What if your card has a mixture of kids's books and pornography? How do you move the pornography onto your reader? Do you select everything in one go, or spend large amounts of time and effort hunting and pecking one book at a time? How are they sorted and grouped? How do you ensure only kids's books go on the kids's books card?
This is why we have LVM and migrate data, instead of scattering it over 40 partitions and the odd external drive. Consolidated storage is easier to manage.
They'd also have to invent a way to manage that storage so that pulling the card out would only remove the part of your library you expect, and not cause the damn thing to fail catastrophically. They'd also need a way to avoid hours and hours of manual user processes to delegate a storage location, or to migrate collections of books between locations.
On the other hand, they could put like 1GB of storage in and sell the device cheap, thus lowering the price tag, even though you really need to spend $50 to add the right storage. That became unviable when 32GB of Flash fell below $10, though, since the difference is trivial. A 64GB microSD will cost you $30, whereas the branding, packaging, electronics, and shipping mark-up are built-in already for a phone or ebook reader and so 64GB would only bump the cost by $10 (since you need internal storage anyway, and the cheapest isn't scaled down linearly).
Saving the market millions of units of $2 cost to run even 8GB instead of 4GB opens up purchasing of other goods. In 2013, a difference of $2 would be a maximum of 5,900 U.S. jobs, which is only.0035% unemployment. Adding $10 would lose at a maximum 23,600 jobs or.017% unemployment. That assumes only an insignificant number of purchasers actually use the space--that is, that we're selling them shit they're not going to use, and making them pay for the privilege.
It's probably cheaper and better to just integrate more flash instead of an SD card controller (it's about $8 of ICs, discrete components, and the slot itself in wholesale bulk components for SD, versus about the same to just drop in 64GB). Either way, no one in the U.S. would max out storage with Kindle media.
Sure, I'm on Amphetamine because my genetics caused a smaller, weaker prefrontal cortex and thus a lower amount of mental force coming out of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, diminishing my ability to control my brain's automatic impulses; but I've spent my life learning things, and learning to control parts of that. It's never going to be a drug-free solution because that just doesn't work; on the other hand, I'm able to control major impulses, and I've got an interest in finances, risk management, and other procedural behaviors which maximize efficiency.
That's just psychological development. Many genetic expressions are a matter of environment. Stress in the environment causes an upregulation and downregulation of gene expression: parts of your brain start pumping out RNA and assembling different neurochemicals. Relaxation techniques and some drugs (notably alcohol, and also foods with certain nutrient profiles) also affect genetic expression, changing brain chemistry or metabolism so you become more-relaxed, more-focused, or fatter, or whatever. It's not just that your brain is structured a certain way or you've eaten too many calories; your body has to decide how to activate its cellular machinery, which can determine what parts of your brain activate the most (even if they're weaker to begin with) or how to process food (do you store fat in fat cells or inside muscle cells? Frequent aerobic metabolism will cause your body to start putting fatty acids directly inside the muscles).
It's actually standard industry information. If it's wrong, businesses are losing money.
Many of the totally unemployable people with nothing but basic income would have drug problems, mental problems or otherwise be dysfunctional.
Many, yes. They're highly-visible, and gain lots of attention; the thing is they're also the minority. That is to say: most low-income people don't have those problems and aren't rowdy, destructive little cretins; the ones who do are quickly-identified, and the ones who don't also don't stand out as poor.
It's similar with welfare fraud. America's welfare system has some overall 11% inappropriate distribution rate. Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest offenders, at 24%; and the claimants are all doctors and hospitals, not individual recipients. Unemployment, SNAP, and HUD largely deal with clerical errors or sympathetic caseworkers, so some borderline cases who should get denied are creatively-approved or extended by the caseworker. The actual incidence of fraud is hard to measure; some analysis indicates it's around 0.018%, but I'd point out fraud is by nature difficult to detect. Nevertheless, Americans perceive welfare as a system rife with abuse, and they perceive that abuse as near-100% of welfare recipients defrauding the system and using the money for drugs and criminal enterprise.
if you have a cheap and not that great rental object I wouldn't bet on 100% coverage, if you got an attractive one you'll rent it again quick by lowering price if you have to but if there's an oversupply some of the less desirable ones will remain empty.
Housing market is odd in that it's inelastic. Once it's actually spun up, competition hardly affects it. Tenants have leases and moving costs, and moving out is a logistics nightmare; leases avoid empty units, but tenants have to rent an open unit ASAP or it costs the landlord money. It costs money to break a lease and a landlord isn't going to hold an empty unit for you for 3 months rent-free, so the consumers can only really move their spending power on a meeting of coincidences.
You lose your market when you out-price them. If you want to capture a market with more-desirable units, you've got to set them up and then take potentially a year of losses while people's leases turn over, and then you have to convince them to come to you instead of renewing their lease. Profits are slim and landlords rely on keeping units full; fierce competition is just market suicide.
There are those who manage to do it and make money on it, but usually they're also circling like hawks to spot potential troublemakers and nip it in the bud.
I'm injecting enough cash that the market "to do it and make money on it" is a big market, rather than a heavily-niche market. Right now, that market here is essentially non-existent. The game changes when "you can make money" goes from "maybe 50-75 good people with that kind of low income in this town" to "over 30,000 distressed households with stable, very-low income in this city alone."
The United States has 1.6 million homeless people, and 600,000 go without shelter every day. Even if we only manage to profit from 40% of that population, the non-government independent charity shelters have the capacity for the rest.
I believe it is the nature of higher animals like rats, dogs, and humans to function more-effectively when less stress is present. It's likely the ability to survive independent of charity aid will improve the behavior of all citizens, with the largest effect on the worst problem cases of the lowest means, and with a better preventative effect on the next generation than remedial effect on the current. Both rats and humans have been shown to frequently abandon drug addictions outright when moved into a more-comfortable environment with greater social support, and huma
It's a problem of statistics. In a population, the amount of cash spent to care for a child varies due to economic fluctuations, spending habits, and random events (destroyed your clothes?). Thus a particular amount of money will pay 100% of the 50th percentile cost--or, statistically, will give 50% of the population more money than required, and 50% less. That 50% less is a concern, so you move out three standard deviations to cover 99.7% of children; except, in both cases, you have a chunk of the population who doesn't need that much, and so is getting money for kid plus money for daddy.
We subsidize dependents and children through tax benefits, which isn't immediate (no paychecks rolling in month per month), and so doesn't keep the household finances going unless someone does a lot of work. We also hand out things like SNAP, which is semi-controlled--it's not perfect, but it's a separate account that can't be spent as straight cash. That means it takes some tricky financial thinking to see your pile of money as "I had $90 for my kid and they gave me $50; I needed $120 and now I have $140, so that's $20 this month!" The child support actually registers more like support, because it takes effort (and thus diminishes the neurological reward) to work out how much cash you just got dumped onto your pile.
