Most of the towns in the South Bay have ordinances with prohibitions against motorhomes. You can't live in them, you can't park them on their streets or in driveways. And they certainly don't allow businesses to allow motorhomes to live in their parking lots. So it all has to be on the downlow, it has to look like a regular van and no one has to notice you.
Even where I live in the midwest, you are not allowed to actually LIVE in a motorhome. In fact, in most towns close to the city you are not allowed to actually store them on your property. However, if you thought the law was going to come down on you for living in a mobile home, wait until you see what they do to someone living in the back of a truck with no sanitary facilities, no utilities, no heat or air conditioning. They will probably come down pretty hard on google for allowing it on their campus.
Raising taxes on high incomes and capital gains does nothing but take money from the rich and the middle class and give it to the government. Why would we want to do that?
Oh, I dunno, perhaps for things like roads, bridges, public schools, water and power infrastructure, Air Traffic Control systems, and you know, all the other shit we've been letting fall to pieces ever since we bought into Reagan's Voodoo Economics and stopped collecting enough taxes to maintain it, all the while spending Trillions and Trillions on overseas wars.
Or how about collecting it for public financing of all campaigns, you know so our politicians don't have to spend all their time begging people for money and becoming beholden to special interests and can actually have time to govern?
Your comment makes it clear that you've been duped by the corporatist libertarian's propaganda that All Government is Bad.
Well guess what, it's NO government that's bad. Effective government can do great things.
All of those things are great, and we already provide enough tax dollars to pay for them. It is not our fault that the government cannot effectively manage their money. Perhaps another organization should take over their operation and make them a more efficient entity.
? Isn't letting people keep the money they earned, regardless of their income level ALWAYS going to be better than taking it away and giving it to the government?
No. The government can spend it on things that help society, but not necessarily the person we took the money from.
Well, then the logical conclusion is that the government should take ALL of the money since they are the ones most qualified to do anything with it.
The rich already pay a much higher percentage of taxes than the middle class or the poor. Worse than that, every single suggestion on how to tax the rich more affects the middle class.
Not having savings is the governments fault. They are taking 12.4% away from you that you could be using for a safety net. Or they could be using for your safety net for you, instead of only making it available when you retire. Unfortunately, they don't even give you back what you paid in, it is NEGATIVE INTEREST on your money when they government provides your safety net.
Letting wealth pile up in anyone's hands is bad for the economy.
The best solution is to discourage savings but provide safety nets so you don't actually have to hoard your wages in order to be assured random events won't leave you helpless.
Holy crap, did you ever drink the kool aid. Discourage savings? Provide a safety net?
That is what SS is supposed to be, but did you know that the average american puts MORE into Social Security, then they draw from? This is in real dollars, not including inflation. The average american will put about $300k into Social Security and will draw about $200k out. If the average american instead put that income into an S&P tracking mutual fund, they would have amassed over $6 million by the time they retired. Clearly the organization managing the safety net is not competent for this job. They could simply put the money into a no load S&P tracking mutual fund and make every american a multimillionaire when they retire.
Capital gains is not earning anything. You didn't "earn" that in the way my kids earn their allowance. If anything it should be taxed at a higher rate then regular income, as it is not much more then a windfall.
I would say middle class family is the one which earns less than $300K.
The government disagrees with you. They think anybody that actually has a job is rich. Anybody that has never had a job is poor (but not somebody that had a job and then lost it, they are still rich and not entitled to long term benefits). And with the governments current policies, it won't be long before there IS only poor and rich, and there will probably be a lot more poor when people figure out they can live a more fulfilling lifestyle by being poor than working their but off being "rich".
Wow, you make being poor sound like a great deal. So why are you still working? Is it just personal pride? Or are things maybe not quite as extreme as you make them seem?
That's a good question. Mostly it is high morals, but eventually I, like everyone else will see that the government would rather have us poor and stupid, suckling at the government tit. But once enough people realize that and nobody is willing to actually work anymore, society will come to a crashing halt.
Uhm... you're doing it wrong. If someone sends you a bill, you take the bill and mail it together with a claims form to the insurance company (or submit it online if they allow that). The insurance company will then call the provider and sort things out. At that point you're out of the loop.
You're doing it wrong. That is the service provider's job, not your job.
