Income taxes are generally low for those who don't earn a lot of money but income taxes are only the tip of the iceberg. Off the top of my head these are the taxes that I pay:
Federal income tax
Federal Social Security tax
Federal Medicaid tax
State income tax
Town property tax
Village property tax
School board property tax
State sales tax on almost everything (save food) that I buy
County sales tax on almost everything (again, save food) that I buy
Mind you, that list doesn't include the various fees that I also get to pay. Like drivers license fees, professional license fees, fees attached to auto insurance policies by my state, fees attached to my phone bill by the FCC, fees attached to my cable bill by the local government, fees attached to my electric bill by the state, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Just counting the direct taxes (save sales tax) mentioned above I'm paying out 30%. Adding in all the others and it's >40%. Mind you, I'm not rich, I make a whooping $30,000/yr. By the time you figure it all out I'm working two days a week out of my five day workweek for someone else. Some people may be able to rationalize that but I really don't see the difference between that and servitude. I have no choice in the matter -- the fruits of my labor are taken from me before I even see them.
The UHC crowd seems to overlook (or just doesn't care) about the fact that UHC will take yet one more decision out of the hands of the population. What if I don't want to take part in it? I'm a fairly healthy guy -- odds are that if I get sick it's going to be via a traumatic injury (car accident?) where there's other insurance that will cover my damages. I made the choice at work to opt out of our group health insurance because odds are that I'm not going to incur >$4,500 of medical bills in a calender year. I can use that money for more productive pursuits or save it somewhere to cover my medical expenses if anything bad does happen to me.
Mind you, I'll lose that "bet" if I get cancer or what not but is it not my choice to make informed decisions regarding my own life without the interference of some Government bureaucrat?
You emphasize the fact that it's a Saudi charity as if that somehow justifies things
Foreign entities by their very nature invite more scrutiny during times of war. You may not like that fact but it's been that way for a long time and I don't think it's particularly likely to change anytime soon.
You seem to imply that because some of the guys involved in 9/11 were Saudi, therefore the Saudis are evil, and don't deserve the same protections of law as other, decent kinds of people
I implied nothing of the sort. All I implied was that a charity that hails from the country where most of the hijackers came from stands to attract more attention than a domestic charity or one from an Allied country. I made no comment on whether or not that attention is deserved and I resent your implication that I think all Saudis are "evil" (whatever the hell that means)
So, once I read your argument against the idea, suddenly the comparison to Hitler's ideologies seemed more sensible
Yes, because investigating a charity with ties to a country that has problems with extremists is exactly the same thing as industrialized genocide. These types of comparisons are the reason why few people take Nazi comparisons seriously.
The "we need drugs to cost so much" is Big Phama bullshit, as a convenient cover for the eye gougingly high prices that they can get away with because of the way the US system is structured
I didn't say they need to cost "so much". All I said was that the price being charged in Cuba probably doesn't reflect the actual cost to produce the drug. Patent reform would do more to bring drug costs down than any Governmental mandate on pricing, IMHO.
My total tax burden is around 30% of my income, just like yours. Yet I have free healthcare included in that. If you do too (ie, you took that into account as a necessary expense) then who is better off? In my personal opinion, it is me, because I really dislike the US system, since it was set up for the benefit of rich people who run insurance companies and not for the guy like you making $30,000 who has to live with it.
Your health care isn't "free". And in my personal opinion I'd rather retain the freedom to choose who I want to do business with rather than face the prospect of the Government taking yet more money out of my paycheck. Can I opt out of this "free" universal health care scheme if I don't deem it to be in my best interest? If the answer is no then I've lost a little bit of freedom.
and my taxes are not that much higher than the US (except VAT/Sales tax [15%], gasoline [70%] and alcohol/cigarettes [40% ish])
So your taxes aren't that much higher than the US except where they are that much higher than the US? Is that really your argument?
There's no way I pay 50% in taxes, compared to my income.
Well bully for you. I on the other hand make a whooping ~$30,000 and between income/social security/medicare and state/local taxes I'm paying nearly 30% of my income out in taxes. I don't know about you but I feel more confident in my ability to spend some of that $9,000 for my own benefit than I do in the ability of some government bureaucrat to spend it for me.
