A business has to pay 25% of the product's sale price to the government.
Sales tax. Already have one, although it's only about 8%.
Well, this might raise food prices. That would disproportionately harm the poor.
Well, it might, except food is exempt from sales tax.
Well, those poor people might want some sort of transportation too.
So tax policy is evaluated only on its benefits/non-benefits to the poor?
You know, we coule also raise the tax on yachts a little while we're at it.
Yeah, that will generate a lot of revenue, and harm the people who make yachts.
Alright, businesses only get the tax break until they're profitable. That couldn't be exploitable.
Already is. Businesses that are never profitable have spectacular tax advantages. Some businesses are purchased because they have significant losses.
Taxes are used as a means to redistribute wealth and encourage certain types of business.
And that is precisely why the current tax system is a mess. Taxes are used to generate revenue to operate the government. Period. For the first 150 years, this country didn't even have an income tax. It wasn't until government discovered they could tax and double-tax every dollar every time it moved from one place to the next that we had a $2 trillion national budget and multi-billion state budgets.
A flat tax has a number of advantages. A national sales tax has even more, provided it replaced income taxes, capital gains taxes and corporate taxes.
A national sales tax would only tax purchases, which would encourage investment and savings, and discourage over-consumption and debt. It would save the economy and the government hundreds of billions in tax paperwork costs. It would make it far less expensive to employ people. Set at the proper level, it would generate more than enough revenue to operate the government.
And we could finally stop arguing over "taxing the rich" and "taxing the poor," which are tired over-emotional arguments that take up most of the public discourse. People could avoid high taxes by saving their money instead of spending it all.
People running for the highest office of the land have often stumped, claiming that they would do such-n-such a thing, and people accept it as if it were a done deal. Why is that?
Because our education system fails utterly to teach people about the basic function of our government.
Recent house refinancings and college graduates first! Across the board wage reductions and let's put some real shitty mutual funds in that pain in the ass 401K. Oh, and benefit cuts for everyone!
The rest of the poor dumb sons-of-bitches will be getting 40% smaller cubicles and 40% shittier workloads with 100% shittier promotions and raises.
There will be a catered presentation on the new management bonuses, buyouts, reserved parking, options and 300% salary increases by a blow-dried, phone flipping asshole in the conference room.
So let's branch off into 800 money-losing "businesses" and flush a pile of cash the size of Nebraska down a shithole so someone can stand up in a meeting and look brilliant by saying "I think we should return to our core business."
The.com bubble has come and gone, but the great ideas and implementations are starting to come through thick and fast now.
And look! Everyone's still unemployed! The entire fucking economy is using computers, and the average technically-intelligent person has about as much chance of finding a job in technology that lasts longer than five weeks as they do of pulling a Faberge egg out of their ass.
Yeah. We self-balance our medical doctors, computer programmers, lawyers, engineers, professors, etc. into the unemployment line so some blow-dried middle manager can gorge another couple million into their pockets.
This is destructive to society. It makes education worthless. What possible chance does the average wage-earner have if someone with a MEDICAL DOCTORATE is discarded like last week's trash? Business can't say it's about skills and education now. What are they going to say? A neurosurgeon needs to acquire more valuable skills? No, it's about fucking everyone out of everything as fast as possible.
No economic theory changes that fact. Capitalism doesn't require business to vigorously fuck everything in sight to turn a profit. I'm as much a supporter of free enterprise as anyone, but when we're building 400 Starbucks stores a year and throwing doctors overboard it's time to wake the fuck up and start requiring some balance.
somebody is losing a job to save that doctor's.
Economics isn't a zero-sum game. The way to fix health care is not to start issuing pink slips to doctors.
MD is only worth what other people are willing to pay for it.
Translation: recently worthless
So I guess you're in favor of destroying the value of someone going to medical school? Are you saying that doctors have no value to society beyond their short-term commercial potential? Because that is precisely what this article is saying.
"Thanks for going to medical school Johnny. Here's your name tag. Your shift at the sandwich shack starts at 6AM Saturday. Good luck paying back that $275,000 student loan."
When one sits and tells the world we tax SS, be sure to explain not in all cases
Why would we ever tax Social Security?
If you make just enough to eat, you pay no tax
Except sales tax, gas tax, excise taxes and tax on Social Security benefits, plus taxes on any utilities and property taxes (through rent if not a homeowner) unless the person is homeless, which wouldn't be all that surprising considering now MEDICAL DOCTORS who went to MEDICAL SCHOOL can't find a fucking job.
