The article quotes some shrinks that make the claim that a healthy family makes you less likely to burn out, because you're don't have to rely on work and your career to fulfill all your requirements for recognition and approval.
Re:Are we sure it comes from work?
on
Understanding Burnout
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Obviously no one bothered to read the article.
The writer cited a lot of evidence/studies/etc that described burnout as the state arising when your outlay of effort doesn't meet your expectation of reward. You get bitter and tired and feel like you accomplish nothing, which kills your productivity.
So no, it's not about time worked. And no it's not about just work, at least buy the official psych definition, which is interesting.
So you're saying, as long as the poor people here aren't as poor as the poor people in some third world country, they should shut the hell up and be happy?
Luxury: something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity.
Good food is an indulgence, and I don't think anyone would begrudge that for a poor family. Likewise basic entertainment, which may include cable tv.
I don't believe in welfare as a way of life, and I have very limited sympathy for those who could work, but won't. But I am willing to see some of my tax dollars go to making the life of the working poor a little less poor.
If you bothered to read my original post, what I said was: "federal sales tax...is generally considered to put an undue tax burden on people who don't make a lot of money." Nowhere did I say it was my view, nowhere did I say it was right or wrong, or anything.
I personally think it is a poor choice because consumption isn't a fair measure of what is owed. A rich man and a poor man live the same lifestyle, spend frugally, put as much money as they can in savings. Rich man becomes fabulously rich, moves to a country where the dollar goes a long way, lives like a king for the rest of his life. Poor man saves enough not to have to work past 65. Doesn't really seem fair based on the relative incomes involved.
I don't know of any government program that takes my tax dollars and uses them to buy luxury goods for the poor...Perhaps you'd like to enlighten me? I think the poor use money that they make to buy luxury goods, same as anyone else...Not sure why you think there is something wrong with this? A goodly number of luxury goods actually do have extra taxes on them, though they appear in the form of tariffs, and are thus invisible to the consumer.
Obviously you wouldn't lift a finger to help people who make less than you do...Unfortunately for you, your opinion is a minority opinion, and everyone else has decided that food stamps, and school lunches, and public health and housing, are preferable to just letting people die in the gutter.
I find myself to be in agreement with that, and I don't hold a grudge against a poor family for using some of the money that they save on groceries (because they're on food stamps) to buy a few luxuries.
I have a much more significant grudge against wealthy people who believe that society owes them something, despite the fact that that same society has allowed them to amass their wealth in the first place. There are prices for living in a free society and, by and large, they're a hell of a lot less here than anywhere else in the world that you'd want to live. So stop your bitchin and pay up...Or move to Europe for a while, and see if you like the taxes any better over there.
I don't mind income tax so much, though it does piss me off when money gets wasted on stupid crap. Not surprised you posted as A.C however. Funny how people whose arguments boil down to "People who are poorer than me don't matter, and shouldn't get a dime of my money if they were starving in the gutter" don't like putting their name on their opinions.
Yea, the McDonald's employee with the Rolex is a real common problem.
Yea people have screwed up priorities. Some poor people blow money on non-essentials, just like the rest of us. Then there are the people who place so little value on other people, that they begrudge the tiniest amount of their tax money that goes to other people.
Everyone jumps on the same examples: Schools and poor people. Out of the entire federal cash income (less than half of which comes from income tax), outlay for education, job training, employment and social services total a pathetic 3%. Almost all of the money that goes to those programs comes from property taxes and local/state sales tax.
But that 3% is such a big deal to you, that you'd like that 1.5% of your income tax back more than you'd like poor kids to have an education, or than you'd like the government to put money toward soup kitchens, or whatever. I paid an obscene amount of income tax last year, and 1.5% of it is still less than 500 dollars...Not much of a TV, by modern standards.
We pay 3 times as much paying the interest on our goddamn national debt...Why don't you complain about that, eh?
It seems lower than it is, because we get jack for healthcare, and that 20% doesn't take into account Social Security, property taxes, state income tax, or sales tax.
Well duh. But how do you enforce that? Altering the prices of goods out of the range of the lower income consumers through arbitrary taxes isn't going to do much but create a black market for those goods.
