I don't understand how you can claim that "the 'fair' tax misses a lot, and is exceptionally regressive," when your very next sentence indicates that you don't know anything about it at all. The answer to all your questions is "yes," btw.
I don't necessarily think I'm getting screwed over. Honestly, I'm pretty sure there's nearly as good of a chance that I'm paying less than I should than that I'm paying more than I should. But I put as little effort into doing my taxes as possible, and if there's something that's not obvious, I just guess. I used to spend weeks organizing documents, reading all the relevant publications, etc. Then I realized that it's not really my job and I have better things to do.
I really don't care if it really is 50%. The problem is that the US tax code is incomprehensible and expensive. It's over 70,000 pages (http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/03/growing-complexity-of-us-federal-tax.html). I believe the FairTax is under 150, but I'll be generous and say that 500 pages would be reasonable. That's 69,500 pages of fluff, special cases, loopholes, and various other ways for people and corporations to avoid paying what they would otherwise have to pay. Not surprisingly, the costs to enforce this tax code are astronomical, as are the costs to businesses and individuals to comply with it.
According to a detailed study by the Tax Foundation, in 2005 individuals, businesses, and nonprofits
spent an estimated 6 billion hours complying with the federal income tax code at an
estimated cost of over $265.1 billion.
The iPhone gaming craze is a fad. How many silly games are there in the app store? 50k? more? And how many are actually worth playing? Maybe a couple of dozen? People say the Wii sucks because of all the shovelware, multiply that by 1000x and you've got the cell-phone game market. I predict the death knoll of cell-phone gaming within 5 years.
I've always wanted a decent racing game for the Wii as well, and I bought F1 2009, but the lack of analog throttle and brakes made the whole game pointless to me. No one has ever produced a real wheel/pedal set for the Wii, so you have to simulate throttle input by tapping the accelerator at varying rates. On the other hand, I probably play Mario Kart online 12 hours a week. Honestly, racing video games have about as much in common with real world racing as the COD type games do with actually going to war, so the items and video-game physics don't bother me a bit, because it's just addicting and fun.
Yeah you'd think the USA would jump at the chance to launch a knee-jerk investigation into a story that contains so much misinformation that it might as well have come from the Weekly World News.
Wow, all the hysteria and misinformation about this from supposedly well-informed Slashdot readers. I guess you don't need to actually know anything about the subject except what you read on huffington or ars before posting. This entire topic is just flamebait here.
My experience with IT is that most of them don't really have much aptitude for the type of work they do, but they went to get some certifications and that sort of thing so they could do it for a living. Most of the developers I know grew up coding and doing all the other things that go along with it - fixing network and OS issues, db server issues, etc. So yes, we can do 80% of whatever IT does for the other departments for ourselves, and it's usually faster and easier to boot. It's actually nice here, because corporate IT basically lets engineering do whatever we want, we just have to take care of our internal resources ourselves.
As an Apple shareholder, I wouldn't call this a problem, I'd call it doing a damn good job. Besides, it's no different from companies in a huge number of other industries. You don't really need that new car either, or that new house, or the huge TV.
ridiculous! I swear, I thought of this long ago, I just didn't bother to write it down or anything. I was kind of busy pirating warez on usenet at the time. But it's clearly an obvious feature that a five year old could come up with - at least that's what it sounds like from the slashdot summary, and those are always correct! Apple and Google are bad! If this patent hadn't been granted, we'd all have hoverboards and no terrorism! Waaaaaaaah!
Everyone just accepts the explanation from the guy whose app was rejected as fact? No one is even the slightest bit skeptical that the "'You know... your magazine...It's just about Android.... we can't have that in our App Store." quote is bogus?
Whatever. Aside from slashdot readers, there are exactly six people who care. When are "you people" going to get off your high horses and accept that the vast majority of people do not give a crap about any of the things you hold so dearly. Namely, all software should be open source, all digital media should be free, and you should be able to run whatever you want wherever you want with no restrictions.
Ha! I said the same thing back in the 80's when I was a 13 year old pirating apple 2 games. Turns out I was just an immature little kid that didn't think the rules applied to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand how you can claim that "the 'fair' tax misses a lot, and is exceptionally regressive," when your very next sentence indicates that you don't know anything about it at all. The answer to all your questions is "yes," btw.
