Put it this way- I hate taxes. Not on general principle, but how it is applied. I get a pay check, and a couple of taxes are taken out. I buy something with some of that money, and taxes are taken out. I save some of that money, and taxes are taken out. I invest the rest, and taxes are taken out. I retire, and taxes are taken out of my pension, savings, Social Security (all of those taxes how many times already?). If I happen to be successful, when I die, I'm taxed after I'm dead. It's a real shitty formula we got going on in the US. And you showed how stupid the whole thing is. What's included, what is not included. Everything is taxed which way forever, and thus new ways have been invented to try and make some of it go away. Hence my "scrap the whole thing and start over" idea. I know, about as likely as me or you winning the lottery (especially since I don't play the lottery, heh), just sussing out some (admittedly quickly and not thoroughly thought out) ideas. Poo- now I'm depressed again. I need to take a bike ride.
11.2? What brand/model is that, I haven't seen that before. Yes, I'm serious, I'm looking to upgrade my sound system in the near future, but haven't really started looking yet.
I have some Nokia xxxx phone. I can install software on it, but it's a real pain in the ass (I did it to turn off the Web, GPS and PTT buttons.). Like you said- it's a damn phone. Unlike most/.ers, I don't want a phone/computer/lawnmower. I want to call my wife, not trade stocks while watching a baseball game and playing Angry Birds on a phone.
Actually, I'll be kind of annoyed as I'm holding a virtual movie night from 5-7PM US Eastern time, but a couple of people from Britain are planning to attend. Since they're 5 hours ahead, I'm going to end up with dead attendees. We're watching the 1978 version of "Dawn of the Dead," so I'm going to be Rapturized just when the film is cranking up.:( Neat coincidence, eh?
Favorite line of the day- "It's possible that someone who doesn't appear to be Christian, and doesn't even think he is one, could be at risk for Rapturing. " Does this count for pets, too?
This ties into the CDC's "Zombie Preparedness" article nicely!
Actually, I think the reason for the mortgage deduction goes way back to help people buy homes after the Great Depression. I could be totally talking out of my ass on this. But the vote thing, totally with you. I live in Pennsylvania, and the Marcellus Shale gas drilling taxation issue is fairly large. People don't seem to realize that corporate taxes go straight to the customer, so any money the state collects from the gas companies are offset by higher prices paid to the companies. For some reason here it seems to be 'no tax' or 'really freaking huge tax.' Tax them a little and there may be a net overall gain. Again, I'm talking out my ass since I don't know the numbers.
They made money, great! Why do you need a water cooler? It's not exactly a necessity for conducting business. Why should 'legitimate business expenses' even be non-taxable? Costs are a cost (couldn't avoid that) of business. Obviously you are a businessman, which is cool, but you have a mindset where you think you need breaks on things. Why is that? If you cannot create enough revenue to cover expenses without having the government subsidize your water cooler, I'm not feeling it. I could get silly and talk about Jobs and Gates and working out of their garages and stuff, but I admit that's pushing it a bit much.
I do admit that there are probably things that should get tax breaks. Perhaps research into new nifty things like alternative energy; pencils and desk chairs, not so much.
People like to watch others do cool things better themselves. It's cheaper and less time intensive than to do it yourself well. Commentaries are fun (as others have said). Researchers are idiots who come up with idiot ideas so they can get paid.
But my question is- how much money did they spend on this. What's next, why do we like watching pro football rather than playing? Hopefully, it wasn't federal taxpayer's money, so it was contained to the student's and/or the states money (I don't live there).
First off, Charlie Sheen is winning. (Sorry, been waiting for a chance to do that here) But you're right, the gov created an entire new department to do what airports were doing before. I'm surprised that not everyone is stripped naked and cavity searched at this point. My wife got so much crap for having her insulin stuff on her (with a doctor's note) I was about || far from punching the guy. Eventually her explanation of "I'm a diabetic" sank in. He actually said, "Oh, you're a diabetic." Apparently that's very rare from his universe./rant
Or the lack of preparation and knowledge. Not necessarily intelligence. No, I don't like her either. She may be smart as heck and have really bad handlers. Or she could be an idiot. I don't care, she's going nowhere. Thankfully.
