Why use Google Apps when LibreOffice is not only economically free, but spyware free?
Because it makes certain types of collaboration harder and LibreOffice requires Java which you may not desire for security reasons. I have standardized my company on LibreOffice but we use Google Docs for certain things that require multi-user access like select spreadsheets. Google Docs also give us some (crude) document distribution control that is more complicated to replicate with LibreOffice. This is not to say there aren't lots of advantages to LibreOffice (there are!) but Google Docs does have some advantages which LibreOffice can't yet match. Whether you need those specific advantages depends on your particular situation.
'Why would we use Google Docs over like Microsoft Word?' a teacher asked the class. 'Because it's free!' exclaimed a grinning Schmidt.
It is NOT free. It might not involve a cash outlay but Google isn't providing Google Docs out of the goodness of their heart. You are paying with personal information that they can then sell to others who want to advertise to you. You are trading Google something, it's just not cash. Nothing wrong with that in principle but Eric Schmidt pretending there is no cost is disingenuous. When making this deal with teachers to get personal information of minors it's borderline creepy.
I don't believe you. When has a headset like this existed before?
Believe whatever you want. I've had the good fortune of working with VR technology for a living for a number of years earlier in my career and I've had a few opportunities to use some really high end (for the time) gear. The Occulus is an incremental (though very nice) improvement over what has existed for well over a decade. I used VR headsets as far back as the 90s. I also worked with 3D glasses, some very expensive Silicon Graphics computers and various other immersive VR technology like CAVE systems. I have actually given lectures to college students on the topic. The key difference now isn't really in the headset hardware but rather in the computer and software driving it. The headset is really just a screen and some motion sensors. Better than they used to be (lighter, better sensors, etc) but nothing fundamentally new. What really makes it work is hardware that can draw the world fast enough to keep up with the motion (and not make you sick) and software that provides something useful and/or entertaining.
And neither had any selection of high-end games available for them.
That's because the headsets were expensive (and heavy and annoying) and the computers needed to make an even vaguely realistic environment were *really* expensive until fairly recently. Computers have gotten faster and 3D games have already been developed for other purposes so it's relatively economical. It was a chicken and egg problem. No software because no hardware and vice-versa. However the use cases really haven't evolved much for the retail market. I imagine there will be some gamers that will use this but I don't really see it becoming mainstream for reasons I've already expounded on. Possible I'm wrong but I doubt it.
However if Occulus can take what they are learning and apply it to an augmented reality system somewhere down the road then they probably have a serious business because that has lots of both retail and business applications.
You must live in some dumpy, backwards rural area where there's a monopoly.
That's pretty condescending. I live in one of the 10 largest metro areas in the US. My broadband choices at my house consist of Comcast where I can get 100mbit speeds or Frontier which gives 6mbit speeds if I want wired access. That means realistically I have one option if I give a shit about the speed of my internet connection. Not exactly what I'd call real competition. Oh I could cut the cord and go wireless I suppose but that has plenty of problems and I'd lose a lot of connection speed and gain a lot of latency plus I'd have to buy a bunch of new hardware or tether my phone every time I want to go online.
Out here in the real world in most places you have at most two sets of data cables (phone and cable tv) coming to your house. You do not have more options than the number of wires available to you even if you have other companies offering you service. Earthlink doesn't have phone lines to your house - the actual last mile is provided by someone else like AT&T. 75% of the US has exactly one landline cable TV option and a similar percent has precisely one phone option. So essentially most of us are under a duopoly. AT&T/Verizon or Comcast/TWC or something similar.
A secretary is never going to use an XBox either, and yet they manage to sell plenty of them.
Do you seriously think this think is going to sell even close to the XBox numbers? Microsoft sold 3 million xbox ones in 2013. Frankly if they sell even a tenth of that I'll be very impressed. The xbox is a device with FAR more mass market appeal. Don't get me wrong, I hope they do well, but based on my own experience with the technology I'm not holding my breath. They're selling this thing at a price point that has to have fairly tight margins. I run a contract assembly company and I've got a moderately good idea of what this thing must cost to make. If they are profitable (very unlikely right now), they aren't making much on it. The company is well funded but that's no guarantee of success.
OTOH, if it's really fun, there's no reason the technology won't spread as the technology matures and prices decrease.
I've used headsets like this. It's fun for a little while but it wears off fast. It's basically a limited use novelty item. A few people will love it and use it a bunch, most will try it once and say that it's neat (or puke) and never pick it up again.
Don't underestimate the market power of geeks playing games - they're the primary motivator for 3D video cards, and arguably one of the larger driving forces behind high-power CPUs as well.
The difference is that eventually the technology in high powered CPUs make their way into middle and low end applications. There is no low end application here. A secretary is never going to use one of these things. The only likely users are techies and early-adopter types. I could see a small business in these things for gamers and marketing and some other niche uses but I really don't see full immersion VR headsets becoming a mainstream technology. Augmented reality on the other hand has very obvious commercial uses.
Because the "wind in the sails" probably isn't as strong as you think. My first job out of college was working with VR technologies. I worked some with headsets myself about 10 years ago. While headsets like this are cool, the use cases for them are pretty darn limited, even allowing for the improvements in the state of the art since I worked with them. It's a relatively expensive specialty item, people historically do not like wearing headsets for entertainment (see 3D TV), there is relatively little software that uses the device, etc. There are a fair number of geeks who are interested in this sort of thing for playing games but that's about where the consumer interest ends. The limitations are probably less in the technological feasibility than in the lack of a killer use case.
