Christ, man, how can you know they're illegal? Or even aliens?
Well, the American College of Emergency Physicians seems to think so:
In some hospitals, as much as two-thirds of total operating costs are for uncompensated care for illegal aliens. As a result, hundreds of emergency departments have closed. In Los Angeles, for example, 10 hospitals have closed in the past five years because of uncompensated care.
I probably earn way more than you, but I pay my taxes and endorse socialism gladly in the knowing that it helps me to avoid living near sad and bitter buggers like you.
If you live in a first world country, then it's likely you do earn more than I do. However depending on your location, your standard of living could still be much lower than mine, even if you live in an area with a higher standard of living index. Take for example somebody who lives in new york. Way higher standard of living than where I live. However to live the same there as I do here, they better make three times what I do.
Even if you did hold a higher standard of living though, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Why? Because unlike socialists, I believe I should only have what I have earned. The simple act of being a human being doesn't make me anything special, so I'm not entitled to anything that's yours. Why did I bring up standard of living though? Because in my experience, all socialists love to live in places that they can't afford to live in, and then blame everybody else for their financial problems.
And I don't mind taxes, so long as the money is spent responsibly. Hell, I served in the Army, taxes provided my income for a while. However I've witnessed socialism fucking people over too much to ever support it. Really socialism is nothing more than a pyramid scheme, and people who support it deserve to get ripped off like the chumps that they are.
As for being sad and bitter? Well, I'm not the one up to my ears in student debt and without a job. In fact I'm living pretty comfortably, and my chosen career field is in very high demand. How many occupy protesters (aka socialists) can say the same?
Interesting you bring up my parents. Both of them actually have no income. My dad was a mechanic for 30+ years and finally wore out his back (he has a family history of back problems, which made it worse) and he can no longer work. He's trying to start a used car sales business, and I've actually loaned him $8k for that. My mom had a work injury back in December and fractured one of her vertebra. Her workman's comp has been thus far denied, so she has no income. In spite of my dad maxing out his contributions to social security for 15 years in a row (he used to earn 6 figures,) social security is effectively broke right now and he has been denied benefits.
That's socialism for you. If it were up to me (and fuck I wish it were...) I would have no part of social security. Socialism ALWAYS gives back less than what you put into it, unless you just flat out refuse to work, and then it's a goldmine. That's assuming, of course, that it doesn't just completely fuck you over, which it usually does, and it is now.
Anyways, between me and my parents, you want to know which of us has income? Me. And I've got enough for all of us.
I actually only moved back in with them a year ago (after having served in the Army, and having lived elsewhere for a few years)
My mom owns the house, but I pay for the utilities. She pays the mortgage out of some money she has saved up. Between the two of us, we have enough money saved up to last until long after I graduate college. That's what happens when you always save money instead of borrowing it, unlike our government.
I live in Arizona and I wear shorts and flip-flops all year long, even when it's cold. So no, I don't pay for heat; I don't really need to. I also live comfortably in a decent sized and furnished house, which is cheap due to it's remote location. That said, I don't live in places like new york where it costs twice what I described above for rent alone, and I've even told people I know in new york that are in my situation that they're dumb for living there.
You see, there's this interesting concept that people with an IQ above 70 call "living within your means." Provided you do that, you can make a small income and still come out on top. Perhaps if your parents weren't hopped up on pain killers and alcohol around the time of your conception you'd be able to comprehend that. Don't feel bad though, the fact that TFS was written demonstrates that you aren't alone. In fact, why don't you go join the occupy movement, you can all go accomplish nothing together!
Oh and you and the occupy movement shouldn't bother asking the government to give you my money once my career takes off; I already have plans on moving overseas (not for political reasons though, I love America, I just want to see the world.)
Considering almost no one pays for college without loans today, any college whose students could not get loans would be dead in the water. That gives a lot of leverage for banks to "ask" colleges to play along.
