It's not the super rich that are soaking up all the extra resources. It's everyone else wanting something for nothing that costs so much.
For example if Bill Gates was forced by taxes to give all his money to the government and they would in turn give an equal share to every person in the US. Each person, assuming there are 311 million in the US each would get $80.35. Barely enough to get a full tank of gas and take your girl friend to the movies.
Now if every college student in the US got a free ride for college assuming 19.7 million students going to a $12,000 a year public college it would cost $236.4 Billion. That is just 1 year of Freshman attending classes. $945.6 Billion for them to go all four years and then hopefully graduate.
Of course most don't graduate, and most that do don't get a real degree either. (I laugh when they talk about how many more women are getting degrees now compared to men as if it is some sort of crisis. Liberal arts degrees ares not worth the paper they are printed on.) So essentially we as a nation take somewhere in the neighboorhood of 500 Billion to 1 Trillion dollars every year and pile it up high into the sky and light it on fire for all the good it does us. This is just College mind you.
You would be disgusted with how much we spend, and waste, on K12 education. Like I said before this has nothing to do with the wealthy wanting to be richer, and everything to do with everyone else wanting a free ride and the politicians borrowing the money and taxing the hell out of those who are productive to give it.
Actually there is plenty of places for the 3rd party to succeed and that is at the State and Local level. Most Federal programs hinge on bribing the States to pass State laws that reflect their will in exchange for funding. The States can always refuse, and a few well placed 3rd party candidates can shut down things are just the trick.
I've gotten some of my education through TA (tuition assistance) by being in the military. Unfortunately the course work you can take while being bounced from bases to base and deployment to deployment leaves much to be desired, so I'm heading back to school to get a real degree and boy is it fun to pay full price for classes in addition to Federal taxes and State property taxes to subsidize everyone else.
Pretty funny, all CEOs do is fly around, eat fancy food, and yell at people all day. Of course you also forget that they usually put in 60-72 hours a week, rarely get weekends off, have to be available on all holidays, and are blamed when everything goes to shit. Sounds like a fun job to me.
Jobs are paid according to difficulty. How hard is it to find someone to do this job? Stocking the freezers, special needs kids are almost over qualified to do that job. So essentially 99% of able bodied adults qualify for that pay, and conversly get paid the lowest 1% of the wage scale to do it.
I propose we adopt a model like this; we can call it the "fear factor model". You are compensated based on your willingness to do monotonous, disgusting, demeaning, or all-around shitty jobs.
We do. Upper level jobs are monotonous, you have to deal with stupid people all day, you have a boss too and their is nothing like getting chewed out in front of 10 other people which is not to mention demeaning, and like I said before you don't get to go home until the job is done and guess what the job is NEVER done. That is why the higher you go the more you get paid.
You can't just shrug off the responsibilty for the minimum wage idiot who didn't listen to how he was trained and screwed up and left all the freezer doors open to long while stocking them, which results in several customers getting food poisening and ending up in the hospital, one of which ends up dying. That's why the boss gets paid the big bucks, and you the whinny little mouth breather get's paid minimum wage.
There are two aspect. First the job requirements. Learning how to run a register or stock the shelves takes about a day to learn the basics, and then a month to master it, and the only requirement to do it is a basicly functional body and brain, so just about anyone can do it. That is my defintion of an unskilled job.
Now the definition of unskilled labor. "Anyone cannot or will not do more than an unskilled job, due to mental or physical defect, lack of desire or drive, and due to shear laziness."
You can have a PHD and be in an unskilled job. That doesn't make you stupid, that was your choice (or lack of choice) that put you in that job or maybe you are stupid. A college degree after all is a symbol a of lack of ignorance, not a proof of intelligence.
A CEO is a poor choice because there are only a few CEO jobs in the world compared to everything else. For example Bill Gates could give up every dollar he has to his name and divide it up and give every person on the planet a fair share. Each person would get a measly $4. So get overyourself on CEOs. If Walmart made all their upper management make the same as everyone else in the company the people at the bottom might see an extra 25 cents an hour in their paychecks. So now everyone is poor together that's fair right? Why would anyone goto school to learn if all they are going to get is minimum wage. Who then is going to build these companies that provide all these "shitty" jobs. That half dead elderly person that is getting a free paycheck standing at the door greating you when you come in, or that fat welfare chick with 4 kids by 4 fathers running the register #2?