Intellectually, from the viewpoint of having enough money for the occasional luxury, we should all be spending our money on other things. I buy books, when my taxes pay for a library. I buy cable, which is a total waste of money...I mean, over the course of the year, I probably pay 1000 dollars for my fricking "extended basic" cable. A thousand dollars a year in savings, spread out over how many years? That'd seriously add up. I mean, put that in a Roth for 20 years and you'd likely end up with 6 figures.
People are people though, and we enjoy luxury goods.
Nonsensical? I was just pointing out why we have an income tax.
I am always amused when someone who lives in a quarter million dollar home goes off on how well people in trailer parks live. You tell 'em. How dare they have cable? Have they no shame? First of all, they have the poor taste to be poor. And second, they have CABLE? W.T.F?
It's one of the wonders of this country that even poor people are allowed to have a few nice things. And I think it very typical that someone who is clearly well off should be offended by this.
Disagreeing with how taxes are spent is not the same thing as saying there should be no taxes.
I agree that the government spends money on stupid stuff, but it also spends money on a lot of necessary stuff. It should be a goal to put people in office who will spend the money wisely, and frankly, when the government goes spending crazy on unnecessary wars and ridiculous pork, they should be held accountable. Not that we hold anyone accountable in this country, but hey, that's the way it should be.
And you have a very poor understanding of the whole toxic waste issue. Generally companies that pollute are forced to clean it up, however, if said company goes out of business before that time, that doesn't happen. It benefits everyone to not have that crap in the environment.
Well, yes and no. If you owe taxes and are alive, they can garnish your wages until hell freezes over, even if you have a zero net worth.
On the other hand, if you die with a zero net worth, the debt is not passed on to your heirs. Of course, if you die with a positive net worth, the IRS can take all of that to settle your tax debt.
You're not disagreeing with me. Rich people hate income tax, because it taxes them based on how much they make, rather than how much they consume.
And generally, if you're making 10k, you're not taxed anything on the order of 30%. You have to make 100k to even get taxed above 20%. Most people on what they consider the poverty line (which is higher than 10k) aren't taxed at all, and get a nice refund check every year.
Capital Gains taxes are assessed when that intangible thing is converted into tangible currency, and not at any other point during ownership, so even if they did apply capital gains tax to virtual stuff, it would only be upon sale.
I think the guy in the article is talking out his ass. Too many people in the world like to think that when you add "online" or "internet" to an idea, then it becomes a special case. Accountants know how to count money; they're not going to start trying to evolve principles for taxing "virtual" assets, when they can apply the principles that already apply to intangibles like stocks. Only an economist would engage in this sort of intellectual masturbation.
Sure, but the system is already set up to tax income from the sale of stuff. If you make some ridiculous home handicraft that you sell on the web, the IRS is set to tax that income, even if you make every tiny piece of that handicraft yourself.
Likewise selling WoW stuff...It's no different than any other business that depends on eBay for it's sales. You sell stuff on eBay, you make money, that money is taxable. It doesn't matter what you sell, whether it's real or virtual, or even non-existant...If I could sell people Satanicpuppy brand Nothing on eBay, 10 bucks a pop, that money, with zero actual goods involved, would be taxable.
Not in the US, because that 10.00 counts as income, which is taxable. =P
You're right though, in the sense that if I bought at 10 cents a share and sold at 1 cent a share, I wouldn't owe capital gains, and, in fact, would be able to write off a chunk of my loss on my income taxes.
The idea that the IRS is going to tax things that have a variable value that has not yet been converted to actual currency is absurd. You think they don't have any experience with this sort of thing? Hello stock market! They know exactly how to tax this stuff, and the day may come when they include money made from selling MMO lewt when they're auditing you, but they're never going to tax you on things that have not been converted to actual money...That goes against nearly every financial precident in this country, and that is not going to happen.
Lot of people think income taxes are stupid...Mostly they are people who makes lots of money.
The alternative to income taxes would be federal sales tax, which is generally considered to put an undue tax burden on people who don't make a lot of money...eg, the rich man and the poor man buy a loaf of bread, and the 30 cents tax on the bread that goes to the Fed means nothing to the rich man, but means a lot to the poor man.
I suppose that you could add heavy taxes on luxury goods to "even out" the tax burden, but that's not exactly fair to the middle class (my new flat screen is gonna cost WHAT?!), and it puts luxury goods completely out of reach for poorer families.
