Sure I'm simplifying things. I not writing an essay.
1. Sure they're poisonous as well. But we're well used to handling poisons safely. We've got generations of nuclear safety now as well.
Uranium and plutonium have two advantages over lead and mercury: They're solid and not very water soluble. Thus, it's actually very hard to poison a waterway with it.
2. Oh, I agree. Modern techniques have a good handle on it. Materials that don't absorb the radiation, or at least not as much. At least you're correct that people fear it more than really necessary.
Even with some reprocessing, the problem still remains where to store the waste while it cools and the byproducts of reprocessing.
It's not that big of a problem. I mean, it's only after forty years that plants are running out of room in their 'temporary' storage pools. The interim solution that's been found is above ground crypts. After spending twenty years in a pool, they're cool enough to transfer to an above ground crypt. At this point the heat produced has lowered to the point that active cooling isn't required. The thing to remember is the small size of this stuff. You can keep 20 years of waste in a pool the size of an olympic swimming pool.
As for permanent disposal, you have to remember that, depending on how you recycle it, you can reclaim something like 80% of the materials as additional fuel. I've heard that our reactors only use like 5% of the fuel. So we could run the USA on the current waste for the next 60 years.
Mines go dead all the time. Properly managed, you'd be able to keep a mineshaft open for when you do it. Doesn't even have to be the same mine, just a suitable one.
Placing the stuff in a subduction zone would be difficult, but I encountered another potential solution which involved dropping into deep sea clay beds which are long term stable.
Offtopic: In my research, I encountered materials calling nuclear waste: 'World's most deadly toxin'. I'll say that's false. In neither quantity or quality it's nowhere near. Think Botox. Heck, industrial Chlorine is nasty.
It is true that Hg and Pb are toxic pretty mcuh forever, but their use in industry is also higly regulated.
And yet I can still buy thermometers and solder at the local hardware store.
Nuclear waste is THE biggest problem with nuclear power.
Nope, it's the political interference in waste management. Much of the waste, in another ~20 years, will be cool enough to reprocess into more fuel without taking more in the way of precautions than from fresh material. But that's currently forbidden by law. Even now, with some extra precautions, the waste can be reprocessed into more fuel.
The rest is tiny in comparison, and can be buried in a subduction zone or back into the mines it comes from.
"Three reviews by Brues, Henry, and Oakley concluded that the inverse correlation between background radiation and cancer mortality was general. (Brues 1959; Henry 1961; Oakley 1972)
"In spite of this information, Frigerio and associates at ANL started a new survey with the working hypothesis that all radiation is carcinogenic and persons living with high background radiation should have a higher rate of cancer mortality than those living in low radiation areas. (Frigerio 1973) The extensive data gathered from the contiguous U.S. led to exactly the opposite conclusion!
"Also, an inverse correlation between altitude and leukemia mortality was noted: '...the leukemia rate actually appears to decrease with increasing altitude.' (Eckhoff 1974) Yalow noted that Colorado residents have one of the lowest cancer death rates while receiving more radiation from cosmic rays and uranium rocks and buildings than is received by workers in the nuclear industry in other parts of the country. (Yalow 1981)
"Sauer et al. had exhausted possibilities for any correlation between the death rates of white males in the eastern coastal areas and about 30 possible factors. (Sauer 1980) Factors examined included air and water composition, factories, economic status, ethnic background, and social status. When background radiation was considered, the inverse correlations between background radiation and total death rates, cancer death rates or cardiovascular death rates were found to be statistically significant, p <0.01. (Sauer 1982) In one area, metropolitan Denver, no differences were found in childhood cancer when it was compared with other geographic areas. (Savitz 1987)
From this, just like chemicals, I'd tend to say that type and dosage matters. Iodine is noted for concentrating in the thyroid. Thus, contaminated iodine will collect there, causing a localized, extreme response.
Look at a functioning nuclear power station - they are still 1950's white elephants.
And that's because of the fear-mongers. We have a number of modern designs, not necessarily pebble bed.
France, for example, gets a large percentage of their power from nuclear.
We can build breeder reactors that, while they have some issues with producing materials that can be used for weapons, have the advantage that they burn far, far less fuel.
