How about your typical state sales tax? I don't think that's progressive or regressive: everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income.
It can be considered regressive in the sense that poor people spend a greater fraction of their earnings, so the amount they pay in sales tax is a greater fraction of their earnings (even though the tax rate is the same).
That's what the "prebate" in national sales tax proposals attempt to deal with. It makes the tax progressive at the very low income end, close to the poverty level (in fact, below the poverty level, you'd get money back). Unfortunately, it rapidly becomes flat as income rises above the poverty level. If a consumption tax is implemented as a personal consumption tax (tax income - savings = consumption once a year according to a tax table), that doesn't have to be true - the rate can continue to rise with rising consumption, since the progressivity is built into the tax table.
The buy/borrow loophole is pretty much built into any tax based on income (due to the realization requirement on cap gains and the fact that borrowed money is not considered income). Good luck on closing it without changing the tax base from income to something else. And a wealth tax would probably be counterproductive as rich people would flee, except for taxing property which people can't take with them.
Besides, I already pointed out in my original comment how a consumption tax can be just as progressive as an income tax. Why do you keep insisting that it has to be regressive? Is it because the tax isn't imposed preemptively, before people decide to spend? People aren't going to hoard their money forever - eventually the heirs will squander it, as happens to all fortunes eventually, and then it will get taxed at a high rate (and the people squandering it don't care about the tax, which makes collecting tax a lot easier than if it was imposed on the people originally earning the money).
And in the meantime the payroll tax, which is literally a regressive tax, and is a bigger burden to low- and middle-income people than the income tax, continues and no one cares about it. If you're concerned with loopholes, start with that one.
Lifestyle is determined by consumption, not wealth or income. The tax is paid when the money is spent, at a much higher rate than the rich pay now (which is as low as zero - see buy/borrow/die). The rich already have the no-limit tax shelter under the current tax system, and unlike the consumption tax, it allows them to spend as much as they want.
1) If a consumption tax is implemented as a personal expenditure tax, instead of a sales tax or VAT, it can be just as progressive as the current income tax. Instead of computing income for the year and looking up the tax in a table, compute income - savings = consumption for the year instead. The progressivity is built into the tax table.
2) Don't overlook that for most people, the biggest tax burden is not the income tax, but the payroll tax, which is literally regressive (since it taxes every dollar of income at a flat rate up to a certain threshold, where the SS part of the tax goes to zero, so the rate is much lower for high incomes). Basically it has a high income cutoff rather than a low income cutoff, like the income tax. It also generally doesn't touch investment income, only wages. Even a "flat" consumption tax (with a prebate to cancel the tax for spending below the poverty level) together with eliminating the payroll tax, would probably be more progressive than the current tax system.
If old people don't die, and young people keep making babies,
People in developed countries generally don't aspire to have as many children as they can before their biological clock runs out. They decide they want to have X children, for some fixed X, and stop after that. If people live longer, it probably means they'll have the same number of children, but over a longer time, which would reduce population growth. They might even put it off indefinitely (since their biological clock isn't ticking anymore) which would reduce it even more.
He has a valid point, to some extent. On the other hand, that's just how the media works - it's also more likely to report deaths by plane crashes, or terrorism, or mass shootings, because that's what people want to read about. Also, those other things have a long history of causing only a small relative number of deaths, while autonomous vehicles are new, and deserve some higher level of scrutiny in the early years.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
It's still available from the assistive technologies page. You have to vouch that you use assistive technologies, but there's no proof required, and under the circumstances there's no reason to feel guilty (but using the magnifier for a few seconds once a year technically qualifies if that's a problem).
There is an undocumented 20-character limit on password length. Any longer password meeting all stated requirements is rejected (repeating only the stated requirements, not the actual reason). Although since the password has to be changed every 180 days, that's probably not enough time to crack it, if all printable characters are used (one can use a strong random username to add security, though). I'd rather be allowed to use an arbitrarily long password and not have to change it at all.
Although the NALC objected strenuously to one provision—requiring injured postal employees to wait three days before beginning Continuation of Pay benefits—the union played a crucial role in developing many of its most important provisions.
(Note that that one provision is something no one remembers or cares about today.)
The Constitution had to explicitly allow the government to deliver mail since otherwise the monopoly would have been illegal. However, there is no requirement for it either (unlike the original Articles of Confederation which explicitly gave the government a monopoly on mail delivery) so the government is free to get out of the mail delivery business if it chooses to, without amending the Constitution. Hence the fact that no privatization attempt has ever included a proposal to amend the Constitution, since it's unnecessary. If there actually was such a requirement, postal unions wouldn't waste time opposing privatization attempts - they'd simply ignore them, knowing they'd be struck down.
