Wow, someone needs a huge refresher course on economics and math.
1) Yes, when you tax INCOME you need a flat tax of 20%. But the total ASSET, in this country is more than 4x the yearly income. Assume you are well off and make 100k a year. You save well and area millionaire. 20% of 100k = 20k. Now look at asset tax 5% of 1,000,000 = 50k. In order to match up the 20% flat income tax with a 5% flat asset tax, the guy making 100k a year needs to own exactly $400,000
If the guy owns less than $400,000, then he comes out ahead using my flat tax. If he owns MORE than $00,000 he is better off with the flat income tax. And that is the key to my argument. At 5%, it is set up to encourage people to own a reasonable amount of stuff. If they get greedy and buy luxuries, they end up paying more taxes. If they are thrifty and invest their money and/or spend on experiences (good trips, good food, etc.) then they come out ahead.
Most importantly, spending money on experiences like good food is BETTER for the economy, then spending money on items like a TV or diamonds. If you think about it for a short time, you understand why.
Note this a VERY basic mistake - anyone at all familiar with math should have been able to see that a tax on income does NOT have the same percentage as a tax on wealth.
2) I did not make a mistake about the poor not paying income tax. YOU did in restricting it to income tax. Like I said later in my argument, you can NOT just look at income tax and ignore the other taxes. You have to look at ALL the taxes. Yes the poor pay almost nothing in income tax - but they pay HUGE amounts of payroll tax - far more than 20% of their salary.
3) Yes, this is a tax on savings. So what? Yes, over time you pay huge amounts of taxes on the assets you have. But you are saving other taxes that all evens out.
The difference between my tax and the standard income is an income tax discourages people from working harder - if you are self employed then you have to work twice as hard to get by. You work 20 hours but the first ten are taxed away. MY tax ENCOURAGES you to work hard and discourages LUXURIES. You work twice as hard, if you spend the money on things like trips, good food, or simply to pay off your college loans then you pay NO TAX. It only starts taxing you when you decided to collect luxuries and KEEP them.
4) As for your RIDICULOUS idea that over 14 years you would have paid more tax on an item then it is worth, it indicates again total ignorance of how the real world operates.
Note that 5% is about 1/2 the yearly depreciate of about 10%. Simple math says once again that the total taxes paid will NEVER exceed the original cost to buy.
With stocks it is even better. They go up in value about 8% each year. 8% is >5%. You still gain money on owning them.
5)Untracked assets already exist. They are called CAYMAN ISLAND BANK ACCOUNTS. They exist because it It is so incredibly easy to hide INCOME and so hard to hide wealth, Your entire argument is in favor of my asset tax, not against it.
My version is biased toward the poor, while the existing system helps the rich. Income is easy to hide - if you have an accountant and foreign bank accounts. It is FAR FAR FAR easier to hide $1,000 of stuff than it is to hide $1,000,0000 of stuff.
But wealth is much much harder to hide. If you generate cash then the US government realizes it. We can easily track what you do with it, but then your accountants come in with all the complex rules about what is
Your arguement applies very much so - to the POOR.
BUT IT IS ENTIRELY WRONG ABOUT THE WEALTHY
The Wealthy don't have half their wealth in TV, Clothing, etc. They have less than 1% of their wealth in such things. The wealthy have their wealth almost exclusively in things that generate wealth. They own stocks, they own bonds, they own private corporations, they own things.
generating
The poor have their wealth almost entirely (99%) in such things.
In fact, that is the main difference between the poor and the wealthy - the poor keep their assets non-generating.
Your main premise is wrong. Which makes your entire argument wrong.
A Flat Asset Tax is a simple way to get the same amount of money as our current income tax, but shifts the tax burden from 1/3 poor, 1/3 middle class, 1/3 wealthy to 5% poor, 20% middle class and 75% wealthy.
Why? BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THE ASSETS ARE DISTRIBUTED.
I totally agree - they should cut those nasty complex taxes and just apply a straight 5% flat asset tax. Pay a nice flat five percent of everything you own. Oh, at 5%, it lets the government exclude IRA's and your personal home from that tax, without reducing the amount the government gets.
What, you conservatives don't like my flat tax? Why Not?
Because my version puts almost all the tax burden on the rich, as opposed to the vile conservative version that puts almost all the tax burden on the poor.