I think the technology is neat but I'm dubious on the commercial feasibility until proven otherwise. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong but I just don't think there is a large business opportunity here.
the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed.
Most studies indicate that after an initial spike, the number of ER visits fell over a period of several years.
I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.
So we shouldn't have health insurance for everyone because a few people lost jobs and found different ones elsewhere?
And because the new Massachusetts website was made by the same people who made Healthcare.gov, it still doesn't work
Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine. For the few people who did have an issue (weird social security issues) they were able to call the hotline numbers and get enrolled. You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.
By the end of the month, they still won't have insurance, and the deadline to sign up will pass.
They've had months to sign up. If they haven't by the deadline it is because they didn't put any effort into doing so. I've done it and it isn't hard.
I DO think tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out the impact of social policies like worker protection, healthcare, social security, welfare, and also for environmental controls.
Tariffs are rarely one way. If you put tariffs in place on incoming goods where you aren't as competitive then odds are your exports will experience tariffs as well. You end up robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak and costing yourself a lot in red tape and lost wages along the way. It also makes goods more expensive for consumers, makes it harder for domestic companies to compete, slows hiring and slows economic growth. Furthermore applying tariffs based on social values is a dangerous game of cultural hypocrisy. In the US we have millions of people without health insurance and we're one of the two biggest polluters in the world. Are we really in a position to tell others that they should be like us when we don't have our own shit together?
I appreciate the intent of what you are suggesting but it's simply not that easy. A lot of the advantage places like China have is due to the lack of pollution controls and other regulations. But the only thing that really is going to fix that is if they Chinese decide it is important to clean up their own mess.
Have you seen Mexico? Parts of it look just like here
Not only have I seen Mexico I've spent considerable time there working. I've been everywhere from Monterrey to Mexico city and everywhere in between. You are correct that much of Mexico looks every bit as modern and nice as much of the USA. Most people in the US have an incredibly wrong mental image of what Mexico is like. It's a modern vibrant country. It also has in some places some crushing poverty that they've not been able to escape. Workers from Mexico don't come to the US because there is an abundance of economic opportunity at home. They need jobs and the pay is FAR better here, even accounting for the risks of immigrating illegally.
Is that what you want for the US? Because otherwise, it's hard to see why you'd bring it up.
Where did I even hint that I wanted low wages for the US? The fact is that wages in Mexico are considerably lower than they are in the US, in some cases considerably so. This is merely a fact, not a judgement. My company is a manufacturing company and we have to factor in the lower wages in Mexico (and other places) when quoting. Labor intensive work will tend to migrate to where labor costs are lower. Labor costs in the US are relatively high, even for jobs like picking crops, compared to other parts of the world. Make them higher and some amount of the production will migrate elsewhere like an osmotic gradient.
If you do nothing to earn something you get you don't win the lottery, you receive a gift.
There is zero functional difference between a gift and a lottery win. Both cases are unearned income received by someone. I don't give a crap about the intentions of the parties involved nor do I care if they are related. I don't object to a small ($10K) exception for immediate family but anything more than that should be treated as regular income and taxed accordingly.
If we had one tax rate for everyone, it would solve the problem of tax loopholes.
No it would not. The loopholes aren't in the tax rate. The loopholes are in defining income. Defining income is complicated and that is what 90%+ of the tax code is. You want to simplify the tax code then you need to simplify the definition of income. A good start to that is to not make special tax exemptions for special groups. When you do that you are complicating the definition of income and saying a particular group deserves to pay less because their "income" is less.
The point is that it is YOUR money, and you paid the taxes on it. As such why the fuck should the government get to double tax you?
When you give it away it by definition is NOT your money (you gave it away) and therefor you cannot be taxed twice on it. It's someone else's money AND it is money they did not earn. It is functionally equivalent to lottery winnings and should be taxed the same way.
Because building for my family's future is one of my primary motivators.
Nothing is stopping you from doing that. That doesn't mean your family should be entitled to special treatment under the law just because they are related to you. If your kids get income from any source then they should have to pay taxes on it the same as anyone else. I don't give a shit if your precious snowflakes are special to you. They aren't special to me and they should have to earn what they keep. If they are unable to care for themselves for some reason then society can make some appropriate accommodations for that but I have no interest in allowing able bodied people to get special treatment they don't deserve because they won the lucky sperm lottery.
If I die I want my kids to receive the same education they would if I were still alive.
So buy a life insurance policy. Set up a trust. Have a will. That's what they are for.
Why is there an estate tax of 45% upon anyone's death!!!
There isn't. Only people inheriting assets worth millions are subject to such a tax. Furthermore why should the family be entitled to inherit a large fortune that they played no role in creating? If the kids weren't involved in creating the wealth then they should have no special tax rights regarding receiving the wealth.
That income has been taxed already. Bequeathment is not a fucking INCOME issue.
Inheritance most certainly IS income to the person inheriting it. The inheritor by definition did nothing to create that asset and to them it is income. It is functionally identical to them winning a lottery and should be taxed under the same rules. Whether or not the inheritor is related should be irrelevant to the discussion.
