Hope you enjoy the new europification of employment. Where everyone is part-time.
Uh, what ? Do you have even the vaguest idea of what employment traditions, standards and laws are like in Europe ?
Here's a hint: "secure jobs for life" isn't something you find right-wing free marketeers fighting for. That's because they're the guys who want employees who can be treated as a number and discarded at will whenever someone cheaper comes along.
You want secure, full-time jobs ? You need to put employees on an equal power footing with employers. The only way to do that on a wide scale is worker unions.
Yes, no government at all. How about you point to a government anywhere in the world that doesn't operated based on a first principle of stealing from the inhabitants of a given geography.
Every country in the world that allows people to leave whenever they want.
Don't like paying taxes ? No-one forces you to live somewhere that has them.
The Royal Swedisg Academy of Sciences, hardly a libertarian body, said hwe work shows "how common resources â" forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands, can be managed successfully by the people who use them, rather than by governments or private companies".
The cognitive dissonance necessary to draw a distinction between "the people who use them" and [democratically elected] government, is truly staggering.
Unless he only rides a bicycle or walks, his license plate fees pay for the road. Or the license plate fees of those whose vehicles he hires the use of. Not 'the government.'
Having lived in the US and knowing how cheap owning a car is there, I would be jaw-droppingly astounded if license and other registration fees came within a bull's roar of paying for the road system.
Only if they're not profitable. Isn't that how the free market should work anyway ? Don't worry yourself though. Farms would be subsidised (or tax-exempted) sufficiently, just like they are today.
Your tax will not effect the truly wealthy, few of their assets will be in the jurisdiction that implements such a tax.
I am curious what you intend to do for government revenue the second year?
The same thing as the first year. (Amazing how this "fair tax" concept suddenly becomes unfair when it's the rich who are disproportionately affected rather than the poor.)
I don't see how the poor are punished almost at all by inflation. In fact it seems to help them.
Low-end - heck, even most mid-range - wages rarely rise as much or as quickly as inflation.
The poor are punished more because they put the majority of their income towards survival, which increase in price (much) faster than their income. The middle classes can at least absorb price increases out of their discretionary expenses so they don't end up starving in the street.
My point is that Apple could use the rumored ARM transition as an excuse to do that, [...] Apple doesn't need an excuse. They have _never_ advertised their machines as general purpose PCs (ie: for the purposes of running anything other than MacOS).
Running, for example, Windows on a Mac is consistently and explicitly promoted as a feature of MacOS - BootCamp - not the hardware.
[...] just as Microsoft has already used its own ARM transition as an excuse to do that. There is nothing Microsoft is doing or changing that they either are using, or need to use, the "ARM transition" as an "excuse" for.
Until the day your MBP breaks, and all Apple sells are ARM-based products without any concept of Boot Camp. These won't boot Linux because Linux isn't signed by Apple.
Apple don't need ARM to do that. Your statement makes no sense.
As to whether or that is "enough" - many factors come into play. $100K per year is not enough to support a family and home ownership in many parts of the country and I would recommend some level of prudence.
Even Manhattan - surely one of, if not the, most expensive places in the USA to live, has a median _household_ income of about $65k. I'm sure a decent chunk of the 50% of households earning $65k or less have "families".
Maybe I'm an entitled idiot but in New York or Los Angeles it's not that easy living on $185k a year. It sounds nuts but with killer mortgage and kids somehow it disappears even though I shop at Costco and Walmart...???
Median household income in Manhattan is about $65k. $185k/yr is nearly three times that amount.
If you can't live comfortably on three times the median income, you're an entitled idiot.
Windows 7 was also very very fast when it was first released. Then after a few months/years of usage, it slows to a crawl. Is it self programmed obsolescence or does Windows naturally drifts towards slower and slower performance?
Yes it is. Where you decide to place your arbitrary line is irrelevant.
