This is really OT, but a friend of mine was a drug store cashier in the early 90s in an older New Jersey suburb. The place hadn't updated their tech to scanners, and so the cashiers had to know which items were considered essential (and thus tax-exempt) by the state and which were not. As it turns out, while toothbrushes were considered essential, toothpaste was not. Neither was toilet paper or deodorant.
It's not so much a rebuttal as a debate about the rate and the exemption.
I'm not trying to defend Fair Tax; I don't know jack about the group. And I'm going to get raped by taxes under any scheme, because I make enough money that average people think I'm rich and yet not enough to get the law changed to shelter my income.
Sock puppet much? Three separate downmods for pointing out that a guy who doesn't even know the difference between your and you're might not be as sharp as he thinks he is? Christ, I get tired of this shit.
So issue a check to every citizen at the beginning of every month that's equal to spending the poverty level of income on stuff - e.g., 5% tax, $20k poverty line, you get $1000/yr from the government. Dead simple.
Only 10%? Read those offers carefully. After all, cutting that off at $250k implies that $25k covers everything. Not saying you're wrong - you're a lot closer to it than I am - but just be careful.
Still, it sounds like you'll do well. Good luck out there. Final tip - whatever you do, pick up a minor in business. It's useful.
I'm sure you think this is insightful in some fashion, but it's really quite true. If you're so much smarter than the guys at the top, why aren't you one of them?
Yes, good luck matters. Yes, hard work by itself is no guarantee. Yes, there are good people who get ground down. And yes, there are truly dumb people who are worth a lot of money and who occupy positions of power. But they are the exception, rather than the rule.
I'm sure I've read that poor kids with lesser grades in high school perform better in university than privately-schooled kids with better grades.
I'm not sure what you mean by this sentence. I'm sure that the occasional poor kid outshines the rich ones (hell, that's me), but it's hardly the case that the nation's great minds lie mostly in the ghetto.
To be fair, your parents' income is almost certainly proportional to their intelligence. And while there are outliers, and the trait regresses to the mean, your parents' intelligence is a pretty fair predictor of your own.
That, and it takes a long, long time to climb up out of the bottom of society. Count on at least three dedicated generations to go from the working class to the upper middle class. There is an enormous amount of human capital embodied in upper-middle-class society, and getting yourself and your family there takes a lot of work and a long time.
To be fair, this means the Ivies are the best. Despite a staggering price tag, they still appear to be worth it.
The other side of that coin is that the vast majority of private colleges and out-of-state public colleges are simply not worth full price. There are limited exceptions, but mostly you shouldn't bother unless you can get a scholarship (and if your intellect is formidable enough to exceed the capabilities of your state's flagship university, it's good enough to get you a scholarship at a good one).
Toward that end, I have one piece of advice for any 9th or 10th graders reading this: practice and study for the PSAT. Your high school may not place much emphasis on it, especially if you live in a rural area; they may not even tell you when it will be offered. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE IT IN 11TH GRADE. A sufficiently high score (and if you're in a low-achieving state, that score won't be all that high) will make you a National Merit Semifinalist, which is enough to get you a full ride at quite a lot of universities and at least half tuition at many others. It will also open up other scholarship opportunities. And apply for every scholarship you hear of; $1000 here and there adds up.
I don't want to dominate every game - that's a sign that you're playing below your level. But it's ridiculous to say that if I ever want to play basketball, I have to be ready for the NBA. I know you're better at this. I don't care about being the best at this. I just want the opportunity to avoid the assholes and play at my level.
The problem comes for someone who isn't a single guy with a bunch of gamer friends that can always be free on Tuesday night at eight for a two hour match. I have two friends that are gamers at all. I can't play enough with them to get up to speed. I'd love to play something like the touch football game I play once a year with some friends from high school - laid back, not viciously competitive, minimal immaturity. But for some reason the online games always have some asshole who has to gank the newb.