Who exactly is supposed to create these businesses then? I'm waiting for an answer. To say "there has got to be a better way" is a cop out answer of either an ignorant child or an idiot adult. The whole point is their probably is a better way and eventually someone in business is going to come up with it, but he isn't going to put in 60 hours a week just to make minumum wage.
I do agree with you that time is selling your life. I'd like to see people who steal millions/billions of dollars be put to death or rott in prison for life because they are effectively murdering thousands of people's entire productive lives when they commit their "victimless" crime.
Well how much do you actually want to pay them? You want them to be able to "live" right. Two adults raising two children, relatively new cars, decent house, decent education, the occassional vacation, retirement, and health care. That ends up being about $100,000 per year.
You are right all the other stuff we end up paying for it. Which is why the gov't feels it has the right to step in, and if it is paying the bills it does, just the same as if you were treating everyone to dinner that you get to pick the resturant.
The real question is are they getting better results by stepping in and providing everyting and then having to regulate because people are adapting and taking advantage of the new system, then if they just left people to their own means. I say they are not.
few people die of disease before they reach reproductive age
Not so. Infant mortality may be very low in modern countries, but abortions and miscarriages are not, also there is the growing number of people who have fertility issues.
Yes the ever present automobile makes an excellent replacement for large preditorial carnivors. If anything we should help natural selection along by making it mandatory for predrivers to walk to school and post drivers ride scooters until they are 25. That should help flush out the clogged filter in our gene pool.
Anyone can be ambidexterous (minues amputees) the real reason most people are "single" handed is the simple fact that most people don't bother learning to use the other hand once they've mastered most common tasks with either the left or the right hand.
Don't believe me. Try this.
First try brushing your teeth every day using your off hand. Do the same with eating and simple things like going to the bathroom or shaving. After a month, practice throwing a ball with your off hand. Start writing after a couple of months start writing with your off hand. After six months you'll be for all practical purposes ambidextrous and able to pick up new tasks very quickly.
They wouldn't, people are full of shit and always blame everyone else for being the asshole.
You can go to the US Treasury website and make a "gift to reduce the US debt" at any time, no special Bills or taxes needed. I paid $4.23 to reduce it. Which was $4.23 more than all of the members of Congress and people holding the job title of POTSUS have paid in the last 20 years. I dare say that is $4.23 more than everyone that has ever posted on/. too.
Actually the average middle-class citizen has more than enough money to lobby Congress. Just exactly who do you think works in all those evil corporations that lobbists to Congress to tilt the system in their favor?
"Apple" did not pay 9.8%. The effective rate is much higher than that.
First off Apple's employees paid somewhere around 25%. A cost born by the Apple corporation. The company paid tarrifs on raw materials and componenets for their gadgets. They paid fuel taxes, property taxes, regulation compliance, and all manner of fees.
After all those costs were added up they managed to make a profit and then the govnment swooped in for the 6 or 7th time and demand another 9.8% off the top that you consider a trivial ammount.
The reality is if they government wasn't always hitting up everyone for taxes they could easily double what they pay their employees and still sell you their services for half of what they go for now. So think about that they next time you pay $600 for a new iPad and realize that $200-300 of the price is due to taxes......haha before you even have to pay the fucking sales tax.
How much in taxes did the Apple employees pay in Federal taxes? How much in taxes did Apple share holders pay on dividens and capital gains on their stock. So on top of that Apple is supposed to pay too? How does that even remotely make any sense? The governement is supposed to get what 90% of everything we do? How is that "fair"
Of that $34 Billion dollars they made how much is that tied up in the business itself? It's like having to pay taxes on your car, but the only way to pay it is you have to sell the car. Once the car is gone how are you going to get to work? It works the same way in the corporate world.
Uh governments provide practically nothing. EVERY SINGLE THING that the gov't "does" comes straight out of you, me, everyone else's pocket.
When it comes to Wallmart "robbing" society, exactly how much should they pay their "working Impoverished" aka people who only qualify for unskilled labor? $100,000 a year? Would that be fair? Are you willing to pay the kid who mows your lawn $100 for an 30 minutes worth of work? Of course you wouldn't.