Generally, the current system doesn't have a welfare abuse problem. There's a large amount of improper payments--estimated around 11% overall, with Medicare being the biggest at 24%--but those aren't population fraud and abuse. Medicare particularly has doctors and hospitals claiming money without proper documentation; and direct aid such as food stamps, housing vouchers, and SNAP face large amounts of clerical errors and approvals of benefits for cases which later review suggests should have been denied. Among the direct aid improper payments, a small percentage are identified as fraudulent; and even among abuse case, much less than 100% of the money is abused.
Most importantly, there aren't a whole hell of a lot of people popping out a whole hell of a lot of babies to get welfare money. Welfare babies most often come from poverty behavior--that is: life is shitty, condoms are expensive, drugs and sex are way better than this shit. Researchers have shown that both rats and humans more-easily break out of drug addiction when placed in supportive communities and given less-shitty lives (more fun things to do, better access to food, better care, less pain); and humans have fewer sex partners and fewer births (especially to young mothers) when not under so much strain. I'm quite keen on not giving people free a cash reward for having babies; and I also firmly believe people aren't making welfare babies to gain from the current public aid system.
That's why coupling a UBI to public aid targeting children of low-income households is a low-risk plan, instead of just lower-risk. The risk now is demonstrably-minimal, and we're keeping that mechanism.
It will fly because it's basically administrative.
Essentially, an immigrant gets the $7,000 as a non-refundable tax credit. That is to say: he might owe a total $8,000 in taxes, and then deduct $7,000, so only owes $1,000. We send him a $7,000 check in February, instead of little checks all year. If he owes $4,000, then he owes $0 in taxes.
At the same time, immigrants would also be eligible for public aid. SNAP only covers children of low-income households; if you're a naturalized American, however, it also covers you--as an adult--and you gain access to HUD and unemployment insurance. As you're not receiving $7,000/year in Social Security money, you're essentially paying for this, relative to other Americans, so it's fair.
I've actually run this by a lot of first-generation immigrants. They tend to identify that it's complex and has trade-offs, and acknowledge it's essentially-fair. That is to say: they recognize that what they get (a sharp tax credit and access to welfare) is unequal to what everyone else gets (free money, flat out); but that, above $41,000 income, the tax credit is equal to what everyone else gets, and below that it scales away and eventually converts into welfare nobody else gets. At HUD levels, income is still higher, thanks to lower taxes; and even married households have an income benefit at $40k (about $6k), although they don't break even with natural-born households until higher.
Funny enough, this is actually how Social Security works, except without the language. If you move to America when you're old, you have no working history, and you don't get a retirement benefit; if you work, you start building a Social Security history, and you get retirement benefits. Universal Social Security reduces your end-of-year taxes by up to the benefit, not to enter negative, if you're an immigrant; and it compensates for the discrepancy by paying welfare if you're a citizen with low income but ineligible for Social Security.
much as I would stop reading any business plan that proposed development of a perpetual motion machine that required no input of energy but output energy in the form of heat
That's a poor analogy. My plan works, with the only challenge being that people don't like it. A perpetual motion machine might work, but thus far the laws of physics suggest that such a machine patently doesn't work even theoretically on-paper, so it's likely the design is mathematically flawed.
What other taxes would you have over the 17% flat tax?
The taxes from welfare are pulled out, and the rest stay. About 55% of existing income taxes vanish.
I'm doing it by modification, with my rough model using 2013. The U.S. actually has an income tax rate of some 30%, sort of. Total Federal spending in 2013 was $3,455 billion, but total revenue (taxes) was $2,775Bn. That's $680 billion of deficit spending. Total taxable income is $9,329Bn, which makes $2,775Bn about 29.75%.
Sort of.
Federal income taxes also tax welfare income, an extra $2,417Bn. That means Social Security, unemployment, and the like are taxed. I tend to exclude these because I'm pushing a Universal Social Security which is untaxed and replaces that stuff. There are other implications, as well. OASDI is a flow-through system: you pay taxes on OASDI (you don't deduct it from your taxable income), and that money taken out of today's paycheck lands in some senior's account next week--and gets taxed. To be clear: you pay $250 in OASDI tax, you pay Federal income taxes on that $250, then that $250 goes to a senior, and the senior pays Federal income taxes on that $250. It's similar for other welfares.
The way I figure tax rates ignores this so everything looks more straight-forward. It's not as hazardous as you'd expect: Social Security doesn't take OASDI from payments; and retirement income is typically lower income, thus not taxed much anyway ($32k average income, you pay 10.6% effective if single, 0.42% if married--standard deductions are radical, eh? Take the full out of your IRA while married and put it into a bank account; when your spouse dies, you've got all this cash at the married rate, instead of taking IRA distributions at the single rate). The proportion of total taxes paid by that demographic is tiny (the bottom 50% of all income earners paid 2.78% of all income taxes in total), and plenty of Federal revenue is collected by non-income taxes--as you've noticed.
That brings me to your 20% number. Income taxes--including OASDI--are 83% of Federal revenue. They make up 24.7% of all taxable income by my measurement, 19.3% if you count Welfare income as income, and--in 2013--16.1% of all income (including untaxable deductions--which OASDI taxes, by the way).
The long and short of all that is my numbers are a bit funky--all numbers are a bit funky in this topic. The income number I'm using is purely the taxable income, flat out, natural, no welfare income or whatnot.
2013, welfare as a percent of taxes was 45.72%, and as a percent of income taxes was 55.06%--including Social Security OASDI, but not HI (medicare/medicaid), because messing with HI is retarded. I actually started my models by removing 55.06% of all tax brackets, and then futzing the numbers around a little to level them.
So to start, I pull out 55% of all direct income taxes--about $1,267Bn. I levy a 17% flat income tax on top of what's left. That includes business and individuals, with the result that businesses pay a little less in taxes, oddly enough.
I modified the tax brackets after that. I actually increased the top bracket because it went from 39.6% to 38.78%. I bumped it to 40%, but that's like $16Bn-$23Bn or something stupid; it's something Congress can bicker over so everyone feels like they had their say. A household with a $10,000,000 income ends up paying $41k more (or $34k, in a two-adult household); top CEOs actually have something like $6 million or so in cash compensation. The effective tax bump there is 0.7%, which is actually pretty considerable; but, again, it's like $20 billion, which is ludicrously small and easy to remove by nudging the tax brackets a little. Then the Republicans can say they protected the rich from tax increases, the Democrats can say they took care of the poor, and everyone can shut up and move on.
After that it gets hairy.
The Universal Social Security isn't exactly a tax rate; it ta
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
The Press has the same rights of free speech as others. The Constitution does not convey additional protections to the Press over the individual.
don't vote to send people with guns to steal the goods produced by taxpayers that choose to spend what they've created on more important things, or however they choose, rather than giving basic income to people who don't need it.
They'd have more money too. Hell, at $158,000/year income, you'd be taking home over $3,000 more spendable money.