When a medicine taken by a patient costs $100 per month, and costs $5 in Cuba, you know there's someone paying off a loan on a 100 foot yacht, and it;s not the person taking the medicine.
Windows XP costs <$5 in Cuba and China but that doesn't mean that cost accurately reflects what it cost to produce that product. I'm no big fan of the pharmaceutical industry and would like to see many reforms (starting with patent reform) but this idea that they can't charge a fair price for their product is absurd.
I am using an extreme example to demonstrate my point
I think that's the problem.
but the responsibility Obama has, and the responsibility our theoretical Hitler successor would have, are similar
They are only similar if you equate the two. To use an analogy, if I think someone is trying to kill you, I'd be justified in using deadly force to prevent them from doing so. I don't have that same justification if they are merely spying on you.
Show me a nation mostly convinced that we should be over there in the first place. (I don't think you can.)
In Afghanistan? How about the 25 other members of NATO that invoked Article 5 of the treaty and declared the attack on the United States to be an attack on all members of the NATO alliance?
No, because propagating a really bad thing (when it's in your power to stop it) carries the same weight as starting a really bad thing. At the risk of someone crying Godwin, if someone had taken over for Hitler and continued his genocide against the Jews
I am gonna cry Godwin. You are comparing industrialized mass murder to the United States spying on lawyers for a Saudi charity. Which country did 15 of 19 hijackers come from again? I have no lost love for Bush or policies like this (is this the "change" we can believe in?) but that doesn't make your comparison any less absurd.
It's great to see increasing numbers of people who are willing to call things what they are as you just did.
I only hope that those increasing numbers of people eventually wind up getting mod points. I've noticed that criticizing Fox News tends to get you +5 informative and making the same criticism of MSNBC tends to get you a troll or flamebait mod.
that no one in the major media has their best interests at heart
The media has one interest at heart: Selling copy. They don't care how they do it. MSNBC came about because some genius decided that if Bill O'Reilly could draw millions of Conservative viewers with manufactured outrage and self-righteousness than Olbermann could do the same to an untapped market of Liberal viewers. It doesn't even have to be Liberal or Conservative though. All three cable news channels can find the time to devote hours of coverage to Britney Spears' latest court appearance because that draws more viewers than coverage of the two wars we are currently involved in. Fourth estate indeed.....
Hmm, your first link doesn't really seem relevant because I never claimed that NBC News was the problem. In fact NBC Nightly News is the only network newscast that I still bother watching. Gibson should have been put out to pasture a long time ago (his "moderation" of the debate between Hillary and Obama comes to mind -- we are involved in two wars so let's talk about flag pins!) and Couric is hard to take seriously. I mostly watch Nightly News and the Newshour.
I can see the partisanship, I don't quite see the childish "haha your stupid!" attitude
Then I don't think you've watched enough of Countdown. I don't really see the difference between the "haha your stupid!" name calling of Fox News and the self-righteous indignation of Keith "he must resign!" Olbermann.
I think if you want something that compares to Fox's level of immaturity you need to visit comedy central.
Well, if we are linking to comedy shows then I would offer this up for consideration:)
But Olberman's bias is liberal much in the same way that reality has liberal bias.
Only liberals think reality has a liberal bias. Independents can see just as many examples as liberals twisting reality to advance their pet causes as conservatives doing the same. At the end of the day the only difference between the two is which of your freedoms you don't mind losing.
I actually have a five digit UID but I can't remember the password for it or even the e-mail address that I used when I signed up. One time I played whack-a-mole with CmdrTaco via e-mail trying to guess the old e-mail address but couldn't figure it out. Probably signed up from some old Hotmail account that I've long forgotten about or some such.
I'm content with my existing UID because people around here have come to know me. If I changed to the older one I'd have to re-establish my reputation as an opinionated asshole;)
Sometimes, I swear to god, Fox News is just going for civil war. Those people seriously need to STFU. Partisan bias, partisan criticisms, and partisan opinions are all fine and to be expected in democracy, but Fox News is purely vitriolic partisan propaganda.