Nobody pays tax on it. Untrue you pay out the nose in taxes or your heirs do. (Yep you have to pay your taxes even when you are dead, just wait till you have to wrap up your parent's estate after they die, you still have to file a 1040 for them) If you take possession of their stock either they or you are going to be paying the gains on them. Not to mention the in heritance tax.
There is also the joy of dealing with the probate and lawyers to sort it all out. They take a big chunk of it and the State (as in the 50 states) wants a piece of the action too.
You go to school? Ride public transportation? Use public anything? Get Federal taxes back in addition of what you paid? You are using the "loop holes" too That stuff is in magically pulled out of the air, it costs alot of money.
Capital "gains" also comes from inflation, which is some dirty pool on the government's part. They print money which effectively taxes the population, and then they charge you a capital gains tax on the inflated value of durable goods and coporate investments.
Verbal threats - no. Verbal threats backed up by 15 other gang members who have surrounded you on the street - Yep, check your targets though. Stop shooting once they flee. Don't want to waste ammo or be accused of being over zealous
Physical threats with a lethal weapon ie baseball bat, knife, a gun, etc - yes. Shoot until the threat is down and not getting back up. Just make sure you didn't start the altercation else you will be in jail.
A drunk taking a swing at you - no. Getting jumped in the middle of the night by an attacker who has you pinned on the ground - yes. Again just make sure you didn't start the altercation or you will see jail time.
All of this will play out on whether or not Zimmerman was truly defending himself from Martin's unprovoked attack or Zimmerman starting a fight with Martin and pulling a gun and shooting Martin after Martin started giving Zimmerman a justified ass whoopin.
Actually there were several witnesses that said there was a physical altercation between the two men. It's a question of who started what and what led to the shooting (We already know how it ended).
Zimmerman has a very narrow legal window in which he can defend himself with lethal force without seeing jailtime. We'll see what the prosecution has on him soon.
Neighborhood watches are purely voluntary and are rarely official in nature (sponsored by the police or city since they don't want the liability either). It's not a question of being "allowed". I can just drive around in my car and be the "Neighborhood watch".
You are absolutley right, if you wander around looking for trouble you are going to be on your own if something happens.
"Meanwhile, it was Zimmerman who was rolling around the neighborhood with a gun looking for trouble."
LOL what exactly do you think "Neighborhood watch" is?
Let's see first you need a neighborhood. Check. Next you need to roll around and look for trouble. Check. The gun was just a bonus.
Of course if he hadn't had it all we would have heard about some teenager asaulting a neighborhood watch captain, and really wouldn't have put much thought to him spending time in jail.
What if after inflation a new car costs $3billion? Is it still wrong?
You are not being very precise in your definition of wealth.
I define too much wealth as having more money than is required to achieve a reasonable life goal.
So what is the going rate for a small moon base and matching warp capable space ship? Having more than that would be my definition of having too much money.
If you're going down that road, how do they get back what we stole from them in the last couple of centuries? I'd argue it is ours to fix. We broke it, we fix it.
We stole? You mean they stole and Europeans stole. Over here in America we had plenty of to steal from the Native Americans we didn't earn the blame for Africa too.
Don't give me slavery. African's started the slave trade they and the Arabs (much of what is considered the Middle East is actually in Africa) enthusiastically sold their own people into it once they found out there were overseas buyers.
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For example if Bill Gates was forced by taxes to give all his money to the government and they would in turn give an equal share to every person in the US. Each person, assuming there are 311 million in the US each would get $80.35. Barely enough to get a full tank of gas and take your girl friend to the movies.
Now if every college student in the US got a free ride for college assuming 19.7 million students going to a $12,000 a year public college it would cost $236.4 Billion. That is just 1 year of Freshman attending classes. $945.6 Billion for them to go all four years and then hopefully graduate.
Of course most don't graduate, and most that do don't get a real degree either. (I laugh when they talk about how many more women are getting degrees now compared to men as if it is some sort of crisis. Liberal arts degrees ares not worth the paper they are printed on.) So essentially we as a nation take somewhere in the neighboorhood of 500 Billion to 1 Trillion dollars every year and pile it up high into the sky and light it on fire for all the good it does us. This is just College mind you.
You would be disgusted with how much we spend, and waste, on K12 education. Like I said before this has nothing to do with the wealthy wanting to be richer, and everything to do with everyone else wanting a free ride and the politicians borrowing the money and taxing the hell out of those who are productive to give it.
