You have to be resident in Canada (not just a citizen) to be subject to worldwide taxation. The same in true of all other developed nations, they will tax your worldwide income but only if you are resident there normally.
Another oddity of US tax law is the repatriation rule whereby US based corporations are subjected to US corporation taxes on income earned elsewhere and already subjected to taxation in that jurisdiction (in effect double taxation), no one else does that either.
You presume there is something automatically unethical about following the law to minimize your tax liability.
If HMRC/IRS said you could choose between paying $1000 or $800 in taxes which would you choose to pay? Why do you presume to hold other people to a higher standard?
For the same reason you have to have a horn and seat belt and all that other crap in your car. Because some people will use it.,
I live in a state where I don't have to wear a seat belt, have a horn or even working turn signals, those riding motorcycles don't have to wear helmets and those learning to drive don't need a permit. The state road mortality rate is significantly lower than the national average (6th lowest) so your assertion that these rules have an impact on mortality rates is provably false.
People wear seat belts because it's safe to not because the law tells them they have to, over regulation acts as a revenue measure and makes it seem like our political masters are doing something worthwhile when they are treating us like children. I am quite capable of putting on my seatbelt without being told to and the idiot who doesn't deserves precisely what he gets.
Regulations such as this seek to penalize everyone at the expense of a minority who are idiots (it doesn't matter if that expense is $2 or $2000) and surprisingly those who will drive drunk will do so irrespective of what a breathalyzer tells them so the measure will be entirely ineffective anyway.
Its none of your, or anyone else's, business what I have in my car or what I have had to drink unless I am driving dangerously.
There is no federal statute requiring the pat downs, USC simply states that TSA deal with airport security under direction from DHS. As such the supremacy clause does not come in to effect as there is no conflicting federal statute.
NH passed http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2012/HB0628.html earlier this year. The current language only allows for citizens to make complaints, the original version made TSA pat downs a felony. I expect it will be updated next year re include that.
As I said before, there is no point in trying to have a rational argument with conservatives
I am about as far from a conservative as you can get. The fact you put stock in an absurd concept of all ideas belonging to one of two poles instead of coming to rational decision on the source and quality of data you are presented speaks volumes about who you are. If you are incapable of critical thought and rationality why do you even bother reading?
Charter schools are not self-selecting, they have to accept everyone who applies up to the number of places available, if more people apply then there are places available then they are required to have a lottery to select students for places.
You have to apply and pay and jump through hoops to get your kids into them
Charter schools are not permitted to charge an entrance or application fee.
the children who have mental, emotional or learning handicaps.
To cite one example Harlem Success Academy actually has higher than the average special needs students compared to surrounding public schools. In any case they must accept special needs students to get a charter, again this idea they somehow get to pick and choose students is just FUD organizations like ACORN, AFT and NEA publish.
Lastly, flight from public schools weakens the resolve to do something about it. For example, if the kids of politicians aren't in public schools then there's little incentive for them to seriously work to improve the situation.
There is no resolve to fix the system, they have had decades to do something about it and haven't. Asking us to continue sacrificing children to a system that fails them on the hopes that maybe someone will fix it is both repugnant and the opposite is suggested based on the history of attempted reform.
Also on the issue of vouchers and private schools I consider it hugely advantageous to provide a mechanism for highly performing students to have a curriculum and environment that nurtures their abilities instead of one that seeks merely mediocrity. While it might make us feel all warm and fuzzy dedicating more resources to students who are failing is insane, teach everyone up to a base but provide a mechanism for those who can go beyond that base to do so.
I guess, if the upper class wants the lower classes to pay more in taxes, it seems like the first thing that needs to change is that the upper classes need to pay the lower classes more in wages.
Yes, because the evil rich people want the poor workers to work for pennies a day. Wages are set by the market, if you don't like what a job pays then improve your skills to move up. Ultimately it doesn't matter what happens with the tax system, to close the deficit you would need to impose a 100% tax on incomes over $276k and this doesn't even begin to account for the extra $500b we need to find for medicare & social security over the next 8 years. Either the programs will be fixed and tax rates go down for everyone or the tax rates on the wealthy will increase so much that they will be driven out of the country,
You are citing an article from a magazine that celebrates its bias as evidence performance related pay doesn't work? Here let me fix your hypocrisy for you, http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/papers_presentations/reports/Podgursky%20and%20Springer.pdf is a peer reviewed overview of studies in to performance related pay. You know, real evidence instead of a magazine and newspaper.
Next time you decide to attempt to make a point about sources perhaps cite some real sources asshole.
