without that it's just another regressive tax on the working poor. And before a bunch of/.er's chime in with 'How can you be poor & live in San Francisco', don't forget the rich hire maids, gardeners, bus boys and other low income workers that still have to get to work at their wealthy boss' house. I always found it odd there was always a ghetto nearby every rich community until I realized this.
Maybe it's different in San Francisco and they can get around on the bus system quickly and conveniently. Aw, who the heck am I kidding. Why spend good tax money on public transportation when you can just make the poor get up 2 hours early to ride the bus in.
Now, if they're putting points on your license then I like. Here in Arizona we learned from California's mistake and stopped putting red light cameras in rich neighborhoods where the stay-at-home moms could organize a vote to ban them. We keep 'em in the poor neighborhoods where everyone works two jobs. Unlike a cop a camera doesn't know not to ticket a late model BMW or Mercedes.
Seriously. The job of most software testers is try the software and then complain it's too hard to use so the UI guys can tweak it down to a 3rd grade level or so. I guess there's regression testing too.
why should some underpaid Cust Serv rep be responsible for the well being of practically every fortune 500 company? When a company succeeds, it's because of brilliant leadership (Apple), but when they fail, it's always the customer service reps responsibility / fault. WTF?
Maybe Barnes & Noble's leadership should have done something about declining reading rates in America, huh? The trend had been going on for decades. Maybe they should have lobbied for better education & schools to create the kind of people who WANT books. Look at Japan. Well educated populace that values reading (hell, good authors are celebrities over there, instead of just the ones that strike it rich like in the US). But nope, you're right. It's all the fault of the minimum wage gal/guy behind the counter with no stock options, no career options, and no raises. Not the multi-millionaire leadership.
"The primary cause was a design flaw, not underfunding to our infrastructure"
Same difference. The point was that there were LOTS of reports from engineers saying the bridge was unsound. Not WHY is was unsound. A properly funded infrastructure budget would have tore that bridge down.
And the rich get a LOT of benefit. They're rich because of what the middle class does (rapidly becoming the lower class). That Ayn Randian fantasy of the 'producers' going off to some gulch and leaving the rest stranded is just that, a fantasy. It all goes back to the 1800s when wealthy schmucks argued unions should be allowed a 40 hour work week because they'd just use it to drink. Idle hands/devil's playing and all that rot.
but I get 100%, absolute protection from rabid elephants. The same as Mitt Romney. It's called an Ocean, dumb ass. There is no credible threat to US security. We do not have to devote 50% of our GDP to the military. And yes, the police do predominately patrol and respond to crime in wealthy neighborhoods. I live in a shit neighborhood, and the only time the cops showed is for a Murder, and even then they just kinda hung out and let events take it's course. Move to inner city Detroit and tell me the cops don't pick and choose.
And while we're on the fsckin' subject, our entire national infrastructure is crumbling. There've already been a few high profile bridge collapses where engineers KNEW the bridge was unsafe and nobody wanted to spend the money. Also, the rich keep going on about not having enough engineers, but they keep increasing class sizes in public schools; every frickin' study since the 70s shows how you get kids to do Math & Science: smaller classes, relevant lessons. Costs money to do that. Why not just let them breed uncontrollable and skim off the 10% that somehow make it.
Nice try though. I'd say if noone else but the GP was pitching you might'a hit something.
to tax income & investments higher and real land less? You know, we can do what we like with our tax law. It's ours. We don't have to try and fit it into silly preconceived notions of what is and isn't "property".
Isn't the whole point of this proposal...
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 1
that the wealthy are making a tremendous amount of money on those assets, and using a few simple accounting tricks, are paying little or nothing in taxes? That shopping mall is making it's owner tremendously rich. That wealth is largely a by product of society, not the owners inherent genius (no matter what Ayn Rand told you), and society at large (meaning me and you) want something fair in return. I think Malcolm Gladwell said it best: We're saying 2 million dollars a year is enough.
As for France, that's an easy solution. Let all other countries enact similar laws, and problem solved. Didn't Carl Marx say something about capital going where labor was cheapest in a never ending race to the bottom? Oh, I forgot, all anyone can ever remember about him is that a few fascists used his books for rhetoric.