Taxes are there to provide services for the whole of the population, whether it's paying for the military to protect our borders, and the police to protect our homes, or paying to clean up toxic waste spills, or paying for the interstate system, etc. People who demand "a la carte" government services always annoy the crap out of me, because they're always the people who refuse to see the point in anything that doesn't benefit them in a big tangible sort of way.
The thing is, in the real world those things are taxed--when they are converted to actual cash. It's called "Capital Gains". The whole point is to take into account the variable nature of value in price fluxuating commodity goods.
If you buy 1,000 shares of stock for one penny each, and those 1,000 shares zip up to 5,000 dollars a piece, you don't owe a dime of tax (unless you receive dividends). If they drop back down to 1 cent each, and you sell, you owe tax based on the amount of money you made when converting the shares back to cash, which, in this case, would be 10.00.
You do NOT owe money based on how much that stock was worth at it's peak, because you didn't sell it at that value, and it would be grossly unfair to tax you based on the 5,000 dollar a share value, when you sold at 1 penny a share...That'd be on the order of a million dollars tax owed on a ten dollar sale.
Since WoW gold, etc, is valued at different values on different servers, and since that value fluxuates on a daily basis, it would seem to be impossible for the IRS to tax "gains" of WoW gold/items that have not been converted to actual currency...At what value would they fix those assets? It's be like taxing your penny stock at the 5,000 dollar mark...You don't have that money, and there is no guarantee that you'll ever have that money, so how can they tax it?
Now, if you sold gold/items/characters, that would be completely taxable, but I wouldn't think it would even fall under capital gains, but rather unreported non-work income, just like any other money gained from where people don't do your tax witholding for you.
Those work for shit. You may be able to get signal if they're sitting within 10 feet of the hub, but otherwise, no way.
I like macs, but they are not the end all be all, and to be told that plugging in a frankensteinian mass of external USB appliances is the same as being able to do simple hardware upgrades is complete crap.
Hell, I work for a company that just stopped downgrading boxes to Windows 2000 2 years ago. I don't see Vista adoption for another 3 years at a minimum, except for a few executives here and there.
Too much headache, too high a hardware requirement, too low a ROI.
Ram? Harddrive? Who gives a shit? What happens when I want to upgrade my motherboard? What happens when I want to upgrade my processor without adding a new motherboard?
How about a concrete example? What happens when my wife decides to move her eMac to a part of the house most conveinently served by a wireless network, and I need to add a wireless card to her eMac, but woops, it's an older eMac which requires an obsolete "Airport" card, as opposed to an "Airport Extreme card", both of which are completely proprietary, and since they stopped making the Airport cards the fricking instant their "standard" shifted to the Extreme cards, I have to buy a 200 "new" obsolete WIRELESS card...That's right, it's almost cheaper to buy a fucking refurb Mac than it is to add a goddamn wireless card.
That's pathetic. If I wanted to wireless a p.o.s Dell that was twice the age of that eMac, I'd have to buy a 20 dollar PCI card, because Dell, though they break standards right and left, at least obeys SOME of them. The same goes if I wanted to add a SCSI card, or a second ethernet card, or any one of a million little necessities which I deal with in my life, but which Mac makes nearly impossible to add to their consumer hardware.
So take your retarded fanboi attitude and shove it up your ass. Some people need more to their computers than a pretty color.
I don't think I made a characterization, just an observation that the audience ostensibly targeted in an ad is not necessarily the audience the marketeers are primarily aiming for. Ad companies focus group this stuff extensively, and I don't believe for an instant that Apple is unaware of the demographic makeup of their client base.
And I've got an iPod, and a soft spot in my heart for the Mac, but I'd never buy one. I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
I see Symantec is still sensitive to the charge that they create worms, etc, to drum up business for themselves.
Personally it doesn't bother me in the least that a security company is interested in, well, security. Having them actually detail vulnerabilities and produce papers like this would at least be a useful function for them.
Of course, so would producing a worthwhile product that doesn't devour processor cycles, hog system resources, and create system instability upon removal.
Slashdot Mirror
The article quotes some shrinks that make the claim that a healthy family makes you less likely to burn out, because you're don't have to rely on work and your career to fulfill all your requirements for recognition and approval.