If you want to argue (pointlessly) again the income tax then that is a separate discussion. But as a principle inheritances should be handled just like lottery winnings for any part of the inheritance that wasn't created by the inheritor.
That could not be more wrong. Insurance is way to protect against downside risk. It is a wager essentially. It prevents you from losing everything if catastrophic events occur. I have health insurance in case I get sick. While this is unlikely given my age and health, it is very possible and could be very expensive. I have homeowners insurance in case my house burns. I have a blanket policy in case something weird happens like a kid getting hurt on my lawn. I have car insurance to preserve the value of my car if there is an accident. Etc. You may lose money on insurance but it is not a "guaranteed loss". Basically you are making a bet with the insurance company that you think something bad will happen and they are betting it will not. One of you is right but you only find out who later.
Insurance can make sense for poor people, but for a rich people, no way.
If anything you have that backwards. The fact is that insurance is incredibly useful for wealthy people and they tend to have a lot of it. If you have an asset it makes sense to protect the value of that asset. Insurance is one way to do that.
Inheritance most certainly IS income. It is functionally equivalent to lottery winnings. People that receive an inheritance by definition did not create it and so they should be taxed on it in the same way they would if they went to Las Vegas and hit a jackpot.
Personally, I want to see all taxes go and be replaced by a sales tax.
I really don't think you've thought that through. Sales taxes are by their very nature regressive so you need to address that problem. Just because people have more money doesn't mean they spend more. Further, while there is nothing wrong with using a sales tax, having it as the only form of taxation is a bad idea which is why few places rely on them solely. Good tax policy depends on multiple revenue streams or else you get budget shortfalls when tax revenue falls from one stream. It's functionally identical to having all your money in one stock. Might work out well but its safer to diversify. For instance lots of local governments in the US get most of their revenue from property taxes but when house prices fell recently they found themselves with difficult to manage short falls. Sales taxes are vulnerable to the same thing when consumer spending falls in an economic downturn.
Everyone is taxed, but only on what they spend. All money is spent.
No it is not. Much money is simply a store of value. The very fact that people die with money they have not spent is clear evidence against your argument. That was money that was not spent but merely handed to another person. All money has the ability to be spent but once you get a certain amount of it there is no reason to spend it. At that point it simply becomes an insurance policy against a rainy day.
So you are saying if someone should happen to get lucky that the state should take it away from them because it's not you?
Has nothing to do with whether it is me or someone else. If I won the lottery today I would be taxed on the income. Getting an inheritance on an asset you didn't help create is functionally identical to winning a lottery and should be taxed the same way. There are a few exceptions I would make for exceptional cases of bad luck (like underage children whose parents died unexpectedly) but those corner cases are fairly easy to deal with.
It's not only the super rich that inherit things.
True but irrelevant. The only difference is the amount they inherit, not the principle of how it should be handled. You unexpectedly come into some money you should be taxed on it the same as anyone else. No better, no worse.
Farms that have been in families for generations are being sold off to pay the taxes when the farmer tries to pass it to his children
The question is whether the children were involved in the farm prior to the farmer dying. If they were involved then they helped earn the income and we can handled that as we would any other business that changes owners. If they were not substantially involved in the work of building the company then they can pay their lottery winnings the same as anyone else. If that requires selling off assets to pay the tax man then so be it.
If the farmer has a brain in their skull they will have the farm held in a corporation and have named the heirs as shareholders. Hell they can hold this stuff in a trust if they want to. But just because your parents had an asset that they worked hard for doesn't mean you should be entitled to it unless you worked hard for it too. If the kids helped build the farm and worked hard at doing so then they have earned the income and there is no problem. It's a working business that will require continued work to make money, not a cash award. If they are just handed the keys then it is nothing more than an asset that should be taxed like lottery winnings.
These farms may have millions of dollars in the equipment alone so the state sees these kids as inheriting millions of dollars.
If they were suddenly gifted the farm upon the death of the former owner and were not working the farm themselves then they WERE inheriting millions of dollars. If the kids were working the farm and appropriate business arrangements were made then it's hardly a lottery ticket. Working a farm is hard work. We can make some sane exceptions for productive business assets utilized appropriately but let's not confuse a working business with a cash bequeathment. If all the kids did was inherit the farm then it isn't a family asset.
These are people that have worked a farm their entire lives only to have it ripped from their hands because of class-envy assholes like you think they are getting away with something.
"Class envy"? Fuck you. You know nothing about me. I've worked my entire life too, inherited nothing, I'm doing just fine and I don't give a shit about people who think they are entitled to something just because their parents worked hard. I'm talking about applying the same rules to everyone and not giving a pass to people who are lucky enough to come into wealth they didn't earn themselves. You think that people who picked the right parents should be subject to special rules?
How 'bout trying to mind your own damn business
When we have a trillion dollar public debt, tax policy IS my damn business. Yours too.
What a BS way to frame the issue. Inheritance taxes should be taxes EXACTLY the same way we tax someone who wins the lottery or wins the jackpot in a Vegas casino. These people did nothing to earn the money. If you won the lottery you would be taxed on your new income. The fact that the parties are related should make no difference whatsoever. If the money is new to you then you should be taxed on it just like everyone else.