The idea that people can't go to school without loans is complete bullshit. I am going to graduate next year, and I paid for my entire education out of my own picket. I've never had a job that paid more than $10 an hour. I served in the military for one year (discharged due to problems with eyesight) so I only had a few months worth of GI bill, which didn't pay much at all. Beyond that, I paid for everything myself. Books, tuition, transportation, everything. I paid for it. Not my parents, not my relatives. All me.
And this isn't hard to do either, all you have to do is save up money and not spend it on stupid shit, e.g. your new ipad every time apple releases one, and your regular visits to starbucks (people don't need $4 cups of coffee twice a day to survive.) I've probably spent about $25,000 on college so far, and I still have about $14,000 saved up. I really don't understand how some people can spend $80,000 on college to get something as worthless as a liberal arts degree, and then wonder why they can't get a job. To me, getting a degree that there is no market for is stupid, you may as well just save the money and get no degree at all. Taking out a student loan is even more stupid.
One big mistake I notice a lot, is that a lot of people seem to go straight to university. This is the dumb, because universities are always overpriced for what you get. Community colleges (especially in places like California) are DIRT CHEAP. I pay upwards of $2,000 per year, that includes summer school, and includes books. Imagine that, a month and a half of pay for an entire year. Plus, community colleges by far tend to have a much better student to teacher ratio (which means if you have a learning disability like I do, your chances of succeeding are much greater,) the learning environment is also therefore more personal so the teachers tend to care more about the students than their status, and in addition to that they tend to offer free tutoring, and it's very good tutoring too.
Another thing is books. I don't know why, but so many students buy their books from the in school book store. This is stupid, they charge a lot more than Amazon, and better yet if you look on ebay, you can buy the international editions which are essentially the same thing, only they are made of cheaper paper, but cost a hell of a lot less.
Also if you don't dedicate yourself to college properly, you won't get shit. And dedication is all it takes. I don't consider myself to be that smart, yet I have a 3.9 GPA. People who say you have to be smart to do that don't know what they're talking about. When I was in high school I was just like the average person I see in college: I didn't give a shit and just did the minimum I needed to get D's because that's all that was required to pass. In college you're required to get C's to pass, so that's the grade I see the most people get. TV gives this impression that college is the time to smoke weed and drink beer at dorm parties, and I'm telling you right now that it's not. College is when you're supposed to work the hardest.
My dedication has paid off already by the way. I just got hired for an internship at a fortune 500 company that pays a lot more money than I've ever earned (think: how often do internships pay anything at all?) I didn't even need to interview, they just asked for my resume and then hired me because of the reputation I've earned at school.
I don't want to hear any crying from people who can't pay off their student loans, that's their own problem that they created from their own stupidity, and they better damn sure fulfill their obligations. The occupy movement sits around doing nothing while demanding jobs, meanwhile I've been working my ass off to earn a job. The occupy movement can eat my ass, I am not part of their 99%.
We do have the highest tax rates in the world, and they did shift their tax burden overseas through a process called transfer pricing (google that term.)
That 10% didn't actually go to the federal government.
Also, those operations are going to China because they can pay people $10 a day there. Even so, that's not the cause of most of the missing revenue.
You're confusing administrative operations with manufacturing operations. Transfer pricing is only effective when you move from a country with a high tax liability to a country with a low tax liability. China's taxes, while better than the US, are a lot higher than places like Ireland. This is why apple, google, and microsoft all use transfer pricing, and do so in Ireland.
Yes, they'll move manufacturing to China, however they aren't paying income taxes in China.
If you're going to lecture me on taxes, you'd probably want to at least take a basic accounting course or at least economics first.
That's why pharmaceutical companies can sell medicine in Mexico for $5, while charging you $200 for it here. Mexico doesn't subsidize it; they can just still make a profit from selling the medicine to Mexicans for $5, and they make an additional $195 from selling it to you.
