Methinks it's anger that I no longer subsidize this person's education that causes him to resent my position.
Oh, and the "highest standard of living stuff"? That's according to criteria established by socialists (i.e. not how good health case is, but how cheap it is, etc.).
Read: "this KIND of idiocy", not this PARTICULAR example of government idiocy.
This is just the latest in a long trend of Canadian government screwups.
I lost my Canadian tax residency over a year ago, after a couple of years of planning, and not in response to a single incident.
Canada levies heavy taxes to support it's crumbling social safety net and other government services.
But that's not all. You very quickly find yourself in the top tax bracket at about the equivalent of US$35,000 a year income. At that point, not only do you pay high taxes (about 51%), BUT all these wonderful social services start to get clawed back from you, raising your effective tax rate even more. In addition, you pay tax on the tax you pay (5% SURtax on tax up to C$12,500 and 8% surtax on taxes in excess of that).
Professionals are leaving the country in droves because of this - the best doctors left long ago, exascerbating the health care crisis (and why not? - the government pays them per procedure regardless of how good they are).
And YES, I speak from experience having lived there for 36 years, seeing the rise of socialism en force. I am no longer a tax resident there because of just this kind of idiocy. After fighting politically, I realized the best way to fight them was to deny them my tax dollars, legally.
What will likely happen is that there will be a "tax" on email, so that the revenues can go to "protect" the jobs of the postal workers.
Canada: A nation where it is illegal to pay for health care quality when the government will provide the same service, at mediocre quality, for "free".
So the banks wanna make a buck. Except for my mortgage and the occasional loan, banks don't make a ton of money off me. Neither do credit card companies as I don't carry a balance.
I suppose I should be outraged, but I'm not. I see nothing wrong with a "club of profitable customers". It's the free market.
Of course, this excludes large numbers of us, so we should be angry and require our legislators to DO something.
Or should we?
After all, large numbers of people represent a potential market for no frills service. Surely that market's desires will be filled (no one want's to carry wads of cash), and competition will keep fees to reasonable limits.
It may be that talking to a teller face to face will become a thing of the past. But, that's just a consequence of people's time being worth more and more in an increasingly electronic society. You can't have increased value placed on human services and personal banking for Joe Lunchbucket at the same time.
Futhermore, would/.ers really prefer a world without ATMs?
First, if the code was developed by a commercial venture, then the expenses have already been written off. There is no "extra" writeoff justified because the code is given away:
Scenario 1: cost of development:$100K, revenue when given away: $0 - tax writeoff (against other revenue): $100K.
Scenario 2: cost of development:$100K, revenue realized: $200K - $100K profit (not $200K) is subject to tax on profits.
Same writeoff, though it is applied against related revenues instead of unrelated ones.
The complication here stems from the fact that a commercial venture is supposed to have a reasonable expectation of profit. IOW, you can't just give away code for a tax writeoff unless you (eventually) have some revenue against which the writeoff can be applied.
This doesn't apply very much to corporations, but is relevant to individuals who might wish to contribute GPL code that they developed, and write off the value of their development time against other income. Since giving stuff away, by itself, is not a commercial venture, I doubt the IRS or Revenue Canada would allow the write-off (disclaimer: I am not a tax professional so consult your own tax advisor).
Ideally, then, GPL software donated by individuals should give rise to a tax-writeoff against other income (well, no: ideally, there would be no tax and the matter moot, that's just my libertarian bias showing).
How can this be achieved? The easiest way would be to make a money donation to an organization like the FSF, which could then pay one back for the development, at cost, of the software you donate. The money donation is a charitable tax writeoff and the revenue from the sale is offset by the development cost of the code, deemed to be a wash if the software is 'sold' at fair market value.
Of course, what is the 'cost' of developing a piece of code? Industry pay-rates for development of similar code can be averaged and multiplied by the time spent developing it. Keeping time-logs would be important here.
Gotta agree regarding "Homicide: Life on the Streets". Though, I found the camera work the first season: rough jump cuts, and just-a-bit-too-quick pans, a far better counterpart for the story lines, than the smother stuff that came in the seasons that followed.
Slashdot Mirror
Ain't that the truth.
