What solutions are there to the problem of people who are too prideful to ask for help when they don't understand how to vote? Surely something is possible.
I know one solution but it wouldn't be acceptable. Someone who knows how to do it supervises everyone. You can't just have them look at the paper output, they have to know who the voter intended to vote for.
Nothing is obvious to everyone. Every first time voter is learning something new. Every second time voter brings his understanding of the previous system into the voting booth.
I even recall, when I was young, there was a PRACTICE ballot and voting booth freely available for anyone who wanted to practice voting before the real event. You could use both and then ask "did I do it right?" That means you have to be honest enough to say "I don't get it", and that's the problem.
Take a systems that works and copy it. Oregon's vote by mail.
Oregon's vote by mail is hardly a panacea. The fact that Oregon typically votes democrat is probably why the system has never been examined with any scrutiny.
Every election, there are stories of people whose votes weren't counted because their signature didn't "look quite right", and there is no way to prove identity by the time the invalidation is issued. Heck, most people don't even know if their vote was allowed or not because that process is hidden in the back rooms of the county election offices. If you vote in person, you know your vote went into the pot before you leave (except for provisional or special case ballots).
During the first few elections, there were stories of people who decided they weren't interested in voting in that election who took the ballot out of their PO box and threw it into the trash at the post office, where anyone could pick them out and vote them, or at least try.
We've still not investigated the amount of "family" voting. You know, where the Dad fills out everyone's ballot for them. Or where Dad is just too tired to actually fill in the circles so Mom does it for him. Or Dad just doesn't care at all.
5. Doesn't take time out of your busy schedule.
Mod me a troll for saying this, but _I_ think voting is important enough that if you can't take a half a hour out of your "busy schedule" to actually go to the polling place and can't prove who you are and that you are authorized to vote, you shouldn't BE voting. Period. Handing everyone a ballot and letting people who just can't be bothered to spend the time to understand the issues vote anyway is twisted democracy. The founders assumed that the people, through a free press, would be informed and express an intelligent self-interest in voting. Today's assumption is that if you don't let every person in the country vote, even if they aren't supposed to be here, you are somehow discriminating against them.
Yes, it is discrimination. Discrimination is not always a dirty word.
Devil's Advocate time: How can you color in a polygonal box with a pencil and not create at least two intersecting line segments in the process?
You know, I don't know that people who were that pedantic didn't get their votes counted anyway. I just know what the instructions said and what the official rules for counting were.
It's not like we were in a high-fraud area like Chicago, we were just close enough that we all knew who Richard Daley was and how he got elected so often.
"Poke a hole in a piece of paper" is about as simple a user interface as possible. If you are three years old and can't poke a hole in a piece of paper, something is wrong.
If you are ten years old, are supposed to poke holes, and can't ask "are those dangly bits a problem", something is wrong.
No, there will always be a user interface, and someone will always do it wrong, and of those who do it wrong there will always be people who refuse to ask for help.
In the butterfly ballot/hanging chad age, it's the seventy year old guy that the democrats trotted out after the election who said he'd been voting for fifty years and didn't need to read no instructions how to vote. Yes, sir, you did.
In the good old days of paper ballots in a small township, I would help my Mom unfold and stack the ballots before they were counted by hand, and I'd be amazed at the number of adults who either could not or would not make a simple X in a box.
The instructions were clear -- X in a box. The rules for counting were simple enough. "Two intersecting line segments and the intersection within the box." That's the actual rule. An X in the box counts. A check mark would count if the corner of the check is in the box. Anything else did not. No lines through the box, no coloring in, no Xs or checks near the box. And yet, people would wait in line to cast a ballot and then fail this simple test. In a day when every child was taught to color within the lines, I saw adults who could not make an X.
Why not count "almost"? It was not unusual, in those days, especially near Chicago, to find poll workers with finger injuries requiring a bandaid (hiding a bit of pencil lead) who could mark ballots while smoothing them out. Hard to make Xs unobserved, but lines and checks are easy.
So some individual earning less than lets say $50,000 a year paying a higher percentage of tax than another individual earning $5,000,000 per year, seems hardly fair especially considering the sheer dollar volume of the remainder left after tacxes.
The numbers show that the top earners pay higher percentages of their income in taxes. People who make very little pay nothing at all, they even get money back. Your statement is based on the consensus truth that the rich get off free and the poor are taken advantage of, not the real truth based on the numbers I've already provided. The bottom 50% of earners make 13% of the money and pay 3.3% of the tax, while the top 10% earned 39% of the income and paid 71% of the taxes. That yeilds a RATE that is much less for the bottom 50% than for the top 10%.
The rest of your response was irrelevant to taxation or the consensus truth that isn't.
I don't suppose there is a rich man willing to swap his income with that of a poor man so he pays a lower percentage in tax is there?
Of course not. But there are rich people who are quite willing to forgo working a little bit harder to make just a bit more money so they won't have to pay extra taxes. Sometimes this "work" is simply taking a risk by investing the money they have in new (or expanding old) companies. This effort on their part is often the source of jobs and income for other people. If they don't do it, this reduces federal revenues.