Actually there is plenty of places for the 3rd party to succeed and that is at the State and Local level. Most Federal programs hinge on bribing the States to pass State laws that reflect their will in exchange for funding. The States can always refuse, and a few well placed 3rd party candidates can shut down things are just the trick.
I've gotten some of my education through TA (tuition assistance) by being in the military. Unfortunately the course work you can take while being bounced from bases to base and deployment to deployment leaves much to be desired, so I'm heading back to school to get a real degree and boy is it fun to pay full price for classes in addition to Federal taxes and State property taxes to subsidize everyone else.
Jobs are paid according to difficulty. How hard is it to find someone to do this job? Stocking the freezers, special needs kids are almost over qualified to do that job. So essentially 99% of able bodied adults qualify for that pay, and conversly get paid the lowest 1% of the wage scale to do it.
I propose we adopt a model like this; we can call it the "fear factor model". You are compensated based on your willingness to do monotonous, disgusting, demeaning, or all-around shitty jobs.
We do. Upper level jobs are monotonous, you have to deal with stupid people all day, you have a boss too and their is nothing like getting chewed out in front of 10 other people which is not to mention demeaning, and like I said before you don't get to go home until the job is done and guess what the job is NEVER done. That is why the higher you go the more you get paid.
You can't just shrug off the responsibilty for the minimum wage idiot who didn't listen to how he was trained and screwed up and left all the freezer doors open to long while stocking them, which results in several customers getting food poisening and ending up in the hospital, one of which ends up dying. That's why the boss gets paid the big bucks, and you the whinny little mouth breather get's paid minimum wage.
Now the definition of unskilled labor. "Anyone cannot or will not do more than an unskilled job, due to mental or physical defect, lack of desire or drive, and due to shear laziness."
You can have a PHD and be in an unskilled job. That doesn't make you stupid, that was your choice (or lack of choice) that put you in that job or maybe you are stupid. A college degree after all is a symbol a of lack of ignorance, not a proof of intelligence.
A CEO is a poor choice because there are only a few CEO jobs in the world compared to everything else. For example Bill Gates could give up every dollar he has to his name and divide it up and give every person on the planet a fair share. Each person would get a measly $4. So get overyourself on CEOs. If Walmart made all their upper management make the same as everyone else in the company the people at the bottom might see an extra 25 cents an hour in their paychecks. So now everyone is poor together that's fair right? Why would anyone goto school to learn if all they are going to get is minimum wage. Who then is going to build these companies that provide all these "shitty" jobs. That half dead elderly person that is getting a free paycheck standing at the door greating you when you come in, or that fat welfare chick with 4 kids by 4 fathers running the register #2?
Who exactly is supposed to create these businesses then? I'm waiting for an answer. To say "there has got to be a better way" is a cop out answer of either an ignorant child or an idiot adult. The whole point is their probably is a better way and eventually someone in business is going to come up with it, but he isn't going to put in 60 hours a week just to make minumum wage.
I do agree with you that time is selling your life. I'd like to see people who steal millions/billions of dollars be put to death or rott in prison for life because they are effectively murdering thousands of people's entire productive lives when they commit their "victimless" crime.
You are right all the other stuff we end up paying for it. Which is why the gov't feels it has the right to step in, and if it is paying the bills it does, just the same as if you were treating everyone to dinner that you get to pick the resturant.
The real question is are they getting better results by stepping in and providing everyting and then having to regulate because people are adapting and taking advantage of the new system, then if they just left people to their own means. I say they are not.
Not so. Infant mortality may be very low in modern countries, but abortions and miscarriages are not, also there is the growing number of people who have fertility issues.
Yes the ever present automobile makes an excellent replacement for large preditorial carnivors. If anything we should help natural selection along by making it mandatory for predrivers to walk to school and post drivers ride scooters until they are 25. That should help flush out the clogged filter in our gene pool.
Don't believe me. Try this.
First try brushing your teeth every day using your off hand. Do the same with eating and simple things like going to the bathroom or shaving. After a month, practice throwing a ball with your off hand. Start writing after a couple of months start writing with your off hand. After six months you'll be for all practical purposes ambidextrous and able to pick up new tasks very quickly.
Just to prove how full of shit you are, I'll even make it easy for you.
The following link takes you to the US Treasury website where you can pay your "fair share" of extra taxes that will prove you "love" America.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
And just like all the other people who are full of shit in the world you will do nothing but bitch and moan but will never do anything.
