Those who claim that capitalism doesn't work, I ask: do the alternatives work?
Few examples. Nordic countries (and especially Finland): about 70% of your income goes into taxes, and what do you get? Wages that are not enough, central deals (thanks, unions) which make your wage each year less than inflation (which is a tax in itself), central economic planning that tax from the worker in the name of saving banks, health care system (aka "social security") where you have to wait dental care for months (in Finland there's 6 month "guarantee" for "emergencies") or where you have to pay for your government hospital visits or where you have school classes hovering around 40 pupils. I could keep going and going.
Of course you posted anonymously... your argument sucks. The Nordic countries have the highest standards of living in the fucking world. It's like winning the lottery to be born in a Nordic country. The wages are plenty enough in the Nordic countries, thank you. The Nordic countries do practice capitalism. They have amazing education, very low crime (admittedly, the reasons for low crime are outside of this discussion about socialism, because they are very heterogeneous, but it bears mentioning). They have no fear when getting sick of an uncommon disease that they won't be able to get cared for (not saying that they magically don't get sick, just that they don't have to play Russian Roulette when it comes to attempting to help their health), they do not suffer the same way the average American did in regards to home foreclosures, and the poorest among them have a exponentially better chance of having a better life than the poorest among Americans.
The rational basis behind arguments like yours are only valid in theory: you must discount the existing evidence, like during the healthcare debates during "Obamacare" that said so many more will die while waiting in long lines in the hospitals/doctor offices. Let me say it clearly: capitalism is good, communism and autocracy and fascism is bad. But government in and of itself isn't bad, and your theoretical arguments from Ayn Rand's playbook are just theoretical. The Nordic countries are clear proof that government involvement in society is a good thing if done well.
No, right now, universities are charging high prices because they can. It's called a government subsidy, and it's a well-known side-effect of government subsidies. If the government didn't subsidize it, then Universities would find creative ways to decrease the cost or increase the value.
Here's the hole in your argument. You make a lot of convincing and correct points, but the number (by student capacity) of hoity-toity "universities" in this country pales in comparison to other higher education facilities. Universities are much more than regular community colleges - research, prestige, etc. The problem is for-profit schools, not universities. Universities have to make money, but not like a corporation. They haven't been government subsidized in the way that they are now. On top of that, the government subsidizes aren't going to universities anymore at the same percentage in the past, they are now going to for-profit schools.
Oh, and by the way, college textbooks are a fucking racket. I've paid my boyfriend's college textbooks for the past 3 years and I've dropped $3K into it. The worst fucking thing is that the e-books were more expensive than the paper books, and you can't resell them.
And for every 1 of those, I can list 100 who work in an area completely orthogonal to the field they got their degree in, and who don't use their training for their job. The whole thing is a big fucking joke.
Yes, agreed, I can too. But all of those 100 people went to college.
- Forced update of "protected" apps on the/system partition - Need to root phone to get full functionality and remove garbage protected apps - Separate/data and/system partitions, plenty of crapware on the phone I got which I then removed, but no easy way to repartition.
These three comments are all really the same thing: operators install bloatware on their phones. This is not Android's fault. For example, get a Nexus One and it won't have all those apps.
- Incompatibility between versions of Android
This has no relevance to an Android phone's user, only computer engineers. It is comparing apples to oranges. Some Android phones actually do have system updates, regardless of the versions. The only reason you say this is because iPhones have system updates with major versions that change. You wouldn't have thought this to be a problem (which it isn't) if you hadn't seen iPhones doing it and expected that all phones need to work that way.
Your post is theoretical. Trust me, I know people at Google and I've interviewed with them, and it DOESN'T work like that.
The interview process goes through engineers, and they are certainly good at not making a single team who are adept at methodology/technology X to hire someone which Google feels is a good area to hire. However, the interview gets put into the equivalent of a notepad text file and is sent to a hiring committee, to which many aspects of an interview and a prospective candidate don't get transferred. They make up this problem of "false negatives" by allowing multiple interviews. In other words, they know that the interview process rejects good candidates, so they do it multiple times.
The problem with the way they interview is the notepad problem. It just goes into a text file which is sent to a hiring committee. They get really good bookworms this way, but they don't get the awesome people that belong in startups, the type of people who have the skills that transcend just binary tree algorithms. As a Google friend of mine who is a PM there says, "We no longer get creative, intuitive people, we lose them to the startups."
