I'm just curious, why are Epi Pens not already generic?
Then observe the value of competition... The market works, if you let it.
There is already a generic epinephrine injector that's been around for about 13 years called Adrenaclick. I bought mine from Walmart for about $160, I think. There's also the Auvi-Q since 2012. https://www.drugs.com/history/...
BlueFoxLucid has a good point Although one in 20 may seem like a stretch for the whole country, but I would not be surprised that some localities have that many. In any case, I'm sure that the USA has a significant number of people who don't have a government ID and cannot easily get one. And the point is that in a country where we keep having local elections decided with 49%-51% of the vote or even closer, the number of people who could not vote because a government ID would be required is more than enough to decide that election.
And there's that a huge number of women, especially older ones, in the USA have never had a job or owned a car and thus don't need a government ID. Something like 40% of females don't have a job, and a large number have never held a job, especially among early baby boomers.
As for lost ID, I once got robbed when I was young and unemployed. I happened to have my draft card, birth certificate, driver's license, and everything else on me, and it all got stolen. I had to get money from a friend so I could go back to my hometown to get my birth certificate, which was required at that place and time. To get a replacement at the state archives required a drivers license, and to get a replacement DL required, guess what? It took days to get everything restored, and many people would have given up. I was lucky to not have a job and to have available parents who could fund me.
You know who else has a huge problem with proving their identities? Women who have been married, divorced and remarried. Those records are required for restoring identity and in most places can only be found in the court of the locality that granted the marriage and divorce. In these modern times, that may require traveling to multiple states. And if the local courthouse had lost the records, or burnt down, you basically have to hire a lawyer to intervene for you.
Also, it's a huge pain for children born abroad of a Dad who was in the Army and married a foreigner. Or didn't marry her but just got her back to the USA somehow with the kid.
Five bucks says the Supreme Court will rule that bots, like corporations, are people.
The supreme did not rule that corporations are people. What they said was that corporations have the same rights as other organizations, so if the law allows unions, charities, 501c and other such groups to fund or engage in issue advocacy, then corporations have the same rights to do so.
Anyway, I would not take your bet because I think you predict correctly. I can see how scotus might find a way to rule that although bots are not people, they are acting as agents for people and rule that bots have free speech rights, which includes the right to tell lies about their identity.
The phrase 'The article did not bode well' *should* mean something like 'The article posed an existential threat' for something (like libraries). Or 'The article portended doom' or 'The article foretold disaster'
I think the writer wanted to say 'The article did not sit well'
Sorry about the word-nazism, but this stuff really grates on me.
You word-Nazism is welcome in a thread regarding the future of libraries. In the words of Julia Child, "never apologize" http://www.latimes.com/resizer...
Really? An hour long podcast? If you don't want to install iTunes, or Spotify, use the Pocket Casts link and download the.mp3 from their website. I listened to the five minutes of seems to be an advertisement for his company and gave up.
Unless I'm reading the ipcc report wrong, nuclear's carbon emissions are not huge amounts more than solar, wind, and geothermal. Nuclear is comparable to wind and much less than solar. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess... page 1335 If I am mistaken, show me the actual numbers.
Page 1335. Lifecycle emissions. Depending on who you ask and what measurement you use, Nuclear is at best about the same as Wind, but it depends a lot on where it is and where the fuel comes from and where the waste ends up.
First of all, good link, thanks
Page 1335 of the document has the values for many modes of generation.
I'm thinking that the median value for all these would be the most appropriate number to quote. Nuclear: 12 gCO2eq / kWh Note that this is about the same as wind, and is significantly less than solar, geothermal, and hydropower.
Socrates (469–399 B.C.) QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
CAPTCHA intact
I like that quote; used to have a poster with that quote in my classroom supply closet. It had been left by a previous instructor, but I kept it because it was fun. However, it's spurious and was actually written in 1907 by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, and not by an actual old person.
Isn't it weird when the person accusing the young generation of being failures is a member of that generation? https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
The article and embedded links talk about how bad Excel's algorithm is, but never states the Excel version that Canada's IRCC uses. In this case it matters because recent versions of Excel are OK.
Excel versions before Excel 2010 use an implementation of the Wichman-Hill that provides not-so-good pseudorandom numbers. https://support.microsoft.com/...
You make $100, the government first takes 7.5% (really 15%) FICA tax, then an additional 25% income tax. You use some of that money to buy a gallon gas for $3, the government takes another 13%. That's 45.5% total tax.
Some time ago I took the trouble to add up all my taxes paid during one bad year and discovered that the dollar amount of taxes divided by my before taxes wages (good wages for IT, not great) came to about 34%. So your rough estimate is a good example, but you can't add percents of varying quantities the way you did. The different taxes have to pro-rated before adding.