This way the heirs won't be left arguing over what to sell to pay off the government.
We can assume they paid their taxes when they received their paychecks. Why should their heirs pay them again?
Because their heirs did nothing to earn the money unless we consider kissing ass a valuable skill. They essentially won the (genetic) lottery and they should be taxed the same as someone who won the Mega-Millions lottery. The source of the funds is irrelevant. If I gave you $1 billion today then you would owe taxes on it. Why should it be any different if we happen to be related?
I hear complaints all the time from a friend of mine who is himself an immigrant and always sees patients who are birthright citizens, which he commonly complains about because he had to go through hell to get here the normal way.)
"Normal way"? Do you speak Cherokee by any chance? This is a country that was founded by and is composed of people who immigrated here without asking the existing residents their opinion on the matter. Anyone who complains about it now is pretty much a hypocrite because most of us have ancestors that came here without asking permission.
That is also ignoring acts of terror:
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with immigration and everything to do with drug cartels. Got any other BS arguments you'd care to make?
Anyways I don't really view it as my problem. I intend on expatriating myself...
If you offered $1M/yr to anybody willing to pick oranges you'd have no trouble filling the jobs
Sure you would because there would be no company able to make an economic profit selling them. No profit = no company = no jobs. This piece of your argument is a strawman.
If you offer $5/hr then nobody is willing to do the job, apparently.
Probably true in most of the US at least. Wages have to be high enough to allow people to pay for necessities of life in the location they live in. However labor costs in Mexico for picking produce are close to $4/DAY so it clearly is not true everywhere.
Chances are if you offered $10-20/hr you'd have no trouble filling the post.
The average wages of a field worker in the US in 2009 was $10.07/hour. (The linked article's conclusions are badly flawed as I'll detail below but the data on wages appears to be close to accurate)
The price of oranges probably wouldn't change much at all - if they could get a penny more for them they already would be doing so.
The price certainly would change if by some means the price of labor went up across the board. However given that these are globally traded commodities we are talking about (you can get oranges from outside the US), it's kind of a moot discussion. Even if we established a higher minimum wage within the US, significant production would simply move to where labor prices are lower. Not all, but significant amounts. This creates a de-facto cap on the price of food products. The cost cannot simply be passed on to consumers even if the consumers were willing to pay more, which they demonstrably are not. (See Walmart) You can place trade barriers but then you are increasing the cost of living for everyone to protect the jobs of a very small group of people.
he guys who own the farm would just make less money.
You are incorrectly presuming several things including that the farm is profitable and that farmers who are profitable are making large profits. Not typically true. Farming is a HARD business that frequently is not profitable and even in the best of circumstances tends to have modest profit margins.
The best data I've been able to get indicates that if you buy an orange for $1, about $0.30 of revenue goes to the owner of the farm and about $0.10 goes to the worker who actually picked the fruit. (Labor costs make up 42% of variable production costs.) The remaining $0.60 goes to the distribution network and various other players including grocery stores. Now that doesn't say anything about profit, just revenue. The farmer has a LOT of cost to their operation so the profits after expenses are negative profit margins for about 2/3 of farms, especially among smaller farms. That means they have zero ability to raise wages - they are already losing money. Bigger farms are more likely to achieve profits and even higher net margins (often >20%) but the profit picture varies wildly by farm. But even among the profitable farms the farmer gets to keep somewhere between $0.02 and $0.07 of the $1.00 you spent on that orange. Many don't get to keep any profit at all.
So, bottom line, if you raise wages by 50% ($0.05 on that $1.00 orange) you will essentially wipe out almost all profit in farming. I'm all for paying higher wages if we can but it isn't as easy as many are making it out to be.
It doesn't matter how you SAY it. What matters is how you WRITE it, and unless you write it in an unambiguous format, you are not communicating fully or properly.
The only time it is ambiguous is if you switch between formats. Big endian and little endian are just as arbitrary as m/d/y and potentially just as confusing if you aren't sure which of the three is being used. As long as the convention is understood it isn't a problem. I agree that m/d/y is kind of dumb but its here and isn't going to change anytime soon.
So we should use a format that makes no sense because the rest of the system makes no sense?
Dude, let it go. The fact that for whatever reason we use month first (which I agree is odd) isn't going to change. People have been doing it that way for a LONG time now and in practical terms it's not really a big problem. It's only confusing if you switch between formats. If you want to rail against something how about starting with getting the US to switch to metric or something else that is more than an occasional minor irritation.
Explain to me any part of our date or time system that is actually rational. Months are inconsistent lengths, the number of seconds in a minute or minutes in an hour or hours in a day or days in a week is an arbitrary divisor, the SI unit of time (second) is arbitrary, the year is based on the birth of a mythical religious figurehead, etc ad nauseum. Because we insist on keeping time based on rotations of our planet and orbits of the sun we jump through all sorts of contortions to keep the calendar in sync with those.
And you actually care whether the month or the year comes first in a whimsical choice of epoch? WHOOOOSHH!!!!
Besides these are irrational numbers so for once it actually makes sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Why use Google Apps when LibreOffice is not only economically free, but spyware free?