So not having any specific position in mind when interviewing a candidate helps the interviewer focus on the more important talents and skills, the ones that will matter two years from now. And the same actually applies when looking at personality as well. You don't want to hire someone that meshes extremely well with this particular team, because the team will change. Instead, you want someone who works well with people, in general.
That sounds like a good theory, but as I've said their interview process removes the personality attributes and it devolves into CS theory 101, and how well you write code on a whiteboard within the limited time frame randomly occurs, which is passed on to the hiring committee of engineers who simply can't get what the interviewees offer.
This may sound like a rant from a person who interviewed with Google and didn't get the job twice (I interviewed with Google twice and didn't get the job twice), so as with all Internet postings take it with a grain of salt of what I'm about to say and you should rightly be skeptical of it: I work with a badass San Francisco startup and am really good at what I do and I'm telling you that my friends at Google agree with me, they no longer get people who are the type of people who can make the world change, they now only get the best and the brightest of people who got straight A's on CS tests. This is from my friends at Google (some but not all software developers... product managers, product evangelicals, etc.)
It works really well, IMO.
It is true that weak teams tend to hire weak candidates, but the process you described does not hire the best people for the success of the company.
Stop thinking Steve Jobs had ideas. He recognized good ideas when he saw one and he spent a lot of time hunting for good ideas, but he did not come up with them first:
There is absolutely nothing in my post that says what you're implying I said. I clearly stated it was his business ability which deserves to be recognized.
personal computer means a computer a single person uses for whatever he needs it for. windows machines are no more or less personal than apple machines. why should we bow to jobs but then think negatively of these others? woz and the other engineers were the ones designing apple's stuff. they deserve at least as much praise.
The "GUI" of Windows and Linux and all modern personal computers were mimicing what Macintoshes did. The engineers certainly deserve praise, as did the research department from Palo Alto which Macinotshes were based off of. What everyone is respecting at the moment is Steve Jobs ability and business sense to bring it to the mainstream. Command lines are what happened from the awesome geeks, but Windows 95 and iPads are what happened from Steve Jobs. And I don't think that mourning over Steve Jobs means anyone has to think negatively of others, such as myself who is typing this on a Windows XP box who has never owned a Macintosh. Steve Jobs was a mother fucking badass and such badassedness does not result from a bunch of open-mouth droolers, it results from how modern society's use of computers resulted in Steve Jobs ability to bring the technology to be understood and usable by the common man.
The person who gets to claim the innovation is whichever sales guy is good at getting the customer to buy a more expensive machine before others can afford it. The real innovation took place--in almost every case--in the context of designs that hardly anyone could yet afford.
His real genius for innovation didn't emerge until devices became a lot less expensive.
You know, you're pretty right. That being said, he did REAL good at what he did at that point. And you know what? He did okay before that point... remember, he made a multi-million dollar business in a few years, back in the 70s or early 80s or whenever it was.
So drop all the fanboy crap, and just remember what he did. He really was there in the beginning of the personal computer. He was there in that shit. He failed at many things. But those "failures" were still good enough to make him very successful (in monetary terms, he was a millionaire). And then, by the time devices became a lot less expensive, he was a mother fucking badass. So one can dismiss the early contributions in the sense that there were other people who were the most badass in those early times, but he was still a major player. What everyone is now mourning is the motherfucking badass that happened beginning with the iPod.
Doctor, when used without context, has the connotation of medical doctor, not someone with a doctorate. At least it's that way in the US. I was referring to the talent needed and extreme hardship that people have to endure in the U.S. to become medical doctors.
Yes, I have heard of them. There are dozens and dozens of honorifics. When filling out forms, the usual list is "Mr", "Mrs", "Ms", and "Dr". I didn't explain properly, but I stand by my statement that medical doctors have to work extremely hard and be talented in order to receive the ability to call themselves a doctor. Historically, societies have generally always held doctors in esteem.
You mean Protect companies like Microsoft, who have profited in the hundreds of billions of dollars
blah blah blah... Microsoft sucks blah blah blah...