You don't spend all your money on gasoline, so you have to pro-rate that tax. If you spent $5 on gasoline (5% of your earnings), then you would add 5% of the gas taxes 13%, so you would only add.65% to the IRS+FICA 32.5% = 33.15%
Similarly, the FICA tax is against your entire earned income, but only the first $128,400, so higher income people would have to prorate their actual FICA paid to their total earnings.. There's no cap on the Medicare part.
However, as you said, the FICA is really double because your employer is on the hook for the same amount you pay, and it's the full 15% for the self-employed such as yourself (ouch).
The FICA tax does not apply to investment income. Investment income becomes ever increasingly more significant later in life for those who have been paying attention, so the FICA part of your taxes can be a good bit less than 7/15% your total income. Wall street types can have nice incomes and pay zero FICA. The same for retirees, although their income may not be so nice.
The Federal IRS tax is on adjusted gross income after deductions, and it has different rates on the brackets, so the brackets contribution have to be prorated and added in. Suppose I make $140,000 but it's $105,000 after deductions. I'm in the 28% bracket, but the tax on the first 100K is only 20% so that has to be prorated. So the actual percent for IRS is about 15%
Lower income people have relatively large deductions as you noted, so much of their income is untaxed - so again the IRS 20% or more has to be prorated down to the actual percent, which may even be negative for people who get earned income credit. For me, my
Also, there's sales tax on purchases (5-8% of purchases, not income), automobile registration, and property taxes against the value of the item. My state wants 6% for income taxes, but with different deductions than the IRS
As I say, your point is a good one, it's just that your math ain't done right.
It's already happening. Boomers say the younger generations are irresponsible and lazy and that's why they don't have a golden final salary pension scheme and half million pound house.
I am an older baby boomer, and I don't know any baby boomer that honestly believes "the younger generations are irresponsible and lazy ". I'm sure there's some out there, but I'm sure there's morons in every generation. I just don't know any.
The people who are saying these things are almost all younger than we boomers, and/or are liars hoping to steal from whoever. What the boomers I know believe is that a fundamentally dishonest media makes up all kinds of shit about people to drive sales. They're making up shit about the millennials, and they're making up shit about baby boomers. Pick any demographic that you're a part of, and consider the BS that you're being blamed for that you know isn't true. It's the same with the demographic that you're not part of.
Do you find it confusing when you see a millennial on the news repeating the "millennials are lazy, irresponsible, make bad choices" story? I don't. I'm not at all confused when I see a liar; I just see a liar.
How is the stock market different from the betting/gambling market.
When you buy stock, you are buying part ownership of the company. The value of the stock may go down and you'll lose money, but you still own a piece of the company as long as it exists. If the company later becomes successful then you may return to profitability. Of course you can lose all your money in stocks if the company has large debts and bankrupts, or is run by criminals, but that's a rare event for people who do their research.
Secondly, as a part owner you may get a part share (dividends) from the company's profits. Many companies may continue to pay dividends even when stock prices have gone down. For example, Coca-Cola has been paying dividends for over 50 years. If you had bought Coca-Cola 50 years ago, the dividends would have given you all your money back with no regard to stock price. There's much more to the story, but that's the short answer.
When you gamble and lose that money is gone, and even if you win, that's a one-time win. There's no continuing payments (except some lottery payoffs).
"We need to spy on our users and sell their data to make money with a free application today. We'll close down 'messenger' and open 'squirel' which is pretty much the same thing but with a EULA that has language embedded in it somewhere which will let us collect your data."
It's not hidden, it's like the first thing they tell you in the "Privacy Policy", and yes those are the ironic quotes. https://policies.oath.com/us/e... I copied some of it below. Right up front you'll see that they read your email content. Your agree that anything you post or upload, including voice remains your property and you grant Oath and oath users a license to do whatever they want with it. So it sounds like their policy is like almost everyone else's policy.
Here's come copy and paste of a portion so you can get a feel for it.
Information Collection and Use - General
We may collect and combine information when you interact with Oath Services including: Information You Provide to Us. We may collect the information that you provide to us, such as: When you create an account with an Oath Service or brand. (Please note, when you use our Services, we may recognize you or your devices even if you are not signed in to our Services.) Oath may use device IDs, cookies, and other signals, including information obtained from third parties, to associate accounts and/or devices with you.
When you use our Services to communicate with others or post, upload or store content (such as comments, photos, voice inputs, videos, emails, messaging services and attachments). Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services. When you otherwise use our Services, such as title queries, watch history, page views, search queries, view the content we make available or install any Oath software such as plugins.
