Your criticism of personal property tax is based on nothing but corruption. Any tax system hurts people when corruption controls it. At least those poor people were able to own a home. Your story is a little difficult to believe, unless you're referring to only a few folks that were in arrears on their taxes. Owning a home, even if a creditor forces its sale, provides a financial advantage over renting, when you can get kicked out on the street and have nothing.
The payroll tax is part of taxing labor. I was including that too. And the income tax is only progressive for the folks that get most of their income from actually working (primarily those that HAVE to continue working). Have enough capital, and that works for you instead, and gets taxed at a much lower rate.
There is nothing progressive about taxing labor.
Nor your defense of such a system, which keeps the working classes just getting by and destroys real opportunities for mobility.
Actually, earnings are calculated pre-tax. Corporate dividends must come out of taxable profits, as they get taxed, and then forwarded as capital gains to shareholders (capital gains collected in this manner are taxed at 55.25% in total). At least, that's my understanding.
Some corporations retain a 20% or 30% profit margin on which they pay 35% taxes (pre-2017); others retain just 2%. That's long-running average; year-to-year is a red herring. Those corporations aren't investing that or passing those taxes onto consumers; they're reaping the profits. A corporation's necessary profit margin covers the threats of loss and the opportunities of gain: at the bare minimum, their long-running profit will be zero. It is fair for corporations to have a reasonable profit such that there is something to disburse to the shareholders and so forth, something not strictly necessary; it is unfair for corporations to drain the economy into a private bucket so they can marvel at just how much they retain, or to pay out dividends amounting to a huge proportion of their total revenue.
A wealth tax is nonsense. First you work to buy a thing; then you work to buy it back from the Government. Everybody knows this is stupid; that's why wealth tax proposals always come with a proposal to exempt people without a lot of money: you'd make it harder as you go up toward middle-class with that kind of thing if it wasn't just taxing the rich.
The wealth of a nation--its capacity to provide a standard-of-living--isn't idle assets that would get sucked down in months or, in extreme imbalances, a few short years; its the nation's capacity to produce, continuously, to meet that standard-of-living per person.
Hayek is long-proven a fool, but conservatives still love him.
It's your description of a wealth tax that's nonsense. You clearly do not know what you're talking about. You have bought into the the "perpetual growth" idea behind corporate value and government debt. It's not necessary.
Wealth taxes already exist in some forms, everywhere. Personal property tax is a form of wealth tax and it provides funding for most of the educational system. Luxury taxes are the same thing.
Taxing labor is the most regressive taxation of all. It transfers wealth from wage earners to the wealthy. You either earn a living by letting your capital do the work, or you sell your only asset: Yourself (your time, your body, your knowledge). To tax that is a morally bankrupt system.
Corporations do not pay taxes. Taxes are an expense that gets figured into the cost of goods and services. Profits are always calculated as after tax. And those profits are then invested into growth opportunities, capital, employee bonuses or shared with stockholders. So you could tax those bonuses or the investment income. But if you tax investment income (capital gains) any higher than they are now, the government will get less income. It's been adjusted enough that everyone acknowledges that that's true.
So corporate taxes are a wash. If you want to tax income it ultimately comes from personal income sources.
If you really want a "fair" tax used for redistributive purposes, a wealth tax makes a lot more sense. The value of your property minus liabilities determines how much you pay. Include exemptions for a maximum amount on a primary home, car, and retirement savings. Done.
your employers extract more wealth from you in the form of profits than you pay in taxes
If you don't like the arrangement you've made to sell your labor you can always quit or negotiate a better one. Try that with the government. You try not paying the IRS and they will make your life hell. If you're not using banks at all, don't worry, they have guns too and will use them.
Interestingly, the document you "linked" indicates that you are wrong. Here's the relevant quote, right in the Introduction: (emphasis mine)
In general, local sales tax is based on the location of the seller’s place of business. Local use tax is based on the location where the customer receives the item. If you ship or deliver goods to your customers, you may have to collect local sales tax, local use tax or both.
The local tax due cannot be more than 2 percent, so the most tax you can collect is 8.25 percent. Both state and local sales and use taxes are reported on your Texas Sales and Use Tax Return.
Use the Comptroller’s Tax Rate Locator to search for sales tax rates by address.
