I used to have a Sprint phone. I had electronic billing. I haven't had a Sprint phone for 3 years, but I still get an email every month helpfully letting me know that my SPrint bill is ready online. I've called Customer Service and they have said there is nothing they can do about it. Good thing for procmail.
Right, then how many quotes are in those sripts, knowng that quotes could be of many lengths.
I'm too lazy at the moment, but if you calculated the number of substring with say, 1-10 words, I think you'd find that the key space is more than large enough.
Certainly Life expectancy are "exagerated" if you don't count declines in infant mortality as improvements. Two things to consider:
1. Nutrition plays a huge roll in infant and child health. I would suspect that along with medicine, the availability of cheap, nutritious food has helped to lower child death rates.
2. Even if you only look at Life Expectance at age 65, the US has been continuously improving for the last 100 years, and certainly has been higher than the four score and ten that you mention. any numbers showing us being worse of recently?
There are certainly countries with better life expectancy numbers than us, I'll give you that.
That's right, use upper and middle class citizen's are mature enough to handle recreational drugs. But those on the bottom, they are helpless, we need to protect them. Please. Drugs and addiction effect everyone regardless of class, but they are still a matter of personal choice.
My point was more about large companies taking URLs from people with trademarked last names, people who registed trademarkedcompanysucks.com, mispelled trademarked names, etc. I think there have been cases of all of these in the past few years.
As has been mentioned, physical organization is probably the best bet.
But... Since this is Slashdot, we might as well discuss total technological overkill. The problem with a database is that, even if you have all of the books catalogued, it still can't tell you where to book is unless you are very diligent about keeping the book in the correct location, not much better than catagorizing your shelves, as others have mentioned.
But what if you built "smart" shelves with RFID readers? Then your database could be constantly updated with the correct location. Tables around the house could even be wired in.
Probably impractical becuase of RFID ranges and the number and cost of readers needed. But that seems like the level of technology you would have to use to make things much better than normal organization skills.
"people like you would just have a party with their money or invest it poorly and the state still would need to take care of you when you're old"
Ah yes, classic liberal attitude. "Other" people are stupud, so we must protect them from themselves.
I fail to see how the inefficiency of the system are outweighed by the benefits of forced spending.
Social Security was created to protect people from unfortunate economic luck in life. But maybe it has removed some incentive for people to plan and invest for the future?
To make it even worse, from the description I read he couldn't keep his skis under him more than half way down and landed head first. Still no injuries.
Yes but here we aren't as anal about the amount of alcohol we serve. No marks on our pint glasses and and bartenders free hand. As a bartender its much faster than using those silly dispensers, and when done right, its accurate enough.
This doesn't appear to be a popular move, but I think variable prices could be good.
This article is mixed up of course, since supply is not limited and there is no secondary market, this in no way resembles commodities or stocks.
The first thing to realize is that cost has very little to do with price setting. Commercially deveeloped software has ver little distribution cost but sometimes sells for thousands of dollars. Now I realize what site I am on and many are dubious of softwares value, but the reality of today says that it does have a value.
No what would happen if we allowed Apple to attempt to maximize profits with variable pricing? The natural floor would be there low variable costs for serving each song. Upwards there is no limit except what someone is willing to pay. Apple would change the price (higher or lower) until Price x Quantity, Revenue was at its maximum. For some songs this would be higher than $0.99, for others it would be lower.
So for a big hit, the song would be released, the price would go up until sales started to drop off. As the song faded into obscurity, or everyone who wants the song has bought it, the price would go down. This would essentially allow everyone to get the song at what they value it at. People who need to hear the latest stuff will be willing to pay a high price.
For older stuff a price level would establish itself. Old unpopular music would be cheap. Classics might be more. The sales of popular songs would subsidize the offering of less popular music, increasing variety.
At the end of the day, something is worth what someone else will pay for it. These prices would allow consumers to signal what is popular.
The trick bit is setting prices when the costs are so low. This would require some research into algorithms for pricing, but there are already companies who develop systems for detecting the local shape of the demand curve through small changes in price.
Also fair points. Any tax system will promote certain behaviors. The current system promotes expensive tax lawyers, convoluted compensation systems, and offshore investment. Any system has it's down sides.
Agreed that it needs to be an amendment. Along with a repeal of the 16th. It needs to be one or the other, not income and sales like Europe.
This is an impossible assertion to make without numbers on consumption by various income classes. I honestly don't know if the burden would shift, but unless you've studied the numbers, I doubt if you do either.
Because the power of most politicians is based on granting tax favors to special interests who spend time lobbying and fund their campaigns.
A consumption tax makes the tax system very transparent. No one gets any special breaks, and any tax increases are immediately seen by everyone at the register.
The rebate check is a flat amount adjusted to the CPI. Everyone gets the same amount. What this does is lower the effective tax rate for lower spenders.