We prefer to spend our money on tax cuts and trickle-down economics.
We don't "spend money" on tax cuts. That implies the money belongs to the government in the first place.
By the way, we still tax Social Security benefits. Read that again. We TAX SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS. We tax people who get married. We tax people who sell their house. We tax people who make just enough to eat. We tax everything at enormous, ridiculous rates.
Doesn't India "outsource" manufacturing of soft drinks to American Coca Cola and Pepsico?
Yeah, but that doesn't employ people here. All it does is force public schools to shovel confiscated tax money into a giant hole so they can have state-of-the-art soft drink service at the lunch counter.
For business, every good idea involves the wanton, gleeful, vigorous destruction of their neighbors' careers.
And the Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S.
Well of course! (notice this is just sort of thrown in as if it is settled fact with not one shred of support) Why, it's just like the programmers! So now, we've made the M.D. useless and worthless. Good to know we former programmers are just as worthless to our neighbors as the good doctor who works 22 hour shifts in the emergency room.
"Mom? Dad? I've decided to go to medical school! I just got accepted to UCLA!"
"Wouldn't you rather have a career in a field where it's easier to find a job? I hear Wal-Mart has a management program"
We are slowly, systematically and deliberately destroying the value of all education, and nobody sees a problem with this. Nobody sees a problem. 50% of the people who live around UCLA are illiterate, and nobody sees a problem.
Instead of a day's worth of food costing you a day of labor, it now probably costs you less than an hour
Which is about how long most people stay employed before some bean-salad eating ass-molded-to-the-chair middle manager breezes through announcing layoffs for all.
Yet you claim that productivity is no good at all for keeping people fed and clothed
Productivity is great, unless every last dime of the increased revenue isn't stuffed into only a few pockets. While management is stacking their dollars tall and deep, the guy who built the fucking product would like to eat too.
Actually, let's use 1997 as a better example (and when there was an even better job market), and while we're at it, let's add Canada: 51.9% of the working-age population was
a) a temp b) working part-time c) self-employed d) out of the work force
Which makes my statement accurate.
138 million non-ag workers employed in the US, out of which only 4.6 million are part timers for "Economic reasons" and 17.6 million for NON-economic reasons? That's only 16% total, and less than 4% part time because that's all they could find.
You forgot temps, self-employed and people who dropped out of the work force because they couldn't find a job. Of course, it's always better to argue about the statistics than to discuss the point: business has turned its back on its neighbors, unless their wallets are open at a cash register.
No, actually my parents got to keep their jobs for years and years. It was never even suggested that they be fired, which is why they could afford a house and a family.
Due to a sense of loyalty, tradition, and pride, Disney kept those artists employed long after they ceased to be profitable.
Absolute nonsense. Lilo and Stitch was their most recent film. It was so "unprofitable" (over $260 million at the box office) that Disney has published several DVDs and a made television show from it. Disney kept the animators employed for a whole year before firing the entire studio. Oh, and they were so concerned about wasting money that they flushed the project they were working on (and all the money that had been spent) down a toilet.
Audiences today just don't like to watch untextured, cell-based cartoons anymore.
Really? There are 400 animation studios in Japan. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for best animated feature. The anime industry earns $4.3 billion a year in revenues. Pokemon's total market exceeds $30 billion.
The last hugely successful
Disney
cell-based film was Lion King
Home On the Range, was not a bad movie, but it made no money, because today's viewers want something else.
Yeah, like a writer. There are eight shelves of anime at Best Buy. There is an entire cable network that runs anime 24 hours a day. Some of the highest-rated shows on television are anime. Today's viewers want quality. Disney just doesn't want to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
A business has to pay 25% of the product's sale price to the government.
Sales tax. Already have one, although it's only about 8%.
Well, this might raise food prices. That would disproportionately harm the poor.
Well, it might, except food is exempt from sales tax.
Well, those poor people might want some sort of transportation too.
So tax policy is evaluated only on its benefits/non-benefits to the poor?
You know, we coule also raise the tax on yachts a little while we're at it.
Yeah, that will generate a lot of revenue, and harm the people who make yachts.
Alright, businesses only get the tax break until they're profitable. That couldn't be exploitable.
Already is. Businesses that are never profitable have spectacular tax advantages. Some businesses are purchased because they have significant losses.
Taxes are used as a means to redistribute wealth and encourage certain types of business.
And that is precisely why the current tax system is a mess. Taxes are used to generate revenue to operate the government. Period. For the first 150 years, this country didn't even have an income tax. It wasn't until government discovered they could tax and double-tax every dollar every time it moved from one place to the next that we had a $2 trillion national budget and multi-billion state budgets.