That has nothing to do with it. They charge more here than in mexico because they know you'll pay more here. It would make no sense to charge $200 in mexico when nobody would buy because they can't even afford it. The same thing happens in Canada, even they pay less for meds than we do. The reason why there's such a difference in price is because US government regulations make it possible. Have you ever wondered why you can't simply order that $5 medication in mexico and have it shipped here? Because the USDA says you can't. You can thank left wing politicians for that because they're too afraid that foreign drugs might hurt you, just like how they want to ban trans fats, MSG, and salt.
Even small countries like Ireland and Iceland--who tried lowering taxes and deregulating businesses exactly as you're talking about--couldn't sustain it.
That's not true, when Ireland lowered their corporate tax rate, they saw HUGE economic boom as many businesses decided to move their operations over there.
The only reason they are having problems now is because their banking system collapsed a few years later due to unrelated issues.
If Ireland raised their tax rates to what they were before, they'd only stand to lose revenue. In other words, there's no question that their tax rate is sustainable.
Besides, if you pay attention, corporations don't pay taxes anyways. They just pass those tax expenses on to their customers. If you raise their taxes, they'll simply raise their prices on goods and services. Eventually it would get to the point that it is simply no longer profitable to run a business here, and you'll end up in a situation France is in.
We should just lower taxes. Sounds counter intuitive, but it's true. A lot of companies move their administrative operations overseas because it is cheaper to do so. Not because the labor is cheaper, but because other countries have a lower tax rate. Our statutory tax rate is the highest in the world.
If we made our tax rate more competitive, you'd probably see those operations heading back. Not only that, but you'd see companies in foreign countries end up incorporating over here, and we'd be the ones collecting that tax revenue. In my opinion, 10% would bring a ton of corporate interest in our direction. Let's not stop there though, let's remove all possible exemptions. All of them, including green subsidies (remember, this is part of the reason GE pays no taxes, not only that but green subsidies haven't done a damn thing to improve green tech, and let's not even get into Solyndra.)
As it is right now for the large corporations, we collect virtually zero income tax. Instead Ireland and Bermuda collect that money.
The only alternative to this is forbid transfer pricing. Obama tried to do that, and a bunch of companies said they would just move their entire operations overseas in order to remain competitive. When that happens, the jobs go bye-bye and you lose even more tax revenue, not to mention piss off your constituents. So naturally he backed down.
If you don't believe that raising taxes can lower revenue, think again:
France's opposition Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said recently that his party's -- and his country's -- opposition to proposals to lower high-income taxes has nothing to do with disdain for the wealthy. "I don't have anything against rich people, as such," Hollande said in a recent political debate. "They have the right to be rich. But I can't accept that the richest can have their taxes lowered."
"This tendency to take from the rich and give to the poor which is supposed to solve all the problems in France is ruining the country," said Alain Marchand, who left France six years ago and now has a London-based consulting business that helps relocate French business leaders and entrepreneurs in England and other countries. "That's an incredibly stupid and narrow-minded vision of economic life."
Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998.
Would anybody care to comment on the Ford translation? I've been curious about this book and have read different things about the accuracy of existing translations. The Ford translation claims to be the most accurate, but some reviews on amazon claim otherwise. However none of those making these claims for or against seem to be native German speakers. Any native German speakers care to chime in?
I want to read this book one day, but I don't want to read one that sugar coats what he says, or one that makes it look more bigoted than it is (which the Mannheim translation supposedly does.)
That depends on which city you are flying to. For example, part of Canada is actually south of Detroit, Michigan. Imagine that, if you want to go from Windsor, Ontario to the US, you have to travel north.
The price is business lost, customers frustrated that shop elsewhere, bad press, etc
So in other words, it is up to you to tell their customers where they are and are not allowed to shop? If not by kicking their customers out of their store, then by forcing them out of business simply because you disagree with them? That sounds a bit arrogant, and is certainly not in the spirit of freedom.
When godaddy supported SOPA, they didn't deserve to be DDoS'ed (and as far as I am aware, they weren't) however their customers are free to do business with somebody else. That is democracy; forcing them out of business is not.
If that isn't the purpose, then what is the purpose? You just don't like them and you want them gone? You just don't want them to be able to do business? Just because you don't want them to exist, means they don't have the right to?