There's a 15-year grandfathering period on my Universal Social Security. Anyone retiring in that period receives their Social Security Retirement Benefit minus the USS benefit--that is, the same total pile of money. Upon implementation, this requires the retention of a 5.6% OASDI payroll tax, replacing the 12.4% current set of taxes.
After that period, new retirees are left to rely on savings. They should probably save the money they're getting out of USS. Retirement planning and all.
Productivity increases raise the purchasing power of the Universal Social Security benefit. A productivity increase is simply new technology requiring less labor--thus wage--to produce a product. That means the same amount of money per person buys more per person (inflation changes the numbers, but not the proportions). The gap between the two benefits narrows over time, creating a stronger retirement position and reducing the transitional cost (though I usually don't advertise this as a feature).
Oh, retirement is easy. The income taxes all go down; but to handle retirement grandfathering everyone who gets on Social Security retirement benefits for the next 15 years, we'd have to retain 5.6% OASDI payroll tax (currently 6.2%). This would reduce over time.
Essentially, you pay everyone the Universal Social Security benefit; then you pay them their OASDI benefit, less the USS benefit. If you're receiving $1,200 in retirement and the USS is $700, then you receive $500 in retirement benefits--a total of $1,200.
Because the USS feeds itself by a 17% tax on all income, its purchasing power goes up with the purchasing power per capita (which continuously increases--productivity increases raise the GDP-per-capita). That means its size relative to OASDI benefits increases, and so OASDI benefits shrink. After 15 years, new retirees have to live on USS plus savings (hence the 15-year transition); existing retirees get OASDI until they die, but the USS becomes a larger representative proportion, so that 5.6% payroll tax shrinks toward zero.
That's a reduction on the payroll tax even with a reduction on business income taxes.
Cost of Living: BI does not consider the variances in cost of living. A person in CA would need a BI of about 80K/yr in the Bay area, but a BI of 30K in Detroit. So simple you say, get it done. Now you have humans being trafficked to CA to live in mass shanty towns to generate massive amounts of cash to be sent back to Detroit.
You answered your own question, sort of.
In New York State, Baltimore City, California, Washington State, and really all over America, there's a broad distribution of low-income neighborhoods with an average rent of $1-$1.06/sqft. Food in Seattle grocery stores costs approximately the same as food in Baltimore City grocery stores--for example: 10 pounds of Pinto beans costs $5.83 in Baltimore, MD and $6.16 in Seattle, WA. Flour, bacon, eggs, and other commodities are similar. The same goes for personal care items.
It's not so much that people will bus to Detroit as it is that they'll bus to the same low-income areas as they do currently.
BI exceeds the total GDP today or you don't have BI.
Using 2013 as a model, it's possible (although unpleasant) to create a single-individual budget from retail prices. Food is the riskiest, while clothing and personal care are the most flexible; housing is the most-complex.
It's possible to incorporate a serving of vegetables, meat, and large amounts of beans or rice into the diet each day in as little as $25 for 2000kcal/day for 30 days. That includes things like Sam's Club's rotisserie chickens, eggs, some bacon, pancake syrup, and a few other so-called luxuries that don't seem luxurious. I based the original budget on a $100/month food budget, and eventually altered that to use a combined food, clothing, and personal care budget, because the latter two are flexible and food is volatile (it's easy to overspend on food).
In 2013, that combined budget was $170; the 2015 number is $181, accounting for income and population growth.
Housing is trickier. Landlords face increasing risk as incomes lower: low-income tenants have no savings, and often face loss of hours or jobs. Evictions and empty units become more-common, and so the cost-of-risk goes into rent. For example: if for every 10 units you will face the cost of 1 empty unit (through the combined cost of all risks), then a $250 unit has to rent for $275 to maintain the same profit.
Risk-reduction is inherent in a UBI, notably in my Universal Social Security plan, because the benefit isn't counted as income. That means it can't be taxed, garnered, or seized. Further risk-reduction is possible, for example by entering into a two-party agreement mediated by the Social Security Administration: the exact rent is direct-deposited to your landlord, and you get the remainder; if either party cancels this agreement, both receive immediate notice. As well, tenants can buy their way out of the cost-of-risk by placing a larger security deposit as an insurance fund against their own risk.
All of this means we can rent stably to these people at a profit. I expect landlords with many units would invest cautiously, at first adding a few units for such tenants to see how the market works, then expanding when they've identified and learned to control risk--hence why transitioning is so delicate (you have to transition without disrupting current welfare e.g. HUD until the market adapts).
With a 224sqft single-occupancy apartment (I've done some designs), $300/month in my original budget gives $1.34/sqft. In 2015, that portion of the budget represents $1.43/sqft. The per-square-foot cost of construction is similar to the cost of building any other unit, although there might be $15-$20/month ($0.07-$0.09/sqft) of additional fixed costs (bathroom and kitchen), assuming everything has a 15-year life. The average life of a kitchen sink or cabinet is 50 years, while the faucet does last about 15; cheap countertops last over a decade and can be relaminated; and bathroom fixtures
Unless UBI is essentially the government saying "X% of all production is to be distributed equally to all the population" then it's pointless - so essentially, UBI must be fractional (and a significant fraction at that) nationalization of all productive resources.
Actually, that's how money works--sort of.
My Universal Social Security proposal (which is about a trillion dollars cheaper than the current system) funds itself with a 17% tax on all income (business and individual). The thing about income is it's all money spent on everything bought--which makes it X% of all production.
In the United States, businesses average about 10% profitability (for real).
If a business makes $10 million, pays $4 million in wages, and purchases $5 million from other businesses, then that business sends 40% of its money to wages and keeps $1 million or 10% as profit. Meanwhile, that other $5 million purchases some input factor from another business (really, businesses) who pays $2 million in wages, $2.5 million for stuff from other businesses, and keeps $0.5 million as profits--again, 10% of that is profit, 40% goes to wages.
Each time you go up the supply chain, you get that kind of loss. For most major goods, however, businesses negotiate bulk contracts. GM wants 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 10 years; some steel mills negotiate with them, and negotiate with coal mines (coke) and iron mines (ore) for materials to produce 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 10 years, contingent on landing the GM contract. Normally, the margin on ore and coal is 10%; however, if you're talking about $30 billion of revenue per year, a 1% margin is still $300 million you wouldn't normally have. Now the steel costs 91% as much to make; and the 10% margin on $80 billion of steel (ore, coke, labor) gets pushed to 1%. Now the steel costs 83% as much, and has a low (1.01%) margin on it.
In this case, the business makes $10 million, pays $4 million in wages, and purchases $5 million of supply. The supplier makes $5 million, pays $2.45 million in wages, pays $2.5 million in supplies, and keeps $0.05 million. The eventual loss approaches some 11% (often less).
So, mostly, income goes to wages. Okay.
What about outsourcing?
When a business buys supplies from non-domestic sources, that money vanishes from the income equation. The business gets $10 million of revenue, pays $4 million in wages, keeps $1 million, and sends $5 million to China. That's $5 million of income. This makes sense: the stuff you're importing isn't produced here; it's not part of U.S. productivity. It's not part of the United States's wealth.
