"California" does not pay taxes that go to Mississippi. The top 1% of income earners pay 38% of all federal income tax. It just so happens that a lot of that 1% live in nice places like NYC or LA, not rural Mississippi.
It's really arrogant and wrong to get all high and mighty because your *neighbor* pays a lot of taxes. I mean maybe you are one of those people, but the typical Californian is not.
How is per-capita tax meaningful in a progressive tax system? Especially when it comes to starting a new business, which is not what your average capita is doing.
Wait, taxes are usually assessed on business profit, not volume. How is tax per gross product dollar meaningful? Could just mean there are a lot of low/negative/non profit businesses.
Hell, in the USA over the last ~20 years 10x as many terrorist attacks were committed by latinos as muslims. Do you fear puerto ricans?
Can you share your source for that, it sounds interesting.
I think one thing you're overlooking, possibly, which is the target of various terrorist groups. I don't fear drug lord terrorists because I'm not a drug lord myself, and I haven't heard of drug lords attacking non-drug-lords. Plus they're not around me, so I won't even get caught in the crossfire.
Islamic terrorists want to kill everybody who's not Muslim enough in their opinion, which includes other Muslims, as well as infidels who do not submit to Islamic rule. That's a huge difference from terrorist groups that have local aims, even within the US.
In principle it does, otherwise it does not exist as a principle. Look at the Terry Jones guy who was going to burn a koran. He started running into "consequences" like his insurance being pulled and his mortgage being called in. That is stifling free speech. It's not at all different than if someone's insurance was canceled because the insurance company found out they are gay.
Some things are supposed to be protected from consequences, that's why we have laws against discrimination. We should probably have laws against speech-based discrimination too.
You must have a high standard for rationality. Fear is a built-in human response. Acting on fear is no different than acting on hunger. Is it irrational to eat when you're hungry?
it makes me sick seeing how much truly wasted paper comes into my mailbox. sick that there's not a thing I can do to stop it, either.
other countries, yes. you can put a sticker on your mailbox. not in the united states of corporate america. peoples' rights always (now) come after those of corporations.
I never understand all the outrage about email spam when there's absolutely nothing being done about the more environmentally harmful and more costly (to me, time wise) junk mail spam.
Buffett has his own agenda. If he really believes that he is morally obligated to pay more taxes, he would. He can certainly afford it. Simple as that. Since he's not doing that, you should take his statement with a large bucket of salt.
Why not raise taxes on the poor as well? Not a lot, but enough that everybody has a financial stake in the government. I think it's a bad situation when you have a large class of people who pay nothing, receive benefits, and vote.
You enjoy having a short term environmental advantage while losing your manufacturing and technology base?
It seems much more responsible and sustainable to say "every society pollutes, so we're dedicating X% of our land/resources to pollution". Hiding it in another country doesn't make it go away, and sacrificing your wealth and way of life to temporarily delay doesn't make sense.
It's amazing how we've strangled ourselves with regulations and protections. Particularly environmental. Instead of dedicating a large part of one state to being dirty, we say "oh no look how clean we are" while we ship all the dirty jobs somewhere else, having absolutely zero net impact on the world environment since we then turn around and demand access to all those dirty products.
The US corporate income tax rate is AMONG the highest in the world.
And that's just looking at the federal tax rate. When you add state and city income taxes, it gets truly ridiculous. Iowa adds 12% more to the 35% federal rate, for instance.
Some of the largest, most complex and profitable companies manage to avoid paying taxes altogether.
I've seen some examples of that and there's usually a good explanation, like the company overpaid taxes in earlier quarters. What examples do you have?
Perhaps more surprising was this figure buried in the Exxon (XOM) report: $9.3 billion. That's how much Exxon paid in worldwide income taxes in the first quarter of 2008, representing a 49% tax rate on its gross income of $20.2 billion.
Here's another way of looking at it. Who contributes more taxes, individuals or corporations? If you answered "individuals", you are right. So right there you can see that the de facto corporate tax rates are lower than individual tax rates, despite being high in theory.
Maybe the share of tax revenue from the corporate income tax falls when businesses move their operations to other countries.
They didn't even attempt to hide that though. After the US government, the union is the largest shareholder of the new GM. Followed by Canada for some weird reason..
Isn't that a misunderstanding of the bankruptcy process? Unless GM couldn't show that it would be profitable again, ever, then the company would keep running pretty much the same way it has been. Except they would renegotiate benefits and pensions and debts.
If Timken had to declare bankruptcy it would be the same thing. The judge isn't going to say "Sorry Timken, we're melting down your machinery, and salting your factory floors so nothing grows there."