I don't necessarily think I'm getting screwed over. Honestly, I'm pretty sure there's nearly as good of a chance that I'm paying less than I should than that I'm paying more than I should. But I put as little effort into doing my taxes as possible, and if there's something that's not obvious, I just guess. I used to spend weeks organizing documents, reading all the relevant publications, etc. Then I realized that it's not really my job and I have better things to do.
According to a detailed study by the Tax Foundation, in 2005 individuals, businesses, and nonprofits spent an estimated 6 billion hours complying with the federal income tax code at an estimated cost of over $265.1 billion.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/1281.html
See the 3rd question from the bottom "Since business purchases are not taxable, how does the FairTax keep individuals from pretending to have a business so they can buy things tax free?" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
What are you looking at? You're laborers. You should be laboring. That's what you get for not having an education.
Brain and brain! What is brain!
Brain and brain! What is brain!
The iPhone gaming craze is a fad. How many silly games are there in the app store? 50k? more? And how many are actually worth playing? Maybe a couple of dozen? People say the Wii sucks because of all the shovelware, multiply that by 1000x and you've got the cell-phone game market. I predict the death knoll of cell-phone gaming within 5 years.
I've always wanted a decent racing game for the Wii as well, and I bought F1 2009, but the lack of analog throttle and brakes made the whole game pointless to me. No one has ever produced a real wheel/pedal set for the Wii, so you have to simulate throttle input by tapping the accelerator at varying rates. On the other hand, I probably play Mario Kart online 12 hours a week. Honestly, racing video games have about as much in common with real world racing as the COD type games do with actually going to war, so the items and video-game physics don't bother me a bit, because it's just addicting and fun.
Yeah you'd think the USA would jump at the chance to launch a knee-jerk investigation into a story that contains so much misinformation that it might as well have come from the Weekly World News.
Wow, all the hysteria and misinformation about this from supposedly well-informed Slashdot readers. I guess you don't need to actually know anything about the subject except what you read on huffington or ars before posting. This entire topic is just flamebait here.
Great scott!
So, at reasonable guesses of $3/gal and 25mpg, you would be driving 65,000 miles to and from work every year. ~260 miles a day. Really?
This is why I store all my important confidential data on a piece of paper taped inside my top desk drawer.
My experience with IT is that most of them don't really have much aptitude for the type of work they do, but they went to get some certifications and that sort of thing so they could do it for a living. Most of the developers I know grew up coding and doing all the other things that go along with it - fixing network and OS issues, db server issues, etc. So yes, we can do 80% of whatever IT does for the other departments for ourselves, and it's usually faster and easier to boot. It's actually nice here, because corporate IT basically lets engineering do whatever we want, we just have to take care of our internal resources ourselves.
Uh, no, @ has always been "at".
I've read that before, good stuff. Also, the good old Kevin Mitnick replays from Tsutomu's site - http://www.takedown.com/evidence/transcripts/index.html
As an Apple shareholder, I wouldn't call this a problem, I'd call it doing a damn good job. Besides, it's no different from companies in a huge number of other industries. You don't really need that new car either, or that new house, or the huge TV.
Shouldn't this guy ought to be a little more concerned with those Swedish sexual assault charges?
ridiculous! I swear, I thought of this long ago, I just didn't bother to write it down or anything. I was kind of busy pirating warez on usenet at the time. But it's clearly an obvious feature that a five year old could come up with - at least that's what it sounds like from the slashdot summary, and those are always correct! Apple and Google are bad! If this patent hadn't been granted, we'd all have hoverboards and no terrorism! Waaaaaaaah!
Gentlemen that prefer ladies prefer iOS too.
Everyone just accepts the explanation from the guy whose app was rejected as fact? No one is even the slightest bit skeptical that the "'You know... your magazine...It's just about Android.... we can't have that in our App Store." quote is bogus?
No, I wrap expensive fragile things that my children play with in rubber though...
Whatever. Aside from slashdot readers, there are exactly six people who care. When are "you people" going to get off your high horses and accept that the vast majority of people do not give a crap about any of the things you hold so dearly. Namely, all software should be open source, all digital media should be free, and you should be able to run whatever you want wherever you want with no restrictions.
Ha! I said the same thing back in the 80's when I was a 13 year old pirating apple 2 games. Turns out I was just an immature little kid that didn't think the rules applied to me.