Well, as long as you don't spend it, what use is it to you?
I mean, granted we talk about the rich getting richer, but usually that's in the context of them having all kinds of fabulous luxuries like gold faucets and Porches while the proles make do with leaky lead pipes and clunkers.
But if the rich don't actually spend their money, how are they benefiting from it? And if they don't spend it, it's lying in a bank, increasing the deposits, and therefore decreasing the cost of loaning money. Thereby allowing the poor and middle classes ease of borrowing (for mortgages or small businesses).
1. Inflation means more people are automatically promoted to higher tax brackets.
2. Income tax discourages productive investment. I've never really understood why the government doesn't let you deduct the entire cost of capital investment (new factory, new pizza oven, etc.) from your income instead of deducting a small amount (depreciation) every year.
It's entirely possible for you to spend more money than you take in for a given year, and still be liable for income taxes! Obviously that means you'll do less capital investment, which means less jobs.
Or it means you'll be encouraged to borrow money from banks (and surprise... that is deductible) instead of growing organically. Which, combined with other government messes, means a diversion of funds toward the non-productive sector (bankers, lawyers, accountants).
Anyway, sales tax eliminates this whole gordian knot. You get taxed on consumption. Production is free.
Well, Washington won't have to increase their sales tax after eliminating income tax because they never had one in the first place. The sales tax is 6.5% in Washington, with counties adding from 1.5% to 3.5%.
For most states and municipalities, things were going swimmingly before the bust. With revenues up, they double-downed on spending: half-billion dollar schools, $1.5 million city manager salaries. The problem is they refused to cut the fat during lean times.
Even if you believe in Keynesian economics, spending money to promote economic activity is the prerogative of the one government (the Feds) that has a printing press.
I think you're right. There's attitude of "whatever Mark says goes" at Ubuntu. It would be nice if there were (at least some level of) discussion with other projects to get their concerns before making a headlong rush.
Find out what websites (Beck, Fox News, etc.) your brother in law visits and ask if it would be OK if AT&T either blocked them (because of a liberal boycott campaign) or charged extra for them.
The thinking behind network non-neutrality is so stupid, it's hard to even fathom. Imagine:
-AT&T says it wants a share of Google's profits. -Electric company says it wants a share of random factory X's profits. -Post Office wants a share of NetFlix profits.
Note: in all these cases, the utility providers are already getting a (fair) share of the profits of the utility users by getting paid for the product (or service). It's a basic principle of business that you only get paid for the value of the service *you* provide, not the value that your customer creates with that service.
Advocates of Net Neutrality should get smart and stop portraying it as an aspect of progressive politics. That only makes the other team want to oppose it.
Instead frame it like this: "What if--oh noes--AT&T wanted to block Glenn Beck and theblaze.com ? Liberals already succeeded in getting major corps to drop Beck for advertising. What if they get them to drop access to the website, too?"
I've sometimes wondered if a better way to do regulation wouldn't be to have hard-and-fast rules, but rather just guidelines along with a logo program.
If you meet the guidelines, you have can use a "US FCC Approved" icon. If not, you have to display "Violates US FCC Guidelines", or something.
That way, companies can choose what they want to do, but consumers can also make a (somewhat more) informed choice.
Sorry, I forgot to mention Sam Stein is a paid Washington beat reporter for the Huffington Post. They also just hired Howard Fineman, formerly of Newsweek.
Slashdot Mirror
I, for one, welcome our new sales-taxing moronic overlords.
Well, as long as you don't spend it, what use is it to you?
I mean, granted we talk about the rich getting richer, but usually that's in the context of them having all kinds of fabulous luxuries like gold faucets and Porches while the proles make do with leaky lead pipes and clunkers.
But if the rich don't actually spend their money, how are they benefiting from it? And if they don't spend it, it's lying in a bank, increasing the deposits, and therefore decreasing the cost of loaning money. Thereby allowing the poor and middle classes ease of borrowing (for mortgages or small businesses).
It sounds like you've given this a lot of thought.
Here's another tax that seems better than the monstrosity of income taxes:
The APT tax (no, it's not a tax on Debian installation methods).
He's right about 6.5%. The extra above that is being added by the counties. Klickitat makes do with a .5% surcharge.
1. Inflation means more people are automatically promoted to higher tax brackets.
2. Income tax discourages productive investment. I've never really understood why the government doesn't let you deduct the entire cost of capital investment (new factory, new pizza oven, etc.) from your income instead of deducting a small amount (depreciation) every year.