They are also more likely to try to find any way they can to shelter what they do make so they won't have to pay higher taxes. This, too, reduces federal revenues. It is a fact that increasing tax RATES reduces tax REVENUES and vice versa.
I don't suppose there are any people unemployed due to a rich man deciding he could make more money by moving jobs away from the local economy to somewhere with lower costs safety standards and scruples.
Like I just said, it is quite likely for rich people, who are not stupid, to find ways to avoid paying higher taxes, and moving jobs offshore is a common method. Scruples has nothing to do with it. Taxing them even more just provides more incentive for them to move more jobs offshore. You can't improve the economy and create jobs by raising taxes, not even taxes on the rich.
Do you not imagine that if someone wanted to come take things from you that you've worked hard to get, you just might try to find ways of hiding them so you could keep them?
you can play the percentage game all you like but there is a minimum income needed to maintain body and soul and tax shouldn't take people below that.
Have you ignored the very large percentage of people in the US who PAY NO INCOME TAX? It is false to claim that income taxes take anyone below a "minimum income" level. In fact, the US tax system has handouts built into it, called "earned income credit". People who aren't paying income taxes directly get credit for income taxes paid by other people they've bought things from. It's an amazing fact that you can get a REFUND for more than you've actually paid.
The "consensus truth" calls for income tax "cuts" for the poor, who already pay no income tax! The truth just doesn't match the consensus.
In the UK there is a thing called family credit where the government tops up the income of poorer families.
Yes, the UK is moving towards socialism, just as the US is. Take money from the people who have it and give it to those who didn't. It's not a new concept, even though all the people in the US who love Obama are claiming he's filled with new concepts.
Yes thats right the company bosses are more than happy to pay wages below the poverty level...
And yet they find people willing to work for those wages. If nobody was willing to work for poverty level wages, the employers would have to pay more to get the work done. Tell me, when you look to fill up your gas tank, do you go to the station with the highest prices, or do you look around for ways to save money? Why do you think rich people would be stupid enough to look for the costliest way of doing things?
Of couse the GP poster was referring to percent of their income. It wasn't relevant, since the discussion at the federal level by the Presidential candidates has nothing to do with sales taxes, only income taxes. The "consensus truth" in that debate is that the rich get off free and the poor are taken advantage of. This is disproven once the facts are examined. There is nothing the President can do about sales taxes, so whether they are unfair or not has nothing to do with this debate.
Oregon doesn't have a sales tax because the people there have voted many times not to have one. While the fact that it is regressive may have played a part, I suspect the simple fact that people do not want to pay more taxes than they have to, and have not had to pay a sales tax, is the bigger reason. The fact that Oregon has passed taxes on "other people" hints at that. They passed a high tax on cigarettes, e.g., based on people who don't smoke who won't have to pay it. People are often happy to vote for taxes on other people, but not themselves.
And, if you note carefully, the regressive nature of the sales tax is why all instances I know of (except for perhaps VAT in countries with that hidden sales tax) exempt "basics that everyone must buy in order to survive."
A moral case can be made for a uniform rate of sales tax on big-ticket luxury goods, but not on food, for example.
The concept of income redistribution is never a moral basis for a tax. I'm sorry that some people cannot afford to buy some things, but I, too, cannot afford many things that I'd like to buy. I do not consider my inability to buy them an ethical reason for calling for high taxes on those items. I do not consider my lack of smoking sufficient reason to vote for a tax on cigarettes, either, so I did not.
I'm simply amazed at the number of people who are telling me that forty million frenchmen were right, despite clear evidence to the contrary. I can think of no better demonstration of why consensus truth is dangerous, not just false to start with.
But how many of those low-tax payers are multi-millionaires?
None of them. I said "The bottom 50% of taxpayers by income".
Its the high salary earners who pay the most tax, not the real rich with their offshore funds and trust accounts.
You can't be one of the "rich" that Obama wants to soak with an income tax increase and not be making income. If you make no income, you pay no tax. You are part of the bottom 50%.
BTW, I think those numbers imply the richer half of the US get 87% of the income,
and pay 96.7% of the taxes. They aren't getting off scott free. The ratio gets worse as you move up the income ladder. The people who are actually "rich" in any significant way pay considerably more.
or SEVEN TIMES on average the income of the poorer half.
You've ignored the broad range of the top 50%. What is "on average" for them is really a meaningless statistic. But yes, it is possible that someone working a good job makes seven times what someone who sits around the house collecting unemployment makes. This is not a problem, in my opinion.
I note you're careful to say "federal taxes". Good talking point.
I said federal taxes because federal taxes are currently being discussed in the Presidential campaign. The class hatred of the rich is being used to justify tax increases on the rich and welfare (called "tax cuts", but you can't cut taxes below 0) for the poor.
You might want to look at what percentage the poor pay in sales taxes (in those states that have them) and other taxes.
They pay the same percentage in sales tax as the rich. The rich don't get a free ride. The poor aren't treated unfairly. In amount, the rich pay a lot more than the poor, simply because they buy more. Except in Oregon, where nobody pays any sales tax.