The funny thing is I could do a find and replace on that part of your post from "Fox News" to "MSNBC" and the rest of it would still be true. Personally I can't take either one of them seriously. Can't take CNN seriously either but that's not because they are hyper-partisan -- it's because they managed to find the airtime to cover Britney Spears while our country is involved in two wars......
Would the parent have been modded troll if he made the same observation about going on Bill O'Reilly? To a lot of us, Olbermann is in the same league as him (he just chooses different topics to manufacture outrage over) and it's pretty hard to take him seriously.
And regardless of what you think of him do try and remember this: Olbermann is not a reporter. He's a commentator. It seems to me like a lot of people have forgotten the difference between the two.
Jobs like this are pretty much what governments are for. if we wouldn't have had the rural electric and water provisions in the 19030's we would still have rural folks reading by candle light and crapping in outhouses. There is NO way a corporation is going to spend the major expense of running fiber to rural areas, simply because it would never bring them a return on investment. So if we want to see nationwide broadband we pretty much HAVE to get the government in on it. Now once those lines are done and we have most of the country blanketed in fiber, THEN we should lease the lines to multiple competitors to break up the natural monopolies
So your business plan can be boiled down to:
1) Use the power of the state to force big evil telco to run fiber to rural areas that they can't profitably serve
2) Once fiber is laid use the power of the state to force big evil telco to lease those lines to competitors that didn't make the initial investment from step #1 for whatever reason (guess they bought off the right Congressman if they weren't obligated to build out to those areas like big evil telco was)
3) ???
4) Profit!
I realize the problem that you are trying to address (rural areas being undeserved by utility companies) but it seems to be quite a contradiction to force them to build out to those areas and then force them to let competitors use their lines.
says it will take a while to figure out how best to close Gitmo
Most reasonable people would acknowledge that it's going to take awhile to close down Gitmo. Many of the people held there are simply too dangerous to let go. Many of the others who aren't have no where to go -- their home countries won't accept them. It should be obvious that you can't just close the facility down and give everybody there a bus ticket home. Obama has committed himself to ending torture and finding a safe way to closing down Gitmo. What more do you want?
Wants to renew Bush's tax cuts
And? Do you really think raising taxes in the middle of the ongoing economic meltdown is wise?
i'm pretty sure that his way prevent fish to eat them too...
Fish are pretty dangerous too. The man wants us to believe that all those cable cuts were caused by anchors but those of us who have raised fish know better......
I say you should move to New Hampshire in that case, so you can counteract the influx of former Massachusetts residents who want to make their new state just like their old one.
That's a decent point. I'm guessing though that the number of people who feel like you or I do are completely outnumbered by the number of people who want to live in Boston without having to pay to live in Boston. It would be kind of neat to actually have my vote mean something in a Presidential primary though.
My girlfriend and I have talked about a number of different places that we would move to if we left NYS. Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska seem to come up the most often. New Hampshire and Alaska appeal to me for the Libertarian streak that both states show. Vermont doesn't quite have the same thing but they do have their own independent streak and I rather like the way they handle "gun control". "Are you a felon? No? Here's your gun"
My G/F has different motivations of course. She's in love with New England because of the small town atmosphere and in love with Alaska because of the sheer beauty of the place. We won't be making this decision for another year or so (she needs to finish her masters degree first) but the more I think about it the more I feel inclined to escape the grasp of the People's Republic of New York.
I love Upstate New York but I have a sickening feeling that we are going to be dominated by NYC (even worse than usual) in the years to come. If the GOP doesn't manage to retake the NYS Senate by 2010 the Dems will have carte blanche to redraw the district lines as they see fit and that will be the end of any Upstate voice in Albany for a long time. *sigh*
Slashdot Mirror
Are American tax rates really so low?
Income taxes are generally low for those who don't earn a lot of money but income taxes are only the tip of the iceberg. Off the top of my head these are the taxes that I pay:
Mind you, that list doesn't include the various fees that I also get to pay. Like drivers license fees, professional license fees, fees attached to auto insurance policies by my state, fees attached to my phone bill by the FCC, fees attached to my cable bill by the local government, fees attached to my electric bill by the state, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Just counting the direct taxes (save sales tax) mentioned above I'm paying out 30%. Adding in all the others and it's >40%. Mind you, I'm not rich, I make a whooping $30,000/yr. By the time you figure it all out I'm working two days a week out of my five day workweek for someone else. Some people may be able to rationalize that but I really don't see the difference between that and servitude. I have no choice in the matter -- the fruits of my labor are taken from me before I even see them.