An equivalent would be if the government forbid fuel cells from cars on the basis that 'somebody could use one to electricute people'.
1. I'm several states away from any ocean. 2. Tides/Waves are the same thing. 2b. Tidal power, except in certain rare cases, has been shown to be one of the most expensive 'renewable' power sources. We just don't have the ability to build stuff that lasts long enough in salt water. 3. Wind: Might be a good idea, but you still have the problem of calm days. 4. algaes: WTH? Still requires sunlight 5. Geothermal is only in limited areas. I'd have to dig very, very deep. Try miles. 6. No, Hydrogen wouldn't be. Hydrogen is very hard to store in bulk. You still loose more than 50% of the energy if you try to. Besides, even in the summer, with the longer days, due to the way things work we still get less solar power by area than the equator.
If you really think you do a better job working hard for 6 hours and goofing off for 2, convince your management of this - I'm sure they'll be glad to only pay you for 6 hours, and let you goof off on your own time...
What's this obsession with 'hours', with getting paid for by period of time?
How about they pay me for six hours, after giving me a 33% raise because I'm a third more productive than the competition? Note: It'd more likely be 50% because so much of the cost of a worker is the benefits. If the worker only gets money, no healthcare, etc, then it'd be 33%
Productivity differs. I can do some jobs in less than half the amount of time it takes for somebody else. Doesn't that mean that they should pay me more?
I'm currently a long term investor. I don't really care how the company is doing today or even this year. I'm looking at it's 20 year prospects.
Most stores opened aren't profitable for the first 1-5 years. Under the 'quick buck' logic, no new stores would be opened.
Sure, there's companies that are looking for the 'quick buck'. They also tend to be the ones are are gone within a few years.
Yes, there's day traders looking to MMF, but like most MMF schemes, they're more likely to loose their money in the long run than the 'slow and steady' approach.
For companies that aren't as interested in the 'quick buck', look at GE, General Mills, POST cereals, grocery stores, insurance companies, power, etc. They're planning for the next ten to twenty years, and not so much the next quarter.
While providing healthcare was originally a smart business move - IE a worker without healthcare was more likely to miss more work, and when you're in a labor shortage market(IE it's a more than trivial task to replace him), it made perfect sense.
Today, healthcare is considered a requirement by most workers, and most pay at least some money towards their company health care plan.
The problem with this is that it took most of the choice away from the actual consumer of the health care, the employee. It creates an excessive burden on small businesses.
What I think would be appropriate would be to decouple your job and your healthcare. IE You can choose your healthcare plan, mix and match, etc. Keep the same plan when you move jobs, etc. I mean, you already do this for vehicle and home insurance.
Heck, have a savings account which you use to pay healthcare expenses through the year, with a relativly cheap 'catastrophic expense' healthcare plan that only kicks in after the first $10,000 or so.
The only cases that the government would need to get involved would be for military/police/fire, which has in increased occupational hazard rate.
The only exceptions I'd make would be minors and catastrophic loss. IE > 100,000 a year, perpetual expense, etc.
While I live in a large town, what I'd like to see would be a practical PRT system.
Many of the proposals look good, though just like 'last mile' costs for fiber, you still need to find some solution to the.5->1 mile walk to/from the station.
While not a big deal for normal use, I see a need for when you have a moderate amount of cargo: Groceries, results from the shopping trip, any trip with a baby, etc. Not to mention bad weather.
Not hard in a big city(you simply put a station into each skyscraper), but for smaller areas, it gets tough. I'd like to see a garage station concept. This would likely require a car be able to back up, but that shouldn't be difficult given electric motors.
If somebody is forcing their way into your house, and you're in it, during a disaster, you have every right to defend your property. You need it for your own survival.
Some states actually have this codified into law, and Texas goes so far to say that lethal force is explicitly authorized against theft at night.
Well, there are limits to this. For example, if a fourteen/fifteen year old goes out and kills somebody, the parent/s won't automatically be up on murder charges.
Fiscal responsability often transfers, but criminal responsability doesn't. It gets into the nitpicking and individual state laws as to where the line is drawn.