"It was an agonizing moment..." Talk about the hyperbole. I know I'm old and all that stuff, but 'agonizing?' Crickey, man, have you even seen a 7 inch green monotone screen in your life? Agonizing is paying $500 for 1MB of RAM.
Yup. My dad has Win7 on his machine, I have Win7 running on Parallels on my Mac. His stuff is constantly freezing & crashing (you wouldn't believe his process list), and mine runs faster as a VM. I also have WinXP on Parallels, and the performance difference is amazing. I'd say about 10X difference in speed. I can't stand Windows, but I do have to say 7 is decent if you don't add all kinds of useless crap to it. (A local weather program?! Look out the damn window, dad!)
So you pressure people in a study to prove your hypothesis? Good job. Also, as others have said, it's a tad easier to eat local food than getting your fried lion testecles, or whatever. I'll make sure I ask for a 'double down' on Mars. I'm sure they'll have it.
I've become too boring for anyone to care. Not on purpose, I just don't care enough that much about anything important besides my family. Yeah, I still vote. I'll write an occasional letter to the paper. I've even written my Congress/Senate critters. Does any seem to make any difference? Nope. I got one, just one, reply where the staffer actually read my letter and wrote back something not in form letter fashion. Bill still passed anyway. Bleh.
I met an NSA recruiter once, too. Wasn't my area, but I thought it would be fun to talk to them. She made it sound like it was going to be like a movie, or a CSI show. Wasn't my field (engineer), so I didn't much care. Kind of funny, though.
Scrap the whole thing and start over. All the cruft is from decades of putting in and taking out different provisions for thousands of groups of people. Start with whatever rates you want. Then stop. What's the point of taxing someone 30%, then giving them a mortgage deduction, education deduction, horse rodeo operator deduction, etc.? Same with corporations; if you're going to give them all tax breaks on their water coolers, just drop the rates. The IRS will be pissed, thousands (millions?) of accountants will be pissed, and everyone else get 4 hours of their lives back from stupid paperwork each year.
Sooooo, it's OK to get cancer when you're not in school? And EM radiation has been studied for how long, going back to high voltage lines near houses? Maybe we should ban earth's EM fields in schools, too! OK, maybe there is some long term risk with holding a phone directly to your head for thousands of hours. I'll give you that. WiFi? What about all that radio and TV signals? Really looks like a flimsy excuse to ban something they don't like on "non-evidence." What the heck kind of position is that to take? Why not extrapolate it out to "Anchovies may cause head explosions. We just don't know because there is no evidence of anchovy explodiness." (no, I don't like anchovies.)
Since I don't play online games, I don't know what kind of mechanism(s) is/are in place for dealing with trolls and idiots. But I can see a group getting together to complain about someone that is too good or they just don't like to make him/her pay more to stay. Those more qualified can say whether this is a reasonable outcome or not. I can see other fail points in his scheme. In a perfect world, this sounds like a great idea.
Can't we just borrow that? On a more serious side, I read an admittedly far fetched idea of putting a 'fishing nets' in the orbits of the smaller bits of debris. Yes, tons of problems with it, but it would be nice if we could 'sweep' up a bunch of the smaller stuff. I forget the details, but from what I remember (that's a chancy proposition in itself) it seemed to be plausible. I admit, I am way out of my league here, so feel free to ignore as hard as possible.
Nah, he's just the 0.001 percent of people that is really paranoid. Gotta give him credit for sticking to his guns, though. I kind of admire that, actually; Batman was pretty paranoid, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless it is sufficiently advanced to dump it into a parallel universe.
I don't think you understand what that word means.