The UHC crowd seems to overlook (or just doesn't care) about the fact that UHC will take yet one more decision out of the hands of the population. What if I don't want to take part in it? I'm a fairly healthy guy -- odds are that if I get sick it's going to be via a traumatic injury (car accident?) where there's other insurance that will cover my damages. I made the choice at work to opt out of our group health insurance because odds are that I'm not going to incur >$4,500 of medical bills in a calender year. I can use that money for more productive pursuits or save it somewhere to cover my medical expenses if anything bad does happen to me.
Mind you, I'll lose that "bet" if I get cancer or what not but is it not my choice to make informed decisions regarding my own life without the interference of some Government bureaucrat?
You emphasize the fact that it's a Saudi charity as if that somehow justifies things
Foreign entities by their very nature invite more scrutiny during times of war. You may not like that fact but it's been that way for a long time and I don't think it's particularly likely to change anytime soon.
You seem to imply that because some of the guys involved in 9/11 were Saudi, therefore the Saudis are evil, and don't deserve the same protections of law as other, decent kinds of people
I implied nothing of the sort. All I implied was that a charity that hails from the country where most of the hijackers came from stands to attract more attention than a domestic charity or one from an Allied country. I made no comment on whether or not that attention is deserved and I resent your implication that I think all Saudis are "evil" (whatever the hell that means)
So, once I read your argument against the idea, suddenly the comparison to Hitler's ideologies seemed more sensible
Yes, because investigating a charity with ties to a country that has problems with extremists is exactly the same thing as industrialized genocide. These types of comparisons are the reason why few people take Nazi comparisons seriously.
You should move to Canada
No thank you. I respect Canada's right to run their country differently than ours but what they have is not for me.
The "we need drugs to cost so much" is Big Phama bullshit, as a convenient cover for the eye gougingly high prices that they can get away with because of the way the US system is structured
I didn't say they need to cost "so much". All I said was that the price being charged in Cuba probably doesn't reflect the actual cost to produce the drug. Patent reform would do more to bring drug costs down than any Governmental mandate on pricing, IMHO.
My total tax burden is around 30% of my income, just like yours. Yet I have free healthcare included in that. If you do too (ie, you took that into account as a necessary expense) then who is better off? In my personal opinion, it is me, because I really dislike the US system, since it was set up for the benefit of rich people who run insurance companies and not for the guy like you making $30,000 who has to live with it.
Your health care isn't "free". And in my personal opinion I'd rather retain the freedom to choose who I want to do business with rather than face the prospect of the Government taking yet more money out of my paycheck. Can I opt out of this "free" universal health care scheme if I don't deem it to be in my best interest? If the answer is no then I've lost a little bit of freedom.
and my taxes are not that much higher than the US (except VAT/Sales tax [15%], gasoline [70%] and alcohol/cigarettes [40% ish])
So your taxes aren't that much higher than the US except where they are that much higher than the US? Is that really your argument?
There's no way I pay 50% in taxes, compared to my income.
Well bully for you. I on the other hand make a whooping ~$30,000 and between income/social security/medicare and state/local taxes I'm paying nearly 30% of my income out in taxes. I don't know about you but I feel more confident in my ability to spend some of that $9,000 for my own benefit than I do in the ability of some government bureaucrat to spend it for me.
When a medicine taken by a patient costs $100 per month, and costs $5 in Cuba, you know there's someone paying off a loan on a 100 foot yacht, and it;s not the person taking the medicine.
Windows XP costs <$5 in Cuba and China but that doesn't mean that cost accurately reflects what it cost to produce that product. I'm no big fan of the pharmaceutical industry and would like to see many reforms (starting with patent reform) but this idea that they can't charge a fair price for their product is absurd.