It's entirely possible for you to spend more money than you take in for a given year, and still be liable for income taxes! Obviously that means you'll do less capital investment, which means less jobs.
Or it means you'll be encouraged to borrow money from banks (and surprise ... that is deductible) instead of growing organically. Which, combined with other government messes, means a diversion of funds toward the non-productive sector (bankers, lawyers, accountants).
Anyway, sales tax eliminates this whole gordian knot. You get taxed on consumption. Production is free.
Well, Washington won't have to increase their sales tax after eliminating income tax because they never had one in the first place. The sales tax is 6.5% in Washington, with counties adding from 1.5% to 3.5%.
For most states and municipalities, things were going swimmingly before the bust. With revenues up, they double-downed on spending: half-billion dollar schools, $1.5 million city manager salaries. The problem is they refused to cut the fat during lean times.
Even if you believe in Keynesian economics, spending money to promote economic activity is the prerogative of the one government (the Feds) that has a printing press.
I'll be sure to read it ... later.
One thing I'd like is to be able to restart the display server (for whatever reason), and have the apps keep running.
What happens for me under Ubuntu (Karmic, Lucid) is X bulks up to 101 MB after a couple of days of usage.
People say it's the pixmaps in apps that cause that, but even if you close out all apps, X still stays huge.
And why does it go from 3 to 6 to 28% CPU, and then back? It goes to 37% when Alt-Tabbing under compiz with a lot of windows open.
After reading some more of the discussion below, it's possible (hopeful?) Wayland might be the answer, but with X compatibility, please.
I think you're right. There's attitude of "whatever Mark says goes" at Ubuntu. It would be nice if there were (at least some level of) discussion with other projects to get their concerns before making a headlong rush.
The funny thing is that even Nokia's N900 runs X. So if a mobile device can run X, why can't a desktop or netbook run it?
Let's test that:
"It's a huge lie. Everything on the web is in fact public domain." By Compaqt.
Hey, it works! The web really is public domain.
with a Tesla, too.
But then it would mean having to go outside.
Choices, choices ...
Find out what websites (Beck, Fox News, etc.) your brother in law visits and ask if it would be OK if AT&T either blocked them (because of a liberal boycott campaign) or charged extra for them.
The thinking behind network non-neutrality is so stupid, it's hard to even fathom. Imagine:
-AT&T says it wants a share of Google's profits.
-Electric company says it wants a share of random factory X's profits.
-Post Office wants a share of NetFlix profits.
Note: in all these cases, the utility providers are already getting a (fair) share of the profits of the utility users by getting paid for the product (or service). It's a basic principle of business that you only get paid for the value of the service *you* provide, not the value that your customer creates with that service.
Advocates of Net Neutrality should get smart and stop portraying it as an aspect of progressive politics. That only makes the other team want to oppose it.
Instead frame it like this: "What if--oh noes--AT&T wanted to block Glenn Beck and theblaze.com ? Liberals already succeeded in getting major corps to drop Beck for advertising. What if they get them to drop access to the website, too?"
I've sometimes wondered if a better way to do regulation wouldn't be to have hard-and-fast rules, but rather just guidelines along with a logo program.
If you meet the guidelines, you have can use a "US FCC Approved" icon. If not, you have to display "Violates US FCC Guidelines", or something.
That way, companies can choose what they want to do, but consumers can also make a (somewhat more) informed choice.
Sorry, I forgot to mention Sam Stein is a paid Washington beat reporter for the Huffington Post. They also just hired Howard Fineman, formerly of Newsweek.
So they do have (some) serious news people.
Depends on the author. If you're talking about a report by Sam Stein, you can probably depend on it as much as Time, Newsweek, WaPo, or WaTimes.
But if you're talking about a blog post by any of their innumerable bloggers, that has no more credibility than a random Blogspot blog.
Books don't link to each other?
What are citations and footnotes?
Anybody know if they have such a switch?
Given how much their phones (going forward) are pretty much open, I wonder where they'd put a killswitch.
2.0?
USSR^H^HA , movie watch you!
md5 hashes and cookies?
Just askin...
The problem with R-Hell is all the outdated packages in the repositories.
Yeah, that was annoying.
In the latest Ubuntus (10.04 Lucid at least, maybe 9.10 Karmic, too), you can re-enable CtrlAltBackspace by going to:
System: Prefereces: Keyboard: Layouts: Options.
Then in the 8th item (Key sequence to kill the X server), check the checkbox for "Control + Alt + Backspace").