Of course these loopholes were set up for the rich, but there is nothing to stop the rest of us from using them too. If you think about it, we have a good system: people that don't mind paying taxes pay them, and those of us that prefer not to, don't.
I'm just interested in doing my job. I hate dealing with money. I do it when I have to (paying bills, filing quarterly and annual taxes). Money is a distraction to doing what I love to do. Now you're suggesting that I learn yet something else and take time out of my day so that I can pay a tax expert hundreds of dollars and avoid paying taxes to support my country? What happens when more people start doing this? The bar is reset: taxes become more complex and middle incomers pay again until we figure out the loop holes that the rich use. Rinse, lather, repeat. Don't tell Uncle Sam that I'm willing to bet money on this: I think part of the reason why the tax codes are so complex and why you're paying hundreds of dollars and using your time to see tax people is because a lot of people are doing what you are doing.
I'm not willing to jump into the debate to say whether or not what you're doing is wrong, but I do feel victimized by it. My wife had her own business for years in the States... a business of one person. Somehow, setting up four corporations for the amount of income she got just seems really wrong.
If something like that is done, it better be open source by those who know how to be responsible for it. Otherwise, a single company will have a lot of power over IDs in the country.
what idiots our lawmakers were, to sign it without reading it or comphrehending it (to quote the lobotomite Pelosi "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it!")
This is one of the biggest problems with any law passed by any federal law maker -- no matter what side of the spectrum you're on. With all of the legislation they pass every year, it is impossible for any person to read (let alone have time to comprehend) everything that is voted on.
I agree. GP was spot on. As a follow up to the parent, I suggest the book Leading Geeks. Geeks are a different breed of people and can't be managed "the typical way". This book explains to managers how to get geeks to contribute to an organization. My friend, who is a manager, recommended I read the book. I'm not a manager, but it had me pretty well pegged and if managers understood how to manage me, everyone (me, managers, clients) would be very happy.
While we're comparing anecdotes, I forget app names all the time. I may be a half way decent programmer, but my memory recall is pretty poor. I work around my memory issues with very specific habits and naming conventions.
Eh... not exactly. Read The Secret History of Star Wars. (It used to be free, but they are charging money for it now. You can probably find a pdf somewhere.) George didn't know what the hell he was doing. It certainly wasn't 9 movies. Sure, he said he was making 9 movies after some point in time, but the facts the author dug up is absolutely amazing. Here's some gems and the page numbers (in the copy of the book I have):
1) Star Wars was the 1st "episode", not the fourth. The Episode IV was decided during the scripting of Empire Strikes Back. Page 164
2) Anakin and Darth Vader were two separate characters up through the first draft of Empire Strikes Back. Page 165
3) The prequel trilogy was formed due to the Anakin / Vader merging. Page 169
4) Leia was never to be Luke's sister. Page 193.
5) Darth Vader was not to be redeemed at the end of Revenge of the Jedi. Page 193.
I enjoyed the last Batman too, but I do have a number of complaints about it. Some of them were so blatantly obvious that hard to tell if being rushed was the worst offender. I believe cracked.com covers my feelings best. Just have a spare change of underwear handy because this article is really funny.
It wasn't really nine parts... even if Lucas said it was. It was supposed to be a just a movie like the old serials that Lucas used to watch. A dry, but very fascinating book anyway, is The Secret History of Star Wars It used to be free, but it looks like they are selling it now. Supposedly, the first 100 pages are free. It's amazing how much research this guy did. It will change your way of thinking about how Star Wars developed.
I've worked with Excel with C#. I will say this: it is not pretty. Like VBA (which I've also worked with), anything other than super simple stuff results in some very ugly code. Honestly, I'm not sure of a good way to interact with Excel on a code level. I might have to check out the Siag that people keep talking about, although I have trouble imagining that it is any better. I think it is an inherent problem of working with cells in spreadsheets.
When designing GUIs, the first place I usually go is the spreadsheet. It's (very) far from perfect. Hell, it's so crude that it's barely useable, but it is the fastest way I can do a screen mockup. I can do in seconds on a spreadsheet what it takes minutes to do in an IDE. After that, I usually prototype it in the language I'm working in, then the functionality goes in.
The most fair way to tax would be to tax companies based both on how much the community benefits the company
What you say is interesting, but if taxes are to be different, I think it should be based on how much a company sucks up from a community. Example: Trucking businesses put a lot of wear and tear on the roads so maybe they should pay more taxes than the common joe who just drives to and from work. Another example: Maybe the common joe should pay more taxes for driving around than buses. I'll admit, this is very arbitrary and there's a lot of room for arguments from everywhere. My wife had a very small footprint: an office in our house, one computer, a printer, and a few hundred pages of paper a month. I was always jealous that there were people who paid a lot less taxes than we did.
