and now that I look further, even these are no longer needed due to ACA's removal of pre-existing condition exclusions. I suppose if ACA 2.0/AHCA or whatever gets passed this might change but for now this is a non-issue.
someone can't move from one state to another without losing health coverage
HIPAA already covers this... you get a "Certificate of Creditable Coverage" from your old insurance/State and give it to the new insurance/State and you're usually good to go.
Dell charges $350 to go from HD to 4K on the same configuration so $600 for 6K isn't really that out of line. But another item you neglected to mention is that the SB comes with GTX 965M with 2GB dedicated graphics vs the MBP coming with Intel Iris Graphics 540 with shared memory. The GTX benchmarks are over twice the Iris.
I am not at all saying that the MBP is a bad machine, if it works for you great! But you just can't compare the MBP directly to a SB, they have completely different features.
Then buy the MBP. If you are not planning on doing any drawing or you do and already have a Wacom to attach to the MBP then obviously the Surface is not for you.
Just don't pretend that you are comparing two similar machines to show an Apple price advantage because they are not at all similar. The 50% screen resolution difference alone justifies the difference in price.
I have a Surface Pro 3 and haven't had any issues with the touch screen, but of course that is anecdotal. As I mentioned above the Surface Book is really a full fledged drawing tablet with 50% more resolution than the MBP. It is just not a fair comparison.
In most cases I would agree but the Surface is not just touch sensitive it has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. There are professional artists who actually use it for production work.
On top of that the screen has 50% more resolution packed in... 6 MP vs 4 MP, so again you are really comparing an Apple to an Orange.
No it actually comes baked into ES. If you accidentally tap the prominent "Charging Boost... ENABLE" box which takes up the lower third of the ES screen it gets enabled without going to Google Play at all. And then there is no way to disable it from ES or manage application... you have to put the phone on a charger and trigger the app, then choose the gear icon in the upper right to change the app setting to off.
The federal government pay scales are generally under market, but you get job security, a pension, and retiree medical benefits at the same subsidized cost as regular employees, all of which are unusual to non-existent in corporate America today.
Really, I don't understand the hate Hangouts keeps receiving...
Hangouts is horrible at keeping chats synchronized. I will sometimes find messages sitting in the Chats folder in gmail that I never saw on my phone and as a result never responded to.
Having SMS in Hangouts is kind of nice, except that it is just window dressing since you can't see those messages on any other Hangout instance other than on that one device.
Also since Hangouts relies upon your network connection it is pretty unreliable as an "instant" messaging system. I find that I can get someone's attention much more quickly via SMS than a Hangout message, which in some cases have taken hours to deliver.
He's got the look and mannerisms down but he just does not have the command presence and the authority voice... he sounds wimpy and whiney. I think he needs to find a drill sergeant to work with him on it.
My Sony library still exists - inaccessible - on my hard-drive, thanks to their !@#$ DRM insanity.
You should have received an email from Sony earlier this year which included a link to transfer your library over to Kobo. About 95% of my library transferred and is now accessible from Kobo readers and apps.
The Nighthawk is about the fastest router you can get bar none... when it is working. Over the last six months I have had no end to troubles with unstable wireless connections, the wireless going away completely, LAN devices being unable to talk to wireless devices, and outright router reboots on the stock firmware. It has been getting better but still just not there. I tried DD-WRT for about a month and it is better, but the wireless connections are still unstable. Currently back on my old ASUS RT-N56U... not as fast but connections are rock solid.
Also pictures taken during rides were automatically tied back to my Disney account. After our last trip they sent me an email offering them for preview/purchase.
the whole Government Shutdown is *precisely* what the Republican mantra is--to cut off non-essential spending.
Which is why I don't understand why one of the first bills they passed (unanimously even) was to guarantee backpay for all of the Federal workers which negates any possible savings.
There most certainly is a marriage penalty. Only the 10% and 15% brackets are identical between the married filing seperate and single. This year a married couple with roughly equal incomes totaling over $146,400 will pay a penalty over filing as two singles.
Okay so now you have to track market value for all of your assets. That's a bit more work than tracking basis, especially for non-liquid assets.
I don't care about some guy with $100k in gold coins the goal is to go after the guy with $100m in coins.
So this guy with $100m in coins... would he have to track bullion value, or collectible value? Whichever is higher? More paperwork.
Also it sounds like you will have to determine if you meet some sort of threshold before being taxed. And of course you know that threshhold will be low enough that dual income couples would have to compute the tax every year anyway ala AMT to make sure they are not liable (this is Congress writing the law after all).