So it's more complicated than you claim. Especially with 50 states, all with varying rules.
this could be a major political issue if it doesn't turn out they did the same for the other side. The Dems might make it a campaign issue with FB stuck in the middle. The one thing they've got to be afraid of most is regulation. After all, you are the product. It's not the adverts where they make all their money, it's selling all that sweet, sweet demographic data.
Not sure what you're going on about. The Trump campaign did not get voter data from Cambridge Analytica, and the Facebook data they had was not used by Trump or the Trump campaign at all. Facebook's political division offered to embed their employees in the campaigns to help with analysis and targeted advertising (the offer was made to both the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaign). The Trump campaign accepted and had Facebook folks working with them. The Clinton campaign rejected the offer because they wanted to use their own strategies.
3) Devices themselves that contain or allow "rogue" FW to run, some which may have been placed there by the manufacturer for dubious purposes
You're kidding, right? If you're buying a device that doesn't allow you to run your own FW on it, you're just paying for a channel for the manufacturer to track you and sell you stuff.
That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.
And that, folks, demonstrates just how effective the pharmaceutical industry is at lobbying and promoting propaganda!
Don't worry about it. Those former burger-flippers will be taking a 6-month trade training course and will be making $15 driving around town doing robot repair and maintenance...
Well I screwed up the dates above (Standard had 90% market share in 1899. It dropped to 68% by 1907, four years before the breakup), but you're a complete idiot. Nobody ever complained that Standard's consumer prices were too high, part of the argument to break them up was that the price was too LOW (they were undercutting competition).
Prices didn't go down after the break-up, either.
Saying that is good service is like saying if only Motorola made cellphones ever, and a cellphone costs $8,000 today, that that is good service as when they were first invented they cost $25,000.
The only good phone is a land line and the phone should be made out of Bakelite.
In fact, Standard Oil was already losing market share to its competition when it was busted up. They peaked in 1879 when they were refining 90 per cent of US oil, after starting up in 1870 with just 4 per cent. During that time, the consumer price of kerosene dropped from 26 cents to 8 cents a gallon. Pretty good customer service for a supposedly evil monopolist.
In Richmond, VA, they are spending $65 million to create dedicated bus lanes over a 7.6 mile route (those numbers are not typos, BTW). Sometimes in the median, sometimes by the curb, sometimes they mix in. They've created a nightmare with the construction, and the nightmare will continue as they eliminate 2 lanes of traffic, lots of parking, many left turn lanes, and run those buses back and forth across traffic.
The worst part? The route starts where nobody lives and ends where nobody wants to go. The claims on their web site is bogus. Businesses are shutting down along the route. They've even completely closed down an alternate route on the east end of town (permanently), meaning the only way in or out will be a one-lane in each direction road, shared with riderless buses.
The real reason for this project? The city oligarchs stand to make a lot of money by building a new baseball park in an area of the city where nobody else wants it (there is already a decent park in a convenient area). They've submitted proposal after proposal for that thing and the pushback from citizens that don't want it there (the vast majority) keep nixing it. So, put in a multi-year construction project, close lanes and roads, until all the businesses there go bankrupt or close up shop. When the whole area is nothing but a ghost town, they hope nobody will object to building the ballpark and they can cash in their chips.
And that's what "public transportation" projects are often all about.
To travel from my home to the US is 10 hours flying. Even if you add 5 hours, to cover pre- and post-flight travel, you still have only 15 hours. No car is traveling 6000 miles in 15 hours.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. She's in worse legal trouble than ever.
Hillary, DNC Funneled $84 Million Through State Parties To Avoid Campaign Finance Laws, Lawsuit Claims "FEC officials did not respond to a request for comment, 'citing an open investigation.'"
The Real Clinton Foundation Record is Getting Exposed
Your criticism of personal property tax is based on nothing but corruption. Any tax system hurts people when corruption controls it. At least those poor people were able to own a home. Your story is a little difficult to believe, unless you're referring to only a few folks that were in arrears on their taxes. Owning a home, even if a creditor forces its sale, provides a financial advantage over renting, when you can get kicked out on the street and have nothing.