Why is the conservative version evil? Because a flat income tax is NOT fair - among other things it ignores the other taxes US citizens pay, almost all of which mainly affect the poor. From sales tax, property tax, to social security tax, they all have massive prejudices against the poor. The poor pay almost everything, while the wealthy pay a tiny portion of their income on these taxes.
Income tax does not exist in a vacuum - you need to look at the OTHER kinds of tax before blindingly trying to make only the income tax 'fair' for all.
No, you CAN'T separate these taxes out then say the poor pay no 'income taxes', because you don't count the taxes they do pay.
If you are want to read more, check out my blog entry about the flat tax at:
My experience is that pornography only harms a marriage if all three of these things occure:
One person keeps secrets about the pornography - and it gets found out.
One person thinks it is evil
The person that thinks it is evil also thinks they have the moral right to ban it for the other person.
What it comes down to is if both people are honest about the porn OR neither thinks it is evil OR neither think they have the right to order the other person to not use it, then pornography can only be good for the marriage.
There are somethings worth keeping secrets about. Porn is NOT one of them. Men (and women) need to admit their feelings about pornography before they get married and also take that into consideration before they marry. If the other person can not deal with your pornography feelings, then you should never marry them in the first place.
People need to stand up for their own beliefs, not bow down to what they THINK society wants them to do.
Pre-internet, estimates ranged that 10% of rural men engaged in bestiality. You know those jokes about farm boys and animals? Not so much jokes as wildly inappropriate insults.
Post-Internet, bestiality vanishes from 10% to almost nothing.
Not that hard to understand - if you live in a small town and are not the handsome jock, you don't have much options for masturbation. The married shmucks outlaw porn, and if you are a teenager/poor you can't get around their laws. The animals start to look not bad.
But give them access to internet and suddenly they no longer want to screw animals.
THE INTERNET IS A HUGE FORCE FOR MORALITY.
The only thing is, moralistic shmucks never knew the disgusting things their neighbors liked before. Know they have become aware of what we do, and blame it on the internet.
No.
Mankind was always a bunch of horny perverts, it's just you were a blind fool before. The internet makes us better people, in part by showing moralistic fools that they are wrong about what most people do.
How many other countries use Japanese auto-complete besides Japan? To me, it looks like this is a Japan only feature, it should be governed by Japanese law.
Yes, I generally agree that the laws of a country that houses the servers should apply.
But from a practical standpoint, Google is ignoring it's founding statement "Don't Be Evil".
This is not the first time they have forgotten the "n't".
No, it's illegal to ask. Asking is prima facae evidence that you are hiring based on it.
Similarly, it is illegal to ask certain questions in a landlord/tennant situatio.
If you have a good lawyer, you can probably sue them already.
In most facebook accounts, people provide a lot of information that it is illegal for the employer to ask about - age, gender, race, sexuality.
Employers can't ask these questions, and similarly, they can't ask questions that they know will reveal that information.
We don't really need a new law, just a smart lawyer
2. Fingerprints don't reveal private family information (WHAT! I'm ADOPTED! You mean I'm actually the son of Charles Manson????)
3. Fingerprints have a proper amount of critical thought. Every single DNA sample the cops use is technically a "Partial DNA Analysis" (They only decode 13 loci, not the millions of DNA loci you have.) When you talk about fingerprints, if it is a partial, they make sure to say "Partial Print"t. They never bother to say "Partial DNA analysis", they just lie and say "DNA analysis"
Drug companies won't be interested, but law firms will be. Specifically family rights law firms.
Specifically, full US DNA fingerprinting checks only 13 Loci, out of millions (if not billions). None currently are known to code for disease, and honestly it would be extremely unlikely for any of those 13 to code for disease.
HOWEVER Those loci are inheritable, so you can tell whose father is whose. Which can lead to divorce and/or lawsuits over paternity payments.
Re:the 'real' problem with organ donation...
on
When Are You Dead?
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· Score: 1
I would be all for this - if the drunk people were the ones getting killed. Unfortunately they have an annoying tendency to kill OTHER people and survive themselves - alcohol increases your chance of surviving a crash.
In fact, in the worst possible case, you can be drunk, crash into someone else, kill them, survive yourself, then get their organs transplanted into you to keep you alive.
Better than the space tether crap which requires manufacturing capabilities we don't have.
I like the idea of building it on the ground then mag lev'ing it up. Makes building it a lot easier....
20 years is in my lifetime and 60 billion is less than 4 years of NASA's current budget. So 20 years of NASA's budget should easily be able to pay for this AND still have money for other stuff.
Then we need to go looking for possible other sources of power.
