That you consider 40k a year to be remotely near the threshold for "poor" clearly shows you have no concept of how poor people in this country really live.
I never said $40K a year was the threshold for poor.
The only ones worried about losing tax on interest are guys who can actually see significant interest gains on things other than retirement accounts.
Or they are people who would like to see society encourage people to save money. I think people making less than $40K a year should pay NO taxes. The money they keep they could save or invest. Savings becomes wealth. Fastest way out of being poor is not having your entire income absorbed by rent and taxes.
They were shut down, however, because they were not licensed to serve food publicly. And getting a license was not straightforward or cheap, I am told.
One news camera and they'd be back up and running with donations from all over the world the next day.
You're assuming that there'll be a significant cut in personal taxes to compensate for the new tax.
VAT replaces the income tax. No tax cut. Tax repealed.
Trust me on this: the poor will lose out by such a system.
Why? Every taxpayer would get about a 15% top-line raise. With some planning, poor people could live tax-free perpetually. By saving the difference, they would eventually be able to get out of what makes them poor: rent, credit cards and taxes.
Okay, those statements should cause this to be modded troll right off the bat.
Really?
People buy houses to LIVE IN.
They could rent.
but the equity is the thing, not the freaking tax benefit.
The ability to deduct six figures in interest from taxes isn't important?
People start IRA's to retire someday
They start IRAs to move a portion of their income to the "tax-free" column.
That has been amply shown over the last 50 years as savings have dwindled and dwindled and the economy surges.
And health care costs consumer interest rates and real estate prices skyrocket. Factories close and wages stagnate. Job security and pensions disappear. Masses of people racking up DVDs and plasma televisions on their maxed credit cards is not a good thing to base economic growth on.
Economic growth is BUILDING products. Savings becomes wealth. Debt becomes bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, you're assuming the poor have anything left for savings. Hello? We're talking about the POOR here - by definition they don't have as much money
Because they are overtaxed. Poor people could live entirely tax free with a little planning. Why do we tax the poor at all? For all the talk about progressive taxes, why do we still force minimum wage earners to fill out a W-4? Why do we force part-time employees and students to pay income tax?
The best thing for the poor is a gradiated income tax, which is exactly what we have.
The best thing for the poor is the ability to create wealth. Savings becomes wealth.
Flat taxes & VATs will always have a disproportionate effect on low-income citizens.
Yes, but the key difference is that a VAT is voluntary. Low-income citizens can avoid high taxation by saving and investing.
Unfortunately, the savings you envision from reduced paper work is a figment of your imagination.
Do you have any idea how expensive the record-keeping and filing requirements are for even a simple business? It is easily costing $50 billion a year just to file tax returns. Easily.
Consumption taxes (VATs) merely shift the burden of paperwork from the Government to the businesses.
Right, and the paperwork required for a VAT is a fraction of what is required for payroll, corporate, partnership, inventory, depreciation, workman's compensation, and sales taxes.
Until the taxes are paid. $40K gross = $22K net after all taxes. Then rent and food takes the rest.
Thats why VATs are evil- they hurt those that make the least
A VAT would benefit those who save the most. It would encourage people to save. Savings are good. Savings are houses and college educations (even though education is worthless in this society right now). Savings are retirement and entrepreneurial businesses.
ANd making taxes VAT based would help this how?
Because it would remove the tax on interest from savings, which would encourage people to save money. A savings account would become a tax-advantaged account, just like a municipal bond or an IRA. All investments: Certificates of Deposit, Stocks, All types of bonds, Mutual Funds, REITs, all of them would become tax-advantaged. It would balance the debt problem because people would start putting more of their income into savings and investment. It would balance the retirement problem. It would solve a huge number of major problems.
It would also remove capital gains taxes, and taxes on dividends (which is a double tax). It would remove payroll taxes, utility taxes, excise tax, inventory taxes, depreciation, corporate earnings taxes and the various taxes on real estate, all of which would enormously benefit small businesses as well as individuals, which would lead to job growth.
The federal government doesn't set savings account rates, the individual banks do.
That's not the point. By taxing the interest earned from savings, the government is discouraging people from saving money. The prevailing loan rates determine the savings interest rates. Banks must maintain a certain margin between how much they can loan at and how much they can afford to pay depositors. When loan rates drop, savings rates must drop in order to maintain that margin. Loan rates are still reasonably low, which is why savings rates are also very low.
However, if interest on savings is no longer taxed, money will begin to move into interest-bearing accounts, which will cause banks to compete for the business and which will therefore cause rates to rise. Depositors will get a double benefit because of the tax advantage.
people aren't going to give up their tendency for immediate gratification because they can put it in a saving account for 1 or 2%, even if that was over inflation.