I've even heard of expensive phone calls made by minors being written off, because, again, you end up with the phone calls like that (900 numbers) being a automatic contract. Oddly enough it's the really expensive ones that are more likely to be written off, because it breaks some limit (the kid, and therefore you, can be held responsable for $20-100 dollar contracts(IE buying something at the store), but $500 might be 'no way'.
I always hate these evolution/creation fights as Evolution, as presented to me in school, wasn't a creation of life theory.
It was a expanation of current(last few hundred thousands of years) events. There was some muttering about different atmospheres, 'soupy oceans', lightning strikes, and mud. Asteroids were also thought to be potentially involved. But then, I went to school before much research on extremophiles had trickled to the beginning of life theorists, much less high school science. And it was fully admitted, pretty much stated: 'We have no clue, we're pretty sure this is wrong on many details, but this is the best we have to date'. It didn't require fake dinosaur bones, fake fossil layers, etc.
There are places that I could walk into the unoccupied house, and be watching the TV, and when the owners came down they'd help me get my frozen car started. Or give me a ride into town.
On the other hand, if you start a problem, just about every one of them has multiple guns.
It's too cold to want to cause trouble most of the time. I mean, do you really want to freeze trying to break and enter? Evade the cops in the winter? Hint: You try to run, and you'll probably freeze.
In the winter, I fill up with ethanol for just this reason. Pay a little less at the pump(well, a fair bit less now), to get the same additives that they'd want a buck for in a can.
With gas prices heading the way they are, E85 will be substantially cheaper than gasoline*, and I'm hoping to hang onto my current car long enough for them to produce a non-truck, non-premium priced car that can take E85.
*Results will vary: I live in the midwest, corn country, and ethanol is cheap here.
There's currently a wacko out there protesting at soldier's funerals, saying they died because God is angry because they're supporting a government that condones gays. Even organizations that have formed to oppose gay marrage and rights say he's a kook.
You tend to have nuts/wackos/loons at the extremes of any spectrum.
Well, you might have heard that, but it was pretty much more along the lines that by the time the FD could get there, the primary starting place of the fire would be fully engulfed. Thus, they'd concentrate their efforts on preventing the spread of the fire. Usually by wetting down the sides and roofs of the buildings closest.
Imagine trying to put out even a one story fire with lines of people with buckets, versus dedicated, high speed water pumps putting out hundreds of gallons a minute.
And yes, what's happening to New Orleans now has pretty much been predicted for the last century. It's simple: City, near water, below sea level, in hurricane territory. I mean, come on.
There's a reason that terms like 'storm of the century' exist. Weather varies by cycles. We're also living in many more areas than in the past, such that every storm gets noticed now. It used to be that storms had a fair chance of hitting 'nowhere populated'. Maybe a farm or three.
Used to be man was the biggest risk in the cities. Fire, Arson, was a shoot on sight offense. Why? Whole sections of cities could, and did, go up in flames.
1. I'm a libertarion, not a Libertarion. I'm a moderate. 2. I never said corporations would be paying sales taxes among themselves. For one thing, this encourages excessive vertical consolidation* 3. The wealthy always manage to avoid taxes. However, they're going to have a hard time avoiding sales tax on their home, cars, clothes(unless they visit another country), food, etc. If they try to shelter it under the aegis of a 'corporation', well, that 'business' is subject to audit. 4. It sounds like you're talking more about a merger. I know, it's wierd, but I don't worry about taxing that stuff. Only retail level stuff. Look up Fairtax. 5. Sure, and we have this big problem about people avoiding taxes by working for a business for free, while the business gives them gifts of vehicles, a house, and generous amounts of cash. Which would you rather try to audit, which is more likely to be correct(within a reasonable margin of error for the amounts of money involved): 10% of american households, or 10% of businesses with retail operations? 6. Why do you think that taxes are part of the cost of running a civilization? Why do we need to tax wealth(instead of income)? How about we just mandate that every worker work for the government one week out of the year? Besides, it's not like I advocated eliminating taxes entirely. I suggested the idea of eliminating payroll taxes, and going with a sales tax. It's relativly easy to avoid income tax. It's a bit harder to avoid a sales tax. Even drug dealers, prostitutes, and politicians will end up paying the sales tax.
You -- the worker bee, or "sap" Guess what, comrade, I'm hard to categorize under the old communist ideas. I'm a working bourgeoisie. I own stock. Not enough to support myself yet, but I'm working my way towards that point.
