Nice going on perpetuating a myth. The Louisiana National Guard was on top of the situation in the SuperDome. Despite the fevered ravings of Geraldo Rivera and the rest of the retards with sat uplinks there was no cannibalism, no mass horrors, only the problems to be expected with thousands of people sheltering in a place not really built for it; no power, cooling, working toilets, etc. And because of the media people suffered longer, the breathless reports of shooting at rescue teams was pure BS yet it delayed everything while the preperations were changed to add armed escorts.
Most of what you saw on the TV about Katrina was eventually revealed to be false, but it is still accepted as Truth or at least 'truthy' by the general public. Just like Gore won FL and the Supreme Court 'stole' the election. Except nobody ever managed to produce a ballot total that gave Gore a win if they applied Florida election laws as they existed on election day. Including the Miami Herald, not generally known as a Republican leaning operation. Much of what you think you know ain't so.
> Might wanta rethink that anti global warming stance.
And I'm sure you will be ready to be take it back next time there is a big AGW related congressional hearing, media event, Goracle pronouncement, whatever that gets another freak snowstorm or whatnot. Probably not so much. Confirmation bias is a bitch for the subject to recognize ain't it.
That's ok. Because nobody believed him except a few low information voters who needed to be duped. Sorta like when he was against redefining marriage until he was for it. Everybody knew he was lying so he got a pass. Of course, anyone else holding the exact same policy position Obama ran on in 2008 was and is a bigot. Ya gotta keep up with what the Official Truth is today. Remember, we have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia. Dissent is not patriotic. Of course if Obama loses it suddenly will have always been the very heart of patriotism and you must be prepared to adjust your public utterances accordingly to properly duckspeak the Party Line.
> In the right circumstances, anyone can be a murderer...
Bullshit. Postmodern twaddle. I might kill ya. But you will be awake, you will be facing me and you will be armed.[1] No, some of us have these things called morals that forbid us from even really considering mass murder and public mayhem.
> So rather than engaging in this ego-protection, you need to admit that > the problem isn't only the people, but the situations that create them.
Lots of people flunk out of college yet few shoot up the town. This tells me most people are rational and capable of self government. You see one nut and declare everyone is insane and a menace waiting for society to make em go off.
[1] And if you don't recognize that line you can turn in your geek card and leave before you are laughed out.
> Also this notion of the people being allowed to protect themselves against a Tyrannical > Government, really who do think would win a country's Armed force's, trained over years, > with Air support, Intel, Huge Logistics or a militia..
Sorry, forgot to eviscerate this one. Do you get cable tv or the Internet on your world? Haven't we been watching exactly what you say can't happen? Does Libya ring any bells? Ok, the ouyside world lent them a hand. So how about Syria? Hell, they overthrew Egypt without even having the running gunfights in the streets and that military dictatorship was armed with American tanks.
This country was founded by ordinary people rising up and defeating the world's leading military power. It can be done, it is a matter of determination. So long as we retain the spirit of revolution we will never be defeated. Not by an outside power and not by our own government. That is why we refuse to surrender our RTKBA.
Lets not mention this jackass's name. Why make the killer a household word while we all forget the victims before the funerals are done. Let us not implant the notion into the unstable that a sure fire way to get your fifteen minutes of fame is to shoot up a public place.
> So how exactly are you meant to control him...
He was seeing a shrink and that story is still ongoing. But no, we probably can't stop every disgruntled grad student who suddenly burns out and decides to go violent.
But most people who die from violent crimes are killed by people who aren't committing their very first violent felony. We stopped locking people up unless they are obviously a menace to others and all too often not even then... until they make the evening news.
But the best way to discourage these incidents is to end the shooting galleries. With the exception of Rep. Giffords all these mass shootings of the last fifty plus years have been in 'gun free zones.' Nobody seriously questions the wisdom of restricting guns in some places, like a courthouse. Because emotions are high and there are plenty of armed LEOs around to keep order. But places like that theater put up the 'no guns' signs and provide zero security. Sue their asses, boycott, whatever it takes to make that insanity end. Mass killings usually don't stop until the 2nd weapon comes into play. When seconds count the police are minutes away.