I am using an extreme example to demonstrate my point
I think that's the problem.
but the responsibility Obama has, and the responsibility our theoretical Hitler successor would have, are similar
They are only similar if you equate the two. To use an analogy, if I think someone is trying to kill you, I'd be justified in using deadly force to prevent them from doing so. I don't have that same justification if they are merely spying on you.
What's the downside again?
Higher taxes, more governmental control over our lives and less individual freedom?
Show me a nation mostly convinced that we should be over there in the first place. (I don't think you can.)
In Afghanistan? How about the 25 other members of NATO that invoked Article 5 of the treaty and declared the attack on the United States to be an attack on all members of the NATO alliance?
No, because propagating a really bad thing (when it's in your power to stop it) carries the same weight as starting a really bad thing. At the risk of someone crying Godwin, if someone had taken over for Hitler and continued his genocide against the Jews
I am gonna cry Godwin. You are comparing industrialized mass murder to the United States spying on lawyers for a Saudi charity. Which country did 15 of 19 hijackers come from again? I have no lost love for Bush or policies like this (is this the "change" we can believe in?) but that doesn't make your comparison any less absurd.
Americans will drop $5k on a 60" hdtv, but don't want to spend a dime on doctor bills to have a baby. WTF?
That sums it up quite nicely I think.
It's great to see increasing numbers of people who are willing to call things what they are as you just did.
I only hope that those increasing numbers of people eventually wind up getting mod points. I've noticed that criticizing Fox News tends to get you +5 informative and making the same criticism of MSNBC tends to get you a troll or flamebait mod.
that no one in the major media has their best interests at heart
The media has one interest at heart: Selling copy. They don't care how they do it. MSNBC came about because some genius decided that if Bill O'Reilly could draw millions of Conservative viewers with manufactured outrage and self-righteousness than Olbermann could do the same to an untapped market of Liberal viewers. It doesn't even have to be Liberal or Conservative though. All three cable news channels can find the time to devote hours of coverage to Britney Spears' latest court appearance because that draws more viewers than coverage of the two wars we are currently involved in. Fourth estate indeed.....
I have no respect or patience for any of them.
Hmm, your first link doesn't really seem relevant because I never claimed that NBC News was the problem. In fact NBC Nightly News is the only network newscast that I still bother watching. Gibson should have been put out to pasture a long time ago (his "moderation" of the debate between Hillary and Obama comes to mind -- we are involved in two wars so let's talk about flag pins!) and Couric is hard to take seriously. I mostly watch Nightly News and the Newshour.
I can see the partisanship, I don't quite see the childish "haha your stupid!" attitude
Then I don't think you've watched enough of Countdown. I don't really see the difference between the "haha your stupid!" name calling of Fox News and the self-righteous indignation of Keith "he must resign!" Olbermann.
I think if you want something that compares to Fox's level of immaturity you need to visit comedy central.
Well, if we are linking to comedy shows then I would offer this up for consideration :)
But Olberman's bias is liberal much in the same way that reality has liberal bias.
Only liberals think reality has a liberal bias. Independents can see just as many examples as liberals twisting reality to advance their pet causes as conservatives doing the same. At the end of the day the only difference between the two is which of your freedoms you don't mind losing.
I actually have a five digit UID but I can't remember the password for it or even the e-mail address that I used when I signed up. One time I played whack-a-mole with CmdrTaco via e-mail trying to guess the old e-mail address but couldn't figure it out. Probably signed up from some old Hotmail account that I've long forgotten about or some such.
I'm content with my existing UID because people around here have come to know me. If I changed to the older one I'd have to re-establish my reputation as an opinionated asshole ;)
Sometimes, I swear to god, Fox News is just going for civil war. Those people seriously need to STFU. Partisan bias, partisan criticisms, and partisan opinions are all fine and to be expected in democracy, but Fox News is purely vitriolic partisan propaganda.
The funny thing is I could do a find and replace on that part of your post from "Fox News" to "MSNBC" and the rest of it would still be true. Personally I can't take either one of them seriously. Can't take CNN seriously either but that's not because they are hyper-partisan -- it's because they managed to find the airtime to cover Britney Spears while our country is involved in two wars......
This would be especially interesting if a journalist for a major network (Olbermann himself perhaps?)
