Unfortunately, I see most businesses like to leave two-thirds of all their lights burning after hours, so it might not help that much.
Also, the people that work at those businesses go home and use more electricity then they would have done at work.
In short it is a big waste of time and energy and should be abolished. Actually, I kind of prefer having the extra hours of daylight when I get home from work, so I would prefer fulltime DST, but the alternative is of course to just be off DST all the time and figure out how to get up earlier.
Also the top % of america doesn't often pay much tax. There are enough loopholes...
Loopholes certainly exist. But the vast majority of the deductions taken by wealthy people are not loopholes at all but are purposely written tax code to encourage wealthy people to invest their money in ways that the IRS is confident will lead to them incurring more revenue in the future than if they had just taxed the initial monies.
You can NOT be a Christian and not also be a strict creationist.
That's not possible with what a Christian is and should be. They can't be separated, and if you do, then you aren't truly a Christian.
It's not up to you who is a Christian or not, nor is it up to a sect of Christianity, a denomination, a religion or anybody on this Earth.
I am a Christian. I believe in Creation, but I don't believe that it was necessarily a literal 6 days. If you want to judge whether I am a Christian or not, you have to take it up with God, because the Bible says you will judge angels, but you can't judge me.
Fundamentalists who hold strictly to this viewpoint ignore many other parts of the same tome... for example, the proscription against eating pork or mixing dairy and meat.
Either that, or 1) they read the rest of the Bible, including the part where Peter had a vision where God said it was okay to eat other kinds of meats, or 2) they are not descended from Abraham and are not covered by the rules of Abraham's covenant with God.
Of course there are religions which take into consideration several if not all of your suggestions. Christianity being one among them that believes in the book, in prophets, and in a personal connection to God.
Well, since 90% of the Canadian population lives within 50 miles of the U.S. Border, maybe the U.S. can claim that they are giving Canada all of the good bandwidth. A FALSE claim, but at least one that might make sense if you didn't know better.
I'm not the one redefining words. Theft was theft long before there was a legal definition. The people changing the definition are the people who are affecting the bottom line of corporations, and the people who invest in them, but then declare that they are not doing wrong because they didn't take something physical. They may be a "copyright infringer" in the eyes of the law, but morally they are a thief.
Well, I don't consider it "mugging" that some record company exec wants to charge me $20 for a CD. I don't feel entitled to have it for less than that. It may be worth less than that to me, but in that case, unless I can find it used for the price I am willing to pay, I just don't get the CD. I am not going to call the corporate execs "muggers" and go download it for free off of a P2P site. CDs are fairly cheap to produce and distribute, but when I look at software, I definitely believe that the fact that some people steal software raises the cost of said software for people like me who buy it legally. It is not the execs at software companies that are ripping me off, but people who decide they are entitled to the software, but do not wish to pay the price set by the company.
In the U.S., we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. This means we can chase our dreams, it does not mean we are entitled to obtaining our dreams. We do not have a right to CDs or software at whatever price we decide. If you can't afford it, do without it. I can't afford a new car. That doesn't mean I should go steal one because no one will sell me a new car at the price I wish to pay. It means I have to do without or change what I am willing to pay.
People who steal, be it software, CDs, cars, or personal possessions raise the cost of living for those of us who abide by the law. I have had bikes stolen out of my yard. Perhaps I should have chained them up, right? Well, that is an extra expense that I have to pay because other people choose not to obey the law or respect ownership rights. Perhaps I could not afford both a bike and a chain. Now, the criminal has a bike, and I have none because I can't afford to buy one and stealing someone else's would be illegal and morally wrong. One of the shopkeepers I do business with was murdered in his store for a few hundred dollars in cash. His family had to invest in video cameras, pay his hospital and funeral expenses, and will have to pay for their share of the incarceration of the guy who was, thankfully, caught.
These are extreme examples, but they illustrate the point. People who choose to disobey the law, whether it be murder, or uploading copyrighted material, cause material damage to those of us who choose to obey the law.
I don't know why so many people have so much trouble with these definitions.