Because it makes certain types of collaboration harder and LibreOffice requires Java which you may not desire for security reasons. I have standardized my company on LibreOffice but we use Google Docs for certain things that require multi-user access like select spreadsheets. Google Docs also give us some (crude) document distribution control that is more complicated to replicate with LibreOffice. This is not to say there aren't lots of advantages to LibreOffice (there are!) but Google Docs does have some advantages which LibreOffice can't yet match. Whether you need those specific advantages depends on your particular situation.
'Why would we use Google Docs over like Microsoft Word?' a teacher asked the class. 'Because it's free!' exclaimed a grinning Schmidt.
It is NOT free. It might not involve a cash outlay but Google isn't providing Google Docs out of the goodness of their heart. You are paying with personal information that they can then sell to others who want to advertise to you. You are trading Google something, it's just not cash. Nothing wrong with that in principle but Eric Schmidt pretending there is no cost is disingenuous. When making this deal with teachers to get personal information of minors it's borderline creepy.
I don't believe you. When has a headset like this existed before?
Believe whatever you want. I've had the good fortune of working with VR technology for a living for a number of years earlier in my career and I've had a few opportunities to use some really high end (for the time) gear. The Occulus is an incremental (though very nice) improvement over what has existed for well over a decade. I used VR headsets as far back as the 90s. I also worked with 3D glasses, some very expensive Silicon Graphics computers and various other immersive VR technology like CAVE systems. I have actually given lectures to college students on the topic. The key difference now isn't really in the headset hardware but rather in the computer and software driving it. The headset is really just a screen and some motion sensors. Better than they used to be (lighter, better sensors, etc) but nothing fundamentally new. What really makes it work is hardware that can draw the world fast enough to keep up with the motion (and not make you sick) and software that provides something useful and/or entertaining.
And neither had any selection of high-end games available for them.
That's because the headsets were expensive (and heavy and annoying) and the computers needed to make an even vaguely realistic environment were *really* expensive until fairly recently. Computers have gotten faster and 3D games have already been developed for other purposes so it's relatively economical. It was a chicken and egg problem. No software because no hardware and vice-versa. However the use cases really haven't evolved much for the retail market. I imagine there will be some gamers that will use this but I don't really see it becoming mainstream for reasons I've already expounded on. Possible I'm wrong but I doubt it.
However if Occulus can take what they are learning and apply it to an augmented reality system somewhere down the road then they probably have a serious business because that has lots of both retail and business applications.
You must live in some dumpy, backwards rural area where there's a monopoly.
That's pretty condescending. I live in one of the 10 largest metro areas in the US. My broadband choices at my house consist of Comcast where I can get 100mbit speeds or Frontier which gives 6mbit speeds if I want wired access. That means realistically I have one option if I give a shit about the speed of my internet connection. Not exactly what I'd call real competition. Oh I could cut the cord and go wireless I suppose but that has plenty of problems and I'd lose a lot of connection speed and gain a lot of latency plus I'd have to buy a bunch of new hardware or tether my phone every time I want to go online.
Out here in the real world in most places you have at most two sets of data cables (phone and cable tv) coming to your house. You do not have more options than the number of wires available to you even if you have other companies offering you service. Earthlink doesn't have phone lines to your house - the actual last mile is provided by someone else like AT&T. 75% of the US has exactly one landline cable TV option and a similar percent has precisely one phone option. So essentially most of us are under a duopoly. AT&T/Verizon or Comcast/TWC or something similar.
A secretary is never going to use an XBox either, and yet they manage to sell plenty of them.
Do you seriously think this think is going to sell even close to the XBox numbers? Microsoft sold 3 million xbox ones in 2013. Frankly if they sell even a tenth of that I'll be very impressed. The xbox is a device with FAR more mass market appeal. Don't get me wrong, I hope they do well, but based on my own experience with the technology I'm not holding my breath. They're selling this thing at a price point that has to have fairly tight margins. I run a contract assembly company and I've got a moderately good idea of what this thing must cost to make. If they are profitable (very unlikely right now), they aren't making much on it. The company is well funded but that's no guarantee of success.
OTOH, if it's really fun, there's no reason the technology won't spread as the technology matures and prices decrease.
I've used headsets like this. It's fun for a little while but it wears off fast. It's basically a limited use novelty item. A few people will love it and use it a bunch, most will try it once and say that it's neat (or puke) and never pick it up again.
Don't underestimate the market power of geeks playing games - they're the primary motivator for 3D video cards, and arguably one of the larger driving forces behind high-power CPUs as well.
The difference is that eventually the technology in high powered CPUs make their way into middle and low end applications. There is no low end application here. A secretary is never going to use one of these things. The only likely users are techies and early-adopter types. I could see a small business in these things for gamers and marketing and some other niche uses but I really don't see full immersion VR headsets becoming a mainstream technology. Augmented reality on the other hand has very obvious commercial uses.
Why would the wind go out of the sails?
Because the "wind in the sails" probably isn't as strong as you think. My first job out of college was working with VR technologies. I worked some with headsets myself about 10 years ago. While headsets like this are cool, the use cases for them are pretty darn limited, even allowing for the improvements in the state of the art since I worked with them. It's a relatively expensive specialty item, people historically do not like wearing headsets for entertainment (see 3D TV), there is relatively little software that uses the device, etc. There are a fair number of geeks who are interested in this sort of thing for playing games but that's about where the consumer interest ends. The limitations are probably less in the technological feasibility than in the lack of a killer use case.