To take your examples: if I join a bridge club, they will start me out against the guy whonjoined last month, not the president of the club. If I start playing poker, I'll do the no-money online games, not no-limit games in Vegas. I don't expect to beat everyone In the world. I just want to be matched against people with similar skill levels. I don't have to win every game, or even most games. Hell, I don't have to win any of them when I'm starting. But it's reasonable to expect that I'll make one kill for every ten deaths, or that I'll be able to move at least a few feet before dying. You can't even begin to develop skills in most of these games if you don't have a group of friends to start from scratch with, and that's not a good thing.
How about doing what Nintendo does with Wii Virtual Console games? You can save at any time, but your saved state is deleted when you resume the game. You get the ability to drop the game now and pick it up later while requiring a certain level of skill to succeed.
If the Nazis had taken Britain and the Caucasus, what do you think are the chances that the US would have tried to invade from across the Atlantic? It's one thing to island hop the Pacific; it's another to jump the entire Atlantic in one go.
I suck at FPS. So what? I don't have time to become good at the genre or memorize the maps. Just put me on a server with a bunch of other guys who don't know the maps and suck. We'll all have fun, while you guys who are good at it compete for the real glory.
I was pointing out a potential problem with his thought process. As quite a few people pointed out when that happened, if the ability exists, the chance that Amazon will eventually be compelled to use it by a publisher is pretty high.
"The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work
That copy is on your Kindle. Or on your PC, or on whatever device you downloaded it to. Loan out your Kindle or your hard drive. Or sell your account on Amazon.
So, just to follow up on something a lot of people complained about when it happened, you're totally cool with Amazon having the ability to delete a book off your device without your explicit authorization?
Slashdot Mirror
Why would people stop comparison-shopping? Cash is fungible. A $100k bonus to buy a house isn't - it can only be used for one thing.
This is really OT, but a friend of mine was a drug store cashier in the early 90s in an older New Jersey suburb. The place hadn't updated their tech to scanners, and so the cashiers had to know which items were considered essential (and thus tax-exempt) by the state and which were not. As it turns out, while toothbrushes were considered essential, toothpaste was not. Neither was toilet paper or deodorant.
It's not so much a rebuttal as a debate about the rate and the exemption.
I'm not trying to defend Fair Tax; I don't know jack about the group. And I'm going to get raped by taxes under any scheme, because I make enough money that average people think I'm rich and yet not enough to get the law changed to shelter my income.
Sock puppet much? Three separate downmods for pointing out that a guy who doesn't even know the difference between your and you're might not be as sharp as he thinks he is? Christ, I get tired of this shit.
So issue a check to every citizen at the beginning of every month that's equal to spending the poverty level of income on stuff - e.g., 5% tax, $20k poverty line, you get $1000/yr from the government. Dead simple.
Only 10%? Read those offers carefully. After all, cutting that off at $250k implies that $25k covers everything. Not saying you're wrong - you're a lot closer to it than I am - but just be careful.
Still, it sounds like you'll do well. Good luck out there. Final tip - whatever you do, pick up a minor in business. It's useful.
I'm sure you think this is insightful in some fashion, but it's really quite true. If you're so much smarter than the guys at the top, why aren't you one of them?
Yes, good luck matters. Yes, hard work by itself is no guarantee. Yes, there are good people who get ground down. And yes, there are truly dumb people who are worth a lot of money and who occupy positions of power. But they are the exception, rather than the rule.
I'm sure I've read that poor kids with lesser grades in high school perform better in university than privately-schooled kids with better grades.
I'm not sure what you mean by this sentence. I'm sure that the occasional poor kid outshines the rich ones (hell, that's me), but it's hardly the case that the nation's great minds lie mostly in the ghetto.
To be fair, your parents' income is almost certainly proportional to their intelligence. And while there are outliers, and the trait regresses to the mean, your parents' intelligence is a pretty fair predictor of your own.