Most societies would be more than willing to help ease the terrible burden of an abundance of assets. Raising the taxes on high incomes and capital gains would help reverse the Reagan-era onwards trend of wealth redistribution towards the higher income and wealth segments of society. We now know that wealth did not start trickling downwards, and grownups need to step in to correct the mistakes.
Raising taxes on high incomes and capital gains does nothing but take money from the rich and the middle class and give it to the government. Why would we want to do that? Isn't letting people keep the money they earned, regardless of their income level ALWAYS going to be better than taking it away and giving it to the government?
I've known stingy rich people and generous rich people. I've known stingy middle class people and less stingy middle class people. On the whole, the rich people I know are more generous. But I have been screwed over a time or two by rich people. However, most of the time when I have been screwed over, it has been by people that make about the same as me who desire to become rich by stepping on others and backstabbing others.
And it's one of the things that's missing from a lot of the 1%ers. This society made it possible for them to be 1%ers. They have a debt to society. And like the Lanisters – who always pay their debts – so should they.
Didn't society also give us that same opportunity, so don't we also owe that debt? Or do we pay that debt back by paying taxes, just like they do?
Don't drive around in Bentleys, Lambos, or those ugly as sin Mercedes SUVs. You don't need a 10,000 sq ft, 6 bedroom house when you have no kids. Live comfortably but not showy and don't advertise the fact that you are loaded and you won't have the problem of wondering whether people are only interested in your for your money because no one will realize you have money. But therein lies the problem: most of these people WANT others to know they have money.
Most of the people buying those things are NOT rich. They are TEMPORARILY rich due to lottery, rap album, sports career, pop album, inheritance, but within decades if not years, they will be broke again. Living beyond your means is the new American pastime.
I would say middle class family is the one which earns less than $300K.
The government disagrees with you. They think anybody that actually has a job is rich. Anybody that has never had a job is poor (but not somebody that had a job and then lost it, they are still rich and not entitled to long term benefits). And with the governments current policies, it won't be long before there IS only poor and rich, and there will probably be a lot more poor when people figure out they can live a more fulfilling lifestyle by being poor than working their but off being "rich".
Also, Quest does not automatically bill the patient first.
Yes, they do. I go to the doctor, they have my insurance information, they send in the bill to the insurance, I get a bill from the provider. The provider sends bloodwork off to a lab of their choosing (despite my objections), the lab has my insurance information, they send me a bill. They don't bill the insurance, I call them, they don't bill the insurance, I call some more, I send letters, they don't bill the insurance. Eventually, they start threatening collections. But how can you collect on an amount when you don't know how much that person owes because you have not yet billed their insurance plan?
Stop blaming your doctor for your own incompetence.
I'm incompetent? I don't work at the doctor's office. How do I control who they send their labwork to. I can and have told them not to send the bloodwork to Quest. They do it anyway. You don't get to decide where it goes, you don't get to just "send" it yourself. The doctor's won't give you your bloodwork even though it came out of your body and they technically should have to get your permission to do anything with it.
I guess you like you getting gang raped by the insurance/doctor/lab companies and that is why you act as an apologist for them.
I'll keep that in mind in case I ever join a paleolithic hunter gatherer society. Until then, I need my sleep.
I suspect these people sleep more deeply due to more rigorous exercise, and probably also catnap during the day.
Anything to disrupt Quest Diagnostics. I wouldn't use this new outfit because they sound sort of shady, but I won't do business with Quest either. Their prices are insanely high, and they always automatically bill the patient first instead of billing the insurance because they know the insurance will adjust it down to a contracted reasonable price. I have had to spend thousands of dollars of my time on the phone with this company just to get them to bill the insurance company. They have threatened me with debt collection over a debt which I would have happily paid if only they would submit it to the insurance company so I knew how much I actually owed. I certainly didn't owe them the full amount they stated. I have repeatedly told doctors not not to send my bloodwork to Quest, but I guess they are a monopoly or the doctors get kickbacks because they always send the bloodwork to them, without first getting signoff from you about which tests will be performed or getting agreement to pay from you.
Do you even know what "non-sequitur" means? Because regardless of the validity of the parent's argument it certainly does not qualify as non-sequitur.
Non-sequitur : a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
Talking about livery operators and livery regulations and AC attempts to refute by saying that no taxi companies have to abide by livery regulations. While true, it does not follow from the previous argument that other livery companies besides Uber all obey the livery rules.