Likewise, when a business (Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel) exports goods, we sell them to Europe and Canada and Mexico. The money that flows in pays for our work--it's our productivity, and part of our wealth. Our labor has made products, and we're compensated for that labor--that production--with money to exchange for products other than what we made. This means not all of that $10 million revenue came from American worker income (spending), just like not all of it went to American income.
Put these things together and you get our total production.
So let's say you improve productivity. You find a way to produce 1% more shit with the same labor. 1% of the American population loses their jobs, wanders around unemployed for a while, and then eventually gets new jobs. That's a lot of complex economics impacted by span of time that I'd like to not explain in detail again (though, for the interested: the general conclusion is that sudden mass-automation would result in extremely-high unemployment and economic collapse; while mass-automation over a decade or so would result in a minor unemployment increase which would eventually go away again).
Now you have 1% more stuff being bought with 100% o
Done and done. Universal Social Security. Replaces current welfare system, takes its intake as a 17% flat tax on all income (business profits included). Tax bracket adjustment avoids raising taxes on anyone and ends in $1 trillion less burden on the American taxpayer.
Deployment requires careful transition. The most notable transitional concern is Social Security old-age pensions; the retirement position is better, but not for immediate retirees. To cover this, the paycheck OASDI goes away; the payroll 6.2% OASDI tax gets cut back to 5.6%; and retirements benefits recipients receive only the difference between the Universal Social Security and their original old-age pension as the Social Security old-age pension. Recipients retiring within 15 years of passing receive this benefit. Because of the way the USS grows (its per-recipient purchasing power increases in direct proportion to the GDP-per-capita), the gap narrows over time, and the OASDI payroll tax shrinks.
Other transitions include moving away from HUD and food stamps. Although all recipient households immediately enter a stronger financial position, the change is disruptive. Fortunately, HUD is only around $80 billion total across America, and mostly state-funded. Likewise SNAP, WIC, and other such programs are state programs; and Unemployment is largely state-funded. All of these programs can be diminished immediately; and HUD only actually pays out to 25% of qualified recipients anyway, so the other 75% would immediately receive a financial benefit where the system had given them nothing.
50 million Americans face hunger; 1.6 million face homelessness; and 600,000 homeless cannot find shelters. The Universal Social Security benefit pays enough for food, clothing, personal care, utilities, and housing. The largest challenge and risk is housing: landlords face higher risks renting to lower incomes, and must raise rents to cover for the cost of evictions and empty units. Because the Universal Social Security benefit is not considered income, it isn't taxable, and it can't be taken in bankruptcy or other wage-garnering programs. It can't be lost for any reason. Landlord risk is thus reduced, and the cost of risk is reduced from rents. This makes single-occupancy 244sqft apartments far more feasible; the current Universal Social Security payment would pay approximately $315/month for rent, or $1.29/sqft, compared to a rough median of $1-$1.06/sqft single-bedroom apartment rent in low-income areas all over the United States.
Universal Social Security is a capitalist solution to a free-market problem. It reduces the cost of labor by reducing payroll taxes, thus encouraging employment. It reduces the taxes on income, thus increasing the ratio of take-home dollars to employer labor costs, providing more consumer spending power (and leading to shorter working weeks--probably 28-32 hours). It provides a profit motive for landlords and other businesses to sell to the lowest-income earners--people with no job and no money--and provide for their living. It does all of this through an immense net-reduction in effective taxes equivalent to almost 40% of the current Federal revenue, and with a return of consumer spending power equivalent to 64% of the current Federal revenue.
So maybe people can stop talking about socialism and make America a free market again?
Uh, I said "Parent suggests violation of ethic might change your legal status, but I don't believe that's true." I described in detail the actual legal status of speech. Shouting fire in a theater, inciting riot, slander, and libel will actually get you in legal trouble.
You seem to be looking to make an attack by ignoring what's being said. Cool your ego, trollchild.
False analogy. A fire is a material fact; protests are a material fact; the reason for the protests are a separate material fact. You don't cover the way the fire started until it's been determined.
Yes and that's why it's considered unethical journalism. It would also be grossly-damaging to arrest people for that shit; journalistic ethic is supposed to be a core tenant of journalism, and your peers are supposed to drive you out for that shit. It doesn't work when none of your peers have any ethics.
The issue is whether a journalist was documenting (journalism) the protest or marketing (marketing) the protest. Pushing a political agenda by misreporting is a violation of ethic.
Parent suggests violation of ethic might change your legal status, but I don't believe that's true. The Press is subject to libel and slander laws as well as to any behavior which incites violence or otherwise causes harm--to the full implication of being subject to laws and lawsuits. The right to peaceful assembly is not special to the Press, nor is the right to freedom of expression. Trespassing might apply, and the Press are often given passes to be present on the understanding that they won't actively cause trouble (no rioting, no inciting riot); violation of this understanding creates the same liability as an individual who causes such harm.
I don't see a legal difference between a journalist and an individual.
It's more-correct to say she did nothing illegal, and I'm not sure on the details. What I've heard on the matter is she grossly-violated journalistic ethic--which is not illegal. A lot of people are pushing the story that she was ignoring any arguments for the pipeline and soliciting opinions to build a case against the pipeline--i.e. rather than "investigative journalism" she was building a sensation piece and willfully-misrepresenting the situation. Again, that's not illegal; and I don't have enough information on the situation to say what was actually going on.
I've had issue with bullshit "investigative journalism" houses like ProPublica before (ProPublica's gross-misrepresentation of facts to generate ad revenue has actually hurt the most vulnerable of people and caused misappropriation of public funds in pointless Congressional investigations). No clue on if Goodman is going the same way or if people are full of shit.
It's a matter of fitness for a purpose. One Tesla caught fire after driving 100mph through a concrete wall; Tesla actually said don't do that, wtf mate? Military vehicles have different concerns, and some are built with air intake snorkles that route above the vehicle's roof (and designed to drain water from absolutely everywhere) so you can drive them through 5 feet of water; they still blow up if you shoot explosives at them, and the manufacturer puts bullet-deflecting armor on at best and points out they're not suitable for driving across minefields.
Road hazards are a part of driving a car under expected conditions. Track cars can go without the armor underneath, but still need a battery ready for a wreck (because that happens)--and might actually forego the armor but take a lower-density battery with reactive fire suppression and isolation because you're actually likely to slam into something at 150mph, whereas a passenger car hitting something at 150mph is your own damn fault and not in our specs.
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"Top 3 percent"? wouldn't that necessarily move the threshold downward over time?
What if your card has a mixture of kids's books and pornography? How do you move the pornography onto your reader? Do you select everything in one go, or spend large amounts of time and effort hunting and pecking one book at a time? How are they sorted and grouped? How do you ensure only kids's books go on the kids's books card?