For example, is the LED getting colder? Could it be converting heat to electricity? Are magnetic fields near them weaker? Is the LED losing a minute amount of mass?
Can we try it again with 100 LED set at low power?
Can we set up a closed loop of a series of low power LED's illuminating a photovoltaic board?
You don't have a twin do you? Some organics have interchangeable parts. We are working hard at cloning to solve that problem for the rest of us.
As for outweighing the rest, you are outright WRONG.
My entire argument was that the robo-arms break while the organic do NOT break.
Maintenance is a problem ALL the time. Ask any car mechanic. A properly maintained car - even a lemon - will last a lifetime (80 years, or 8 million miles). An improperly maintained one breaks down after a couple of years and/or 100,000 miles. Guess how often most cars last?
Maintenance is NOT easy to do or diagnosis for robotic arms.
You ignored my points by falsely stating they don't matter. Support your belief with something besides bullcrap.
1) Organic fails WELL. By that I mean, it causes pain and minor damage before you do something stupid that destroys the entire organic object. Electronics fail badly. Little if any warning, and it operates on the performance edge, so sudden failure is usually catastrophic.
2)Organics do minor self repair, for free (if time+ food = free). They are built to accept the minor damage it gives (see option 1) above.
3) Organic maintenance is limited and automatic inbuilt. We call it SLEEP. Electronic maintenance involves constant attention to detail - oils, software patches, etc.
4) Organics are evolved/designed to run far inside maximum tolerances. In extreme circumstances, they have hidden reserves that suddenly become accessible.
5) Organics are self-replicating. No need for a factory.
None. But I have friends that are divorced and my father got divorced twice. The first time, amicably, the second time was hell (Note, my father made several stupid decisions, including picking a lawyer that was used to dealing with amicable divorces.)
1) Given that it is possible to cheat ANY system - paper, online, colored stone (Ancient Greece used that one).
2.) The problem is not stopping cheating, but detecting it.
3) Which clearly illustrates the problem with using internet voting.
The most interesting thing about internet/computer technology is the huge decrease in the number of humans necessary to do work. An executive with good words skills doesn't need a secretary pool.
Similarly the real problem with the internet/computer based voting is that now a small group of hackers can cause MAJOR election fraud with a far fewer number of conspirators. The traces are much harder to find, or worse, to prove.
It is not the ease of cheating that is the problem, but instead the difficulty of detecting it.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Yes, when you tax INCOME you need a flat tax of 20%. But the total ASSET, in this country is more than 4x the yearly income. Assume you are well off and make 100k a year. You save well and area millionaire. 20% of 100k = 20k. Now look at asset tax 5% of 1,000,000 = 50k. In order to match up the 20% flat income tax with a 5% flat asset tax, the guy making 100k a year needs to own exactly $400,000
If the guy owns less than $400,000, then he comes out ahead using my flat tax. If he owns MORE than $00,000 he is better off with the flat income tax. And that is the key to my argument. At 5%, it is set up to encourage people to own a reasonable amount of stuff. If they get greedy and buy luxuries, they end up paying more taxes. If they are thrifty and invest their money and/or spend on experiences (good trips, good food, etc.) then they come out ahead.
Most importantly, spending money on experiences like good food is BETTER for the economy, then spending money on items like a TV or diamonds. If you think about it for a short time, you understand why.
Note this a VERY basic mistake - anyone at all familiar with math should have been able to see that a tax on income does NOT have the same percentage as a tax on wealth.
2) I did not make a mistake about the poor not paying income tax. YOU did in restricting it to income tax. Like I said later in my argument, you can NOT just look at income tax and ignore the other taxes. You have to look at ALL the taxes. Yes the poor pay almost nothing in income tax - but they pay HUGE amounts of payroll tax - far more than 20% of their salary.
3) Yes, this is a tax on savings. So what? Yes, over time you pay huge amounts of taxes on the assets you have. But you are saving other taxes that all evens out. The difference between my tax and the standard income is an income tax discourages people from working harder - if you are self employed then you have to work twice as hard to get by. You work 20 hours but the first ten are taxed away. MY tax ENCOURAGES you to work hard and discourages LUXURIES. You work twice as hard, if you spend the money on things like trips, good food, or simply to pay off your college loans then you pay NO TAX. It only starts taxing you when you decided to collect luxuries and KEEP them.
4) As for your RIDICULOUS idea that over 14 years you would have paid more tax on an item then it is worth, it indicates again total ignorance of how the real world operates.