Yup. Look at destination charges for vehicles. GMC $925-$1195 from USA to USA. BMW $995 from Germany to USA. Toyota $720-$835 from Japan. It is actually cheaper to ship it from overseas and then put it on a train and then on a truck than it is to just put it on a train and then on a truck.
No current livery company has to abide by taxi rules in London. Uber is no exception.
What a wonderful non-sequitur. Thank you. By merely changing the entire focus of the sentence, you have made it become a falsehood. That must take a lot of work.
I never click on ads (except by mistake) so they wouldn't get any real ad revenue from me whether I use an ad blocker or not.
Not just by mistake, I'm sure you click on them by deception as well. At least once, until you learn that particular deceptive technique, and then have to come up with another one. It must be extremely costly for ad agencies to have to keep coming up with new ways to deceive the public into clicking on their unwanted ads. It must cost the companies they are advertising for many, many times more than it ever brings in in additional sales and also in lost sales due to people being deceived into clicking intentionally not buying their products and telling their friends not to as well.
They don't expect you to click on ads in every case. They expect you to remember WXY Corp when you're about to buy a widget or service they offer. Which is why they want their ads to be so obnoxious, so you will remember.
I have a horrible memory for details like that. I can remember that the catchy television ad was for some sort of insurance company, but couldn't tell you which one.
On the other hand, if they make it truly obnoxious and in your face, then yes, I will remember it, and avoid that company like the plague when it comes time to buy that type of product.
When Uber uses GPS to figure out the fare, is that your end fare for certain? If they decide to take a different route, is it possible for your fare to change? If so, then I would say that qualifies as metering. If they agree to take you from A to B for X and X cannot change, then I would definitely say that that is not metering. After all, the other livery companies have flat rate pricing which they manage to figure out. Probably using google (which uses GPS behind the scenes) or just using paper maps.
Personally, I 100% support Uber because I firmly believe that if I want to hitch a ride with a complete stranger (whether for pay or just hitchhiking), I should have every right to do so.
If that is the way you want things to be, then you need to petition your elected officials. In the mean time, it is not fair that all of the existing livery operators have to abide by the existing regulations and a new company does not. I mean, actually it DOES have to abide by those rules, it just chooses not to.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the towns in the South Bay have ordinances with prohibitions against motorhomes. You can't live in them, you can't park them on their streets or in driveways. And they certainly don't allow businesses to allow motorhomes to live in their parking lots. So it all has to be on the downlow, it has to look like a regular van and no one has to notice you.
Even where I live in the midwest, you are not allowed to actually LIVE in a motorhome. In fact, in most towns close to the city you are not allowed to actually store them on your property. However, if you thought the law was going to come down on you for living in a mobile home, wait until you see what they do to someone living in the back of a truck with no sanitary facilities, no utilities, no heat or air conditioning. They will probably come down pretty hard on google for allowing it on their campus.
Raising taxes on high incomes and capital gains does nothing but take money from the rich and the middle class and give it to the government. Why would we want to do that?
Oh, I dunno, perhaps for things like roads, bridges, public schools, water and power infrastructure, Air Traffic Control systems, and you know, all the other shit we've been letting fall to pieces ever since we bought into Reagan's Voodoo Economics and stopped collecting enough taxes to maintain it, all the while spending Trillions and Trillions on overseas wars.
Or how about collecting it for public financing of all campaigns, you know so our politicians don't have to spend all their time begging people for money and becoming beholden to special interests and can actually have time to govern?
Your comment makes it clear that you've been duped by the corporatist libertarian's propaganda that All Government is Bad.
Well guess what, it's NO government that's bad. Effective government can do great things.
All of those things are great, and we already provide enough tax dollars to pay for them. It is not our fault that the government cannot effectively manage their money. Perhaps another organization should take over their operation and make them a more efficient entity.
No. The government can spend it on things that help society, but not necessarily the person we took the money from.
Well, then the logical conclusion is that the government should take ALL of the money since they are the ones most qualified to do anything with it.
The rich already pay a much higher percentage of taxes than the middle class or the poor. Worse than that, every single suggestion on how to tax the rich more affects the middle class.
Not having savings is the governments fault. They are taking 12.4% away from you that you could be using for a safety net. Or they could be using for your safety net for you, instead of only making it available when you retire. Unfortunately, they don't even give you back what you paid in, it is NEGATIVE INTEREST on your money when they government provides your safety net.
No it isn't.
