I don't think you quite understand what that word means. A stereotype is a simplistic model that is held as if it were true of *all* members of some group.
I know exactly what that word means, and that is exactly the use I was replying to. When someone says "that group doesn't require protection", then you are using a simplistic model and holding as true for the entire group. It would have been much clearer as a stereotype if you had said "some genders typically don't require protection", at which point you'd have noticed the word "typical" -- from the same root as "type" in "stereotype".
Hitherto, men have not requires as much protection from sexual harassment as a group,
And that, sir, is a prototypical stereotype. Were it proper English, that is. Had you said "some men don't", you would have been right, and you'd have been talking about individual members of the group. But to talk about the group as a whole, which you did deliberately by referring to "as a group", that makes it a stereotype.
The reason the FBI isn't doing more to combat revenge porn is thus: It's not illegal.
At the very least, it seems to be considered identity theft.
By whom? Hunter was convicted of identity theft not because he posted the images but because of how he got them. He could have been convicted for that even without posting them.
Franken is talking about revenge porn that results in harassment, stalking, assault and murder. Those are already crimes. Identity theft is a crime. The major convictions for this porn have been the large-scale players who are acting against large numbers of people not for revenge over relationships gone bad, but monetary gain. What new laws do we need to cover that? Isn't extortion enough?
And the fact that he has to ask the FBI what laws they have to deal with the problem means his own staff is incompetent. He's a Senator, shouldn't he have a good idea of what the laws already are? Or shouldn't his staff be able to research this?
It sounds like an attempt at embarrassing the FBI for some reason. From a comedian who popularized the concept of "the me decade". It's all about him, Al Franken.
Which definition of equivalent are you unaware of?
The one where changing one thing on a car is "equivalent to" changing something else that the car doesn't have to begin with. If changing the exhaust on a electric car (which has no effect at all) is equivalent to changing the software, then why bother? It will have no effect.
The bit that you are too dense to grasp
Thanks for playing. Putting one aftermarket piece of hardware on a car is not the same as (or equivalent to) modifications to software that runs a large number of systems on that car. There is a manufacturer that designed and tested that bit of kit you upgraded to. Who tests the modified software that you think you are smart enough to write to control the functions of your car?
The main difference is being able look over the entire code so it is obvious that maximum current is linked to regenerative braking
Except it may not be obvious. And it may not be obvious that the current limit on acceleration is based on circuit limits, unless you also tear the car apart to see what the specific electronic circuits involved are rated at. Wouldn't it be really safe if you load your family in the car and head off for a long trip, and show them how much better your car accelerates that it used to? And what's that burning smell, by the way? Great, the car is on fire.
And it may be a physical hardware limit. What's the tensile strength of the bolts that mount that motor?
And especially here, arguing for security through obscurity is just delicious.
So don't argue for that. And stop being patently insulting in your attitude. People who disagree with you aren't dense, they just don't agree with you.
Tests with pre-programmed equipment given to the patient for use at home for one night,... All of it probably lab grade or close enough for the screening.
Which for me was a device almost identical to the $19 device I just purchased. It wasn't anywhere close to lab grade. It didn't need to be. Since I had to give it back I couldn't repeat the test, but now I can. I could try any of the cheap methods of solving the problem and actually see if they solve the problem.
And especially as electric cars come into the fold, being able to modify parameters is the equivalent to putting on a larger exhaust.
Which electric car would benefit from putting on a larger exhaust?
I'd rather have more options than what the factory allows, especially when the factory is charging twice the garage rate of my local shop.
So you change a few of the parameters of your electric car and some of the safety systems stop working right. E.g., you didn't realize that a parameter used for maximum current for acceleration interacted with the regenerative braking. I.e., you go fast but your brakes don't work as well. Or you change that acceleration parameter and your motors burn up because of the overcurrent. Or you change some other parameter that's based on a hardware limitation and you break the hardware and expect the dealer to fix it under warrantee. You blame the manufacturer, but it's your fault.
The issue though is really not the one-off experimenter who will hopefully only kill himself when he screws up, but the cottage businesses that will pop up selling kits to modify street vehicles and the people who don't understand why allowing twice the current during acceleration might be a bad thing -- but faster is gooder! Or the kit makers who reverse engineer the code for the 2016 model, but the 2017 model uses different code and they just overwrote the antilock braking function...
It's bad enough that phones or other firmware-driven devices can be bricked by hacked code, imagine your car.
So untrained people are now monitoring their health using uncalibrated devices in uncontrolled circumstances.
Compared to a one-point sample during an office visit. Do you have a problem with high blood pressure? Will it manifest during that one office visit, or does it happen during specific times of the day? Does your blood sugar spike/drop after specific events, that you might not think of and your doctor won't see, but a home monitoring system will?
If we all lived in doctor's offices then calibrated devices in that controlled circumstance would be sufficient. Life is filled with uncontrolled circumstances for most people.
A lot of the devices available today are very good. And getting cheaper. I just bought a pulse oxymeter from Daily Steals for $19. While it isn't lab grade, it does good enough that it can be a check to see if someone may be suffering from sleep apnea. You don't need to know blood oxygen levels to a fraction of a percent for that, all you need to see is that the levels drop significantly.
To do the same test using lab grade equipments means spending a night sleeping in a test facility with wires attached. The last time I did that, it was supposed to be a two night process. Night one: determine if there was a problem. Night 2: determine the settings for the solution (pressure for the CPAP machine.) A $19 fingertip PO used at home could replace night one altogether for most people.
That removes the distraction from working at home, gives you social interaction with other professionals,
So the distraction of working at home is replaced by the distraction of working in a group of people who are doing unrelated things, some of whom might be hot babes and stuff? An upside may be that it becomes easier to find other people who want to play video games instead of work, and the network latency for in-building gameplay will certainly be better than home to cloud latency...
And, of course, your significant other may get very tired of hearing you yell "hey honey, come see what some moron wrote on/." and tell you to go back to work, but you can always find someone in the cubicle warehouse who will stop and come look. Maybe even a hot babe, who you can get a coke and a cup of ice and tell her her sweater looks nice.
and the moment we had a magnificent high-speed fatality car accident it stopped the practice of human drivers....
Of course not, but it did change the laws for how cars were driven. It is pretty standard knowledge among pilots that every prohibition in the FARS came about as a result of a major aviation accident, for example.
Similarly for your other two examples, the end of civilization did not occur because someone living in civilization had an accident, but civilized people change how things are done when there are. It is not an end to AV if the rules prohibit high-speed formation driving (which is what a bumper to bumper group of cars going 65MPH is), just as the rules that limit formation flying have not ended the concept of aviation altogether.
And if you're not in that business, prepare to enjoy not having to pay monthly on auto insurance.
Uhhh, what? What makes you think that the owner/operator of a car will not retain legal liability for the actions of that car? You think the manufacturers will step in and pay off the lawsuits? You forget a routine maintenance requirement and your car has an accident -- the manufacturer will pay off? You don't have the latest rev of the operating software -- ditto.