A flat tax has a number of advantages. A national sales tax has even more, provided it replaced income taxes, capital gains taxes and corporate taxes.
A national sales tax would only tax purchases, which would encourage investment and savings, and discourage over-consumption and debt. It would save the economy and the government hundreds of billions in tax paperwork costs. It would make it far less expensive to employ people. Set at the proper level, it would generate more than enough revenue to operate the government.
And we could finally stop arguing over "taxing the rich" and "taxing the poor," which are tired over-emotional arguments that take up most of the public discourse. People could avoid high taxes by saving their money instead of spending it all.
People running for the highest office of the land have often stumped, claiming that they would do such-n-such a thing, and people accept it as if it were a done deal. Why is that?
Because our education system fails utterly to teach people about the basic function of our government.
What, you've got something against the international free market of ideas and products?
No. There is no free market. There are massive no-cost incentives to fire people and destroy their careers. That's not a free market.
Nothing. They're exactly like Disney, which claimed it couldn't make money on Monday Night Football but still spent millions to make "Lion King 1 1/2"
as long as we pay $100/month
Plain local phone service used to be less than $20 a month, with the added bonus of being able to hear the other person during a call.
It's a 400% price increase, but that's OK!! BRING ON THE MEGACORP!!
It's not like Cingular has anything except cellphone service, and even then it's doesn't have even 80% of the market.
Whew, not even 80%? That's a relief.
There are currently about 4 other companies I can think of that are in the cellphone business.
That many, huh?
That's way too many as it is.
Run 'em all outta business. That'll be great for consumers.
PROCEED WITH THE LAYOFFS!!
Recent house refinancings and college graduates first! Across the board wage reductions and let's put some real shitty mutual funds in that pain in the ass 401K. Oh, and benefit cuts for everyone!
The rest of the poor dumb sons-of-bitches will be getting 40% smaller cubicles and 40% shittier workloads with 100% shittier promotions and raises.
There will be a catered presentation on the new management bonuses, buyouts, reserved parking, options and 300% salary increases by a blow-dried, phone flipping asshole in the conference room.
So let's branch off into 800 money-losing "businesses" and flush a pile of cash the size of Nebraska down a shithole so someone can stand up in a meeting and look brilliant by saying "I think we should return to our core business."
Then we can start the layoffs.
The plot and setting is right from the game
Doom had a plot?
John Kerry is running for President. Congress makes laws. Read the Constitution sometime. Fascinating document.
The .com bubble has come and gone, but the great ideas and implementations are starting to come through thick and fast now.
And look! Everyone's still unemployed! The entire fucking economy is using computers, and the average technically-intelligent person has about as much chance of finding a job in technology that lasts longer than five weeks as they do of pulling a Faberge egg out of their ass.
Wasn't this tried once? XUL + Javascript + CSS + XML + XHTML = the greatest programming platform?
Must everything become an operating system? How about quitting trying to become a brand and just make a simple quality browser?
Economics is a self-balancing equillibrium.
Yeah. We self-balance our medical doctors, computer programmers, lawyers, engineers, professors, etc. into the unemployment line so some blow-dried middle manager can gorge another couple million into their pockets.
This is destructive to society. It makes education worthless. What possible chance does the average wage-earner have if someone with a MEDICAL DOCTORATE is discarded like last week's trash? Business can't say it's about skills and education now. What are they going to say? A neurosurgeon needs to acquire more valuable skills? No, it's about fucking everyone out of everything as fast as possible.
No economic theory changes that fact. Capitalism doesn't require business to vigorously fuck everything in sight to turn a profit. I'm as much a supporter of free enterprise as anyone, but when we're building 400 Starbucks stores a year and throwing doctors overboard it's time to wake the fuck up and start requiring some balance.
somebody is losing a job to save that doctor's.
Economics isn't a zero-sum game. The way to fix health care is not to start issuing pink slips to doctors.
No profession has any value to society beyond their commercial potential.
Well, there you go.
MD is only worth what other people are willing to pay for it.
Translation: recently worthless
So I guess you're in favor of destroying the value of someone going to medical school? Are you saying that doctors have no value to society beyond their short-term commercial potential? Because that is precisely what this article is saying.
"Thanks for going to medical school Johnny. Here's your name tag. Your shift at the sandwich shack starts at 6AM Saturday. Good luck paying back that $275,000 student loan."