Aluminum is 2.7g/cm^3, steel is close to 8g/cm^3 so the price per volume is much closer. I don't know how much thicker aluminum would have to be for the same effect though.
But a gallon of diesel gas doesn't just spring into existence from a wish to the diesel fairy.
At what point in the process do you stop "inheriting" efficiency? I'm sure the sun isn't 100% efficient either. In fact if you start doing stuff like saying "of the total output of the sun, only X% made it to the Earth to help grow plants that would turn into oil.." then your efficiency is basically 0%.
(Because I know people who hate nuclear love to say stuff like nuclear is less than 1% efficient due to waste etc.)
No difference at all. When you talk about islam as if it is monolithic -- which is precisely what you are doing when you say things like "contemporary muslim societies" and "when you start canceling out factors, the biggest one that remains is 'Muslim'" -- then you paint with the broadest brush possible.
Right but the brush is painting the ideology of Islam, not the nice Muslim guy you know at work. I don't see how you don't see the difference.
Also I acknowledge Islam isn't monolithic but since there's not a name for every single possible variation of Islam, I'm comfortable acknowledging it's a general label and not at all useful when you get more detailed like "this guy Joe is a Muslim, based on what I said, Joe is ____."
Your argument could be applied to pretty much every complex topic. I wonder if you actually apply it to every complex topic, or if Islam holds some special spot that you like to defend? Why? For example, do you refuse to talk about "challenges facing Democrats in the next election" because "Democrats are not monolithic" and "politics is not monolithic" etc?
No, you are saying that muslims treat women badly because they are muslim - in the face of plenty of evidence that the biggest common factors are poverty and poor education.
I'm saying many of the problems women face in Muslim societies are due to the application of Islam to the society's laws, and the application of Islam to the interaction between men and women in that society. I'm not talking about individual Muslims. But I would say that many individual Muslims who have negative views of women base those views on what they learned from Islam. Couldn't say that about one particular person who is Muslim though. It's just statistics.
Again more begging the question - islam gets the blame when muslims do something bad but not the credit when they do something good.
I really don't think I'm begging the question, but I see what you're saying. It goes back to me distinguishing between Muslims and Islam. Islam the ideology can be moved away from by Muslims. When they do that, it generally has positive results. I attribute that positivity towards the lessening influence of traditional Islam and the growing influence of other ideologies like communism. What do you attribute it to? Surely you acknowledge that if Islam is changed because of an external idea, then it's not the same Islam anymore... so I don't see how you can "credit Islam" for moving away from Islam..
How do you measure the efficiency of the electricity generation, and what is the relevance when the source isn't oil? What I mean is do you claim nuclear energy is 1% efficient because 99% of the fuel is wasted? Stuff like that?
Not only that but desalination plants can be built in concert with electricity generation plants like nuclear, gaining efficiency by pre-heating the water. A lot of developing countries need more power in addition to more water.
Because you've been saying "islam" you have not been saying "some" muslims.
But that's because I'm talking about Islam the religion, not "all Muslims". Big difference.
Are you seriously trying to pull the "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" bullshit?
No I'm genuinely wondering, what difference does it make that there are lots of Muslims? Just because there is diversity in the religion means nobody can criticize the religion for fear of offending the people it doesn't apply to?
And there are plenty of non muslim societies that treat their women poorly. If you were seeking truth rather than rationalization you would ask what do all of these groups have in common rather than working backwards from the group of muslim majority countries.
Ah but I don't think that there is one sole cause of societies treating women poorly. Maybe that's our misunderstanding. I'm not saying all Muslims, and only Muslims, treat women badly. That would be silly.
Look at Afghanistan - muslim for centuries. In the 1960s women wore skirts and went to university. Today they don't. Muslim before and muslim after - it should be obvious that other factors were involved.
Hey come on, I'm sure you know the reason. Afghanistan was becoming communist. It's the commies that made major reforms in the urban areas, introduced education for all, and radically reduced the influence of Islam. That's what provoked the rural fundamental Muslims (who were still a big part of the population, let's not kid ourselves) to fight them and seek the aid of Pakistan/USA.
I know you knew that.
To me that's a clear case of two incompatible ideologies, communism and Islam, having a conflict. You and I both see the communist inspired actions as better than the Islam inspired actions.
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"California" does not pay taxes that go to Mississippi. The top 1% of income earners pay 38% of all federal income tax. It just so happens that a lot of that 1% live in nice places like NYC or LA, not rural Mississippi.
It's really arrogant and wrong to get all high and mighty because your *neighbor* pays a lot of taxes. I mean maybe you are one of those people, but the typical Californian is not.
