The US inheritance tax until 2001 was 55% of any estate exceeding $675k. Of course, the truly wealthy can afford dodges, so it fell disproportionately heavily on people who were born with relatively little money but who had earned $4-5M over a lifetime, especially small business owners (some of whose descendants were having to sell the family farm or business to have the money to pay the tax). 15% of anything above $140K is rather nasty, though, I agree.
The roads, I pay plenty for - currently for my wife and me it's over $1300/yr before you count gasoline tax. And I never went to public school until I was 22...
Having said that, I think that the problem with libertarianism is the extraordinary number of crazy nerds it attracts - the Randroids (Rand herself was a bit goofy but not stupid). There are plenty of hard Left groups that do just fine with the youth that refer to sheeple and so forth, so abusing the populace at large seems to work (this is the group largely responsible for the fact that Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton is the president, after all). I've known a few Randroids, and the biggest problem they have is an inability to understand that some people are just assholes because they like being assholes, so they act as though society can be organized on the principle of everyone acting in their own purely rational interest.
That is not the IRS, it's the "Free File Alliance, LLC". Which is not an arm of the US government. I have to disclose this information to the IRS; I don't have to tell anyone else, and I now earn enough money not to want to.
You got deposits? Capital tax on interest, wealth tax on balance
Interest is income, I get that - but you have to pay a wealth tax on money sitting in the bank? How can you ever retire on more than a government pension?
people actually go to a doctor for the simpler things
I'd be happy to see a health care reform that ends ER abuse, but unfortunately you run up hard against the brick wall of stupidity very fast. Speaking from my own experience working in an ER, there are relatively few conditions that are left untreated because people won't go to a regular office visit but blossom into a nightmare that requires extraordinarily expensive treatment. Most ER abuse consists of people who honestly view it as a 24-hour-a-day clinic where they can come in at 2 AM for an emergency evaluation of... spots on their genitalia, back pain that's been bothering them for a month, neck pain that appeared not after the car wreck but after they went and talked to a lawyer, a toothache they've had for a week, you name it. Lots of people are trying to get work excuses, pain pills, or some other BS.
It works in Sweden. The US is not Sweden - the relative cultural homogeneity of the Scandinavian nations is a really crucial part of their ability to conduct welfare states that are not overwhelmed by freeloaders, because that's the reason that...
[m]ost people who are receiving more money than they're contributing tend to feel pretty bad about this.
That is not a given in the US. It has been my experience that most Americans I know who are big-government, welfare-state liberals grew up in places where government works. By contrast, most of the small-government, go-it-alone conservatives grew up in places where it doesn't. Don't forget that not all governments work...
You are correct. The requirement that you use some other provider to submit info to the IRS was what kept me from using the free services in the past, when I was poor enough to qualify. Now I no longer qualify, but I haven't had a big income long enough to have accumulated a complicated tax situation (it's all W2 income, I have a house and student loans but no kids or current education expenses).
In the UK and Europe, drinking is much, much more socially acceptable than it is in significant parts of the US. There are still a fair number of places in the US where you can't buy alcohol at all, and most states have some degree of bizarre regulation around alcohol (who may sell it, during what hours, etc.). Being inebriated in public is a major no-no in most of the US. (Exceptions apply, of course.)
Depends on the industry. I'm a doctor; the last dinner meeting (i.e., after hours) I went to, not a single person had more than three (small) glasses of wine. For lawyers, that would be the minimum at lunch.
people "in charge" rarely know any more or any better than anyone else
This is both true and somewhat beside the point. Industries often do things that fail to make any sense to outsiders, even outsiders of considerable intelligence, because experience has shown them that it's the right thing to do.
punish
Damn, man, this is yapping on the Internet, not S&M. Don't ever take anything I write on the Internet that seriously.
The company was behaving like a library instead of like a company, because there was obviously no fiscal reason to continue maintaining those tapes without any intention of releasing them. The idea that someone would happily relieve them of that burden at no cost to CBS is a financial win for CBS.
I'm no network executive, and neither are you, so we are at some disadvantage while contemplating what is or is not in CBS' best interests. BTW, I'd never realized "market failure" was a term of art, simply because most times I've encountered it, it has been used to describe the situation I mentioned: a product that someone wants, but nobody sells. Having read about it, I understand your point, and you're right. This is the flip side of the sword I've seen too many Randroids impale themselves on, when they insist that nobody would ever refuse to do something that would be economically very advantageous to them just to be a bastard. It's sad that it exists, but any policy changes based on it will create at least as many problems as they solve.
I have nothing to "repeat after you" because you don't know what you're talking about, because you had no idea what I was talking about, even though Wikipedia could have told you.