No matter how rich you are you can't buy enough Royal's Royces to drive our economy. Just tax the high end like crazy stuff. Private jets, $100k cars, etc, etc. That solves the regressive problem, It's easy to enforce because there just aren't than many people buying private jets who aren't Carly Fiorina, and it won't stop consumption. There. I just solved our tax problem. Now good luck getting our rulers to approve it.
Oh, Jeez, they're borrowing below market rate!
on
The Zuckerberg Tax
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· Score: 1
Sorry, but nobody in this thread noticed the obvious. It's a good 'ole boy network at work. When you have that much money you go to the bank and your buddy loans you at 1%. So yes, the loans have to be *quote* paid back *unquote*, but only in the academic sense. It's a very simple, very effective tax dodge that's only allowed because it's being done by the ruling class. It's a bit of fundamental corruption in our economic system. This, folks, is why capitalism doesn't work. It gets broken by stuff like this. You know what's the worst thing? They don't even hide what they're doing. It's all out in the open for everyone to see, and while we're blathering on about economic principles they're laughing all the way to the bank.
For years and years we read news stories about the amazing and complicated hoops accountants jump through to keep their wealth clients from paying money. Now we find out that all their doing is borrowing money at below market rates against untaxable assets. Nothing too complex, and it relies on a good 'ole boy network to approve the ultra low interest loans that make it all possible (I, for example, can't borrow at a rate low enough to get away with this).
The big guys would just love this. They pay this guy $500 million and then never have to worry about another Google coming out of nowhere and redefining everything again. In Europe it was called the guild system, and it kept knowledge and power in the hands of the ruling elite.
It takes much less processing power to encrypt than to decrypt. That's sorta the point. Also, my point wasn't that processing power increases allow for more complex or higher bit-rate encryption. My point is that they allow the programmers to focus on making functionally correct code instead of on code that's fast enough to run real time on a 1333mhz single core Arm or some such. If you look into it, you'll find all the DRM cracks boil down to mistakes made during the implementation phase, usually due to processor specific optimizations.
Also doesn't work. Just put a kill switch in at the right place along with circuitry complex enough that you need a Scanning Electron Microscope to decypher the board. Capcom did the former with their CPS games but the chips were simple enough the encryption was cracked. Microsoft did the latter on the 360 controllers and it took a SEM to pirate the codes needed to hook an unlicense peripheral to the 360. A guy did it and the story was posted here, but it's not practical for every device, and you just change the codes. Modern manufacturing and factory retooling makes that possible too.
Sorry, but you're the one being naive and silly. Technology will outpace freedom, like it or not.
If it's good enough to watch then you're Camera's will recognize copyrighted material from a watermark and won't take the picture. High end copy machines already do this with currency.
Most piracy is based on poorly implemented encryption due to slow processors. Next Gen hardware will be able to run encryption algorithms that don't have a gazillion assembly optimization in them. The XBox, PS3, current gen TVs & Blu Ray players couldn't. Once that happens, pop. No more piracy.
a judge will just rule the damages you're asking for aren't reasonable and reduce them. Judges are kings of their court. We've watched several copyright trolls get slapped by Judges (Righthaven comes to mind). Judges are property holders. They're going to come done on the side of property in almost every case.
I think what people are worried about is there won't be enough young people to take care of the old people. There's two reasons why this is BS. One, the Japanese are a healthy population that takes care of themselves. They're able to work longer. Two, robots & machines are doing most manufacturing tasks these days. It's actually a big problem in the States. We've got no work for the young.
Now, if you're a member of Japan's ruling elite you've got lots of reasons to be worried. You need a strong population of workers producing the export goods you sell to buy your expensive luxury items; like $100,000 bottles of Whiskey.
I'll one up that. The US Did put down a protest. They crushed OWS using provisions of the Patriot Act. The rest of the world ran a few news stories and then got on with their lives.
The rulers lost the support of their generals. That wasn't because the generals had anything against turning guns on their citizens, they just thought the rulers were taking too big a piece of the pie. The lesson will be learned, the ruling class will adapt, and it won't happen again.
That's kinda the problem. Our oppressors are learning from their mistakes. We're not.
there will be no civil war. A modern military can put down it's populace in no time. You don't have the weapons, tactics or manpower to take on a police force, let alone the US army. Plus our ruling class own the media. Look how far Occupy Wall Street got...