When you sign up for paid Services, use Services that require your financial information or complete transactions with us or our business partners, we may collect your payment and billing information. Device Information. We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use. Location Information. We collect location information from a variety of sources. You can learn more about and manage your location permissions on our Locations page and by visiting the location settings tool on your devices.
Information from Cookies and Other Technologies.
We collect information when you access content, advertising, sites, interactive widgets, applications, and other products (both on and off of our Services) where Oath’s data collection technologies (such as web beacons, development tools, cookies and other technologies, etc.) are present. These data collection technologies allow us to understand your activity on and off our Services and to collect and store information when you interact with Services we offer to partners.
This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
"It is perfectly OK to sell the dangerous products that are sold to the public everyday, but they are required to carry warnings."
What? Seriously what? You think that's ok? To sell dangerously defective products so long as you stick a warning in the small print?
Idiot.
I didn't say "OK to sell dangerously defective products", I said "OK to sell the dangerous products ". It's not enough to learn how to read. You need to practice understanding what you read. It's really hard to do, and you'll need help.
Gasoline is an example of a commonly sold and dangerous product. Also included are just about any insecticide or weed-killer. Charcoal comes to mind as well.
I may be an idiot, but my previous post was not a confirming example.
Why do so many people think that basic consumer protection is some sort of onerous burden?
Because it is. Every regulation tells us what we can't do or what we have to do in order to do business. When you add them up, they're onerous and they prevent people from getting what they want.
Adults aren't little children. We're capable of making decisions based on what the risks are. If you're worried about cheap Chinese products on Amazon, then there is a simple solution, pay attention to the listed Manufacturer and don't buy one! Why the need to use force to prevent the other 250,000 people who want to from buying one?
We're capable of making decisions based on what the risks are.
And that's wrong. We can only make decisions based on the information that we have. If we don't have the data regarding risks, then we don't know what the risks are, then we cannot make a decision based on the risks.
The issue here isn't that the board caught fire, but rather that in this case Amazon knew they caught fire, but did not provide the information to the buyer. From the embedded link: "Fox's case was filled with testimony and evidence illustrating that Amazon execs were concerned about the hoverboards sold on its site. One executive deposed in the case said he'd removed a hoverboard from his house before Christmas after hearing about "potential issues."
I have to agree with the plaintiff. If a store sells a product that they know is defective or dangerous, then they are obligated to clearly warn the buyer, and if possible, warn the previous purchasers. It is perfectly OK to sell the dangerous products that are sold to the public everyday, but they are required to carry warnings.
"Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings."
The GPS knows where the car is, and just about every mapping software knows what kind of road you're on. So how hard would it be to have the Tesla's computer not even turn on the autopilot if they're not on a road with center divider and clear lane markings? Or better yet, the autopilot only runs on roads that have been certified "not screwed up".
In this case he was on Laguna Canyon Road, which has a median in some places and a middle "suicide lane" in others, and varies from one to two lanes from place to place.
Henry Ford figured out that when he paid his workers more than the prevailing wage at the time, it actually increased his own wealth even more because suddenly his workers could afford to buy his cars.
That's not true,and there's no way to make that work mathematically. He raised wages because his workers kept quitting.
And worse of all, they were quitting and then going to work for his competitors. It sucks to not be a monopoly, because your workers will do that everytime. But everything that Wall street has been doing for the last few of decades is to bring about monopolies of ownership of everything.
Now Google has the extermination of a species in on its belt. Lets see what the upgrade to next in the physical space.
My guess is that in the case of the Google and cats story, after those owls are exterminated, the land will no longer contain a protected species and can be turned into a Google office tower or a space for bicycle racks.
If businesses and real estate can be owned indefinitely, and passed down to heirs forever, why can't IP be passed down as well for infinity?
You have not understood the difference between tangible assets and intangible assets. Please read up on this and come back.
(waiting)
Are you back now? Good. Now that you are a bit more informed you can see that if you take a tangible asset from someone, they no longer have it. We call this stealing. This is universally understood as bad in the general case. Also, if you try to steal something from me I can protect myself from theft and if you get hurt while trying to steal, it I have not attacked you, I have acted in self-defense, within reasonable limits. The laws around this is easy to understand, even for children.
As for intangible assets, like copyrighted work, there is nothing inherent in it that grants you these rights. If someone uses your work, you still have access to it. It is not gone. Also, it is harder to detect someone unlawfully using it, etc. This made it hard for content creators back then, before the copyright. Essentially, you wrote a piece of music and I played it and got money for it without compensating you. Many musicians and artists back in the day had patrons paying your upkeep to be able to enjoy your music. It was hard to be an artist. And the incentive to create was low. This is bad. We want creation of new works.