Well, my own definitions don't necessarily correspond with the legal definitions of theft. But frankly, I see every immoral act as an act of theft. Putting up the 24 episodes on Youtube was a theft of advertisement revenue. Murder is the theft of life. Stealing is theft of goods. Lying is theft of truth. Some immoral acts are thefts of multiple things: Rape for example physically steals sex, but also steals peace of mind, since of self-image and more.
Obviously, my views don't hold up in court. But in my own little world, everything bad is a theft of something or somethings.
But you don't really think that copyright infringement and mugging share a common moral space, do you?
Copyright infringement is mugging a whole bunch of people (possibly including yourself) a little amount. Just because you spread out your mugging over more people doesn't make it any better in my opinion.
I think you are missing the point of how FOX makes its money.
If you take somebody's money and burn it, instead of using it to buy things for yourself, it is still illegal.
Originally it was brick and mortar retailers, but many of them now have ecommerce sites.
As the owner of a brick and mortar retailer with an associated online store, I am not at all interested in a nationwide sales tax system. As it stands, I have to collect sales tax at my store for the state, and for the city it is based in. For internet orders within my state, I have been told by my taxing authority that I have to collect state sales tax (which I knew already), and also collect tax for the county (if any) and city (if any) that the item is shipped to. There is a conveniently downloadable 17MB zipped file detailing all of the tax zones in my state. Oh, and it changes every quarter.
A flat internet sales tax would be better than having to handle 50 different states' different sales tax rules. However, even easier than that would be to do it the way it already works now. I charge tax in my state, but in other states, the consumer is responsible for their Use Tax.
The only reason I as a retailer would ever push for a nationwide sales tax system is if there already existed a system whereby I as a retailer in a single state had to calculate sales tax for every state as I currently do in my own state. I am aware that large online retailers with presences in many states already do have to calculate this stuff, but they can probably afford the $500/year subscription to the services which will figure out the local sales tax for you.
Of course, as you mention, no one would quit on 4/1. But even if you give notice on 4/16, and work another two weeks, you are not going to get your second quarter bonus, or even 1/3 of it.
I mean a bonus is a bonus, right? So who can complain. Well, really the fact is, that their salary is only competitive when you consider the bonus, which is paid like clockwork, quarter after quarter. No one would work there, if they were only guaranteed the base pay.
it's pretty unusual to axe health coverage on the day that you quit. Health insurance typically operates on the first of the month. They should have canceled you on the following 1st.
Even worse, the company was using an outsourcing service to handle their payroll, and the job I took 1 day later was using the SAME outsourcing service, and they promised my insurance would roll over. In fact, it did not roll over, and I was without insurance for 1.75 months. On the plus side, I was alos without an insurance payment for 1.5 months.
For one, the moon gets pounded with, depending on sources, 70 to 150 measurable (from Earth), meteorite impacts. This is not bad considering the area of the moon, but much worse than, say Earth, which at least has an appreciable atmosphere to break down large rocks to dust before impact. I see no mention in the article of how they are going to mitigate this risk in a moon base.
Secondly, we have no vehicle capable of reaching the moon. We have lost the technology to build a rocket such as the Saturn V, we do not have the blueprints or the parts available to build such a rocket, safety regulations would not allow us to build it if we DID have the parts, and our short-sighted investors in the United States will not stand for research into building such a rocket, unless it could be made profitable within 90 days, which is impossible.
This is just somebody's wet dream. It won't happen until our society developes the ability to think past the next 3 months.
And for the slot that gets stomped on by football? A couple things come to mind....
I vote they just write the script for football games better so that they will always fit in their allotted timeframe.
Either that or always pad the length of the game, and adjust the amount of time that the reminiscing ex-football players prattle on after the game is over, such that the next scheduled show can always start on time.
"In the United States, the standard employment contract is considered to be at-will meaning that the employer and employee are both free to terminate the employment at any time and for any cause, or for no cause at all."
At my last job, they had this clause specifically stated and indicated that they could fire me at any time for any reason or no reason. Then it said I could quit for no reason as well. It followed this up by saying that out of courtesy, I should give them two weeks notice before quitting. Nowhere did I see that out of courtesy they would give me any notice at all.