This is why we have LVM and migrate data, instead of scattering it over 40 partitions and the odd external drive. Consolidated storage is easier to manage.
They'd also have to invent a way to manage that storage so that pulling the card out would only remove the part of your library you expect, and not cause the damn thing to fail catastrophically. They'd also need a way to avoid hours and hours of manual user processes to delegate a storage location, or to migrate collections of books between locations.
On the other hand, they could put like 1GB of storage in and sell the device cheap, thus lowering the price tag, even though you really need to spend $50 to add the right storage. That became unviable when 32GB of Flash fell below $10, though, since the difference is trivial. A 64GB microSD will cost you $30, whereas the branding, packaging, electronics, and shipping mark-up are built-in already for a phone or ebook reader and so 64GB would only bump the cost by $10 (since you need internal storage anyway, and the cheapest isn't scaled down linearly).
Saving the market millions of units of $2 cost to run even 8GB instead of 4GB opens up purchasing of other goods. In 2013, a difference of $2 would be a maximum of 5,900 U.S. jobs, which is only .0035% unemployment. Adding $10 would lose at a maximum 23,600 jobs or .017% unemployment. That assumes only an insignificant number of purchasers actually use the space--that is, that we're selling them shit they're not going to use, and making them pay for the privilege.
It's probably cheaper and better to just integrate more flash instead of an SD card controller (it's about $8 of ICs, discrete components, and the slot itself in wholesale bulk components for SD, versus about the same to just drop in 64GB). Either way, no one in the U.S. would max out storage with Kindle media.
You're pretty much right.
Sure, I'm on Amphetamine because my genetics caused a smaller, weaker prefrontal cortex and thus a lower amount of mental force coming out of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, diminishing my ability to control my brain's automatic impulses; but I've spent my life learning things, and learning to control parts of that. It's never going to be a drug-free solution because that just doesn't work; on the other hand, I'm able to control major impulses, and I've got an interest in finances, risk management, and other procedural behaviors which maximize efficiency.
That's just psychological development. Many genetic expressions are a matter of environment. Stress in the environment causes an upregulation and downregulation of gene expression: parts of your brain start pumping out RNA and assembling different neurochemicals. Relaxation techniques and some drugs (notably alcohol, and also foods with certain nutrient profiles) also affect genetic expression, changing brain chemistry or metabolism so you become more-relaxed, more-focused, or fatter, or whatever. It's not just that your brain is structured a certain way or you've eaten too many calories; your body has to decide how to activate its cellular machinery, which can determine what parts of your brain activate the most (even if they're weaker to begin with) or how to process food (do you store fat in fat cells or inside muscle cells? Frequent aerobic metabolism will cause your body to start putting fatty acids directly inside the muscles).
I think you've only imagined this, not tried it.
It's actually standard industry information. If it's wrong, businesses are losing money.
Many of the totally unemployable people with nothing but basic income would have drug problems, mental problems or otherwise be dysfunctional.
Many, yes. They're highly-visible, and gain lots of attention; the thing is they're also the minority. That is to say: most low-income people don't have those problems and aren't rowdy, destructive little cretins; the ones who do are quickly-identified, and the ones who don't also don't stand out as poor.
It's similar with welfare fraud. America's welfare system has some overall 11% inappropriate distribution rate. Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest offenders, at 24%; and the claimants are all doctors and hospitals, not individual recipients. Unemployment, SNAP, and HUD largely deal with clerical errors or sympathetic caseworkers, so some borderline cases who should get denied are creatively-approved or extended by the caseworker. The actual incidence of fraud is hard to measure; some analysis indicates it's around 0.018%, but I'd point out fraud is by nature difficult to detect. Nevertheless, Americans perceive welfare as a system rife with abuse, and they perceive that abuse as near-100% of welfare recipients defrauding the system and using the money for drugs and criminal enterprise.
if you have a cheap and not that great rental object I wouldn't bet on 100% coverage, if you got an attractive one you'll rent it again quick by lowering price if you have to but if there's an oversupply some of the less desirable ones will remain empty.
Housing market is odd in that it's inelastic. Once it's actually spun up, competition hardly affects it. Tenants have leases and moving costs, and moving out is a logistics nightmare; leases avoid empty units, but tenants have to rent an open unit ASAP or it costs the landlord money. It costs money to break a lease and a landlord isn't going to hold an empty unit for you for 3 months rent-free, so the consumers can only really move their spending power on a meeting of coincidences.
You lose your market when you out-price them. If you want to capture a market with more-desirable units, you've got to set them up and then take potentially a year of losses while people's leases turn over, and then you have to convince them to come to you instead of renewing their lease. Profits are slim and landlords rely on keeping units full; fierce competition is just market suicide.
There are those who manage to do it and make money on it, but usually they're also circling like hawks to spot potential troublemakers and nip it in the bud.
I'm injecting enough cash that the market "to do it and make money on it" is a big market, rather than a heavily-niche market. Right now, that market here is essentially non-existent. The game changes when "you can make money" goes from "maybe 50-75 good people with that kind of low income in this town" to "over 30,000 distressed households with stable, very-low income in this city alone."
The United States has 1.6 million homeless people, and 600,000 go without shelter every day. Even if we only manage to profit from 40% of that population, the non-government independent charity shelters have the capacity for the rest.
I believe it is the nature of higher animals like rats, dogs, and humans to function more-effectively when less stress is present. It's likely the ability to survive independent of charity aid will improve the behavior of all citizens, with the largest effect on the worst problem cases of the lowest means, and with a better preventative effect on the next generation than remedial effect on the current. Both rats and humans have been shown to frequently abandon drug addictions outright when moved into a more-comfortable environment with greater social support, and huma
It's a problem of statistics. In a population, the amount of cash spent to care for a child varies due to economic fluctuations, spending habits, and random events (destroyed your clothes?). Thus a particular amount of money will pay 100% of the 50th percentile cost--or, statistically, will give 50% of the population more money than required, and 50% less. That 50% less is a concern, so you move out three standard deviations to cover 99.7% of children; except, in both cases, you have a chunk of the population who doesn't need that much, and so is getting money for kid plus money for daddy.
We subsidize dependents and children through tax benefits, which isn't immediate (no paychecks rolling in month per month), and so doesn't keep the household finances going unless someone does a lot of work. We also hand out things like SNAP, which is semi-controlled--it's not perfect, but it's a separate account that can't be spent as straight cash. That means it takes some tricky financial thinking to see your pile of money as "I had $90 for my kid and they gave me $50; I needed $120 and now I have $140, so that's $20 this month!" The child support actually registers more like support, because it takes effort (and thus diminishes the neurological reward) to work out how much cash you just got dumped onto your pile.
Generally, the current system doesn't have a welfare abuse problem. There's a large amount of improper payments--estimated around 11% overall, with Medicare being the biggest at 24%--but those aren't population fraud and abuse. Medicare particularly has doctors and hospitals claiming money without proper documentation; and direct aid such as food stamps, housing vouchers, and SNAP face large amounts of clerical errors and approvals of benefits for cases which later review suggests should have been denied. Among the direct aid improper payments, a small percentage are identified as fraudulent; and even among abuse case, much less than 100% of the money is abused.
