of our lives though. As for the emergency response to a disaster, of course that is one of the few things government should do. Small government does not mean no government.
Your post pretty much consists of worthless ranting but one term caught my eye: corporate anarchists. I've heard people use it before but what on earth does it mean? There is no wikipedia entry on it. Can you define it? And if you can't, why are you using it?
That may have applied to some earlier versions of Windows but not Windows 7. It hasn't crashed yet even once, it comes with a firewall that works well enough. I don't know what you mean by "spend an hour turning off all the resident scanners so you can use it again", I certainly didn't have to do that. The rest of your list are things I expect to do when buying a new computer anyway.
Punditry sells because people already get the news from the Internet and other sources and what they tune in for is the analysis. Fox gets this and CNN (for example) doesn't, which is why Fox News ratings are through the roof and CNN's are in free fall.