"Other taxes" is too obtuse a reference to know what you want to discuss. Property taxes? Well, the rich, again, pay a lot more than the poor. If you don't own property, you don't pay property taxes. Excise taxes? Again, the rich pay more. If you don't buy things which have excise taxes on them, you pay nothing. Death taxes? Again, the rich pay more in death taxes than the poor.
The "consensus truth" that the poor are being treated unfairly is still not the real truth, once you look at the facts. All it takes to get past "consensus truth" is to resort to facts.
They were just items that had been buried during the Iran-Iraq war and were long past their shelf life even if properly stored. No one seriously used them as proof.
Chemical rockets were found in the first week, but probably what it being referrred to is the sale of a large amount of yellowcake uranium to Canada from the stash in Iraq.
And what should you have had about the Maginot line in the encyclopedias of the time ? The consensus truth was the only thing to have.
That is untrue.
"Consensus truth" is nothing more than a politically correct way of saying "opinion" that dresses opinion up in a fancy dress and makes it look like more than it really is. It's a way of making EVERYONE correct, while not having to point out that some people's "truth" just doesn't fit with the facts. It's good for their "self esteem" and politically correct not to think that some truths really are absolute.
The encyclopedia of the time could easily give just the facts about the line, which is what truth ultimately is based on. Real truth, not "consensus truth" which can ignore facts in favor of rumor and innuendo. "The Maginot Line consists of X number of fortified positions spread across a line from Y to Z, intended to defend the country against German attack". Those are facts. "The Maginot Line is an invincible fortified defense system..." is an opinion, or what would be called "consensus truth" today.
Some of these might be true, but the thing is, the wikipedia has no way of being smarter than the consensus.
Yes, it does. The same way anyone has of being smarter than the consensus. Look for facts and not opinions. The fact that they don't allow one of their victims to correct his own biography is demonstration that truth really isn't the goal of Wikipedia, it's popularity. Let everyone participate, even if they don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Here's an example of how to beat "consensus truth". The "consensus truth" is that the current US tax system is unfair to the poor and lets the rich off the hook. ("Unfair" and "off the hook" are opinion words, a quick way to identify "consensus truth".) The FACTS show that the poor already pay nothing, or very close to nothing, in federal taxes. The bottom 50% of taxpayers by income pay just 3.3% of the tax revenues (and a large number of them pay 0) while earning 13% of the income, while the top 0.1% of incomes pay 17% of the revenue while earning just 9% of the income. That's the truth, and it directly contradicts the "consensus truth", which shows that the consensus truth is not.
There is a more relevant quote that had read-world consequences. "Forty million Frenchmen can't be wrong."
That quote refers to something called the Maginot Line; a line of heavily fortified positions on the French border prior to WWII. The "consensus truth" (a term I doubt they had heard of back then, it is so politically correct sounding) was that the Germans could NEVER break through such a heavily defended line.
That was the French "truth". The German "truth" was that they walked past the Maginot Line (because it was fixed and could not adapt to changes in attack plans) and into Paris.
"Consensus truth" is a waste of time and an insult to intelligent people. The summary shows why. If someone who was actually there because it was his life cannot get correct information into Wikipedia, that doesn't mean his life was different than he thought. It means that the Wikipedia "consensus truth" is balderdash. In other words, forty million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.
Worst-case scenario, they can move to a country that actually cares about its citizens and provides decent free health care.
Where's my mod points when I need to mark a troll?
A country that cares about its citizens doesn't try to take over the health care industry, it allows people to get the amount or level of insurance they want and don't overload the system by making it free for all. Free for all means mediocre or poor for everyone.
Hawaii has just dropped free health care for children because, duh, people who could pay for it stopped paying for it and the free system overloaded. After just SEVEN MONTHS in operation. Funny how people who demand free health care for all can't predict that those who pay for it now will STOP and there will be no "free" for anyone.
It was the most amazing thing to hear Obama saying that he didn't want to eliminate existing insurance, just provide free coverage for those who can't afford it. He has no clue how many people would stop paying for their existing insurance and go with free, so his projections on cost and workability are skewed. It's the same as every other entitlement program ever enacted. FREE draws crowds of people who can afford it but don't want to pay. What's worse is that those who drop paid insurance for the free stuff are likely to be the ones who don't need much medical care to start with and object to paying insurance for something they don't need. That leaves all the sick people paying insurance because they can't change with an existing condition, which can't provide services because it is no longer getting subsidized by people who are paying but not needing services.
And then we can join Canada and have ten month waiting lists for OB services. (Here's the clue: OB's deliver babies. Babies take only nine months. If you have to wait ten months to see an OB, you will have a one month old baby to show him, delivered by yourself.)
It is nice to theorize high-level conspiracies about this kind of stuff, but Occams' razor shreds it pretty quick.
I don't recall a time where there has never been a security check prior to flying, and I've been doing it for thirty years. Someone did it before, as a private company. Now it's federalized. Same issues. Same effect.