So, society (that is we people) decided to band together to protect the poor artists. We said "let us help with making sure that only YOU get to use your work". But we also recognized that every work has been influenced by other work that has come before. So if we deny future artists this back catalog, again we would stifle creation.
So, we said, "in return for helping you make sure that only you get to use your work, we want this protection to be time-limited. After a number of years, where only you may profit from it, it becomes public domain. And then everyone can use it to create new and wonderful things."
I like this spirit of copyright. I want content creators to be able to make a living. The earnings they make during this time can be handed down to their heirs if they want. But I also want things to spread and be used, modified and changed when the time is right.
So let's get back to your totally inappropriate analogy. A business or real estate requires further investment just to keep existing. You cannot sit on your ass and expect money to roll in automagically. They are tangible assets. If you don't renovate your real estate it eventually crumbles and fall down. In this case it might even be confiscated by the local government in most places since it is neglected/abandoned and a public danger. A business not attended will eventually go bankrupt (if they have any bills needed to be paid) or just not generate any money (and thus, those heirs wont get a dime).
Do you understand why copyright is not the same as property rights now? Good. There are other intangible assets too (trademarks and patents for example). They work in other ways than copyright and should not be confused with each others.
Now that you know much more, cut the shit with "the ruling class vs the working class". I definitely belong to the latter, but I want reasonable copyright. 144 years is NOT reasonable. No living person, nor their children, and most likely their grand-children, will ever see something created fall into the public domain and thus see derivative works created from it. If this is not stagnating the rate of creativity, I don't know what is.
Some might say: "so what, there are enough of creativity anyway". Perhaps, but consider something like the comic "Fables" by Bill Willingham. It is a wonderful modern take on how the fables of yesterday (Snow White, Big bad wolf, Cinderella, Pinocchio, etc) live today. All those are in the public domain which means that Willingham could use them. Heck, Disney have started their empire on the shoulder
Can anyone explain how arbitration clauses work? How can a company limit an employee's rights to proceed legally against a company in case of criminal conduct? There are rules for arbitration clauses and a federal law. There are some rights that just cannot be signed away, and matters involving serious crimes (such as assault) in one of them.
I suspect that when Uber's lawyers took a look at the situation, they knew the courts would not support mandatory arbitration for victims of rape and assault, so
That doesn't seem to make sense?
This isn't about employees. It is some passengers who have been assaulted and/or raped that think criminal actions by Uber drivers should not be restricted to mandatory arbitration.
A company can put anything into a contract, but courts shoot down unenforceable or unconscionable clauses all the time. I suspect that when Uber's lawyers realized that trying to enforce mandatory arbitration for assault would get shot down by the courts, and rather than get shot down, and get very bad press, they "generously" gave in on sexual harassment and assault.
How in the hell is mandatory arbitration for customers legal? That makes zero sense. For any business.
It's legal because you signed the contract. Arbitration has been around for a long time. The original idea was to resolve disputes between businesses outside of the court system. It was a pretty good idea. As you know, lawyers will never settle a business dispute but rather will drag it on for years if they can. Lawyers get paid by the hour; they don't get paid for solving problems.
The idea is that you weren't forced to sign the contract. You could have walked away, but you agreed to be bound by it. However, there are laws regulating arbitration and courts rule against bad contracts all the time.
What, you mean that the Minutemen weren't driving their Range Rovers up to the battle at Yorktown in order to seal the deal against King George?
Of course not. Range Rovers are built by British Leyland. Not only are they British, but back then they used electrical components made by Lucas, so it's unlikely that more than a few would have survived the drive to the battlefield, must less the rigors of combat driving.
The vehicle of choice for the American troops was naturally the French provided Citroen DS, whose hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension made the attacking troops an impossible target to hit as they bobbed and weaved on their way to redoubts 9 and 10.
I bet that it was a seborrheic keratosis. Younger people can them, but it's mostly something you'll become familiar after you get into your 60's. https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis... Often they just fall off on their own, and there won't be a scar. Wanna see pics of mine?
Slashdot Mirror
Generic of course.
I'm just curious, why are Epi Pens not already generic?
Then observe the value of competition... The market works, if you let it.
There is already a generic epinephrine injector that's been around for about 13 years called Adrenaclick. I bought mine from Walmart for about $160, I think.
There's also the Auvi-Q since 2012. https://www.drugs.com/history/...
https://www.consumerreports.or...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
BlueFoxLucid has a good point
Although one in 20 may seem like a stretch for the whole country, but I would not be surprised that some localities have that many. In any case, I'm sure that the USA has a significant number of people who don't have a government ID and cannot easily get one.