Hint for the future: If you had left off that entire sentence, and linked the Wikipedia article, you would have come across as an opinionated guy with a defensible position who is happy to spread knowledge to the layman in need of enlightenment. Instead, you reveal yourself to be a supercilious prick, a notion that your photo on your blog does little to dispel. (Take a new one. Smile in it.)
If you happen to hold the physical media that the only copy is on, you are its guardian, not its owner.
There is no meaningful discussion that I can have with someone whose concept of property rights encompasses this idea. We're just going to have to agree to disagree.
What's the market failure? The Internet is the market and it has established a price of "free" for all content that can legally be redistributed. Repeat after me: "Markets set prices. They do not determine what is available." CBS obviously believes that the value of Jack Benny is more than "free", and it appears that they are not crazy to think so. What they want is some kind of compensation for having retained good-quality tapes for all these years instead of the third-generation kinescopes that are apparently available.
That makes them their works. I'm with fandingo; they are being supreme jerks about this, but it's their property and they can do as they please with it. Now, if there were copies out there somewhere, those could be legally redistributed (unless the concerns about songs in the skits are correct).
The only links I have to government IT are two old friends, one of whom works for a defense contractor (a very, very bright guy) and the other of whom... probably works for the NSA. I'm not an IT guy myself.
You do touch on an interesting problem: how can the FBI recruit the tech people it needs? The NSA can give you access to knowledge that you'll never get elsewhere; the military can let you do things with it without going to jail. Being a cop offers neither of those benefits, and most geeks I know are anti-cop. (For the law enforcement folks in the audience: we see you driving 5-10 mph over the speed limit and blowing yellow-red lights in your official cars, the same shit you use to pull us over. You're a bunch of meter maids until you quit that.)
US pushes around Central American country and gets away with it because we are their biggest market. Gee, that's only been the story of, what, the past 150 years?
I rather strongly suspect that there are a lot of new Google "employees" and "corporate security" who just happen to draw a paycheck from the FBI. It's about mapping out the threat.
Slashdot Mirror
The US inheritance tax until 2001 was 55% of any estate exceeding $675k. Of course, the truly wealthy can afford dodges, so it fell disproportionately heavily on people who were born with relatively little money but who had earned $4-5M over a lifetime, especially small business owners (some of whose descendants were having to sell the family farm or business to have the money to pay the tax). 15% of anything above $140K is rather nasty, though, I agree.
We tried, in 1986, to fix things. By 1990 they were already off track again. Thankfully, we're not yet back to 1985 levels of insanity.
most people LIKE roads and public education
The roads, I pay plenty for - currently for my wife and me it's over $1300/yr before you count gasoline tax. And I never went to public school until I was 22...
Having said that, I think that the problem with libertarianism is the extraordinary number of crazy nerds it attracts - the Randroids (Rand herself was a bit goofy but not stupid). There are plenty of hard Left groups that do just fine with the youth that refer to sheeple and so forth, so abusing the populace at large seems to work (this is the group largely responsible for the fact that Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton is the president, after all). I've known a few Randroids, and the biggest problem they have is an inability to understand that some people are just assholes because they like being assholes, so they act as though society can be organized on the principle of everyone acting in their own purely rational interest.
That is not the IRS, it's the "Free File Alliance, LLC". Which is not an arm of the US government. I have to disclose this information to the IRS; I don't have to tell anyone else, and I now earn enough money not to want to.
You got deposits? Capital tax on interest, wealth tax on balance
Interest is income, I get that - but you have to pay a wealth tax on money sitting in the bank? How can you ever retire on more than a government pension?
people actually go to a doctor for the simpler things
I'd be happy to see a health care reform that ends ER abuse, but unfortunately you run up hard against the brick wall of stupidity very fast. Speaking from my own experience working in an ER, there are relatively few conditions that are left untreated because people won't go to a regular office visit but blossom into a nightmare that requires extraordinarily expensive treatment. Most ER abuse consists of people who honestly view it as a 24-hour-a-day clinic where they can come in at 2 AM for an emergency evaluation of... spots on their genitalia, back pain that's been bothering them for a month, neck pain that appeared not after the car wreck but after they went and talked to a lawyer, a toothache they've had for a week, you name it. Lots of people are trying to get work excuses, pain pills, or some other BS.
[m]ost people who are receiving more money than they're contributing tend to feel pretty bad about this.
That is not a given in the US. It has been my experience that most Americans I know who are big-government, welfare-state liberals grew up in places where government works. By contrast, most of the small-government, go-it-alone conservatives grew up in places where it doesn't. Don't forget that not all governments work...