Microsoft is a very small percentage of the economy US software development. Although I'd like to defend Microsoft by saying they don't take a reckless attitude towards software security, I honestly don't have proof one way or another (I do know that Microsoft does have a security team, but I don't know how important or effective it is). What I do know is that closed-source software is the majority of the software development economy, but you didn't point out everyone making closed-source software - just one entity. People like you like to hate Microsoft, but the clear sign that you aren't thinking rationally is that you didn't say Apple, because Apple makes way more money and has way more money than Microsoft. Oh, and there's millions of other people who make closed-source software. Not every program that is programmed has the umbrella of a billion-dollar company.
The point is, your vitriol towards Microsoft will influence your decisions that will in turn hurt many, many other entities and people, not all of whom have billions of dollars.
80 years ago, doctors were richer than 90% of society. Doctors have always been richer than plumbers and teachers and most other professions for hundreds of years. I don't think that is middle class, even if it isn't "aristocracy". In fact, doctors even had their own honorific: "Dr.". Nobody else in the English language gets their own honorific, except doctors, military personnel, and clergy. Not lawyers, not presidents, but doctors.
And I bet you have no fucking idea what doctors have to go through to become doctors. I do.
Why would that be? First of all, we are talking about software developers being held liable. The cost is there, regardless of whether we leave it with the customer, or shift it to the software vendor. Secondly, for software that is under the proposed clause I, liability of the vendor would be limited to what they were originally paid for the software.
The skepticism and completely reasonable fear is that a vendor can't limit the liability to what one pays for the software. McDonald's got sued for millions because someone spilled hot coffee in their laps. Toy companies get sued for millions because some kid stuck a toy in his/her throat. Doctors get sued for millions when they fail to save the life of one patient.
What you're implying is that it is completely feasible to limit monetary liability of a customer to their purchase price. That is not the world we live in, for good or for bad.
My understanding is that this is usually the case for custom software, and that the majority of the software industry is about custom software.
Where do you get this information? The majority of the economy in the industry of programming is by far not custom software, nor is the majority of the economy in the industry of programming resulting in delivered source code.
"Christianity is not true because science shows that there is no need for there to be a God."
On the other hand, there is no proof that Christianity (or any other faith-based credo religion) is "true". There's lots of evidence contrary to faith-based beliefs and tenants.
No, the conflict between science and religion is a false conflict created by atheists as a way to denigrate religion and make it seem as if atheism is supported by science.
You are making a very, very broad judgement. The affirmation that the conflict is created by atheists is a statement almost impossible to disprove, and you want it to be correct. However, it's almost impossible to prove as well - one or even fifty examples don't prove it, it just gives evidence. There's also a virtually countless amount of evidence that says the opposite - that theists create the conflict. What matters is which evidence you look for (and want to believe), and how much time you spend looking.
make it seem as if atheism is supported by science
You don't understand theism and atheism then. Your fault, not your dreaded atheists. Atheism isn't supported by anything. It is simply the lack of theism - the lack of belief doesn't require proof/support/evidence. The scientific method starts at nothing, and then uses evidence and tests to find answers. The scientific method can't prove atheism, it can only disprove various tenants of theistic affirmations.
For example, the scientific method may disprove tenants of the Christian Bible such as the statement that the Earth is ~6000 years old, but the scientific method can never discover how existence was made into being. So even if the scientific method leads to evidence that the Big Bang occurred, it cannot answer the question of "How the Universe and all matter was created in the first place". Another way of putting that in a theistic mindset would be, "If God created the Universe, then who created God?".
1%, yes. And tie it to the highest income rate -- even at a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. So that if the highest rate is 35%, the lowest mandatory rate is 1%. If income taxes increase on the "rich" from 35% to 55%, then the "poor" will increase from 1% to 4%-5%. At $20k income, someone would pay a minimum of $200 per year (less than $17/mo) income tax. They'll be a lot more likely to responsibly spend "group" money (by way of their voting for representatives) if it means their taxes will rise to pay for "more stuff". This is why I believe they need to be invested in the system.
This is not a bad idea. In order for it to work, the tax code has to be simplified - there are thousands of pages of "loopholes" as they're commonly called, otherwise the increases will simply be offset in the higher income brackets by loopholes. The proposal by the administration seeks to close some of these loopholes - how and how much, I do not know, but I know it's a start.