Olbermann isn't a journalist. He's a commentator. Let's try and remember the difference between the two.
We have been on /. longer than most
Fixed that for you. I've been on the net since 1991 (using USENET and IRC on a text terminal at Duke) and I have a six digit /. UID.
After all the bennies the outgoing failministration gave FoxNews
Your concern smells trollish.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
(emphasis obviously mine)
Would the parent have been modded troll if he made the same observation about going on Bill O'Reilly? To a lot of us, Olbermann is in the same league as him (he just chooses different topics to manufacture outrage over) and it's pretty hard to take him seriously.
And regardless of what you think of him do try and remember this: Olbermann is not a reporter. He's a commentator. It seems to me like a lot of people have forgotten the difference between the two.
NYCL gets all the pussy while you're stuck beating your shrivelled, uncircumsized needledick on weekends
What's wrong with being uncircumcised? ;)
The US Department of Defense operates many military prisons. They can all easily be transfered to a military prison within the US.
So it's ok to hold them without charges on American soil but not ok to hold them without charges on foreign soil?
They were only held offshore to avoid jurisdiction, and that point's been rendered moot.
Then who cares that they are held offshore?
Jobs like this are pretty much what governments are for. if we wouldn't have had the rural electric and water provisions in the 19030's we would still have rural folks reading by candle light and crapping in outhouses. There is NO way a corporation is going to spend the major expense of running fiber to rural areas, simply because it would never bring them a return on investment. So if we want to see nationwide broadband we pretty much HAVE to get the government in on it. Now once those lines are done and we have most of the country blanketed in fiber, THEN we should lease the lines to multiple competitors to break up the natural monopolies
So your business plan can be boiled down to:
1) Use the power of the state to force big evil telco to run fiber to rural areas that they can't profitably serve
2) Once fiber is laid use the power of the state to force big evil telco to lease those lines to competitors that didn't make the initial investment from step #1 for whatever reason (guess they bought off the right Congressman if they weren't obligated to build out to those areas like big evil telco was)
3) ???
4) Profit!
I realize the problem that you are trying to address (rural areas being undeserved by utility companies) but it seems to be quite a contradiction to force them to build out to those areas and then force them to let competitors use their lines.
says it will take a while to figure out how best to close Gitmo
Most reasonable people would acknowledge that it's going to take awhile to close down Gitmo. Many of the people held there are simply too dangerous to let go. Many of the others who aren't have no where to go -- their home countries won't accept them. It should be obvious that you can't just close the facility down and give everybody there a bus ticket home. Obama has committed himself to ending torture and finding a safe way to closing down Gitmo. What more do you want?
Wants to renew Bush's tax cuts
And? Do you really think raising taxes in the middle of the ongoing economic meltdown is wise?
i'm pretty sure that his way prevent fish to eat them too ...
Fish are pretty dangerous too. The man wants us to believe that all those cable cuts were caused by anchors but those of us who have raised fish know better......
I say you should move to New Hampshire in that case, so you can counteract the influx of former Massachusetts residents who want to make their new state just like their old one.
That's a decent point. I'm guessing though that the number of people who feel like you or I do are completely outnumbered by the number of people who want to live in Boston without having to pay to live in Boston. It would be kind of neat to actually have my vote mean something in a Presidential primary though.
My girlfriend and I have talked about a number of different places that we would move to if we left NYS. Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska seem to come up the most often. New Hampshire and Alaska appeal to me for the Libertarian streak that both states show. Vermont doesn't quite have the same thing but they do have their own independent streak and I rather like the way they handle "gun control". "Are you a felon? No? Here's your gun"
My G/F has different motivations of course. She's in love with New England because of the small town atmosphere and in love with Alaska because of the sheer beauty of the place. We won't be making this decision for another year or so (she needs to finish her masters degree first) but the more I think about it the more I feel inclined to escape the grasp of the People's Republic of New York.
I love Upstate New York but I have a sickening feeling that we are going to be dominated by NYC (even worse than usual) in the years to come. If the GOP doesn't manage to retake the NYS Senate by 2010 the Dems will have carte blanche to redraw the district lines as they see fit and that will be the end of any Upstate voice in Albany for a long time. *sigh*