Of course that 47% includes the retired on Social Security, students, unemployed people, etc
Its based on filers, returns with AGI's lower then $8,500 account for 0.77% of the total so the unemployed, students and those existing only on SS are not significantly distorting to the total.
Of course that 47% includes the retired on Social Security, students, unemployed people, etc. Also, those numbers do not include social security taxes which are a federal tax.
Yes, then the number moves up to 49%. Total effective rate for the bottom 50% is 1.85% which accounts for income, capital gains and payroll.
Also, a fair system is not necessarily linear with wealth and income. It is not unacceptable for the very rich to pay a proportionally unfair amount of taxes.
On effective rates bottom 50% pay 1.85% from all sources (income taxes, capital gains, payroll) while the top 1% pag 24.01%.
On share of taxes the bottom 50% pay 2.3% of the burden (on an income share of 13.5%) while the top 1% pay 36.7% of the burden (on an income share of 16.9%).
On dollar amounts the bottom 50% contribute $19.5b while the top 1% contribute $318b.
How are they paying proportionally unfairly from any number?
After all, above a certain wealth having more money is less useful than a similar amount spread among people that will spend it.
This is false, trickle up is as economically unsound as trickle town. Unless they keep the additional wealth as cash then its invested somewhere, this extra capital is what provides liquidity for corporate and consumer credit. Suggesting it is "wasted" or not as productive is pure ignorance.
The performance related bonuses were related to test scores, the firing would have been up to the principals so problems with bad students would have been part of the consideration. This is no different to what occurs in the real world, if you have a legitimate reason why you can't meet targets then you generally won't be fired for not meeting those targets, if you don't meet those targets because you were slacking or are incompetent then you get fired.
This was tried in DC with Rhee. The teachers were offered a contract which would have seen their starting salary rise from $32k to $72k with performance related bonuses capable of taking it up to $185k (previously the cap was $79k and was based on seniority). In exchange tenure, rubber rooms and seniority pay had to go and there has to be a process for firing underperforming teachers that didn't take a year. They rejected the contract, apparently keeping bad teachers is more important to them then good pay.
Part of the problem is that people (such as yourself) keep framing the charter/voucher issue as an "attack" on public education when its nothing of the sort, people are not advocating for shutting down public schools and the only way charters & vouchers will "take money away" from public schools is if they perform better. What people are advocating for is choice, if the current system really is superior then it won't face any problems with charters or vouchers, if it is endemically broken then reform will be forced or the system will simply die.
For people who claim we can reform the current system what evidence is there that this will even happen? Reform has been promised for decades but every year the system gets more and more expensive while delivering poorer results, this is absolutely no evidence the system is even capable of being reformed. Administrative overheads in schools are absurd, and absurdities such as the fact it costs $300k and 11 months to fire a teacher in NYC (assuming it is not blocked by one of the dozens of boards and comities involved), to the extent that the average cost to send a child to a single year of K-12 is now $13.2k, the average private school costs $8.7k.
Since the politicians and unions who run the school systems are unwilling to fix the problems charters and vouchers are the best option.
Is this simply a perennial sin of the Court, or is there a sound Constitutional basis for it?
No. The liberal reading of it started with the FDR administration, when SCOTUS started ruling parts of New Deal unconstitutional he proposed to expand the number of justices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937) and while this bill ultimately failed SCOTUS got the message and stopped getting in Führer's way.
It wasn't until the late 90's where SCOTUS started getting some teeth again and stopped agreeing that pretty much everything the federal government is permitted to do is covered under interstate commerce.
The average cost to market for a new drug is now $1.4b (using the aggregate of all developments method) and 7 years from patent to commercially viable drug. This gives them 3/4 years to recoup their original investment so, as you mentioned, having such a small user group has a massive impact on price point.
About one half what the Congessional Budget Office estimates the 2008 bank bailout has cost taxpayers.
You are confusing cost and exposure. Total TARP exposure was about $413b of an authorized ~$700b spend. As of a week ago $318b of this has been repaid (either through returning cash or sale of stock) leaving $95b outstanding.
Out of the $95b outstanding ~$41b is outstanding cash loans that either need to be repaid or converted to stock, the remainder ($54b) is stock the Treasury still owns and has yet to dispose of.
Net profits of the program stand at $58b, number is current state assuming no other stock sales or loans are repaid so will end up being significantly higher than this, so didn't actually cost tax payers a penny.