"You did implicitly, when you said It appears that somewhere along the line something flipped to where we have "Representation without taxation" for a hell of a chunk of our population. "
No I didn't. You are reading in to my statement information that isn't there. They are getting FEDERAL representation without FEDERAL taxation. The article is about FEDERAL taxes...
Uh yeah, I understand you. That's what I read, and the second sentence was addressing exactly your response. The income tax in the United States was only introduced in the 20th century. So, before there was an income tax there was federal representation - that didn't change with the introduction of the federal income tax.
"Anyways, the argument that you are making is that it isn't fair for the lower class to receive more money than they pay from the federal government"
No, I'm arguing that they either pay nothing or get more back than they pay. It translates as they have no "stake" in the game such that they can say "give me more" without it impacting their federal tax burden.
Yes, that's exactly what I just said. I don't know of any society in the world where you can make it perfectly even - everyone gets exactly what they paid for. If you needed the police 3 times this year, but someone else didn't - both of you could have theoretically paid the same amount of taxes, but you got more service than the other for the same amount of money. If this is such a problem, I don't know of a solution that doesn't involve anarchy (no government at all). Even given a theoretical perfect free market solution, such as health insurance, you still won't get exactly what you paid for - it's insurance for in case something goes wrong, and if it does, the other people paying money into the pool end up paying for the few.
To your point, you are saying that they didn't pay anything, which is especially dubious in your mind... but I argue that it is impossible for the poor to pay for society. If poor paid for society, you'd have a 3rd world country. If you expect the society that Americans enjoy, you need middle class and rich people to pay for it. The poor simply don't have anything (monetarily) to offer, at least not of any worthwhile substance.
As for taxing the rich it is worthless, even if you tax the rich 100% you are not going to hardly put a dent in the deficit, the only way to do it meaningfully is to raise taxes on the middle class, which are by far and away the largest tax source.
Uh, no. You are either misinformed or exaggerating. If you tax the rich 100% you will get trillions. The upper class of the US own most of the wealth of this country. In 2007, the top 20% of the country owned 85% of the wealth. I'm not saying you should tax anyone 100%, but you are way off about the middle class vs. upper class. How can the largest tax source be the middle class when they own less than 15% of the wealth of this country?
Exactly. The right (or whoever) needs to stop saying that rich is the exact same thing as job creators. They may be the same, but make it explicit.
If you are so worried about taxing job creators out of the area, then stop giving tax breaks to the rich - instead, give tax breaks to job creators. Make it based on job creation, not on income.
You did implicitly, when you said It appears that somewhere along the line something flipped to where we have "Representation without taxation" for a hell of a chunk of our population. Even though you're saying it is just federal so the other taxes don't matter, that is incorrect: there hasn't been a federal income tax for over 50% of our country's history, and the phrase was still valid when there wasn't.
Anyways, the argument that you are making is that it isn't fair for the lower class to receive more money than they pay from the federal government. Think about this: 99.999999% of the population of this planet either 1. get more from their government than what they pay for it, or 2. get less than from their government than what they pay for. It's impossible to make it perfectly even. As soon as you have another kid, or buy another car, etc. you've somehow tipped the scale in so many ways of what exact services you receive from the government than what you've paid for (schools, roads, shared defense, etc.)
With all the caps it looks like you're yelling at me... I mentioned that I like your idea of at least a nominal tax which makes people invest in society.
I wish the right would stop saying "rich people" when they refer to the benefits that rich people bring to the society.
There are two distinct types: rich people and job creators. There are not necessarily the same nor are they mutually exclusive. But by doing so, we could start debating the right things... how to get job creators to keep creating more jobs, without bothering with all this "class warfare" bullshit that I keep hearing about.
Interestingly enough, the proposed legislation being debated talks about doing just this - closing loopholes. Honestly I think they should just burn the entire 15,000 page tax code and start over. They could fit it on a few pages - tiered income brackets, a few pages for tax breaks for job creation and disasters such as loss of a home, throw in a small deduction for charitable donations and viola! Done. Of course, we'd put all of the tax professionals out of business, but that's another story...
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Those who claim that capitalism doesn't work, I ask: do the alternatives work?