I'd like to emphasize the if. I'm far from convinced that this is the best way to go, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.
And that isn't much of a threshold. Are you sure the production of porn isn't adversely affecting other people? That the contents of redtube and pornhub and so forth are healthy to consume, healthy to produce, and healthy for society as a whole?
Someone will always be affected. Watching someone eat large beetles would make me queasy, but I hear they can be quite tasty. No reason for me to ban others from eating them. I'll get over it once I get used to it. In some ways, I had a little bit of a culture shock when I moved from the U.S. to Germany. They don't mind boobs in images in public. I've seen movie porn (with boobs and people in a sexual position) advertised right to the kid stuff. Nobody says anything about it. It's just everyday life here in Germany.
But I can see a lot of parallels with modelling where vague concepts of harm such as 'unrealistic', 'creates negative body image in the general public', and observations that the models do unhealthy things to achieve those beauty standards is starting to lead to things like weight guidelines that models cannot be under etc. And for the most part I am in favor of those reforms, despite the fact that I'm "restricting someone elses freedom of choice" in the process.
I'm not anti-porn per se, but I think the same sort of discussions can be had, for the same sorts of reasons.
Ah ha! This is a whole other argument entirely. Yes, unrealisitic negative body image is something well worth looking in to. I think women should be free to do with their bodies as they want, but regulations to help curb young girls (and now boys too) from unrealistic body images would be helpful. I think a balance can be achieved with reasonable regulations. I'm even for reasonable regulations in the pornography industry. I also believe banning pornography won't help these problems, though.
Paid sex, filmed or not, is not a normal job and it is insulting to compare the miseries of your desk job to the degradations of a sex worker. Sex is intimate, invasive, and can seriously affect your health.
I'm curious to know what you define as "normal" job. I'm also curious what it is about the work that is degrading.
1) Sex is intimate for most people, but not for everyone. I don't see where this contributes to the argument even if they are paid to have sex and they do see it is intimate. They choose to do it. They are not being forced. If they are forced, then that is something else entirely. Having sex and getting paid does mean a person was forced to do it. 2) The word "invasive" implies that they don't want to have sex. If they didn't want the job, they don't have to take the job. 3) I think people know that sex can affect people's health. Those who willfully have sex with others get STDs without getting paid. I"m not sure what that second sentence does to support the first.
I think it is well worth comparing desk jobs to sex work. I nearly stopped writing programs due to repetitive stress injuries about 12 years ago. After that, I was having health related issues due to stress at work where I wrote programs day in and out. I had to quit that job. It can also be a lot of fun. It also presented me with a certain amount of rock-star status at times. There are times I hide my inner nerd in certain social groups -- where I really can't talk about what I do because of how people will respond. At times, it has also been quite humiliating and degrading.
Would I work in front of a camera in the sex industry? No, that's not for me. I also doubt programming is for the majority of people too.
Agreed. We do things to harm ourselves all the time: smoking, driving, drinking, eating high-fat and high-sugar foods. Non of this is illegal... but it is harmful is not done in proper moderation. Just living in cities harms your hearing and more than 50% of the world population lives in cities now. Consenting adults and not harming anyone else are the two key factors here. This seems like it should be a no brainer. There are certainly other areas of life that are more gray.
No one's freedom of choice is being affected here.
No the freedom being being restricted here is purely at the commerce level
My freedom to choose to sell porn that I make is being limited. The only thing that should stop me from doing anything I liked is when it adversely affects other people... and even then it gets a bit murky. Leaded gasoline is unhealthy and there are viable alternatives. Beef lasagna that has horse meat in it can harm people. (My mother is deathly allergic to pork, but can eat beef and chicken. Literally -- it really can kill her.) Unpasteurized milk gets murky since it may or may not be harmful. It should be regulated in under the conditions that it is harmful. (I'll leave it to others to figure out where that line is drawn.) There is no logical nor reasonable reason to prevent pornography from being sold.
I know several others have already posted, but I'll post here as well. People think free will and predestination cannot both exist at the same time. They can. Think of it this way: when you read a book, a character in a novel has free will, but it is predestined what will happen. The choices that the character makes in the book are his or her own even if the outcome is already written in the pages you haven't read.