People put money into savings accounts all the time now. Every major commercial bank offers a simple passbook savings account product. Most of them are sold as "reserve" accounts for a checking account, but they all pay interest. Savings are better than debt.
If the gov't no longer taxes savings, then they either have to A) cut spending, B) create Debt, or C) move the tax elsewhere.
They don't tax savings. They tax the interest earned from savings. Of course, nobody has a savings account any more because they are pointless. Savings should be encouraged. Not taxed.
They should also move the tax elsewhere, to purchases. The amount of time and money this country spends doing "tax preparation" is totally ridiculous. 18% on all purchases. No deductions. Government has revenue. Country saves $50 billion a year in time and effort for tax preparation. All taxpayers get a huge income increase.
is that the AMT has been pulling in more and more tax revenue from people lower on the economic totem pole.
The Alternative Minimum Tax was probably invented to "tax the rich" too.
One major problem here- poor people don't make enough money to save.
Poor people pay high taxes. That's why they can't save. Why do people making less than $40,000 a year pay income tax at all? Want to know the most overtaxed person in this country? A single male age 25. They get ZERO tax breaks.
This would mean it lowers taxes as a percent of income on the rich, and raises it on the poor.
The purpose of taxes is to provide revenue to operate the government. It is not to tax rich people and reduce tax on poor people. Taxing this group but not that group is why taxes are a mess. One tax. 18% on purchases, paid by businesses. Just the time savings from not having 300 million people file every year would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
Furthermore, the idea that a VAT tax would effect savings rate is ludicrous even at face value. Why is the fact that savings are taxed effect savings rate?
For the same reason the home mortgage deduction encourages home ownership. Taxing something discourages it. Simple rule of economics. Right now a savings account is utterly 100% pointless. The savings rate is less than 1%. Not even half of inflation. On top of that, all interest from savings is taxed. Why, there's even a special form for it! So a savings account right now is a net loss no matter how much is saved. Not the best way to encourage savings.
Even under a VAT tax, when you do eventually spend its taxed. Now or later, it doesn't make a difference.
Then whether the taxpayer is "rich" or not shouldn't matter.
Well, let's see how good the current tax system is for poor people:
1. Rent = zero deductions 2. Savings = all interest taxed 3. Medical expenses = not deductible unless high minimum reached 4. Car repairs = not deductible 5. Wages = taxed before they are received 6. Consumer interest = not deductible, even though it is ten times higher than when it WAS deductible 7. Gas and Utilities = taxed two and three times
Basically, poor people are taxed and taxed and TAXED with the current system. Now, why would a VAT be better? One simple reason: Savings would no longer be taxed. Ever. When something isn't taxed, people use it. Why do people buy houses? To get the mortgage deduction. Why do people start IRAs? To get the deduction.
With a VAT, only money that is spent is taxed. Savings levels would skyrocket, it would put more money back into the hands of taxpayers, and that would dramatically decrease the current debt problems most people have. Anything that encourages savings is always a good thing. Always.
I'm a business owner and I am free to stay put with my 3 experienced engineers and zero apprentices. I can make the free and voluntary choice to run my business that way.
Yep. Someone else can pay to train your engineers.
I personally know quite a number of people with M.S. degrees and I wouldn't hire them.
Well good for you.
is getting a M.S. degree (which is well and good)
No it isn't. What's the fucking point? Stop the bullshit. M.S. degree don't mean shit and nobody gives a fuck how much education someone has. Just say it.
It is very simple folks. If you have no real world experience you deserve nothing more than an entry level position.
So drop those books and take that temp job. Nobody cares about your degree.
Should someone with a Masters degree be paid for having spent another couple of years becoming more educated, instead of spending those years getting job experience?
Yep. Otherwise we should stop bullshitting people about how important education is.
Just because person A has a higher education than person B does not make person A more valuable in the real world.
Everyone comes running when they hear "education is important." They come running to shout "degrees suck! Nobody cares about your worthless degree!"
Moreover, a graduate degree in no way *entitles* them to anything (anybody with an entitlement, "the world owes me a living" mentality is a loser in my book).
Fine. Then let's stop horseshitting everyone about how much we value education. Fair enough?
In IT, talk is cheap.
Jobs are cheap.
You can have all the educational background in the world, but if you aren't up on the technology some company is using, you're worthless to them.
Yep, that's about right. Education is worthless. Just say it. Don't need all the extra words.
So why should they hire you?
I didn't fucking ask them to hire me. I learned a while ago that there ain't no fucking jobs in this fucking economy.