Letting wealth pile up in anyone's hands is bad for the economy.
The best solution is to discourage savings but provide safety nets so you don't actually have to hoard your wages in order to be assured random events won't leave you helpless.
Holy crap, did you ever drink the kool aid. Discourage savings? Provide a safety net?
That is what SS is supposed to be, but did you know that the average american puts MORE into Social Security, then they draw from? This is in real dollars, not including inflation. The average american will put about $300k into Social Security and will draw about $200k out. If the average american instead put that income into an S&P tracking mutual fund, they would have amassed over $6 million by the time they retired. Clearly the organization managing the safety net is not competent for this job. They could simply put the money into a no load S&P tracking mutual fund and make every american a multimillionaire when they retire.
Capital gains is not earning anything. You didn't "earn" that in the way my kids earn their allowance. If anything it should be taxed at a higher rate then regular income, as it is not much more then a windfall.
Why? The government didn't "earn" that money.
I would say middle class family is the one which earns less than $300K.
The government disagrees with you. They think anybody that actually has a job is rich. Anybody that has never had a job is poor (but not somebody that had a job and then lost it, they are still rich and not entitled to long term benefits). And with the governments current policies, it won't be long before there IS only poor and rich, and there will probably be a lot more poor when people figure out they can live a more fulfilling lifestyle by being poor than working their but off being "rich".
Wow, you make being poor sound like a great deal. So why are you still working? Is it just personal pride? Or are things maybe not quite as extreme as you make them seem?
That's a good question. Mostly it is high morals, but eventually I, like everyone else will see that the government would rather have us poor and stupid, suckling at the government tit. But once enough people realize that and nobody is willing to actually work anymore, society will come to a crashing halt.
Uhm... you're doing it wrong. If someone sends you a bill, you take the bill and mail it together with a claims form to the insurance company (or submit it online if they allow that). The insurance company will then call the provider and sort things out. At that point you're out of the loop.
You're doing it wrong. That is the service provider's job, not your job.
Most societies would be more than willing to help ease the terrible burden of an abundance of assets. Raising the taxes on high incomes and capital gains would help reverse the Reagan-era onwards trend of wealth redistribution towards the higher income and wealth segments of society. We now know that wealth did not start trickling downwards, and grownups need to step in to correct the mistakes.
Raising taxes on high incomes and capital gains does nothing but take money from the rich and the middle class and give it to the government. Why would we want to do that? Isn't letting people keep the money they earned, regardless of their income level ALWAYS going to be better than taking it away and giving it to the government?
I've known stingy rich people and generous rich people. I've known stingy middle class people and less stingy middle class people. On the whole, the rich people I know are more generous. But I have been screwed over a time or two by rich people. However, most of the time when I have been screwed over, it has been by people that make about the same as me who desire to become rich by stepping on others and backstabbing others.
And it's one of the things that's missing from a lot of the 1%ers. This society made it possible for them to be 1%ers. They have a debt to society. And like the Lanisters – who always pay their debts – so should they.
Didn't society also give us that same opportunity, so don't we also owe that debt? Or do we pay that debt back by paying taxes, just like they do?
Don't drive around in Bentleys, Lambos, or those ugly as sin Mercedes SUVs. You don't need a 10,000 sq ft, 6 bedroom house when you have no kids. Live comfortably but not showy and don't advertise the fact that you are loaded and you won't have the problem of wondering whether people are only interested in your for your money because no one will realize you have money. But therein lies the problem: most of these people WANT others to know they have money.
Most of the people buying those things are NOT rich. They are TEMPORARILY rich due to lottery, rap album, sports career, pop album, inheritance, but within decades if not years, they will be broke again. Living beyond your means is the new American pastime.
I would say middle class family is the one which earns less than $300K.
The government disagrees with you. They think anybody that actually has a job is rich. Anybody that has never had a job is poor (but not somebody that had a job and then lost it, they are still rich and not entitled to long term benefits). And with the governments current policies, it won't be long before there IS only poor and rich, and there will probably be a lot more poor when people figure out they can live a more fulfilling lifestyle by being poor than working their but off being "rich".
Also, Quest does not automatically bill the patient first.
Yes, they do. I go to the doctor, they have my insurance information, they send in the bill to the insurance, I get a bill from the provider. The provider sends bloodwork off to a lab of their choosing (despite my objections), the lab has my insurance information, they send me a bill. They don't bill the insurance, I call them, they don't bill the insurance, I call some more, I send letters, they don't bill the insurance. Eventually, they start threatening collections. But how can you collect on an amount when you don't know how much that person owes because you have not yet billed their insurance plan?