How is any of this in the spirit of democracy and freedom of expression?
Seriously, the only purpose of a DDoS is to prevent somebody from being able to speak. I'm a huge advocate of freedom of speech, I love it when everybody is able to say whatever they want to say, and that includes people I don't like. I hate the MPAA/RIAA as much as anybody, but I want them to be able to say what they say. Websites are a form of speech, regardless of whether their purpose is to sell goods or to issue propaganda.
When you shut down those websites (like anonymous tried to do with the vatican) you are no better than the mafia; just trying to shut somebody up for the sole purpose that you don't like them. To these people, freedom of speech is good but only when they agree with the person who is speaking. That is just fucked up and goes against everything our democracy stands for; so I say fuck anonymous. If they want to spread the truth about the bad things that an organization does (like they did with scientology,) that is perfectly acceptable, but shutting them up is not.
To me this is poetic justice. No, I don't like to see people getting their identity stolen, but participating in inhibiting somebody else's ability to speak is just bad form, and I hope they get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I recall the same things being said about America's voting system. Around 2004, there was this big hoopla that Bush was rigging the election, even the EU was asking to have oversight of the US elections. Bush won that election, fairly and by a landslide. The people who didn't see their candidate win didn't like it, and made a LOT of noise about it.
Being the libertarian that I am (my chosen candidates never win,) I can observe this kind of bullshit and call it for what it is, but in the case of the US I haven't seen any sufficient evidence of rigged elections. Some voter fraud here and there (which democrat supporters have done alotof, ironically) but not enough to influence the results in any election in my opinion.
I don't know about Russia's system, but I'm not going to be so arrogant (as the EU was) to demand that America take oversight of their elections; if they have voter fraud, that's their problem. Much in the same, I think it is pretty arrogant of the Russians and Chinese to demand that the UN get regulatory powers over the internet.
Why seed when there is usenet? It's far superior to torrents. With most providers your files remain up for over three years and you'll be able to download so fast 24/7 that you'll fill up your whole pipe. No need to worry about people who stop seeding, or worrying about the **AA sending DMCA notices to your ISP since you download and upload files completely anonymously since the usenet providers don't keep logs.
I'd avoid giganews though as they are the most expensive and not worth the cost.
I stopped using torrents two months ago and haven't looked back.
Er, no-one claims organic food is about nutritive value.
If organic food isn't about nutritive value, then why have organic food? It costs more to produce and has a much lower useful yield, not to mention organic farms still use pesticides and still contain insect parts, eggs, and larvae.
I'd imagine you could run a md5/sha1 or some other hash of that nature on the backup prior to restoring it.
However I don't think an image is what they'd be relying on. Microsoft already signs its own first party binaries, so the restore function could simply wipe out all non microsoft unsigned content and then reset all configurations to their defaults. Any Microsoft binary that doesn't have a valid signature could be trashed and then a replacement could be pulled from the cloud or pulled from a disc. (At least, this is what I gather from a description I read elsewhere.)
Your argument might be "oooh signature checks! palladium! bad bad bad! evil microsoft no more windows!" but the signatures aren't there to prevent running unauthorized code, rather they serve to authenticate existing code to make sure it hasn't been tampered with by malware. This is a good thing, maybe not for you personally, but for grandma's computer it makes sense, and there are ways to override it on your own system if you are a developer, not to mention ways of obtaining your own signing keys for your open source project.
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You should likely save up, some more money, and at least pay for class in political science.
Been there, done that, got an A. 102% of the maximum score possible, in fact.
Why should someone, who is not you, be the sole proprietor of YOUR labor?
Because it works out to our mutual benefit.
How am I lucky?
Am I lucky that I work hard?
Am I lucky that I persevere in spite of having a low income?
Christ, man, how can you know they're illegal? Or even aliens?