Because you're smart? Who cares
I didn't fucking ask anybody to care either.
other people who are sufficiently-smart can do the job that you presently cannot. The manager thus picks them over you.
Yep. Of course they could train people to do the job, but that only works for astronauts.
Step out of the grad school office and enter the real world sometime.
I've been building it better and faster ever since the last lying rat fuck powdered-donut hairpiece chair-molded asscrack cheat fucked me out of a paycheck. I've never seen a grad school. I've done jobs faster and better than any ten of my former "co-workers." I don't spend my work day talking about golf next to the air conditioner.
If education is worthless, it's not the employers who made it so.
Oh yes it is. "My company passed up plenty of Master's Degrees" = education worthless.
Either we reward people for making the sacrifice to get a degree or there won't be any degrees. Simple choice. We're choosing, as a society, to devalue education on purpose.
What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?
1. Five years of experience. 2. A perfect employment history with no gaps of more than a weekend. 3. Willingness to work 80 hour weeks perpetually 4. WIllingness to work without benefits, overtime or vacation. 5. Being a team player, which means "agree even when the team is wrong" 6. Work for half pay. 7. Work those 80 hour weeks as a temp 8. Perfect credit 9. No family (too many non-company obligations) 10. Permarenter (so the company can relocate at will)
All ten or it's a guaranteed layoff within 60 days. It's that simple.
Slashdot Mirror
That does not in any way say what these "fine arts" people earn.
They all make minimum wage. Every single one.
Really? Do the jobs have:
1. Pension benefit
2. Paid vacation
3. Full insurance
Career job? Will it pay off a mortgage? Guaranteed contract?
If not, it's not a real job. Could be hired Monday and unemployed by Thursday. Meaningless.
Fine arts people, for the most part, don't make rent
Motion Pictures + Video Games + Anime/Manga = $22 billion a year.
That's just in the U.S. Then we can add Japan, Europe and Austraila.
That you consider 40k a year to be remotely near the threshold for "poor" clearly shows you have no concept of how poor people in this country really live.
I never said $40K a year was the threshold for poor.
The only ones worried about losing tax on interest are guys who can actually see significant interest gains on things other than retirement accounts.
Or they are people who would like to see society encourage people to save money. I think people making less than $40K a year should pay NO taxes. The money they keep they could save or invest. Savings becomes wealth. Fastest way out of being poor is not having your entire income absorbed by rent and taxes.
I could swear AT&T and IBM made some pretty important contributions to advancing civilization.
100 years ago. Telling the average middle management fuck "I've got a great idea" goes straight to voice mail while they move to the salad course.
They were shut down, however, because they were not licensed to serve food publicly. And getting a license was not straightforward or cheap, I am told.
One news camera and they'd be back up and running with donations from all over the world the next day.
And by the way if you feed starving people you get (guess what?) more kids!
Yeah? What's the birth rate in Japan these days?
are we seeing the fabled instance of revolutionary technology coming not from the big corporations
Inventions do not come from corporations. The modern workplace is simply incompatible with entrepreneurial thought. Period.
You're assuming that there'll be a significant cut in personal taxes to compensate for the new tax.
VAT replaces the income tax. No tax cut. Tax repealed.
Trust me on this: the poor will lose out by such a system.
Why? Every taxpayer would get about a 15% top-line raise. With some planning, poor people could live tax-free perpetually. By saving the difference, they would eventually be able to get out of what makes them poor: rent, credit cards and taxes.
Okay, those statements should cause this to be modded troll right off the bat.
Really?
People buy houses to LIVE IN.
They could rent.
but the equity is the thing, not the freaking tax benefit.
The ability to deduct six figures in interest from taxes isn't important?
People start IRA's to retire someday
They start IRAs to move a portion of their income to the "tax-free" column.
That has been amply shown over the last 50 years as savings have dwindled and dwindled and the economy surges.
And health care costs consumer interest rates and real estate prices skyrocket. Factories close and wages stagnate. Job security and pensions disappear. Masses of people racking up DVDs and plasma televisions on their maxed credit cards is not a good thing to base economic growth on.
Economic growth is BUILDING products. Savings becomes wealth. Debt becomes bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, you're assuming the poor have anything left for savings. Hello? We're talking about the POOR here - by definition they don't have as much money
Because they are overtaxed. Poor people could live entirely tax free with a little planning. Why do we tax the poor at all? For all the talk about progressive taxes, why do we still force minimum wage earners to fill out a W-4? Why do we force part-time employees and students to pay income tax?
The best thing for the poor is a gradiated income tax, which is exactly what we have.
The best thing for the poor is the ability to create wealth. Savings becomes wealth.
