Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
On a form 4473 (that is Application to Purchase a freaking firearm) I am allowed to skip the portion about the social security number and the federal background check will still go through and I am still allowed to walk home with my new shooting iron.
That's because you owning a gun is a guaranteed right and you owning a cell phone is a negotiated sale.
We didn't set up the cities that pretty much require cars (I'd like something less car-intensive and I'm a car guy), and your obnoxious LCD tv is fairly cheap compared to your other expenses, but go ahead and bash americans for wanting to afford living in america.
My main concern is that I trust the cops about as much as the criminals, so I don't want them having more than the minimum required power to investigate crimes.
As a government, we mostly don't give a crap about Kuwaitis. We apparently don't even care about the kuwait invasion - what does make sense is that we invaded to stop Iraq from trading dollars in Euros - that's a serious threat to our own stability.
No. It hits each of their dollars in exactly the same way.
the marginal utility of income goes down the more you make, so that makes this tax regressive.
How? It's utterly blind to how a given dollar is made. A progressive tax, on the other hand, actually does, actively and by design, discriminate against those that produce more, or work harder. Your low-wage-earning guy that has it in him to work two jobs so that he can bring up his family's standard of living? That guy, through progressive taxes, is punished for having the energy and dedication to work harder and take risks. That is discrimination.
Simple - low wage earners are 2 steps from starvation already. It makes sense to shift their burden up the food chain to the guy who makes a lot more and most likely has a lot more to protect. When poor joe improves his station, he pays more taxes, but the low taxes on the poor are what enables him to do it at all.
So, is a fat person allowed to purchase more "necessities of life" than a skinny person?
Well obviously they have, now haven't they? The point here is that nobody starves. We don't need to get the numbers exactly right for everybody, just close enough that nobody starves.
The US has close to 10 times the population of Canada. California alone has more people than Canada.
Um, what? How is this relevant?
Nothing in my argument precludes a Canada-style system in any one of our 57 states
We have 50 states and a couple territories.
The US has plenty of room for socialism. I'm arguing that implementing it federally must be opposed.
You realise that this would limit people from moving across state lines due to the different state health insurance plans, right? We already have socialism, we just don't get our money's worth wrt health care. Regarding mortgage underwriting, regulation of the industry is absolutely not socialism and is arguably a federal matter.
Actually, that's good - a proactive IT department would work on fixing issues that many users have difficulty with, even if that means replacing the copier contract with one that delivers a more user-friendly machine that has slightly worse "paper specs". As a random not-very-technical example.
How many spares do you have on hand? Do you order mobos from newegg or go to frys? If the company won't spring for a reliable infrastructure, they probably won't go for spare parts either.
That's a very dangerous attitude to take. After all, you are not omniscient. All you have is the evidence before you, which may or may not be telling the whole story.
Depends on the context. If I see someone attacking someone else, I have the right in most states to use up to deadly force to stop the attack. If I find someone who's already been beaten unconcious, all I can really do is call an ambulance for them.
I can play this game: It's not like he wanted to shut down a local airport, so he ordered bulldozers to destroy the runways in the middle of the night while the airport was open. He did actually close gitmo and appears able to avert any serious bloodletting, so that's good, but he really freaks out the NRA guys.
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Article 1, section 8:
Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
On a form 4473 (that is Application to Purchase a freaking firearm) I am allowed to skip the portion about the social security number and the federal background check will still go through and I am still allowed to walk home with my new shooting iron.
That's because you owning a gun is a guaranteed right and you owning a cell phone is a negotiated sale.
No, not everybody has a credit score. The system can kick out an error that amounts to 'insufficient information'.
Hawaii? You do know that's a state, right?
How does canada do credit checks? Down here, you can run someone's credit without the SSN, but it's a pain in the ass.
it wasn't considered "true" multi-tasking by purists.
Yeah, only purists care that a poorly behaved app can freeze the computer for minutes on end.
We didn't set up the cities that pretty much require cars (I'd like something less car-intensive and I'm a car guy), and your obnoxious LCD tv is fairly cheap compared to your other expenses, but go ahead and bash americans for wanting to afford living in america.