> look at the countries which the highest murder rates, and they all have easy access to Gun's.
What diseased mind looks at that map and comes to THAT conclusion. The countries in the dark colors are the ones with widespread civil unrest, revolutions, wars, loss of the rule of law, etc. Sure guns aren't legal in Mexico but they are having open battles between rival gangs in daylight, half (or more) of their army is in cahoots with one or more gangs, etc. Central America, South America, Africa, etc. are all battling communist revolutionaries and worse at the moment; violence is just how those guys roll.
> Just be careful if you go there; there's a lot of crazy shit that goes on.
Nah, a gun show is probably the safest place you could be. Have you EVER heard of anyone trying to start anything at one? Just how much of one's brain has to be malfunctioning for a person to pick a gun show as the place they want to go postal? What are the odds on that much of a human brain being broke and yet still retain enough functionality to pull off the act?
Nah, just annoyed. Even this/. summary tried to bury the lede. We already had a 3D printed gun thread, that ain't news. The censorship is the news, not a footnote.
Media bias usually isn't typically as blunt an instrument as it has become lately in the presidential elections and big policy disputes, it is more subtle. Some stories just aren't news, while some are beaten to death days beyond when most people are shouting "ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP" and flipping the channel. And like this one, the bias is in how a story is presented, what aspect is or is not presented with OUTRAGE, what key phrases are used in the story, etc.
News flash. If you, me or anyone with average intelligence goes postal lack of a gun won't lower the body count much.
Look at the recent nut who went off at the Batman premiere. He left bombs in his apartment. Had he carried those and lobbed them into the packed audience it would have been at least as deadly, probably more. So hearing that, bed wetting types like yourself will next work to ban any access to chemicals that can go boom, right? You do know that would ban almost everything useful, right?
Control the criminals and the mentally ill, not household cleaners, not knives, not firearms.
Notice how often some ideas will get instantly censored and others won't?
Post plans to make a gun and get yourself instantly frozen out. Classified military secrets go straight to the NYT and the leaker is called a hero.
Question politically correct orthodoxy in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Edication and be fired almost instantly.
Say outrageous, at LEAST borderline if not outright, racist things for years and if you are Joe Biden your career doesn't end; no that is just Crazy Joe. Need it even be pointed out that any R saying things that dumb/retarded (say Akin for example) are denounced by the same people who cover for Joe and his boss?
When do we get to call you guys intolerant, bigots, etc.?
As for this idea, it is a veritable certainty it will be denounced by exactly the same people who support all other information being free. Pirate Party Yea! But not this. Double standard.
Me, I want more of this. I want plans to 3D print a fully automatic weapon. Just to watch the heads explode at the realization that the genie is out of the bottle and ain't going back.
Well guess what champ? You want to interoperate with the real world you pay the price. And Mastercard charges fees.
You aren't paying 'rent' you are paying a pretty cheap transaction (by credit card standards) fee to move in and out of the mainstream economy.
Not that it matters, just like egold before it, BitCoin is already flailing with the problem of keeping the money launderers, drug dealers and various other underworld forces from overwhelming it to the point no legit person will want to be associated with it.
> Actually, a group of economists crunched the numbers [berkeley.edu] and found > that the optimal top marginal tax rate was somewhere between 70% and 85%.
Figures. Idiots. Long before you get to rates anywhere that high tax avoidance becomes far more profitable than income generation. Think about it and that doesn't even pass the most basic smell test. Lets put some round numbers in and see what happens in the real world.
Assume your top rate of 70% kicks in at a half million of income and you were making a mill a year when the socialists took over. As soon as you get done with your accountants you will renegotiate your taxable income down to the half million mark and that other half million will go elsewhere. Shelters, indirect things you won't exactly control but will gain indirect benefits from, the details will depend on your lawyers, accountants and lobbyists but the point is you can now lose 70% to overhead, graft, ineffeciency, paying that swarm of lawyers and accountants, etc. and still be ahead of the game. Meanwhile the gravel in the gears of society introduced by the overhead lower total GDP. Guess who gets hurt? See Europe.
> You don't seriously believe trickle-down economics actually work, do you?
To quote the great man himself, "Notice they don't call it Reaganomics anymore."