I think the technology is neat but I'm dubious on the commercial feasibility until proven otherwise. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong but I just don't think there is a large business opportunity here.
the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed.
Most studies indicate that after an initial spike, the number of ER visits fell over a period of several years.
I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.
So we shouldn't have health insurance for everyone because a few people lost jobs and found different ones elsewhere?
And because the new Massachusetts website was made by the same people who made Healthcare.gov, it still doesn't work
Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine. For the few people who did have an issue (weird social security issues) they were able to call the hotline numbers and get enrolled. You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.
By the end of the month, they still won't have insurance, and the deadline to sign up will pass.
They've had months to sign up. If they haven't by the deadline it is because they didn't put any effort into doing so. I've done it and it isn't hard.
I DO think tariffs should be applied for the purpose of evening out the impact of social policies like worker protection, healthcare, social security, welfare, and also for environmental controls.
Tariffs are rarely one way. If you put tariffs in place on incoming goods where you aren't as competitive then odds are your exports will experience tariffs as well. You end up robbing Peter to pay Paul so to speak and costing yourself a lot in red tape and lost wages along the way. It also makes goods more expensive for consumers, makes it harder for domestic companies to compete, slows hiring and slows economic growth. Furthermore applying tariffs based on social values is a dangerous game of cultural hypocrisy. In the US we have millions of people without health insurance and we're one of the two biggest polluters in the world. Are we really in a position to tell others that they should be like us when we don't have our own shit together?
I appreciate the intent of what you are suggesting but it's simply not that easy. A lot of the advantage places like China have is due to the lack of pollution controls and other regulations. But the only thing that really is going to fix that is if they Chinese decide it is important to clean up their own mess.
Have you seen Mexico? Parts of it look just like here
Not only have I seen Mexico I've spent considerable time there working. I've been everywhere from Monterrey to Mexico city and everywhere in between. You are correct that much of Mexico looks every bit as modern and nice as much of the USA. Most people in the US have an incredibly wrong mental image of what Mexico is like. It's a modern vibrant country. It also has in some places some crushing poverty that they've not been able to escape. Workers from Mexico don't come to the US because there is an abundance of economic opportunity at home. They need jobs and the pay is FAR better here, even accounting for the risks of immigrating illegally.
Is that what you want for the US? Because otherwise, it's hard to see why you'd bring it up.
Where did I even hint that I wanted low wages for the US? The fact is that wages in Mexico are considerably lower than they are in the US, in some cases considerably so. This is merely a fact, not a judgement. My company is a manufacturing company and we have to factor in the lower wages in Mexico (and other places) when quoting. Labor intensive work will tend to migrate to where labor costs are lower. Labor costs in the US are relatively high, even for jobs like picking crops, compared to other parts of the world. Make them higher and some amount of the production will migrate elsewhere like an osmotic gradient.
If you do nothing to earn something you get you don't win the lottery, you receive a gift.
There is zero functional difference between a gift and a lottery win. Both cases are unearned income received by someone. I don't give a crap about the intentions of the parties involved nor do I care if they are related. I don't object to a small ($10K) exception for immediate family but anything more than that should be treated as regular income and taxed accordingly.
If we had one tax rate for everyone, it would solve the problem of tax loopholes.
No it would not. The loopholes aren't in the tax rate. The loopholes are in defining income. Defining income is complicated and that is what 90%+ of the tax code is. You want to simplify the tax code then you need to simplify the definition of income. A good start to that is to not make special tax exemptions for special groups. When you do that you are complicating the definition of income and saying a particular group deserves to pay less because their "income" is less.
The point is that it is YOUR money, and you paid the taxes on it. As such why the fuck should the government get to double tax you?
When you give it away it by definition is NOT your money (you gave it away) and therefor you cannot be taxed twice on it. It's someone else's money AND it is money they did not earn. It is functionally equivalent to lottery winnings and should be taxed the same way.
Because building for my family's future is one of my primary motivators.
Nothing is stopping you from doing that. That doesn't mean your family should be entitled to special treatment under the law just because they are related to you. If your kids get income from any source then they should have to pay taxes on it the same as anyone else. I don't give a shit if your precious snowflakes are special to you. They aren't special to me and they should have to earn what they keep. If they are unable to care for themselves for some reason then society can make some appropriate accommodations for that but I have no interest in allowing able bodied people to get special treatment they don't deserve because they won the lucky sperm lottery.
If I die I want my kids to receive the same education they would if I were still alive.
So buy a life insurance policy. Set up a trust. Have a will. That's what they are for.
Why is there an estate tax of 45% upon anyone's death!!!
There isn't. Only people inheriting assets worth millions are subject to such a tax. Furthermore why should the family be entitled to inherit a large fortune that they played no role in creating? If the kids weren't involved in creating the wealth then they should have no special tax rights regarding receiving the wealth.
That income has been taxed already. Bequeathment is not a fucking INCOME issue.
Inheritance most certainly IS income to the person inheriting it. The inheritor by definition did nothing to create that asset and to them it is income. It is functionally identical to them winning a lottery and should be taxed under the same rules. Whether or not the inheritor is related should be irrelevant to the discussion.