And the point is that in a country where we keep having local elections decided with 49%-51% of the vote or even closer, the number of people who could not vote because a government ID would be required is more than enough to decide that election.
And there's that a huge number of women, especially older ones, in the USA have never had a job or owned a car and thus don't need a government ID.
Something like 40% of females don't have a job, and a large number have never held a job, especially among early baby boomers.
As for lost ID, I once got robbed when I was young and unemployed. I happened to have my draft card, birth certificate, driver's license, and everything else on me, and it all got stolen. I had to get money from a friend so I could go back to my hometown to get my birth certificate, which was required at that place and time. To get a replacement at the state archives required a drivers license, and to get a replacement DL required, guess what?
It took days to get everything restored, and many people would have given up. I was lucky to not have a job and to have available parents who could fund me.
You know who else has a huge problem with proving their identities? Women who have been married, divorced and remarried. Those records are required for restoring identity and in most places can only be found in the court of the locality that granted the marriage and divorce. In these modern times, that may require traveling to multiple states. And if the local courthouse had lost the records, or burnt down, you basically have to hire a lawyer to intervene for you.
Also, it's a huge pain for children born abroad of a Dad who was in the Army and married a foreigner. Or didn't marry her but just got her back to the USA somehow with the kid.
Five bucks says the Supreme Court will rule that bots, like corporations, are people.
The supreme did not rule that corporations are people. What they said was that corporations have the same rights as other organizations, so if the law allows unions, charities, 501c and other such groups to fund or engage in issue advocacy, then corporations have the same rights to do so.
Anyway, I would not take your bet because I think you predict correctly. I can see how scotus might find a way to rule that although bots are not people, they are acting as agents for people and rule that bots have free speech rights, which includes the right to tell lies about their identity.
The phrase 'The article did not bode well' *should* mean something like 'The article posed an existential threat' for something (like libraries). Or 'The article portended doom' or 'The article foretold disaster'
I think the writer wanted to say 'The article did not sit well'
Sorry about the word-nazism, but this stuff really grates on me.
You word-Nazism is welcome in a thread regarding the future of libraries.
In the words of Julia Child, "never apologize"
http://www.latimes.com/resizer...
This has been practiced by vector control authorities for decades in the U.S.
When it's out of the news for so long, a repeat of the past becomes novel for a new generation.
yep. And one of those is the screwworm that has been eradicated from the USA, Mexico, and Central America. (and re-eradicated after being reintroduced)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/U422...
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aph...
Really? An hour long podcast? .mp3 from their website.
If you don't want to install iTunes, or Spotify, use the Pocket Casts link and download the
I listened to the five minutes of seems to be an advertisement for his company and gave up.
Unless I'm reading the ipcc report wrong, nuclear's carbon emissions are not huge amounts more than solar, wind, and geothermal. Nuclear is comparable to wind and much less than solar.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...
page 1335
If I am mistaken, show me the actual numbers.
Yes, it's the total emissions including all the mining and fuel transport and storage and air conditioning for the control room etc. etc.
Don't take my word for it though, ask the IPCC: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...
Page 1335. Lifecycle emissions. Depending on who you ask and what measurement you use, Nuclear is at best about the same as Wind, but it depends a lot on where it is and where the fuel comes from and where the waste ends up.
First of all, good link, thanks
Page 1335 of the document has the values for many modes of generation.
Table A.III.2 | Emissions of selected electricity supply technologies (gCO2eq / kWh)
Lifecycle emissions
(including albedo effect)
Min/Median/Max
Geothermal 6.0 / 38 / 79
Hydropower 1.0 / 24 / 2200
Nuclear 3.7 / 12 / 110
Solar PV — rooftop 26 / 41 / 60
Solar PV — utility 18 / 48 / 180
Wind onshore 7.0 / 11 / 56
Wind offshore 8.0 / 12 / 35
I'm thinking that the median value for all these would be the most appropriate number to quote.
Nuclear: 12 gCO2eq / kWh
Note that this is about the same as wind, and is significantly less than solar, geothermal, and hydropower.
Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
CAPTCHA intact
I like that quote; used to have a poster with that quote in my classroom supply closet. It had been left by a previous instructor, but I kept it because it was fun.
However, it's spurious and was actually written in 1907 by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, and not by an actual old person.
Isn't it weird when the person accusing the young generation of being failures is a member of that generation?
https://quoteinvestigator.com/...
The article and embedded links talk about how bad Excel's algorithm is, but never states the Excel version that Canada's IRCC uses. In this case it matters because recent versions of Excel are OK.
Excel 2010 and later uses Mersenne Twister for the PRNG. This is good.
https://support.office.com/en-...