> the NYSE is trading at record highs
Not record. But still high. Care to guess why? Inflation is one. We are told there isn't any but people with money know better. Second, everyone in the world is boned right now but the US is boned less. So everyone is still dumping their money here, bidding up prices.
And notice corporate income is up but dividends aren't really doing much. They are mostly just sitting on it. Do you wonder why? Could it be because the rewards on investing it (either external or in internal capital expansion) is low and unreliable and the risks are ginormous. Uncertainty causes economic stagnation which breeds instability which is another word for uncertainty, and the circle turns. Add in the uncertainty from a government that has by word and deed shown itself to be an enemy and well, look around and you see the result.
No, that would be a losing deal because we would still be paying taxes.
How about a better deal. Allow the red states the option to leave the Union. Leave behind your taxes, regulations, mandates, all of it. Since most of the military is from red states and most of the bases also are in red states I'd even be willing to have us shoulder the 'White Man's Burden' of defending the West and only require the Blues to keep whatever minimal force they thought best for internal defense.
People are already fleeing the blue states now. Given an option to totally escape to a land of opportunity we would depopulate your hives of pretty much all productive people in a generation and the whole remaining mess would look like Detroit. I know that, you know that. Admit it; first to yourself.
> Mitt Romney's 13% sure as fuck is not a "fair share",
Sure it is. It is mostly from investments. I.e. it is money that has already been subjected to the corporate tax rate. And see my post above on why you don't want to tax investment income too high. Of course I don't want to tax ANY income too high.
> And they magically decide to pay taxes when they're lower?
Yes. Do a simple thought experiment. Imagine progressives get what they claim to want and start taxing investment income at the normal rate for wages. If you live in a high tax location like NYC that puts you well over 50%. So. Consider you have ten million dollars in a sack. You have already set aside the tax liability on it so you have your sack of ten million dollars and you are just sitting there looking lovingly at it, sipping some fine wine and perhaps stroking a white cat and cackling evilly. What so do with it....
1. Put in the bank. And get less than inflation. I.e. pay the bankers to hold your wealth as they inflate its value away.
2. Buy some cool rich people stuff with it. You will lose a little to sales tax but hey, you get fast cars, hookers and blow!
3. Buy yourself some tax free munis. Say you get five percent. Assuming the government you invested in isn't in CA your principle is probably safe and you will score a half million every year tax free. Loop back to this list to decide what to do with the money every year.
4. Buy some stocks. They better return ten percent plus a premium for the risk of the very volitile stock market because thegovernment will be taking half.
5. Start a business. Similar to buying stock, it better make at least ten percent annually on your investment plus a premium for the risk and another premium for the time you will have to put into overseeing it.
The lower the taxes on investments are the more attractive investing is and the less attractive parking the money or pissing it away on titties and cocaine get. We WANT rich people to pick the last two options. If the taxes are fairly low the rewards are attractive enough they will invest. BUt every time you raise em a single point a few more otherwise economically sound business opportunities tip into not profitable and a few more people get 'rightsized'.
You are right. It doesn't hurt the rich at all, like everything it rolls downhill and hurts US. Higher tax rates force the rich to switch from asset appreciation and economic growth to wealth preservation and tax avoidance.
> How low does the tax rate for the top.1% have to be. I want a percentage.
Ten percent. For everybody with absolutely no deductions, classes of income (capital gains, unearned, etc) credits (refundable or none) or anything. Everybody has skin in the game and nobody is voting to tax 'the other guy.' If I had to make a compromise to get a bill actually passed into law I'd settle for 5% on all income to the poverty line, 10% everything to a million and 15% on anything over. But everybody pays something, we don't set social policy throuth the tax code and we don't need to spend billion on compliance, recordkeeping, enforcement and such.
That is a good resource but it doesn't show the comparison with Europe I was wanting to point out. That we are already far more progressive in our tax policy than countries with outright socialists in charge. In other words, we are almost certainly maxed out and probably way on the bad side of the Laffer Curve. Raising more revenue via taxation isn't an option. The rich are already taxed beyond the line where you get revenue for raising rates and if you even talk about raising rates on the already beleagered middle class you will have a revolt.