Flat taxes & VATs will always have a disproportionate effect on low-income citizens.
Yes, but the key difference is that a VAT is voluntary. Low-income citizens can avoid high taxation by saving and investing.
Unfortunately, the savings you envision from reduced paper work is a figment of your imagination.
Do you have any idea how expensive the record-keeping and filing requirements are for even a simple business? It is easily costing $50 billion a year just to file tax returns. Easily.
Consumption taxes (VATs) merely shift the burden of paperwork from the Government to the businesses.
Right, and the paperwork required for a VAT is a fraction of what is required for payroll, corporate, partnership, inventory, depreciation, workman's compensation, and sales taxes.
If you're making 40K/yr, you're hardly poor.
Until the taxes are paid. $40K gross = $22K net after all taxes. Then rent and food takes the rest.
Thats why VATs are evil- they hurt those that make the least
A VAT would benefit those who save the most. It would encourage people to save. Savings are good. Savings are houses and college educations (even though education is worthless in this society right now). Savings are retirement and entrepreneurial businesses.
ANd making taxes VAT based would help this how?
Because it would remove the tax on interest from savings, which would encourage people to save money. A savings account would become a tax-advantaged account, just like a municipal bond or an IRA. All investments: Certificates of Deposit, Stocks, All types of bonds, Mutual Funds, REITs, all of them would become tax-advantaged. It would balance the debt problem because people would start putting more of their income into savings and investment. It would balance the retirement problem. It would solve a huge number of major problems.
It would also remove capital gains taxes, and taxes on dividends (which is a double tax). It would remove payroll taxes, utility taxes, excise tax, inventory taxes, depreciation, corporate earnings taxes and the various taxes on real estate, all of which would enormously benefit small businesses as well as individuals, which would lead to job growth.
The federal government doesn't set savings account rates, the individual banks do.
That's not the point. By taxing the interest earned from savings, the government is discouraging people from saving money. The prevailing loan rates determine the savings interest rates. Banks must maintain a certain margin between how much they can loan at and how much they can afford to pay depositors. When loan rates drop, savings rates must drop in order to maintain that margin. Loan rates are still reasonably low, which is why savings rates are also very low.
However, if interest on savings is no longer taxed, money will begin to move into interest-bearing accounts, which will cause banks to compete for the business and which will therefore cause rates to rise. Depositors will get a double benefit because of the tax advantage.
people aren't going to give up their tendency for immediate gratification because they can put it in a saving account for 1 or 2%, even if that was over inflation.
People put money into savings accounts all the time now. Every major commercial bank offers a simple passbook savings account product. Most of them are sold as "reserve" accounts for a checking account, but they all pay interest. Savings are better than debt.
If the gov't no longer taxes savings, then they either have to A) cut spending, B) create Debt, or C) move the tax elsewhere.
They don't tax savings. They tax the interest earned from savings. Of course, nobody has a savings account any more because they are pointless. Savings should be encouraged. Not taxed.
They should also move the tax elsewhere, to purchases. The amount of time and money this country spends doing "tax preparation" is totally ridiculous. 18% on all purchases. No deductions. Government has revenue. Country saves $50 billion a year in time and effort for tax preparation. All taxpayers get a huge income increase.
is that the AMT has been pulling in more and more tax revenue from people lower on the economic totem pole.
The Alternative Minimum Tax was probably invented to "tax the rich" too.
One major problem here- poor people don't make enough money to save.
Poor people pay high taxes. That's why they can't save. Why do people making less than $40,000 a year pay income tax at all? Want to know the most overtaxed person in this country? A single male age 25. They get ZERO tax breaks.
This would mean it lowers taxes as a percent of income on the rich, and raises it on the poor.
The purpose of taxes is to provide revenue to operate the government. It is not to tax rich people and reduce tax on poor people. Taxing this group but not that group is why taxes are a mess. One tax. 18% on purchases, paid by businesses. Just the time savings from not having 300 million people file every year would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
Furthermore, the idea that a VAT tax would effect savings rate is ludicrous even at face value. Why is the fact that savings are taxed effect savings rate?
For the same reason the home mortgage deduction encourages home ownership. Taxing something discourages it. Simple rule of economics. Right now a savings account is utterly 100% pointless. The savings rate is less than 1%. Not even half of inflation. On top of that, all interest from savings is taxed. Why, there's even a special form for it! So a savings account right now is a net loss no matter how much is saved. Not the best way to encourage savings.
Even under a VAT tax, when you do eventually spend its taxed. Now or later, it doesn't make a difference.
Then whether the taxpayer is "rich" or not shouldn't matter.
and then move to a Value Added Tax system.
poor people that it'd be good for them.