You can go to the US Treasury website and make a "gift to reduce the US debt" at any time, no special Bills or taxes needed. I paid $4.23 to reduce it. Which was $4.23 more than all of the members of Congress and people holding the job title of POTSUS have paid in the last 20 years. I dare say that is $4.23 more than everyone that has ever posted on /. too.
Actually the average middle-class citizen has more than enough money to lobby Congress. Just exactly who do you think works in all those evil corporations that lobbists to Congress to tilt the system in their favor?
First off Apple's employees paid somewhere around 25%. A cost born by the Apple corporation. The company paid tarrifs on raw materials and componenets for their gadgets. They paid fuel taxes, property taxes, regulation compliance, and all manner of fees.
After all those costs were added up they managed to make a profit and then the govnment swooped in for the 6 or 7th time and demand another 9.8% off the top that you consider a trivial ammount.
The reality is if they government wasn't always hitting up everyone for taxes they could easily double what they pay their employees and still sell you their services for half of what they go for now. So think about that they next time you pay $600 for a new iPad and realize that $200-300 of the price is due to taxes......haha before you even have to pay the fucking sales tax.
Of that $34 Billion dollars they made how much is that tied up in the business itself? It's like having to pay taxes on your car, but the only way to pay it is you have to sell the car. Once the car is gone how are you going to get to work? It works the same way in the corporate world.
When it comes to Wallmart "robbing" society, exactly how much should they pay their "working Impoverished" aka people who only qualify for unskilled labor? $100,000 a year? Would that be fair? Are you willing to pay the kid who mows your lawn $100 for an 30 minutes worth of work? Of course you wouldn't.
If you won't why should they?
There is also the joy of dealing with the probate and lawyers to sort it all out. They take a big chunk of it and the State (as in the 50 states) wants a piece of the action too.
You go to school? Ride public transportation? Use public anything? Get Federal taxes back in addition of what you paid? You are using the "loop holes" too That stuff is in magically pulled out of the air, it costs alot of money.
You can't do that. If you turn over the stocks to settle a debt, you still end up having to pay taxes on the settled value of the stocks.
Capital "gains" also comes from inflation, which is some dirty pool on the government's part. They print money which effectively taxes the population, and then they charge you a capital gains tax on the inflated value of durable goods and coporate investments.
Verbal threats - no. Verbal threats backed up by 15 other gang members who have surrounded you on the street - Yep, check your targets though. Stop shooting once they flee. Don't want to waste ammo or be accused of being over zealous
Physical threats with a lethal weapon ie baseball bat, knife, a gun, etc - yes. Shoot until the threat is down and not getting back up. Just make sure you didn't start the altercation else you will be in jail.
A drunk taking a swing at you - no. Getting jumped in the middle of the night by an attacker who has you pinned on the ground - yes. Again just make sure you didn't start the altercation or you will see jail time.
All of this will play out on whether or not Zimmerman was truly defending himself from Martin's unprovoked attack or Zimmerman starting a fight with Martin and pulling a gun and shooting Martin after Martin started giving Zimmerman a justified ass whoopin.
Zimmerman has a very narrow legal window in which he can defend himself with lethal force without seeing jailtime. We'll see what the prosecution has on him soon.
You are absolutley right, if you wander around looking for trouble you are going to be on your own if something happens.
LOL what exactly do you think "Neighborhood watch" is?
Let's see first you need a neighborhood. Check. Next you need to roll around and look for trouble. Check. The gun was just a bonus.
Of course if he hadn't had it all we would have heard about some teenager asaulting a neighborhood watch captain, and really wouldn't have put much thought to him spending time in jail.
I checked out the exhibit and bar several years after it came out. It was still packed with fans. Pretty cool to see all that stuff up close.
You are not being very precise in your definition of wealth.
I define too much wealth as having more money than is required to achieve a reasonable life goal.
So what is the going rate for a small moon base and matching warp capable space ship? Having more than that would be my definition of having too much money.
We stole? You mean they stole and Europeans stole. Over here in America we had plenty of to steal from the Native Americans we didn't earn the blame for Africa too.
Don't give me slavery. African's started the slave trade they and the Arabs (much of what is considered the Middle East is actually in Africa) enthusiastically sold their own people into it once they found out there were overseas buyers.