Your assertion that hard limits being enforced caused drivers to "glue their eyes" to the speedo (ie, check it obsessively). My assertion is that if you can't stay under the limit (whatever limit that may be, 30, 35, 38, 70, 85 etc) without doing that then you're unfit to drive a car.
And your assertion is rubbish. Primarily because, as I've stated numerous times, drivers shouldn't _need_ to spend any meaningful amount of their concentration budget monitoring speed. If there really is any danger to creeping a few km/h over the limit, then the speed limit on the road should be lower to start with.
You're looking for an excuse to say "the cops should not ticket me for being over the speed limit if it's only by a small amount, even though I know it's within their remit to ticket me for breaking the limit."
I'm not looking for an excuse, that's _exactly_ what I'm saying because it's a perfectly sound argument. Speeding infringements shouldn't even be punishable until they hit more than 10% over and they most certainly should not be hyper-focused on low-scale, low-risk [high-payback] infringement like they are in Australia (and particularly Victoria). It's a waste of resources and a counter-productive safety strategy.
Your choice of car and tyres, or your vehicle's maintenance, have more of an impact on safety than whether you're doing 100 or 105km/h. This is before even getting to driver attributes like reaction time, concentration and experience.
Your assertion is that the law is the law and tough titties (an incredibly weak argument to start with). My assertion is that road safety should be the focus and that draconian speed enforcement undermines that principle.
I've spent enough time in the UK to probably have covered 40,000-odd km there, all over the country. I know what the roads and the policing attitudes are like, so I know where you're coming from. Australia - particularly Victoria - is a very different culture. Mobile speed traps are rife, deliberately placed to be obscured and frequently located in areas where unintentional (and low-risk) speeding is easy (bottom of hills, roads where limits should be higher, inactive construction zones, etc). Speeding fines are routinely given out for exceeding the limit by single-digit amounts in 100-110km/h zones (which is absurd on its face). As I have said, this has bred an environment where drivers are constantly monitoring their speed and neglecting the far greater responsibility of monitoring everything happening around them.
I'm not making that argument. If the enforcement of speed is draconian, then driving under the limit is just sensible to avoid tickets. In that case, "observing the speed limit" does not mean "+/- 5 kmh". In that case you're simply courting trouble if the police are as draconian as you say. In that case, they are treating the limit as a hard limit, so even 1 over is outside the conditions set out for the road, whether "common sense" applies or not.
And the point being made, which you are ignoring, is that this sort of enforcement is not only pointless, it is actually counter-productive.
Personally I think that is overly draconian, and doesn't really contribute much to safety, other than being a deterrent for people speeding (I think the UK's system is far more sensible - 10% margin, with up to an extra 1,2 or 3 on top of that depending on the local force), but if you're going to argue that the line being exactly on there limit of the posted signs is any more "taxing" with "eyes glued to the speedometer" than having the limit be a few over that speed then you're just looking for an excuse.
No, I am not trying to make excuses, or whinge about tickets - I haven't been fined for speeding for at least ten years, and even that was the first time for a few (then again I don't - and wouldn't - live in Victoria). My interest is in road safety, and I am criticising a system that is failing to aim for that objective, in the face of people like you who are insisting that my criticism is invalid because "that's the law".
If you can't keep your car safely under the limit without your eyes "glued to the speedo" then you're not fit to drive a car. Just pretend that the limit is 5 less than the posted limit and then resume your normal "+/- 5 kmh" as you say is your normal "observing the speed limit" and you'll be able to do it safely, right?
Bullshit. I'd lay down a hundred bucks in an instant betting you couldn't keep your speed under an arbitrary limit over any meaningful period of time, in traffic, without frequent references to the speedometer.
The issue, which you are studiously ignoring, is that drivers should not have to frequently monitor their speed. Drivers should feel confident that they can match their speed to surrounding traffic without fear of punishment so they can concentrate on the far more important jobs of monitoring their vehicle, other vehicles, the road, pedestrians, and the like.
If you can't drive safely while observing the speed limit for the road then you shouldn't be driving a car in the first place.