Put it this way- I hate taxes. Not on general principle, but how it is applied. I get a pay check, and a couple of taxes are taken out. I buy something with some of that money, and taxes are taken out. I save some of that money, and taxes are taken out. I invest the rest, and taxes are taken out. I retire, and taxes are taken out of my pension, savings, Social Security (all of those taxes how many times already?). If I happen to be successful, when I die, I'm taxed after I'm dead.
It's a real shitty formula we got going on in the US. And you showed how stupid the whole thing is. What's included, what is not included. Everything is taxed which way forever, and thus new ways have been invented to try and make some of it go away.
Hence my "scrap the whole thing and start over" idea. I know, about as likely as me or you winning the lottery (especially since I don't play the lottery, heh), just sussing out some (admittedly quickly and not thoroughly thought out) ideas.
Poo- now I'm depressed again. I need to take a bike ride.
11.2? What brand/model is that, I haven't seen that before. Yes, I'm serious, I'm looking to upgrade my sound system in the near future, but haven't really started looking yet.
I have some Nokia xxxx phone. I can install software on it, but it's a real pain in the ass (I did it to turn off the Web, GPS and PTT buttons.). Like you said- it's a damn phone. Unlike most /.ers, I don't want a phone/computer/lawnmower. I want to call my wife, not trade stocks while watching a baseball game and playing Angry Birds on a phone.
"And ye shall be touched by his noodley goodness."
Pastafarians 42:3.14
Actually, I'll be kind of annoyed as I'm holding a virtual movie night from 5-7PM US Eastern time, but a couple of people from Britain are planning to attend. Since they're 5 hours ahead, I'm going to end up with dead attendees. We're watching the 1978 version of "Dawn of the Dead," so I'm going to be Rapturized just when the film is cranking up. :( Neat coincidence, eh?
Favorite line of the day-
"It's possible that someone who doesn't appear to be Christian, and doesn't even think he is one, could be at risk for Rapturing. "
Does this count for pets, too?
This ties into the CDC's "Zombie Preparedness" article nicely!
That mash up was very nice. Well done, sir.
Actually, I think the reason for the mortgage deduction goes way back to help people buy homes after the Great Depression. I could be totally talking out of my ass on this. But the vote thing, totally with you. I live in Pennsylvania, and the Marcellus Shale gas drilling taxation issue is fairly large. People don't seem to realize that corporate taxes go straight to the customer, so any money the state collects from the gas companies are offset by higher prices paid to the companies. For some reason here it seems to be 'no tax' or 'really freaking huge tax.' Tax them a little and there may be a net overall gain. Again, I'm talking out my ass since I don't know the numbers.
I was going to say something about the percentage of people who pay taxes, but I forgot what it was. Didn't realize it hit 50%. Bread and circuses.
They made money, great! Why do you need a water cooler? It's not exactly a necessity for conducting business. Why should 'legitimate business expenses' even be non-taxable? Costs are a cost (couldn't avoid that) of business. Obviously you are a businessman, which is cool, but you have a mindset where you think you need breaks on things. Why is that? If you cannot create enough revenue to cover expenses without having the government subsidize your water cooler, I'm not feeling it. I could get silly and talk about Jobs and Gates and working out of their garages and stuff, but I admit that's pushing it a bit much.
I do admit that there are probably things that should get tax breaks. Perhaps research into new nifty things like alternative energy; pencils and desk chairs, not so much.
People like to watch others do cool things better themselves.
It's cheaper and less time intensive than to do it yourself well.
Commentaries are fun (as others have said).
Researchers are idiots who come up with idiot ideas so they can get paid.
But my question is- how much money did they spend on this. What's next, why do we like watching pro football rather than playing? Hopefully, it wasn't federal taxpayer's money, so it was contained to the student's and/or the states money (I don't live there).
First off, Charlie Sheen is winning. (Sorry, been waiting for a chance to do that here) /rant
But you're right, the gov created an entire new department to do what airports were doing before. I'm surprised that not everyone is stripped naked and cavity searched at this point. My wife got so much crap for having her insulin stuff on her (with a doctor's note) I was about || far from punching the guy. Eventually her explanation of "I'm a diabetic" sank in. He actually said, "Oh, you're a diabetic." Apparently that's very rare from his universe.