One day, for any reason or no reason, they fired 6 or 7 of my coworkers, and gave them no notice.
So, I quit. They called me up, told me how unprofessional I was ofr giving no notice, asked me to continue working for them to fulfill my obligation, etc, etc. In the end, I stuck to my guns and gave them the same notice they gave my coworkers, and would have given me. So they punished me by stealing my earned PTO and by canceling my insurance effective that day, but making me pay for a regular two week cycle of insurance.
Two jobs ago I worked at a place where about 25% of your pay was in the form of a quarterly bonus. The bonus was always the same amount and you could count on it like clockwork (+/- a few dollars probably for legal reasons. Also, sucked trying to get a car or home loan). And you didn't get your bonus until halfway through the next month. This was used to screw people over when they quit. You could work like a dog all through quarter one, then give two weeks notice on April 1, and you got no bonus, none, for the 1st quarter.
I had a friend who got double screwed there. They announced that all employees as of 12/31 would be getting an end-of-year bonus which would be paid in March. He quit in February, got no first quarter bonus (of course), and got no prior end-of-year bonus.
Clearly this bonus was not reflective of the actual work performed during the quarter, but was a punitive tool to make it financially difficult to seek other work.
It's required in every state that they pay you for accrued vacation/PTO/etc. For non-accrued leave, you need not be paid.
My last employer (in Oklahoma) did not pay me for my accrued Paid Time Off, and they also cancelled my medical insurance the day that I quit, but still pulled the usual medical amount out of my last paycheck.
Why tax it at all?
Unless I'm missing something, somebody paid tax to buy said item as a prize
You have a good point. If I were King, I would try to avoid double taxation. In the current system in the U.S., people generally think that they can not pay taxes on something if it has already been taxed, but that is not the case at all. Multiple taxations are commonplace. People think that they do not have to pay sales tax on the items they sold at a garage sale because they already paid the full sales tax when they bought the item originally. But this is not true in most states. If an item goes from garage sale to garage sale to garage sale, according to the letter of the law, it should have sales tax withheld each time.
When you invest money that you already paid income taxes on, and it produces a return, then you have to pay tax on it.
My company hypes the fact that my medical and dental benefits are paid (by me) pre-tax, but this is not true. It is pre income tax, but I still have to pay social security and medicare tax on it, and those together add up to about 7%.
The U.S. is commonly known for having on e of the lowest tax rates among the first world nations, but when you add up ALL of the taxes, not just income tax, then it reveals itself as not such a great rate after all.
If you win a car in a church raffle in the US, you must pay applicable taxes on the prize.
At least with a car, there is an MSRP that says what it is worth. Of course, no one in their right mind pays MSRP for a car. Now, for a trip to space, when they value it at umpteen million dollars, where is the comparison to find out what it is really worth? Sure, some millionaire might pay $25 million for it, but how much would the average Joe pay. Or in my case, how much would they have to pay me to get me to go?
I think in some cicrumstances, the IRS demands up front payment for prize winnings. I have seen circumstances where a prize winner was forced to sell his prize in order to pay the taxes on it, and I have seen other cicrumstances where prize winners were unable to accept the prize because he would have to immediately pay the taxes. I am not sure what the distinction is. If I were King, I would make it a requirement to pay tax on cash prizes immediately (actually estimaed taxes at quarter end, because I'm a nice guy), because cash is cash, and goods have to be sold to turn into cash. I think it would be more fair that way. At least someone of limited means could still win a huge prize, and get to keep the cash equivalent of 2/3 of it.
I am convinced part of the marketing of the green car is to make it look distinctive so that the owner thinks other people will notice it is an electric car and, in his mind anyway, think he is a great soicially conscious person.
I think that the fact that they are butt-ugly also is to feed the ego of the buyer. "Look, in order to save the planet, I have to make sacrifices. Look at how much I sacrifice by driving a butt ugly car in order to save the environment."
So like far too many car purchases, it is all about ego and sense of self-worth.