Sheesh, we have software companies that won't even talk to you unless you are running the most current version of their product, and you think manufacturers will open up their pockets to pay off damage claims if they can find any reason not to? There are cars that people are claiming have a flaw in a simple computer that controls the throttle and the company claimed that it was driver error. This will change?
Yeah, I think I'll just take that hour drive twice a day and just watch netflix on my phone or read on my kindle or code on my laptop or even just sleep it.
I think you vastly overestimate the desire of people to spend two hours a day locked in a tiny room with little to do. It's still two hours they're away from their family. It's two hours that you aren't flipping burgers or stocking shelves so you won't be paid for them.
And 100 acres an hour's drive away? When everyone is doing it? 10 acres, maybe. And 100 acres of land takes a bit of maintenance, which you have 10 hours a week less free time to do because you're commuting.
A lot less accidents too -- huge plus for society.
And here's why losing focus on the technology in favor of dreaming of all the social benefits is a bad idea. We don't know this will be true, and have every reason to believe it will not be.
If idiots connect their cars or the underlying system to the internet, people will end up at hacked destinations.
Every claim for safety of AVs includes the idea that the cars will all talk to each other. Who cares if you call it "the Internet" or "the internet" or "the road web", a malicious actor on that net can cause much worse than "hacked destinations". Much worse.
Parking will become a bigger business -- especially garages that work hand in hand with autonomous vehicles.
And here's another obvious vector for malicious access. If your car will talk to external sources (parking attendants) to learn where they should park themselves, then what else will they listen to?
These are all, of course, many years off. But it is starting to look more and more inevitable.
I recall many years ago the predictions that appeared on a regular basis for what we'd have. Things like flying cars. Still not practical, and less practical as time goes on. Yes, AV are a long time off, unless we discover some issue that nobody thought about, or the people who are currently talking about the risks instead of the wonderful panacea they will be are right, or both.
but look for corroborating evidence from trustworthy sources before fashioning a protective anti-contrail aluminum foil hat.
You should have used Google. You would have learned that tin foil hats don't protect against the chemicals being dispersed via CIA-operated jets through the contrails. Dummy. You need a mask.
The issue I have with the study is the conclusion about people who are "left on their own" thinking they are smarter. They're comparing Google use to book use, and the people who use books to learn were NOT "left on their own". Yeah, someone who is left on their own isn't as smart as someone who uses books to learn things. D'oh. Take the books away and then compare.
Of course you don't do that, today. There is no global sales tax. When there is one, you don't think that the federal government would audit those who are responsible for paying it?
I'll repeat: Income to Sales tax was only given as an extreme example of how, in the face of changing tax law, the IRS would end up becoming a vastly different agency even if you didn't change anything else.
And I don't consider a simple change from collecting income taxes to collecting a global sales tax to be "vastly different". Collect the taxes and go after those who don't pay what they owe. Same idea no matter which kind of tax it is.
1. 'Poor enough' doesn't matter, seeing as how in the schemes I've read about Bill Gates is poor enough to get it.
Right. The 99% would stand for a direct cash handout to Bill Gates to help him pay his global sales taxes. I don't know what system you've read about, but when a handout is intended to help cover the tax liability of the poor, you don't also give it to the rich. They don't need it.
The only reason states don't do it now is because it would be a nightmare to manage. They mitigate the regressive nature by making some things tax free. If you're handing out free money to cover that at the federal level, then expect that there will some things you buy that will have no state sales tax but will have federal. And then the great situation where you pay no state sales tax at all but are stuck with a new global one.
2. 'Really even exist/Not Dead/Etc...' - Doesn't require digging into a person's financials, just that you have a pulse.
Someone shows up at your door looking for your pulse. First you have to prove who you are. Then they'll take your pulse. Then they'll check your income to make sure you qualify for the handout. One step at a time... and it is still a federal agency that is responsible for auditing the paperwork filed by individuals in support of tax payments. Just like the IRS now.
As a volunteer tax preparer, I'd say only about half of them are, other than the whole 'have to have enough income to actually have enough tax to refund'.
As a volunteer tax preparer, you should know about the tax rebates that don't get added on to any refund, and are not a refund themselves because there was no tax paid to be refunded.
You should also know how hidden a lot of the loopholes are. If you don't, you can't do a good job for your clients. Make the "free cash" handouts explicit and you'll see the reaction.
The idea behind the prebate is that it becomes sort of a BIG - 'Basic Guaranteed Income' - EVERYBODY gets it,
That is not the idea at all. It is intended to cover the fact that a global sales tax will be incredibly regressive and that the people who can afford it least will be impacted by it the most. Therefore, give them a rebate. That requires proving you deserve it. And that requires proof of lack of income.
If you try proposing a "basic guaranteed income" by giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Ted Turner and all the other millionaires a handout, you'll be laughed off the podium, and rightly so.
If you are seriously suggesting such a scheme, then you seriously need to consider the impacts and the way you structure it so you aren't taken for a loon. "Everyone in the country gets free money from the government" makes you sound like the nutcase trying to sell the book.
Well, for starters, civil forfeiture is about your non-living stuff, and the 4th Amendment applies to YOU, a living being with enumerable rights.
Under that argument, it is not unreasonable search for the police to enter your home whenever they wish. After all, your home is non-living stuff and the fourth amendment applies only to you.
I think taking things from a living being with enumerable rights counts as a violation of 1) due process (since there has been no due process at all), 2) the fourth amendment right to be secure in one's person AND property, and 3) the concept of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
When your car is seized after you are arrested for DUII, you have not yet been convicted of that crime, and by taking physical property of considerable value you have effectively levied a fine for just being accused of a crime. In theory it is confiscating the means of committing a crime, but nobody has been proven to have committed a crime yet. It certainly is nothing like the concept of bail, which is intended to compel those who are charged but not confined to show up for trial.
Any use of civil forfeiture that occurs BEFORE any finding of guilt is simply a gross violation of the Constitution. That SCOTUS does not stop the practice is insane.
No it doesn't. The only way to get rich is to save. The incentive to save still far exceeds the incentive to spend.
If I have a savings account with $200k in it and I can manage to put $10k a year into it, what incentive do I have to keep that account? Put in $10k, take out $10.5k to pay taxes. Let's say I have a great interest rate of 1% on that account. I wind up with $1.5k more money in that account after putting $10k in. (Those are round numbers for argument only, so don't waste our time insulting me for not calculating things to the penny.)
My best option is to withdraw all my savings and store it in the backyard. That way the government doesn't know I have it and I immediately save at least $10k a year just in taxes. Add the $10k I put in with it and I'll have a full $210k, or $8.5 thousand dollars more than if the money was in the bank. Yeah, I'm "saving", but only because I'm hiding the money.
Other people would figure this out. The rich people you hate so much have lawyers and accountants who will run the numbers and tell them to pull their cash out of the banks, too. Do you not realize what a mass exodus of money from the banking system means? Interest rates on loans will skyrocket as the money supply dries up.