The payroll tax is part of taxing labor. I was including that too. And the income tax is only progressive for the folks that get most of their income from actually working (primarily those that HAVE to continue working). Have enough capital, and that works for you instead, and gets taxed at a much lower rate.
There is nothing progressive about taxing labor.
Nor your defense of such a system, which keeps the working classes just getting by and destroys real opportunities for mobility.
Well carriers' deals on phones suck now, so I just buy them outright. I have a Huawei phone and it's the best smart phone I've ever had.
Actually, earnings are calculated pre-tax. Corporate dividends must come out of taxable profits, as they get taxed, and then forwarded as capital gains to shareholders (capital gains collected in this manner are taxed at 55.25% in total). At least, that's my understanding.
Some corporations retain a 20% or 30% profit margin on which they pay 35% taxes (pre-2017); others retain just 2%. That's long-running average; year-to-year is a red herring. Those corporations aren't investing that or passing those taxes onto consumers; they're reaping the profits. A corporation's necessary profit margin covers the threats of loss and the opportunities of gain: at the bare minimum, their long-running profit will be zero. It is fair for corporations to have a reasonable profit such that there is something to disburse to the shareholders and so forth, something not strictly necessary; it is unfair for corporations to drain the economy into a private bucket so they can marvel at just how much they retain, or to pay out dividends amounting to a huge proportion of their total revenue.
A wealth tax is nonsense. First you work to buy a thing; then you work to buy it back from the Government. Everybody knows this is stupid; that's why wealth tax proposals always come with a proposal to exempt people without a lot of money: you'd make it harder as you go up toward middle-class with that kind of thing if it wasn't just taxing the rich.
The wealth of a nation--its capacity to provide a standard-of-living--isn't idle assets that would get sucked down in months or, in extreme imbalances, a few short years; its the nation's capacity to produce, continuously, to meet that standard-of-living per person.
Hayek is long-proven a fool, but conservatives still love him.
It's your description of a wealth tax that's nonsense. You clearly do not know what you're talking about. You have bought into the the "perpetual growth" idea behind corporate value and government debt. It's not necessary.
Wealth taxes already exist in some forms, everywhere. Personal property tax is a form of wealth tax and it provides funding for most of the educational system. Luxury taxes are the same thing.
Taxing labor is the most regressive taxation of all. It transfers wealth from wage earners to the wealthy. You either earn a living by letting your capital do the work, or you sell your only asset: Yourself (your time, your body, your knowledge). To tax that is a morally bankrupt system.
Corporations do not pay taxes. Taxes are an expense that gets figured into the cost of goods and services. Profits are always calculated as after tax. And those profits are then invested into growth opportunities, capital, employee bonuses or shared with stockholders. So you could tax those bonuses or the investment income. But if you tax investment income (capital gains) any higher than they are now, the government will get less income. It's been adjusted enough that everyone acknowledges that that's true.
So corporate taxes are a wash. If you want to tax income it ultimately comes from personal income sources.
If you really want a "fair" tax used for redistributive purposes, a wealth tax makes a lot more sense. The value of your property minus liabilities determines how much you pay. Include exemptions for a maximum amount on a primary home, car, and retirement savings. Done.
your employers extract more wealth from you in the form of profits than you pay in taxes
If you don't like the arrangement you've made to sell your labor you can always quit or negotiate a better one. Try that with the government. You try not paying the IRS and they will make your life hell. If you're not using banks at all, don't worry, they have guns too and will use them.
Interestingly, the document you "linked" indicates that you are wrong. Here's the relevant quote, right in the Introduction: (emphasis mine)
So it's more complicated than you claim. Especially with 50 states, all with varying rules.
I report on a city and county basis to the BoE (Board of Equalization), and pay them quarterly, all the taxes I collect.
Board of Equalization??? WTF, California? Seriously, What. The. Fuck.?
I've read that the fourth-generation Apple TV can do this.
The Amazon TV stick can, too, for any apps you have installed.
Dandelion salad is good with a nice vinaigrette dressing.
this could be a major political issue if it doesn't turn out they did the same for the other side. The Dems might make it a campaign issue with FB stuck in the middle. The one thing they've got to be afraid of most is regulation. After all, you are the product. It's not the adverts where they make all their money, it's selling all that sweet, sweet demographic data.