The USPS's pension funding requirement is 50 years, not 75 - see here (where an actual link to the legislation is provided, so you can check for yourself). The exaggeration originated with the postal unions, probably the NALC. Of course, you could say "So what?" if you don't think it's disturbing that they would abuse your blind trust like that, considering you believe they deserve to have monopoly powers.
There are perfectly legal ways for the rich to pay zero taxes. Only ordinary working stiffs have to break the law by either not reporting income or cheating on deductions. Your tax system at work.
In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.
When food is scarce, being fat is a status symbol. Same principle applies to smoking, since tobacco costs money (even ignoring the health damage). They are no longer status symbols in the US, but still are in poorer countries, so in those countries the well-off are more likely to be fat and smoke.
No, it's that with robot cars, those options exist to improve safety, if people want to use them, and with human cars they don't exist at all. Without any of the communication between cars and pedestrians/animals, safety and speed would still be improved, just not by as much. Given that cars are currently required to have lights/horns/license plates, it's likely that robot cars would be required to communicate as well.
Assuming AI image recognition works as well as a human, which it doesn't.
The vehicles tell each other explicitly where they are. They don't need AI to avoid colliding with each other (as in this particular accident). They only need AI to deal with the rest of the environment (and the environment the cars spend most of their time on will be structured to be easy to deal with). Also, if they wanted, pedestrians could carry beacons saying basically "I'm a person, don't hit me" in case the AI isn't reliable enough, or if certain children have a habit of running into the road too fast for vehicles to avoid hitting them (just due to time required to change speed/direction, not processing time). In the latter case, the "network" could keep track of the behavior of those particular people, so as to give them a wide berth. That degree of safety is way beyond what's possible with human drivers.
At 55 mph, it takes roughly 1/1000th of a second to travel an inch. With radio communication and the speed of computer hardware, that's a long time. There wouldn't be any perceptible lag, unlike with human drivers, who can take seconds to move after the light turns green.
It should be kept in mind that if both vehicles were autonomous, they could have automatically negotiated what to do before either moved an inch, and this type of incident would never happen.
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Sorry, I meant "personal expenditure tax", not "personal consumption tax".
How about your typical state sales tax? I don't think that's progressive or regressive: everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income.
It can be considered regressive in the sense that poor people spend a greater fraction of their earnings, so the amount they pay in sales tax is a greater fraction of their earnings (even though the tax rate is the same).
That's what the "prebate" in national sales tax proposals attempt to deal with. It makes the tax progressive at the very low income end, close to the poverty level (in fact, below the poverty level, you'd get money back). Unfortunately, it rapidly becomes flat as income rises above the poverty level. If a consumption tax is implemented as a personal consumption tax (tax income - savings = consumption once a year according to a tax table), that doesn't have to be true - the rate can continue to rise with rising consumption, since the progressivity is built into the tax table.
The buy/borrow loophole is pretty much built into any tax based on income (due to the realization requirement on cap gains and the fact that borrowed money is not considered income). Good luck on closing it without changing the tax base from income to something else. And a wealth tax would probably be counterproductive as rich people would flee, except for taxing property which people can't take with them.
Besides, I already pointed out in my original comment how a consumption tax can be just as progressive as an income tax. Why do you keep insisting that it has to be regressive? Is it because the tax isn't imposed preemptively, before people decide to spend? People aren't going to hoard their money forever - eventually the heirs will squander it, as happens to all fortunes eventually, and then it will get taxed at a high rate (and the people squandering it don't care about the tax, which makes collecting tax a lot easier than if it was imposed on the people originally earning the money).
And in the meantime the payroll tax, which is literally a regressive tax, and is a bigger burden to low- and middle-income people than the income tax, continues and no one cares about it. If you're concerned with loopholes, start with that one.
Lifestyle is determined by consumption, not wealth or income. The tax is paid when the money is spent, at a much higher rate than the rich pay now (which is as low as zero - see buy/borrow/die). The rich already have the no-limit tax shelter under the current tax system, and unlike the consumption tax, it allows them to spend as much as they want.
1) If a consumption tax is implemented as a personal expenditure tax, instead of a sales tax or VAT, it can be just as progressive as the current income tax. Instead of computing income for the year and looking up the tax in a table, compute income - savings = consumption for the year instead. The progressivity is built into the tax table.
2) Don't overlook that for most people, the biggest tax burden is not the income tax, but the payroll tax, which is literally regressive (since it taxes every dollar of income at a flat rate up to a certain threshold, where the SS part of the tax goes to zero, so the rate is much lower for high incomes). Basically it has a high income cutoff rather than a low income cutoff, like the income tax. It also generally doesn't touch investment income, only wages. Even a "flat" consumption tax (with a prebate to cancel the tax for spending below the poverty level) together with eliminating the payroll tax, would probably be more progressive than the current tax system.
Unlike with games like Chess (best moves can be precisely calculated)
True in theory, but in practice the search space is too big.