The bottom half are already getting more from the State than they pay in all taxes combined. They pay more Federal Income tax and usually no State Income tax. They do pay some FICA and sales taxes but get the Earned Income Tax Credit and almost always a few government handouts which cancels those out and usually leaves them in the black. And changing that would be instant political suicide in the current environment.
Politifact is useless. You won't believe me so I won't even cite, Google it yourself.
The important numbers are the percentage of the budget shouldered by the top income earners vs their share of total income. Go look it up and compare it to Europe. Anyone who even utters the phrase 'fair share' must first go see that number for themselves and THEN define exactly how much more they think they can extract before they say 'fuck it' and go somewhere else. I want a percentage. Define it.
Well there was another article bemoaning budget cuts to science posted an hour and twenty minutes prior to this one.
The bottom line though is the country is broke. Eventually a welfare state drives out all other spending. We are borrowing forty cents of every dollar spent trying to deny that reality but it can't continue. Things that can't continue, don't. Reality eventually wins. Every. Single. Time.
There are only a couple of choices available.
1. We do things that get the economy humming again. More economic activity means more revenue to the government to fund all this stuff and fewer people needing the welfare state.
2. Cut everything, like Europe is facing. They haven't had a military to speak of since the end of WWII over there. Soon we won't be able to aford one either. But it won't help. Soon we will be spending every dollar coming into the treasury on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt. So as soon as nobody is willing to keep throwing good money after bad by continuing to loan us more, that is it. And soon they will grow yet more and exceed 100%. Just for those.
3. Hyperinflation.
4. Stay the course and fall off the cliff. You don't have to look to Europe to see where that leads, California and Illinois are closer.
Don't even talk about raising taxes, won't do anything for the deficit. If you want to be a socialist and talk about 'economic justice' and crap like that, go ahead; just don't delude yourself into thinking it is going to raise any actual net revenue.
Em, the size of a tarball doesn't tell the story. Look at the size of a source repository. As in a CVS, git or SourceSafe storage area. Those suckers get huge and they get huge fast.
And I think you are mistaken on the size of some of those items. Doom came on three(?) floppy discs. Or are you expecting me to believe the geniuses who created Doom would distribute it in a format larger than the one used to fully express the editable data for the artwork and levels? And Doom3's art assets are certainly larger than 9.5MB.
Do the math on the volume a gigabyte of data on paper take would consume. Now go look at the size of the source repository even for a crappy little Android game. Not practical.
Yes but UPS must stay running because the only way to recover from such a disaster is for UPS, FedEx and such to stay running. Under the martial law that would follow such an event the military would be ensuring they get priority access to whatever fuel can be obtained. That is why they figure on a week. If they can't get more in that time it is truly game over anyway. And anyway, the datacenter without fuel for the trucks and planes wouldn't help a lot.
First step is to stop listening to the hype. Yes it would be bad for the large power distribution infrastructure but no solar flare is going to erase optical discs that doesn't also wipe out most life on the planet. It isn't going to erase hard drives that aren't destroyed by the power events that happen in the first few minutes. So a copy in your safe will still be readable. Remember, the safe is metal and entirely enclosed. In other words it is a Faraday Cage. I really don't know how flash memory will react to a strong electro-magnetic field but my money on it also surviving so long as it isn't connected to anything when the balloon goes up. Kinda hard to induce much of a voltage across nanoscale features. And these observations also apply to an EMP attack.
It things really get bad you might have trouble finding a working system to connect that backup to and electricity to start it up with but if it gets that bad you won't be worrying about the source code to some damned game, you will be worried about God, Gold and Guns at that point.
While making those elaborate plans to protect your data you might also want to take a few precautions to ensure you are there to need that data when the dust settles. Do you have a bug out bag? Is it fresh? Do you have an escape plan? Odds are that if you are an indie game dev you live in one of the hives where venture capital can be found and everyone there is toast within days; the trucks stop rolling when the gas pumps stop working, the shelves empty and canibalism begins. Do you have a destination in mind? Do you have a few days of survival supplies stashed to allow you a chance to get to it?
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> and largely ignored until theyre all dead.