To those who will gleefully point out the flaws in my analogy: Yes, I'm aware there is an author and, no, I'm not trying to make any kind of statement about God one way or another. I fully admit there are flaws in my analogy, but I was merely trying to help explain a very difficult concept. Just go with it.
There are jobs out there...just maybe some that people think are beneath them.
Cayenne8, I like what you have to say most of the time (and I believe you live in a city that I used to live in... and on occasion I miss being there). Still, I'm going to have to disagree with you from a big picture perspective. In today's society, there are for every 100 people looking at only 20 jobs available. (Ok, I made up numbers, but you get the gist.) Skills have a lot to do with things as does social networking abilities. I've read stories from people who quit jobs because it was cheaper than driving in to work everyday on the schedule than the companies wanted them to keep. It's not just about jobs that are beneath people. It is really hard to find a job that makes ends meet. Think about single moms working two and three jobs. Some people are lazy. Others aren't.
Not only that, but there is another issue at stake in all of this also: if $BIG_COMPANY should get a tax exemption because it is good for the state, why is it not good for a $SMALL_COMPANY to get the same tax exemptions? If tax exemptions are good, then why not do away with them and just lower the taxes on everyone?
My wife had her own small business in the U.S. for about 8 years. Why was she supposedly paying more taxes than Amazon? I have yet to hear any politician answer that question.
You're not a customer that anybody wants. No business person in their right mind would lose any sleep over customers that have zero loyalty, and are just looking for the best price. That's Business 101, and it's absolutely true.
I think I'm going to disagree. I don't see any large business that grooms customer loyalty. I'm not talking about loyalty cards... I'm talking real loyalty. On top of that: because so few people have loyalty to businesses (they are hunting for the lowest cost bargain), most businesses want these kinds of customers. We've been using the phrase "race to the bottom" on Slashdot and I think that aptly describes the situation of loyalty between customer and business.
I'm sure someone can find a few examples where this is not true, but overall I think I'm right. At least that's my opinion for the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course these loopholes were set up for the rich, but there is nothing to stop the rest of us from using them too. If you think about it, we have a good system: people that don't mind paying taxes pay them, and those of us that prefer not to, don't.
I'm just interested in doing my job. I hate dealing with money. I do it when I have to (paying bills, filing quarterly and annual taxes). Money is a distraction to doing what I love to do. Now you're suggesting that I learn yet something else and take time out of my day so that I can pay a tax expert hundreds of dollars and avoid paying taxes to support my country? What happens when more people start doing this? The bar is reset: taxes become more complex and middle incomers pay again until we figure out the loop holes that the rich use. Rinse, lather, repeat. Don't tell Uncle Sam that I'm willing to bet money on this: I think part of the reason why the tax codes are so complex and why you're paying hundreds of dollars and using your time to see tax people is because a lot of people are doing what you are doing.
I'm not willing to jump into the debate to say whether or not what you're doing is wrong, but I do feel victimized by it. My wife had her own business for years in the States... a business of one person. Somehow, setting up four corporations for the amount of income she got just seems really wrong.
If something like that is done, it better be open source by those who know how to be responsible for it. Otherwise, a single company will have a lot of power over IDs in the country.
what idiots our lawmakers were, to sign it without reading it or comphrehending it (to quote the lobotomite Pelosi "we have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it!")
This is one of the biggest problems with any law passed by any federal law maker -- no matter what side of the spectrum you're on. With all of the legislation they pass every year, it is impossible for any person to read (let alone have time to comprehend) everything that is voted on.
I agree. GP was spot on. As a follow up to the parent, I suggest the book Leading Geeks. Geeks are a different breed of people and can't be managed "the typical way". This book explains to managers how to get geeks to contribute to an organization. My friend, who is a manager, recommended I read the book. I'm not a manager, but it had me pretty well pegged and if managers understood how to manage me, everyone (me, managers, clients) would be very happy.
While we're comparing anecdotes, I forget app names all the time. I may be a half way decent programmer, but my memory recall is pretty poor. I work around my memory issues with very specific habits and naming conventions.
And I thought these things smelled bad on the outside!
The most watchable parts of the original movies are any scene with Harrison Ford in it and any scene with James Earl Jones talking.
I agree with one minor addendum: Carrie Fisher didn't look so bad back then.