You're asking to get on someone else's airplane with a hundred or so others. Your carryon sits either at your seat or above, while you trot off to the bathroom and anyone else on the plane can rifle through it. (Less likely for under-the-seat, but you did leave your expensive headset and mp3 player on your seat out in the open.) You are handing your checked baggage to people you don't know who get to sit with it for long periods of time -- long enough to open it and steal anything they want.
If you are worried about your privacy, flying isn't how to keep it. Never has been.
I have flown numerous (probably a lot more than most) domestic and international flights over the past three years. Every time the pilot exits the cockpit he closes the door behind him, leaving one or two other people in the cockpit.
Yes, they close the door behind them. I didn't say it wasn't. I pointed out that the door on an airliner is not locked shut tight for the the duration of a flight, by using an example when it was not. All three "pilots" came out and went back in. That's four times the door was open.
Given the extra attention attendees appear to pay during the opening and closing of doors, even someone who was able to fly above the seats at high speed...
Above the seats? No, not necessary. You see, on most of the planes I've been on, they have this thing down the middle, or on big ones two things, called "aisles". There are no seats in the aisles. The airlines would LOVE to put seats in the aisles so they could sell more tickets, but they can't.
Those "aisles" provide easy access from the back of the plane to the front. No need to climb over or fly over the seats.
In fact, on the flight I was talking about, I was in the front row. There was a set of closets between me and the front galley, about three feet, and another three feet (maybe four) to the door. A very short trip.
As for the cart being put away while the pilots are out, not on the flights I've been on.
The inside of the cabin is pressurized to 1 atmosphere,
The normal pressure altitude of an airliner is about 8000 feet. That's considerably lower than "1 atmosphere" at sea level. A rule of thumb for pilots is 1" of mercury per 1000 feet, so instead of 31", you're down to about 23". That's still a big difference between outside and in, and normal humans aren't opening the doors at altitude.
Above 8000', people with low lung efficiencies start having problems. Above 14,000', normal people start having problems. Below 8000' and you put unnecessary strain on the cabin.
The deal with the saline is not that it is a loophole, it is that toothpaste isn't a whole lot more dangerous.
The rule about liquids and gels is based on liquids that ARE more dangerous than toothpaste, and that a TSA security checkpoint is a poor place to do a full chemical analysis on every liquid or gel that people carry through. Some of them would be carrying a LOT of liquids if there wasn't a limit on them, and testing them all would be a nightmare in both time and money.
You could have people open the bottle and drink to prove it is safe, right? Ummm, no Mr. TSA agent, that's a bottle of nail polish remover and I'm not going to drink from it. It's a bottle of medicine that can't just be swigged. It's a bottle of ipecac I use for first aid, I ain't drinking it here. Further, people would be extremely unwilling to have to open a vintage bottle of wine just so TSA could test it, even if drinking it is safe, the value plummets when the bottle opens.
So, the rule is amounts of liquids that can't be used to do "enough damage" for some probably arcane definition of "enough".
And that makes the saline solution exemption a loophole. It is an exemption that bad guys can take advantage of.
10 ounces would be about enough for a terrist to burn themselves pretty good (or maybe a couple of other passengers), but it wouldn't be that big a deal.
Ten ounces of gasoline appropriately vaporized and ignited in a closed cylinder could make a grand explosion.
You would think that if it were effective, they would be capturing people with provable ill intent. And you'd further think that if they did this, they'd want to tell th e world, loudly! After all, they could justify their own existence that way.
I can think of one obvious reason why not.
Every stupid person you catch who has ill intent is education to the rest. "Hey, don't forget the damn matches, you other stupid shoe-bombers!" If you don't announce the stupid ones and how you caught them, the others won't know what not to do.
I can think of another reason. Terrorists work on terror, usually by causing damage. If they get people afraid of flying because they learn a large number of people with ill intent are being caught, they've got their effect without risking their own lives. Win-win.
A terrorist's odds of getting through that reinforced cockpit door while fending off the passengers is practically nil.
So he waits until the pilot comes out to take a pee, or chat up the flight attendants, or get a coffee. The pilot has come out at least once on every flight I've been on that's longer than an hour. On one flight, in sequence, out came the pilot to pee and then chat with the crew for fifteen minutes, and as he went back in the copilot came out and did the same thing. When HE went back in, the deadheader riding the jump seat did exactly the same thing. Fourty five minutes strapped in, and I needed to take a pee more than any of them.
An open door isn't much of an impediment, and the carts they put across the aisle are just one leap from the door.
...if anyone is going to effect some level of change, the chances are far greater with his sig at the bottom of the Security report.
That's a danger, not a benefit.
He missed the most obvious problem with his plan on "closing the triangle". He wants an id check when the person gets on the plane because only a stupid terrorist won't know how to steal a credit card and avoid the "do not fly" check by using a fake name when he buys the ticket.
Only a stupid terrorist won't be able to get a fake id to go with the stolen credit card to get through the new, as-you-board id check.
High school students do it so they can buy liquor, you don't think a terrorist might be able to? His suggested solution is just more of the same game we are already playing, only he doesn't recognize it.