Obviously no one bothered to read the article.
The writer cited a lot of evidence/studies/etc that described burnout as the state arising when your outlay of effort doesn't meet your expectation of reward. You get bitter and tired and feel like you accomplish nothing, which kills your productivity.
So no, it's not about time worked. And no it's not about just work, at least buy the official psych definition, which is interesting.
You dared to slight the holy Spore, for that you are flamebait. Go forth and sin no more.
So you're saying, as long as the poor people here aren't as poor as the poor people in some third world country, they should shut the hell up and be happy?
Luxury: something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity.
Good food is an indulgence, and I don't think anyone would begrudge that for a poor family. Likewise basic entertainment, which may include cable tv.
I don't believe in welfare as a way of life, and I have very limited sympathy for those who could work, but won't. But I am willing to see some of my tax dollars go to making the life of the working poor a little less poor.
If you bothered to read my original post, what I said was: "federal sales tax...is generally considered to put an undue tax burden on people who don't make a lot of money." Nowhere did I say it was my view, nowhere did I say it was right or wrong, or anything.
I personally think it is a poor choice because consumption isn't a fair measure of what is owed. A rich man and a poor man live the same lifestyle, spend frugally, put as much money as they can in savings. Rich man becomes fabulously rich, moves to a country where the dollar goes a long way, lives like a king for the rest of his life. Poor man saves enough not to have to work past 65. Doesn't really seem fair based on the relative incomes involved.
I don't know of any government program that takes my tax dollars and uses them to buy luxury goods for the poor...Perhaps you'd like to enlighten me? I think the poor use money that they make to buy luxury goods, same as anyone else...Not sure why you think there is something wrong with this? A goodly number of luxury goods actually do have extra taxes on them, though they appear in the form of tariffs, and are thus invisible to the consumer.
Obviously you wouldn't lift a finger to help people who make less than you do...Unfortunately for you, your opinion is a minority opinion, and everyone else has decided that food stamps, and school lunches, and public health and housing, are preferable to just letting people die in the gutter.
I find myself to be in agreement with that, and I don't hold a grudge against a poor family for using some of the money that they save on groceries (because they're on food stamps) to buy a few luxuries.
I have a much more significant grudge against wealthy people who believe that society owes them something, despite the fact that that same society has allowed them to amass their wealth in the first place. There are prices for living in a free society and, by and large, they're a hell of a lot less here than anywhere else in the world that you'd want to live. So stop your bitchin and pay up...Or move to Europe for a while, and see if you like the taxes any better over there.
I don't mind income tax so much, though it does piss me off when money gets wasted on stupid crap. Not surprised you posted as A.C however. Funny how people whose arguments boil down to "People who are poorer than me don't matter, and shouldn't get a dime of my money if they were starving in the gutter" don't like putting their name on their opinions.
Yea, the McDonald's employee with the Rolex is a real common problem.
Yea people have screwed up priorities. Some poor people blow money on non-essentials, just like the rest of us. Then there are the people who place so little value on other people, that they begrudge the tiniest amount of their tax money that goes to other people.
Everyone jumps on the same examples: Schools and poor people. Out of the entire federal cash income (less than half of which comes from income tax), outlay for education, job training, employment and social services total a pathetic 3%. Almost all of the money that goes to those programs comes from property taxes and local/state sales tax.
But that 3% is such a big deal to you, that you'd like that 1.5% of your income tax back more than you'd like poor kids to have an education, or than you'd like the government to put money toward soup kitchens, or whatever. I paid an obscene amount of income tax last year, and 1.5% of it is still less than 500 dollars...Not much of a TV, by modern standards.
We pay 3 times as much paying the interest on our goddamn national debt...Why don't you complain about that, eh?
It seems lower than it is, because we get jack for healthcare, and that 20% doesn't take into account Social Security, property taxes, state income tax, or sales tax.
Well duh. But how do you enforce that? Altering the prices of goods out of the range of the lower income consumers through arbitrary taxes isn't going to do much but create a black market for those goods.
