Yea, be glad for that. I recently started my own business doing contract work in no less than 4 states, and the differences in how sales tax applies in each is already a huge pain in my ass.
From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.
Then again, I suppose that should apply to any estimate, especially when the estimator is using ceteris paribus in order to reach a certain conclusion...
The only exception would be if you were selling collectibles or some investment item that went up in price, and that's rarely sold at a yard sale.
You must not frequent yard sales, as in reality tons of incredibly valuable collectables are sold at them every weekend - but for far, far less than the item's actual value.
Of course, all that is unimportant (from a legal standpoint), because the fact remains that somebody is profiting, and nobody is paying taxes on those transactions.
Don't tax food or medicine. OK, the discrepancy just halved.
Except that the government will just increase taxes on other common goods to make up for the shortfall.
Your problem is that you missed the most important sentence in OP's post:
if you make $24,000 a year, a 20% tax that reduces your income to $18,000 a year is a much greater burden than it is to someone who makes $200,000 a year and has their income reduced to $150,000 a year.
With a "flat tax," there isn't any way around that issue.
Better idea: revert the legal definition of "income" to what it meant pre-1913.
Interestingly, before the oft-questioned "passage" of the 16th Amendment, "labor given in exchange for payment" was just that; income was what a business earned as a result of selling a product or service.
Do find a lot of examples of neo-Nazi idiots with hundreds of millions of stolen dollars and heavy weapons rounding up thousands of people and promising to slaughter them because of their religion, or marching cops and soldiers into trenches and machine gunning them down?
The "rounding up people" part might not be happening right now, but if you google phrases like "neo-nazi weapons stockpile" and "neo-nazis murder cop," you'll find plenty of examples. Don't the people of Europe have a right to use a pre-emptive strike to defend themselves against the inevitable escalation of violence from these barbaric individuals from reaching their shores*?
*In case it's not glaringly obvious, yes, I'm mocking the "fight them there so we don't fight them here" warhawks.
Neo-Nazis talk a lot. But they're just noisy idiots.
Neo-nazis kill people - Anders Breivik ring a bell?. That's not being "just noisy idiots." No, today they aren't killing people in the volumes that ISIL is, but that's today. Tomorrow could be completely different.
Actually, Breivik shows the point I'm making quite well: many would claim his style of extremism is an exclusively American export. If American neo-nazis can influence him, they can influence thousands of others, and by the "fight them there not here" mentality, that means other nations "have a duty" to bomb American neo-nazis into oblivion, sovereign borders be damned.
I'm really not sure why you mischaracterize neo-nazis as a non-violent group; ignorance is hard to believe... confluent opinions, perhaps?
The Ukrainians weren't cutting heads off or systematically slaughtering entire towns for being the wrong religion, so no, it's not "exactly as justified." Not even close.
OP was speaking from a legal standpoint, not a moral one.
Honestly, I fail to see how anyone ever confuses the two.
Can someone convince me that in the absence of a specific invitation by the legitimate Syrian government, which is the case this time, this [US] action cannot be defined as aggression?
IS/ISIS/ISIL is the aggressor, slaughtering thousands of people for being insufficiently Islamic, etc.
Hitting their command/control and training operations, from which tens of thousands of them are directed and supplied, is DEFENSIVE, not aggressive.
By that logic (or lack thereof, IMO), Europe has every right to bomb neo-Nazi targets on US soil as a "defensive" measure against far-right ideology, and the US has every right to bomb Scandinavia as a "defensive" measure against socialist ideology.
In short, by that logic (or lack thereof), all humans should kill all other humans as a "defensive" measure.
You know, that was essentially Wernher Von Braun's attitude about the rockets he was building; he's quoted as saying something to the effect of, "My job is to make the rockets go up, where they fall is London's problem."
Yea, but I bet only one of us did it knowingly and intentionally:)
We don't want to cramp people into the empty Midwest, we want to cram them into cities
We do that naturally. That's why the people who live in the rural Midwest live in the rural Midwest, and people who live in New York City live in New York City.