How is per-capita tax meaningful in a progressive tax system? Especially when it comes to starting a new business, which is not what your average capita is doing.
Wait, taxes are usually assessed on business profit, not volume. How is tax per gross product dollar meaningful? Could just mean there are a lot of low/negative/non profit businesses.
Hell, in the USA over the last ~20 years 10x as many terrorist attacks were committed by latinos as muslims. Do you fear puerto ricans?
Can you share your source for that, it sounds interesting.
I think one thing you're overlooking, possibly, which is the target of various terrorist groups. I don't fear drug lord terrorists because I'm not a drug lord myself, and I haven't heard of drug lords attacking non-drug-lords. Plus they're not around me, so I won't even get caught in the crossfire.
Islamic terrorists want to kill everybody who's not Muslim enough in their opinion, which includes other Muslims, as well as infidels who do not submit to Islamic rule. That's a huge difference from terrorist groups that have local aims, even within the US.
In principle it does, otherwise it does not exist as a principle. Look at the Terry Jones guy who was going to burn a koran. He started running into "consequences" like his insurance being pulled and his mortgage being called in. That is stifling free speech. It's not at all different than if someone's insurance was canceled because the insurance company found out they are gay.
Some things are supposed to be protected from consequences, that's why we have laws against discrimination. We should probably have laws against speech-based discrimination too.
No - fear is not rational.
You must have a high standard for rationality. Fear is a built-in human response. Acting on fear is no different than acting on hunger. Is it irrational to eat when you're hungry?
it makes me sick seeing how much truly wasted paper comes into my mailbox. sick that there's not a thing I can do to stop it, either.
other countries, yes. you can put a sticker on your mailbox. not in the united states of corporate america. peoples' rights always (now) come after those of corporations.
I never understand all the outrage about email spam when there's absolutely nothing being done about the more environmentally harmful and more costly (to me, time wise) junk mail spam.
I wonder if sometimes that's not good enough. Certainly it's possible to owe more property tax than what you make in income.
Buffett has his own agenda. If he really believes that he is morally obligated to pay more taxes, he would. He can certainly afford it. Simple as that. Since he's not doing that, you should take his statement with a large bucket of salt.
They paid income tax while accumulating that wealth.
Or they made/improved the assets themselves, and will pay taxes when they sell them to get actual cash.
You should be thanking them for helping make the nation great, not claiming they somehow owe you something.
Why not raise taxes on the poor as well? Not a lot, but enough that everybody has a financial stake in the government. I think it's a bad situation when you have a large class of people who pay nothing, receive benefits, and vote.
You enjoy having a short term environmental advantage while losing your manufacturing and technology base?
It seems much more responsible and sustainable to say "every society pollutes, so we're dedicating X% of our land/resources to pollution". Hiding it in another country doesn't make it go away, and sacrificing your wealth and way of life to temporarily delay doesn't make sense.
It's amazing how we've strangled ourselves with regulations and protections. Particularly environmental. Instead of dedicating a large part of one state to being dirty, we say "oh no look how clean we are" while we ship all the dirty jobs somewhere else, having absolutely zero net impact on the world environment since we then turn around and demand access to all those dirty products.
The US corporate income tax rate is AMONG the highest in the world.
And that's just looking at the federal tax rate. When you add state and city income taxes, it gets truly ridiculous. Iowa adds 12% more to the 35% federal rate, for instance.
Some of the largest, most complex and profitable companies manage to avoid paying taxes altogether.
I've seen some examples of that and there's usually a good explanation, like the company overpaid taxes in earlier quarters. What examples do you have?
Look at what Exxon, a complex and profitable company, pays:
Perhaps more surprising was this figure buried in the Exxon (XOM) report: $9.3 billion. That's how much Exxon paid in worldwide income taxes in the first quarter of 2008, representing a 49% tax rate on its gross income of $20.2 billion.
Here's another way of looking at it. Who contributes more taxes, individuals or corporations? If you answered "individuals", you are right. So right there you can see that the de facto corporate tax rates are lower than individual tax rates, despite being high in theory.
Maybe the share of tax revenue from the corporate income tax falls when businesses move their operations to other countries.
What does a housing association do in England?
I know that sounds like the setup for a joke but I'm really asking.
They didn't even attempt to hide that though. After the US government, the union is the largest shareholder of the new GM. Followed by Canada for some weird reason..
Isn't that a misunderstanding of the bankruptcy process? Unless GM couldn't show that it would be profitable again, ever, then the company would keep running pretty much the same way it has been. Except they would renegotiate benefits and pensions and debts.