Intellectually, from the viewpoint of having enough money for the occasional luxury, we should all be spending our money on other things. I buy books, when my taxes pay for a library. I buy cable, which is a total waste of money...I mean, over the course of the year, I probably pay 1000 dollars for my fricking "extended basic" cable. A thousand dollars a year in savings, spread out over how many years? That'd seriously add up. I mean, put that in a Roth for 20 years and you'd likely end up with 6 figures.
People are people though, and we enjoy luxury goods.
Nonsensical? I was just pointing out why we have an income tax.
I am always amused when someone who lives in a quarter million dollar home goes off on how well people in trailer parks live. You tell 'em. How dare they have cable? Have they no shame? First of all, they have the poor taste to be poor. And second, they have CABLE? W.T.F?
It's one of the wonders of this country that even poor people are allowed to have a few nice things. And I think it very typical that someone who is clearly well off should be offended by this.
Disagreeing with how taxes are spent is not the same thing as saying there should be no taxes.
I agree that the government spends money on stupid stuff, but it also spends money on a lot of necessary stuff. It should be a goal to put people in office who will spend the money wisely, and frankly, when the government goes spending crazy on unnecessary wars and ridiculous pork, they should be held accountable. Not that we hold anyone accountable in this country, but hey, that's the way it should be.
And you have a very poor understanding of the whole toxic waste issue. Generally companies that pollute are forced to clean it up, however, if said company goes out of business before that time, that doesn't happen. It benefits everyone to not have that crap in the environment.
Well, yes and no. If you owe taxes and are alive, they can garnish your wages until hell freezes over, even if you have a zero net worth.
On the other hand, if you die with a zero net worth, the debt is not passed on to your heirs. Of course, if you die with a positive net worth, the IRS can take all of that to settle your tax debt.
Only in Florida =P
You're not disagreeing with me. Rich people hate income tax, because it taxes them based on how much they make, rather than how much they consume.
And generally, if you're making 10k, you're not taxed anything on the order of 30%. You have to make 100k to even get taxed above 20%. Most people on what they consider the poverty line (which is higher than 10k) aren't taxed at all, and get a nice refund check every year.
Capital Gains taxes are assessed when that intangible thing is converted into tangible currency, and not at any other point during ownership, so even if they did apply capital gains tax to virtual stuff, it would only be upon sale.
I think the guy in the article is talking out his ass. Too many people in the world like to think that when you add "online" or "internet" to an idea, then it becomes a special case. Accountants know how to count money; they're not going to start trying to evolve principles for taxing "virtual" assets, when they can apply the principles that already apply to intangibles like stocks. Only an economist would engage in this sort of intellectual masturbation.
Sure, but the system is already set up to tax income from the sale of stuff. If you make some ridiculous home handicraft that you sell on the web, the IRS is set to tax that income, even if you make every tiny piece of that handicraft yourself.
Likewise selling WoW stuff...It's no different than any other business that depends on eBay for it's sales. You sell stuff on eBay, you make money, that money is taxable. It doesn't matter what you sell, whether it's real or virtual, or even non-existant...If I could sell people Satanicpuppy brand Nothing on eBay, 10 bucks a pop, that money, with zero actual goods involved, would be taxable.
Not in the US, because that 10.00 counts as income, which is taxable. =P
You're right though, in the sense that if I bought at 10 cents a share and sold at 1 cent a share, I wouldn't owe capital gains, and, in fact, would be able to write off a chunk of my loss on my income taxes.
Yay! Someone with a brain!
The idea that the IRS is going to tax things that have a variable value that has not yet been converted to actual currency is absurd. You think they don't have any experience with this sort of thing? Hello stock market! They know exactly how to tax this stuff, and the day may come when they include money made from selling MMO lewt when they're auditing you, but they're never going to tax you on things that have not been converted to actual money...That goes against nearly every financial precident in this country, and that is not going to happen.
Lot of people think income taxes are stupid...Mostly they are people who makes lots of money.
The alternative to income taxes would be federal sales tax, which is generally considered to put an undue tax burden on people who don't make a lot of money...eg, the rich man and the poor man buy a loaf of bread, and the 30 cents tax on the bread that goes to the Fed means nothing to the rich man, but means a lot to the poor man.
I suppose that you could add heavy taxes on luxury goods to "even out" the tax burden, but that's not exactly fair to the middle class (my new flat screen is gonna cost WHAT?!), and it puts luxury goods completely out of reach for poorer families.