Eh... not exactly. Read The Secret History of Star Wars. (It used to be free, but they are charging money for it now. You can probably find a pdf somewhere.) George didn't know what the hell he was doing. It certainly wasn't 9 movies. Sure, he said he was making 9 movies after some point in time, but the facts the author dug up is absolutely amazing. Here's some gems and the page numbers (in the copy of the book I have):
1) Star Wars was the 1st "episode", not the fourth. The Episode IV was decided during the scripting of Empire Strikes Back. Page 164
2) Anakin and Darth Vader were two separate characters up through the first draft of Empire Strikes Back. Page 165
3) The prequel trilogy was formed due to the Anakin / Vader merging. Page 169
4) Leia was never to be Luke's sister. Page 193.
5) Darth Vader was not to be redeemed at the end of Revenge of the Jedi. Page 193.
I enjoyed the last Batman too, but I do have a number of complaints about it. Some of them were so blatantly obvious that hard to tell if being rushed was the worst offender. I believe cracked.com covers my feelings best. Just have a spare change of underwear handy because this article is really funny.
It wasn't really nine parts... even if Lucas said it was. It was supposed to be a just a movie like the old serials that Lucas used to watch. A dry, but very fascinating book anyway, is The Secret History of Star Wars It used to be free, but it looks like they are selling it now. Supposedly, the first 100 pages are free. It's amazing how much research this guy did. It will change your way of thinking about how Star Wars developed.
I've worked with Excel with C#. I will say this: it is not pretty. Like VBA (which I've also worked with), anything other than super simple stuff results in some very ugly code. Honestly, I'm not sure of a good way to interact with Excel on a code level. I might have to check out the Siag that people keep talking about, although I have trouble imagining that it is any better. I think it is an inherent problem of working with cells in spreadsheets.
When designing GUIs, the first place I usually go is the spreadsheet. It's (very) far from perfect. Hell, it's so crude that it's barely useable, but it is the fastest way I can do a screen mockup. I can do in seconds on a spreadsheet what it takes minutes to do in an IDE. After that, I usually prototype it in the language I'm working in, then the functionality goes in.
The most fair way to tax would be to tax companies based both on how much the community benefits the company
What you say is interesting, but if taxes are to be different, I think it should be based on how much a company sucks up from a community. Example: Trucking businesses put a lot of wear and tear on the roads so maybe they should pay more taxes than the common joe who just drives to and from work. Another example: Maybe the common joe should pay more taxes for driving around than buses. I'll admit, this is very arbitrary and there's a lot of room for arguments from everywhere. My wife had a very small footprint: an office in our house, one computer, a printer, and a few hundred pages of paper a month. I was always jealous that there were people who paid a lot less taxes than we did.
I'd like to emphasize the if. I'm far from convinced that this is the best way to go, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.
And that isn't much of a threshold. Are you sure the production of porn isn't adversely affecting other people? That the contents of redtube and pornhub and so forth are healthy to consume, healthy to produce, and healthy for society as a whole?
Someone will always be affected. Watching someone eat large beetles would make me queasy, but I hear they can be quite tasty. No reason for me to ban others from eating them. I'll get over it once I get used to it. In some ways, I had a little bit of a culture shock when I moved from the U.S. to Germany. They don't mind boobs in images in public. I've seen movie porn (with boobs and people in a sexual position) advertised right to the kid stuff. Nobody says anything about it. It's just everyday life here in Germany.
But I can see a lot of parallels with modelling where vague concepts of harm such as 'unrealistic', 'creates negative body image in the general public', and observations that the models do unhealthy things to achieve those beauty standards is starting to lead to things like weight guidelines that models cannot be under etc. And for the most part I am in favor of those reforms, despite the fact that I'm "restricting someone elses freedom of choice" in the process.
I'm not anti-porn per se, but I think the same sort of discussions can be had, for the same sorts of reasons.
Ah ha! This is a whole other argument entirely. Yes, unrealisitic negative body image is something well worth looking in to. I think women should be free to do with their bodies as they want, but regulations to help curb young girls (and now boys too) from unrealistic body images would be helpful. I think a balance can be achieved with reasonable regulations. I'm even for reasonable regulations in the pornography industry. I also believe banning pornography won't help these problems, though.
Paid sex, filmed or not, is not a normal job and it is insulting to compare the miseries of your desk job to the degradations of a sex worker. Sex is intimate, invasive, and can seriously affect your health.
I'm curious to know what you define as "normal" job. I'm also curious what it is about the work that is degrading.
1) Sex is intimate for most people, but not for everyone. I don't see where this contributes to the argument even if they are paid to have sex and they do see it is intimate. They choose to do it. They are not being forced. If they are forced, then that is something else entirely. Having sex and getting paid does mean a person was forced to do it. 2) The word "invasive" implies that they don't want to have sex. If they didn't want the job, they don't have to take the job. 3) I think people know that sex can affect people's health. Those who willfully have sex with others get STDs without getting paid. I"m not sure what that second sentence does to support the first.