The people on the first four airplanes thought they were going to land safely later. The ones on United 93 had the benefit of learning the lesson of the first four, only after the attack started and the cockpit broached.
Nobody can predict if an attacked airliner is going to land safely later, unless the attacker is removed from the equation. And that's what's going to happen. Even an attacker who is promising he only wants to go to Cuba may be just the first wave of the attack, and the real intent only become clear when three others join him.
Try recording a song that includes you chanting the Lord's Prayer backwards, and see how long it takes before fundamentalist Christians start complaining.
And Sony execs will be slapping each other on the back congratulating themselves on all the free publicity as the dollars roll in.
Anti-christian lyrics are nothing new.
How confident are you that no Buddhists anywhere would be at all offended by any use of Buddhist texts?
Considering the number of them I've come across in airports trying to sell me copies of their holy writings translated into english, I'd say very. The important question is not how offended they'd be, but when was the last death sentence in absentia issued by a Buddhist monk, and how many buddhists would try to carry it out? Salmon Rushdie isn't an item on the seafood side of the menu.
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I know one solution but it wouldn't be acceptable. Someone who knows how to do it supervises everyone. You can't just have them look at the paper output, they have to know who the voter intended to vote for.
Nothing is obvious to everyone. Every first time voter is learning something new. Every second time voter brings his understanding of the previous system into the voting booth.
I even recall, when I was young, there was a PRACTICE ballot and voting booth freely available for anyone who wanted to practice voting before the real event. You could use both and then ask "did I do it right?" That means you have to be honest enough to say "I don't get it", and that's the problem.
Oregon's vote by mail is hardly a panacea. The fact that Oregon typically votes democrat is probably why the system has never been examined with any scrutiny.
Every election, there are stories of people whose votes weren't counted because their signature didn't "look quite right", and there is no way to prove identity by the time the invalidation is issued. Heck, most people don't even know if their vote was allowed or not because that process is hidden in the back rooms of the county election offices. If you vote in person, you know your vote went into the pot before you leave (except for provisional or special case ballots).
During the first few elections, there were stories of people who decided they weren't interested in voting in that election who took the ballot out of their PO box and threw it into the trash at the post office, where anyone could pick them out and vote them, or at least try.
We've still not investigated the amount of "family" voting. You know, where the Dad fills out everyone's ballot for them. Or where Dad is just too tired to actually fill in the circles so Mom does it for him. Or Dad just doesn't care at all.
5. Doesn't take time out of your busy schedule.
Mod me a troll for saying this, but _I_ think voting is important enough that if you can't take a half a hour out of your "busy schedule" to actually go to the polling place and can't prove who you are and that you are authorized to vote, you shouldn't BE voting. Period. Handing everyone a ballot and letting people who just can't be bothered to spend the time to understand the issues vote anyway is twisted democracy. The founders assumed that the people, through a free press, would be informed and express an intelligent self-interest in voting. Today's assumption is that if you don't let every person in the country vote, even if they aren't supposed to be here, you are somehow discriminating against them.
Yes, it is discrimination. Discrimination is not always a dirty word.
You know, I don't know that people who were that pedantic didn't get their votes counted anyway. I just know what the instructions said and what the official rules for counting were.
It's not like we were in a high-fraud area like Chicago, we were just close enough that we all knew who Richard Daley was and how he got elected so often.
"Poke a hole in a piece of paper" is about as simple a user interface as possible. If you are three years old and can't poke a hole in a piece of paper, something is wrong. If you are ten years old, are supposed to poke holes, and can't ask "are those dangly bits a problem", something is wrong.
No, there will always be a user interface, and someone will always do it wrong, and of those who do it wrong there will always be people who refuse to ask for help.
In the butterfly ballot/hanging chad age, it's the seventy year old guy that the democrats trotted out after the election who said he'd been voting for fifty years and didn't need to read no instructions how to vote. Yes, sir, you did.
In the good old days of paper ballots in a small township, I would help my Mom unfold and stack the ballots before they were counted by hand, and I'd be amazed at the number of adults who either could not or would not make a simple X in a box.
The instructions were clear -- X in a box. The rules for counting were simple enough. "Two intersecting line segments and the intersection within the box." That's the actual rule. An X in the box counts. A check mark would count if the corner of the check is in the box. Anything else did not. No lines through the box, no coloring in, no Xs or checks near the box. And yet, people would wait in line to cast a ballot and then fail this simple test. In a day when every child was taught to color within the lines, I saw adults who could not make an X.
Why not count "almost"? It was not unusual, in those days, especially near Chicago, to find poll workers with finger injuries requiring a bandaid (hiding a bit of pencil lead) who could mark ballots while smoothing them out. Hard to make Xs unobserved, but lines and checks are easy.
The numbers show that the top earners pay higher percentages of their income in taxes. People who make very little pay nothing at all, they even get money back. Your statement is based on the consensus truth that the rich get off free and the poor are taken advantage of, not the real truth based on the numbers I've already provided. The bottom 50% of earners make 13% of the money and pay 3.3% of the tax, while the top 10% earned 39% of the income and paid 71% of the taxes. That yeilds a RATE that is much less for the bottom 50% than for the top 10%.