Excel versions before Excel 2010 use an implementation of the Wichman-Hill that provides not-so-good pseudorandom numbers.
https://support.microsoft.com/...
You make $100, the government first takes 7.5% (really 15%) FICA tax, then an additional 25% income tax. You use some of that money to buy a gallon gas for $3, the government takes another 13%. That's 45.5% total tax.
Some time ago I took the trouble to add up all my taxes paid during one bad year and discovered that the dollar amount of taxes divided by my before taxes wages (good wages for IT, not great) came to about 34%. So your rough estimate is a good example, but you can't add percents of varying quantities the way you did. The different taxes have to pro-rated before adding.
You don't spend all your money on gasoline, so you have to pro-rate that tax. If you spent $5 on gasoline (5% of your earnings), then you would add 5% of the gas taxes 13%, so you would only add .65% to the IRS+FICA 32.5% = 33.15%
Similarly, the FICA tax is against your entire earned income, but only the first $128,400, so higher income people would have to prorate their actual FICA paid to their total earnings.. There's no cap on the Medicare part.
However, as you said, the FICA is really double because your employer is on the hook for the same amount you pay, and it's the full 15% for the self-employed such as yourself (ouch).
The FICA tax does not apply to investment income. Investment income becomes ever increasingly more significant later in life for those who have been paying attention, so the FICA part of your taxes can be a good bit less than 7/15% your total income.
Wall street types can have nice incomes and pay zero FICA. The same for retirees, although their income may not be so nice.
The Federal IRS tax is on adjusted gross income after deductions, and it has different rates on the brackets, so the brackets contribution have to be prorated and added in. Suppose I make $140,000 but it's $105,000 after deductions. I'm in the 28% bracket, but the tax on the first 100K is only 20% so that has to be prorated. So the actual percent for IRS is about 15%
Lower income people have relatively large deductions as you noted, so much of their income is untaxed - so again the IRS 20% or more has to be prorated down to the actual percent, which may even be negative for people who get earned income credit. For me, my
Also, there's sales tax on purchases (5-8% of purchases, not income), automobile registration, and property taxes against the value of the item. My state wants 6% for income taxes, but with different deductions than the IRS
As I say, your point is a good one, it's just that your math ain't done right.
It's already happening. Boomers say the younger generations are irresponsible and lazy and that's why they don't have a golden final salary pension scheme and half million pound house.
I am an older baby boomer, and I don't know any baby boomer that honestly believes "the younger generations are irresponsible and lazy ".
I'm sure there's some out there, but I'm sure there's morons in every generation. I just don't know any.
The people who are saying these things are almost all younger than we boomers, and/or are liars hoping to steal from whoever.
What the boomers I know believe is that a fundamentally dishonest media makes up all kinds of shit about people to drive sales.
They're making up shit about the millennials, and they're making up shit about baby boomers.
Pick any demographic that you're a part of, and consider the BS that you're being blamed for that you know isn't true. It's the same with the demographic that you're not part of.
Do you find it confusing when you see a millennial on the news repeating the "millennials are lazy, irresponsible, make bad choices" story?
I don't. I'm not at all confused when I see a liar; I just see a liar.
How is the stock market different from the betting/gambling market.
When you buy stock, you are buying part ownership of the company. The value of the stock may go down and you'll lose money, but you still own a piece of the company as long as it exists. If the company later becomes successful then you may return to profitability.
Of course you can lose all your money in stocks if the company has large debts and bankrupts, or is run by criminals, but that's a rare event for people who do their research.
Secondly, as a part owner you may get a part share (dividends) from the company's profits. Many companies may continue to pay dividends even when stock prices have gone down. For example, Coca-Cola has been paying dividends for over 50 years. If you had bought Coca-Cola 50 years ago, the dividends would have given you all your money back with no regard to stock price.
There's much more to the story, but that's the short answer.
When you gamble and lose that money is gone, and even if you win, that's a one-time win. There's no continuing payments (except some lottery payoffs).
"We need to spy on our users and sell their data to make money with a free application today. We'll close down 'messenger' and open 'squirel' which is pretty much the same thing but with a EULA that has language embedded in it somewhere which will let us collect your data."
It's not hidden, it's like the first thing they tell you in the "Privacy Policy", and yes those are the ironic quotes.
https://policies.oath.com/us/e...
I copied some of it below. Right up front you'll see that they read your email content.
Your agree that anything you post or upload, including voice remains your property and you grant Oath and oath users a license to do whatever they want with it. So it sounds like their policy is like almost everyone else's policy.
Here's come copy and paste of a portion so you can get a feel for it.