Or the lack of preparation and knowledge. Not necessarily intelligence. No, I don't like her either. She may be smart as heck and have really bad handlers. Or she could be an idiot. I don't care, she's going nowhere. Thankfully.
"It was an agonizing moment..."
Talk about the hyperbole. I know I'm old and all that stuff, but 'agonizing?' Crickey, man, have you even seen a 7 inch green monotone screen in your life? Agonizing is paying $500 for 1MB of RAM.
Yup. My dad has Win7 on his machine, I have Win7 running on Parallels on my Mac. His stuff is constantly freezing & crashing (you wouldn't believe his process list), and mine runs faster as a VM. I also have WinXP on Parallels, and the performance difference is amazing. I'd say about 10X difference in speed. I can't stand Windows, but I do have to say 7 is decent if you don't add all kinds of useless crap to it. (A local weather program?! Look out the damn window, dad!)
So you pressure people in a study to prove your hypothesis? Good job.
Also, as others have said, it's a tad easier to eat local food than getting your fried lion testecles, or whatever. I'll make sure I ask for a 'double down' on Mars. I'm sure they'll have it.
You beat me to it. I broke down and read the article. You know that thing they teach about writing? Like HAVING A TOPIC?! Oy.
I've become too boring for anyone to care. Not on purpose, I just don't care enough that much about anything important besides my family. Yeah, I still vote. I'll write an occasional letter to the paper. I've even written my Congress/Senate critters. Does any seem to make any difference? Nope. I got one, just one, reply where the staffer actually read my letter and wrote back something not in form letter fashion. Bill still passed anyway. Bleh.
I met an NSA recruiter once, too. Wasn't my area, but I thought it would be fun to talk to them. She made it sound like it was going to be like a movie, or a CSI show. Wasn't my field (engineer), so I didn't much care. Kind of funny, though.
Scrap the whole thing and start over. All the cruft is from decades of putting in and taking out different provisions for thousands of groups of people. Start with whatever rates you want. Then stop. What's the point of taxing someone 30%, then giving them a mortgage deduction, education deduction, horse rodeo operator deduction, etc.? Same with corporations; if you're going to give them all tax breaks on their water coolers, just drop the rates. The IRS will be pissed, thousands (millions?) of accountants will be pissed, and everyone else get 4 hours of their lives back from stupid paperwork each year.
Sooooo, it's OK to get cancer when you're not in school? And EM radiation has been studied for how long, going back to high voltage lines near houses? Maybe we should ban earth's EM fields in schools, too! OK, maybe there is some long term risk with holding a phone directly to your head for thousands of hours. I'll give you that. WiFi? What about all that radio and TV signals? Really looks like a flimsy excuse to ban something they don't like on "non-evidence." What the heck kind of position is that to take? Why not extrapolate it out to "Anchovies may cause head explosions. We just don't know because there is no evidence of anchovy explodiness." (no, I don't like anchovies.)
Since I don't play online games, I don't know what kind of mechanism(s) is/are in place for dealing with trolls and idiots. But I can see a group getting together to complain about someone that is too good or they just don't like to make him/her pay more to stay. Those more qualified can say whether this is a reasonable outcome or not. I can see other fail points in his scheme. In a perfect world, this sounds like a great idea.
Can't we just borrow that?
On a more serious side, I read an admittedly far fetched idea of putting a 'fishing nets' in the orbits of the smaller bits of debris. Yes, tons of problems with it, but it would be nice if we could 'sweep' up a bunch of the smaller stuff. I forget the details, but from what I remember (that's a chancy proposition in itself) it seemed to be plausible.
I admit, I am way out of my league here, so feel free to ignore as hard as possible.
Nah, he's just the 0.001 percent of people that is really paranoid. Gotta give him credit for sticking to his guns, though. I kind of admire that, actually; Batman was pretty paranoid, too.