My main concern is that I trust the cops about as much as the criminals, so I don't want them having more than the minimum required power to investigate crimes.
As a government, we mostly don't give a crap about Kuwaitis. We apparently don't even care about the kuwait invasion - what does make sense is that we invaded to stop Iraq from trading dollars in Euros - that's a serious threat to our own stability.
The Kuwaitis love us!
Of course they do - they slant drill into Iraq, Saddam bitchslaps them, and we go roll over him after telling him we wouldn't.
Yeah, so how are north Korea, Rwanda, and Darfur these days? How about that Taliban? We don't seem to care that much about 'other' people.
Never underestimate the power of organized idiots :)
Possibly it could, but this is by no means an explicit requirement.
That makes it fall under the interstate commerce clause, so congress can get their fingers in it.
Why you wouldn't want the states to figure things out for themselves, and have the federal government acting as a check on abuses escapes me.
Fair enough, but I really don't think anyone in congress remembers the 10th.
No. It hits each of their dollars in exactly the same way.
the marginal utility of income goes down the more you make, so that makes this tax regressive.
How? It's utterly blind to how a given dollar is made. A progressive tax, on the other hand, actually does, actively and by design, discriminate against those that produce more, or work harder. Your low-wage-earning guy that has it in him to work two jobs so that he can bring up his family's standard of living? That guy, through progressive taxes, is punished for having the energy and dedication to work harder and take risks. That is discrimination.
Simple - low wage earners are 2 steps from starvation already. It makes sense to shift their burden up the food chain to the guy who makes a lot more and most likely has a lot more to protect. When poor joe improves his station, he pays more taxes, but the low taxes on the poor are what enables him to do it at all.
So, is a fat person allowed to purchase more "necessities of life" than a skinny person?
Well obviously they have, now haven't they? The point here is that nobody starves. We don't need to get the numbers exactly right for everybody, just close enough that nobody starves.
Eh, what do I care, you sound like a freeper.
The US has close to 10 times the population of Canada. California alone has more people than Canada.
Um, what? How is this relevant?
Nothing in my argument precludes a Canada-style system in any one of our 57 states
We have 50 states and a couple territories.
The US has plenty of room for socialism. I'm arguing that implementing it federally must be opposed.
You realise that this would limit people from moving across state lines due to the different state health insurance plans, right? We already have socialism, we just don't get our money's worth wrt health care. Regarding mortgage underwriting, regulation of the industry is absolutely not socialism and is arguably a federal matter.
Actually, that's good - a proactive IT department would work on fixing issues that many users have difficulty with, even if that means replacing the copier contract with one that delivers a more user-friendly machine that has slightly worse "paper specs". As a random not-very-technical example.
How will that help? Users don't read.
How many spares do you have on hand? Do you order mobos from newegg or go to frys? If the company won't spring for a reliable infrastructure, they probably won't go for spare parts either.
Which is why you explain to them that fixing problem X costs money and they can spend the money to fix things or deal with things as they are.
Even if you show them that, they will say "well, it isn't broken all the time..." or something like that.
To which you say "okay, then accept that it will be broken and don't come crying to us when it is."
Things must be bad indeed in parts of Michigan.
Hmm, welcome to 1995.
That's a very dangerous attitude to take. After all, you are not omniscient. All you have is the evidence before you, which may or may not be telling the whole story.
Depends on the context. If I see someone attacking someone else, I have the right in most states to use up to deadly force to stop the attack. If I find someone who's already been beaten unconcious, all I can really do is call an ambulance for them.
so post a link, why don't you?
What a winner...
I can play this game: It's not like he wanted to shut down a local airport, so he ordered bulldozers to destroy the runways in the middle of the night while the airport was open. He did actually close gitmo and appears able to avert any serious bloodletting, so that's good, but he really freaks out the NRA guys.
I'd probably go with "$LUSER flags everything as an emergency. How was I to know this really was one?"