Say the monthly rebate is $400 (I think I've seen numbers in this range before). And assume for simplicity that the rate is %20 (Estimates are in the range of %20-25%).
$400 is %20 of $2000. So if I'm spending $2000 a month (and remember this does not include spending on rent or mortgages) then I pay 0% tax. Spend less and I actually get a tax benefit. As spending increase you gradually approach the maximum tax of 20%.
I simpler tax system would avoid this. It is much easier to define what someone spends in a store than what they make (as you point out, income is pretty nebulous, Salary, capital gains, non-cash bonuses, etc).
Good point, although doesn't seem like an economics question. So right now everyone has to prove what they earn to the IRS in order to pay tax, and other systems which depend on income level can piggyback off this information.
Wouldn't it be more efficient if just the small portion of the population which needs a means assessment go through the same process? For divorce prceedings they already go through a process to determine net worth, the same could be done for net income.
I agree its not as elegant. Seems like a small administrative hassle, comparable to filing for income taxes currently, only not everyone has to do it.
Who says a consumption tax can't be progressive? With a monthly rebate only people with high consumption are taxed at near the maximum rate. The lowest consumers would pay no tax, or even negative tax.
Most states let you deduct taxes paid to other states. This still means you end up paying the higher of the two taxes. NY Taxes are high, especially compared to TN. No wonder this guy is pissed!
I call bull. First off, you are talking about a billionaire. If I have a billion in the bank, and have 0 income, then I pay zero tax under the current system. As someone earlier said, don't confuse wealth and income.
Second, find me a billionaire who spends the same amount as someone making $40,000. The money will get spent sooner or later, otherwise, what's the point.
Third, once you factor in the monthly rebate, the tax rate for people who spend less is lower. Therefore the richer higher spenders will have a higher tax rate and spend more.
Fourth, You're right, the sales tax rate will go up. Estimates are in the 20-25% range tough, not 30%. Most people's effective rate (because of the rebate) will be in the teens. The lowest spender will actually have a negative tax rate (their rebate will be higher than taxes paid).
What the fair tax does is allow the middle and lower classes to save more easily because they have all of their income to save or spend. Saving is much more effective when done pre-tax. This would increase opportunity, not stifle it.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to have a Sprint phone. I had electronic billing. I haven't had a Sprint phone for 3 years, but I still get an email every month helpfully letting me know that my SPrint bill is ready online. I've called Customer Service and they have said there is nothing they can do about it. Good thing for procmail.
Right, then how many quotes are in those sripts, knowng that quotes could be of many lengths.
I'm too lazy at the moment, but if you calculated the number of substring with say, 1-10 words, I think you'd find that the key space is more than large enough.
Certainly Life expectancy are "exagerated" if you don't count declines in infant mortality as improvements. Two things to consider:
1. Nutrition plays a huge roll in infant and child health. I would suspect that along with medicine, the availability of cheap, nutritious food has helped to lower child death rates.
2. Even if you only look at Life Expectance at age 65, the US has been continuously improving for the last 100 years, and certainly has been higher than the four score and ten that you mention. any numbers showing us being worse of recently?
There are certainly countries with better life expectancy numbers than us, I'll give you that.
Govs have no problem with taxing cigarettes and alchohol. Do they provide the trucks that ship that stuff?
When I was stuck washing glasses in a bar I tought a lot about the knapsack problem.
That's right, use upper and middle class citizen's are mature enough to handle recreational drugs. But those on the bottom, they are helpless, we need to protect them. Please. Drugs and addiction effect everyone regardless of class, but they are still a matter of personal choice.
An oversimplification? Maybe, but Alchohol has been in use for thousands of years, would you really expect any new government to move against it?
My point was more about large companies taking URLs from people with trademarked last names, people who registed trademarkedcompanysucks.com, mispelled trademarked names, etc. I think there have been cases of all of these in the past few years.
How is that different from now, where large corporations can get registrar's to snatch trademarked (sort of) domains from the little guy?
As has been mentioned, physical organization is probably the best bet.
But... Since this is Slashdot, we might as well discuss total technological overkill. The problem with a database is that, even if you have all of the books catalogued, it still can't tell you where to book is unless you are very diligent about keeping the book in the correct location, not much better than catagorizing your shelves, as others have mentioned.
But what if you built "smart" shelves with RFID readers? Then your database could be constantly updated with the correct location. Tables around the house could even be wired in.
Probably impractical becuase of RFID ranges and the number and cost of readers needed. But that seems like the level of technology you would have to use to make things much better than normal organization skills.
"people like you would just have a party with their money or invest it poorly and the state still would need to take care of you when you're old"
Ah yes, classic liberal attitude. "Other" people are stupud, so we must protect them from themselves.
I fail to see how the inefficiency of the system are outweighed by the benefits of forced spending.
Social Security was created to protect people from unfortunate economic luck in life. But maybe it has removed some incentive for people to plan and invest for the future?