If you merely keep an IRA as tax free, effectively the middle class starts to save,
IRAs are already "tax free", and if the middle class isn't dumping money into them now to reduce their income tax burden, then they aren't going to be dumping money into them when the gurps owning-stuff tax kicks in. They MAY transfer other money in their accounts to the IRA to legally keep from paying taxes on it (so no change in the savings), but most likely there will be limits to IRA contributions (like there are now) and they'll just take their money out of the bank to protect it.
Don't try claiming that IRAs won't have contribution limits. If they don't, then you've just created yet another legal loophole to avoid taxes. If you try to keep people from dumping all their money into a "gurps-IRA" to keep from paying taxes on it, you'll have to do something like mandate that money that goes in cannot be taken out until the owner reaches a certain age. That will disincentivize the gurps-IRA since people need to know they can get to their money in an emergency.
And why save at all, if the government is simply going to start taking 5% of whatever you save away from you every year you have it? You have no clue as to human nature.
The key thing is this is a simple tax structure that soaks the wealthy,
You first claimed that taxing what people own doesn't screw anyone, and you called me stupid for pointing out how many people it would actually screw. Now you admit that you proposed the idea precisely because it screws the rich. But it also screws EVERYONE who owns anything -- rich, poor, middle class. Having the government come take 5% of everything you own away from you every year cannot help but screw everyone who has stuff. I'm not part of the 1% and even I am smart enough to know how this would destroy my retirement savings and home ownership possibilities.
That you continue to claim this would be a good system, well, I dunno. Your hatred for successful people is blinding you to the facts.
Here's another fact: taxing people on what they own means that the car that the poor person needs to own to get to work will be costing him 5% of the value every year just in federal ownership taxes. You don't think that screws him, but that 5% ($1k on a $20k car) may be the difference between food and hunger for him. Of course, if he can't afford the taxes, he shouldn't buy the car.
In other words it reduces the gap between the wealthy and the poor,
Yes, we understand the concept of forced wealth redistribution using the tax system as a bludgeon on the people who have any wealth at all.
You fixated on 'global', I admitted it was a poor word choice for what I was envisioning.
As were "sales" and "tax", since what you were talking about is a duty that would be applied at customs when you return. All three words were the wrong thing to use.
I admitted it was my mistake.
In the last posting, before I ripped the idea of a global sales tax to shreds. So don't get upset that I was talking about a global sales tax before you admitted it was a mistake to say that.
But, poor word choice aside, I certainly hope I didn't imply that I was getting rid of the IRS, merely that if we got rid of the income tax in favor of a sales tax, the nature of the IRS would change, because it's duties would.
Wrong. They would still need to audit individuals to make sure they've paid the sales tax on things that they buy. Then they would ALSO have a new responsibility to go digging in corporate records to verify sales tax collections. Implying that the IRS would become a friend of man because their job would be different is just loony. They'll still be a large, powerful tool available to the ruling party.
Well, if you want to know if they tell the truth, you will have to examine their assets and income to see.
What truth? Why assets and income?
Since this is now context-less, I'll return some. This statement is about the "simplicity" of the new system where people would be asked the question "do you meet the requirements for the sales tax rebate?" in order for the IRS to know who to send the free money to.
What truth? D'oh. Do they really qualify as "poor enough" to get the sales tax rebate? Does that person who answered "yes" really even exist, or did they die two years ago? Why assets and income? To know if they are poor enough to qualify. You're making $200k a year and own a mansion and a yacht, what makes you think you'll qualify for the rebate?
Most of the time the qualification for the rebates amounts to this: Are you a legal US Resident, Y/N?
Most of the time current tax rebates and credits are dependent upon income. In fact, I don't know of any significant one that isn't. Maybe the clunkers clunker wasn't, but earned income credit is. Handing out checks for sales tax rebates will almost certainly have the same kind of income test. You don't think any rational politician will let the poor people know that he's voting to hand out free money to rich people, do you?
Current loopholes are easy to hide since they are often complicated and hidden side effects of other legislation. They appear on tax forms that the common person never sees. "Enter the greater of 33.4% of the value on line 45 of form X7Y/4 or 0:". Huh? But when the single page form consists in large part of the question: "do you qualify for the sales tax rebate?", and the instructions on the same sheet of paper say "you do if you are alive and a resident of the US", it will be hard to hide the fact that the 1% is benefiting from the free money intended to help the poor people.
Again, no checking of assets or income necessary.
You don't think an audit checks your income? And I was accused of being naive because I didn't agree that it was an anal probe process.
The government gets to set the rules if they were to set this up, which INCLUDES things like 'We're not going to bother charging sales tax unless you bring in more than $5k worth of goods'.
It's hard to talk about a wandering target. First it's a global sales tax, then it's not.
A sales tax doesn't depend on what you carry into the country, it's on what you BUY. If it is a tax on what you bring in, it's a DUTY, not a sales tax. So excuse me if I'm talking about the global sales tax you proposed while you change the system into something different.
Global was a poor word choice on my part. I should have said 'federal' I think.
Yeah, my mistake. I assume people say what they mean and don't try to second guess them.
What the heck are we even arguing about?
Your global sales tax that really isn't. The idea that a global sales tax would get rid of the IRS because it would replace the income tax.
I admit, if you pass a sales tax idea with a rebate, you'll need some auditing of individuals to make sure they're not claiming extra bodies and whatnot.
Your idea was that it would be as simple as asking people "do you qualify?" That's the entire "tax return" to qualify for the free money rebate. That's not an audit. Well, if you want to know if they tell the truth, you will have to examine their assets and income to see. That's no different than today's audits. And it requires a government agency to do it. Whether that's called the IRS or not, it does a similar job and has the same potential abuses.
Are you really so stupid that you don't know the difference between voluntary debt and government taxation? Do you see how wonderfully productive it is to call people stupid when they don't agree with you?
I don't have a mortgage. I'm a "normal people". Under your new taxation system I'd have to find a spare $10,000 a year to hand over to the government if I want to keep my house. Every year. For the rest of my life. Even after I retire and my income drops to zero.
As for on top of, I did not say that. I want a federal property tax to replace existing federal taxes.
I don't know what "that" you are trying to deny saying. You want a tax on ownership, which means the same property gets taxed year after year after year -- until you can no longer afford to pay the tax and you have to sell it. And your attitude toward those who find themselves unable to pay is just pathetic. Don't buy it if you can't afford the taxes. Phhht.
(on everything excluding IRAs and 1 home of upto 200K value)
So after I point out the absolutely absurd result of your proposed tax on ownership you come up with two minor exemptions. Very handy. But you still tax savings that has already been taxed. Not everyone qualified for an IRA, and thus not everyone has retirement money in the bank that was pre-tax. So you'd like to dip into my bank account at 5% per year because I managed to save money while I worked, and you'll keep dipping after I retire and need the money to live on. My main retirement is also not an IRA, so that goes into someone else's pocket, too. Thanks. I worked hard all my life, saved my money, and you want to tax me repetitively on it until I'm living in poverty. You're such a sweetheart.
The fact that you thought 10% or more indicates your knowledge of the math and economics involved is seriously flawed.