I don't buy it - an app that monitors every sensor, plus apparently monitoring abstract stuff like "stress level" somehow, 24/7?
Wouldn't that pretty much lock up and drain the battery of almost every phone on the market today? Hey, maybe that's how they determined stress level - using the accelerometer to determine how hard the student threw the phone against the wall when it froze up on them for the last time.
And your car will someday refuse to boot without them.
Someday NEW cars might refuse to boot or whatever, but MY car, the carburated one with no electronics other than lights and a stereo, will never have that problem.
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
Yes, it is. Your "privacy" is not worth a human life. And no, you don't get to have any say in the matter.
Sayeth the Anonymous Coward.
Why not include your name, address, and contact info on every post? after all, your "privacy" is not worth the chance that you might someday take a human life, right jackass?
Crime reduction is certainly a worthy reward, but as the article says, lots of people might not be too happy with having their information shared this way.
Especially considering that said "information sharing" leads to a mere 8% increase in accuracy.
Let's hope it is truly anonymous (which I doubt) and see how it goes.
Let's assume that it's not, and see how it's used nefariously. That's not cynicism, that's realism.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any sense of how sales tax applies.
Yea, be glad for that. I recently started my own business doing contract work in no less than 4 states, and the differences in how sales tax applies in each is already a huge pain in my ass.
From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.
Then again, I suppose that should apply to any estimate, especially when the estimator is using ceteris paribus in order to reach a certain conclusion...
The only exception would be if you were selling collectibles or some investment item that went up in price, and that's rarely sold at a yard sale.
You must not frequent yard sales, as in reality tons of incredibly valuable collectables are sold at them every weekend - but for far, far less than the item's actual value.
Of course, all that is unimportant (from a legal standpoint), because the fact remains that somebody is profiting, and nobody is paying taxes on those transactions.
Don't tax food or medicine. OK, the discrepancy just halved.
Except that the government will just increase taxes on other common goods to make up for the shortfall.
Your problem is that you missed the most important sentence in OP's post:
if you make $24,000 a year, a 20% tax that reduces your income to $18,000 a year is a much greater burden than it is to someone who makes $200,000 a year and has their income reduced to $150,000 a year.
With a "flat tax," there isn't any way around that issue.
End income tax.
Better idea: revert the legal definition of "income" to what it meant pre-1913.
Interestingly, before the oft-questioned "passage" of the 16th Amendment, "labor given in exchange for payment" was just that; income was what a business earned as a result of selling a product or service.
Yard sales.
Nobody remits taxes on yard sales.
Google will tell you all you need to know.
Well, sure, but "let me go Google that" isn't nearly as fun to say.
Do find a lot of examples of neo-Nazi idiots with hundreds of millions of stolen dollars and heavy weapons rounding up thousands of people and promising to slaughter them because of their religion, or marching cops and soldiers into trenches and machine gunning them down?
The "rounding up people" part might not be happening right now, but if you google phrases like "neo-nazi weapons stockpile" and "neo-nazis murder cop," you'll find plenty of examples. Don't the people of Europe have a right to use a pre-emptive strike to defend themselves against the inevitable escalation of violence from these barbaric individuals from reaching their shores*?
*In case it's not glaringly obvious, yes, I'm mocking the "fight them there so we don't fight them here" warhawks.
Neo-Nazis talk a lot. But they're just noisy idiots.
Neo-nazis kill people - Anders Breivik ring a bell?. That's not being "just noisy idiots." No, today they aren't killing people in the volumes that ISIL is, but that's today. Tomorrow could be completely different.
Actually, Breivik shows the point I'm making quite well: many would claim his style of extremism is an exclusively American export. If American neo-nazis can influence him, they can influence thousands of others, and by the "fight them there not here" mentality, that means other nations "have a duty" to bomb American neo-nazis into oblivion, sovereign borders be damned.
I'm really not sure why you mischaracterize neo-nazis as a non-violent group; ignorance is hard to believe... confluent opinions, perhaps?