You want to do something that works? Don't have children (Ok,/.ers, get the jokes out of your system, I'll be here when you're done giggling). Seriously. So long as there's more people than we need to keep the rich living like kings they'll be able to take advantage of us. You want kids? Have 1, then stop. Or go full Darwin award and have none. The ruling class of Japan is freaking the fuck out because they can't get their people to have kids. So is a good chunk of Europe. Stop giving them fodder for their factories and machines. Stop convincing yourself that your fsckin' crotchfruit is so amazing they'll rise above the misery you left in your wake. Stop reproducing, and watch our rulers turn impotent (pun not intended).
this contractor is basically screwed now. That said, I don't know a single contractor, company or business that's not run like this. The company that cuts the most corners gets the contract when they underbid. Sometimes that company's dumb luck launches them to success, and somethings this happens.
It wasn't communists & anarchists, it was broke college grads with no jobs, no prospects and lots and lots of debt. It was a bunch of people sold a bill of goods (buy education and you're future's set!). Anarchists are just guys out to riot, and there were no riots. And communists? Seriously? In America you'd have to declare yourself a baby eating Nambla member with ties to the Nazi party and the KKK to even get into the ballpark range of how much we hate communists. Heck, my kid was watching Annie yesterday and there's a Bolshevik trying to kill 'ole Daddy Warbucks. Anti-communism permeates our culture. Or to put it another way... But.. But.. Socialism!
The whole thing WAS conducted like civil rights marches. e.g. peacefully. As for the Sunday's best, the movement was squashed long before it could get that level of organization. It woulda been nice if it got that far, but do you honestly think our ruling class learned nothing from the 60s?
The media didn't downplay, they outright ignored. Worked too. The cops moved in and busted some heads and the whole thing fizzled out. Occupy Wall Street wasn't about a few anti-1% protests. It was about changing America's economic narrative: e.g. work hard and play by the rules and you'll succeed. It was about letting the 99% know the deck was stacked against them; and that no matter how hard they worked they'd keep losing ground. The American Ruling class figured that out right quick and squashed it.
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without that it's just another regressive tax on the working poor. And before a bunch of /.er's chime in with 'How can you be poor & live in San Francisco', don't forget the rich hire maids, gardeners, bus boys and other low income workers that still have to get to work at their wealthy boss' house. I always found it odd there was always a ghetto nearby every rich community until I realized this.
Maybe it's different in San Francisco and they can get around on the bus system quickly and conveniently. Aw, who the heck am I kidding. Why spend good tax money on public transportation when you can just make the poor get up 2 hours early to ride the bus in.
Now, if they're putting points on your license then I like. Here in Arizona we learned from California's mistake and stopped putting red light cameras in rich neighborhoods where the stay-at-home moms could organize a vote to ban them. We keep 'em in the poor neighborhoods where everyone works two jobs. Unlike a cop a camera doesn't know not to ticket a late model BMW or Mercedes.
Seriously. The job of most software testers is try the software and then complain it's too hard to use so the UI guys can tweak it down to a 3rd grade level or so. I guess there's regression testing too.
why should some underpaid Cust Serv rep be responsible for the well being of practically every fortune 500 company? When a company succeeds, it's because of brilliant leadership (Apple), but when they fail, it's always the customer service reps responsibility / fault. WTF?
Maybe Barnes & Noble's leadership should have done something about declining reading rates in America, huh? The trend had been going on for decades. Maybe they should have lobbied for better education & schools to create the kind of people who WANT books. Look at Japan. Well educated populace that values reading (hell, good authors are celebrities over there, instead of just the ones that strike it rich like in the US). But nope, you're right. It's all the fault of the minimum wage gal/guy behind the counter with no stock options, no career options, and no raises. Not the multi-millionaire leadership.
"The primary cause was a design flaw, not underfunding to our infrastructure"
Same difference. The point was that there were LOTS of reports from engineers saying the bridge was unsound. Not WHY is was unsound. A properly funded infrastructure budget would have tore that bridge down.