The US is particularly poor on infant mortality because of lack of public services for pregnant women and infants. Extend Medicare to pregnant women and I'll bet that would turn around fast
Tell me that doesn't show that the more money you have in the US, the better your chances of survival.
That isn't the question, the question is does the US healthcare system do better or worse in treating illness in general (so for an average person) and the answer is it does better.
Dealing with the gap in treatment options between rich & poor is a different issue entirely and one that shouldn't focus on changing a system that maintains such a high average. The focus should be on costs and what influences them; hospitals are already mostly non-profit (less then 8% of hospitals with general admittance are for-profit), drug costs can be brought down by removing the import restrictions and ending the over-regulation of the approval process, primary care prices can be brought down by not stopping doctors from offering health subscriptions etc etc.
Here is NiH on the issue with real data rather then crap from a WHO study based on a few bits of census data like the two links you gave, it shows US as leading the pack.
Perhaps in future check the sources on the crap you link to.
The metrics that actually matter to the people making use of the system, how more/less likely you are to die of ailment x in country y, shows quite the opposite. If you are diagnosed with any form of Cancer in the US you are more likely to still be alive after 5 years than anywhere else in the world (in some places, such as the UK, the survival rate is half of what it is in the US) and the numbers for almost every other medical problem shows the same pattern with the US being first or top three.
Other metrics such as accessibility the US is a leader in too. Access to doctors is 2nd only to South Korea, wait times for a hip replacement is 1.4% of what it is in the UK and 22% of the OCED average and on and on and on.
The crisis in US healthcare is that people are delusional enough to believe that insurance should cover regular medical expenses, such as doctors visits and the odd prescription drug, and as such pay absurd amounts of money for coverage they don't need; 25 million of us understand this and make a conscious choice to not buy it. If you are under 60 and not chronically ill you can save thousands every year by making use of a HSA & extremely high deductable policy but apparently if you suggest insurance is the problem not the cure you just hate poor people.
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Er who does drug research?
The idea that corporations shy away from long term research is simply absurd, they fund long term/blue sky research all the time.
You have to be resident in Canada (not just a citizen) to be subject to worldwide taxation. The same in true of all other developed nations, they will tax your worldwide income but only if you are resident there normally. Another oddity of US tax law is the repatriation rule whereby US based corporations are subjected to US corporation taxes on income earned elsewhere and already subjected to taxation in that jurisdiction (in effect double taxation), no one else does that either.
You presume there is something automatically unethical about following the law to minimize your tax liability. If HMRC/IRS said you could choose between paying $1000 or $800 in taxes which would you choose to pay? Why do you presume to hold other people to a higher standard?
For the same reason you have to have a horn and seat belt and all that other crap in your car. Because some people will use it.,
I live in a state where I don't have to wear a seat belt, have a horn or even working turn signals, those riding motorcycles don't have to wear helmets and those learning to drive don't need a permit. The state road mortality rate is significantly lower than the national average (6th lowest) so your assertion that these rules have an impact on mortality rates is provably false.
People wear seat belts because it's safe to not because the law tells them they have to, over regulation acts as a revenue measure and makes it seem like our political masters are doing something worthwhile when they are treating us like children. I am quite capable of putting on my seatbelt without being told to and the idiot who doesn't deserves precisely what he gets.
Regulations such as this seek to penalize everyone at the expense of a minority who are idiots (it doesn't matter if that expense is $2 or $2000) and surprisingly those who will drive drunk will do so irrespective of what a breathalyzer tells them so the measure will be entirely ineffective anyway.
Its none of your, or anyone else's, business what I have in my car or what I have had to drink unless I am driving dangerously.
There is no federal statute requiring the pat downs, USC simply states that TSA deal with airport security under direction from DHS. As such the supremacy clause does not come in to effect as there is no conflicting federal statute.
NH passed http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2012/HB0628.html earlier this year. The current language only allows for citizens to make complaints, the original version made TSA pat downs a felony. I expect it will be updated next year re include that.
As I said before, there is no point in trying to have a rational argument with conservatives
I am about as far from a conservative as you can get. The fact you put stock in an absurd concept of all ideas belonging to one of two poles instead of coming to rational decision on the source and quality of data you are presented speaks volumes about who you are. If you are incapable of critical thought and rationality why do you even bother reading?
they're self-selecting
Charter schools are not self-selecting, they have to accept everyone who applies up to the number of places available, if more people apply then there are places available then they are required to have a lottery to select students for places.
You have to apply and pay and jump through hoops to get your kids into them
Charter schools are not permitted to charge an entrance or application fee.
the children who have mental, emotional or learning handicaps.