The rest of your response was irrelevant to taxation or the consensus truth that isn't.
Of course not. But there are rich people who are quite willing to forgo working a little bit harder to make just a bit more money so they won't have to pay extra taxes. Sometimes this "work" is simply taking a risk by investing the money they have in new (or expanding old) companies. This effort on their part is often the source of jobs and income for other people. If they don't do it, this reduces federal revenues.
They are also more likely to try to find any way they can to shelter what they do make so they won't have to pay higher taxes. This, too, reduces federal revenues. It is a fact that increasing tax RATES reduces tax REVENUES and vice versa.
I don't suppose there are any people unemployed due to a rich man deciding he could make more money by moving jobs away from the local economy to somewhere with lower costs safety standards and scruples.
Like I just said, it is quite likely for rich people, who are not stupid, to find ways to avoid paying higher taxes, and moving jobs offshore is a common method. Scruples has nothing to do with it. Taxing them even more just provides more incentive for them to move more jobs offshore. You can't improve the economy and create jobs by raising taxes, not even taxes on the rich.
Do you not imagine that if someone wanted to come take things from you that you've worked hard to get, you just might try to find ways of hiding them so you could keep them?
you can play the percentage game all you like but there is a minimum income needed to maintain body and soul and tax shouldn't take people below that.
Have you ignored the very large percentage of people in the US who PAY NO INCOME TAX? It is false to claim that income taxes take anyone below a "minimum income" level. In fact, the US tax system has handouts built into it, called "earned income credit". People who aren't paying income taxes directly get credit for income taxes paid by other people they've bought things from. It's an amazing fact that you can get a REFUND for more than you've actually paid.
The "consensus truth" calls for income tax "cuts" for the poor, who already pay no income tax! The truth just doesn't match the consensus.
In the UK there is a thing called family credit where the government tops up the income of poorer families.
Yes, the UK is moving towards socialism, just as the US is. Take money from the people who have it and give it to those who didn't. It's not a new concept, even though all the people in the US who love Obama are claiming he's filled with new concepts.
Yes thats right the company bosses are more than happy to pay wages below the poverty level ...
And yet they find people willing to work for those wages. If nobody was willing to work for poverty level wages, the employers would have to pay more to get the work done. Tell me, when you look to fill up your gas tank, do you go to the station with the highest prices, or do you look around for ways to save money? Why do you think rich people would be stupid enough to look for the costliest way of doing things?
Oregon doesn't have a sales tax because the people there have voted many times not to have one. While the fact that it is regressive may have played a part, I suspect the simple fact that people do not want to pay more taxes than they have to, and have not had to pay a sales tax, is the bigger reason. The fact that Oregon has passed taxes on "other people" hints at that. They passed a high tax on cigarettes, e.g., based on people who don't smoke who won't have to pay it. People are often happy to vote for taxes on other people, but not themselves.
And, if you note carefully, the regressive nature of the sales tax is why all instances I know of (except for perhaps VAT in countries with that hidden sales tax) exempt "basics that everyone must buy in order to survive."
A moral case can be made for a uniform rate of sales tax on big-ticket luxury goods, but not on food, for example.
The concept of income redistribution is never a moral basis for a tax. I'm sorry that some people cannot afford to buy some things, but I, too, cannot afford many things that I'd like to buy. I do not consider my inability to buy them an ethical reason for calling for high taxes on those items. I do not consider my lack of smoking sufficient reason to vote for a tax on cigarettes, either, so I did not.
I'm simply amazed at the number of people who are telling me that forty million frenchmen were right, despite clear evidence to the contrary. I can think of no better demonstration of why consensus truth is dangerous, not just false to start with.
None of them. I said "The bottom 50% of taxpayers by income".
Its the high salary earners who pay the most tax, not the real rich with their offshore funds and trust accounts.
You can't be one of the "rich" that Obama wants to soak with an income tax increase and not be making income. If you make no income, you pay no tax. You are part of the bottom 50%.
BTW, I think those numbers imply the richer half of the US get 87% of the income,
and pay 96.7% of the taxes. They aren't getting off scott free. The ratio gets worse as you move up the income ladder. The people who are actually "rich" in any significant way pay considerably more.
or SEVEN TIMES on average the income of the poorer half.
You've ignored the broad range of the top 50%. What is "on average" for them is really a meaningless statistic. But yes, it is possible that someone working a good job makes seven times what someone who sits around the house collecting unemployment makes. This is not a problem, in my opinion.
No no no. It's called "consensus truth", and it seems to be the only kind of truth that some people accept.
I said federal taxes because federal taxes are currently being discussed in the Presidential campaign. The class hatred of the rich is being used to justify tax increases on the rich and welfare (called "tax cuts", but you can't cut taxes below 0) for the poor.
You might want to look at what percentage the poor pay in sales taxes (in those states that have them) and other taxes.