I can drive perfectly safely while observing the speed limit. "Observing the speed limit" will mean +/- 5-10km/h depending on road design, geography, other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, etc.
If you are going to try and argue that exceeding the posted limit by a single km/h has any meaningful impact on risk, then I'm just going to point out that makes you completely ineligible to have a discussion on the subject.
It's hardy "micro-managing" to drive at the speed limit - it's called "driving a car on a public road".
Having to spend most of the time watching the speedometer so you don't drift a few km/h over the limit is absolutely micro-managing. The correct and safe way to determine speed is to match it with surrounding traffic.
Posted limits also have nothing to do with your own judgement regarding the safe speed to drive.
I never said they did. I said draconian enforcement of speed limits and a hyper-focus on speeding by police leads to a culture of "obeying the speed limit == safe" and roads full of people who spend most of their time with their eyes glued to the speedometer (since creeping a few km/h over could cost them a hundred and fifty bucks and a license point). I have observed this phenomenon infecting Australian drivers for twenty years as speed enforcement has become more and more strict. Unsurprisingly, the impact on the road toll has been minimal (to nonexistant) and wholly attributable to things like better roads and safer vehicles.
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Uh, what ? Do you have even the vaguest idea of what employment traditions, standards and laws are like in Europe ?
Here's a hint: "secure jobs for life" isn't something you find right-wing free marketeers fighting for. That's because they're the guys who want employees who can be treated as a number and discarded at will whenever someone cheaper comes along.
You want secure, full-time jobs ? You need to put employees on an equal power footing with employers. The only way to do that on a wide scale is worker unions.
Blame the Republicans. They could have allowed a single-payer system.
Every country in the world that allows people to leave whenever they want.
Don't like paying taxes ? No-one forces you to live somewhere that has them.
The cognitive dissonance necessary to draw a distinction between "the people who use them" and [democratically elected] government, is truly staggering.
Having lived in the US and knowing how cheap owning a car is there, I would be jaw-droppingly astounded if license and other registration fees came within a bull's roar of paying for the road system.
As opposed to an individual who would rob, murder, and kidnap anyone who doesn't agree with their arbitrary laws ?
Only if they're not profitable. Isn't that how the free market should work anyway ?
Don't worry yourself though. Farms would be subsidised (or tax-exempted) sufficiently, just like they are today.
As opposed to their incomes ?
The same thing as the first year.
(Amazing how this "fair tax" concept suddenly becomes unfair when it's the rich who are disproportionately affected rather than the poor.)
How often do you intend to tax income ?
So long as it's a flat tax on assets.
And that's why Northern Europe is an apocalyptic wasteland, right ?
Low-end - heck, even most mid-range - wages rarely rise as much or as quickly as inflation.
The poor are punished more because they put the majority of their income towards survival, which increase in price (much) faster than their income. The middle classes can at least absorb price increases out of their discretionary expenses so they don't end up starving in the street.
Storage _bandwidth_ ? What are you regularly saturating 16Gb of FC with ?
My point is that Apple could use the rumored ARM transition as an excuse to do that, [...]
Apple doesn't need an excuse. They have _never_ advertised their machines as general purpose PCs (ie: for the purposes of running anything other than MacOS).
Running, for example, Windows on a Mac is consistently and explicitly promoted as a feature of MacOS - BootCamp - not the hardware.
[...] just as Microsoft has already used its own ARM transition as an excuse to do that.
There is nothing Microsoft is doing or changing that they either are using, or need to use, the "ARM transition" as an "excuse" for.
Apple don't need ARM to do that. Your statement makes no sense.
Even Manhattan - surely one of, if not the, most expensive places in the USA to live, has a median _household_ income of about $65k.
I'm sure a decent chunk of the 50% of households earning $65k or less have "families".
Median household income in Manhattan is about $65k. $185k/yr is nearly three times that amount.
If you can't live comfortably on three times the median income, you're an entitled idiot.
In Australia right now you can get 5% for cash in the bank.