If you want to argue (pointlessly) again the income tax then that is a separate discussion. But as a principle inheritances should be handled just like lottery winnings for any part of the inheritance that wasn't created by the inheritor.
Buying insurance is a guaranteed loss of money.
That could not be more wrong. Insurance is way to protect against downside risk. It is a wager essentially. It prevents you from losing everything if catastrophic events occur. I have health insurance in case I get sick. While this is unlikely given my age and health, it is very possible and could be very expensive. I have homeowners insurance in case my house burns. I have a blanket policy in case something weird happens like a kid getting hurt on my lawn. I have car insurance to preserve the value of my car if there is an accident. Etc. You may lose money on insurance but it is not a "guaranteed loss". Basically you are making a bet with the insurance company that you think something bad will happen and they are betting it will not. One of you is right but you only find out who later.
Insurance can make sense for poor people, but for a rich people, no way.
If anything you have that backwards. The fact is that insurance is incredibly useful for wealthy people and they tend to have a lot of it. If you have an asset it makes sense to protect the value of that asset. Insurance is one way to do that.
Inheritance is not income.
Inheritance most certainly IS income. It is functionally equivalent to lottery winnings. People that receive an inheritance by definition did not create it and so they should be taxed on it in the same way they would if they went to Las Vegas and hit a jackpot.
Personally, I want to see all taxes go and be replaced by a sales tax.
I really don't think you've thought that through. Sales taxes are by their very nature regressive so you need to address that problem. Just because people have more money doesn't mean they spend more. Further, while there is nothing wrong with using a sales tax, having it as the only form of taxation is a bad idea which is why few places rely on them solely. Good tax policy depends on multiple revenue streams or else you get budget shortfalls when tax revenue falls from one stream. It's functionally identical to having all your money in one stock. Might work out well but its safer to diversify. For instance lots of local governments in the US get most of their revenue from property taxes but when house prices fell recently they found themselves with difficult to manage short falls. Sales taxes are vulnerable to the same thing when consumer spending falls in an economic downturn.
Everyone is taxed, but only on what they spend. All money is spent.
No it is not. Much money is simply a store of value. The very fact that people die with money they have not spent is clear evidence against your argument. That was money that was not spent but merely handed to another person. All money has the ability to be spent but once you get a certain amount of it there is no reason to spend it. At that point it simply becomes an insurance policy against a rainy day.
So you are saying if someone should happen to get lucky that the state should take it away from them because it's not you?
Has nothing to do with whether it is me or someone else. If I won the lottery today I would be taxed on the income. Getting an inheritance on an asset you didn't help create is functionally identical to winning a lottery and should be taxed the same way. There are a few exceptions I would make for exceptional cases of bad luck (like underage children whose parents died unexpectedly) but those corner cases are fairly easy to deal with.
It's not only the super rich that inherit things.
True but irrelevant. The only difference is the amount they inherit, not the principle of how it should be handled. You unexpectedly come into some money you should be taxed on it the same as anyone else. No better, no worse.
Farms that have been in families for generations are being sold off to pay the taxes when the farmer tries to pass it to his children
The question is whether the children were involved in the farm prior to the farmer dying. If they were involved then they helped earn the income and we can handled that as we would any other business that changes owners. If they were not substantially involved in the work of building the company then they can pay their lottery winnings the same as anyone else. If that requires selling off assets to pay the tax man then so be it.
If the farmer has a brain in their skull they will have the farm held in a corporation and have named the heirs as shareholders. Hell they can hold this stuff in a trust if they want to. But just because your parents had an asset that they worked hard for doesn't mean you should be entitled to it unless you worked hard for it too. If the kids helped build the farm and worked hard at doing so then they have earned the income and there is no problem. It's a working business that will require continued work to make money, not a cash award. If they are just handed the keys then it is nothing more than an asset that should be taxed like lottery winnings.
These farms may have millions of dollars in the equipment alone so the state sees these kids as inheriting millions of dollars.
If they were suddenly gifted the farm upon the death of the former owner and were not working the farm themselves then they WERE inheriting millions of dollars. If the kids were working the farm and appropriate business arrangements were made then it's hardly a lottery ticket. Working a farm is hard work. We can make some sane exceptions for productive business assets utilized appropriately but let's not confuse a working business with a cash bequeathment. If all the kids did was inherit the farm then it isn't a family asset.
These are people that have worked a farm their entire lives only to have it ripped from their hands because of class-envy assholes like you think they are getting away with something.
"Class envy"? Fuck you. You know nothing about me. I've worked my entire life too, inherited nothing, I'm doing just fine and I don't give a shit about people who think they are entitled to something just because their parents worked hard. I'm talking about applying the same rules to everyone and not giving a pass to people who are lucky enough to come into wealth they didn't earn themselves. You think that people who picked the right parents should be subject to special rules?
How 'bout trying to mind your own damn business
When we have a trillion dollar public debt, tax policy IS my damn business. Yours too.
The government will grab it all as "death tax".
What a BS way to frame the issue. Inheritance taxes should be taxes EXACTLY the same way we tax someone who wins the lottery or wins the jackpot in a Vegas casino. These people did nothing to earn the money. If you won the lottery you would be taxed on your new income. The fact that the parties are related should make no difference whatsoever. If the money is new to you then you should be taxed on it just like everyone else.