To cite one example Harlem Success Academy actually has higher than the average special needs students compared to surrounding public schools. In any case they must accept special needs students to get a charter, again this idea they somehow get to pick and choose students is just FUD organizations like ACORN, AFT and NEA publish.
Lastly, flight from public schools weakens the resolve to do something about it. For example, if the kids of politicians aren't in public schools then there's little incentive for them to seriously work to improve the situation.
There is no resolve to fix the system, they have had decades to do something about it and haven't. Asking us to continue sacrificing children to a system that fails them on the hopes that maybe someone will fix it is both repugnant and the opposite is suggested based on the history of attempted reform.
Also on the issue of vouchers and private schools I consider it hugely advantageous to provide a mechanism for highly performing students to have a curriculum and environment that nurtures their abilities instead of one that seeks merely mediocrity. While it might make us feel all warm and fuzzy dedicating more resources to students who are failing is insane, teach everyone up to a base but provide a mechanism for those who can go beyond that base to do so.
I guess, if the upper class wants the lower classes to pay more in taxes, it seems like the first thing that needs to change is that the upper classes need to pay the lower classes more in wages.
Yes, because the evil rich people want the poor workers to work for pennies a day. Wages are set by the market, if you don't like what a job pays then improve your skills to move up. Ultimately it doesn't matter what happens with the tax system, to close the deficit you would need to impose a 100% tax on incomes over $276k and this doesn't even begin to account for the extra $500b we need to find for medicare & social security over the next 8 years. Either the programs will be fixed and tax rates go down for everyone or the tax rates on the wealthy will increase so much that they will be driven out of the country,
You are citing an article from a magazine that celebrates its bias as evidence performance related pay doesn't work? Here let me fix your hypocrisy for you, http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/papers_presentations/reports/Podgursky%20and%20Springer.pdf is a peer reviewed overview of studies in to performance related pay. You know, real evidence instead of a magazine and newspaper.
Next time you decide to attempt to make a point about sources perhaps cite some real sources asshole.
Of course that 47% includes the retired on Social Security, students, unemployed people, etc
Its based on filers, returns with AGI's lower then $8,500 account for 0.77% of the total so the unemployed, students and those existing only on SS are not significantly distorting to the total.
Of course that 47% includes the retired on Social Security, students, unemployed people, etc. Also, those numbers do not include social security taxes which are a federal tax.
Yes, then the number moves up to 49%. Total effective rate for the bottom 50% is 1.85% which accounts for income, capital gains and payroll.
Also, a fair system is not necessarily linear with wealth and income. It is not unacceptable for the very rich to pay a proportionally unfair amount of taxes.
There is no number which suggests this, feel free to check the data yourself http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=98123,00.html
On effective rates bottom 50% pay 1.85% from all sources (income taxes, capital gains, payroll) while the top 1% pag 24.01%.
On share of taxes the bottom 50% pay 2.3% of the burden (on an income share of 13.5%) while the top 1% pay 36.7% of the burden (on an income share of 16.9%).
On dollar amounts the bottom 50% contribute $19.5b while the top 1% contribute $318b.
How are they paying proportionally unfairly from any number?
After all, above a certain wealth having more money is less useful than a similar amount spread among people that will spend it.
This is false, trickle up is as economically unsound as trickle town. Unless they keep the additional wealth as cash then its invested somewhere, this extra capital is what provides liquidity for corporate and consumer credit. Suggesting it is "wasted" or not as productive is pure ignorance.
The performance related bonuses were related to test scores, the firing would have been up to the principals so problems with bad students would have been part of the consideration. This is no different to what occurs in the real world, if you have a legitimate reason why you can't meet targets then you generally won't be fired for not meeting those targets, if you don't meet those targets because you were slacking or are incompetent then you get fired.
This was tried in DC with Rhee. The teachers were offered a contract which would have seen their starting salary rise from $32k to $72k with performance related bonuses capable of taking it up to $185k (previously the cap was $79k and was based on seniority). In exchange tenure, rubber rooms and seniority pay had to go and there has to be a process for firing underperforming teachers that didn't take a year. They rejected the contract, apparently keeping bad teachers is more important to them then good pay.
Relevant: http://reason.com/assets/db/12639308918768.pdf
While they are still cliquey charters generally don't have a focus on sports like public schools so you don't end up with "untouchable" jocks.
There is also http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/ and http://thelotteryfilm.com/ which is a look at charter schools in DC & NYC as well as the problems in the system itself.