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Unfortunately, I see most businesses like to leave two-thirds of all their lights burning after hours, so it might not help that much.
Also, the people that work at those businesses go home and use more electricity then they would have done at work.
In short it is a big waste of time and energy and should be abolished. Actually, I kind of prefer having the extra hours of daylight when I get home from work, so I would prefer fulltime DST, but the alternative is of course to just be off DST all the time and figure out how to get up earlier.
Also the top % of america doesn't often pay much tax. There are enough loopholes...
Loopholes certainly exist. But the vast majority of the deductions taken by wealthy people are not loopholes at all but are purposely written tax code to encourage wealthy people to invest their money in ways that the IRS is confident will lead to them incurring more revenue in the future than if they had just taxed the initial monies.
It's not up to you who is a Christian or not, nor is it up to a sect of Christianity, a denomination, a religion or anybody on this Earth.
I am a Christian. I believe in Creation, but I don't believe that it was necessarily a literal 6 days. If you want to judge whether I am a Christian or not, you have to take it up with God, because the Bible says you will judge angels, but you can't judge me.
Fundamentalists who hold strictly to this viewpoint ignore many other parts of the same tome... for example, the proscription against eating pork or mixing dairy and meat.
Either that, or 1) they read the rest of the Bible, including the part where Peter had a vision where God said it was okay to eat other kinds of meats, or 2) they are not descended from Abraham and are not covered by the rules of Abraham's covenant with God.
Of course there are religions which take into consideration several if not all of your suggestions. Christianity being one among them that believes in the book, in prophets, and in a personal connection to God.
Well, since 90% of the Canadian population lives within 50 miles of the U.S. Border, maybe the U.S. can claim that they are giving Canada all of the good bandwidth. A FALSE claim, but at least one that might make sense if you didn't know better.
I'm not the one redefining words. Theft was theft long before there was a legal definition. The people changing the definition are the people who are affecting the bottom line of corporations, and the people who invest in them, but then declare that they are not doing wrong because they didn't take something physical. They may be a "copyright infringer" in the eyes of the law, but morally they are a thief.
Well, I don't consider it "mugging" that some record company exec wants to charge me $20 for a CD. I don't feel entitled to have it for less than that. It may be worth less than that to me, but in that case, unless I can find it used for the price I am willing to pay, I just don't get the CD. I am not going to call the corporate execs "muggers" and go download it for free off of a P2P site. CDs are fairly cheap to produce and distribute, but when I look at software, I definitely believe that the fact that some people steal software raises the cost of said software for people like me who buy it legally. It is not the execs at software companies that are ripping me off, but people who decide they are entitled to the software, but do not wish to pay the price set by the company.
In the U.S., we have the right to the pursuit of happiness. This means we can chase our dreams, it does not mean we are entitled to obtaining our dreams. We do not have a right to CDs or software at whatever price we decide. If you can't afford it, do without it. I can't afford a new car. That doesn't mean I should go steal one because no one will sell me a new car at the price I wish to pay. It means I have to do without or change what I am willing to pay.
People who steal, be it software, CDs, cars, or personal possessions raise the cost of living for those of us who abide by the law. I have had bikes stolen out of my yard. Perhaps I should have chained them up, right? Well, that is an extra expense that I have to pay because other people choose not to obey the law or respect ownership rights. Perhaps I could not afford both a bike and a chain. Now, the criminal has a bike, and I have none because I can't afford to buy one and stealing someone else's would be illegal and morally wrong.
One of the shopkeepers I do business with was murdered in his store for a few hundred dollars in cash. His family had to invest in video cameras, pay his hospital and funeral expenses, and will have to pay for their share of the incarceration of the guy who was, thankfully, caught.
These are extreme examples, but they illustrate the point. People who choose to disobey the law, whether it be murder, or uploading copyrighted material, cause material damage to those of us who choose to obey the law.
I don't know why so many people have so much trouble with these definitions.
Well, my own definitions don't necessarily correspond with the legal definitions of theft. But frankly, I see every immoral act as an act of theft. Putting up the 24 episodes on Youtube was a theft of advertisement revenue. Murder is the theft of life. Stealing is theft of goods. Lying is theft of truth. Some immoral acts are thefts of multiple things: Rape for example physically steals sex, but also steals peace of mind, since of self-image and more.