Nice going on perpetuating a myth. The Louisiana National Guard was on top of the situation in the SuperDome. Despite the fevered ravings of Geraldo Rivera and the rest of the retards with sat uplinks there was no cannibalism, no mass horrors, only the problems to be expected with thousands of people sheltering in a place not really built for it; no power, cooling, working toilets, etc. And because of the media people suffered longer, the breathless reports of shooting at rescue teams was pure BS yet it delayed everything while the preperations were changed to add armed escorts.
Most of what you saw on the TV about Katrina was eventually revealed to be false, but it is still accepted as Truth or at least 'truthy' by the general public. Just like Gore won FL and the Supreme Court 'stole' the election. Except nobody ever managed to produce a ballot total that gave Gore a win if they applied Florida election laws as they existed on election day. Including the Miami Herald, not generally known as a Republican leaning operation. Much of what you think you know ain't so.
> Might wanta rethink that anti global warming stance.
And I'm sure you will be ready to be take it back next time there is a big AGW related congressional hearing, media event, Goracle pronouncement, whatever that gets another freak snowstorm or whatnot. Probably not so much. Confirmation bias is a bitch for the subject to recognize ain't it.
> And Obama. Don't forget, he's a "Christian."
That's ok. Because nobody believed him except a few low information voters who needed to be duped. Sorta like when he was against redefining marriage until he was for it. Everybody knew he was lying so he got a pass. Of course, anyone else holding the exact same policy position Obama ran on in 2008 was and is a bigot. Ya gotta keep up with what the Official Truth is today. Remember, we have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia. Dissent is not patriotic. Of course if Obama loses it suddenly will have always been the very heart of patriotism and you must be prepared to adjust your public utterances accordingly to properly duckspeak the Party Line.
> In the right circumstances, anyone can be a murderer...
Bullshit. Postmodern twaddle. I might kill ya. But you will be awake, you will be facing me and you will be armed.[1] No, some of us have these things called morals that forbid us from even really considering mass murder and public mayhem.
> So rather than engaging in this ego-protection, you need to admit that
> the problem isn't only the people, but the situations that create them.
Lots of people flunk out of college yet few shoot up the town. This tells me most people are rational and capable of self government. You see one nut and declare everyone is insane and a menace waiting for society to make em go off.
[1] And if you don't recognize that line you can turn in your geek card and leave before you are laughed out.
> Also this notion of the people being allowed to protect themselves against a Tyrannical
> Government, really who do think would win a country's Armed force's, trained over years,
> with Air support, Intel, Huge Logistics or a militia..
Sorry, forgot to eviscerate this one. Do you get cable tv or the Internet on your world? Haven't we been watching exactly what you say can't happen? Does Libya ring any bells? Ok, the ouyside world lent them a hand. So how about Syria? Hell, they overthrew Egypt without even having the running gunfights in the streets and that military dictatorship was armed with American tanks.
This country was founded by ordinary people rising up and defeating the world's leading military power. It can be done, it is a matter of determination. So long as we retain the spirit of revolution we will never be defeated. Not by an outside power and not by our own government. That is why we refuse to surrender our RTKBA.
> Logic is flawed, ***** ****** (batman premier)
Lets not mention this jackass's name. Why make the killer a household word while we all forget the victims before the funerals are done. Let us not implant the notion into the unstable that a sure fire way to get your fifteen minutes of fame is to shoot up a public place.
> So how exactly are you meant to control him...
He was seeing a shrink and that story is still ongoing. But no, we probably can't stop every disgruntled grad student who suddenly burns out and decides to go violent.
But most people who die from violent crimes are killed by people who aren't committing their very first violent felony. We stopped locking people up unless they are obviously a menace to others and all too often not even then... until they make the evening news.
But the best way to discourage these incidents is to end the shooting galleries. With the exception of Rep. Giffords all these mass shootings of the last fifty plus years have been in 'gun free zones.' Nobody seriously questions the wisdom of restricting guns in some places, like a courthouse. Because emotions are high and there are plenty of armed LEOs around to keep order. But places like that theater put up the 'no guns' signs and provide zero security. Sue their asses, boycott, whatever it takes to make that insanity end. Mass killings usually don't stop until the 2nd weapon comes into play. When seconds count the police are minutes away.