Most importantly, there aren't a whole hell of a lot of people popping out a whole hell of a lot of babies to get welfare money. Welfare babies most often come from poverty behavior--that is: life is shitty, condoms are expensive, drugs and sex are way better than this shit. Researchers have shown that both rats and humans more-easily break out of drug addiction when placed in supportive communities and given less-shitty lives (more fun things to do, better access to food, better care, less pain); and humans have fewer sex partners and fewer births (especially to young mothers) when not under so much strain. I'm quite keen on not giving people free a cash reward for having babies; and I also firmly believe people aren't making welfare babies to gain from the current public aid system.
That's why coupling a UBI to public aid targeting children of low-income households is a low-risk plan, instead of just lower-risk. The risk now is demonstrably-minimal, and we're keeping that mechanism.
It will fly because it's basically administrative.
Essentially, an immigrant gets the $7,000 as a non-refundable tax credit. That is to say: he might owe a total $8,000 in taxes, and then deduct $7,000, so only owes $1,000. We send him a $7,000 check in February, instead of little checks all year. If he owes $4,000, then he owes $0 in taxes.
At the same time, immigrants would also be eligible for public aid. SNAP only covers children of low-income households; if you're a naturalized American, however, it also covers you--as an adult--and you gain access to HUD and unemployment insurance. As you're not receiving $7,000/year in Social Security money, you're essentially paying for this, relative to other Americans, so it's fair.
I've actually run this by a lot of first-generation immigrants. They tend to identify that it's complex and has trade-offs, and acknowledge it's essentially-fair. That is to say: they recognize that what they get (a sharp tax credit and access to welfare) is unequal to what everyone else gets (free money, flat out); but that, above $41,000 income, the tax credit is equal to what everyone else gets, and below that it scales away and eventually converts into welfare nobody else gets. At HUD levels, income is still higher, thanks to lower taxes; and even married households have an income benefit at $40k (about $6k), although they don't break even with natural-born households until higher.
Funny enough, this is actually how Social Security works, except without the language. If you move to America when you're old, you have no working history, and you don't get a retirement benefit; if you work, you start building a Social Security history, and you get retirement benefits. Universal Social Security reduces your end-of-year taxes by up to the benefit, not to enter negative, if you're an immigrant; and it compensates for the discrepancy by paying welfare if you're a citizen with low income but ineligible for Social Security.
much as I would stop reading any business plan that proposed development of a perpetual motion machine that required no input of energy but output energy in the form of heat
That's a poor analogy. My plan works, with the only challenge being that people don't like it. A perpetual motion machine might work, but thus far the laws of physics suggest that such a machine patently doesn't work even theoretically on-paper, so it's likely the design is mathematically flawed.
What other taxes would you have over the 17% flat tax?
The taxes from welfare are pulled out, and the rest stay. About 55% of existing income taxes vanish.
I'm doing it by modification, with my rough model using 2013. The U.S. actually has an income tax rate of some 30%, sort of. Total Federal spending in 2013 was $3,455 billion, but total revenue (taxes) was $2,775Bn. That's $680 billion of deficit spending. Total taxable income is $9,329Bn, which makes $2,775Bn about 29.75%.
Sort of.
Federal income taxes also tax welfare income, an extra $2,417Bn. That means Social Security, unemployment, and the like are taxed. I tend to exclude these because I'm pushing a Universal Social Security which is untaxed and replaces that stuff. There are other implications, as well. OASDI is a flow-through system: you pay taxes on OASDI (you don't deduct it from your taxable income), and that money taken out of today's paycheck lands in some senior's account next week--and gets taxed. To be clear: you pay $250 in OASDI tax, you pay Federal income taxes on that $250, then that $250 goes to a senior, and the senior pays Federal income taxes on that $250. It's similar for other welfares.
The way I figure tax rates ignores this so everything looks more straight-forward. It's not as hazardous as you'd expect: Social Security doesn't take OASDI from payments; and retirement income is typically lower income, thus not taxed much anyway ($32k average income, you pay 10.6% effective if single, 0.42% if married--standard deductions are radical, eh? Take the full out of your IRA while married and put it into a bank account; when your spouse dies, you've got all this cash at the married rate, instead of taking IRA distributions at the single rate). The proportion of total taxes paid by that demographic is tiny (the bottom 50% of all income earners paid 2.78% of all income taxes in total), and plenty of Federal revenue is collected by non-income taxes--as you've noticed.
That brings me to your 20% number. Income taxes--including OASDI--are 83% of Federal revenue. They make up 24.7% of all taxable income by my measurement, 19.3% if you count Welfare income as income, and--in 2013--16.1% of all income (including untaxable deductions--which OASDI taxes, by the way).
The long and short of all that is my numbers are a bit funky--all numbers are a bit funky in this topic. The income number I'm using is purely the taxable income, flat out, natural, no welfare income or whatnot.
2013, welfare as a percent of taxes was 45.72%, and as a percent of income taxes was 55.06%--including Social Security OASDI, but not HI (medicare/medicaid), because messing with HI is retarded. I actually started my models by removing 55.06% of all tax brackets, and then futzing the numbers around a little to level them.
So to start, I pull out 55% of all direct income taxes--about $1,267Bn. I levy a 17% flat income tax on top of what's left. That includes business and individuals, with the result that businesses pay a little less in taxes, oddly enough.
I modified the tax brackets after that. I actually increased the top bracket because it went from 39.6% to 38.78%. I bumped it to 40%, but that's like $16Bn-$23Bn or something stupid; it's something Congress can bicker over so everyone feels like they had their say. A household with a $10,000,000 income ends up paying $41k more (or $34k, in a two-adult household); top CEOs actually have something like $6 million or so in cash compensation. The effective tax bump there is 0.7%, which is actually pretty considerable; but, again, it's like $20 billion, which is ludicrously small and easy to remove by nudging the tax brackets a little. Then the Republicans can say they protected the rich from tax increases, the Democrats can say they took care of the poor, and everyone can shut up and move on.
After that it gets hairy.
The Universal Social Security isn't exactly a tax rate; it ta
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The Press has the same rights of free speech as others. The Constitution does not convey additional protections to the Press over the individual.
don't vote to send people with guns to steal the goods produced by taxpayers that choose to spend what they've created on more important things, or however they choose, rather than giving basic income to people who don't need it.
They'd have more money too. Hell, at $158,000/year income, you'd be taking home over $3,000 more spendable money.
I've already solved that problem.
There's a 15-year grandfathering period on my Universal Social Security. Anyone retiring in that period receives their Social Security Retirement Benefit minus the USS benefit--that is, the same total pile of money. Upon implementation, this requires the retention of a 5.6% OASDI payroll tax, replacing the 12.4% current set of taxes.