Taxes are there to provide services for the whole of the population, whether it's paying for the military to protect our borders, and the police to protect our homes, or paying to clean up toxic waste spills, or paying for the interstate system, etc. People who demand "a la carte" government services always annoy the crap out of me, because they're always the people who refuse to see the point in anything that doesn't benefit them in a big tangible sort of way.
The thing is, in the real world those things are taxed--when they are converted to actual cash. It's called "Capital Gains". The whole point is to take into account the variable nature of value in price fluxuating commodity goods.
If you buy 1,000 shares of stock for one penny each, and those 1,000 shares zip up to 5,000 dollars a piece, you don't owe a dime of tax (unless you receive dividends). If they drop back down to 1 cent each, and you sell, you owe tax based on the amount of money you made when converting the shares back to cash, which, in this case, would be 10.00.
You do NOT owe money based on how much that stock was worth at it's peak, because you didn't sell it at that value, and it would be grossly unfair to tax you based on the 5,000 dollar a share value, when you sold at 1 penny a share...That'd be on the order of a million dollars tax owed on a ten dollar sale.
Since WoW gold, etc, is valued at different values on different servers, and since that value fluxuates on a daily basis, it would seem to be impossible for the IRS to tax "gains" of WoW gold/items that have not been converted to actual currency...At what value would they fix those assets? It's be like taxing your penny stock at the 5,000 dollar mark...You don't have that money, and there is no guarantee that you'll ever have that money, so how can they tax it?
Now, if you sold gold/items/characters, that would be completely taxable, but I wouldn't think it would even fall under capital gains, but rather unreported non-work income, just like any other money gained from where people don't do your tax witholding for you.
Just stupid.
Those work for shit. You may be able to get signal if they're sitting within 10 feet of the hub, but otherwise, no way.
I like macs, but they are not the end all be all, and to be told that plugging in a frankensteinian mass of external USB appliances is the same as being able to do simple hardware upgrades is complete crap.
Hell, I work for a company that just stopped downgrading boxes to Windows 2000 2 years ago. I don't see Vista adoption for another 3 years at a minimum, except for a few executives here and there.
Too much headache, too high a hardware requirement, too low a ROI.
Ram? Harddrive? Who gives a shit? What happens when I want to upgrade my motherboard? What happens when I want to upgrade my processor without adding a new motherboard?
How about a concrete example? What happens when my wife decides to move her eMac to a part of the house most conveinently served by a wireless network, and I need to add a wireless card to her eMac, but woops, it's an older eMac which requires an obsolete "Airport" card, as opposed to an "Airport Extreme card", both of which are completely proprietary, and since they stopped making the Airport cards the fricking instant their "standard" shifted to the Extreme cards, I have to buy a 200 "new" obsolete WIRELESS card...That's right, it's almost cheaper to buy a fucking refurb Mac than it is to add a goddamn wireless card.
That's pathetic. If I wanted to wireless a p.o.s Dell that was twice the age of that eMac, I'd have to buy a 20 dollar PCI card, because Dell, though they break standards right and left, at least obeys SOME of them. The same goes if I wanted to add a SCSI card, or a second ethernet card, or any one of a million little necessities which I deal with in my life, but which Mac makes nearly impossible to add to their consumer hardware.
So take your retarded fanboi attitude and shove it up your ass. Some people need more to their computers than a pretty color.
I don't think I made a characterization, just an observation that the audience ostensibly targeted in an ad is not necessarily the audience the marketeers are primarily aiming for. Ad companies focus group this stuff extensively, and I don't believe for an instant that Apple is unaware of the demographic makeup of their client base.
And I've got an iPod, and a soft spot in my heart for the Mac, but I'd never buy one. I like being able to change the internals of my computer without buying a whole new machine, and that's something that Mac just doesn't offer.
I see Symantec is still sensitive to the charge that they create worms, etc, to drum up business for themselves.
Personally it doesn't bother me in the least that a security company is interested in, well, security. Having them actually detail vulnerabilities and produce papers like this would at least be a useful function for them.
Of course, so would producing a worthwhile product that doesn't devour processor cycles, hog system resources, and create system instability upon removal.