Methinks it's anger that I no longer subsidize this person's education that causes him to resent my position.
Oh, and the "highest standard of living stuff"? That's according to criteria established by socialists (i.e. not how good health case is, but how cheap it is, etc.).
Read: "this KIND of idiocy", not this PARTICULAR example of government idiocy.
This is just the latest in a long trend of Canadian government screwups.
I lost my Canadian tax residency over a year ago, after a couple of years of planning, and not in response to a single incident.
Canada levies heavy taxes to support it's crumbling social safety net and other government services.
But that's not all. You very quickly find yourself in the top tax bracket at about the equivalent of US$35,000 a year income. At that point, not only do you pay high taxes (about 51%), BUT all these wonderful social services start to get clawed back from you, raising your effective tax rate even more. In addition, you pay tax on the tax you pay (5% SURtax on tax up to C$12,500 and 8% surtax on taxes in excess of that).
Professionals are leaving the country in droves because of this - the best doctors left long ago, exascerbating the health care crisis (and why not? - the government pays them per procedure regardless of how good they are).
And YES, I speak from experience having lived there for 36 years, seeing the rise of socialism en force. I am no longer a tax resident there because of just this kind of idiocy. After fighting politically, I realized the best way to fight them was to deny them my tax dollars, legally.
What will likely happen is that there will be a "tax" on email, so that the revenues can go to "protect" the jobs of the postal workers.
Canada: A nation where it is illegal to pay for health care quality when the government will provide the same service, at mediocre quality, for "free".
So the banks wanna make a buck. Except for my mortgage and the occasional loan, banks don't make a ton of money off me. Neither do credit card companies as I don't carry a balance.
/.ers really prefer a world without ATMs?
I suppose I should be outraged, but I'm not. I see nothing wrong with a "club of profitable customers". It's the free market.
Of course, this excludes large numbers of us, so we should be angry and require our legislators to DO something.
Or should we?
After all, large numbers of people represent a potential market for no frills service. Surely that market's desires will be filled (no one want's to carry wads of cash), and competition will keep fees to reasonable limits.
It may be that talking to a teller face to face will become a thing of the past. But, that's just a consequence of people's time being worth more and more in an increasingly electronic society. You can't have increased value placed on human services and personal banking for Joe Lunchbucket at the same time.
Futhermore, would
First, if the code was developed by a commercial venture, then the expenses have already been written off. There is no "extra" writeoff justified because the code is given away:
Scenario 1: cost of development:$100K, revenue when given away: $0 - tax writeoff (against other revenue): $100K.
Scenario 2: cost of development:$100K, revenue realized: $200K - $100K profit (not $200K) is subject to tax on profits.
Same writeoff, though it is applied against related revenues instead of unrelated ones.
The complication here stems from the fact that a commercial venture is supposed to have a reasonable expectation of profit. IOW, you can't just give away code for a tax writeoff unless you (eventually) have some revenue against which the writeoff can be applied.
This doesn't apply very much to corporations, but is relevant to individuals who might wish to contribute GPL code that they developed, and write off the value of their development time against other income. Since giving stuff away, by itself, is not a commercial venture, I doubt the IRS or Revenue Canada would allow the write-off (disclaimer: I am not a tax professional so consult your own tax advisor).
Ideally, then, GPL software donated by individuals should give rise to a tax-writeoff against other income (well, no: ideally, there would be no tax and the matter moot, that's just my libertarian bias showing).
How can this be achieved? The easiest way would be to make a money donation to an organization like the FSF, which could then pay one back for the development, at cost, of the software you donate. The money donation is a charitable tax writeoff and the revenue from the sale is offset by the development cost of the code, deemed to be a wash if the software is 'sold' at fair market value.
Of course, what is the 'cost' of developing a piece of code? Industry pay-rates for development of similar code can be averaged and multiplied by the time spent developing it. Keeping time-logs would be important here.
Gotta agree regarding "Homicide: Life on the Streets". Though, I found the camera work the first season: rough jump cuts, and just-a-bit-too-quick pans, a far better counterpart for the story lines, than the smother stuff that came in the seasons that followed.
Guess you can only push the masses so far.