Well, the American College of Emergency Physicians seems to think so:
In some hospitals, as much as two-thirds of total operating costs are for uncompensated care for illegal aliens. As a result, hundreds of emergency departments have closed. In Los Angeles, for example, 10 hospitals have closed in the past five years because of uncompensated care.
http://www.acep.org/content.aspx?id=25206
I probably earn way more than you, but I pay my taxes and endorse socialism gladly in the knowing that it helps me to avoid living near sad and bitter buggers like you.
If you live in a first world country, then it's likely you do earn more than I do. However depending on your location, your standard of living could still be much lower than mine, even if you live in an area with a higher standard of living index. Take for example somebody who lives in new york. Way higher standard of living than where I live. However to live the same there as I do here, they better make three times what I do.
Even if you did hold a higher standard of living though, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Why? Because unlike socialists, I believe I should only have what I have earned. The simple act of being a human being doesn't make me anything special, so I'm not entitled to anything that's yours. Why did I bring up standard of living though? Because in my experience, all socialists love to live in places that they can't afford to live in, and then blame everybody else for their financial problems.
And I don't mind taxes, so long as the money is spent responsibly. Hell, I served in the Army, taxes provided my income for a while. However I've witnessed socialism fucking people over too much to ever support it. Really socialism is nothing more than a pyramid scheme, and people who support it deserve to get ripped off like the chumps that they are.
As for being sad and bitter? Well, I'm not the one up to my ears in student debt and without a job. In fact I'm living pretty comfortably, and my chosen career field is in very high demand. How many occupy protesters (aka socialists) can say the same?
Well, I'd argue that retards don't pay five times as much in tuition for one class at a university than the exact same class at a community college.
Interesting you bring up my parents. Both of them actually have no income. My dad was a mechanic for 30+ years and finally wore out his back (he has a family history of back problems, which made it worse) and he can no longer work. He's trying to start a used car sales business, and I've actually loaned him $8k for that. My mom had a work injury back in December and fractured one of her vertebra. Her workman's comp has been thus far denied, so she has no income. In spite of my dad maxing out his contributions to social security for 15 years in a row (he used to earn 6 figures,) social security is effectively broke right now and he has been denied benefits.
That's socialism for you. If it were up to me (and fuck I wish it were...) I would have no part of social security. Socialism ALWAYS gives back less than what you put into it, unless you just flat out refuse to work, and then it's a goldmine. That's assuming, of course, that it doesn't just completely fuck you over, which it usually does, and it is now.
Anyways, between me and my parents, you want to know which of us has income? Me. And I've got enough for all of us.
I actually only moved back in with them a year ago (after having served in the Army, and having lived elsewhere for a few years)
My mom owns the house, but I pay for the utilities. She pays the mortgage out of some money she has saved up. Between the two of us, we have enough money saved up to last until long after I graduate college. That's what happens when you always save money instead of borrowing it, unlike our government.
I live in Arizona and I wear shorts and flip-flops all year long, even when it's cold. So no, I don't pay for heat; I don't really need to. I also live comfortably in a decent sized and furnished house, which is cheap due to it's remote location. That said, I don't live in places like new york where it costs twice what I described above for rent alone, and I've even told people I know in new york that are in my situation that they're dumb for living there.
You see, there's this interesting concept that people with an IQ above 70 call "living within your means." Provided you do that, you can make a small income and still come out on top. Perhaps if your parents weren't hopped up on pain killers and alcohol around the time of your conception you'd be able to comprehend that. Don't feel bad though, the fact that TFS was written demonstrates that you aren't alone. In fact, why don't you go join the occupy movement, you can all go accomplish nothing together!
Oh and you and the occupy movement shouldn't bother asking the government to give you my money once my career takes off; I already have plans on moving overseas (not for political reasons though, I love America, I just want to see the world.)
Considering almost no one pays for college without loans today, any college whose students could not get loans would be dead in the water. That gives a lot of leverage for banks to "ask" colleges to play along.
The idea that people can't go to school without loans is complete bullshit. I am going to graduate next year, and I paid for my entire education out of my own picket. I've never had a job that paid more than $10 an hour. I served in the military for one year (discharged due to problems with eyesight) so I only had a few months worth of GI bill, which didn't pay much at all. Beyond that, I paid for everything myself. Books, tuition, transportation, everything. I paid for it. Not my parents, not my relatives. All me.