And the rich get a LOT of benefit. They're rich because of what the middle class does (rapidly becoming the lower class). That Ayn Randian fantasy of the 'producers' going off to some gulch and leaving the rest stranded is just that, a fantasy. It all goes back to the 1800s when wealthy schmucks argued unions should be allowed a 40 hour work week because they'd just use it to drink. Idle hands/devil's playing and all that rot.
but I get 100%, absolute protection from rabid elephants. The same as Mitt Romney. It's called an Ocean, dumb ass. There is no credible threat to US security. We do not have to devote 50% of our GDP to the military. And yes, the police do predominately patrol and respond to crime in wealthy neighborhoods. I live in a shit neighborhood, and the only time the cops showed is for a Murder, and even then they just kinda hung out and let events take it's course. Move to inner city Detroit and tell me the cops don't pick and choose.
And while we're on the fsckin' subject, our entire national infrastructure is crumbling. There've already been a few high profile bridge collapses where engineers KNEW the bridge was unsafe and nobody wanted to spend the money. Also, the rich keep going on about not having enough engineers, but they keep increasing class sizes in public schools; every frickin' study since the 70s shows how you get kids to do Math & Science: smaller classes, relevant lessons. Costs money to do that. Why not just let them breed uncontrollable and skim off the 10% that somehow make it.
Nice try though. I'd say if noone else but the GP was pitching you might'a hit something.
to tax income & investments higher and real land less? You know, we can do what we like with our tax law. It's ours. We don't have to try and fit it into silly preconceived notions of what is and isn't "property".
that the wealthy are making a tremendous amount of money on those assets, and using a few simple accounting tricks, are paying little or nothing in taxes? That shopping mall is making it's owner tremendously rich. That wealth is largely a by product of society, not the owners inherent genius (no matter what Ayn Rand told you), and society at large (meaning me and you) want something fair in return. I think Malcolm Gladwell said it best: We're saying 2 million dollars a year is enough.
As for France, that's an easy solution. Let all other countries enact similar laws, and problem solved. Didn't Carl Marx say something about capital going where labor was cheapest in a never ending race to the bottom? Oh, I forgot, all anyone can ever remember about him is that a few fascists used his books for rhetoric.
No matter how rich you are you can't buy enough Royal's Royces to drive our economy. Just tax the high end like crazy stuff. Private jets, $100k cars, etc, etc. That solves the regressive problem, It's easy to enforce because there just aren't than many people buying private jets who aren't Carly Fiorina, and it won't stop consumption. There. I just solved our tax problem. Now good luck getting our rulers to approve it.
Sorry, but nobody in this thread noticed the obvious. It's a good 'ole boy network at work. When you have that much money you go to the bank and your buddy loans you at 1%. So yes, the loans have to be *quote* paid back *unquote*, but only in the academic sense. It's a very simple, very effective tax dodge that's only allowed because it's being done by the ruling class. It's a bit of fundamental corruption in our economic system. This, folks, is why capitalism doesn't work. It gets broken by stuff like this. You know what's the worst thing? They don't even hide what they're doing. It's all out in the open for everyone to see, and while we're blathering on about economic principles they're laughing all the way to the bank.
For years and years we read news stories about the amazing and complicated hoops accountants jump through to keep their wealth clients from paying money. Now we find out that all their doing is borrowing money at below market rates against untaxable assets. Nothing too complex, and it relies on a good 'ole boy network to approve the ultra low interest loans that make it all possible (I, for example, can't borrow at a rate low enough to get away with this).
I think you're still liable for damages during the patent period. That's a whole lot of start ups getting squashed.
The big guys would just love this. They pay this guy $500 million and then never have to worry about another Google coming out of nowhere and redefining everything again. In Europe it was called the guild system, and it kept knowledge and power in the hands of the ruling elite.
It takes much less processing power to encrypt than to decrypt. That's sorta the point. Also, my point wasn't that processing power increases allow for more complex or higher bit-rate encryption. My point is that they allow the programmers to focus on making functionally correct code instead of on code that's fast enough to run real time on a 1333mhz single core Arm or some such. If you look into it, you'll find all the DRM cracks boil down to mistakes made during the implementation phase, usually due to processor specific optimizations.
Also doesn't work. Just put a kill switch in at the right place along with circuitry complex enough that you need a Scanning Electron Microscope to decypher the board. Capcom did the former with their CPS games but the chips were simple enough the encryption was cracked. Microsoft did the latter on the 360 controllers and it took a SEM to pirate the codes needed to hook an unlicense peripheral to the 360. A guy did it and the story was posted here, but it's not practical for every device, and you just change the codes. Modern manufacturing and factory retooling makes that possible too.