I'm sorry I bothered asking you what amount you thought it was going to be. It doesn't really matter if it is 5% or 10%, it screws every person who tries to save for retirement or provide for his family. More property taxes will not make it easier to own a house, it will make it harder. It will decimate family farms and turn marginally profitable operations into losses. But if they can't pay the tax they don't deserve to own whatever it is.
If you make it 2% that only applied if you owned more than 1 million dollars, we could lower the top tax rate to 30% and keep it there.
Uhh, if we apply a federal property tax rate of 2% to only those who have $1 million, we can lower the tax rate to 30%? I'm sorry, to whom does that 30% tax rate apply when you've said it would be 2%? Or were you lying when you said this new property tax would replace existing federal taxes?
Frankly, you don't know enough to have this argument.
And you aren't civil enough to be worth having it with. If only we were all as smart as gurps we'd agree with it. Sure. Nobody knows better.
"Hey, maybe the rich can pay a bit more tax - like they used to 40-50 years ago"
Hmmm. That's not what I replied to. This is:
"So the Top 1% needs to give the bottom 99% all their money."
Do you have some definition of "all" that equates to "a bit more tax"? I don't. And I'm not the one who suggested it, so why you're flipping off on me is a mystery. Makes you look like a moron, I'd say.
What exemption? There is no personal exemption for sales tax. What you bought is either taxable or it isn't. You don't get to say "I don't have to pay tax on that YET because I am still below my exemption limit." You'll have to tell Customs about everything you bought (that was taxable) and pay that tax upon entry. Everything, even stuff that you didn't bring back with you. That book you bought and then left in the hotel for the next person: taxed. The gift you bought and gave to your host: taxable. The shirt that you bought that you threw away when it got stained at the party: taxable.
Right now if you've bring back less than a certain amount you don't pay anything and the customs process is simple. Make everything you buy while overseas taxable and it becomes a nightmare.
Packages coming from overseas have to go through customs as well.
Yes, they do. Who said otherwise? You'll have to pay the sales tax on those, too.
Assuming that we decide we need to tax stuff coming from overseas.
It's not a global sales tax unless it applies to everything you buy anywhere on the globe.
That's true for everything though.
Yes, I used just one example of how a global federal sales tax would be regressive. That's why everyone who proposes a federal sales tax tries to mitigate the problem by creating a refund for people below a certain income level. They've usually just claimed that the IRS will go away, and then they create a new system that will require the equivalent to the IRS to manage.
Signs you've never been audited...
You weren't talking about an audit, you were talking about the normal tax process. At least I was. And how there will still need to be an IRS to deal with the "normal tax process" when everyone has to file for their free money. You can't get away from having a federal agency that deals with personal information to make sure everyone pays the taxes they are supposed to, and that people who aren't owed a rebate or refund don't simply raise their hands to get one.
So the Top 1% needs to give the bottom 99% all their money. Problem solved.
Until next year, when the ones who suddenly find themselves in the new 1% have everything taken away from them and given to everyone else. As in, what do you do when the money you've just given away is gone and you need to do it again? Do you really imagine that those people who had no money will save whatever windfall they get by eating the rich for use over a long period of time? (And taking everything away from the 1% is as close to "eating the rich" as you can get without actually eating them.) The vacuum created by emptying out the 1% will create endless opportunities for the 5% to move up, creating the same 1% all over again.
I can think of no better incentive to be non-productive than to know that if you make the magic 1% level you'll have everything confiscated. No better way to destroy any idea of the "land of opportunity" than to reward the use of opportunity with total abject poverty. Well, no, I guess knowing that if you sit on your backside all day you'll get enough to live on is a pretty good incentive to not be productive, too.
I didn't say "win-win", just "win", in the context of the next sentence about our current president considering it more important to "win" against the awful rich people than to "win" in the goal of funding necessary government services. That's not true sarcasm, it's highlighting the use of taxes as a social engineering tool.
So then customs would go from a relatively inobtrusive process of listing things and not worrying about it unless you bring in more than X dollars of stuff, it will be a complete listing of everything you buy while outside the country, even things you do not bring back with you, and everyone having to pay something just to come home.
A massive expansion of ICE in addition to an expansion of the IRS.
Now, if you include a rebate rather than the usual food/medical care/rent being tax free,
It has nothing to do with just buying food etc tax free, it's the fact that a sales tax on the other things is still highly regressive. Adding a percentage to the cost of everything that isn't already sales-tax free for a poor person has much more impact on them than on the savage child-molesting rich folks this is intended to punish. A $5000 car that becomes $5500 with a ten percent sales tax is harder for a poor person to manage than a rich one.
However, it wouldn't be the anal probing it currently is, it'd consist of 'Are you a party that's eligible for the rebate?'
It isn't an anal probing now, and you can't just have people say "yes" or "no" without some proof -- everyone would just say "yes" and they'd get the free money from the government. No audits, no compliance. That's why audits were started in the first place. That they are a wonderful tool to ensure compliance in other aspects of our interaction with government is just a happy side-effect.
For example, if you eliminate the personal income tax in exchange for a global sales tax, it'd stop auditing individuals and shift towards auditing businesses exclusively.
Hardly. It would have to audit individuals to make sure they paid the sales tax (or what we now call a "use tax" that is the sales tax owed to the state you live in when you buy tax-free out of state) on that large ticket item they bought somewhere outside the US.
You would also have a HUGE number of people whose sole duty it is to audit the individual information that will be part of every "sales tax" system anyone proposes for the US: who gets the rebates? Everyone acknowledges that a "global sales tax" will be massively regressive unless you hand money out to the poor to cover the sales tax for them. Everyone who gets a rebate will have to file and the New IRS will have to work to catch the cheats. You can't just hand-wave that function away by saying 'everyone gets a rebate'. How do they know who to send checks to? There will have to be an annual filing from everyone who wants their check. That means audits, and that means that the IRS will still be a tool of the political party in power to coerce opponents into silence.
We're just looking for a way to fund the government here, as a means to the end of improving everyone's standard of living.
The federal tax system long ago ceased to be a way to simply fund the necessary government services and turned into a vehicle for large scale social engineering. Give tax breaks for things "we" want people to do, put more taxes on things "we" don't want them doing. When you look at the things "we" have decided to tax and not tax, you don't get a clear indication that "we" have everyone's improved standard of living in mind.
A plan that would cause the successful to move elsewhere might raise some funds for a while, but is a terrible long-term strategy for improving standard of living.
Yep. But as long as it prevents the successful from having an unhindered better standard of living than everyone else, it's a win. We have a president who admitted on national broadcast TV that he wanted to tax the rich not because it would increase the revenues to pay for government services -- in fact he admitted he knew it would decrease revenues overall -- but because it would be "fair". I.e., it would accomplish the social engineering goal he had for it while it was a step backwards for funding the government operations.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think you quite understand what that word means. A stereotype is a simplistic model that is held as if it were true of *all* members of some group.
I know exactly what that word means, and that is exactly the use I was replying to. When someone says "that group doesn't require protection", then you are using a simplistic model and holding as true for the entire group. It would have been much clearer as a stereotype if you had said "some genders typically don't require protection", at which point you'd have noticed the word "typical" -- from the same root as "type" in "stereotype".