Few examples. Nordic countries (and especially Finland): about 70% of your income goes into taxes, and what do you get? Wages that are not enough, central deals (thanks, unions) which make your wage each year less than inflation (which is a tax in itself), central economic planning that tax from the worker in the name of saving banks, health care system (aka "social security") where you have to wait dental care for months (in Finland there's 6 month "guarantee" for "emergencies") or where you have to pay for your government hospital visits or where you have school classes hovering around 40 pupils. I could keep going and going.
Of course you posted anonymously... your argument sucks. The Nordic countries have the highest standards of living in the fucking world. It's like winning the lottery to be born in a Nordic country. The wages are plenty enough in the Nordic countries, thank you. The Nordic countries do practice capitalism. They have amazing education, very low crime (admittedly, the reasons for low crime are outside of this discussion about socialism, because they are very heterogeneous, but it bears mentioning). They have no fear when getting sick of an uncommon disease that they won't be able to get cared for (not saying that they magically don't get sick, just that they don't have to play Russian Roulette when it comes to attempting to help their health), they do not suffer the same way the average American did in regards to home foreclosures, and the poorest among them have a exponentially better chance of having a better life than the poorest among Americans.
The rational basis behind arguments like yours are only valid in theory: you must discount the existing evidence, like during the healthcare debates during "Obamacare" that said so many more will die while waiting in long lines in the hospitals/doctor offices. Let me say it clearly: capitalism is good, communism and autocracy and fascism is bad. But government in and of itself isn't bad, and your theoretical arguments from Ayn Rand's playbook are just theoretical. The Nordic countries are clear proof that government involvement in society is a good thing if done well.
No, right now, universities are charging high prices because they can. It's called a government subsidy, and it's a well-known side-effect of government subsidies. If the government didn't subsidize it, then Universities would find creative ways to decrease the cost or increase the value.
Here's the hole in your argument. You make a lot of convincing and correct points, but the number (by student capacity) of hoity-toity "universities" in this country pales in comparison to other higher education facilities. Universities are much more than regular community colleges - research, prestige, etc. The problem is for-profit schools, not universities. Universities have to make money, but not like a corporation. They haven't been government subsidized in the way that they are now. On top of that, the government subsidizes aren't going to universities anymore at the same percentage in the past, they are now going to for-profit schools.
Oh, and by the way, college textbooks are a fucking racket. I've paid my boyfriend's college textbooks for the past 3 years and I've dropped $3K into it. The worst fucking thing is that the e-books were more expensive than the paper books, and you can't resell them.
And for every 1 of those, I can list 100 who work in an area completely orthogonal to the field they got their degree in, and who don't use their training for their job. The whole thing is a big fucking joke.
Yes, agreed, I can too. But all of those 100 people went to college.
To be fair:
- Forced update of "protected" apps on the /system partition /data and /system partitions, plenty of crapware on the phone I got which I then removed, but no easy way to repartition.
- Need to root phone to get full functionality and remove garbage protected apps
- Separate
These three comments are all really the same thing: operators install bloatware on their phones. This is not Android's fault. For example, get a Nexus One and it won't have all those apps.
- Incompatibility between versions of Android
This has no relevance to an Android phone's user, only computer engineers. It is comparing apples to oranges. Some Android phones actually do have system updates, regardless of the versions. The only reason you say this is because iPhones have system updates with major versions that change. You wouldn't have thought this to be a problem (which it isn't) if you hadn't seen iPhones doing it and expected that all phones need to work that way.
Your post is theoretical. Trust me, I know people at Google and I've interviewed with them, and it DOESN'T work like that.
The interview process goes through engineers, and they are certainly good at not making a single team who are adept at methodology/technology X to hire someone which Google feels is a good area to hire. However, the interview gets put into the equivalent of a notepad text file and is sent to a hiring committee, to which many aspects of an interview and a prospective candidate don't get transferred. They make up this problem of "false negatives" by allowing multiple interviews. In other words, they know that the interview process rejects good candidates, so they do it multiple times.
The problem with the way they interview is the notepad problem. It just goes into a text file which is sent to a hiring committee. They get really good bookworms this way, but they don't get the awesome people that belong in startups, the type of people who have the skills that transcend just binary tree algorithms. As a Google friend of mine who is a PM there says, "We no longer get creative, intuitive people, we lose them to the startups."