Obviously, my views don't hold up in court. But in my own little world, everything bad is a theft of something or somethings.
But you don't really think that copyright infringement and mugging share a common moral space, do you?
Copyright infringement is mugging a whole bunch of people (possibly including yourself) a little amount. Just because you spread out your mugging over more people doesn't make it any better in my opinion.
I think you are missing the point of how FOX makes its money.
If you take somebody's money and burn it, instead of using it to buy things for yourself, it is still illegal.
Did he also return the advertising revenue resulting from the reduced viewership?
Originally it was brick and mortar retailers, but many of them now have ecommerce sites.
As the owner of a brick and mortar retailer with an associated online store, I am not at all interested in a nationwide sales tax system. As it stands, I have to collect sales tax at my store for the state, and for the city it is based in. For internet orders within my state, I have been told by my taxing authority that I have to collect state sales tax (which I knew already), and also collect tax for the county (if any) and city (if any) that the item is shipped to. There is a conveniently downloadable 17MB zipped file detailing all of the tax zones in my state. Oh, and it changes every quarter.
A flat internet sales tax would be better than having to handle 50 different states' different sales tax rules. However, even easier than that would be to do it the way it already works now. I charge tax in my state, but in other states, the consumer is responsible for their Use Tax.
The only reason I as a retailer would ever push for a nationwide sales tax system is if there already existed a system whereby I as a retailer in a single state had to calculate sales tax for every state as I currently do in my own state. I am aware that large online retailers with presences in many states already do have to calculate this stuff, but they can probably afford the $500/year subscription to the services which will figure out the local sales tax for you.
Of course, as you mention, no one would quit on 4/1. But even if you give notice on 4/16, and work another two weeks, you are not going to get your second quarter bonus, or even 1/3 of it.
I mean a bonus is a bonus, right? So who can complain. Well, really the fact is, that their salary is only competitive when you consider the bonus, which is paid like clockwork, quarter after quarter. No one would work there, if they were only guaranteed the base pay.
it's pretty unusual to axe health coverage on the day that you quit. Health insurance typically operates on the first of the month. They should have canceled you on the following 1st.
Even worse, the company was using an outsourcing service to handle their payroll, and the job I took 1 day later was using the SAME outsourcing service, and they promised my insurance would roll over. In fact, it did not roll over, and I was without insurance for 1.75 months. On the plus side, I was alos without an insurance payment for 1.5 months.
For one, the moon gets pounded with, depending on sources, 70 to 150 measurable (from Earth), meteorite impacts. This is not bad considering the area of the moon, but much worse than, say Earth, which at least has an appreciable atmosphere to break down large rocks to dust before impact. I see no mention in the article of how they are going to mitigate this risk in a moon base.
Secondly, we have no vehicle capable of reaching the moon. We have lost the technology to build a rocket such as the Saturn V, we do not have the blueprints or the parts available to build such a rocket, safety regulations would not allow us to build it if we DID have the parts, and our short-sighted investors in the United States will not stand for research into building such a rocket, unless it could be made profitable within 90 days, which is impossible.
This is just somebody's wet dream. It won't happen until our society developes the ability to think past the next 3 months.
And for the slot that gets stomped on by football? A couple things come to mind....
I vote they just write the script for football games better so that they will always fit in their allotted timeframe.
Either that or always pad the length of the game, and adjust the amount of time that the reminiscing ex-football players prattle on after the game is over, such that the next scheduled show can always start on time.
Yes. Stop asking.
"In the United States, the standard employment contract is considered to be at-will meaning that the employer and employee are both free to terminate the employment at any time and for any cause, or for no cause at all."
At my last job, they had this clause specifically stated and indicated that they could fire me at any time for any reason or no reason. Then it said I could quit for no reason as well. It followed this up by saying that out of courtesy, I should give them two weeks notice before quitting. Nowhere did I see that out of courtesy they would give me any notice at all.