It's called DEPRECIATION vs APPRECIATION. As in each year items either lose value (car) or gain value (stocks). You buy that car for 30k, when you drive it off the lot, it loses 9%. Next year, another 10%, the year after that, another 10% http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/how-fast-does-my-new-car-lose-value-infographic.html
Note that 5% is about 1/2 the yearly depreciate of about 10%. Simple math says once again that the total taxes paid will NEVER exceed the original cost to buy.
With stocks it is even better. They go up in value about 8% each year. 8% is >5%. You still gain money on owning them.
5)Untracked assets already exist. They are called CAYMAN ISLAND BANK ACCOUNTS. They exist because it It is so incredibly easy to hide INCOME and so hard to hide wealth, Your entire argument is in favor of my asset tax, not against it.
My version is biased toward the poor, while the existing system helps the rich. Income is easy to hide - if you have an accountant and foreign bank accounts. It is FAR FAR FAR easier to hide $1,000 of stuff than it is to hide $1,000,0000 of stuff.
But wealth is much much harder to hide. If you generate cash then the US government realizes it. We can easily track what you do with it, but then your accountants come in with all the complex rules about what is
That assumes you did not have a mortgage. But in general, you are correct.
Your arguement applies very much so - to the POOR. BUT IT IS ENTIRELY WRONG ABOUT THE WEALTHY The Wealthy don't have half their wealth in TV, Clothing, etc. They have less than 1% of their wealth in such things. The wealthy have their wealth almost exclusively in things that generate wealth. They own stocks, they own bonds, they own private corporations, they own things. generating The poor have their wealth almost entirely (99%) in such things. In fact, that is the main difference between the poor and the wealthy - the poor keep their assets non-generating. Your main premise is wrong. Which makes your entire argument wrong. A Flat Asset Tax is a simple way to get the same amount of money as our current income tax, but shifts the tax burden from 1/3 poor, 1/3 middle class, 1/3 wealthy to 5% poor, 20% middle class and 75% wealthy. Why? BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THE ASSETS ARE DISTRIBUTED.
What, you conservatives don't like my flat tax? Why Not?
Because my version puts almost all the tax burden on the rich, as opposed to the vile conservative version that puts almost all the tax burden on the poor.
Why is the conservative version evil? Because a flat income tax is NOT fair - among other things it ignores the other taxes US citizens pay, almost all of which mainly affect the poor. From sales tax, property tax, to social security tax, they all have massive prejudices against the poor. The poor pay almost everything, while the wealthy pay a tiny portion of their income on these taxes.
Income tax does not exist in a vacuum - you need to look at the OTHER kinds of tax before blindingly trying to make only the income tax 'fair' for all.
No, you CAN'T separate these taxes out then say the poor pay no 'income taxes', because you don't count the taxes they do pay.
If you are want to read more, check out my blog entry about the flat tax at:
http://conservativelyliberal.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-flat-tax-idea.html/
One person keeps secrets about the pornography - and it gets found out.
One person thinks it is evil
The person that thinks it is evil also thinks they have the moral right to ban it for the other person.
What it comes down to is if both people are honest about the porn OR neither thinks it is evil OR neither think they have the right to order the other person to not use it, then pornography can only be good for the marriage.
There are somethings worth keeping secrets about. Porn is NOT one of them. Men (and women) need to admit their feelings about pornography before they get married and also take that into consideration before they marry. If the other person can not deal with your pornography feelings, then you should never marry them in the first place.
People need to stand up for their own beliefs, not bow down to what they THINK society wants them to do.
Post-Internet, bestiality vanishes from 10% to almost nothing.
Not that hard to understand - if you live in a small town and are not the handsome jock, you don't have much options for masturbation. The married shmucks outlaw porn, and if you are a teenager/poor you can't get around their laws. The animals start to look not bad.
But give them access to internet and suddenly they no longer want to screw animals.
THE INTERNET IS A HUGE FORCE FOR MORALITY.
The only thing is, moralistic shmucks never knew the disgusting things their neighbors liked before. Know they have become aware of what we do, and blame it on the internet.
No.
Mankind was always a bunch of horny perverts, it's just you were a blind fool before. The internet makes us better people, in part by showing moralistic fools that they are wrong about what most people do.
Insightful is not earned.
Yes, I generally agree that the laws of a country that houses the servers should apply.
But from a practical standpoint, Google is ignoring it's founding statement "Don't Be Evil". This is not the first time they have forgotten the "n't".