They pay the same percentage in sales tax as the rich. The rich don't get a free ride. The poor aren't treated unfairly. In amount, the rich pay a lot more than the poor, simply because they buy more. Except in Oregon, where nobody pays any sales tax.
"Other taxes" is too obtuse a reference to know what you want to discuss. Property taxes? Well, the rich, again, pay a lot more than the poor. If you don't own property, you don't pay property taxes. Excise taxes? Again, the rich pay more. If you don't buy things which have excise taxes on them, you pay nothing. Death taxes? Again, the rich pay more in death taxes than the poor.
The "consensus truth" that the poor are being treated unfairly is still not the real truth, once you look at the facts. All it takes to get past "consensus truth" is to resort to facts.
Chemical rockets were found in the first week, but probably what it being referrred to is the sale of a large amount of yellowcake uranium to Canada from the stash in Iraq.
That is untrue.
"Consensus truth" is nothing more than a politically correct way of saying "opinion" that dresses opinion up in a fancy dress and makes it look like more than it really is. It's a way of making EVERYONE correct, while not having to point out that some people's "truth" just doesn't fit with the facts. It's good for their "self esteem" and politically correct not to think that some truths really are absolute.
The encyclopedia of the time could easily give just the facts about the line, which is what truth ultimately is based on. Real truth, not "consensus truth" which can ignore facts in favor of rumor and innuendo. "The Maginot Line consists of X number of fortified positions spread across a line from Y to Z, intended to defend the country against German attack". Those are facts. "The Maginot Line is an invincible fortified defense system ..." is an opinion, or what would be called "consensus truth" today.
Some of these might be true, but the thing is, the wikipedia has no way of being smarter than the consensus.
Yes, it does. The same way anyone has of being smarter than the consensus. Look for facts and not opinions. The fact that they don't allow one of their victims to correct his own biography is demonstration that truth really isn't the goal of Wikipedia, it's popularity. Let everyone participate, even if they don't know what the hell they are talking about.
Here's an example of how to beat "consensus truth". The "consensus truth" is that the current US tax system is unfair to the poor and lets the rich off the hook. ("Unfair" and "off the hook" are opinion words, a quick way to identify "consensus truth".) The FACTS show that the poor already pay nothing, or very close to nothing, in federal taxes. The bottom 50% of taxpayers by income pay just 3.3% of the tax revenues (and a large number of them pay 0) while earning 13% of the income, while the top 0.1% of incomes pay 17% of the revenue while earning just 9% of the income. That's the truth, and it directly contradicts the "consensus truth", which shows that the consensus truth is not.
That quote refers to something called the Maginot Line; a line of heavily fortified positions on the French border prior to WWII. The "consensus truth" (a term I doubt they had heard of back then, it is so politically correct sounding) was that the Germans could NEVER break through such a heavily defended line.
That was the French "truth". The German "truth" was that they walked past the Maginot Line (because it was fixed and could not adapt to changes in attack plans) and into Paris.
"Consensus truth" is a waste of time and an insult to intelligent people. The summary shows why. If someone who was actually there because it was his life cannot get correct information into Wikipedia, that doesn't mean his life was different than he thought. It means that the Wikipedia "consensus truth" is balderdash. In other words, forty million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.
Where's my mod points when I need to mark a troll?
A country that cares about its citizens doesn't try to take over the health care industry, it allows people to get the amount or level of insurance they want and don't overload the system by making it free for all. Free for all means mediocre or poor for everyone.
Hawaii has just dropped free health care for children because, duh, people who could pay for it stopped paying for it and the free system overloaded. After just SEVEN MONTHS in operation. Funny how people who demand free health care for all can't predict that those who pay for it now will STOP and there will be no "free" for anyone.
It was the most amazing thing to hear Obama saying that he didn't want to eliminate existing insurance, just provide free coverage for those who can't afford it. He has no clue how many people would stop paying for their existing insurance and go with free, so his projections on cost and workability are skewed. It's the same as every other entitlement program ever enacted. FREE draws crowds of people who can afford it but don't want to pay. What's worse is that those who drop paid insurance for the free stuff are likely to be the ones who don't need much medical care to start with and object to paying insurance for something they don't need. That leaves all the sick people paying insurance because they can't change with an existing condition, which can't provide services because it is no longer getting subsidized by people who are paying but not needing services.
And then we can join Canada and have ten month waiting lists for OB services. (Here's the clue: OB's deliver babies. Babies take only nine months. If you have to wait ten months to see an OB, you will have a one month old baby to show him, delivered by yourself.)
I don't recall a time where there has never been a security check prior to flying, and I've been doing it for thirty years. Someone did it before, as a private company. Now it's federalized. Same issues. Same effect.
You're asking to get on someone else's airplane with a hundred or so others. Your carryon sits either at your seat or above, while you trot off to the bathroom and anyone else on the plane can rifle through it. (Less likely for under-the-seat, but you did leave your expensive headset and mp3 player on your seat out in the open.) You are handing your checked baggage to people you don't know who get to sit with it for long periods of time -- long enough to open it and steal anything they want.