Stop blaming your doctor for your own incompetence.
I'm incompetent? I don't work at the doctor's office. How do I control who they send their labwork to. I can and have told them not to send the bloodwork to Quest. They do it anyway. You don't get to decide where it goes, you don't get to just "send" it yourself. The doctor's won't give you your bloodwork even though it came out of your body and they technically should have to get your permission to do anything with it.
I guess you like you getting gang raped by the insurance/doctor/lab companies and that is why you act as an apologist for them.
I'll keep that in mind in case I ever join a paleolithic hunter gatherer society. Until then, I need my sleep.
I suspect these people sleep more deeply due to more rigorous exercise, and probably also catnap during the day.
Anything to disrupt Quest Diagnostics. I wouldn't use this new outfit because they sound sort of shady, but I won't do business with Quest either. Their prices are insanely high, and they always automatically bill the patient first instead of billing the insurance because they know the insurance will adjust it down to a contracted reasonable price. I have had to spend thousands of dollars of my time on the phone with this company just to get them to bill the insurance company. They have threatened me with debt collection over a debt which I would have happily paid if only they would submit it to the insurance company so I knew how much I actually owed. I certainly didn't owe them the full amount they stated. I have repeatedly told doctors not not to send my bloodwork to Quest, but I guess they are a monopoly or the doctors get kickbacks because they always send the bloodwork to them, without first getting signoff from you about which tests will be performed or getting agreement to pay from you.
Do you even know what "non-sequitur" means? Because regardless of the validity of the parent's argument it certainly does not qualify as non-sequitur.
Non-sequitur : a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
Talking about livery operators and livery regulations and AC attempts to refute by saying that no taxi companies have to abide by livery regulations. While true, it does not follow from the previous argument that other livery companies besides Uber all obey the livery rules.
Yup. Look at destination charges for vehicles. GMC $925-$1195 from USA to USA. BMW $995 from Germany to USA. Toyota $720-$835 from Japan. It is actually cheaper to ship it from overseas and then put it on a train and then on a truck than it is to just put it on a train and then on a truck.
No current livery company has to abide by taxi rules in London. Uber is no exception.
What a wonderful non-sequitur. Thank you. By merely changing the entire focus of the sentence, you have made it become a falsehood. That must take a lot of work.
I think the point is that it sexually objectifies the women.
Yes, we should find the guy (or woman) that put a gun to their head and forced them to do this commercial and throw them in jail.
I never click on ads (except by mistake) so they wouldn't get any real ad revenue from me whether I use an ad blocker or not.
Not just by mistake, I'm sure you click on them by deception as well. At least once, until you learn that particular deceptive technique, and then have to come up with another one. It must be extremely costly for ad agencies to have to keep coming up with new ways to deceive the public into clicking on their unwanted ads. It must cost the companies they are advertising for many, many times more than it ever brings in in additional sales and also in lost sales due to people being deceived into clicking intentionally not buying their products and telling their friends not to as well.
They don't expect you to click on ads in every case. They expect you to remember WXY Corp when you're about to buy a widget or service they offer. Which is why they want their ads to be so obnoxious, so you will remember.
I have a horrible memory for details like that. I can remember that the catchy television ad was for some sort of insurance company, but couldn't tell you which one.
On the other hand, if they make it truly obnoxious and in your face, then yes, I will remember it, and avoid that company like the plague when it comes time to buy that type of product.
When Uber uses GPS to figure out the fare, is that your end fare for certain? If they decide to take a different route, is it possible for your fare to change? If so, then I would say that qualifies as metering. If they agree to take you from A to B for X and X cannot change, then I would definitely say that that is not metering. After all, the other livery companies have flat rate pricing which they manage to figure out. Probably using google (which uses GPS behind the scenes) or just using paper maps.
Personally, I 100% support Uber because I firmly believe that if I want to hitch a ride with a complete stranger (whether for pay or just hitchhiking), I should have every right to do so.
If that is the way you want things to be, then you need to petition your elected officials. In the mean time, it is not fair that all of the existing livery operators have to abide by the existing regulations and a new company does not. I mean, actually it DOES have to abide by those rules, it just chooses not to.