And this isn't hard to do either, all you have to do is save up money and not spend it on stupid shit, e.g. your new ipad every time apple releases one, and your regular visits to starbucks (people don't need $4 cups of coffee twice a day to survive.) I've probably spent about $25,000 on college so far, and I still have about $14,000 saved up. I really don't understand how some people can spend $80,000 on college to get something as worthless as a liberal arts degree, and then wonder why they can't get a job. To me, getting a degree that there is no market for is stupid, you may as well just save the money and get no degree at all. Taking out a student loan is even more stupid.
One big mistake I notice a lot, is that a lot of people seem to go straight to university. This is the dumb, because universities are always overpriced for what you get. Community colleges (especially in places like California) are DIRT CHEAP. I pay upwards of $2,000 per year, that includes summer school, and includes books. Imagine that, a month and a half of pay for an entire year. Plus, community colleges by far tend to have a much better student to teacher ratio (which means if you have a learning disability like I do, your chances of succeeding are much greater,) the learning environment is also therefore more personal so the teachers tend to care more about the students than their status, and in addition to that they tend to offer free tutoring, and it's very good tutoring too.
Another thing is books. I don't know why, but so many students buy their books from the in school book store. This is stupid, they charge a lot more than Amazon, and better yet if you look on ebay, you can buy the international editions which are essentially the same thing, only they are made of cheaper paper, but cost a hell of a lot less.
Also if you don't dedicate yourself to college properly, you won't get shit. And dedication is all it takes. I don't consider myself to be that smart, yet I have a 3.9 GPA. People who say you have to be smart to do that don't know what they're talking about. When I was in high school I was just like the average person I see in college: I didn't give a shit and just did the minimum I needed to get D's because that's all that was required to pass. In college you're required to get C's to pass, so that's the grade I see the most people get. TV gives this impression that college is the time to smoke weed and drink beer at dorm parties, and I'm telling you right now that it's not. College is when you're supposed to work the hardest.
My dedication has paid off already by the way. I just got hired for an internship at a fortune 500 company that pays a lot more money than I've ever earned (think: how often do internships pay anything at all?) I didn't even need to interview, they just asked for my resume and then hired me because of the reputation I've earned at school.
I don't want to hear any crying from people who can't pay off their student loans, that's their own problem that they created from their own stupidity, and they better damn sure fulfill their obligations. The occupy movement sits around doing nothing while demanding jobs, meanwhile I've been working my ass off to earn a job. The occupy movement can eat my ass, I am not part of their 99%.
We do have the highest tax rates in the world, and they did shift their tax burden overseas through a process called transfer pricing (google that term.)
That 10% didn't actually go to the federal government.
Also, those operations are going to China because they can pay people $10 a day there. Even so, that's not the cause of most of the missing revenue.
You're confusing administrative operations with manufacturing operations. Transfer pricing is only effective when you move from a country with a high tax liability to a country with a low tax liability. China's taxes, while better than the US, are a lot higher than places like Ireland. This is why apple, google, and microsoft all use transfer pricing, and do so in Ireland.
Yes, they'll move manufacturing to China, however they aren't paying income taxes in China.
If you're going to lecture me on taxes, you'd probably want to at least take a basic accounting course or at least economics first.
That's why pharmaceutical companies can sell medicine in Mexico for $5, while charging you $200 for it here. Mexico doesn't subsidize it; they can just still make a profit from selling the medicine to Mexicans for $5, and they make an additional $195 from selling it to you.
That has nothing to do with it. They charge more here than in mexico because they know you'll pay more here. It would make no sense to charge $200 in mexico when nobody would buy because they can't even afford it. The same thing happens in Canada, even they pay less for meds than we do. The reason why there's such a difference in price is because US government regulations make it possible. Have you ever wondered why you can't simply order that $5 medication in mexico and have it shipped here? Because the USDA says you can't. You can thank left wing politicians for that because they're too afraid that foreign drugs might hurt you, just like how they want to ban trans fats, MSG, and salt.