One day, for any reason or no reason, they fired 6 or 7 of my coworkers, and gave them no notice.
So, I quit. They called me up, told me how unprofessional I was ofr giving no notice, asked me to continue working for them to fulfill my obligation, etc, etc. In the end, I stuck to my guns and gave them the same notice they gave my coworkers, and would have given me. So they punished me by stealing my earned PTO and by canceling my insurance effective that day, but making me pay for a regular two week cycle of insurance.
Two jobs ago I worked at a place where about 25% of your pay was in the form of a quarterly bonus. The bonus was always the same amount and you could count on it like clockwork (+/- a few dollars probably for legal reasons. Also, sucked trying to get a car or home loan). And you didn't get your bonus until halfway through the next month. This was used to screw people over when they quit. You could work like a dog all through quarter one, then give two weeks notice on April 1, and you got no bonus, none, for the 1st quarter.
I had a friend who got double screwed there. They announced that all employees as of 12/31 would be getting an end-of-year bonus which would be paid in March. He quit in February, got no first quarter bonus (of course), and got no prior end-of-year bonus.
Clearly this bonus was not reflective of the actual work performed during the quarter, but was a punitive tool to make it financially difficult to seek other work.
It's required in every state that they pay you for accrued vacation/PTO/etc. For non-accrued leave, you need not be paid.
My last employer (in Oklahoma) did not pay me for my accrued Paid Time Off, and they also cancelled my medical insurance the day that I quit, but still pulled the usual medical amount out of my last paycheck.
Why tax it at all? Unless I'm missing something, somebody paid tax to buy said item as a prize
You have a good point. If I were King, I would try to avoid double taxation. In the current system in the U.S., people generally think that they can not pay taxes on something if it has already been taxed, but that is not the case at all. Multiple taxations are commonplace. People think that they do not have to pay sales tax on the items they sold at a garage sale because they already paid the full sales tax when they bought the item originally. But this is not true in most states. If an item goes from garage sale to garage sale to garage sale, according to the letter of the law, it should have sales tax withheld each time.
When you invest money that you already paid income taxes on, and it produces a return, then you have to pay tax on it.
My company hypes the fact that my medical and dental benefits are paid (by me) pre-tax, but this is not true. It is pre income tax, but I still have to pay social security and medicare tax on it, and those together add up to about 7%.
The U.S. is commonly known for having on e of the lowest tax rates among the first world nations, but when you add up ALL of the taxes, not just income tax, then it reveals itself as not such a great rate after all.
If you win a car in a church raffle in the US, you must pay applicable taxes on the prize.
At least with a car, there is an MSRP that says what it is worth. Of course, no one in their right mind pays MSRP for a car. Now, for a trip to space, when they value it at umpteen million dollars, where is the comparison to find out what it is really worth? Sure, some millionaire might pay $25 million for it, but how much would the average Joe pay. Or in my case, how much would they have to pay me to get me to go?
I think in some cicrumstances, the IRS demands up front payment for prize winnings. I have seen circumstances where a prize winner was forced to sell his prize in order to pay the taxes on it, and I have seen other cicrumstances where prize winners were unable to accept the prize because he would have to immediately pay the taxes. I am not sure what the distinction is. If I were King, I would make it a requirement to pay tax on cash prizes immediately (actually estimaed taxes at quarter end, because I'm a nice guy), because cash is cash, and goods have to be sold to turn into cash. I think it would be more fair that way. At least someone of limited means could still win a huge prize, and get to keep the cash equivalent of 2/3 of it.
I'm sure you can find plenty here *looks around nervously*
Nice try, but we've all seen Zap Brannigan's website.
I am convinced part of the marketing of the green car is to make it look distinctive so that the owner thinks other people will notice it is an electric car and, in his mind anyway, think he is a great soicially conscious person.
I think that the fact that they are butt-ugly also is to feed the ego of the buyer. "Look, in order to save the planet, I have to make sacrifices. Look at how much I sacrifice by driving a butt ugly car in order to save the environment."
So like far too many car purchases, it is all about ego and sense of self-worth.