You are correct. The requirement that you use some other provider to submit info to the IRS was what kept me from using the free services in the past, when I was poor enough to qualify. Now I no longer qualify, but I haven't had a big income long enough to have accumulated a complicated tax situation (it's all W2 income, I have a house and student loans but no kids or current education expenses).
I'm an American citizen who applied for residency abroad and got the hell out.
So where did you go? Inquiring minds want to know.
TFA says it goes via TDRS, which is in geosynchronous orbit. Round trip is just under 45000 miles.
In the UK and Europe, drinking is much, much more socially acceptable than it is in significant parts of the US. There are still a fair number of places in the US where you can't buy alcohol at all, and most states have some degree of bizarre regulation around alcohol (who may sell it, during what hours, etc.). Being inebriated in public is a major no-no in most of the US. (Exceptions apply, of course.)
Depends on the industry. I'm a doctor; the last dinner meeting (i.e., after hours) I went to, not a single person had more than three (small) glasses of wine. For lawyers, that would be the minimum at lunch.
people "in charge" rarely know any more or any better than anyone else
This is both true and somewhat beside the point. Industries often do things that fail to make any sense to outsiders, even outsiders of considerable intelligence, because experience has shown them that it's the right thing to do.
punish
Damn, man, this is yapping on the Internet, not S&M. Don't ever take anything I write on the Internet that seriously.
The company was behaving like a library instead of like a company, because there was obviously no fiscal reason to continue maintaining those tapes without any intention of releasing them. The idea that someone would happily relieve them of that burden at no cost to CBS is a financial win for CBS.
I'm no network executive, and neither are you, so we are at some disadvantage while contemplating what is or is not in CBS' best interests. BTW, I'd never realized "market failure" was a term of art, simply because most times I've encountered it, it has been used to describe the situation I mentioned: a product that someone wants, but nobody sells. Having read about it, I understand your point, and you're right. This is the flip side of the sword I've seen too many Randroids impale themselves on, when they insist that nobody would ever refuse to do something that would be economically very advantageous to them just to be a bastard. It's sad that it exists, but any policy changes based on it will create at least as many problems as they solve.
I have nothing to "repeat after you" because you don't know what you're talking about, because you had no idea what I was talking about, even though Wikipedia could have told you.
Hint for the future: If you had left off that entire sentence, and linked the Wikipedia article, you would have come across as an opinionated guy with a defensible position who is happy to spread knowledge to the layman in need of enlightenment. Instead, you reveal yourself to be a supercilious prick, a notion that your photo on your blog does little to dispel. (Take a new one. Smile in it.)
If you happen to hold the physical media that the only copy is on, you are its guardian, not its owner.
There is no meaningful discussion that I can have with someone whose concept of property rights encompasses this idea. We're just going to have to agree to disagree.
What's the market failure? The Internet is the market and it has established a price of "free" for all content that can legally be redistributed. Repeat after me: "Markets set prices. They do not determine what is available." CBS obviously believes that the value of Jack Benny is more than "free", and it appears that they are not crazy to think so. What they want is some kind of compensation for having retained good-quality tapes for all these years instead of the third-generation kinescopes that are apparently available.
Is your local library as rich as CBS? Because it's all about how deep the pockets are...
They only held the copyright.
That makes them their works. I'm with fandingo; they are being supreme jerks about this, but it's their property and they can do as they please with it. Now, if there were copies out there somewhere, those could be legally redistributed (unless the concerns about songs in the skits are correct).
The only links I have to government IT are two old friends, one of whom works for a defense contractor (a very, very bright guy) and the other of whom... probably works for the NSA. I'm not an IT guy myself.
You do touch on an interesting problem: how can the FBI recruit the tech people it needs? The NSA can give you access to knowledge that you'll never get elsewhere; the military can let you do things with it without going to jail. Being a cop offers neither of those benefits, and most geeks I know are anti-cop. (For the law enforcement folks in the audience: we see you driving 5-10 mph over the speed limit and blowing yellow-red lights in your official cars, the same shit you use to pull us over. You're a bunch of meter maids until you quit that.)
what is keeping China from importing Costa Rican sugar and re-branding it as Chinese sugar?
Because transporting it across the Pacific, twice, eliminates any price advantage?
US pushes around Central American country and gets away with it because we are their biggest market. Gee, that's only been the story of, what, the past 150 years?
I believe you used vis-a-vis correctly there. Try vice versa.
I rather strongly suspect that there are a lot of new Google "employees" and "corporate security" who just happen to draw a paycheck from the FBI. It's about mapping out the threat.
Do you still design for flammable anesthetics? I didn't think they were used anywhere that there was electricity.
wine & dine doctors, preferrably at strip clubs
I invite you to come sell me equipment any time you like. Hell, I'd settle for a decent lunch.