If Timken had to declare bankruptcy it would be the same thing. The judge isn't going to say "Sorry Timken, we're melting down your machinery, and salting your factory floors so nothing grows there."
Aluminum is 2.7g/cm^3, steel is close to 8g/cm^3 so the price per volume is much closer. I don't know how much thicker aluminum would have to be for the same effect though.
Use coal then. I just think nuclear is more environmentally friendly.
If we're proactive about it, we could offer them free prepackaged nuclear desalination devices but require them to be stationed on US army bases.
But a gallon of diesel gas doesn't just spring into existence from a wish to the diesel fairy.
At what point in the process do you stop "inheriting" efficiency? I'm sure the sun isn't 100% efficient either. In fact if you start doing stuff like saying "of the total output of the sun, only X% made it to the Earth to help grow plants that would turn into oil.." then your efficiency is basically 0%.
(Because I know people who hate nuclear love to say stuff like nuclear is less than 1% efficient due to waste etc.)
No difference at all. When you talk about islam as if it is monolithic -- which is precisely what you are doing when you say things like "contemporary muslim societies" and "when you start canceling out factors, the biggest one that remains is 'Muslim'" -- then you paint with the broadest brush possible.
Right but the brush is painting the ideology of Islam, not the nice Muslim guy you know at work. I don't see how you don't see the difference.
Also I acknowledge Islam isn't monolithic but since there's not a name for every single possible variation of Islam, I'm comfortable acknowledging it's a general label and not at all useful when you get more detailed like "this guy Joe is a Muslim, based on what I said, Joe is ____."
Your argument could be applied to pretty much every complex topic. I wonder if you actually apply it to every complex topic, or if Islam holds some special spot that you like to defend? Why? For example, do you refuse to talk about "challenges facing Democrats in the next election" because "Democrats are not monolithic" and "politics is not monolithic" etc?
No, you are saying that muslims treat women badly because they are muslim - in the face of plenty of evidence that the biggest common factors are poverty and poor education.
I'm saying many of the problems women face in Muslim societies are due to the application of Islam to the society's laws, and the application of Islam to the interaction between men and women in that society. I'm not talking about individual Muslims. But I would say that many individual Muslims who have negative views of women base those views on what they learned from Islam. Couldn't say that about one particular person who is Muslim though. It's just statistics.
Again more begging the question - islam gets the blame when muslims do something bad but not the credit when they do something good.
I really don't think I'm begging the question, but I see what you're saying. It goes back to me distinguishing between Muslims and Islam. Islam the ideology can be moved away from by Muslims. When they do that, it generally has positive results. I attribute that positivity towards the lessening influence of traditional Islam and the growing influence of other ideologies like communism. What do you attribute it to? Surely you acknowledge that if Islam is changed because of an external idea, then it's not the same Islam anymore... so I don't see how you can "credit Islam" for moving away from Islam..
How do you measure the efficiency of the electricity generation, and what is the relevance when the source isn't oil? What I mean is do you claim nuclear energy is 1% efficient because 99% of the fuel is wasted? Stuff like that?
Not only that but desalination plants can be built in concert with electricity generation plants like nuclear, gaining efficiency by pre-heating the water. A lot of developing countries need more power in addition to more water.
Addressed in the other reply, hopefully.
Because you've been saying "islam" you have not been saying "some" muslims.
But that's because I'm talking about Islam the religion, not "all Muslims". Big difference.
Are you seriously trying to pull the "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" bullshit?
No I'm genuinely wondering, what difference does it make that there are lots of Muslims? Just because there is diversity in the religion means nobody can criticize the religion for fear of offending the people it doesn't apply to?
And there are plenty of non muslim societies that treat their women poorly. If you were seeking truth rather than rationalization you would ask what do all of these groups have in common rather than working backwards from the group of muslim majority countries.
Ah but I don't think that there is one sole cause of societies treating women poorly. Maybe that's our misunderstanding. I'm not saying all Muslims, and only Muslims, treat women badly. That would be silly.
Look at Afghanistan - muslim for centuries. In the 1960s women wore skirts and went to university. Today they don't. Muslim before and muslim after - it should be obvious that other factors were involved.
Hey come on, I'm sure you know the reason. Afghanistan was becoming communist. It's the commies that made major reforms in the urban areas, introduced education for all, and radically reduced the influence of Islam. That's what provoked the rural fundamental Muslims (who were still a big part of the population, let's not kid ourselves) to fight them and seek the aid of Pakistan/USA.
I know you knew that.
To me that's a clear case of two incompatible ideologies, communism and Islam, having a conflict. You and I both see the communist inspired actions as better than the Islam inspired actions.