Even small countries like Ireland and Iceland--who tried lowering taxes and deregulating businesses exactly as you're talking about--couldn't sustain it.
That's not true, when Ireland lowered their corporate tax rate, they saw HUGE economic boom as many businesses decided to move their operations over there.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-256404.html
The only reason they are having problems now is because their banking system collapsed a few years later due to unrelated issues.
If Ireland raised their tax rates to what they were before, they'd only stand to lose revenue. In other words, there's no question that their tax rate is sustainable.
Besides, if you pay attention, corporations don't pay taxes anyways. They just pass those tax expenses on to their customers. If you raise their taxes, they'll simply raise their prices on goods and services. Eventually it would get to the point that it is simply no longer profitable to run a business here, and you'll end up in a situation France is in.
Yeah that'll raise revenue real fast.
We should just lower taxes. Sounds counter intuitive, but it's true. A lot of companies move their administrative operations overseas because it is cheaper to do so. Not because the labor is cheaper, but because other countries have a lower tax rate. Our statutory tax rate is the highest in the world.
If we made our tax rate more competitive, you'd probably see those operations heading back. Not only that, but you'd see companies in foreign countries end up incorporating over here, and we'd be the ones collecting that tax revenue. In my opinion, 10% would bring a ton of corporate interest in our direction. Let's not stop there though, let's remove all possible exemptions. All of them, including green subsidies (remember, this is part of the reason GE pays no taxes, not only that but green subsidies haven't done a damn thing to improve green tech, and let's not even get into Solyndra.)
As it is right now for the large corporations, we collect virtually zero income tax. Instead Ireland and Bermuda collect that money.
The only alternative to this is forbid transfer pricing. Obama tried to do that, and a bunch of companies said they would just move their entire operations overseas in order to remain competitive. When that happens, the jobs go bye-bye and you lose even more tax revenue, not to mention piss off your constituents. So naturally he backed down.
If you don't believe that raising taxes can lower revenue, think again:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071501010_2.html
France's opposition Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said recently that his party's -- and his country's -- opposition to proposals to lower high-income taxes has nothing to do with disdain for the wealthy. "I don't have anything against rich people, as such," Hollande said in a recent political debate. "They have the right to be rich. But I can't accept that the richest can have their taxes lowered."
"This tendency to take from the rich and give to the poor which is supposed to solve all the problems in France is ruining the country," said Alain Marchand, who left France six years ago and now has a London-based consulting business that helps relocate French business leaders and entrepreneurs in England and other countries. "That's an incredibly stupid and narrow-minded vision of economic life."
Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998.
Would anybody care to comment on the Ford translation? I've been curious about this book and have read different things about the accuracy of existing translations. The Ford translation claims to be the most accurate, but some reviews on amazon claim otherwise. However none of those making these claims for or against seem to be native German speakers. Any native German speakers care to chime in?
I want to read this book one day, but I don't want to read one that sugar coats what he says, or one that makes it look more bigoted than it is (which the Mannheim translation supposedly does.)
That depends on which city you are flying to. For example, part of Canada is actually south of Detroit, Michigan. Imagine that, if you want to go from Windsor, Ontario to the US, you have to travel north.
Best Buy already provides free warranties, even if you didn't buy from them.
You see, if you buy something from amazon and it breaks, you go buy another one from best buy, and then return the broken one the next day.
*not saying I do this, but know people who do
The price is business lost, customers frustrated that shop elsewhere, bad press, etc
So in other words, it is up to you to tell their customers where they are and are not allowed to shop? If not by kicking their customers out of their store, then by forcing them out of business simply because you disagree with them? That sounds a bit arrogant, and is certainly not in the spirit of freedom.
When godaddy supported SOPA, they didn't deserve to be DDoS'ed (and as far as I am aware, they weren't) however their customers are free to do business with somebody else. That is democracy; forcing them out of business is not.