> look at the countries which the highest murder rates, and they all have easy access to Gun's.
What diseased mind looks at that map and comes to THAT conclusion. The countries in the dark colors are the ones with widespread civil unrest, revolutions, wars, loss of the rule of law, etc. Sure guns aren't legal in Mexico but they are having open battles between rival gangs in daylight, half (or more) of their army is in cahoots with one or more gangs, etc. Central America, South America, Africa, etc. are all battling communist revolutionaries and worse at the moment; violence is just how those guys roll.
> Just be careful if you go there; there's a lot of crazy shit that goes on.
Nah, a gun show is probably the safest place you could be. Have you EVER heard of anyone trying to start anything at one? Just how much of one's brain has to be malfunctioning for a person to pick a gun show as the place they want to go postal? What are the odds on that much of a human brain being broke and yet still retain enough functionality to pull off the act?
Nah, just annoyed. Even this /. summary tried to bury the lede. We already had a 3D printed gun thread, that ain't news. The censorship is the news, not a footnote.
Media bias usually isn't typically as blunt an instrument as it has become lately in the presidential elections and big policy disputes, it is more subtle. Some stories just aren't news, while some are beaten to death days beyond when most people are shouting "ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP" and flipping the channel. And like this one, the bias is in how a story is presented, what aspect is or is not presented with OUTRAGE, what key phrases are used in the story, etc.
News flash. If you, me or anyone with average intelligence goes postal lack of a gun won't lower the body count much.
Look at the recent nut who went off at the Batman premiere. He left bombs in his apartment. Had he carried those and lobbed them into the packed audience it would have been at least as deadly, probably more. So hearing that, bed wetting types like yourself will next work to ban any access to chemicals that can go boom, right? You do know that would ban almost everything useful, right?
Control the criminals and the mentally ill, not household cleaners, not knives, not firearms.
Notice how often some ideas will get instantly censored and others won't?
Post plans to make a gun and get yourself instantly frozen out. Classified military secrets go straight to the NYT and the leaker is called a hero.
Question politically correct orthodoxy in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Edication and be fired almost instantly.
Say outrageous, at LEAST borderline if not outright, racist things for years and if you are Joe Biden your career doesn't end; no that is just Crazy Joe. Need it even be pointed out that any R saying things that dumb/retarded (say Akin for example) are denounced by the same people who cover for Joe and his boss?
When do we get to call you guys intolerant, bigots, etc.?
As for this idea, it is a veritable certainty it will be denounced by exactly the same people who support all other information being free. Pirate Party Yea! But not this. Double standard.
Me, I want more of this. I want plans to 3D print a fully automatic weapon. Just to watch the heads explode at the realization that the genie is out of the bottle and ain't going back.
Well guess what champ? You want to interoperate with the real world you pay the price. And Mastercard charges fees.
You aren't paying 'rent' you are paying a pretty cheap transaction (by credit card standards) fee to move in and out of the mainstream economy.
Not that it matters, just like egold before it, BitCoin is already flailing with the problem of keeping the money launderers, drug dealers and various other underworld forces from overwhelming it to the point no legit person will want to be associated with it.
> Actually, a group of economists crunched the numbers [berkeley.edu] and found
> that the optimal top marginal tax rate was somewhere between 70% and 85%.
Figures. Idiots. Long before you get to rates anywhere that high tax avoidance becomes far more profitable than income generation. Think about it and that doesn't even pass the most basic smell test. Lets put some round numbers in and see what happens in the real world.
Assume your top rate of 70% kicks in at a half million of income and you were making a mill a year when the socialists took over. As soon as you get done with your accountants you will renegotiate your taxable income down to the half million mark and that other half million will go elsewhere. Shelters, indirect things you won't exactly control but will gain indirect benefits from, the details will depend on your lawyers, accountants and lobbyists but the point is you can now lose 70% to overhead, graft, ineffeciency, paying that swarm of lawyers and accountants, etc. and still be ahead of the game. Meanwhile the gravel in the gears of society introduced by the overhead lower total GDP. Guess who gets hurt? See Europe.
> You don't seriously believe trickle-down economics actually work, do you?