Not sure what you're going on about. The Trump campaign did not get voter data from Cambridge Analytica, and the Facebook data they had was not used by Trump or the Trump campaign at all. Facebook's political division offered to embed their employees in the campaigns to help with analysis and targeted advertising (the offer was made to both the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaign). The Trump campaign accepted and had Facebook folks working with them. The Clinton campaign rejected the offer because they wanted to use their own strategies.
Source about Cambridge Analytica, and source for Facebook "embeds".
I'll take the authoritarians over the people who actually ruin my waking life.
Are they gaslighting you?
Why ban crypto currency alone? That is discrimination.
Because it's a useless activity that does nothing for anyone but suck up resources that could be put to productive use?
They simply don't know how to manage the economy.
Nobody does. It's the authoritarians that think they know how to "manage" an economy better than 300 million free agents that creates nightmares.
Wait... you don't trust Huawei?
3) Devices themselves that contain or allow "rogue" FW to run, some which may have been placed there by the manufacturer for dubious purposes
You're kidding, right? If you're buying a device that doesn't allow you to run your own FW on it, you're just paying for a channel for the manufacturer to track you and sell you stuff.
Will you turn your clocks back an hour before going to bed Saturday night?
Of course not. That would make me 2 hours late for everything!
So, they're trying to build a user-base among those who most struggle with health care: The old and poor.
They offer the discount for SNAP and medicaid folks, not for seniors. So your premise is flawed. Where is my old people discount?
That *might* apply to drugs and devices, but the vast majority of the cost of health care is doctors' & nurses' salaries, real estate, and facilities. None of those are things that are made cheaper abroad by being overpriced in the US.
And that, folks, demonstrates just how effective the pharmaceutical industry is at lobbying and promoting propaganda!
Don't worry about it. Those former burger-flippers will be taking a 6-month trade training course and will be making $15 driving around town doing robot repair and maintenance...
Well I screwed up the dates above (Standard had 90% market share in 1899. It dropped to 68% by 1907, four years before the breakup), but you're a complete idiot. Nobody ever complained that Standard's consumer prices were too high, part of the argument to break them up was that the price was too LOW (they were undercutting competition).
Prices didn't go down after the break-up, either.
Saying that is good service is like saying if only Motorola made cellphones ever, and a cellphone costs $8,000 today, that that is good service as when they were first invented they cost $25,000.
The only good phone is a land line and the phone should be made out of Bakelite.
In fact, Standard Oil was already losing market share to its competition when it was busted up. They peaked in 1879 when they were refining 90 per cent of US oil, after starting up in 1870 with just 4 per cent. During that time, the consumer price of kerosene dropped from 26 cents to 8 cents a gallon. Pretty good customer service for a supposedly evil monopolist.
In Richmond, VA, they are spending $65 million to create dedicated bus lanes over a 7.6 mile route (those numbers are not typos, BTW). Sometimes in the median, sometimes by the curb, sometimes they mix in. They've created a nightmare with the construction, and the nightmare will continue as they eliminate 2 lanes of traffic, lots of parking, many left turn lanes, and run those buses back and forth across traffic.
The worst part? The route starts where nobody lives and ends where nobody wants to go. The claims on their web site is bogus. Businesses are shutting down along the route. They've even completely closed down an alternate route on the east end of town (permanently), meaning the only way in or out will be a one-lane in each direction road, shared with riderless buses.
The real reason for this project? The city oligarchs stand to make a lot of money by building a new baseball park in an area of the city where nobody else wants it (there is already a decent park in a convenient area). They've submitted proposal after proposal for that thing and the pushback from citizens that don't want it there (the vast majority) keep nixing it. So, put in a multi-year construction project, close lanes and roads, until all the businesses there go bankrupt or close up shop. When the whole area is nothing but a ghost town, they hope nobody will object to building the ballpark and they can cash in their chips.
And that's what "public transportation" projects are often all about.
Cities are centrally controlled and can just decide to stop growing in part through zoning restrictions.
Yea, that's working out great for San Fransisco, isn't it?
To travel from my home to the US is 10 hours flying. Even if you add 5 hours, to cover pre- and post-flight travel, you still have only 15 hours. No car is traveling 6000 miles in 15 hours.
... yet!