When one sits and tells the world we tax SS, be sure to explain not in all cases
Why would we ever tax Social Security?
If you make just enough to eat, you pay no tax
Except sales tax, gas tax, excise taxes and tax on Social Security benefits, plus taxes on any utilities and property taxes (through rent if not a homeowner) unless the person is homeless, which wouldn't be all that surprising considering now MEDICAL DOCTORS who went to MEDICAL SCHOOL can't find a fucking job.
The value of education remains the same
Unemployed with an M.D.
Of what value is that education, other than the tens of thousands borrowed to earn it?
We prefer to spend our money on tax cuts and trickle-down economics.
We don't "spend money" on tax cuts. That implies the money belongs to the government in the first place.
By the way, we still tax Social Security benefits. Read that again. We TAX SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS. We tax people who get married. We tax people who sell their house. We tax people who make just enough to eat. We tax everything at enormous, ridiculous rates.
Doesn't India "outsource" manufacturing of soft drinks to American Coca Cola and Pepsico?
Yeah, but that doesn't employ people here. All it does is force public schools to shovel confiscated tax money into a giant hole so they can have state-of-the-art soft drink service at the lunch counter.
For business, every good idea involves the wanton, gleeful, vigorous destruction of their neighbors' careers.
Eager to cash in on the trend
Doesn't this just about describe all of business now? Doesn't this just about explain why business is so UTTERLY FUCKED UP right now?
All about short-term gain at the expense of long-term value, and the Dow is off 101 to the lowest close of the year.
And the Indian doctors are probably at least as good as those one is likely to get in the U.S.
Well of course! (notice this is just sort of thrown in as if it is settled fact with not one shred of support) Why, it's just like the programmers! So now, we've made the M.D. useless and worthless. Good to know we former programmers are just as worthless to our neighbors as the good doctor who works 22 hour shifts in the emergency room.
"Mom? Dad? I've decided to go to medical school! I just got accepted to UCLA!"
"Wouldn't you rather have a career in a field where it's easier to find a job? I hear Wal-Mart has a management program"
We are slowly, systematically and deliberately destroying the value of all education, and nobody sees a problem with this. Nobody sees a problem. 50% of the people who live around UCLA are illiterate, and nobody sees a problem.
Instead of a day's worth of food costing you a day of labor, it now probably costs you less than an hour
Which is about how long most people stay employed before some bean-salad eating ass-molded-to-the-chair middle manager breezes through announcing layoffs for all.
Yet you claim that productivity is no good at all for keeping people fed and clothed
Productivity is great, unless every last dime of the increased revenue isn't stuffed into only a few pockets. While management is stacking their dollars tall and deep, the guy who built the fucking product would like to eat too.
(let's use July 2004 as an example)
Actually, let's use 1997 as a better example (and when there was an even better job market), and while we're at it, let's add Canada: 51.9% of the working-age population was
a) a temp
b) working part-time
c) self-employed
d) out of the work force
Which makes my statement accurate.
138 million non-ag workers employed in the US, out of which only 4.6 million are part timers for "Economic reasons" and 17.6 million for NON-economic reasons? That's only 16% total, and less than 4% part time because that's all they could find.
You forgot temps, self-employed and people who dropped out of the work force because they couldn't find a job. Of course, it's always better to argue about the statistics than to discuss the point: business has turned its back on its neighbors, unless their wallets are open at a cash register.
No, actually my parents got to keep their jobs for years and years. It was never even suggested that they be fired, which is why they could afford a house and a family.
Due to a sense of loyalty, tradition, and pride, Disney kept those artists employed long after they ceased to be profitable.
Absolute nonsense. Lilo and Stitch was their most recent film. It was so "unprofitable" (over $260 million at the box office) that Disney has published several DVDs and a made television show from it. Disney kept the animators employed for a whole year before firing the entire studio. Oh, and they were so concerned about wasting money that they flushed the project they were working on (and all the money that had been spent) down a toilet.
Audiences today just don't like to watch untextured, cell-based cartoons anymore.
Really? There are 400 animation studios in Japan. Spirited Away won the Academy Award for best animated feature. The anime industry earns $4.3 billion a year in revenues. Pokemon's total market exceeds $30 billion.
The last hugely successful
Disney
cell-based film was Lion King
Home On the Range, was not a bad movie, but it made no money, because today's viewers want something else.
Yeah, like a writer. There are eight shelves of anime at Best Buy. There is an entire cable network that runs anime 24 hours a day. Some of the highest-rated shows on television are anime. Today's viewers want quality. Disney just doesn't want to pay for it.