Hitherto, men have not requires as much protection from sexual harassment as a group,
And that, sir, is a prototypical stereotype. Were it proper English, that is. Had you said "some men don't", you would have been right, and you'd have been talking about individual members of the group. But to talk about the group as a whole, which you did deliberately by referring to "as a group", that makes it a stereotype.
The reason the FBI isn't doing more to combat revenge porn is thus: It's not illegal.
At the very least, it seems to be considered identity theft.
By whom? Hunter was convicted of identity theft not because he posted the images but because of how he got them. He could have been convicted for that even without posting them.
Franken is talking about revenge porn that results in harassment, stalking, assault and murder. Those are already crimes. Identity theft is a crime. The major convictions for this porn have been the large-scale players who are acting against large numbers of people not for revenge over relationships gone bad, but monetary gain. What new laws do we need to cover that? Isn't extortion enough?
And the fact that he has to ask the FBI what laws they have to deal with the problem means his own staff is incompetent. He's a Senator, shouldn't he have a good idea of what the laws already are? Or shouldn't his staff be able to research this?
It sounds like an attempt at embarrassing the FBI for some reason. From a comedian who popularized the concept of "the me decade". It's all about him, Al Franken.
All genders (and indeed all gender self-identifications) are entitled to equal protection, but not all genders *require as much*.
That sounds very much like a gender-based stereotype. Exactly which genders don't require equal protection, and why?
The only thing patently insulting is your idiocy.
I understand. People who disagree with you are idiots. End of story.
Further, arguing for safety concerns through the auspices DMCA is disingenuous in the extreme. You are arguing for no modifications,
Since it is clear you haven't bothered to take the time to understand what my position is, why should I bother talking to you?
but since software is more akin to magic to you,
Ok, because you aren't looking for a discussion of the issue and are planning on winning by insult, you win. Bye.
Which definition of equivalent are you unaware of?
The one where changing one thing on a car is "equivalent to" changing something else that the car doesn't have to begin with. If changing the exhaust on a electric car (which has no effect at all) is equivalent to changing the software, then why bother? It will have no effect.
The bit that you are too dense to grasp
Thanks for playing. Putting one aftermarket piece of hardware on a car is not the same as (or equivalent to) modifications to software that runs a large number of systems on that car. There is a manufacturer that designed and tested that bit of kit you upgraded to. Who tests the modified software that you think you are smart enough to write to control the functions of your car?
The main difference is being able look over the entire code so it is obvious that maximum current is linked to regenerative braking
Except it may not be obvious. And it may not be obvious that the current limit on acceleration is based on circuit limits, unless you also tear the car apart to see what the specific electronic circuits involved are rated at. Wouldn't it be really safe if you load your family in the car and head off for a long trip, and show them how much better your car accelerates that it used to? And what's that burning smell, by the way? Great, the car is on fire.
And it may be a physical hardware limit. What's the tensile strength of the bolts that mount that motor?
And especially here, arguing for security through obscurity is just delicious.
So don't argue for that. And stop being patently insulting in your attitude. People who disagree with you aren't dense, they just don't agree with you.
Tests with pre-programmed equipment given to the patient for use at home for one night, ... All of it probably lab grade or close enough for the screening.
Which for me was a device almost identical to the $19 device I just purchased. It wasn't anywhere close to lab grade. It didn't need to be. Since I had to give it back I couldn't repeat the test, but now I can. I could try any of the cheap methods of solving the problem and actually see if they solve the problem.
And especially as electric cars come into the fold, being able to modify parameters is the equivalent to putting on a larger exhaust.
Which electric car would benefit from putting on a larger exhaust?
I'd rather have more options than what the factory allows, especially when the factory is charging twice the garage rate of my local shop.
So you change a few of the parameters of your electric car and some of the safety systems stop working right. E.g., you didn't realize that a parameter used for maximum current for acceleration interacted with the regenerative braking. I.e., you go fast but your brakes don't work as well. Or you change that acceleration parameter and your motors burn up because of the overcurrent. Or you change some other parameter that's based on a hardware limitation and you break the hardware and expect the dealer to fix it under warrantee. You blame the manufacturer, but it's your fault.
The issue though is really not the one-off experimenter who will hopefully only kill himself when he screws up, but the cottage businesses that will pop up selling kits to modify street vehicles and the people who don't understand why allowing twice the current during acceleration might be a bad thing -- but faster is gooder! Or the kit makers who reverse engineer the code for the 2016 model, but the 2017 model uses different code and they just overwrote the antilock braking function ...
It's bad enough that phones or other firmware-driven devices can be bricked by hacked code, imagine your car.
So untrained people are now monitoring their health using uncalibrated devices in uncontrolled circumstances.
Compared to a one-point sample during an office visit. Do you have a problem with high blood pressure? Will it manifest during that one office visit, or does it happen during specific times of the day? Does your blood sugar spike/drop after specific events, that you might not think of and your doctor won't see, but a home monitoring system will?
If we all lived in doctor's offices then calibrated devices in that controlled circumstance would be sufficient. Life is filled with uncontrolled circumstances for most people.
A lot of the devices available today are very good. And getting cheaper. I just bought a pulse oxymeter from Daily Steals for $19. While it isn't lab grade, it does good enough that it can be a check to see if someone may be suffering from sleep apnea. You don't need to know blood oxygen levels to a fraction of a percent for that, all you need to see is that the levels drop significantly.
To do the same test using lab grade equipments means spending a night sleeping in a test facility with wires attached. The last time I did that, it was supposed to be a two night process. Night one: determine if there was a problem. Night 2: determine the settings for the solution (pressure for the CPAP machine.) A $19 fingertip PO used at home could replace night one altogether for most people.
That removes the distraction from working at home, gives you social interaction with other professionals,
So the distraction of working at home is replaced by the distraction of working in a group of people who are doing unrelated things, some of whom might be hot babes and stuff? An upside may be that it becomes easier to find other people who want to play video games instead of work, and the network latency for in-building gameplay will certainly be better than home to cloud latency ...
And, of course, your significant other may get very tired of hearing you yell "hey honey, come see what some moron wrote on /." and tell you to go back to work, but you can always find someone in the cubicle warehouse who will stop and come look. Maybe even a hot babe, who you can get a coke and a cup of ice and tell her her sweater looks nice.
and the moment we had a magnificent high-speed fatality car accident it stopped the practice of human drivers....
Of course not, but it did change the laws for how cars were driven. It is pretty standard knowledge among pilots that every prohibition in the FARS came about as a result of a major aviation accident, for example.
Similarly for your other two examples, the end of civilization did not occur because someone living in civilization had an accident, but civilized people change how things are done when there are. It is not an end to AV if the rules prohibit high-speed formation driving (which is what a bumper to bumper group of cars going 65MPH is), just as the rules that limit formation flying have not ended the concept of aviation altogether.
And if you're not in that business, prepare to enjoy not having to pay monthly on auto insurance.