This post demonstrates the fundamental Libertarian disconnect from reality - that the only form violence or coercion can take is physical.
Hence the reason they don't support laws against things like fraud or conspiracy.
How are "lots of people in the world" relevant to the Government of whatever country he's in ?
Or do you just get used to it ?
Does not compute. The vast majority of Windows licenses sold are either OEM bundled or part of EA agreements.
Yes it is. Where you decide to place your arbitrary line is irrelevant.
And your assertion is rubbish. Primarily because, as I've stated numerous times, drivers shouldn't _need_ to spend any meaningful amount of their concentration budget monitoring speed. If there really is any danger to creeping a few km/h over the limit, then the speed limit on the road should be lower to start with.
I'm not looking for an excuse, that's _exactly_ what I'm saying because it's a perfectly sound argument. Speeding infringements shouldn't even be punishable until they hit more than 10% over and they most certainly should not be hyper-focused on low-scale, low-risk [high-payback] infringement like they are in Australia (and particularly Victoria). It's a waste of resources and a counter-productive safety strategy.
Your choice of car and tyres, or your vehicle's maintenance, have more of an impact on safety than whether you're doing 100 or 105km/h. This is before even getting to driver attributes like reaction time, concentration and experience.
Your assertion is that the law is the law and tough titties (an incredibly weak argument to start with). My assertion is that road safety should be the focus and that draconian speed enforcement undermines that principle.
I've spent enough time in the UK to probably have covered 40,000-odd km there, all over the country. I know what the roads and the policing attitudes are like, so I know where you're coming from. Australia - particularly Victoria - is a very different culture. Mobile speed traps are rife, deliberately placed to be obscured and frequently located in areas where unintentional (and low-risk) speeding is easy (bottom of hills, roads where limits should be higher, inactive construction zones, etc). Speeding fines are routinely given out for exceeding the limit by single-digit amounts in 100-110km/h zones (which is absurd on its face). As I have said, this has bred an environment where drivers are constantly monitoring their speed and neglecting the far greater responsibility of monitoring everything happening around them.
And the point being made, which you are ignoring, is that this sort of enforcement is not only pointless, it is actually counter-productive.
No, I am not trying to make excuses, or whinge about tickets - I haven't been fined for speeding for at least ten years, and even that was the first time for a few (then again I don't - and wouldn't - live in Victoria). My interest is in road safety, and I am criticising a system that is failing to aim for that objective, in the face of people like you who are insisting that my criticism is invalid because "that's the law".
Bullshit. I'd lay down a hundred bucks in an instant betting you couldn't keep your speed under an arbitrary limit over any meaningful period of time, in traffic, without frequent references to the speedometer.
The issue, which you are studiously ignoring, is that drivers should not have to frequently monitor their speed. Drivers should feel confident that they can match their speed to surrounding traffic without fear of punishment so they can concentrate on the far more important jobs of monitoring their vehicle, other vehicles, the road, pedestrians, and the like.
I can drive perfectly safely while observing the speed limit. "Observing the speed limit" will mean +/- 5-10km/h depending on road design, geography, other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, etc.
If you are going to try and argue that exceeding the posted limit by a single km/h has any meaningful impact on risk, then I'm just going to point out that makes you completely ineligible to have a discussion on the subject.
Having to spend most of the time watching the speedometer so you don't drift a few km/h over the limit is absolutely micro-managing. The correct and safe way to determine speed is to match it with surrounding traffic.
I never said they did. I said draconian enforcement of speed limits and a hyper-focus on speeding by police leads to a culture of "obeying the speed limit == safe" and roads full of people who spend most of their time with their eyes glued to the speedometer (since creeping a few km/h over could cost them a hundred and fifty bucks and a license point). I have observed this phenomenon infecting Australian drivers for twenty years as speed enforcement has become more and more strict. Unsurprisingly, the impact on the road toll has been minimal (to nonexistant) and wholly attributable to things like better roads and safer vehicles.