That, and it takes a long, long time to climb up out of the bottom of society. Count on at least three dedicated generations to go from the working class to the upper middle class. There is an enormous amount of human capital embodied in upper-middle-class society, and getting yourself and your family there takes a lot of work and a long time.
To be fair, this means the Ivies are the best. Despite a staggering price tag, they still appear to be worth it.
The other side of that coin is that the vast majority of private colleges and out-of-state public colleges are simply not worth full price. There are limited exceptions, but mostly you shouldn't bother unless you can get a scholarship (and if your intellect is formidable enough to exceed the capabilities of your state's flagship university, it's good enough to get you a scholarship at a good one).
Toward that end, I have one piece of advice for any 9th or 10th graders reading this: practice and study for the PSAT. Your high school may not place much emphasis on it, especially if you live in a rural area; they may not even tell you when it will be offered. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE IT IN 11TH GRADE. A sufficiently high score (and if you're in a low-achieving state, that score won't be all that high) will make you a National Merit Semifinalist, which is enough to get you a full ride at quite a lot of universities and at least half tuition at many others. It will also open up other scholarship opportunities. And apply for every scholarship you hear of; $1000 here and there adds up.
Agreed. Anyone living in the Great White North able to comment? Where I live, it never gets cold enough to need gloves unless you're working outdoors.
We'll consider doing it when you get around to exempting Americans from libel tourism in your courts.
Fischer-Tropsch. But it's not very efficient.
I don't want to dominate every game - that's a sign that you're playing below your level. But it's ridiculous to say that if I ever want to play basketball, I have to be ready for the NBA. I know you're better at this. I don't care about being the best at this. I just want the opportunity to avoid the assholes and play at my level.
The problem comes for someone who isn't a single guy with a bunch of gamer friends that can always be free on Tuesday night at eight for a two hour match. I have two friends that are gamers at all. I can't play enough with them to get up to speed. I'd love to play something like the touch football game I play once a year with some friends from high school - laid back, not viciously competitive, minimal immaturity. But for some reason the online games always have some asshole who has to gank the newb.
To take your examples: if I join a bridge club, they will start me out against the guy whonjoined last month, not the president of the club. If I start playing poker, I'll do the no-money online games, not no-limit games in Vegas. I don't expect to beat everyone In the world. I just want to be matched against people with similar skill levels. I don't have to win every game, or even most games. Hell, I don't have to win any of them when I'm starting. But it's reasonable to expect that I'll make one kill for every ten deaths, or that I'll be able to move at least a few feet before dying. You can't even begin to develop skills in most of these games if you don't have a group of friends to start from scratch with, and that's not a good thing.
How about doing what Nintendo does with Wii Virtual Console games? You can save at any time, but your saved state is deleted when you resume the game. You get the ability to drop the game now and pick it up later while requiring a certain level of skill to succeed.
Man, that flew right over my head.
If the Nazis had taken Britain and the Caucasus, what do you think are the chances that the US would have tried to invade from across the Atlantic? It's one thing to island hop the Pacific; it's another to jump the entire Atlantic in one go.
I was thinking more along the lines of winter on the Eastern Front.
I suck at FPS. So what? I don't have time to become good at the genre or memorize the maps. Just put me on a server with a bunch of other guys who don't know the maps and suck. We'll all have fun, while you guys who are good at it compete for the real glory.
Hell, if Hitler had just had better weather there's a good chance you'd all be speaking German right now. Those of you that survived, that is.
I was pointing out a potential problem with his thought process. As quite a few people pointed out when that happened, if the ability exists, the chance that Amazon will eventually be compelled to use it by a publisher is pretty high.
"The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work
That copy is on your Kindle. Or on your PC, or on whatever device you downloaded it to. Loan out your Kindle or your hard drive. Or sell your account on Amazon.
10. They're heavy.
11. They take up a lot of space if you want more than two or three.
So, just to follow up on something a lot of people complained about when it happened, you're totally cool with Amazon having the ability to delete a book off your device without your explicit authorization?