This way the heirs won't be left arguing over what to sell to pay off the government.
That is what a will is for.
We can assume they paid their taxes when they received their paychecks. Why should their heirs pay them again?
Because their heirs did nothing to earn the money unless we consider kissing ass a valuable skill. They essentially won the (genetic) lottery and they should be taxed the same as someone who won the Mega-Millions lottery. The source of the funds is irrelevant. If I gave you $1 billion today then you would owe taxes on it. Why should it be any different if we happen to be related?
I hear complaints all the time from a friend of mine who is himself an immigrant and always sees patients who are birthright citizens, which he commonly complains about because he had to go through hell to get here the normal way.)
"Normal way"? Do you speak Cherokee by any chance? This is a country that was founded by and is composed of people who immigrated here without asking the existing residents their opinion on the matter. Anyone who complains about it now is pretty much a hypocrite because most of us have ancestors that came here without asking permission.
That is also ignoring acts of terror:
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with immigration and everything to do with drug cartels. Got any other BS arguments you'd care to make?
Anyways I don't really view it as my problem. I intend on expatriating myself...
Please hurry up and do so.
If you offered $1M/yr to anybody willing to pick oranges you'd have no trouble filling the jobs
Sure you would because there would be no company able to make an economic profit selling them. No profit = no company = no jobs. This piece of your argument is a strawman.
If you offer $5/hr then nobody is willing to do the job, apparently.
Probably true in most of the US at least. Wages have to be high enough to allow people to pay for necessities of life in the location they live in. However labor costs in Mexico for picking produce are close to $4/DAY so it clearly is not true everywhere.
Chances are if you offered $10-20/hr you'd have no trouble filling the post.
The average wages of a field worker in the US in 2009 was $10.07/hour. (The linked article's conclusions are badly flawed as I'll detail below but the data on wages appears to be close to accurate)
The price of oranges probably wouldn't change much at all - if they could get a penny more for them they already would be doing so.
The price certainly would change if by some means the price of labor went up across the board. However given that these are globally traded commodities we are talking about (you can get oranges from outside the US), it's kind of a moot discussion. Even if we established a higher minimum wage within the US, significant production would simply move to where labor prices are lower. Not all, but significant amounts. This creates a de-facto cap on the price of food products. The cost cannot simply be passed on to consumers even if the consumers were willing to pay more, which they demonstrably are not. (See Walmart) You can place trade barriers but then you are increasing the cost of living for everyone to protect the jobs of a very small group of people.
he guys who own the farm would just make less money.
You are incorrectly presuming several things including that the farm is profitable and that farmers who are profitable are making large profits. Not typically true. Farming is a HARD business that frequently is not profitable and even in the best of circumstances tends to have modest profit margins.
The best data I've been able to get indicates that if you buy an orange for $1, about $0.30 of revenue goes to the owner of the farm and about $0.10 goes to the worker who actually picked the fruit. (Labor costs make up 42% of variable production costs.) The remaining $0.60 goes to the distribution network and various other players including grocery stores. Now that doesn't say anything about profit, just revenue. The farmer has a LOT of cost to their operation so the profits after expenses are negative profit margins for about 2/3 of farms, especially among smaller farms. That means they have zero ability to raise wages - they are already losing money. Bigger farms are more likely to achieve profits and even higher net margins (often >20%) but the profit picture varies wildly by farm. But even among the profitable farms the farmer gets to keep somewhere between $0.02 and $0.07 of the $1.00 you spent on that orange. Many don't get to keep any profit at all.
So, bottom line, if you raise wages by 50% ($0.05 on that $1.00 orange) you will essentially wipe out almost all profit in farming. I'm all for paying higher wages if we can but it isn't as easy as many are making it out to be.
It doesn't matter how you SAY it. What matters is how you WRITE it, and unless you write it in an unambiguous format, you are not communicating fully or properly.
The only time it is ambiguous is if you switch between formats. Big endian and little endian are just as arbitrary as m/d/y and potentially just as confusing if you aren't sure which of the three is being used. As long as the convention is understood it isn't a problem. I agree that m/d/y is kind of dumb but its here and isn't going to change anytime soon.
So we should use a format that makes no sense because the rest of the system makes no sense?
Dude, let it go. The fact that for whatever reason we use month first (which I agree is odd) isn't going to change. People have been doing it that way for a LONG time now and in practical terms it's not really a big problem. It's only confusing if you switch between formats. If you want to rail against something how about starting with getting the US to switch to metric or something else that is more than an occasional minor irritation.
Month-Day-Year format is irrational.
Explain to me any part of our date or time system that is actually rational. Months are inconsistent lengths, the number of seconds in a minute or minutes in an hour or hours in a day or days in a week is an arbitrary divisor, the SI unit of time (second) is arbitrary, the year is based on the birth of a mythical religious figurehead, etc ad nauseum. Because we insist on keeping time based on rotations of our planet and orbits of the sun we jump through all sorts of contortions to keep the calendar in sync with those.
And you actually care whether the month or the year comes first in a whimsical choice of epoch? WHOOOOSHH!!!!
Besides these are irrational numbers so for once it actually makes sense.