After that period, new retirees are left to rely on savings. They should probably save the money they're getting out of USS. Retirement planning and all.
Productivity increases raise the purchasing power of the Universal Social Security benefit. A productivity increase is simply new technology requiring less labor--thus wage--to produce a product. That means the same amount of money per person buys more per person (inflation changes the numbers, but not the proportions). The gap between the two benefits narrows over time, creating a stronger retirement position and reducing the transitional cost (though I usually don't advertise this as a feature).
Don't give people cash for kids. It's then profitable to have kids.
Oh, retirement is easy. The income taxes all go down; but to handle retirement grandfathering everyone who gets on Social Security retirement benefits for the next 15 years, we'd have to retain 5.6% OASDI payroll tax (currently 6.2%). This would reduce over time.
Essentially, you pay everyone the Universal Social Security benefit; then you pay them their OASDI benefit, less the USS benefit. If you're receiving $1,200 in retirement and the USS is $700, then you receive $500 in retirement benefits--a total of $1,200.
Because the USS feeds itself by a 17% tax on all income, its purchasing power goes up with the purchasing power per capita (which continuously increases--productivity increases raise the GDP-per-capita). That means its size relative to OASDI benefits increases, and so OASDI benefits shrink. After 15 years, new retirees have to live on USS plus savings (hence the 15-year transition); existing retirees get OASDI until they die, but the USS becomes a larger representative proportion, so that 5.6% payroll tax shrinks toward zero.
That's a reduction on the payroll tax even with a reduction on business income taxes.
Replacing medicare and medicaid is unnecessary.
End homelessness and hunger in America, reduce taxpayer burden by $1 trillion. Done.
Will that even buy health insurance from the exchange?
The ACA gives it to you for free if you don't have any income.
Is that even a subsistence wage?
It's enough for landlords to profit renting housing. It's enough to sell food, clothing, utilities, and personal care to these people at a profit.
Globalization--the exchange of goods and services between countries around the world--increases wealth in all regions involved.
Cost of Living: BI does not consider the variances in cost of living. A person in CA would need a BI of about 80K/yr in the Bay area, but a BI of 30K in Detroit. So simple you say, get it done. Now you have humans being trafficked to CA to live in mass shanty towns to generate massive amounts of cash to be sent back to Detroit.
You answered your own question, sort of.
In New York State, Baltimore City, California, Washington State, and really all over America, there's a broad distribution of low-income neighborhoods with an average rent of $1-$1.06/sqft. Food in Seattle grocery stores costs approximately the same as food in Baltimore City grocery stores--for example: 10 pounds of Pinto beans costs $5.83 in Baltimore, MD and $6.16 in Seattle, WA. Flour, bacon, eggs, and other commodities are similar. The same goes for personal care items.
It's not so much that people will bus to Detroit as it is that they'll bus to the same low-income areas as they do currently.
BI exceeds the total GDP today or you don't have BI.
Using 2013 as a model, it's possible (although unpleasant) to create a single-individual budget from retail prices. Food is the riskiest, while clothing and personal care are the most flexible; housing is the most-complex.
It's possible to incorporate a serving of vegetables, meat, and large amounts of beans or rice into the diet each day in as little as $25 for 2000kcal/day for 30 days. That includes things like Sam's Club's rotisserie chickens, eggs, some bacon, pancake syrup, and a few other so-called luxuries that don't seem luxurious. I based the original budget on a $100/month food budget, and eventually altered that to use a combined food, clothing, and personal care budget, because the latter two are flexible and food is volatile (it's easy to overspend on food).
In 2013, that combined budget was $170; the 2015 number is $181, accounting for income and population growth.
Housing is trickier. Landlords face increasing risk as incomes lower: low-income tenants have no savings, and often face loss of hours or jobs. Evictions and empty units become more-common, and so the cost-of-risk goes into rent. For example: if for every 10 units you will face the cost of 1 empty unit (through the combined cost of all risks), then a $250 unit has to rent for $275 to maintain the same profit.
Risk-reduction is inherent in a UBI, notably in my Universal Social Security plan, because the benefit isn't counted as income. That means it can't be taxed, garnered, or seized. Further risk-reduction is possible, for example by entering into a two-party agreement mediated by the Social Security Administration: the exact rent is direct-deposited to your landlord, and you get the remainder; if either party cancels this agreement, both receive immediate notice. As well, tenants can buy their way out of the cost-of-risk by placing a larger security deposit as an insurance fund against their own risk.
All of this means we can rent stably to these people at a profit. I expect landlords with many units would invest cautiously, at first adding a few units for such tenants to see how the market works, then expanding when they've identified and learned to control risk--hence why transitioning is so delicate (you have to transition without disrupting current welfare e.g. HUD until the market adapts).
With a 224sqft single-occupancy apartment (I've done some designs), $300/month in my original budget gives $1.34/sqft. In 2015, that portion of the budget represents $1.43/sqft. The per-square-foot cost of construction is similar to the cost of building any other unit, although there might be $15-$20/month ($0.07-$0.09/sqft) of additional fixed costs (bathroom and kitchen), assuming everything has a 15-year life. The average life of a kitchen sink or cabinet is 50 years, while the faucet does last about 15; cheap countertops last over a decade and can be relaminated; and bathroom fixtures
Unless UBI is essentially the government saying "X% of all production is to be distributed equally to all the population" then it's pointless - so essentially, UBI must be fractional (and a significant fraction at that) nationalization of all productive resources.
Actually, that's how money works--sort of.
My Universal Social Security proposal (which is about a trillion dollars cheaper than the current system) funds itself with a 17% tax on all income (business and individual). The thing about income is it's all money spent on everything bought--which makes it X% of all production.
In the United States, businesses average about 10% profitability (for real).
If a business makes $10 million, pays $4 million in wages, and purchases $5 million from other businesses, then that business sends 40% of its money to wages and keeps $1 million or 10% as profit. Meanwhile, that other $5 million purchases some input factor from another business (really, businesses) who pays $2 million in wages, $2.5 million for stuff from other businesses, and keeps $0.5 million as profits--again, 10% of that is profit, 40% goes to wages.
Each time you go up the supply chain, you get that kind of loss. For most major goods, however, businesses negotiate bulk contracts. GM wants 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 10 years; some steel mills negotiate with them, and negotiate with coal mines (coke) and iron mines (ore) for materials to produce 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 10 years, contingent on landing the GM contract. Normally, the margin on ore and coal is 10%; however, if you're talking about $30 billion of revenue per year, a 1% margin is still $300 million you wouldn't normally have. Now the steel costs 91% as much to make; and the 10% margin on $80 billion of steel (ore, coke, labor) gets pushed to 1%. Now the steel costs 83% as much, and has a low (1.01%) margin on it.
In this case, the business makes $10 million, pays $4 million in wages, and purchases $5 million of supply. The supplier makes $5 million, pays $2.45 million in wages, pays $2.5 million in supplies, and keeps $0.05 million. The eventual loss approaches some 11% (often less).