Meh. I see that argument used frequently on /.
... and you've done nothing to prove the aforementioned argument wrong. Good job.
Exactly - Disagree, and we kill you for being an infidel; agree, and we'll kill you as a "martyr."
Being a royal douchenozzle does not require adherence to a specific ideology.
The Ukrainians weren't cutting heads off or systematically slaughtering entire towns for being the wrong religion, so no, it's not "exactly as justified." Not even close.
OP was speaking from a legal standpoint, not a moral one.
Honestly, I fail to see how anyone ever confuses the two.
Can someone convince me that in the absence of a specific invitation by the legitimate Syrian government, which is the case this time, this [US] action cannot be defined as aggression?
IS/ISIS/ISIL is the aggressor, slaughtering thousands of people for being insufficiently Islamic, etc.
Hitting their command/control and training operations, from which tens of thousands of them are directed and supplied, is DEFENSIVE, not aggressive.
By that logic (or lack thereof, IMO), Europe has every right to bomb neo-Nazi targets on US soil as a "defensive" measure against far-right ideology, and the US has every right to bomb Scandinavia as a "defensive" measure against socialist ideology.
In short, by that logic (or lack thereof), all humans should kill all other humans as a "defensive" measure.
You know, that was essentially Wernher Von Braun's attitude about the rockets he was building; he's quoted as saying something to the effect of, "My job is to make the rockets go up, where they fall is London's problem."
I think both of you are using the wrong metric.
Yea, but I bet only one of us did it knowingly and intentionally :)
We don't want to cramp people into the empty Midwest, we want to cram them into cities
We do that naturally. That's why the people who live in the rural Midwest live in the rural Midwest, and people who live in New York City live in New York City.
I don't buy it - an app that monitors every sensor, plus apparently monitoring abstract stuff like "stress level" somehow, 24/7?
Wouldn't that pretty much lock up and drain the battery of almost every phone on the market today? Hey, maybe that's how they determined stress level - using the accelerometer to determine how hard the student threw the phone against the wall when it froze up on them for the last time.
(remember the butter mountains and wine lakes?)
No;
Pics or it didn't happen.
FEAR the technology! Its' gunna getcha! It might invade ten privacy you don't actually have on public roads!
Yea, because the best response to extremist idiots is to become an extremist idiot yourself. Nothing bad ever comes of that *coughCrusadescoughcough*
And your car will someday refuse to boot without them.
Someday NEW cars might refuse to boot or whatever, but MY car, the carburated one with no electronics other than lights and a stereo, will never have that problem.
Your '84 T-bird was fuel-injected and had electronic ignition. It was in no way EMP-proof.
My '81 GMC had electronic ignition, too... until I ripped out the drivetrain and put in a good ol' fashioned carburated setup.
Clearly, space is the answer.
Preferably for people who want to turn America's farmland into some sprawling metropolis...
Vast areas of Earth remain unpopulated. In no particular order:
Uh, no, it's not, actually. In fact, as of the 2010 Census, the Midwestern states had higher combined populations than the Northwestern states.
Belief vs reality.
The number of people on Earth is likely to reach 11 billion by 2100
Nope; before then we'll have a good solid pandemic, or war, or famine, or hey - maybe all three! That will make a significant dent in the existing population.
At least, one could hope :)
Point being, my privacy is worth more than 13%.
Yes, it is. Your "privacy" is not worth a human life. And no, you don't get to have any say in the matter.
Sayeth the Anonymous Coward.
Why not include your name, address, and contact info on every post? after all, your "privacy" is not worth the chance that you might someday take a human life, right jackass?
Crime reduction is certainly a worthy reward, but as the article says, lots of people might not be too happy with having their information shared this way.
Especially considering that said "information sharing" leads to a mere 8% increase in accuracy.
Let's hope it is truly anonymous (which I doubt) and see how it goes.
Let's assume that it's not, and see how it's used nefariously. That's not cynicism, that's realism.