Uhhh, what? What makes you think that the owner/operator of a car will not retain legal liability for the actions of that car? You think the manufacturers will step in and pay off the lawsuits? You forget a routine maintenance requirement and your car has an accident -- the manufacturer will pay off? You don't have the latest rev of the operating software -- ditto.
Sheesh, we have software companies that won't even talk to you unless you are running the most current version of their product, and you think manufacturers will open up their pockets to pay off damage claims if they can find any reason not to? There are cars that people are claiming have a flaw in a simple computer that controls the throttle and the company claimed that it was driver error. This will change?
Yeah, I think I'll just take that hour drive twice a day and just watch netflix on my phone or read on my kindle or code on my laptop or even just sleep it.
I think you vastly overestimate the desire of people to spend two hours a day locked in a tiny room with little to do. It's still two hours they're away from their family. It's two hours that you aren't flipping burgers or stocking shelves so you won't be paid for them.
And 100 acres an hour's drive away? When everyone is doing it? 10 acres, maybe. And 100 acres of land takes a bit of maintenance, which you have 10 hours a week less free time to do because you're commuting.
A lot less accidents too -- huge plus for society.
And here's why losing focus on the technology in favor of dreaming of all the social benefits is a bad idea. We don't know this will be true, and have every reason to believe it will not be.
If idiots connect their cars or the underlying system to the internet, people will end up at hacked destinations.
Every claim for safety of AVs includes the idea that the cars will all talk to each other. Who cares if you call it "the Internet" or "the internet" or "the road web", a malicious actor on that net can cause much worse than "hacked destinations". Much worse.
Parking will become a bigger business -- especially garages that work hand in hand with autonomous vehicles.
And here's another obvious vector for malicious access. If your car will talk to external sources (parking attendants) to learn where they should park themselves, then what else will they listen to?
These are all, of course, many years off. But it is starting to look more and more inevitable.
I recall many years ago the predictions that appeared on a regular basis for what we'd have. Things like flying cars. Still not practical, and less practical as time goes on. Yes, AV are a long time off, unless we discover some issue that nobody thought about, or the people who are currently talking about the risks instead of the wonderful panacea they will be are right, or both.
but look for corroborating evidence from trustworthy sources before fashioning a protective anti-contrail aluminum foil hat.
You should have used Google. You would have learned that tin foil hats don't protect against the chemicals being dispersed via CIA-operated jets through the contrails. Dummy. You need a mask.
The issue I have with the study is the conclusion about people who are "left on their own" thinking they are smarter. They're comparing Google use to book use, and the people who use books to learn were NOT "left on their own". Yeah, someone who is left on their own isn't as smart as someone who uses books to learn things. D'oh. Take the books away and then compare.
You don't audit individuals for that.
Of course you don't do that, today. There is no global sales tax. When there is one, you don't think that the federal government would audit those who are responsible for paying it?
I'll repeat: Income to Sales tax was only given as an extreme example of how, in the face of changing tax law, the IRS would end up becoming a vastly different agency even if you didn't change anything else.
And I don't consider a simple change from collecting income taxes to collecting a global sales tax to be "vastly different". Collect the taxes and go after those who don't pay what they owe. Same idea no matter which kind of tax it is.
1. 'Poor enough' doesn't matter, seeing as how in the schemes I've read about Bill Gates is poor enough to get it.
Right. The 99% would stand for a direct cash handout to Bill Gates to help him pay his global sales taxes. I don't know what system you've read about, but when a handout is intended to help cover the tax liability of the poor, you don't also give it to the rich. They don't need it.
The only reason states don't do it now is because it would be a nightmare to manage. They mitigate the regressive nature by making some things tax free. If you're handing out free money to cover that at the federal level, then expect that there will some things you buy that will have no state sales tax but will have federal. And then the great situation where you pay no state sales tax at all but are stuck with a new global one.
2. 'Really even exist/Not Dead/Etc...' - Doesn't require digging into a person's financials, just that you have a pulse.
Someone shows up at your door looking for your pulse. First you have to prove who you are. Then they'll take your pulse. Then they'll check your income to make sure you qualify for the handout. One step at a time... and it is still a federal agency that is responsible for auditing the paperwork filed by individuals in support of tax payments. Just like the IRS now.
As a volunteer tax preparer, I'd say only about half of them are, other than the whole 'have to have enough income to actually have enough tax to refund'.
As a volunteer tax preparer, you should know about the tax rebates that don't get added on to any refund, and are not a refund themselves because there was no tax paid to be refunded.
You should also know how hidden a lot of the loopholes are. If you don't, you can't do a good job for your clients. Make the "free cash" handouts explicit and you'll see the reaction.
The idea behind the prebate is that it becomes sort of a BIG - 'Basic Guaranteed Income' - EVERYBODY gets it,
That is not the idea at all. It is intended to cover the fact that a global sales tax will be incredibly regressive and that the people who can afford it least will be impacted by it the most. Therefore, give them a rebate. That requires proving you deserve it. And that requires proof of lack of income.
If you try proposing a "basic guaranteed income" by giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and Ted Turner and all the other millionaires a handout, you'll be laughed off the podium, and rightly so.
If you are seriously suggesting such a scheme, then you seriously need to consider the impacts and the way you structure it so you aren't taken for a loon. "Everyone in the country gets free money from the government" makes you sound like the nutcase trying to sell the book.
Well, for starters, civil forfeiture is about your non-living stuff, and the 4th Amendment applies to YOU, a living being with enumerable rights.
Under that argument, it is not unreasonable search for the police to enter your home whenever they wish. After all, your home is non-living stuff and the fourth amendment applies only to you.
I think taking things from a living being with enumerable rights counts as a violation of 1) due process (since there has been no due process at all), 2) the fourth amendment right to be secure in one's person AND property, and 3) the concept of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
When your car is seized after you are arrested for DUII, you have not yet been convicted of that crime, and by taking physical property of considerable value you have effectively levied a fine for just being accused of a crime. In theory it is confiscating the means of committing a crime, but nobody has been proven to have committed a crime yet. It certainly is nothing like the concept of bail, which is intended to compel those who are charged but not confined to show up for trial.
Any use of civil forfeiture that occurs BEFORE any finding of guilt is simply a gross violation of the Constitution. That SCOTUS does not stop the practice is insane.
No it doesn't. The only way to get rich is to save. The incentive to save still far exceeds the incentive to spend.
If I have a savings account with $200k in it and I can manage to put $10k a year into it, what incentive do I have to keep that account? Put in $10k, take out $10.5k to pay taxes. Let's say I have a great interest rate of 1% on that account. I wind up with $1.5k more money in that account after putting $10k in. (Those are round numbers for argument only, so don't waste our time insulting me for not calculating things to the penny.)
My best option is to withdraw all my savings and store it in the backyard. That way the government doesn't know I have it and I immediately save at least $10k a year just in taxes. Add the $10k I put in with it and I'll have a full $210k, or $8.5 thousand dollars more than if the money was in the bank. Yeah, I'm "saving", but only because I'm hiding the money.
Other people would figure this out. The rich people you hate so much have lawyers and accountants who will run the numbers and tell them to pull their cash out of the banks, too. Do you not realize what a mass exodus of money from the banking system means? Interest rates on loans will skyrocket as the money supply dries up.