Besides, have you ever wondered why so many of the 'socialists' and people who encourage large amounts of government are rich? The huge amount of complex tax regulations helps to ensure that their exclusive little club remains just that. It puts barriers in the way of joe schmoe who's the first to graduate from college in his family, and is looking to build a business from scratch. It means that a business of five people needs a dedicated accountant, or hire a firm. They definitly need a lawyer on retainer. Meanwhile, they pay for a staff of lawyers and accountants to hide most of their income.
A simple system is usually far harder to 'game' than a complex one. It levels the playing field.
*Example: A breakfast cereal company owns the Farm, the factory, the delivery trucks, maybe even the stores, fertilizer plant, box&liner manufacture.
Other than you wanting to have fun, is there any real reason you need to bank in different languages at any given ATM?
The simplist way I can think of would be to have a preference list.
IE Eng->German->Spanish->prompt
Yours would simply go straight to prompt, and would be usefull in the case of a card possibly being shared by people who speak/read different languages.
Of course, in order to do this we'd either have to change all the cards(as the account number is pretty much all the strip can handle), or have the machine query a variable attached to your account to pull up the preferences.
As far as it goes, the last option is to design the machine so you can do the common function(getting money), without needing to read the prompts. Improved graphical displays make this easier.
Personally, I've memorized the way to manipulate the machine using the keypad entirely, I find it works much faster. Don't need to see the screen at all.
And I'm 99% of the time well within the 10 items or less limit.
Thing is, living in a large town/micro city, Wallmart is the only place with self-checkout that I've seen. I also don't like how fussy the scanners are. They're also slow.
RFID would be of great help.
Improvements I could see: Age verification from credit card, or give the checker a console where all she has to do is hit a button(he's obviously over 16/17/18/21). A better scanner. An ATM style credit card reader where you feed it in, it reads it then spits it out. I hate the slide style.
What really annoys me are those who want to pay cash... Boy that's slow. It's much faster to have a cashier count it up.
Just to make it clear, this sort of stuff is why many libertarions support the elimination of business and payroll taxes and going with a sales tax. That way you're not penalized for producing the product in the USA, as about a third of the cost of employing a low wage worker in the states is taxes. This is true until you get quite high in the pay grade.
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Sure I'm simplifying things. I not writing an essay.
1. Sure they're poisonous as well. But we're well used to handling poisons safely. We've got generations of nuclear safety now as well.
Uranium and plutonium have two advantages over lead and mercury: They're solid and not very water soluble. Thus, it's actually very hard to poison a waterway with it.
2. Oh, I agree. Modern techniques have a good handle on it. Materials that don't absorb the radiation, or at least not as much. At least you're correct that people fear it more than really necessary.
It's not that big of a problem. I mean, it's only after forty years that plants are running out of room in their 'temporary' storage pools. The interim solution that's been found is above ground crypts. After spending twenty years in a pool, they're cool enough to transfer to an above ground crypt. At this point the heat produced has lowered to the point that active cooling isn't required. The thing to remember is the small size of this stuff. You can keep 20 years of waste in a pool the size of an olympic swimming pool.
As for permanent disposal, you have to remember that, depending on how you recycle it, you can reclaim something like 80% of the materials as additional fuel. I've heard that our reactors only use like 5% of the fuel. So we could run the USA on the current waste for the next 60 years. Mines go dead all the time. Properly managed, you'd be able to keep a mineshaft open for when you do it. Doesn't even have to be the same mine, just a suitable one. Placing the stuff in a subduction zone would be difficult, but I encountered another potential solution which involved dropping into deep sea clay beds which are long term stable. Offtopic: In my research, I encountered materials calling nuclear waste: 'World's most deadly toxin'. I'll say that's false. In neither quantity or quality it's nowhere near. Think Botox. Heck, industrial Chlorine is nasty.It is true that Hg and Pb are toxic pretty mcuh forever, but their use in industry is also higly regulated.
And yet I can still buy thermometers and solder at the local hardware store.
Nuclear waste is THE biggest problem with nuclear power.