Well, let's see how good the current tax system is for poor people:
1. Rent = zero deductions
2. Savings = all interest taxed
3. Medical expenses = not deductible unless high minimum reached
4. Car repairs = not deductible
5. Wages = taxed before they are received
6. Consumer interest = not deductible, even though it is ten times higher than when it WAS deductible
7. Gas and Utilities = taxed two and three times
Basically, poor people are taxed and taxed and TAXED with the current system. Now, why would a VAT be better? One simple reason: Savings would no longer be taxed. Ever. When something isn't taxed, people use it. Why do people buy houses? To get the mortgage deduction. Why do people start IRAs? To get the deduction.
With a VAT, only money that is spent is taxed. Savings levels would skyrocket, it would put more money back into the hands of taxpayers, and that would dramatically decrease the current debt problems most people have. Anything that encourages savings is always a good thing. Always.
they were looking for a quick path to money, rather than doing something that they felt was worthwhile.
Maybe they just wanted a job to pay the bills.
I'm a business owner and I am free to stay put with my 3 experienced engineers and zero apprentices. I can make the free and voluntary choice to run my business that way.
Yep. Someone else can pay to train your engineers.
I personally know quite a number of people with M.S. degrees and I wouldn't hire them.
Well good for you.
is getting a M.S. degree (which is well and good)
No it isn't. What's the fucking point? Stop the bullshit. M.S. degree don't mean shit and nobody gives a fuck how much education someone has. Just say it.
It is very simple folks. If you have no real world experience you deserve nothing more than an entry level position.
So drop those books and take that temp job. Nobody cares about your degree.
Should someone with a Masters degree be paid for having spent another couple of years becoming more educated, instead of spending those years getting job experience?
Yep. Otherwise we should stop bullshitting people about how important education is.
Just because person A has a higher education than person B does not make person A more valuable in the real world.
Everyone comes running when they hear "education is important." They come running to shout "degrees suck! Nobody cares about your worthless degree!"
Moreover, a graduate degree in no way *entitles* them to anything (anybody with an entitlement, "the world owes me a living" mentality is a loser in my book).
Fine. Then let's stop horseshitting everyone about how much we value education. Fair enough?
In IT, talk is cheap.
Jobs are cheap.
You can have all the educational background in the world, but if you aren't up on the technology some company is using, you're worthless to them.
Yep, that's about right. Education is worthless. Just say it. Don't need all the extra words.
So why should they hire you?
I didn't fucking ask them to hire me. I learned a while ago that there ain't no fucking jobs in this fucking economy.
Because you're smart? Who cares
I didn't fucking ask anybody to care either.
other people who are sufficiently-smart can do the job that you presently cannot. The manager thus picks them over you.
Yep. Of course they could train people to do the job, but that only works for astronauts.
Step out of the grad school office and enter the real world sometime.
I've been building it better and faster ever since the last lying rat fuck powdered-donut hairpiece chair-molded asscrack cheat fucked me out of a paycheck. I've never seen a grad school. I've done jobs faster and better than any ten of my former "co-workers." I don't spend my work day talking about golf next to the air conditioner.
Theory without practice is pointless
Just say it. Education is worthless.
If education is worthless, it's not the employers who made it so.
Oh yes it is. "My company passed up plenty of Master's Degrees" = education worthless.
Either we reward people for making the sacrifice to get a degree or there won't be any degrees. Simple choice. We're choosing, as a society, to devalue education on purpose.
My company has passed up plenty of people who have applied that had Master's Degrees in Computer Science and little to no experience in the field.
Thanks for helping make education worthless.
They usually either scoff at an entry level position
They should. They have a Master's Degree.
or insist that the entry level salary be raised to something not entry level anymore
They should. They have a Master's Degree.
Now, this may seem like a kinda crappy deal
It doesn't seem like a crappy deal, it IS a crappy deal. Asking people to work for free is flat out wrong. End of story.
People hiring summer interns don't expect 20 years of .NET experience.
Yeah they do.
In reality, they are hiring interns as a 3-month interview process
Summer internship. 3-month interview process. Yep, that's about what I'd expect from the average middle manager.
What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?
1. Five years of experience.
2. A perfect employment history with no gaps of more than a weekend.
3. Willingness to work 80 hour weeks perpetually
4. WIllingness to work without benefits, overtime or vacation.
5. Being a team player, which means "agree even when the team is wrong"
6. Work for half pay.
7. Work those 80 hour weeks as a temp
8. Perfect credit
9. No family (too many non-company obligations)
10. Permarenter (so the company can relocate at will)
All ten or it's a guaranteed layoff within 60 days. It's that simple.