Sorry, but you're the one being naive and silly. Technology will outpace freedom, like it or not.
If it's good enough to watch then you're Camera's will recognize copyrighted material from a watermark and won't take the picture. High end copy machines already do this with currency.
Most piracy is based on poorly implemented encryption due to slow processors. Next Gen hardware will be able to run encryption algorithms that don't have a gazillion assembly optimization in them. The XBox, PS3, current gen TVs & Blu Ray players couldn't. Once that happens, pop. No more piracy.
a judge will just rule the damages you're asking for aren't reasonable and reduce them. Judges are kings of their court. We've watched several copyright trolls get slapped by Judges (Righthaven comes to mind). Judges are property holders. They're going to come done on the side of property in almost every case.
I think what people are worried about is there won't be enough young people to take care of the old people. There's two reasons why this is BS. One, the Japanese are a healthy population that takes care of themselves. They're able to work longer. Two, robots & machines are doing most manufacturing tasks these days. It's actually a big problem in the States. We've got no work for the young.
Now, if you're a member of Japan's ruling elite you've got lots of reasons to be worried. You need a strong population of workers producing the export goods you sell to buy your expensive luxury items; like $100,000 bottles of Whiskey.
I'll one up that. The US Did put down a protest. They crushed OWS using provisions of the Patriot Act. The rest of the world ran a few news stories and then got on with their lives.
The rulers lost the support of their generals. That wasn't because the generals had anything against turning guns on their citizens, they just thought the rulers were taking too big a piece of the pie. The lesson will be learned, the ruling class will adapt, and it won't happen again.
That's kinda the problem. Our oppressors are learning from their mistakes. We're not.
there will be no civil war. A modern military can put down it's populace in no time. You don't have the weapons, tactics or manpower to take on a police force, let alone the US army. Plus our ruling class own the media. Look how far Occupy Wall Street got...
/.ers, get the jokes out of your system, I'll be here when you're done giggling). Seriously. So long as there's more people than we need to keep the rich living like kings they'll be able to take advantage of us. You want kids? Have 1, then stop. Or go full Darwin award and have none. The ruling class of Japan is freaking the fuck out because they can't get their people to have kids. So is a good chunk of Europe. Stop giving them fodder for their factories and machines. Stop convincing yourself that your fsckin' crotchfruit is so amazing they'll rise above the misery you left in your wake. Stop reproducing, and watch our rulers turn impotent (pun not intended).
You want to do something that works? Don't have children (Ok,
this contractor is basically screwed now. That said, I don't know a single contractor, company or business that's not run like this. The company that cuts the most corners gets the contract when they underbid. Sometimes that company's dumb luck launches them to success, and somethings this happens.
It wasn't communists & anarchists, it was broke college grads with no jobs, no prospects and lots and lots of debt. It was a bunch of people sold a bill of goods (buy education and you're future's set!). Anarchists are just guys out to riot, and there were no riots. And communists? Seriously? In America you'd have to declare yourself a baby eating Nambla member with ties to the Nazi party and the KKK to even get into the ballpark range of how much we hate communists. Heck, my kid was watching Annie yesterday and there's a Bolshevik trying to kill 'ole Daddy Warbucks. Anti-communism permeates our culture. Or to put it another way... But.. But.. Socialism!
The whole thing WAS conducted like civil rights marches. e.g. peacefully. As for the Sunday's best, the movement was squashed long before it could get that level of organization. It woulda been nice if it got that far, but do you honestly think our ruling class learned nothing from the 60s?
Make games I don't want to sell 2 weeks after I buy them?
I still got my original copies of Chrono Cross & Star Ocean 2 from launch day. Just sayin'...
The media didn't downplay, they outright ignored. Worked too. The cops moved in and busted some heads and the whole thing fizzled out. Occupy Wall Street wasn't about a few anti-1% protests. It was about changing America's economic narrative: e.g. work hard and play by the rules and you'll succeed. It was about letting the 99% know the deck was stacked against them; and that no matter how hard they worked they'd keep losing ground. The American Ruling class figured that out right quick and squashed it.