I wonder how well this compresses compared with FLIF, which actually is lossless?
If old people don't die, and young people keep making babies,
People in developed countries generally don't aspire to have as many children as they can before their biological clock runs out. They decide they want to have X children, for some fixed X, and stop after that. If people live longer, it probably means they'll have the same number of children, but over a longer time, which would reduce population growth. They might even put it off indefinitely (since their biological clock isn't ticking anymore) which would reduce it even more.
Optical scan ballots are a bit better because the voter fills in the ballot himself, so doesn't need to verify it.
That's the thing, Hillary ALREADY conceded. It's done and on the books.
In 2000 Gore conceded, then retracted his concession, then conceded again. It's not legally binding.
He has a valid point, to some extent. On the other hand, that's just how the media works - it's also more likely to report deaths by plane crashes, or terrorism, or mass shootings, because that's what people want to read about. Also, those other things have a long history of causing only a small relative number of deaths, while autonomous vehicles are new, and deserve some higher level of scrutiny in the early years.
Maybe those old vibrating belt weight loss machines would work for this, though not as much fun.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
It's still available from the assistive technologies page. You have to vouch that you use assistive technologies, but there's no proof required, and under the circumstances there's no reason to feel guilty (but using the magnifier for a few seconds once a year technically qualifies if that's a problem).
Oh, and you have to give strong random answers to the required "security" questions too, otherwise that's a workaround.
There is an undocumented 20-character limit on password length. Any longer password meeting all stated requirements is rejected (repeating only the stated requirements, not the actual reason). Although since the password has to be changed every 180 days, that's probably not enough time to crack it, if all printable characters are used (one can use a strong random username to add security, though). I'd rather be allowed to use an arbitrarily long password and not have to change it at all.
Formerly on the NALC website (and saved by the Wayback Machine:
Although the NALC objected strenuously to one provision—requiring injured postal employees to wait three days before beginning Continuation of Pay benefits—the union played a crucial role in developing many of its most important provisions.
(Note that that one provision is something no one remembers or cares about today.)
The Constitution had to explicitly allow the government to deliver mail since otherwise the monopoly would have been illegal. However, there is no requirement for it either (unlike the original Articles of Confederation which explicitly gave the government a monopoly on mail delivery) so the government is free to get out of the mail delivery business if it chooses to, without amending the Constitution. Hence the fact that no privatization attempt has ever included a proposal to amend the Constitution, since it's unnecessary. If there actually was such a requirement, postal unions wouldn't waste time opposing privatization attempts - they'd simply ignore them, knowing they'd be struck down.
The USPS's pension funding requirement is 50 years, not 75 - see here (where an actual link to the legislation is provided, so you can check for yourself). The exaggeration originated with the postal unions, probably the NALC. Of course, you could say "So what?" if you don't think it's disturbing that they would abuse your blind trust like that, considering you believe they deserve to have monopoly powers.
There are perfectly legal ways for the rich to pay zero taxes. Only ordinary working stiffs have to break the law by either not reporting income or cheating on deductions. Your tax system at work.
In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.
When food is scarce, being fat is a status symbol. Same principle applies to smoking, since tobacco costs money (even ignoring the health damage). They are no longer status symbols in the US, but still are in poorer countries, so in those countries the well-off are more likely to be fat and smoke.
Better to be a bit chubby than die of starvation which in some parts of the world, people used to do.
Last I checked, some still do. That food's not distributed evenly.
No, it's that with robot cars, those options exist to improve safety, if people want to use them, and with human cars they don't exist at all. Without any of the communication between cars and pedestrians/animals, safety and speed would still be improved, just not by as much. Given that cars are currently required to have lights/horns/license plates, it's likely that robot cars would be required to communicate as well.
Assuming AI image recognition works as well as a human, which it doesn't.
The vehicles tell each other explicitly where they are. They don't need AI to avoid colliding with each other (as in this particular accident). They only need AI to deal with the rest of the environment (and the environment the cars spend most of their time on will be structured to be easy to deal with). Also, if they wanted, pedestrians could carry beacons saying basically "I'm a person, don't hit me" in case the AI isn't reliable enough, or if certain children have a habit of running into the road too fast for vehicles to avoid hitting them (just due to time required to change speed/direction, not processing time). In the latter case, the "network" could keep track of the behavior of those particular people, so as to give them a wide berth. That degree of safety is way beyond what's possible with human drivers.
At 55 mph, it takes roughly 1/1000th of a second to travel an inch. With radio communication and the speed of computer hardware, that's a long time. There wouldn't be any perceptible lag, unlike with human drivers, who can take seconds to move after the light turns green.
It should be kept in mind that if both vehicles were autonomous, they could have automatically negotiated what to do before either moved an inch, and this type of incident would never happen.
They are accountable to to the people
In other words, you can just walk away from a company, but with the government you need to get the majority's permission.