So, mostly, income goes to wages. Okay.
What about outsourcing?
When a business buys supplies from non-domestic sources, that money vanishes from the income equation. The business gets $10 million of revenue, pays $4 million in wages, keeps $1 million, and sends $5 million to China. That's $5 million of income. This makes sense: the stuff you're importing isn't produced here; it's not part of U.S. productivity. It's not part of the United States's wealth.
Likewise, when a business (Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Intel) exports goods, we sell them to Europe and Canada and Mexico. The money that flows in pays for our work--it's our productivity, and part of our wealth. Our labor has made products, and we're compensated for that labor--that production--with money to exchange for products other than what we made. This means not all of that $10 million revenue came from American worker income (spending), just like not all of it went to American income.
Put these things together and you get our total production.
So let's say you improve productivity. You find a way to produce 1% more shit with the same labor. 1% of the American population loses their jobs, wanders around unemployed for a while, and then eventually gets new jobs. That's a lot of complex economics impacted by span of time that I'd like to not explain in detail again (though, for the interested: the general conclusion is that sudden mass-automation would result in extremely-high unemployment and economic collapse; while mass-automation over a decade or so would result in a minor unemployment increase which would eventually go away again).
Now you have 1% more stuff being bought with 100% o
Done and done. Universal Social Security. Replaces current welfare system, takes its intake as a 17% flat tax on all income (business profits included). Tax bracket adjustment avoids raising taxes on anyone and ends in $1 trillion less burden on the American taxpayer.
Deployment requires careful transition. The most notable transitional concern is Social Security old-age pensions; the retirement position is better, but not for immediate retirees. To cover this, the paycheck OASDI goes away; the payroll 6.2% OASDI tax gets cut back to 5.6%; and retirements benefits recipients receive only the difference between the Universal Social Security and their original old-age pension as the Social Security old-age pension. Recipients retiring within 15 years of passing receive this benefit. Because of the way the USS grows (its per-recipient purchasing power increases in direct proportion to the GDP-per-capita), the gap narrows over time, and the OASDI payroll tax shrinks.
Other transitions include moving away from HUD and food stamps. Although all recipient households immediately enter a stronger financial position, the change is disruptive. Fortunately, HUD is only around $80 billion total across America, and mostly state-funded. Likewise SNAP, WIC, and other such programs are state programs; and Unemployment is largely state-funded. All of these programs can be diminished immediately; and HUD only actually pays out to 25% of qualified recipients anyway, so the other 75% would immediately receive a financial benefit where the system had given them nothing.
50 million Americans face hunger; 1.6 million face homelessness; and 600,000 homeless cannot find shelters. The Universal Social Security benefit pays enough for food, clothing, personal care, utilities, and housing. The largest challenge and risk is housing: landlords face higher risks renting to lower incomes, and must raise rents to cover for the cost of evictions and empty units. Because the Universal Social Security benefit is not considered income, it isn't taxable, and it can't be taken in bankruptcy or other wage-garnering programs. It can't be lost for any reason. Landlord risk is thus reduced, and the cost of risk is reduced from rents. This makes single-occupancy 244sqft apartments far more feasible; the current Universal Social Security payment would pay approximately $315/month for rent, or $1.29/sqft, compared to a rough median of $1-$1.06/sqft single-bedroom apartment rent in low-income areas all over the United States.
Universal Social Security is a capitalist solution to a free-market problem. It reduces the cost of labor by reducing payroll taxes, thus encouraging employment. It reduces the taxes on income, thus increasing the ratio of take-home dollars to employer labor costs, providing more consumer spending power (and leading to shorter working weeks--probably 28-32 hours). It provides a profit motive for landlords and other businesses to sell to the lowest-income earners--people with no job and no money--and provide for their living. It does all of this through an immense net-reduction in effective taxes equivalent to almost 40% of the current Federal revenue, and with a return of consumer spending power equivalent to 64% of the current Federal revenue.
So maybe people can stop talking about socialism and make America a free market again?
Uh, I said "Parent suggests violation of ethic might change your legal status, but I don't believe that's true." I described in detail the actual legal status of speech. Shouting fire in a theater, inciting riot, slander, and libel will actually get you in legal trouble.
You seem to be looking to make an attack by ignoring what's being said. Cool your ego, trollchild.
False analogy. A fire is a material fact; protests are a material fact; the reason for the protests are a separate material fact. You don't cover the way the fire started until it's been determined.
Yes and that's why it's considered unethical journalism. It would also be grossly-damaging to arrest people for that shit; journalistic ethic is supposed to be a core tenant of journalism, and your peers are supposed to drive you out for that shit. It doesn't work when none of your peers have any ethics.
The issue is whether a journalist was documenting (journalism) the protest or marketing (marketing) the protest. Pushing a political agenda by misreporting is a violation of ethic.
Parent suggests violation of ethic might change your legal status, but I don't believe that's true. The Press is subject to libel and slander laws as well as to any behavior which incites violence or otherwise causes harm--to the full implication of being subject to laws and lawsuits. The right to peaceful assembly is not special to the Press, nor is the right to freedom of expression. Trespassing might apply, and the Press are often given passes to be present on the understanding that they won't actively cause trouble (no rioting, no inciting riot); violation of this understanding creates the same liability as an individual who causes such harm.
I don't see a legal difference between a journalist and an individual.
It's more-correct to say she did nothing illegal, and I'm not sure on the details. What I've heard on the matter is she grossly-violated journalistic ethic--which is not illegal. A lot of people are pushing the story that she was ignoring any arguments for the pipeline and soliciting opinions to build a case against the pipeline--i.e. rather than "investigative journalism" she was building a sensation piece and willfully-misrepresenting the situation. Again, that's not illegal; and I don't have enough information on the situation to say what was actually going on.
I've had issue with bullshit "investigative journalism" houses like ProPublica before (ProPublica's gross-misrepresentation of facts to generate ad revenue has actually hurt the most vulnerable of people and caused misappropriation of public funds in pointless Congressional investigations). No clue on if Goodman is going the same way or if people are full of shit.
It's a matter of fitness for a purpose. One Tesla caught fire after driving 100mph through a concrete wall; Tesla actually said don't do that, wtf mate? Military vehicles have different concerns, and some are built with air intake snorkles that route above the vehicle's roof (and designed to drain water from absolutely everywhere) so you can drive them through 5 feet of water; they still blow up if you shoot explosives at them, and the manufacturer puts bullet-deflecting armor on at best and points out they're not suitable for driving across minefields.
Road hazards are a part of driving a car under expected conditions. Track cars can go without the armor underneath, but still need a battery ready for a wreck (because that happens)--and might actually forego the armor but take a lower-density battery with reactive fire suppression and isolation because you're actually likely to slam into something at 150mph, whereas a passenger car hitting something at 150mph is your own damn fault and not in our specs.