How do you propose that websites detect the use of an adblocker? (Without seriously degrading the user experience)
Refresh rates are currently between .5 second and 1 second depending on if you are using grayscale.
Open source developers do this all the time. The big changes should be in system libraries. Portable code is often better code anyways.
To make it even worse, from the description I read he couldn't keep his skis under him more than half way down and landed head first. Still no injuries.
Yes but here we aren't as anal about the amount of alcohol we serve. No marks on our pint glasses and and bartenders free hand. As a bartender its much faster than using those silly dispensers, and when done right, its accurate enough.
This doesn't appear to be a popular move, but I think variable prices could be good.
This article is mixed up of course, since supply is not limited and there is no secondary market, this in no way resembles commodities or stocks.
The first thing to realize is that cost has very little to do with price setting. Commercially deveeloped software has ver little distribution cost but sometimes sells for thousands of dollars. Now I realize what site I am on and many are dubious of softwares value, but the reality of today says that it does have a value.
No what would happen if we allowed Apple to attempt to maximize profits with variable pricing? The natural floor would be there low variable costs for serving each song. Upwards there is no limit except what someone is willing to pay. Apple would change the price (higher or lower) until Price x Quantity, Revenue was at its maximum. For some songs this would be higher than $0.99, for others it would be lower.
So for a big hit, the song would be released, the price would go up until sales started to drop off. As the song faded into obscurity, or everyone who wants the song has bought it, the price would go down. This would essentially allow everyone to get the song at what they value it at. People who need to hear the latest stuff will be willing to pay a high price.
For older stuff a price level would establish itself. Old unpopular music would be cheap. Classics might be more. The sales of popular songs would subsidize the offering of less popular music, increasing variety.
At the end of the day, something is worth what someone else will pay for it. These prices would allow consumers to signal what is popular.
The trick bit is setting prices when the costs are so low. This would require some research into algorithms for pricing, but there are already companies who develop systems for detecting the local shape of the demand curve through small changes in price.
Also fair points. Any tax system will promote certain behaviors. The current system promotes expensive tax lawyers, convoluted compensation systems, and offshore investment. Any system has it's down sides.
Agreed that it needs to be an amendment. Along with a repeal of the 16th. It needs to be one or the other, not income and sales like Europe.
This is an impossible assertion to make without numbers on consumption by various income classes. I honestly don't know if the burden would shift, but unless you've studied the numbers, I doubt if you do either.
Because the power of most politicians is based on granting tax favors to special interests who spend time lobbying and fund their campaigns.
A consumption tax makes the tax system very transparent. No one gets any special breaks, and any tax increases are immediately seen by everyone at the register.
The rebate check is a flat amount adjusted to the CPI. Everyone gets the same amount. What this does is lower the effective tax rate for lower spenders.
Say the monthly rebate is $400 (I think I've seen numbers in this range before). And assume for simplicity that the rate is %20 (Estimates are in the range of %20-25%).
$400 is %20 of $2000. So if I'm spending $2000 a month (and remember this does not include spending on rent or mortgages) then I pay 0% tax. Spend less and I actually get a tax benefit. As spending increase you gradually approach the maximum tax of 20%.
Make sense?
I simpler tax system would avoid this. It is much easier to define what someone spends in a store than what they make (as you point out, income is pretty nebulous, Salary, capital gains, non-cash bonuses, etc).
Good point, although doesn't seem like an economics question. So right now everyone has to prove what they earn to the IRS in order to pay tax, and other systems which depend on income level can piggyback off this information.
Wouldn't it be more efficient if just the small portion of the population which needs a means assessment go through the same process? For divorce prceedings they already go through a process to determine net worth, the same could be done for net income.
I agree its not as elegant. Seems like a small administrative hassle, comparable to filing for income taxes currently, only not everyone has to do it.
Who says a consumption tax can't be progressive? With a monthly rebate only people with high consumption are taxed at near the maximum rate. The lowest consumers would pay no tax, or even negative tax.
Most states let you deduct taxes paid to other states. This still means you end up paying the higher of the two taxes. NY Taxes are high, especially compared to TN. No wonder this guy is pissed!
I call bull. First off, you are talking about a billionaire. If I have a billion in the bank, and have 0 income, then I pay zero tax under the current system. As someone earlier said, don't confuse wealth and income.
Second, find me a billionaire who spends the same amount as someone making $40,000. The money will get spent sooner or later, otherwise, what's the point.
Third, once you factor in the monthly rebate, the tax rate for people who spend less is lower. Therefore the richer higher spenders will have a higher tax rate and spend more.
Fourth, You're right, the sales tax rate will go up. Estimates are in the 20-25% range tough, not 30%. Most people's effective rate (because of the rebate) will be in the teens. The lowest spender will actually have a negative tax rate (their rebate will be higher than taxes paid).
What the fair tax does is allow the middle and lower classes to save more easily because they have all of their income to save or spend. Saving is much more effective when done pre-tax. This would increase opportunity, not stifle it.