Nope, it's the political interference in waste management. Much of the waste, in another ~20 years, will be cool enough to reprocess into more fuel without taking more in the way of precautions than from fresh material. But that's currently forbidden by law. Even now, with some extra precautions, the waste can be reprocessed into more fuel.
The rest is tiny in comparison, and can be buried in a subduction zone or back into the mines it comes from.
Ah, found it: Higher background radiation, less cancer?
From this, just like chemicals, I'd tend to say that type and dosage matters. Iodine is noted for concentrating in the thyroid. Thus, contaminated iodine will collect there, causing a localized, extreme response.
Look at a functioning nuclear power station - they are still 1950's white elephants.
And that's because of the fear-mongers. We have a number of modern designs, not necessarily pebble bed.
France, for example, gets a large percentage of their power from nuclear.
We can build breeder reactors that, while they have some issues with producing materials that can be used for weapons, have the advantage that they burn far, far less fuel.
An equivalent would be if the government forbid fuel cells from cars on the basis that 'somebody could use one to electricute people'.
I live in Minot, ND:
1. I'm several states away from any ocean.
2. Tides/Waves are the same thing.
2b. Tidal power, except in certain rare cases, has been shown to be one of the most expensive 'renewable' power sources. We just don't have the ability to build stuff that lasts long enough in salt water.
3. Wind: Might be a good idea, but you still have the problem of calm days.
4. algaes: WTH? Still requires sunlight
5. Geothermal is only in limited areas. I'd have to dig very, very deep. Try miles.
6. No, Hydrogen wouldn't be. Hydrogen is very hard to store in bulk. You still loose more than 50% of the energy if you try to. Besides, even in the summer, with the longer days, due to the way things work we still get less solar power by area than the equator.
I'll take a nuclear reactor any day.
I'll counter that your #1 is backwards. Knowing how to 'play' the stockmarket is absolutly essential for making money(consistantly, at least).
#2, if you avoid daytrading, choose and keep your assets for long-term gain, you will come out ahead 99% of the time.
Granted, I still recommend mutual funds for 99% of the people out there. Gotta love automatic diversification.
Don't forget the method of electrolosys they developed for nuclear plants that has the highest efficiency ever.
I believe it's a combination of high heat(waste heat), a catalyst, and electricity.
If you really think you do a better job working hard for 6 hours and goofing off for 2, convince your management of this - I'm sure they'll be glad to only pay you for 6 hours, and let you goof off on your own time...
What's this obsession with 'hours', with getting paid for by period of time?
How about they pay me for six hours, after giving me a 33% raise because I'm a third more productive than the competition? Note: It'd more likely be 50% because so much of the cost of a worker is the benefits. If the worker only gets money, no healthcare, etc, then it'd be 33%
Productivity differs. I can do some jobs in less than half the amount of time it takes for somebody else. Doesn't that mean that they should pay me more?
Definitly true.
I'm currently a long term investor. I don't really care how the company is doing today or even this year. I'm looking at it's 20 year prospects.
Most stores opened aren't profitable for the first 1-5 years. Under the 'quick buck' logic, no new stores would be opened.
Sure, there's companies that are looking for the 'quick buck'. They also tend to be the ones are are gone within a few years.
Yes, there's day traders looking to MMF, but like most MMF schemes, they're more likely to loose their money in the long run than the 'slow and steady' approach.
For companies that aren't as interested in the 'quick buck', look at GE, General Mills, POST cereals, grocery stores, insurance companies, power, etc. They're planning for the next ten to twenty years, and not so much the next quarter.
While providing healthcare was originally a smart business move - IE a worker without healthcare was more likely to miss more work, and when you're in a labor shortage market(IE it's a more than trivial task to replace him), it made perfect sense.
Today, healthcare is considered a requirement by most workers, and most pay at least some money towards their company health care plan.
The problem with this is that it took most of the choice away from the actual consumer of the health care, the employee. It creates an excessive burden on small businesses.
What I think would be appropriate would be to decouple your job and your healthcare. IE You can choose your healthcare plan, mix and match, etc. Keep the same plan when you move jobs, etc. I mean, you already do this for vehicle and home insurance.
Heck, have a savings account which you use to pay healthcare expenses through the year, with a relativly cheap 'catastrophic expense' healthcare plan that only kicks in after the first $10,000 or so.