Part of the problem is that people (such as yourself) keep framing the charter/voucher issue as an "attack" on public education when its nothing of the sort, people are not advocating for shutting down public schools and the only way charters & vouchers will "take money away" from public schools is if they perform better. What people are advocating for is choice, if the current system really is superior then it won't face any problems with charters or vouchers, if it is endemically broken then reform will be forced or the system will simply die.
For people who claim we can reform the current system what evidence is there that this will even happen? Reform has been promised for decades but every year the system gets more and more expensive while delivering poorer results, this is absolutely no evidence the system is even capable of being reformed. Administrative overheads in schools are absurd, and absurdities such as the fact it costs $300k and 11 months to fire a teacher in NYC (assuming it is not blocked by one of the dozens of boards and comities involved), to the extent that the average cost to send a child to a single year of K-12 is now $13.2k, the average private school costs $8.7k.
Since the politicians and unions who run the school systems are unwilling to fix the problems charters and vouchers are the best option.
I'm pretty sure you guys still have a large portion of the 2nd
Try living in Massachusetts. Carrying a gun outside the home is almost impossible now.
Is this simply a perennial sin of the Court, or is there a sound Constitutional basis for it?
No. The liberal reading of it started with the FDR administration, when SCOTUS started ruling parts of New Deal unconstitutional he proposed to expand the number of justices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937) and while this bill ultimately failed SCOTUS got the message and stopped getting in Führer's way.
It wasn't until the late 90's where SCOTUS started getting some teeth again and stopped agreeing that pretty much everything the federal government is permitted to do is covered under interstate commerce.
Based on that absurd valuation the average Facebook profile is worth $225.
The average cost to market for a new drug is now $1.4b (using the aggregate of all developments method) and 7 years from patent to commercially viable drug. This gives them 3/4 years to recoup their original investment so, as you mentioned, having such a small user group has a massive impact on price point.
About one half what the Congessional Budget Office estimates the 2008 bank bailout has cost taxpayers.
You are confusing cost and exposure. Total TARP exposure was about $413b of an authorized ~$700b spend. As of a week ago $318b of this has been repaid (either through returning cash or sale of stock) leaving $95b outstanding.
Out of the $95b outstanding ~$41b is outstanding cash loans that either need to be repaid or converted to stock, the remainder ($54b) is stock the Treasury still owns and has yet to dispose of.
Net profits of the program stand at $58b, number is current state assuming no other stock sales or loans are repaid so will end up being significantly higher than this, so didn't actually cost tax payers a penny.
The US is particularly poor on infant mortality because of lack of public services for pregnant women and infants. Extend Medicare to pregnant women and I'll bet that would turn around fast
See CHIP and WIC.
Tell me that doesn't show that the more money you have in the US, the better your chances of survival.
That isn't the question, the question is does the US healthcare system do better or worse in treating illness in general (so for an average person) and the answer is it does better.
Dealing with the gap in treatment options between rich & poor is a different issue entirely and one that shouldn't focus on changing a system that maintains such a high average. The focus should be on costs and what influences them; hospitals are already mostly non-profit (less then 8% of hospitals with general admittance are for-profit), drug costs can be brought down by removing the import restrictions and ending the over-regulation of the approval process, primary care prices can be brought down by not stopping doctors from offering health subscriptions etc etc.
Total bullshit
Here is NiH on the issue with real data rather then crap from a WHO study based on a few bits of census data like the two links you gave, it shows US as leading the pack.
Perhaps in future check the sources on the crap you link to.
The US has been behind in healthcare for years.
The metrics that actually matter to the people making use of the system, how more/less likely you are to die of ailment x in country y, shows quite the opposite. If you are diagnosed with any form of Cancer in the US you are more likely to still be alive after 5 years than anywhere else in the world (in some places, such as the UK, the survival rate is half of what it is in the US) and the numbers for almost every other medical problem shows the same pattern with the US being first or top three.
Other metrics such as accessibility the US is a leader in too. Access to doctors is 2nd only to South Korea, wait times for a hip replacement is 1.4% of what it is in the UK and 22% of the OCED average and on and on and on.
The crisis in US healthcare is that people are delusional enough to believe that insurance should cover regular medical expenses, such as doctors visits and the odd prescription drug, and as such pay absurd amounts of money for coverage they don't need; 25 million of us understand this and make a conscious choice to not buy it. If you are under 60 and not chronically ill you can save thousands every year by making use of a HSA & extremely high deductable policy but apparently if you suggest insurance is the problem not the cure you just hate poor people.