If you merely keep an IRA as tax free, effectively the middle class starts to save,
IRAs are already "tax free", and if the middle class isn't dumping money into them now to reduce their income tax burden, then they aren't going to be dumping money into them when the gurps owning-stuff tax kicks in. They MAY transfer other money in their accounts to the IRA to legally keep from paying taxes on it (so no change in the savings), but most likely there will be limits to IRA contributions (like there are now) and they'll just take their money out of the bank to protect it.
Don't try claiming that IRAs won't have contribution limits. If they don't, then you've just created yet another legal loophole to avoid taxes. If you try to keep people from dumping all their money into a "gurps-IRA" to keep from paying taxes on it, you'll have to do something like mandate that money that goes in cannot be taken out until the owner reaches a certain age. That will disincentivize the gurps-IRA since people need to know they can get to their money in an emergency.
And why save at all, if the government is simply going to start taking 5% of whatever you save away from you every year you have it? You have no clue as to human nature.
The key thing is this is a simple tax structure that soaks the wealthy,
You first claimed that taxing what people own doesn't screw anyone, and you called me stupid for pointing out how many people it would actually screw. Now you admit that you proposed the idea precisely because it screws the rich. But it also screws EVERYONE who owns anything -- rich, poor, middle class. Having the government come take 5% of everything you own away from you every year cannot help but screw everyone who has stuff. I'm not part of the 1% and even I am smart enough to know how this would destroy my retirement savings and home ownership possibilities. That you continue to claim this would be a good system, well, I dunno. Your hatred for successful people is blinding you to the facts.
Here's another fact: taxing people on what they own means that the car that the poor person needs to own to get to work will be costing him 5% of the value every year just in federal ownership taxes. You don't think that screws him, but that 5% ($1k on a $20k car) may be the difference between food and hunger for him. Of course, if he can't afford the taxes, he shouldn't buy the car.
In other words it reduces the gap between the wealthy and the poor,
Yes, we understand the concept of forced wealth redistribution using the tax system as a bludgeon on the people who have any wealth at all.
You fixated on 'global', I admitted it was a poor word choice for what I was envisioning.
As were "sales" and "tax", since what you were talking about is a duty that would be applied at customs when you return. All three words were the wrong thing to use.
I admitted it was my mistake.
In the last posting, before I ripped the idea of a global sales tax to shreds. So don't get upset that I was talking about a global sales tax before you admitted it was a mistake to say that.
But, poor word choice aside, I certainly hope I didn't imply that I was getting rid of the IRS, merely that if we got rid of the income tax in favor of a sales tax, the nature of the IRS would change, because it's duties would.
Wrong. They would still need to audit individuals to make sure they've paid the sales tax on things that they buy. Then they would ALSO have a new responsibility to go digging in corporate records to verify sales tax collections. Implying that the IRS would become a friend of man because their job would be different is just loony. They'll still be a large, powerful tool available to the ruling party.
Well, if you want to know if they tell the truth, you will have to examine their assets and income to see.
What truth? Why assets and income?
Since this is now context-less, I'll return some. This statement is about the "simplicity" of the new system where people would be asked the question "do you meet the requirements for the sales tax rebate?" in order for the IRS to know who to send the free money to.
What truth? D'oh. Do they really qualify as "poor enough" to get the sales tax rebate? Does that person who answered "yes" really even exist, or did they die two years ago? Why assets and income? To know if they are poor enough to qualify. You're making $200k a year and own a mansion and a yacht, what makes you think you'll qualify for the rebate?
Most of the time the qualification for the rebates amounts to this: Are you a legal US Resident, Y/N?
Most of the time current tax rebates and credits are dependent upon income. In fact, I don't know of any significant one that isn't. Maybe the clunkers clunker wasn't, but earned income credit is. Handing out checks for sales tax rebates will almost certainly have the same kind of income test. You don't think any rational politician will let the poor people know that he's voting to hand out free money to rich people, do you?
Current loopholes are easy to hide since they are often complicated and hidden side effects of other legislation. They appear on tax forms that the common person never sees. "Enter the greater of 33.4% of the value on line 45 of form X7Y/4 or 0:". Huh? But when the single page form consists in large part of the question: "do you qualify for the sales tax rebate?", and the instructions on the same sheet of paper say "you do if you are alive and a resident of the US", it will be hard to hide the fact that the 1% is benefiting from the free money intended to help the poor people.
Again, no checking of assets or income necessary.
You don't think an audit checks your income? And I was accused of being naive because I didn't agree that it was an anal probe process.
The government gets to set the rules if they were to set this up, which INCLUDES things like 'We're not going to bother charging sales tax unless you bring in more than $5k worth of goods'.
It's hard to talk about a wandering target. First it's a global sales tax, then it's not.
A sales tax doesn't depend on what you carry into the country, it's on what you BUY. If it is a tax on what you bring in, it's a DUTY, not a sales tax. So excuse me if I'm talking about the global sales tax you proposed while you change the system into something different.
Global was a poor word choice on my part. I should have said 'federal' I think.
Yeah, my mistake. I assume people say what they mean and don't try to second guess them.
What the heck are we even arguing about?
Your global sales tax that really isn't. The idea that a global sales tax would get rid of the IRS because it would replace the income tax.
I admit, if you pass a sales tax idea with a rebate, you'll need some auditing of individuals to make sure they're not claiming extra bodies and whatnot.
Your idea was that it would be as simple as asking people "do you qualify?" That's the entire "tax return" to qualify for the free money rebate. That's not an audit. Well, if you want to know if they tell the truth, you will have to examine their assets and income to see. That's no different than today's audits. And it requires a government agency to do it. Whether that's called the IRS or not, it does a similar job and has the same potential abuses.
Normal people have mortgages.
Are you really so stupid that you don't know the difference between voluntary debt and government taxation? Do you see how wonderfully productive it is to call people stupid when they don't agree with you?
I don't have a mortgage. I'm a "normal people". Under your new taxation system I'd have to find a spare $10,000 a year to hand over to the government if I want to keep my house. Every year. For the rest of my life. Even after I retire and my income drops to zero.
As for on top of, I did not say that. I want a federal property tax to replace existing federal taxes.
I don't know what "that" you are trying to deny saying. You want a tax on ownership, which means the same property gets taxed year after year after year -- until you can no longer afford to pay the tax and you have to sell it. And your attitude toward those who find themselves unable to pay is just pathetic. Don't buy it if you can't afford the taxes. Phhht.
(on everything excluding IRAs and 1 home of upto 200K value)
So after I point out the absolutely absurd result of your proposed tax on ownership you come up with two minor exemptions. Very handy. But you still tax savings that has already been taxed. Not everyone qualified for an IRA, and thus not everyone has retirement money in the bank that was pre-tax. So you'd like to dip into my bank account at 5% per year because I managed to save money while I worked, and you'll keep dipping after I retire and need the money to live on. My main retirement is also not an IRA, so that goes into someone else's pocket, too. Thanks. I worked hard all my life, saved my money, and you want to tax me repetitively on it until I'm living in poverty. You're such a sweetheart.