So not having any specific position in mind when interviewing a candidate helps the interviewer focus on the more important talents and skills, the ones that will matter two years from now. And the same actually applies when looking at personality as well. You don't want to hire someone that meshes extremely well with this particular team, because the team will change. Instead, you want someone who works well with people, in general.
That sounds like a good theory, but as I've said their interview process removes the personality attributes and it devolves into CS theory 101, and how well you write code on a whiteboard within the limited time frame randomly occurs, which is passed on to the hiring committee of engineers who simply can't get what the interviewees offer.
This may sound like a rant from a person who interviewed with Google and didn't get the job twice (I interviewed with Google twice and didn't get the job twice), so as with all Internet postings take it with a grain of salt of what I'm about to say and you should rightly be skeptical of it: I work with a badass San Francisco startup and am really good at what I do and I'm telling you that my friends at Google agree with me, they no longer get people who are the type of people who can make the world change, they now only get the best and the brightest of people who got straight A's on CS tests. This is from my friends at Google (some but not all software developers... product managers, product evangelicals, etc.)
It works really well, IMO.
It is true that weak teams tend to hire weak candidates, but the process you described does not hire the best people for the success of the company.
Good job, it was actually just taken down a few minutes ago.
Stop thinking Steve Jobs had ideas. He recognized good ideas when he saw one and he spent a lot of time hunting for good ideas, but he did not come up with them first :
There is absolutely nothing in my post that says what you're implying I said. I clearly stated it was his business ability which deserves to be recognized.
personal computer means a computer a single person uses for whatever he needs it for. windows machines are no more or less personal than apple machines. why should we bow to jobs but then think negatively of these others? woz and the other engineers were the ones designing apple's stuff. they deserve at least as much praise.
The "GUI" of Windows and Linux and all modern personal computers were mimicing what Macintoshes did. The engineers certainly deserve praise, as did the research department from Palo Alto which Macinotshes were based off of. What everyone is respecting at the moment is Steve Jobs ability and business sense to bring it to the mainstream. Command lines are what happened from the awesome geeks, but Windows 95 and iPads are what happened from Steve Jobs. And I don't think that mourning over Steve Jobs means anyone has to think negatively of others, such as myself who is typing this on a Windows XP box who has never owned a Macintosh. Steve Jobs was a mother fucking badass and such badassedness does not result from a bunch of open-mouth droolers, it results from how modern society's use of computers resulted in Steve Jobs ability to bring the technology to be understood and usable by the common man.
The person who gets to claim the innovation is whichever sales guy is good at getting the customer to buy a more expensive machine before others can afford it. The real innovation took place--in almost every case--in the context of designs that hardly anyone could yet afford.
His real genius for innovation didn't emerge until devices became a lot less expensive.
You know, you're pretty right. That being said, he did REAL good at what he did at that point. And you know what? He did okay before that point... remember, he made a multi-million dollar business in a few years, back in the 70s or early 80s or whenever it was.
So drop all the fanboy crap, and just remember what he did. He really was there in the beginning of the personal computer. He was there in that shit. He failed at many things. But those "failures" were still good enough to make him very successful (in monetary terms, he was a millionaire). And then, by the time devices became a lot less expensive, he was a mother fucking badass. So one can dismiss the early contributions in the sense that there were other people who were the most badass in those early times, but he was still a major player. What everyone is now mourning is the motherfucking badass that happened beginning with the iPod.
Doctor, when used without context, has the connotation of medical doctor, not someone with a doctorate. At least it's that way in the US. I was referring to the talent needed and extreme hardship that people have to endure in the U.S. to become medical doctors.
Yes, I have heard of them. There are dozens and dozens of honorifics. When filling out forms, the usual list is "Mr", "Mrs", "Ms", and "Dr". I didn't explain properly, but I stand by my statement that medical doctors have to work extremely hard and be talented in order to receive the ability to call themselves a doctor. Historically, societies have generally always held doctors in esteem.
You mean Protect companies like Microsoft, who have profited in the hundreds of billions of dollars
blah blah blah... Microsoft sucks blah blah blah...