You forget the mortgage is a huge negative
Now it sounds like you are really looking to tax net worth, so now you have to deduct loans from your assets. Or do only mortgages count? How about margin accounts?
On the whole you are describing a paper nightmare. It is hard enough for me to just track capital gains on the couple stock sales I do in a year well enough to report them correctly. I can't imagine trying to get something like this right... I have enough fears about screwing up my relatively simple 1040 without making it even more complicated.
I think just raising the capital gains tax would serve nearly the same purpose and would have the added effect of stabilizing the market.
Your points are interesting but I believe investors will change their asset mixes to try to make up the loss of return, e.g. would you also tax hard commodities? How? Would you tax stock market value? Poor people invested in Apple would get nailed at the peak and will be hurting now. The tax would effectively reduce asset value, which would then decrease capital gains taxes when sold as well. I still believe the net effect will be near neutral to the Federal government, and would create another round of burdensome paperwork for people trying to figure out their 1040, so I guess it would be good for tax accountants and IRS agents.
Also when long term rates increase, credit card rates also increase so those people are screwed. People with fixed mortgages would certainly be better off, but people looking for mortgages will have a hard time.
Lets say you have a t-bill... $10,000 paying 3% interest. That means you net $300 per year income, and lose roughly a third of it to income taxes so you make $200
Now add your 2% asset tax. Now instead of netting $200... you get zip. So why would you invest in a t-bill?
So the Feds have to increase the interest paid on the t-bill in order to attract investors... in this case you would have to raise the interest rate to 6% in order for the investor to make his $200 net. So:
Old: Pay $300, get $100 back in income taxes, paid investor $200
New: Pay $600, get $200 back in income taxes, get $200 back in asset taxes, paid investor $200
Net effect to the Federal government is zero. No matter if the tax is 2% or 10% they are still paying the investor roughly $200.
Now if the Federal government had no debt this picture would be a bit different, but you would still be raising interest rates on everyone else, which is not good for the 99%.
Slashdot Mirror
and now that I look further, even these are no longer needed due to ACA's removal of pre-existing condition exclusions. I suppose if ACA 2.0/AHCA or whatever gets passed this might change but for now this is a non-issue.
someone can't move from one state to another without losing health coverage
HIPAA already covers this... you get a "Certificate of Creditable Coverage" from your old insurance/State and give it to the new insurance/State and you're usually good to go.
The most dangerous person in the world would be a climate scientist who figures out how to completely eliminate CO2.
Dell charges $350 to go from HD to 4K on the same configuration so $600 for 6K isn't really that out of line. But another item you neglected to mention is that the SB comes with GTX 965M with 2GB dedicated graphics vs the MBP coming with Intel Iris Graphics 540 with shared memory. The GTX benchmarks are over twice the Iris.
I am not at all saying that the MBP is a bad machine, if it works for you great! But you just can't compare the MBP directly to a SB, they have completely different features.
Then buy the MBP. If you are not planning on doing any drawing or you do and already have a Wacom to attach to the MBP then obviously the Surface is not for you.
Just don't pretend that you are comparing two similar machines to show an Apple price advantage because they are not at all similar. The 50% screen resolution difference alone justifies the difference in price.
I have a Surface Pro 3 and haven't had any issues with the touch screen, but of course that is anecdotal. As I mentioned above the Surface Book is really a full fledged drawing tablet with 50% more resolution than the MBP. It is just not a fair comparison.
On top of that the screen has 50% more resolution packed in... 6 MP vs 4 MP, so again you are really comparing an Apple to an Orange.
You're comparing an Apple and an Orange though, unless you somehow configured the MacBook Pro with a touch screen.
In most cases you probably got 2 weeks pay in lieu of notice, perhaps even 60 days if the WARN Act was triggered.
In a lot of these cases the company is holding severance hostage which can be several times your $5000 demand.
No it actually comes baked into ES. If you accidentally tap the prominent "Charging Boost ... ENABLE" box which takes up the lower third of the ES screen it gets enabled without going to Google Play at all. And then there is no way to disable it from ES or manage application... you have to put the phone on a charger and trigger the app, then choose the gear icon in the upper right to change the app setting to off.
According to the TSA they found 31 loaded guns in carry-on bags *this week* so they must be doing something right. http://blog.tsa.gov/2015/12/ts...
The federal government pay scales are generally under market, but you get job security, a pension, and retiree medical benefits at the same subsidized cost as regular employees, all of which are unusual to non-existent in corporate America today.
Really, I don't understand the hate Hangouts keeps receiving...
Hangouts is horrible at keeping chats synchronized. I will sometimes find messages sitting in the Chats folder in gmail that I never saw on my phone and as a result never responded to.