The fact that you thought 10% or more indicates your knowledge of the math and economics involved is seriously flawed.
I'm sorry I bothered asking you what amount you thought it was going to be. It doesn't really matter if it is 5% or 10%, it screws every person who tries to save for retirement or provide for his family. More property taxes will not make it easier to own a house, it will make it harder. It will decimate family farms and turn marginally profitable operations into losses. But if they can't pay the tax they don't deserve to own whatever it is.
If you make it 2% that only applied if you owned more than 1 million dollars, we could lower the top tax rate to 30% and keep it there.
Uhh, if we apply a federal property tax rate of 2% to only those who have $1 million, we can lower the tax rate to 30%? I'm sorry, to whom does that 30% tax rate apply when you've said it would be 2%? Or were you lying when you said this new property tax would replace existing federal taxes?
Frankly, you don't know enough to have this argument.
And you aren't civil enough to be worth having it with. If only we were all as smart as gurps we'd agree with it. Sure. Nobody knows better.
"Hey, maybe the rich can pay a bit more tax - like they used to 40-50 years ago"
Hmmm. That's not what I replied to. This is: "So the Top 1% needs to give the bottom 99% all their money."
Do you have some definition of "all" that equates to "a bit more tax"? I don't. And I'm not the one who suggested it, so why you're flipping off on me is a mystery. Makes you look like a moron, I'd say.
Huh? You could still have that exemption.
What exemption? There is no personal exemption for sales tax. What you bought is either taxable or it isn't. You don't get to say "I don't have to pay tax on that YET because I am still below my exemption limit." You'll have to tell Customs about everything you bought (that was taxable) and pay that tax upon entry. Everything, even stuff that you didn't bring back with you. That book you bought and then left in the hotel for the next person: taxed. The gift you bought and gave to your host: taxable. The shirt that you bought that you threw away when it got stained at the party: taxable.
Right now if you've bring back less than a certain amount you don't pay anything and the customs process is simple. Make everything you buy while overseas taxable and it becomes a nightmare.
Packages coming from overseas have to go through customs as well.
Yes, they do. Who said otherwise? You'll have to pay the sales tax on those, too.
Assuming that we decide we need to tax stuff coming from overseas.
It's not a global sales tax unless it applies to everything you buy anywhere on the globe.
That's true for everything though.
Yes, I used just one example of how a global federal sales tax would be regressive. That's why everyone who proposes a federal sales tax tries to mitigate the problem by creating a refund for people below a certain income level. They've usually just claimed that the IRS will go away, and then they create a new system that will require the equivalent to the IRS to manage.
Signs you've never been audited...
You weren't talking about an audit, you were talking about the normal tax process. At least I was. And how there will still need to be an IRS to deal with the "normal tax process" when everyone has to file for their free money. You can't get away from having a federal agency that deals with personal information to make sure everyone pays the taxes they are supposed to, and that people who aren't owed a rebate or refund don't simply raise their hands to get one.
So the Top 1% needs to give the bottom 99% all their money. Problem solved.
Until next year, when the ones who suddenly find themselves in the new 1% have everything taken away from them and given to everyone else. As in, what do you do when the money you've just given away is gone and you need to do it again? Do you really imagine that those people who had no money will save whatever windfall they get by eating the rich for use over a long period of time? (And taking everything away from the 1% is as close to "eating the rich" as you can get without actually eating them.) The vacuum created by emptying out the 1% will create endless opportunities for the 5% to move up, creating the same 1% all over again.
I can think of no better incentive to be non-productive than to know that if you make the magic 1% level you'll have everything confiscated. No better way to destroy any idea of the "land of opportunity" than to reward the use of opportunity with total abject poverty. Well, no, I guess knowing that if you sit on your backside all day you'll get enough to live on is a pretty good incentive to not be productive, too.
I didn't say "win-win", just "win", in the context of the next sentence about our current president considering it more important to "win" against the awful rich people than to "win" in the goal of funding necessary government services. That's not true sarcasm, it's highlighting the use of taxes as a social engineering tool.
Nope, you'd collect it at customs.
So then customs would go from a relatively inobtrusive process of listing things and not worrying about it unless you bring in more than X dollars of stuff, it will be a complete listing of everything you buy while outside the country, even things you do not bring back with you, and everyone having to pay something just to come home.
A massive expansion of ICE in addition to an expansion of the IRS.
Now, if you include a rebate rather than the usual food/medical care/rent being tax free,
It has nothing to do with just buying food etc tax free, it's the fact that a sales tax on the other things is still highly regressive. Adding a percentage to the cost of everything that isn't already sales-tax free for a poor person has much more impact on them than on the savage child-molesting rich folks this is intended to punish. A $5000 car that becomes $5500 with a ten percent sales tax is harder for a poor person to manage than a rich one.
However, it wouldn't be the anal probing it currently is, it'd consist of 'Are you a party that's eligible for the rebate?'
It isn't an anal probing now, and you can't just have people say "yes" or "no" without some proof -- everyone would just say "yes" and they'd get the free money from the government. No audits, no compliance. That's why audits were started in the first place. That they are a wonderful tool to ensure compliance in other aspects of our interaction with government is just a happy side-effect.
For example, if you eliminate the personal income tax in exchange for a global sales tax, it'd stop auditing individuals and shift towards auditing businesses exclusively.
Hardly. It would have to audit individuals to make sure they paid the sales tax (or what we now call a "use tax" that is the sales tax owed to the state you live in when you buy tax-free out of state) on that large ticket item they bought somewhere outside the US.
You would also have a HUGE number of people whose sole duty it is to audit the individual information that will be part of every "sales tax" system anyone proposes for the US: who gets the rebates? Everyone acknowledges that a "global sales tax" will be massively regressive unless you hand money out to the poor to cover the sales tax for them. Everyone who gets a rebate will have to file and the New IRS will have to work to catch the cheats. You can't just hand-wave that function away by saying 'everyone gets a rebate'. How do they know who to send checks to? There will have to be an annual filing from everyone who wants their check. That means audits, and that means that the IRS will still be a tool of the political party in power to coerce opponents into silence.
We're just looking for a way to fund the government here, as a means to the end of improving everyone's standard of living.
The federal tax system long ago ceased to be a way to simply fund the necessary government services and turned into a vehicle for large scale social engineering. Give tax breaks for things "we" want people to do, put more taxes on things "we" don't want them doing. When you look at the things "we" have decided to tax and not tax, you don't get a clear indication that "we" have everyone's improved standard of living in mind.
A plan that would cause the successful to move elsewhere might raise some funds for a while, but is a terrible long-term strategy for improving standard of living.
Yep. But as long as it prevents the successful from having an unhindered better standard of living than everyone else, it's a win. We have a president who admitted on national broadcast TV that he wanted to tax the rich not because it would increase the revenues to pay for government services -- in fact he admitted he knew it would decrease revenues overall -- but because it would be "fair". I.e., it would accomplish the social engineering goal he had for it while it was a step backwards for funding the government operations.