Microsoft is a very small percentage of the economy US software development. Although I'd like to defend Microsoft by saying they don't take a reckless attitude towards software security, I honestly don't have proof one way or another (I do know that Microsoft does have a security team, but I don't know how important or effective it is). What I do know is that closed-source software is the majority of the software development economy, but you didn't point out everyone making closed-source software - just one entity. People like you like to hate Microsoft, but the clear sign that you aren't thinking rationally is that you didn't say Apple, because Apple makes way more money and has way more money than Microsoft. Oh, and there's millions of other people who make closed-source software. Not every program that is programmed has the umbrella of a billion-dollar company.
The point is, your vitriol towards Microsoft will influence your decisions that will in turn hurt many, many other entities and people, not all of whom have billions of dollars.
80 years ago, doctors were richer than 90% of society. Doctors have always been richer than plumbers and teachers and most other professions for hundreds of years. I don't think that is middle class, even if it isn't "aristocracy". In fact, doctors even had their own honorific: "Dr.". Nobody else in the English language gets their own honorific, except doctors, military personnel, and clergy. Not lawyers, not presidents, but doctors.
And I bet you have no fucking idea what doctors have to go through to become doctors. I do.
Why would that be? First of all, we are talking about software developers being held liable. The cost is there, regardless of whether we leave it with the customer, or shift it to the software vendor. Secondly, for software that is under the proposed clause I, liability of the vendor would be limited to what they were originally paid for the software.
The skepticism and completely reasonable fear is that a vendor can't limit the liability to what one pays for the software. McDonald's got sued for millions because someone spilled hot coffee in their laps. Toy companies get sued for millions because some kid stuck a toy in his/her throat. Doctors get sued for millions when they fail to save the life of one patient.
What you're implying is that it is completely feasible to limit monetary liability of a customer to their purchase price. That is not the world we live in, for good or for bad.
My understanding is that this is usually the case for custom software, and that the majority of the software industry is about custom software.
Where do you get this information? The majority of the economy in the industry of programming is by far not custom software, nor is the majority of the economy in the industry of programming resulting in delivered source code.
"Christianity is not true because science shows that there is no need for there to be a God."
On the other hand, there is no proof that Christianity (or any other faith-based credo religion) is "true". There's lots of evidence contrary to faith-based beliefs and tenants.
No, the conflict between science and religion is a false conflict created by atheists as a way to denigrate religion and make it seem as if atheism is supported by science.
You are making a very, very broad judgement. The affirmation that the conflict is created by atheists is a statement almost impossible to disprove, and you want it to be correct. However, it's almost impossible to prove as well - one or even fifty examples don't prove it, it just gives evidence. There's also a virtually countless amount of evidence that says the opposite - that theists create the conflict. What matters is which evidence you look for (and want to believe), and how much time you spend looking.
make it seem as if atheism is supported by science
You don't understand theism and atheism then. Your fault, not your dreaded atheists. Atheism isn't supported by anything. It is simply the lack of theism - the lack of belief doesn't require proof/support/evidence. The scientific method starts at nothing, and then uses evidence and tests to find answers. The scientific method can't prove atheism, it can only disprove various tenants of theistic affirmations.
For example, the scientific method may disprove tenants of the Christian Bible such as the statement that the Earth is ~6000 years old, but the scientific method can never discover how existence was made into being. So even if the scientific method leads to evidence that the Big Bang occurred, it cannot answer the question of "How the Universe and all matter was created in the first place". Another way of putting that in a theistic mindset would be, "If God created the Universe, then who created God?".
Real liberals wanted health care, not health insurance.
Dude I love the links. I'm going to buy a kilt tomorrow.
1%, yes. And tie it to the highest income rate -- even at a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. So that if the highest rate is 35%, the lowest mandatory rate is 1%. If income taxes increase on the "rich" from 35% to 55%, then the "poor" will increase from 1% to 4%-5%. At $20k income, someone would pay a minimum of $200 per year (less than $17/mo) income tax. They'll be a lot more likely to responsibly spend "group" money (by way of their voting for representatives) if it means their taxes will rise to pay for "more stuff". This is why I believe they need to be invested in the system.
This is not a bad idea. In order for it to work, the tax code has to be simplified - there are thousands of pages of "loopholes" as they're commonly called, otherwise the increases will simply be offset in the higher income brackets by loopholes. The proposal by the administration seeks to close some of these loopholes - how and how much, I do not know, but I know it's a start.