If that isn't the purpose, then what is the purpose? You just don't like them and you want them gone? You just don't want them to be able to do business? Just because you don't want them to exist, means they don't have the right to?
How is any of this in the spirit of democracy and freedom of expression?
Seriously, the only purpose of a DDoS is to prevent somebody from being able to speak. I'm a huge advocate of freedom of speech, I love it when everybody is able to say whatever they want to say, and that includes people I don't like. I hate the MPAA/RIAA as much as anybody, but I want them to be able to say what they say. Websites are a form of speech, regardless of whether their purpose is to sell goods or to issue propaganda.
When you shut down those websites (like anonymous tried to do with the vatican) you are no better than the mafia; just trying to shut somebody up for the sole purpose that you don't like them. To these people, freedom of speech is good but only when they agree with the person who is speaking. That is just fucked up and goes against everything our democracy stands for; so I say fuck anonymous. If they want to spread the truth about the bad things that an organization does (like they did with scientology,) that is perfectly acceptable, but shutting them up is not.
To me this is poetic justice. No, I don't like to see people getting their identity stolen, but participating in inhibiting somebody else's ability to speak is just bad form, and I hope they get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I recall the same things being said about America's voting system. Around 2004, there was this big hoopla that Bush was rigging the election, even the EU was asking to have oversight of the US elections. Bush won that election, fairly and by a landslide. The people who didn't see their candidate win didn't like it, and made a LOT of noise about it.
Being the libertarian that I am (my chosen candidates never win,) I can observe this kind of bullshit and call it for what it is, but in the case of the US I haven't seen any sufficient evidence of rigged elections. Some voter fraud here and there (which democrat supporters have done a lot of, ironically) but not enough to influence the results in any election in my opinion.
I don't know about Russia's system, but I'm not going to be so arrogant (as the EU was) to demand that America take oversight of their elections; if they have voter fraud, that's their problem. Much in the same, I think it is pretty arrogant of the Russians and Chinese to demand that the UN get regulatory powers over the internet.
The problem here though is this is akin to creating world peace by killing off all of the humans.
Why seed when there is usenet? It's far superior to torrents. With most providers your files remain up for over three years and you'll be able to download so fast 24/7 that you'll fill up your whole pipe. No need to worry about people who stop seeding, or worrying about the **AA sending DMCA notices to your ISP since you download and upload files completely anonymously since the usenet providers don't keep logs.
I'd avoid giganews though as they are the most expensive and not worth the cost.
I stopped using torrents two months ago and haven't looked back.
Er, no-one claims organic food is about nutritive value.
If organic food isn't about nutritive value, then why have organic food? It costs more to produce and has a much lower useful yield, not to mention organic farms still use pesticides and still contain insect parts, eggs, and larvae.
What we have is a legal requirement to not choose who we buy our goods from based on race or minority status of the owner/employees.
That's not true, you're allowed to buy your goods from whoever you choose, for any reason you choose. That is freedom of association.
I'd imagine you could run a md5/sha1 or some other hash of that nature on the backup prior to restoring it.
However I don't think an image is what they'd be relying on. Microsoft already signs its own first party binaries, so the restore function could simply wipe out all non microsoft unsigned content and then reset all configurations to their defaults. Any Microsoft binary that doesn't have a valid signature could be trashed and then a replacement could be pulled from the cloud or pulled from a disc. (At least, this is what I gather from a description I read elsewhere.)
Your argument might be "oooh signature checks! palladium! bad bad bad! evil microsoft no more windows!" but the signatures aren't there to prevent running unauthorized code, rather they serve to authenticate existing code to make sure it hasn't been tampered with by malware. This is a good thing, maybe not for you personally, but for grandma's computer it makes sense, and there are ways to override it on your own system if you are a developer, not to mention ways of obtaining your own signing keys for your open source project.
Real women love men, real men love women, and real humans aren't such dicks anyway.
So lesbians aren't real women, and gays aren't real men?