No, it's illegal to ask. Asking is prima facae evidence that you are hiring based on it. Similarly, it is illegal to ask certain questions in a landlord/tennant situatio.
Really? gurps is still alive? Even non-player characters? Are you sure? I thought I was dead.
If you have a good lawyer, you can probably sue them already. In most facebook accounts, people provide a lot of information that it is illegal for the employer to ask about - age, gender, race, sexuality. Employers can't ask these questions, and similarly, they can't ask questions that they know will reveal that information. We don't really need a new law, just a smart lawyer
2. Fingerprints don't reveal private family information (WHAT! I'm ADOPTED! You mean I'm actually the son of Charles Manson????)
3. Fingerprints have a proper amount of critical thought. Every single DNA sample the cops use is technically a "Partial DNA Analysis" (They only decode 13 loci, not the millions of DNA loci you have.) When you talk about fingerprints, if it is a partial, they make sure to say "Partial Print"t. They never bother to say "Partial DNA analysis", they just lie and say "DNA analysis"
Specifically, full US DNA fingerprinting checks only 13 Loci, out of millions (if not billions). None currently are known to code for disease, and honestly it would be extremely unlikely for any of those 13 to code for disease.
HOWEVER Those loci are inheritable, so you can tell whose father is whose. Which can lead to divorce and/or lawsuits over paternity payments.
In fact, in the worst possible case, you can be drunk, crash into someone else, kill them, survive yourself, then get their organs transplanted into you to keep you alive.
Doesn't pass the smell test.
I like the idea of building it on the ground then mag lev'ing it up. Makes building it a lot easier....
20 years is in my lifetime and 60 billion is less than 4 years of NASA's current budget. So 20 years of NASA's budget should easily be able to pay for this AND still have money for other stuff.
For example, is the LED getting colder? Could it be converting heat to electricity? Are magnetic fields near them weaker? Is the LED losing a minute amount of mass?
Can we try it again with 100 LED set at low power?
Can we set up a closed loop of a series of low power LED's illuminating a photovoltaic board?
It's a violation of the terms of services, and violation of federal law:
18 USC Â 1030 - Fraud and related activity in connection with computers.ahref=http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030rel=url2html-19895http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030>
Cops need a warrant to obtain a password. Even if the person is a child. Schools are forbidden from doing so even with a warrant.
As for outweighing the rest, you are outright WRONG.
My entire argument was that the robo-arms break while the organic do NOT break.
Maintenance is a problem ALL the time. Ask any car mechanic. A properly maintained car - even a lemon - will last a lifetime (80 years, or 8 million miles). An improperly maintained one breaks down after a couple of years and/or 100,000 miles. Guess how often most cars last?
Maintenance is NOT easy to do or diagnosis for robotic arms.
You ignored my points by falsely stating they don't matter. Support your belief with something besides bullcrap.
inorganics die of age, and exposure tot he elments (rust, sunlight, heat, etc.
Don't blame the poisonous that doesn't bite you for the idiot doctor that removed the leg before checking to see if the snake actually bit you.
2)Organics do minor self repair, for free (if time+ food = free). They are built to accept the minor damage it gives (see option 1) above.
3) Organic maintenance is limited and automatic inbuilt. We call it SLEEP. Electronic maintenance involves constant attention to detail - oils, software patches, etc.
4) Organics are evolved/designed to run far inside maximum tolerances. In extreme circumstances, they have hidden reserves that suddenly become accessible.
5) Organics are self-replicating. No need for a factory.
None. But I have friends that are divorced and my father got divorced twice. The first time, amicably, the second time was hell (Note, my father made several stupid decisions, including picking a lawyer that was used to dealing with amicable divorces.)
2.) The problem is not stopping cheating, but detecting it.
3) Which clearly illustrates the problem with using internet voting.
The most interesting thing about internet/computer technology is the huge decrease in the number of humans necessary to do work. An executive with good words skills doesn't need a secretary pool.
Similarly the real problem with the internet/computer based voting is that now a small group of hackers can cause MAJOR election fraud with a far fewer number of conspirators. The traces are much harder to find, or worse, to prove.
It is not the ease of cheating that is the problem, but instead the difficulty of detecting it.
Seriously, though, it's been 20 years since I took the class and when I googeld it, google auto fixed my spelling and I did not realize it.
Note, that is not always true about women marrying into wealth. Judges still discriminate, at least in my personal experience.