"You did implicitly, when you said It appears that somewhere along the line something flipped to where we have "Representation without taxation" for a hell of a chunk of our population. "
No I didn't. You are reading in to my statement information that isn't there. They are getting FEDERAL representation without FEDERAL taxation. The article is about FEDERAL taxes...
Uh yeah, I understand you. That's what I read, and the second sentence was addressing exactly your response. The income tax in the United States was only introduced in the 20th century. So, before there was an income tax there was federal representation - that didn't change with the introduction of the federal income tax.
"Anyways, the argument that you are making is that it isn't fair for the lower class to receive more money than they pay from the federal government"
No, I'm arguing that they either pay nothing or get more back than they pay. It translates as they have no "stake" in the game such that they can say "give me more" without it impacting their federal tax burden.
Yes, that's exactly what I just said. I don't know of any society in the world where you can make it perfectly even - everyone gets exactly what they paid for. If you needed the police 3 times this year, but someone else didn't - both of you could have theoretically paid the same amount of taxes, but you got more service than the other for the same amount of money. If this is such a problem, I don't know of a solution that doesn't involve anarchy (no government at all). Even given a theoretical perfect free market solution, such as health insurance, you still won't get exactly what you paid for - it's insurance for in case something goes wrong, and if it does, the other people paying money into the pool end up paying for the few.
To your point, you are saying that they didn't pay anything, which is especially dubious in your mind... but I argue that it is impossible for the poor to pay for society. If poor paid for society, you'd have a 3rd world country. If you expect the society that Americans enjoy, you need middle class and rich people to pay for it. The poor simply don't have anything (monetarily) to offer, at least not of any worthwhile substance.
As for taxing the rich it is worthless, even if you tax the rich 100% you are not going to hardly put a dent in the deficit, the only way to do it meaningfully is to raise taxes on the middle class, which are by far and away the largest tax source.
Uh, no. You are either misinformed or exaggerating. If you tax the rich 100% you will get trillions. The upper class of the US own most of the wealth of this country. In 2007, the top 20% of the country owned 85% of the wealth. I'm not saying you should tax anyone 100%, but you are way off about the middle class vs. upper class. How can the largest tax source be the middle class when they own less than 15% of the wealth of this country?
Exactly. The right (or whoever) needs to stop saying that rich is the exact same thing as job creators. They may be the same, but make it explicit.
If you are so worried about taxing job creators out of the area, then stop giving tax breaks to the rich - instead, give tax breaks to job creators. Make it based on job creation, not on income.
"In other words, federal taxes aren't all taxes."
Who claimed it was?
You did implicitly, when you said It appears that somewhere along the line something flipped to where we have "Representation without taxation" for a hell of a chunk of our population. Even though you're saying it is just federal so the other taxes don't matter, that is incorrect: there hasn't been a federal income tax for over 50% of our country's history, and the phrase was still valid when there wasn't.
Anyways, the argument that you are making is that it isn't fair for the lower class to receive more money than they pay from the federal government. Think about this: 99.999999% of the population of this planet either 1. get more from their government than what they pay for it, or 2. get less than from their government than what they pay for. It's impossible to make it perfectly even. As soon as you have another kid, or buy another car, etc. you've somehow tipped the scale in so many ways of what exact services you receive from the government than what you've paid for (schools, roads, shared defense, etc.)
With all the caps it looks like you're yelling at me... I mentioned that I like your idea of at least a nominal tax which makes people invest in society.
I wish the right would stop saying "rich people" when they refer to the benefits that rich people bring to the society.
There are two distinct types: rich people and job creators. There are not necessarily the same nor are they mutually exclusive. But by doing so, we could start debating the right things... how to get job creators to keep creating more jobs, without bothering with all this "class warfare" bullshit that I keep hearing about.
Interestingly enough, the proposed legislation being debated talks about doing just this - closing loopholes. Honestly I think they should just burn the entire 15,000 page tax code and start over. They could fit it on a few pages - tiered income brackets, a few pages for tax breaks for job creation and disasters such as loss of a home, throw in a small deduction for charitable donations and viola! Done. Of course, we'd put all of the tax professionals out of business, but that's another story...