To quote the great man himself, "Notice they don't call it Reaganomics anymore."
> the NYSE is trading at record highs
Not record. But still high. Care to guess why? Inflation is one. We are told there isn't any but people with money know better. Second, everyone in the world is boned right now but the US is boned less. So everyone is still dumping their money here, bidding up prices.
And notice corporate income is up but dividends aren't really doing much. They are mostly just sitting on it. Do you wonder why? Could it be because the rewards on investing it (either external or in internal capital expansion) is low and unreliable and the risks are ginormous. Uncertainty causes economic stagnation which breeds instability which is another word for uncertainty, and the circle turns. Add in the uncertainty from a government that has by word and deed shown itself to be an enemy and well, look around and you see the result.
No, that would be a losing deal because we would still be paying taxes.
How about a better deal. Allow the red states the option to leave the Union. Leave behind your taxes, regulations, mandates, all of it. Since most of the military is from red states and most of the bases also are in red states I'd even be willing to have us shoulder the 'White Man's Burden' of defending the West and only require the Blues to keep whatever minimal force they thought best for internal defense.
People are already fleeing the blue states now. Given an option to totally escape to a land of opportunity we would depopulate your hives of pretty much all productive people in a generation and the whole remaining mess would look like Detroit. I know that, you know that. Admit it; first to yourself.
> Mitt Romney's 13% sure as fuck is not a "fair share",
Sure it is. It is mostly from investments. I.e. it is money that has already been subjected to the corporate tax rate. And see my post above on why you don't want to tax investment income too high. Of course I don't want to tax ANY income too high.
> And they magically decide to pay taxes when they're lower?
Yes. Do a simple thought experiment. Imagine progressives get what they claim to want and start taxing investment income at the normal rate for wages. If you live in a high tax location like NYC that puts you well over 50%. So. Consider you have ten million dollars in a sack. You have already set aside the tax liability on it so you have your sack of ten million dollars and you are just sitting there looking lovingly at it, sipping some fine wine and perhaps stroking a white cat and cackling evilly. What so do with it....
1. Put in the bank. And get less than inflation. I.e. pay the bankers to hold your wealth as they inflate its value away.
2. Buy some cool rich people stuff with it. You will lose a little to sales tax but hey, you get fast cars, hookers and blow!
3. Buy yourself some tax free munis. Say you get five percent. Assuming the government you invested in isn't in CA your principle is probably safe and you will score a half million every year tax free. Loop back to this list to decide what to do with the money every year.
4. Buy some stocks. They better return ten percent plus a premium for the risk of the very volitile stock market because thegovernment will be taking half.
5. Start a business. Similar to buying stock, it better make at least ten percent annually on your investment plus a premium for the risk and another premium for the time you will have to put into overseeing it.
The lower the taxes on investments are the more attractive investing is and the less attractive parking the money or pissing it away on titties and cocaine get. We WANT rich people to pick the last two options. If the taxes are fairly low the rewards are attractive enough they will invest. BUt every time you raise em a single point a few more otherwise economically sound business opportunities tip into not profitable and a few more people get 'rightsized'.
> but it's not like it's hurting you
You are right. It doesn't hurt the rich at all, like everything it rolls downhill and hurts US. Higher tax rates force the rich to switch from asset appreciation and economic growth to wealth preservation and tax avoidance.
> How low does the tax rate for the top .1% have to be. I want a percentage.
Ten percent. For everybody with absolutely no deductions, classes of income (capital gains, unearned, etc) credits (refundable or none) or anything. Everybody has skin in the game and nobody is voting to tax 'the other guy.' If I had to make a compromise to get a bill actually passed into law I'd settle for 5% on all income to the poverty line, 10% everything to a million and 15% on anything over. But everybody pays something, we don't set social policy throuth the tax code and we don't need to spend billion on compliance, recordkeeping, enforcement and such.
That is a good resource but it doesn't show the comparison with Europe I was wanting to point out. That we are already far more progressive in our tax policy than countries with outright socialists in charge. In other words, we are almost certainly maxed out and probably way on the bad side of the Laffer Curve. Raising more revenue via taxation isn't an option. The rich are already taxed beyond the line where you get revenue for raising rates and if you even talk about raising rates on the already beleagered middle class you will have a revolt.