I think it is well worth comparing desk jobs to sex work. I nearly stopped writing programs due to repetitive stress injuries about 12 years ago. After that, I was having health related issues due to stress at work where I wrote programs day in and out. I had to quit that job. It can also be a lot of fun. It also presented me with a certain amount of rock-star status at times. There are times I hide my inner nerd in certain social groups -- where I really can't talk about what I do because of how people will respond. At times, it has also been quite humiliating and degrading.
Would I work in front of a camera in the sex industry? No, that's not for me. I also doubt programming is for the majority of people too.
Agreed. We do things to harm ourselves all the time: smoking, driving, drinking, eating high-fat and high-sugar foods. Non of this is illegal... but it is harmful is not done in proper moderation. Just living in cities harms your hearing and more than 50% of the world population lives in cities now. Consenting adults and not harming anyone else are the two key factors here. This seems like it should be a no brainer. There are certainly other areas of life that are more gray.
So... non-violent pornography is ok. Violent movies are ok. Violent pornographic movies are not ok?
I think something is very wrong with this so called "logic".
Yeah. After that it's reality TV. Then nothing makes sense anymore.
Are they going to ban violent movies too?
Which freedom is being limited exactly?
No one's freedom of choice is being affected here.
No the freedom being being restricted here is purely at the commerce level
My freedom to choose to sell porn that I make is being limited. The only thing that should stop me from doing anything I liked is when it adversely affects other people... and even then it gets a bit murky. Leaded gasoline is unhealthy and there are viable alternatives. Beef lasagna that has horse meat in it can harm people. (My mother is deathly allergic to pork, but can eat beef and chicken. Literally -- it really can kill her.) Unpasteurized milk gets murky since it may or may not be harmful. It should be regulated in under the conditions that it is harmful. (I'll leave it to others to figure out where that line is drawn.) There is no logical nor reasonable reason to prevent pornography from being sold.
I know several others have already posted, but I'll post here as well. People think free will and predestination cannot both exist at the same time. They can. Think of it this way: when you read a book, a character in a novel has free will, but it is predestined what will happen. The choices that the character makes in the book are his or her own even if the outcome is already written in the pages you haven't read.
To those who will gleefully point out the flaws in my analogy: Yes, I'm aware there is an author and, no, I'm not trying to make any kind of statement about God one way or another. I fully admit there are flaws in my analogy, but I was merely trying to help explain a very difficult concept. Just go with it.
There are jobs out there...just maybe some that people think are beneath them.
Cayenne8, I like what you have to say most of the time (and I believe you live in a city that I used to live in... and on occasion I miss being there). Still, I'm going to have to disagree with you from a big picture perspective. In today's society, there are for every 100 people looking at only 20 jobs available. (Ok, I made up numbers, but you get the gist.) Skills have a lot to do with things as does social networking abilities. I've read stories from people who quit jobs because it was cheaper than driving in to work everyday on the schedule than the companies wanted them to keep. It's not just about jobs that are beneath people. It is really hard to find a job that makes ends meet. Think about single moms working two and three jobs. Some people are lazy. Others aren't.
Just food for thought.
Not only that, but there is another issue at stake in all of this also: if $BIG_COMPANY should get a tax exemption because it is good for the state, why is it not good for a $SMALL_COMPANY to get the same tax exemptions? If tax exemptions are good, then why not do away with them and just lower the taxes on everyone?
My wife had her own small business in the U.S. for about 8 years. Why was she supposedly paying more taxes than Amazon? I have yet to hear any politician answer that question.
You're not a customer that anybody wants. No business person in their right mind would lose any sleep over customers that have zero loyalty, and are just looking for the best price. That's Business 101, and it's absolutely true.
I think I'm going to disagree. I don't see any large business that grooms customer loyalty. I'm not talking about loyalty cards... I'm talking real loyalty. On top of that: because so few people have loyalty to businesses (they are hunting for the lowest cost bargain), most businesses want these kinds of customers. We've been using the phrase "race to the bottom" on Slashdot and I think that aptly describes the situation of loyalty between customer and business.
I'm sure someone can find a few examples where this is not true, but overall I think I'm right. At least that's my opinion for the moment.
I also have a question. What happens if the said software happens to have a wrong tax figure? Who pays the penalty once the problem is found?