If you are worried about your privacy, flying isn't how to keep it. Never has been.
Yes, they close the door behind them. I didn't say it wasn't. I pointed out that the door on an airliner is not locked shut tight for the the duration of a flight, by using an example when it was not. All three "pilots" came out and went back in. That's four times the door was open.
Given the extra attention attendees appear to pay during the opening and closing of doors, even someone who was able to fly above the seats at high speed...
Above the seats? No, not necessary. You see, on most of the planes I've been on, they have this thing down the middle, or on big ones two things, called "aisles". There are no seats in the aisles. The airlines would LOVE to put seats in the aisles so they could sell more tickets, but they can't.
Those "aisles" provide easy access from the back of the plane to the front. No need to climb over or fly over the seats.
In fact, on the flight I was talking about, I was in the front row. There was a set of closets between me and the front galley, about three feet, and another three feet (maybe four) to the door. A very short trip.
As for the cart being put away while the pilots are out, not on the flights I've been on.
The normal pressure altitude of an airliner is about 8000 feet. That's considerably lower than "1 atmosphere" at sea level. A rule of thumb for pilots is 1" of mercury per 1000 feet, so instead of 31", you're down to about 23". That's still a big difference between outside and in, and normal humans aren't opening the doors at altitude.
Above 8000', people with low lung efficiencies start having problems. Above 14,000', normal people start having problems. Below 8000' and you put unnecessary strain on the cabin.
The rule about liquids and gels is based on liquids that ARE more dangerous than toothpaste, and that a TSA security checkpoint is a poor place to do a full chemical analysis on every liquid or gel that people carry through. Some of them would be carrying a LOT of liquids if there wasn't a limit on them, and testing them all would be a nightmare in both time and money.
You could have people open the bottle and drink to prove it is safe, right? Ummm, no Mr. TSA agent, that's a bottle of nail polish remover and I'm not going to drink from it. It's a bottle of medicine that can't just be swigged. It's a bottle of ipecac I use for first aid, I ain't drinking it here. Further, people would be extremely unwilling to have to open a vintage bottle of wine just so TSA could test it, even if drinking it is safe, the value plummets when the bottle opens.
So, the rule is amounts of liquids that can't be used to do "enough damage" for some probably arcane definition of "enough".
And that makes the saline solution exemption a loophole. It is an exemption that bad guys can take advantage of.
10 ounces would be about enough for a terrist to burn themselves pretty good (or maybe a couple of other passengers), but it wouldn't be that big a deal.
Ten ounces of gasoline appropriately vaporized and ignited in a closed cylinder could make a grand explosion.
I can think of one obvious reason why not.
Every stupid person you catch who has ill intent is education to the rest. "Hey, don't forget the damn matches, you other stupid shoe-bombers!" If you don't announce the stupid ones and how you caught them, the others won't know what not to do.
I can think of another reason. Terrorists work on terror, usually by causing damage. If they get people afraid of flying because they learn a large number of people with ill intent are being caught, they've got their effect without risking their own lives. Win-win.
Just a thought.
So he waits until the pilot comes out to take a pee, or chat up the flight attendants, or get a coffee. The pilot has come out at least once on every flight I've been on that's longer than an hour. On one flight, in sequence, out came the pilot to pee and then chat with the crew for fifteen minutes, and as he went back in the copilot came out and did the same thing. When HE went back in, the deadheader riding the jump seat did exactly the same thing. Fourty five minutes strapped in, and I needed to take a pee more than any of them.
An open door isn't much of an impediment, and the carts they put across the aisle are just one leap from the door.
That's a danger, not a benefit.
He missed the most obvious problem with his plan on "closing the triangle". He wants an id check when the person gets on the plane because only a stupid terrorist won't know how to steal a credit card and avoid the "do not fly" check by using a fake name when he buys the ticket.
Only a stupid terrorist won't be able to get a fake id to go with the stolen credit card to get through the new, as-you-board id check.
High school students do it so they can buy liquor, you don't think a terrorist might be able to? His suggested solution is just more of the same game we are already playing, only he doesn't recognize it.
The people on the first four airplanes thought they were going to land safely later. The ones on United 93 had the benefit of learning the lesson of the first four, only after the attack started and the cockpit broached.
Nobody can predict if an attacked airliner is going to land safely later, unless the attacker is removed from the equation. And that's what's going to happen. Even an attacker who is promising he only wants to go to Cuba may be just the first wave of the attack, and the real intent only become clear when three others join him.
And Sony execs will be slapping each other on the back congratulating themselves on all the free publicity as the dollars roll in.
Anti-christian lyrics are nothing new.
How confident are you that no Buddhists anywhere would be at all offended by any use of Buddhist texts?
Considering the number of them I've come across in airports trying to sell me copies of their holy writings translated into english, I'd say very. The important question is not how offended they'd be, but when was the last death sentence in absentia issued by a Buddhist monk, and how many buddhists would try to carry it out? Salmon Rushdie isn't an item on the seafood side of the menu.
This isn't something I have to worry about forgetting, it's something he better not forget. He's not going to make it.