Information Collection and Use - General
We may collect and combine information when you interact with Oath Services including:
Information You Provide to Us. We may collect the information that you provide to us, such as:
When you create an account with an Oath Service or brand. (Please note, when you use our Services, we may recognize you or your devices even if you are not signed in to our Services.) Oath may use device IDs, cookies, and other signals, including information obtained from third parties, to associate accounts and/or devices with you.
When you use our Services to communicate with others or post, upload or store content (such as comments, photos, voice inputs, videos, emails, messaging services and attachments).
Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
When you otherwise use our Services, such as title queries, watch history, page views, search queries, view the content we make available or install any Oath software such as plugins.
When you sign up for paid Services, use Services that require your financial information or complete transactions with us or our business partners, we may collect your payment and billing information.
Device Information. We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use.
Location Information. We collect location information from a variety of sources. You can learn more about and manage your location permissions on our Locations page and by visiting the location settings tool on your devices.
Information from Cookies and Other Technologies.
We collect information when you access content, advertising, sites, interactive widgets, applications, and other products (both on and off of our Services) where Oath’s data collection technologies (such as web beacons, development tools, cookies and other technologies, etc.) are present. These data collection technologies allow us to understand your activity on and off our Services and to collect and store information when you interact with Services we offer to partners.
This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
"It is perfectly OK to sell the dangerous products that are sold to the public everyday, but they are required to carry warnings."
What? Seriously what? You think that's ok? To sell dangerously defective products so long as you stick a warning in the small print?
Idiot.
I didn't say "OK to sell dangerously defective products", I said "OK to sell the dangerous products ".
It's not enough to learn how to read. You need to practice understanding what you read. It's really hard to do, and you'll need help.
Gasoline is an example of a commonly sold and dangerous product. Also included are just about any insecticide or weed-killer.
Charcoal comes to mind as well.
I may be an idiot, but my previous post was not a confirming example.
Because it is. Every regulation tells us what we can't do or what we have to do in order to do business. When you add them up, they're onerous and they prevent people from getting what they want.
Adults aren't little children. We're capable of making decisions based on what the risks are. If you're worried about cheap Chinese products on Amazon, then there is a simple solution, pay attention to the listed Manufacturer and don't buy one! Why the need to use force to prevent the other 250,000 people who want to from buying one?
We're capable of making decisions based on what the risks are.
And that's wrong. We can only make decisions based on the information that we have. If we don't have the data regarding risks, then we don't know what the risks are, then we cannot make a decision based on the risks.
The issue here isn't that the board caught fire, but rather that in this case Amazon knew they caught fire, but did not provide the information to the buyer.
From the embedded link:
"Fox's case was filled with testimony and evidence illustrating that Amazon execs were concerned about the hoverboards sold on its site. One executive deposed in the case said he'd removed a hoverboard from his house before Christmas after hearing about "potential issues."
I have to agree with the plaintiff. If a store sells a product that they know is defective or dangerous, then they are obligated to clearly warn the buyer, and if possible, warn the previous purchasers. It is perfectly OK to sell the dangerous products that are sold to the public everyday, but they are required to carry warnings.
"Autopilot is designed for use on highways that have a center divider and clear lane markings."
The GPS knows where the car is, and just about every mapping software knows what kind of road you're on.
So how hard would it be to have the Tesla's computer not even turn on the autopilot if they're not on a road with center divider and clear lane markings? Or better yet, the autopilot only runs on roads that have been certified "not screwed up".
In this case he was on Laguna Canyon Road, which has a median in some places and a middle "suicide lane" in others, and varies from one to two lanes from place to place.
That's not true,and there's no way to make that work mathematically. He raised wages because his workers kept quitting.
And worse of all, they were quitting and then going to work for his competitors.
It sucks to not be a monopoly, because your workers will do that everytime.
But everything that Wall street has been doing for the last few of decades is to bring about monopolies of ownership of everything.
Now Google has the extermination of a species in on its belt. Lets see what the upgrade to next in the physical space.
My guess is that in the case of the Google and cats story, after those owls are exterminated, the land will no longer contain a protected species and can be turned into a Google office tower or a space for bicycle racks.
Thank you.
If businesses and real estate can be owned indefinitely, and passed down to heirs forever, why can't IP be passed down as well for infinity?
You have not understood the difference between tangible assets and intangible assets. Please read up on this and come back.
(waiting)
Are you back now? Good. Now that you are a bit more informed you can see that if you take a tangible asset from someone, they no longer have it. We call this stealing. This is universally understood as bad in the general case. Also, if you try to steal something from me I can protect myself from theft and if you get hurt while trying to steal, it I have not attacked you, I have acted in self-defense, within reasonable limits. The laws around this is easy to understand, even for children.