Having SMS in Hangouts is kind of nice, except that it is just window dressing since you can't see those messages on any other Hangout instance other than on that one device.
Also since Hangouts relies upon your network connection it is pretty unreliable as an "instant" messaging system. I find that I can get someone's attention much more quickly via SMS than a Hangout message, which in some cases have taken hours to deliver.
Vic does a great job as Kirk
He's got the look and mannerisms down but he just does not have the command presence and the authority voice... he sounds wimpy and whiney. I think he needs to find a drill sergeant to work with him on it.
It is a lot smaller than a standard telephone handset... why is this somehow different? e.g. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000...
My Sony library still exists - inaccessible - on my hard-drive, thanks to their !@#$ DRM insanity.
You should have received an email from Sony earlier this year which included a link to transfer your library over to Kobo. About 95% of my library transferred and is now accessible from Kobo readers and apps.
The Nighthawk is about the fastest router you can get bar none... when it is working. Over the last six months I have had no end to troubles with unstable wireless connections, the wireless going away completely, LAN devices being unable to talk to wireless devices, and outright router reboots on the stock firmware. It has been getting better but still just not there. I tried DD-WRT for about a month and it is better, but the wireless connections are still unstable. Currently back on my old ASUS RT-N56U... not as fast but connections are rock solid.
5. Photo pass (photos shot by in park employees)
Also pictures taken during rides were automatically tied back to my Disney account. After our last trip they sent me an email offering them for preview/purchase.
the whole Government Shutdown is *precisely* what the Republican mantra is--to cut off non-essential spending.
Which is why I don't understand why one of the first bills they passed (unanimously even) was to guarantee backpay for all of the Federal workers which negates any possible savings.
There most certainly is a marriage penalty. Only the 10% and 15% brackets are identical between the married filing seperate and single. This year a married couple with roughly equal incomes totaling over $146,400 will pay a penalty over filing as two singles.
does this mean polygamy is now legal?
It is legal if the State you live in says it is legal. Only then can you attempt to claim Federal benefits under this ruling.
Would you tax stock market value?
Absolutely.
Okay so now you have to track market value for all of your assets. That's a bit more work than tracking basis, especially for non-liquid assets.
I don't care about some guy with $100k in gold coins the goal is to go after the guy with $100m in coins.
So this guy with $100m in coins... would he have to track bullion value, or collectible value? Whichever is higher? More paperwork. Also it sounds like you will have to determine if you meet some sort of threshold before being taxed. And of course you know that threshhold will be low enough that dual income couples would have to compute the tax every year anyway ala AMT to make sure they are not liable (this is Congress writing the law after all).
You forget the mortgage is a huge negative
Now it sounds like you are really looking to tax net worth, so now you have to deduct loans from your assets. Or do only mortgages count? How about margin accounts?
On the whole you are describing a paper nightmare. It is hard enough for me to just track capital gains on the couple stock sales I do in a year well enough to report them correctly. I can't imagine trying to get something like this right... I have enough fears about screwing up my relatively simple 1040 without making it even more complicated.
I think just raising the capital gains tax would serve nearly the same purpose and would have the added effect of stabilizing the market.
Sorry, typo... t-bill -> t-bond.
Your points are interesting but I believe investors will change their asset mixes to try to make up the loss of return, e.g. would you also tax hard commodities? How? Would you tax stock market value? Poor people invested in Apple would get nailed at the peak and will be hurting now. The tax would effectively reduce asset value, which would then decrease capital gains taxes when sold as well. I still believe the net effect will be near neutral to the Federal government, and would create another round of burdensome paperwork for people trying to figure out their 1040, so I guess it would be good for tax accountants and IRS agents.
Also when long term rates increase, credit card rates also increase so those people are screwed. People with fixed mortgages would certainly be better off, but people looking for mortgages will have a hard time.
Lets say you have a t-bill... $10,000 paying 3% interest. That means you net $300 per year income, and lose roughly a third of it to income taxes so you make $200
Now add your 2% asset tax. Now instead of netting $200... you get zip. So why would you invest in a t-bill?
So the Feds have to increase the interest paid on the t-bill in order to attract investors... in this case you would have to raise the interest rate to 6% in order for the investor to make his $200 net. So:
Old: Pay $300, get $100 back in income taxes, paid investor $200
New: Pay $600, get $200 back in income taxes, get $200 back in asset taxes, paid investor $200
Net effect to the Federal government is zero. No matter if the tax is 2% or 10% they are still paying the investor roughly $200.
Now if the Federal government had no debt this picture would be a bit different, but you would still be raising interest rates on everyone else, which is not good for the 99%.