The only cases that the government would need to get involved would be for military/police/fire, which has in increased occupational hazard rate.
The only exceptions I'd make would be minors and catastrophic loss. IE > 100,000 a year, perpetual expense, etc.
While I live in a large town, what I'd like to see would be a practical PRT system.
.5->1 mile walk to/from the station.
Many of the proposals look good, though just like 'last mile' costs for fiber, you still need to find some solution to the
While not a big deal for normal use, I see a need for when you have a moderate amount of cargo: Groceries, results from the shopping trip, any trip with a baby, etc. Not to mention bad weather.
Not hard in a big city(you simply put a station into each skyscraper), but for smaller areas, it gets tough. I'd like to see a garage station concept. This would likely require a car be able to back up, but that shouldn't be difficult given electric motors.
Depends on the area.
If somebody is forcing their way into your house, and you're in it, during a disaster, you have every right to defend your property. You need it for your own survival.
Some states actually have this codified into law, and Texas goes so far to say that lethal force is explicitly authorized against theft at night.
Well, there are limits to this. For example, if a fourteen/fifteen year old goes out and kills somebody, the parent/s won't automatically be up on murder charges.
Fiscal responsability often transfers, but criminal responsability doesn't. It gets into the nitpicking and individual state laws as to where the line is drawn.
I've even heard of expensive phone calls made by minors being written off, because, again, you end up with the phone calls like that (900 numbers) being a automatic contract. Oddly enough it's the really expensive ones that are more likely to be written off, because it breaks some limit (the kid, and therefore you, can be held responsable for $20-100 dollar contracts(IE buying something at the store), but $500 might be 'no way'.
I always hate these evolution/creation fights as Evolution, as presented to me in school, wasn't a creation of life theory.
It was a expanation of current(last few hundred thousands of years) events. There was some muttering about different atmospheres, 'soupy oceans', lightning strikes, and mud. Asteroids were also thought to be potentially involved. But then, I went to school before much research on extremophiles had trickled to the beginning of life theorists, much less high school science. And it was fully admitted, pretty much stated: 'We have no clue, we're pretty sure this is wrong on many details, but this is the best we have to date'. It didn't require fake dinosaur bones, fake fossil layers, etc.
Very true.
There are places that I could walk into the unoccupied house, and be watching the TV, and when the owners came down they'd help me get my frozen car started. Or give me a ride into town.
On the other hand, if you start a problem, just about every one of them has multiple guns.
It's too cold to want to cause trouble most of the time. I mean, do you really want to freeze trying to break and enter? Evade the cops in the winter? Hint: You try to run, and you'll probably freeze.
Yes, it's redundant.
In the winter, I fill up with ethanol for just this reason. Pay a little less at the pump(well, a fair bit less now), to get the same additives that they'd want a buck for in a can.
With gas prices heading the way they are, E85 will be substantially cheaper than gasoline*, and I'm hoping to hang onto my current car long enough for them to produce a non-truck, non-premium priced car that can take E85.
*Results will vary: I live in the midwest, corn country, and ethanol is cheap here.
I'll just chime in on this.
There's currently a wacko out there protesting at soldier's funerals, saying they died because God is angry because they're supporting a government that condones gays. Even organizations that have formed to oppose gay marrage and rights say he's a kook.
You tend to have nuts/wackos/loons at the extremes of any spectrum.
Well, you might have heard that, but it was pretty much more along the lines that by the time the FD could get there, the primary starting place of the fire would be fully engulfed. Thus, they'd concentrate their efforts on preventing the spread of the fire. Usually by wetting down the sides and roofs of the buildings closest.
Imagine trying to put out even a one story fire with lines of people with buckets, versus dedicated, high speed water pumps putting out hundreds of gallons a minute.
And yes, what's happening to New Orleans now has pretty much been predicted for the last century. It's simple:
City, near water, below sea level, in hurricane territory. I mean, come on.
There's a reason that terms like 'storm of the century' exist. Weather varies by cycles. We're also living in many more areas than in the past, such that every storm gets noticed now. It used to be that storms had a fair chance of hitting 'nowhere populated'. Maybe a farm or three.