As for intangible assets, like copyrighted work, there is nothing inherent in it that grants you these rights. If someone uses your work, you still have access to it. It is not gone. Also, it is harder to detect someone unlawfully using it, etc. This made it hard for content creators back then, before the copyright. Essentially, you wrote a piece of music and I played it and got money for it without compensating you. Many musicians and artists back in the day had patrons paying your upkeep to be able to enjoy your music. It was hard to be an artist. And the incentive to create was low. This is bad. We want creation of new works.
So, society (that is we people) decided to band together to protect the poor artists. We said "let us help with making sure that only YOU get to use your work". But we also recognized that every work has been influenced by other work that has come before. So if we deny future artists this back catalog, again we would stifle creation.
So, we said, "in return for helping you make sure that only you get to use your work, we want this protection to be time-limited. After a number of years, where only you may profit from it, it becomes public domain. And then everyone can use it to create new and wonderful things."
I like this spirit of copyright. I want content creators to be able to make a living. The earnings they make during this time can be handed down to their heirs if they want. But I also want things to spread and be used, modified and changed when the time is right.
So let's get back to your totally inappropriate analogy. A business or real estate requires further investment just to keep existing. You cannot sit on your ass and expect money to roll in automagically. They are tangible assets. If you don't renovate your real estate it eventually crumbles and fall down. In this case it might even be confiscated by the local government in most places since it is neglected/abandoned and a public danger. A business not attended will eventually go bankrupt (if they have any bills needed to be paid) or just not generate any money (and thus, those heirs wont get a dime).
Do you understand why copyright is not the same as property rights now? Good. There are other intangible assets too (trademarks and patents for example). They work in other ways than copyright and should not be confused with each others.
Now that you know much more, cut the shit with "the ruling class vs the working class". I definitely belong to the latter, but I want reasonable copyright. 144 years is NOT reasonable. No living person, nor their children, and most likely their grand-children, will ever see something created fall into the public domain and thus see derivative works created from it. If this is not stagnating the rate of creativity, I don't know what is.
Some might say: "so what, there are enough of creativity anyway". Perhaps, but consider something like the comic "Fables" by Bill Willingham. It is a wonderful modern take on how the fables of yesterday (Snow White, Big bad wolf, Cinderella, Pinocchio, etc) live today. All those are in the public domain which means that Willingham could use them. Heck, Disney have started their empire on the shoulder
Can anyone explain how arbitration clauses work? How can a company limit an employee's rights to proceed legally against a company in case of criminal conduct? There are rules for arbitration clauses and a federal law. There are some rights that just cannot be signed away, and matters involving serious crimes (such as assault) in one of them.
I suspect that when Uber's lawyers took a look at the situation, they knew the courts would not support mandatory arbitration for victims of rape and assault, so
That doesn't seem to make sense?
This isn't about employees. It is some passengers who have been assaulted and/or raped that think criminal actions by Uber drivers should not be restricted to mandatory arbitration.
Here is Uber's arbitration clause. Have you ever used Uber? If so then you agreed to this.
https://www.uber.com/legal/ter...
A company can put anything into a contract, but courts shoot down unenforceable or unconscionable clauses all the time.
I suspect that when Uber's lawyers realized that trying to enforce mandatory arbitration for assault would get shot down by the courts, and rather than get shot down, and get very bad press, they "generously" gave in on sexual harassment and assault.
How in the hell is mandatory arbitration for customers legal? That makes zero sense. For any business.
It's legal because you signed the contract. Arbitration has been around for a long time.
The original idea was to resolve disputes between businesses outside of the court system. It was a pretty good idea. As you know, lawyers will never settle a business dispute but rather will drag it on for years if they can. Lawyers get paid by the hour; they don't get paid for solving problems.
The idea is that you weren't forced to sign the contract. You could have walked away, but you agreed to be bound by it.
However, there are laws regulating arbitration and courts rule against bad contracts all the time.
What, you mean that the Minutemen weren't driving their Range Rovers up to the battle at Yorktown in order to seal the deal against King George?
Of course not. Range Rovers are built by British Leyland. Not only are they British, but back then they used electrical components made by Lucas, so it's unlikely that more than a few would have survived the drive to the battlefield, must less the rigors of combat driving.
The vehicle of choice for the American troops was naturally the French provided Citroen DS, whose hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension made the attacking troops an impossible target to hit as they bobbed and weaved on their way to redoubts 9 and 10.
I bet that it was a seborrheic keratosis. Younger people can them, but it's mostly something you'll become familiar after you get into your 60's. https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis...
Often they just fall off on their own, and there won't be a scar.
Wanna see pics of mine?