The bottom half are already getting more from the State than they pay in all taxes combined. They pay more Federal Income tax and usually no State Income tax. They do pay some FICA and sales taxes but get the Earned Income Tax Credit and almost always a few government handouts which cancels those out and usually leaves them in the black. And changing that would be instant political suicide in the current environment.
Politifact is useless. You won't believe me so I won't even cite, Google it yourself.
The important numbers are the percentage of the budget shouldered by the top income earners vs their share of total income. Go look it up and compare it to Europe. Anyone who even utters the phrase 'fair share' must first go see that number for themselves and THEN define exactly how much more they think they can extract before they say 'fuck it' and go somewhere else. I want a percentage. Define it.
Well there was another article bemoaning budget cuts to science posted an hour and twenty minutes prior to this one.
The bottom line though is the country is broke. Eventually a welfare state drives out all other spending. We are borrowing forty cents of every dollar spent trying to deny that reality but it can't continue. Things that can't continue, don't. Reality eventually wins. Every. Single. Time.
There are only a couple of choices available.
1. We do things that get the economy humming again. More economic activity means more revenue to the government to fund all this stuff and fewer people needing the welfare state.
2. Cut everything, like Europe is facing. They haven't had a military to speak of since the end of WWII over there. Soon we won't be able to aford one either. But it won't help. Soon we will be spending every dollar coming into the treasury on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt. So as soon as nobody is willing to keep throwing good money after bad by continuing to loan us more, that is it. And soon they will grow yet more and exceed 100%. Just for those.
3. Hyperinflation.
4. Stay the course and fall off the cliff. You don't have to look to Europe to see where that leads, California and Illinois are closer.
Don't even talk about raising taxes, won't do anything for the deficit. If you want to be a socialist and talk about 'economic justice' and crap like that, go ahead; just don't delude yourself into thinking it is going to raise any actual net revenue.
Em, the size of a tarball doesn't tell the story. Look at the size of a source repository. As in a CVS, git or SourceSafe storage area. Those suckers get huge and they get huge fast.
And I think you are mistaken on the size of some of those items. Doom came on three(?) floppy discs. Or are you expecting me to believe the geniuses who created Doom would distribute it in a format larger than the one used to fully express the editable data for the artwork and levels? And Doom3's art assets are certainly larger than 9.5MB.
Do the math on the volume a gigabyte of data on paper take would consume. Now go look at the size of the source repository even for a crappy little Android game. Not practical.
Yes but UPS must stay running because the only way to recover from such a disaster is for UPS, FedEx and such to stay running. Under the martial law that would follow such an event the military would be ensuring they get priority access to whatever fuel can be obtained. That is why they figure on a week. If they can't get more in that time it is truly game over anyway. And anyway, the datacenter without fuel for the trucks and planes wouldn't help a lot.
First step is to stop listening to the hype. Yes it would be bad for the large power distribution infrastructure but no solar flare is going to erase optical discs that doesn't also wipe out most life on the planet. It isn't going to erase hard drives that aren't destroyed by the power events that happen in the first few minutes. So a copy in your safe will still be readable. Remember, the safe is metal and entirely enclosed. In other words it is a Faraday Cage. I really don't know how flash memory will react to a strong electro-magnetic field but my money on it also surviving so long as it isn't connected to anything when the balloon goes up. Kinda hard to induce much of a voltage across nanoscale features. And these observations also apply to an EMP attack.
It things really get bad you might have trouble finding a working system to connect that backup to and electricity to start it up with but if it gets that bad you won't be worrying about the source code to some damned game, you will be worried about God, Gold and Guns at that point.
While making those elaborate plans to protect your data you might also want to take a few precautions to ensure you are there to need that data when the dust settles. Do you have a bug out bag? Is it fresh? Do you have an escape plan? Odds are that if you are an indie game dev you live in one of the hives where venture capital can be found and everyone there is toast within days; the trucks stop rolling when the gas pumps stop working, the shelves empty and canibalism begins. Do you have a destination in mind? Do you have a few days of survival supplies stashed to allow you a chance to get to it?