Used to be man was the biggest risk in the cities. Fire, Arson, was a shoot on sight offense. Why? Whole sections of cities could, and did, go up in flames.
I'd suggest checking out Baen's free library and webscriptions.net sites.
They're making money selling Ebooks so unencumbered with DRM that they're available in RTF and HTML. How more open can they be?
They even say that sales go up for any book placed on the list, as well as the author's other titles.
How do they do it? It's seen as a good value.
1. I'm a libertarion, not a Libertarion. I'm a moderate.
2. I never said corporations would be paying sales taxes among themselves. For one thing, this encourages excessive vertical consolidation*
3. The wealthy always manage to avoid taxes. However, they're going to have a hard time avoiding sales tax on their home, cars, clothes(unless they visit another country), food, etc. If they try to shelter it under the aegis of a 'corporation', well, that 'business' is subject to audit.
4. It sounds like you're talking more about a merger. I know, it's wierd, but I don't worry about taxing that stuff. Only retail level stuff. Look up Fairtax.
5. Sure, and we have this big problem about people avoiding taxes by working for a business for free, while the business gives them gifts of vehicles, a house, and generous amounts of cash. Which would you rather try to audit, which is more likely to be correct(within a reasonable margin of error for the amounts of money involved): 10% of american households, or 10% of businesses with retail operations?
6. Why do you think that taxes are part of the cost of running a civilization? Why do we need to tax wealth(instead of income)? How about we just mandate that every worker work for the government one week out of the year? Besides, it's not like I advocated eliminating taxes entirely. I suggested the idea of eliminating payroll taxes, and going with a sales tax. It's relativly easy to avoid income tax. It's a bit harder to avoid a sales tax. Even drug dealers, prostitutes, and politicians will end up paying the sales tax.
You -- the worker bee, or "sap"
Guess what, comrade, I'm hard to categorize under the old communist ideas. I'm a working bourgeoisie. I own stock. Not enough to support myself yet, but I'm working my way towards that point.
Besides, have you ever wondered why so many of the 'socialists' and people who encourage large amounts of government are rich? The huge amount of complex tax regulations helps to ensure that their exclusive little club remains just that. It puts barriers in the way of joe schmoe who's the first to graduate from college in his family, and is looking to build a business from scratch. It means that a business of five people needs a dedicated accountant, or hire a firm. They definitly need a lawyer on retainer. Meanwhile, they pay for a staff of lawyers and accountants to hide most of their income.
A simple system is usually far harder to 'game' than a complex one. It levels the playing field.
*Example: A breakfast cereal company owns the Farm, the factory, the delivery trucks, maybe even the stores, fertilizer plant, box&liner manufacture.
Other than you wanting to have fun, is there any real reason you need to bank in different languages at any given ATM?
The simplist way I can think of would be to have a preference list.
IE Eng->German->Spanish->prompt
Yours would simply go straight to prompt, and would be usefull in the case of a card possibly being shared by people who speak/read different languages.
Of course, in order to do this we'd either have to change all the cards(as the account number is pretty much all the strip can handle), or have the machine query a variable attached to your account to pull up the preferences.
As far as it goes, the last option is to design the machine so you can do the common function(getting money), without needing to read the prompts. Improved graphical displays make this easier.
Personally, I've memorized the way to manipulate the machine using the keypad entirely, I find it works much faster. Don't need to see the screen at all.
Though it might be useful for building a tower to meet the cable partway, maybe a kilometer or five up?
And I'm 99% of the time well within the 10 items or less limit.
Thing is, living in a large town/micro city, Wallmart is the only place with self-checkout that I've seen. I also don't like how fussy the scanners are. They're also slow.
RFID would be of great help.
Improvements I could see: Age verification from credit card, or give the checker a console where all she has to do is hit a button(he's obviously over 16/17/18/21). A better scanner. An ATM style credit card reader where you feed it in, it reads it then spits it out. I hate the slide style.
What really annoys me are those who want to pay cash... Boy that's slow. It's much faster to have a cashier count it up.
Just to make it clear, this sort of stuff is why many libertarions support the elimination of business and payroll taxes and going with a sales tax. That way you're not penalized for producing the product in the USA, as about a third of the cost of employing a low wage worker in the states is taxes. This is true until you get quite high in the pay grade.